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Get Ready Like Royalty—Feel Like Royalty!
Open up your mind and it will sing to you. The love that goes out into our work comes back as love of self. Work is an important component of the spiritual life, it can be a path to holiness, and profoundly affects the soul. When we think of work, we only consider function, and so the soul elements are left to chance. However, the rituals that are taking place when one performs a task is the soul’s work: something of the soul is being created in the work of ritual. Ordinary actions, too, accomplish something for the soul. Yet, where there is no artfulness about life, there is a weakening of soul. It seems that the problem with most modern manufacturing is not a lack of efficiency, it is a loss of soul. If people had a deep sense of the truly magical nature of their product, they would take care of the souls of their products with sacred imagination. The same principle holds for all professions and for all forms of labor. We could say, then, that all work is sacred, whether you are building a castle, creating a beautiful stain glass window, or taking out the rubbish. A special window might help ritualize a house, or a dinning room table of a special design or select wood could transform the house into an arena that has imaginal depth that feels one’s soul. It may conjure up certain memories and fantasies that have significance. Or work may be a means of sorting out issues that have little to do with the work itself. It may be a response to fate. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
We may find ourselves doing work that has been in the family for generations or working at a job that appeared after a number of coincidences and chance events. In this sense, all work is a vocation, a calling from a place that is the source of meaning and identity, the foundation of which are beyond human intention and interpretation. However, we can never do this unless we believe that we can, for the belief that we cannot binds us back to the antiquated precedents and compels us to accept only as much good as has been experienced in the past. If we can get firmly fixed in our mind that the principle of the soul is never bound by precedent, that the doing of new things in science through new discoveries always existed as a possibility, and there was nothing in nature which prohibited the larger experiences, we shall no longer be hypnotized by limitations of the past. It is possible that most of us go through life more or less hypnotized by what everyone has believed. We say that the good we desire cannot come to us because we have never experienced much of it, or there is not enough good to go around, of that God does not hear our prayers. Too often we turn over the possibilities of the individual life to the acceptance of the collective group. Not understanding soul, companies look to the work of other cultures and try to mimic their methods. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
It is not possible to care for the soul while violating or disregarding one’s own moral sensibility. What we should break down is the hypnotic suggestions that bind us, and create new avenues in the mind for a fresh approach and a new outlook to the spirit. This is something every individual must do for oneself, but there must be a method or a way to begin. We have to start with the firm faith that we are dealing with power which is not bound. It is not limited. It is not only some power; it is all-power. It is not difficult to convince the mind of this, since plain reasoning compels one to accept such a viewpoint. Alchemy was a process in which raw material was placed in a vessel where it was heated, observed closely, heated some more, passed through various operations and observed once again. In the end, the result was an arcane product imagined mysteriously to be gold, the stone of the philosophers, or a potent elixir. Alchemy was a spiritual practice carried out for the benefit of the soul. Just like many of you work to benefit your family, who are part of your soul. Face it, the only reason many of you get out of bed everyday and go to work is because you believe that the qualities you produce are scared rituals which benefit your soul and are a way to honor God and the people and things you love. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
You find your poetic inspiration in your home, family, garden, and furniture to keep going even when you are tired. We must assure ourselves that we have access to the power of God. We could never do this if we felt that the power was external to us, if it were something apart from or different from our own being. We discover that God is immediate and personal, a possibility latent within the self, and ready to be called upon and used. We could imagine our own everyday work alchemically in the same way. We work on the stuff of the soul by means of the things of life. This is an ancient idea. Ordinary life is the means of entry into higher spiritual activity. At the very moment we are hard at work on some Worldly endeavor, we are also working on a different plane. Perhaps without knowing it, we are engaged in the labours of the soul. The more deeply our work stirs imagination and corresponds to images that are sacred at the core of identity and fate, the more it will have soul. Having identified ourselves with the power which is law, and the presence which is the spirit, we must consciously increase our expectation and deepen our realization. This is done by prayer, communing with the divine, until gradually we so extend our concepts of life and the possibilities of living that we are no longer bound by our thought patterns of lack and limitation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is simply to try to get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever had, and to hail it with delight as an opportunity of obtaining a larger measure of divine grace. There is one life, that life is God, that life is my life now. This power, this presence, and this life are perfect, complete, whole, and happy. We identify the mind with this wholeness, happiness, and perfection, affirming its presence and embodying a certain feeling about it, and inward awareness. This practice must continue until the idea becomes real to us, not as though we were something apart from or approaching the reality, but as through we were operating from the very center of it, which of course we are. It is an extension or reflection of ourselves. When one concludes a successful business transaction, one feels good about oneself. When one builds their dream house or gets a new care, one stands back and contemplates it, feeling a surge of pride. However, if we allow ourselves to do bad work, the whole society suffers a wound to soul. When it is not possible to feel good about our work, then soulful pride, so necessary for creativity, turns into narcissism. Pride and narcissism are not the same thing; in a sense, they are opposites. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
The product of our work should reflect a means of loving ourselves. However, if those products are not lovable, we are forced into a narcissistic place where we lose sight of the work itself and focus on our own personal needs. Love of the World and our place in it, attained largely by our work, turns into solipsistic craving for love. We will never achieve the flowing of our own natures until we find that piece of ourselves, that lovable twin, which lives in the World and as the World. Therefore, finding the right work is like discovering your soul in the World. There will be new thoughts, new ideas coming. We will open our whole consciousness to the influx of that which is larger and better, as we identify with inward peace and joy. At times, however, we may be confronted with negative arguments of set mental patterns which circumscribe, limit, and depress the mind. Our sense may try to insist that we follow the old established precedents as our true guide, since they have been adhered to by humankind from time immemorial. Contradict those vibes, they are so deceiving as the clouded heart. A major part of faith is trusting God when we do not understand why things happen the way they do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
We all know that God gives us opportunities. We have seen God give us favour, good situations, blessings, and promotion. That is the hand of God opening the World up for us. Right here, a certain amount of adventure, of imagination must be brought into play to create a feeling of acceptance which will break down those old thought patterns. We must understand that they are not the Truth of God’s Being, but merely monotonous repetitions of all the negative thought of the ages. We must know that our new declarations of truth have the power within themselves to completely destroy the old thought patterns. We are no longer hypnotized by the old thought patterns; we are no longer bound by negative precedents; we are no longer limited to what everyone has believed, because we know it has no truth, no reality, and no law to support it. It is but a phantom. It is obvious that climbing the ladder of success can easily lead to a loss of soul. Are there any moral problems in the job or workplace—making things detrimental to people or to the Earth, taking excessive profits or contributing to racial and sexist oppression? It is not possible to care for the soul while violating or disregarding one’s own moral sensibility. They will misconstrue your answers due to a lack of love. An alternative may be to choose a profession or projects with soul in mind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Signs of love and therefore of soul are feelings of attraction, desire, curiosity, involvement, passion, and loyalty in relation to our work. When the soul is involved, the work is not carried out by a need for prestige alone; it raises from a deeper place and therefore is not deprived of passion, spontaneity, and grace. We are and always have been part of God’s Universe. Do not ask someone else to justify your belief, for this is confusion. We must in our own minds increase our faith, reaffirming its own position, which will awaken the mind to the greater influx of blessings. Just as surely as we do this, the prison walls of the lesser self begin to crumble, the horizon experiences begins to push itself father away, and, because more spiritual territory is taken in, greater experiences are bound to follow. “Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright. Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy. The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the house of the upright will flourish (Proverbs 14.9-11).” Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God’s motives, but in understanding his character, in trusting in his promises, and in leaning on him and resting in him as the Sovereign who knows what he is doing and does all things well. Look at others with patient eyes, as some leave reality early due to the lack of love. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
God is Shaping Us for Higher Things
How we spend our time—what we look at, sit on and work with—makes a difference, not only in terms of efficiency but for its effect on our sense of ourselves and the direction our imagination takes. Care of the soul requires ongoing attention to every aspect of life. Essentially it is a cultivation of ordinary things in such a way that soul is nurtured and fostered. Therapy tends to focus on distress or chronic problems. No one every goes to therapy to talk about their dreams, aspirations, hopes and goals. Therapy does not teach us how to accomplish anything. People just rehearse problems and do not really learn how to move forward. All of the ordinary things in life have a great deal to do with the condition of the soul. If we do not tend the soul consciously and artfully, then its issues remain largely unconscious, uncultivated, and therefore often problematic. The Law of Mental Equivalents means that everything that is consciously and subjectively embodied in our thinking tends to radiate an atmosphere, a vibration, a current of thought, and inward acceptance which automatically attracts to itself that which is like itself. Some business cover over their soulless conception of work with a veneer of fake walls, plastic plants, and pseudoart. If that is what we give to the workplace in the name of beauty, then that is the measure of soulfulness we will have at our job. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Storms make oaks take deeper roots. Soul cannot be faked without serious consequences. A green thought, in a green shade, surrounded by plastic ferns, we will be filled with plastic thoughts. Believe in God; believe that he is; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, born in Heaven and in Earth. Allow your heart to find the comfort you seek in God. There shall be within the body of our thinking not only an acceptance of the good we desire, but an inward experience of the meaning of that good, a real sense and a real feeling that we now possess it. Exercise great faith and be filled with optimism, wisdom, and love for others. Have an attitude of perseverance. Trust the Lord and rely on him for strength, and the Lord will bless you. If we look to God for help, we will not be overwhelmed with the burdens of life. We will not feel incapable of doing what we are called to do or need to do. We will be strengthened, and our lives will be filled with peace and joy. We will come to realize that most of what we worry about is not of eternal significance—and if it is, the Lord will help us. However, we must have the faith to look up and the courage to follow God’s direction. Not only can we change our objective thinking, but by a process of careful treatment we can change the whole subjective field of our thought, because most of our thinking is unconscious. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Because much of our thought is unconscious, the mental embodiment of an idea or the true mental equivalent of something is not so much the word we speak as it is something we feel in the heart. Unconscious wishes are always active and ready to express themselves whenever they find an opportunity of allying themselves with an impulse from consciousness, and transferring their own greater intensity to the less intensity of the latter. It must, therefore, seem that the conscious wish alone has been realized in the dream; but a slight peculiarity in the form of the dream will put upon the track of the powerful ally from the unconscious. Architecture, colours, furnishings, decorations, give people a place of dignity. Architecture can touch on philosophical revelations, it is the favoured setting for many dreams, an indication of its special appeal to the imagination. Some houses are unusually orderly and clean, and people put special efforts into keeping the rooms spotless. This allows us to take a special look at the house in order to glimpse signs of the soul that are hidden in the everyday and common place. The house can be a path of contemplation, which allows people to take their mind off of their grief, and reflect on the chamber of the heart, a special space in the soul. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
We all have a definite content of unconscious thinking, of unconscious expectations, of unconscious frustration and desire. This is just as much a part of the process of our thinking as the words we use consciously, and it is just as certain to be operated upon by the Law of Life. Our daily work and lives affect the character and the overall quality of life, but we usually overlook the way soulfulness can adhere to our benefit and shows us how to become more like God. This is sometimes a long and arduous process, for a person does not change all of the patterns of one’s thought in a moment. Rather it takes place little by little, until gradually the antiquated patterns become transformed into new ones by come inner alchemy of the mind, the operation of which we do not see but the manifestation of which we do experience. Encouragement to look up is a metaphor for remembering God. As we remember him and trust in his power, we receive strength. Our whole inner feeling will entertain and experiences goodness. Our expectations will be one of joy and pleasurable anticipation. All the antiquated thoughts of fear and doubt and uncertainty have vanished. There is nothing that can limit one. One’s memory is one of happiness; anticipation is one of joy; and our experience is one of pleasure. It is the means whereby we can receive the faith and strength to endure all things. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
We must act on the direction we receive. We must look up and step up. And as we do, I know we will cheer up, for God wants us to be happy. We are Heavenly Father’s children. He wants to be a part of our lives, to bless us, and to help us. He will heal our wounds, dry our tears, and help us along our path to return to his presence. We should think about it and feel it, envision it, and try to think of the meaning of sanctification. Accepting it consciously, we should let it seek deeply into the unconscious, until the subjectivity of our thought shall have accepted its meaning; then we shall have arrived at the mental equivalent of the idea. Psychologist contend that a neurotic thought pattern will repeat itself with monotonous regularity until the pattern is changed. Advances in science and civilization come through breaking down the belief that things have to be the way they are because they have always been that way. However, the laws of nature or the principles that govern life know nothing about precedents. At one time we used tallow candles; now we have electric lights. There was nothing in nature that prohibited the World from having had electric lights ten thousand years ago, but no one knew anything about them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
When the day arrived on which somebody discovered the new possibility, the laws of nature complied and delivered the secret which made the new possible. The same thing has happened throughout the history of spiritual evolution, or the unfoldment of human’s thought about one’s relationship with God. People have prayed to a power higher than themselves and occasionally their prayers have been answered affirmatively. Perhaps they have always been answered in accordance with the way they have prayed. However, it has always been accepted that some prayers are answered while others are not. Because of this belief, a precedent was established which made the answer to prayer an unpredictable thing. This is one of the precedents which need to be broke, for we must allow spiritual activity a larger scope. The power of God can make Mount Vesuvius look like an early autumn flurry. When we realize that all the spiritual power there is is at our disposal, and that no matter how limited a viewpoint we may have had yesterday (with the limitations that follow that viewpoint), today we can increase our field of inward awareness, then we make possible a greater influx of the divine through the human, that is, through our own thinking. God is shaping us for higher things. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
We Must Relate to Our Bodies as Having a Soul
Structures harness the extraordinary power of the imagination to transform the inner narratives that drive and confine our functioning in the World. The human body is the soul presented in its richest and most expressive form. We share of thoughts, physical sensations, ideas, ideals, hopes, and feelings and all life experiences. We call for a new appreciation for the laws of imagination to keep us moving into ever newer and deeper insights. Blame is a defensive substitute for an honest examination of life that seeks guidance in our mistakes. It is a way of averting consciousness of error. Rather than blame, we could respond. Of course, we can never undo what happened in the past, but we can create new emotional scenarios intense and real enough to defuse and counter some of those old ones. Sometimes our senses pick up sounds around us, but our attention sinks into an area sheltered from life. The healing tableaus of structures offer an experience that many may never have believed was possible for them: to be welcomed into a World where people delight in them, protect them, meet their needs, and make one feel at home. Listening to the messages of the body is not the same as blaming the individual. This seems to give people confidence and strength. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Wounding takes us deep into the invisible World. In the heroic struggle to be someone, to make life work and to find happiness, thing we do may inflict wounds on something much more deep than our beings. The very foundations of existence can be affected, and so disease and illness arise as from some profound, mysterious place, very much as a divine apparition. We know that panic symptoms (symbols) are maintained largely because the individual develops a fear of the bodily sensations associated with panic attacks. The attack may be triggered by something he or she knows is irrational, but fear of the sensation keeps them escalating into a full-body emergency. This could be because people are enduring pain and being forced to recall that pain over and over and dealing with things that threaten their peace, safety and security in real life. The experience of fear derives from primitive responses to threat where escape is thwarted in some way. People’s lives will be held hostage to fear until that visceral experience changes. The price for ignoring or distorting the body’s messages is being unable to detect what is truly dangerous or harmful for you, just as bad, what is safe or nourishing. Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
When we do not feel safe in our own body, we usually have to rely on external regulations—from medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others. Many people respond to stress not by noticing and naming it, but by developing migraine headaches, asthma attacks, intestinal disturbances, and some even experience internal bleeding. Suppressing our inner cries for help does not stop our stress hormones from mobilizing the body. Even though you may learn to ignore your relationship problems and block out your physical distress signals, they will show up in symptoms that demand your attention. It is important to focus on identifying the link between your physical sensations and your emotions. Accepting that we are wounded, we enter life differently than if our only concern is to overcome the wound. When we respond to the mysterious appearance of an illness, we live with responsibility to fate. If we allow sickness to lead us into wonder about the very base of experience, then our spirituality is strengthened. We wish joy instead of tears, gladness instead of sorrow, peace instead of disturbance, success instead of failure, life instead of death. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The modern body is an efficient machine that needs to be kept in shape so that its organs will function smoothly for as long as possible. We are already familiar with the mental law of cause and effect, with the idea that mind in action is law, and with the principle upon which all mental practice is based; that we are surrounded by God, and he receives the impress of our thoughts and action upon them. We cannot change the nature of the law, nor can we change the nature of our being, but we can think and act differently, and the law, being subjective to our thought, must change its tendency toward us. The World lives and breathes, and we can draw its spirit into us. What we do to the World’s body, we do to our own. God is the High Chancellor, and whatsoever a person does to you, is also what they shall reap. “Lord Almighty, you who judge righteously, and test the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you I have committed my cause (Jeremiah 11.20).” This suggests that the various treatments employed on the physical plane have counterparts in the soul. In a very real sense, we do not cure our aliments, they cure us, by restoring our religious participation in life. We are not masters of this World, we participate in its life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The new patterns of belief must be found in a higher consciousness and deeper realization of human’s position in the creative order as a dispenser of the divine gifts and as the recipient of the infinite will and willingness. We need to repudiate the belief that we are bound. We need to know that the spirit within us is now free, complete, and perfect. There is not a person living who cannot change one’s thought, at least somewhat. We can all improve and broaden our mental reaction right where we are, and with each new and better mental outlook there will come a corresponding reaction in our objective World. When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their music, and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its music underground, so the we experience the body as an instrument and see its musical tones only in illness. Fortunately, we still have a few institutions that foster an imaginal body. Fashion, for instances, brings a considerable amount of fantasy to the body. Cosmetics and perfumery are available to women, and cologne to men, and it can be an important aspect of cultivating the body’s soul. To understand the working of the law is knowledge, but to use it constructively is wisdom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Tending to the body in all its physicality is an important part of the care of the soul. Daily we must consciously reverse our position in the law, knowing that we are no longer subject to the race suggestion of lack, limitation, want, or fear; knowing that the spirit is with us and for us and operating through us; knowing that all good is ours, and specifically declaring that the particular good we desire is now made manifest. We are not alone nor unacknowledged. The soul is involved in the perception of an intimacy between human personality and the World’s communing body. How marvelous is God to have allowed us to live on Earth—a place where the stranger can find rest, protection, and care. And once again, we feel the flush of soul as it becomes animated by a new appreciation for its own art. To truly enjoy life, faith and expectancy are necessary, and above all, a great inner flexibility. We must have a knowledge that we can change bondage into freedom one of the greatest joys we can contemplate. May the Heavenly Father command it and arrange it, and may the Holy Spirit appease the hearts of those against us. Come, Holy Spirit, enlighten the hearts of those who can favour us or those who can help us. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
God Expects Us to be Especially Mindful of the Bounteous Blessings
It has a very long history, dating back to our origins, has a momentum that shows little indication of slowing down. The word violence comes from the Latin word vis, meaning “life force.” Its very roots suggest that in violence the thrust of life is making itself visible. If that fundamental vitality is not present in the heart, it nevertheless seems to appear distorted by our representations and compromises, our fears and our narcissistic manipulations. There may be talk of honor, but it is mostly just more fuel for the fires of violence and has nothing to do with real honor. God, we can make something out of that! Perhaps humankind will get down on its knees and, fearing for its own sanity, will beg the Creator for more madness! It would be a mistake to approach violence with any simple idea of getting rid of it. Chances are, if we try to eradicate our violence, we will also cut ourselves off from the deep power that sustains creative life. Besides, psychoanalysis teaches, repression never accomplishes what we want. The repressed always returns in monstrous form. The life current of the soul, vis, is like the natural force of planet life, like the grass that grows up through cement and in a relatively short time obliterates grand monuments of culture. This land where confusion between the real and false reigns supreme. A magic enchantment now attaches itself to neurotic symptoms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
How did all this fakery and moral insanity come about? There are plenty of views about what constitutes and causes violence, but nay deep understanding of violence has to include our own capacity for extreme aggression and the dehumanizing of others, especially toward those who offend us. So simple a thing as new food can be threatening, and it is well known that fashions in dress can be statements of either conformity or anarchy. Political groups have identified themselves through their gender, ethnic background, hair colour and style, and citizenship status. Such choices in everyday life have genuine power, and a society concerned about order and smooth functioning may gradually and unconsciously flatten itself out of the apparent good of the whole. If we try taming and boxing in this innate power, it will inevitably find its way into the light. The more intimate we are with our own violent urges and their roots, the less likely we are to be irresponsible with such urges, and the deeper our understanding will be of others’ violence. Repression of the life force is a diagnosis that fits most of the emotional problems, and people have suffered serious injury to their bodies as well as their own souls. When people let their minds be colonized by revengeful or retaliatory or first-strike fantasies, they create enemies and have an undue anticipation of unleashing their aggression. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
People freed from onerous taxes and humiliating restrictions on their property rights, professional choices, and religious practices, could realistically harbour hopes for economic advancement, political participation, and a measure of social acceptance. Countless individuals whose life is in bankruptcy clamor for relief through the court of psychoanalysis, because the public now expects, and indeed demands, help through this channel. We have personally analyzed many psychopathic personalities whose treatment we were unable to bring to proper conclusion because of their impregnable moral insanity. We were sorry to learn, from reports in the newspapers, that many of these people continue to occupy positions of public trust. Humankind has no choice but to learn to resist this sort of bedazzlement. If one were to question how central violence is in contemporary culture, one would find the answer in the frequency with which violence occurs in film, news, and television. These mediums do not just feature plenty of violence, but also conjures violence as acceptable reactions until these fantasies become crystallized in a thing that has the power of lure of a fetish. In this sense people’s arsenals with their mystery and threat are dark carries of what has been ignored in the soul. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Because so many people are walking around with open emotional wounds that have never been resolved, they have refused to associate themselves with the dark forces lurking in their mind, heart, and soul. That rage and violence is them forced into fetishistic form, where they remain, fascinating and lethal. When people to not care for their wounds and souls, the dysfunction is forced to appear in fetish ad in violent behavior. Moreover, it is an integral part of mental diseases. There is nothing neutral about the soul. It is the seat and the source of life. Either we respond to what the soul presents in its fantasies and desires, or people will suffer from neglect of themselves. The power of the soul can hurl a person into ecstasy or into depression. It can be creative or destructive, gentle or aggressive. Power incubates within the soul and then makes it influential move into life as the expression of soul. If there is no soulfulness, then there is no true power, and if there is no power, then there can be no true soul. When the soul’s power is neglected, usurped, or toyed with, then it breaks down into violence and victimization, controller and subject. Whenever one person victimizes another, real power has been lost and replaced by a literalistic drama that is dangerous for both parties. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
People who turn to violence are visibly controlling; what is less obvious are their weakness and feeling of powerlessness. On the other hand, those who habitually play the submissive may be quite unaware of their own more subtle methods of control. This is why issues of power are so difficult to deal with; things are not as they appear to be. Weaklings puff themselves up and try to act strong; tough people hide their vulnerabilities; many fail to look past the surface. People assume that the fabrications of power all around them are genuine, and they all fall prey to them. Fear is never far removed from power and genuine innocence is always to be found in the vicinity of blood-guilt. Guns are dangerous not only because it threatens lives, but also because it concretizes and fetishizes a person’s desire for power, keeping power both in sight and also removed from its soulful presence in our daily lives. However, guns are also a source of protection. Many people turn to violent gun violence because they may feel they have no power or because they want to be famous. If we want to stop school shootings, perhaps we need to look beyond mental help, and help people who are targets of bullies and encourage them to join groups where they know that they are loved and accepted. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Sometimes healthy people seek mental help or are forced into it and the healthy often emerge from the analyst’s office sick. The soul is explosive and powerful. If we do not claim the soul’s power on our own behalf, we become its victims. We suffer our own emotions rather than feel them working for us. We suffer our emotions rather than feel them working for us. We hold our thoughts and passions inward, disconnecting them from life, and then they stir trouble within, making us feel profoundly unsettled or, it seems, turning into illness. We all know what it feels like to hold anger in our hearts, as it builds and transmuted into corrosive resentment and rage. Even unexpressed love creates a pressure that demands release in come kind of expression. Therefore, if violence is the repressed life force showing itself symptomatically, then cure for violence is care of the soul’s power. God teaches us to love our enemies because we do not hurt the people we love, it is a way to keep society civil and save your soul. God always says that vengeance is his and he will get revenge for the wrongs that others have done to you, so it is best to follow the laws of the land so your hands stay clean and the guilty can be punished by the law so they can be taken off the streets where their violence cannot escalate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
People who teach love and virtue, like Socrates and Plato, were condemned by the wicked because of the “unsettling” and “threatening” power of their soul, which was reveled in their personal lives and in their works. They did not carry guns, but they were still considered a problem because there is nothing more powerful than peace, love, harmony, and education, which leads to the true passion and revelation of one’s own soul. My past is your present. What embarrasses me in my dreams, amuses you in your interpretations, but I insist on the privacy of my dreams, and on embarrassing you with your foul waking life. In the presence of deep power, life becomes robust and passionate, signs that the soul is engaged and being given expression. When God is honored in our lives, everything we do becomes more genuine, quickening our lives with intensity, passion, power, and courage. One the scale of our individual lives we reproduce the divine order in its entirety. Our thought is creative, but in our ignorance, we use it destructively, and that is why people suffer the onslaughts of uncontained violence. To learn to think in the right manner is to learn to create that which is good, and which gives compete expression to the self without ever containing anything destructive or negative. The only lasting joy and happiness we will ever find during our mortal experience will come by following the Savior. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
The Lord has blessed us with lands of promise to enjoy during our mortal probation. In the doctrine of progression, we learn that all people were born into the spirit World—prior to taking on Earthly bodies. Our lives did not begin at birth and will not end at death. We are here on Earth to learn and progress for a while; in the process there will be joy and pain. This mortal probation is the period of testing and demonstrating character or abilities. “If people have sought to do wickedly during days of probation, they will be found unclean before judgment (1 Nephi 10.21).” The chief reward of surrendering innocence, so that the soul may be fully expressed, as an increase of power. That is why we must “Continue in the straight and narrow path until end of the day of probation (2 Nephi 33.9).” Therefore, instead of being confused by the situations around us we should be calm, tranquil, and confident that through reforming our word and changing our whole body of thinking, we can as easily change the existing conditions as perpetuate them. The nations of Earth, if they would continue to follow the ways of God, could be a blessing to his children here. We need complete assurance, an inner determination, faith, and confidence to know that we can proceed with definite, deliberate determination and that there can be no question about the result; they will be inevitable. Be better than smart, be thoughtful. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
The Soul is More Mysterious
The soul’s indications are many, but they are usually extremely subtle. In the process of civilization, the far most important thing is the aim of creating unity out of the individual human beings. It is true that the aim of happiness is still there, but it is pushed into the background. It almost seems as if the creation of a great human community would be successful, we should focus on the benefit of the soul. The soul does not necessarily benefit from long, hard work, nor from fairness of any kind. Its effects are achieved more with God than effort. While it is true that science must deal with cause and effect in practical applications, it is also true that in physics the antiquated idea of cause and effect has been eliminated, which means that things do not always work in the way they are supposed to, basing the performance on precedent. Just because an individual has worked a long time and is fair about it, does not mean one will have the benefits of soul one wants. Nor should any individual enter such work innocently, agreeing to work hard, and then expect something for their labour. This consumer logic is based on fairness and reasonableness, and has nothing to do with the way the soul operates and may be the least effective way to seek out the soul’s power. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The soul is more mysterious. The developmental process of the individual can thus be expected to have special features of its own which are not reproduced in the process of human civilization. Just as a planet revolves around a central body as well as rotating on its own axis, so the human individual takes part in the course of development of humankind at the same time as one pursues one’s own path in life. However, to our dull eyes the play of forces in the Heavens seems fixed in a never-changing order; in the field of organic life we can still see how the forces contend with one another, and how the effects of the conflict are continually changing, as though it were the envelope of the soul. Much of the civilization of the future may oppress the life of the individual today. We lose opportunities to know ourselves for our motives and our secrets because people just want to open our boxes and pry into our lives when we may not even to share a cup of coffee with them. Disregard for privacy, increasing technology is at the forerunner of this conflict. Do we need to expose everything that is hidden? Do we need to understand all mysteries? We are used to hearing about the great revelations of science—the discovery of atoms, particles, and DNA—and so quite naturally we think that mysteries are there to be solved. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
People have at all times set the greatest value on ethics, as though they expected that it in particular would produce especially important results. And it does in fact deal with a subject which can easily be recognized as the sorest spot in every civilization. Ethics is thus to be regarded as a therapeutic attempt—as an endeavor to achieve, by means of a command of God to get rid of the greatest hindrance to civilization, namely, the constitutional inclination of human beings to be aggressive towards one another; and for that very reason we are especially interested in what is probably the most recent of the cultural commands of God, the commandment to love one’s neighbor ur as oneself. From the point of view of soul, it is just as important, maybe more important, to check the urgency of curiosity and suspicion, to allow certain things to remain distant and buried, to trust one’s soul mate or mate soul with things that should not be brought to the light of day. Because we know that science cannot get along without dealing with cause and effect any more than a farmer can get along without planting crops if one expects to reap a harvest. If we want an unbroken bond with an individual, we have to respect their privacy so our relationships will be tightened by reverence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The special lesson in the power of soul is learned in the moments of thought when it is decided by someone that their chest would remain closed. The soul, too, does not trouble itself enough about the fact of the mental constitutions of human beings. It issues a command and does not ask whether it is possible for people to obey it. On the contrary, it assumes that a human’s soul is psychologically capable of anything that is required of it, and our soul has unlimited mastery over on beings. One can easily overpower another person and discover his or her secrets, but by preserving their privacy, one maintains one’s power. In general, we keep our power when we protect the power of others. The commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” is the strongest defense against human aggressiveness and an excellent example of the respect God expects of us. You ever heard that Summer bodies are made in the Winter? That means if we want to tone up our bodies, we start before the Summer arrives to achieve our goals. Likewise, we should start preparing for Heaven, while we are on Earth. There is time. We still have the farmer, planting time, and harvest season, but we also have an alternative. There is also a choice and volition introducing a personal factor. Humans have free will. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The fateful question for the human species seems to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction. New causes bring new effects, and every sequence of cause and effect takes place in something which is greater than cause or effect. Freedom is where it is perceived and in such a degree as it is recognized. Such an attitude is scientific and mathematical. The soul practices a different kind of math and logic. It presents images that are not immediately intelligible to the reasoning mind. It insinuates, offers fleeting impressions, persuades more with desire than with reasonableness. In order to reach the soul’s power, one has to be conversant with its style, and watchful. The soul also gives us a vision that nothing is solid, everything is moving, shifting, changing. Even though we view the Universe as a mass of solid facts, God is the supreme cause and has liquid laws, for matter is spirit reduced to its greatest thinness. We focus on the purpose of life because the ultimate objective of our mortal journey has been revealed by our Creator, who said, “If you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which is the greatest of all the gifts of God.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The reward is worth the effort. God’s gift of eternal life is subject to conditions established by him. “Behold, are not the things that God has wrought marvelous in our eyes? And who can comprehend the marvelous works of God? Who shall say that is was not a miracle that by God’s word the Heaven and the Earth should be; and by the power of this word humans were created of the dust of the Earth; and by the power of God’s word have miracles been wrought (Mormon 9.17)?” God allowed us to come to Earth with freedom to choose our own course. In his great love, he did not leave us alone. He provided a guide—a spiritual Global Positioning System (GPS)—to help us achieve successful navigation and tracking in our journey. Spiritual nature is love and truth and beauty. The Bible refers to the spirit moving upon the face of the deep, which means absolute intelligence thinking within itself. This is but another way of saying that the starting point of every creation is the word of God or the word of Universal intelligence. Our excruciating experiences will develop in us an unshakable faith in God. We have a great heritage of love—love of God and love of humankind. It is an inheritance of sobriety, independence, hard work, high moral values, and fellowship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
To these Truths I Share My Witness
The past is gone and the Sun is shining on the other side of the clouds. The power of the soul is like a great reservoir, like the force of water in a fast-rushing river. It is natural, not manipulated, and stems from an unknown source. Our role with this kind of power is to be an attentive observer noticing how the soul wants to thrust itself into life. It is also our task to find artful means of articulating and structuring that power, taking full responsibility for it, but trusting too that the soul has intentions and necessities that we may understand only partially. The soul work requires both much reflection and also great dedication. Believing that a spiritual revolution must precede the political and economic revolutions, the social revival has to be supported by literature and art. Think of all the ancient cultures that poured masses of money, materials, and energy into pyramids, castles, temples, and cathedrals on behalf of sacred play or holy imagination. The idea is to find the soulful perspective that feeds action with both passion and imaginal contemplation. This is how we embrace the mysterious depths of the soul as well as conscious understanding and intention. General life, needs, and interests of the people should have an effect upon the general social revival. We must accept as true certain deliverances of consciousness which appear to give us direct information about the external World, the self, and morality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Science, which deals only with phenomena, cannot upset our belief in God, but the increasing unity of the laws and theories which science discovers acts as a confirmation of our intuitive belief in the unity of the cause of nature. If the natural attributes of God, such as omnipotence and intelligence, are revealed through our experience of the external World, the moral attributes are revealed to us primarily in our moral experience. In our own willing we learn something of the nature of God’s activity; the realization that there is an authoritative demand on us to act on the relatively higher motive is the chief revelation of God within our moral experience. The authoritativeness of the demand can be explained only in theistic terms, and the content of the demand reveals to us God’s moral nature. “And no unclean thing can enter into God’s kingdom; therefore nothing enters into his rest save it be those who have been purified, because of their faith, and the repentance of all their sins, and their faithfulness unto the end (3 Nephi 27.19).” The power of the soul comes from living close to the heart, and not at odds with it. Therefore, paradoxically, soul power may emerge from failure, depression, and loss. The general rule is that the soul appears in the gaps and holes of experience. We have all experienced moments when we have lost an opportunity or endured an illness only to find an unexpected inner strength. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
We cannot always control all that happens to us, but we have absolute control over how we respond to the changes in our lives. That inner strength and perseverance comes from knowing that God is the only presence and the only power in the Universe, and knowing that God is love. We have the power to press on because we deliberately turn from everything that is ungodly and unlike this love. We desire to feel and express this love and compassion and well-wishing for others as the theme of our lives. There will be times in our lives when we find ourselves on an unexpected path, facing circumstances much more severe than a disrupted vacation. How do we respond when events often out of our control, altered the life we have planned or hoped for? We must never doubt our divine nature and eternal potential. It is important, even when the unexpected happens, to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize our divine destiny as heirs of eternal life. No amount of change, trial, or opposition can alter that eternal course—only our choices, as we exercise our agency. It does not seem possible that so simple a method as this can produce such a dynamic result, but experience has definitely proved that it can. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Rather than blame God for anything, we must turn to hum and pour out our hearts (feelings, dreams, emotions, desires, goal, fears, and love). In response to our faith and silent prayers, the Lord will respond. God wants of to be comfortable, and he will ease the burdens which are put on our shoulders, that we cannot even feel them upon our backs. God will strengthen us that we may bear up our burdens with ease. Anyone who tries this method will experience definite results. The most wonderful thing about it is that we do not have to change anything but ourselves. For every person is the cause of one’s own experience, whether we know it or not. We are all carrying the negative experiences of out past into the future merely because we have not disconnected them from our minds. If we are creating a negative future, it is because we have not changed our thought about it. We have seen the same thing happen to people who have failed in the past, as though nothing could ever work out right for them. We have seen them deliberately change their thought, disconnect their memory from failure, push it aside mentally as though it no longer belonged, as through it were no longer a part of them, and affirm that God alone accompanies them, that life is made to live successfully and happily. Accepting this and daily affirming it, we have seen failure and defeat turn into success and triumph. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
We are who we are because of the special combinations that make up our souls. Power begins in knowing this special soul, which may be entirely different from our fantasies about who we are or who we want to be. Power pours in our soul when we fill the emptiness with God and withstand temptations to fill it prematurely. When we are feeling weak, it is a prerequisite for the discovery of power. The soul has room to present itself when we feed it things that are good. We are swinging into line with the great harmony of the Universe. However, before we can entirely disconnect ourselves from the negations of the past, we have to learn to fill the mind with beneficial acceptances which are so much greater and deeper than the negations we have been entertaining that they consume them by their very presence, just as light dissipates darkness. We have to know that God loves us and wants the best for us, and totally reverse our whole psychological outlook on life. If we disconnect ourselves from the past and find ourselves firmly rooted in God today, in lobe, hope, joyful experiences, and become grateful and acknowledge the blessings we have, this will teach us to harmonize with everything that transpires today, in the future, and it will cultivate our souls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Healing blessings come in many ways, each suited to our own individual needs, as known to God who loves us best. Sometimes a healing cures our aliments, or lifts our burden. However, in other causes we are healed by being given strength or understanding or patience to bear the burdens places on us. When we awaken to the divine within us, it will reach out and embrace everything around us, and it will discover the same presence in people and in events and in all nature. For God is not separate from what he is doing. The divine life is in everyone and everything. This is the secrets that Jesus discovered. The simple fact is that God is right where you are. Whatever change in life’s circumstance may come our way, and whatever unexpected path we may have to travel, how we respond is a choice. Turning to the Savior and grasping his outstretched arms is always our best option. True enduring happiness with accompanying strength, courage and capacity to overcome the most challenging difficulties comes from a life centered in God. There is no guarantee of overnight results, but there is absolute assurance that, in the Lord’s time, solutions will come, peace will prevail, and emptiness will be filled. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
People Who Excel in Life Tend to be Emotionally Intelligent
It is God’s will that we be free men and women enabled to rise to our full potential both temporally and spiritually. People who excel in life tend to be emotionally intelligent. The recipe for handling relationships smoothly is to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way. Indeed, the costs of poor emotional skills can be high. They range from problems in marriage and parenting to poor physical health. A lack of emotional intelligence (self-control, self-awareness, sensitivity to the feelings of others, persistence, and self-motivation) can ruin careers and sabotage achievement. Perhaps the greatest toll falls on children and teenagers. For them, poor emotional skills can contribute to depression, eating disorders, unexpected pregnancy, aggression, and violent crime. We should promote emotional competence as well as intellectual skills. The result would be greater self-control, altruism, and compassion—all basic capacities needed if our society is to thrive. What means does civilization employ in order to inhibit the aggressiveness which it opposes it, to make it harmless, to get rid of it, perhaps? We have already become acquainted with a few of these methods, but not yet with the one that appears to be most important. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
What happens in an individual to render his or her desire for aggression innocuous? Civilization obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within one to understand why they feel the way they feel. The tension people feel in jealousy may be that of much greater Worlds colliding than can be seen by looking only at our personal situations. Its pain comes, at least in part, from opening up to unexplored territory and letting go of old familiar truths in the face of unknown and threatening new possibilities. It is not unusual for a jealous person to feel so altruistic and reasonable about one’s own life, so clean of the vice of selfishness, that one finds the loved one self-serving. Many people experience jealousy because the soul wants complete openness and freedom. That leaves a sense of order and limit in the darkness of repression, where it stirs and becomes wild and unreasonable, and potentially violent. It also may be time for one to reevaluate one’s beliefs. People who feel rage and suspicious call for some kind of adjustment and reflection. To begin with, if we ask how a person comes to have a sense of guilt after unjustifiably hurting another person, we arrive at an answer which cannot be disputed: a person feels guilty (maybe even sinful) when he or she has done something bad. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
When your jealousy, with or without your conscious consent, is setting limits on your life it is because your jealousy is drawing out a strange cast of characters—the moralist, the detective, the paranoid, the archconservative. People often feel jealous because they assume that something threatening and dangerous is near. They believe that they are hard on the trail of facts, but they behave as if they do not know any details. Then aggressiveness is introjected, internalized. It expresses itself as a need for punishment. Since a person’s own feelings would not have led one along this path, one must have had a motive for submitting to this extraneous influence. Such a motive is easily discovered in one’s helplessness and one’s dependence on other people, and it can best be designated as fear of loss of love. If one losses the love of another person upon whom one is dependent, one also ceases to be protected from a variety of dangers. Above all, the individual feels they are exposed to the danger that this stronger person will show his or her superiority in the form of punishment. At the beginning, therefore, what is bad is whatever causes one to be threatened with the loss of love. For fear of that loss, one must avoid it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Feelings of violence can show how slit off one is from the power of one’s knowledge. Blinded by a cloud of innocence, people seem not to know their friend or oneself or the complexity of relationships in general. They plead for simple attention and care. When one does not get these things, one feels controlled and toyed with. Then, in place of a more genuine power, violent rage pours out of the individual. The paranoid element in one’s jealousy both keeps the possibility of deeper knowledge within reach, but also dissociates itself from will and intentionality. It makes little difference whether one has already done the bad things or only intends to do it. In either cause the danger only sets in if and when the individual discovers it. This state of mind is called a bad conscience; but actually it does not deserve this name, for at this stage the sense of guilt is clearly only a fear of loss of love, social anxiety. Consequently, such people habitually allow themselves to do any bad things which promises them enjoyment, so long as they are sure that the authority will not know anything about it or cannot blame them for it; they are afraid only of being found out. For instance, when people vandalize cars of someone they are jealous of, they usually do so when they know people are in deep sleeps so they will not be held accountable for their crimes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The obsessive side of jealousy seems in part to be a function of its hiddenness, arising when it is not being revealed and given place. When jealous feelings and images penetrate the heart and mind, a kind of initiation takes place. Their souls become profoundly disturbed. Sometimes people also become jealous of other person, who they do not know, because some people might appear to have a lot of talent, or be an insanely inspired artist or seem to possess the power of a politician graced with the charisma that might make him or her a World leader. How can anyone compete with a person who has desire of cosmic proportions without always feeling threatened? They become fitful, outrageously infuriated, betrayed, and offended. If one did not become jealous, they feel that too many events would take place, too much life would be lived, too many connections would be made. Therefore, jealousy serves the soul by pressing for limits on an individual one does not have control over, but deeply desires to control or possess their absolute beauty and fulfilling absolute power. From the jealousy person’s point of view, not only is their possessiveness right, it is required that one be outraged. This serves to compensate for a sense of union that does not exist or is not terribly deep. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
When a jealousy person’s feelings come upon them, they feel alien and do not know what to do with them. When some part of one longs for more experience, new people, and starting over, jealousy remembers attachment and feels the unending pain of separation and divorces. These types of people become tormented by jealousy. They sense tension between attachment to what is and the promise of a new passion. How does one care for the soul when it is presenting itself through jealousy? Can we perceive that the soul wants when it wrenches us with longing for what another person has? Jealousy can be consuming. It can crowd out every other thought and emotion with its pungency. It can make a person distracted, touched, aching for the life, position, and possession of others. My neighbors have happiness, money, success, children—why do I not? My friend has a great career, good looks, luck—what is wrong with me? There may be a good dose of self-pity in jealousy, but it is the longing that is so bitter. Jealousy eats away at the heart, soul, and mind. It has a corrosive power. In jealousy, desire and self-denial work together to create characteristic sense of frustration and obsessiveness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
The jealous person thinks he or she is the victim of bad fortune it also involves strong willfulness in the form of resistance to fate and character. When misfortune befalls an individual, one must search one’s soul, acknowledge sinfulness, heighten the demands of one’s conscience, impose abstinences on oneself and they often punish themselves with penances. Whole people have behaved in this way and still do. Fate is regarded as a substitute for the parental agency. If any person’s unfortunate it, they sometimes take it to mean that they are no longer loved by their higher power; and threatened by such a loss of love, they become more conservative, and no longer neglect their religion. However, a person with a jealous nature fights fervently against the deal fate has handed them. They feel deprived and cheated. Because jealous people are so out of touch with the potential value of his or her own fate, one has elaborate fantasies about others being blessed with good fortune that belongs to them. The point of caring for the envious soul is not to get rid of the jealousy, but to be guided back by it into one’s own fate. The pain in jealousy is like pain in the body: it makes one stop and take notice of something that has gone wrong and needs attention. Jealous people simply fail to see the necessity and value in their own lives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
When things turn bad, there is a tendency to blame others or even God. Sometimes a sense of entitlement arises, and individuals or groups try to shift their responsibility to others. Some people allow their jealousy to allow them to have a preoccupation with the lives of others and then neglect their own. Their angry explanations for their misfortune distract them from the pain of their past and dealing with it productively. Symptoms are often obviously painful, but at the same time they may protect against a deeper pain associated with awareness and facing the fundamental realities of fate. It is through their jealousy that they suck all that pain into itself and in an odd way keeps them from owning their past. The problem is not the individual’s ability to have a good life, it is his or her capacity not to have one. Jealous people need to be taught to care for their soul. If in jealousy the person wishes life were better, then maybe it is a good idea to feel that emptiness deeply. People must take more responsibility for their situations, and over time eventually improve it. And it is important to be honest with oneself. In jealousy, fantasies are potent and utterly captivating, yet floating in an atmosphere somehow removed from actual life. These fantasies are illusions, images kept at bay so they cannot touch life directly. Dwelling in an imaginary life is a way of avoiding soul. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Jealousy is resistance to reason. If a jealous person is met with a misfortune or denial of a desire, they do not throw the blame on oneself, but on one’s fetish, which has obviously not done its duty, and one gives it a thrashing instead of punishing oneself. When one has a sense of guilt after having committed a misdeed, and because of it, the feeling should more properly be called remorse. It relates only to a deed that has been done, and, of course, it presupposes that a conscience—the readiness to feel guilty—was already in existence before the deed took place. Remorse of this sort can, therefore, never help one to discover the origin of conscience and of the sense of guilt in general. What happens in these everyday cases is usually this: an instinctual need acquires the strength to achieve satisfaction in spite of the conscience, which is, after all, limited in its strength; and with the natural weakening of the need owning to it having been satisfied, the former balance of power is restored. The task is to care for the soul, but it is also true that the soul cares for us. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
We must do our best to honor whatever the soul presents to us. It suffering can only be relieved by the reestablishment of the will placed on us by the Heavenly Powers. And we may well heave a sigh of relief at the thought that it is nevertheless vouchsafed to a few to salvage without effort from the whirlpool of their own feelings the deepest truths, toward which the rest of us have to find our way through tormenting uncertainty and with restless groping. God wishes only good for everyone. We are all rooted in pure spirit, in perfect life, and at any moment we can so unify ourselves with the power of good that evil will disappear from our experience. We have to live each day as though all the joy there is in the Universe were ours now. And we have to live each day as though all the joy we ever expect to experience were ours now. If we make every day a day of praise and thanksgiving, a day in which we recognize the divine bounty and the eternal goodness, and if we live today as though God were the only presence and the only power there is, we would not have to worry about tomorrow. We are all human and have all made mistakes. The starting point for creating a better future for ourselves is to deliberately free our minds from the mistakes of the past and feel they no longer be held against us; they need no longer be a liability. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Suppose we have had a deep sense of animosity toward others and because of this we find that we are not meeting people in the right spirit; they, naturally, respond to us the way we meet them, and out whole set of human relations is out of harmony. We cannot go back over the past and relive it. We cannot make adjustments in the past. We have to make them in the present. It is not going to do us any good to sit around and cry over the past and bemoan our fate, because in the very day in which we are living we are creating our future, which will become monotonous repetitions of the past. The one who is suffering from one’s past mistakes of resentment and animosity merely turns quietly to oneself and prays: I have decided to change al this. I want to like people and I want them to like me. I want to get along happily with others. I forgive myself for everything that has happened up until now. I lose it and let it go. I not only forgive myself, I forgive everyone who I feel has held anything against me. I forgive and I am forgiven. Furthermore, the power of the Universe conspires to help us. We should feel that we live in an eternal presence of pure spirit whose whole purpose is good, whose whole desire is constructive, and whose whole feeling toward us is one of love and compassion. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Undergo Whatever Fate is Asking of the Soul
If we want Sunshine, step out into the Sunshine. A deepening of consciousness sometimes requires a strong move in life. Sometimes living on our own could be a way of getting to know more precisely what our souls are searching form. Love finds its soul in its feelings of incompleteness, impossibility, and imperfection. There was once an Angel who came to visit Earth. He found himself in the usual stream of human activities and found himself fascinated with the television. As he watched the news for the first time, he heard negative comments. Some of these news anchors who were supposed to be an authority called religion a mental illness and said that there might be a way and human life would be destroyed. The news reporters also went on to say that there would be a great epidemic of illness, and that financial hardships were certain to limit us all. He heard that there was not enough food, water, and housing to go around, and that people were going to die as a result. He felt like he needed to take a bath in holy water to rid himself of the negativity from the news. The Angel began to wonder if these things might not be true, and even as he entertained the thoughts of negation to which he was listening, the brightness of his angelic presence faded into dark shadows. His form seemed to shrivel, and looking at himself he saw that he was dressed as a human being, walking the Earth in fear, doubt, and uncertainty. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
And so the weary years went by, years of unhappiness and impoverishment and dread, years so filled with stress that he wished her were dead, and that some oblivion might forever swallow him up. And yet, even in the midst of all this, something within him remembered that he was once an Angel of God, living in a Heaven of beauty and a place of peace and joy, living in a garden of Eden which God has provided for him. And, remembering, a determination arose within him to somehow or other find his way back to this lost paradise. Hunger and love are two things that motivate the World. Hunger could be taken to represent the instincts which aim at preserving the individual; while love strives after objects, and its chief function, favoured in every way by nature, is the preservation of the species. This situation shows that there is something about him that is superior to the experience he is having. This determination grew into a great faith, and as his faith was renewed, a light seemed to shine in the distance; and he had the courage to travel toward the light. As he did, a miracle gradually took place. The Angel found that the shadows were being cast behind him, until finally he so completely entered into the light that no shadows were cast at all, and he started to awaken to the reality of God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
We must undergo whatever fate is asking of the soul. We think we know what love is about, both theoretically and in an episode of life, but love sometimes leans toward the mysterious dark niches of the soul’s underworld. Life takes us to the edge of what we know and have experienced, and this we are willing to assent to love and freely awaken out of sleep. So let us wake up, and let us be certain that we no longer drug ourselves with the sleeping potion of fear and uncertainty and doubt, but awake into faith and confidence, into peace and joy, into love and happiness. For there is something in us too, like the Angel in the fable, that have never forgotten. There is a silent witness at the center of every human’s being which evermore proclaims: One of the strongest needs of the soul is for community. The Soul yearns for attachment, for variety in personality, for intimacy and particularity. So these qualities in community that the soul seeks out. “Pray unto the Father in Heaven with all the energy of heart, that you may be filled with this love, which he has bestowed upon all (Moroni 7.48).” We must be with others, enjoy them and act with them, without in any way seeking to control their actions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
There are many signs in our society that we lack a sufficiently deep experience in community. There is the energetic search for a community. No one can live to oneself alone. Other people are so much a part of our lives that we cannot think of living without them. People who feel themselves excluded from society may just need a little encouragement and support. Loneliness is a major complaint and is responsible for deep-seated emotional pain that leads to despair and a consideration of not wanting to live. It is wonderful to be around people and it is a pleasure to be surrounded by friends. Community is a group pf people held together by feelings of belonging, and those feelings are the attitude of the well-adjusted person, one who has been permitted to be an individual, but who has also learned to cooperate with others. It is a fortunate child who is born into a community that understand this and that gives the child as much freedom as possible, while at the same time teaching the individual to cooperate with others who are good and trustworthy. We must succeed in obtaining the clearest insight into God’s nature and relation to us, as the one guardian of life is love, but to be loved we must love. This is the new birth that comes through a new outlook on life, a new way of thinking, a new sense of our relationship to our environment, to the people around us, to ourselves, and to God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
However, a person oppressed by loneliness can go out into the World and simply start belonging to it, not by joining organizations, but by living through feelings of relatedness—to other people, to nature, to society, to the World as a whole. Relatedness is a signal of soul. By allowing the sometimes vulnerable feelings of relatedness, soul pours into life and does not have to insist on itself symptomatically. We know that the psychological, emotional, and mental readjustments which are necessary to our well-being will be made if we experience this firm faith that all people live in God, and we must have a deep realization that we are all one in this Universal spirit which is God. If we have ourselves locked away in a dark closet, why not come out into the light? If we really have been feeling that everything is against us and no one really cares for us, know that God is in everyone, and meet the God in others and see what happens. I can love anyone I meet and be loved in return. The foundation of community is immeasurably deep, and the process of belonging, dealing actively with loneliness, begins in the depths of the soul. Love keeps the soul on the track of its fate and keeps consciousness at the edge of the abyss of the infinity that is the range of the soul. Forgive yourself and everyone else for everything that has ever happened. Try to feel that everyone is doing the best they can. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Some people do not like their jobs because there never seems to be completion and satisfaction, but they keep going to fulfill those aspirations. Find God in yourself because blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Seek, and you shall find. Love must go forth and meet love. All people are rooted in God, and it is the only being as we go down to the roots of our beings that we unify with others in spirit and truth. Manifestation of God is the force of life itself and is the fountain of love that keeps the soul alive and full. There is no way toward divine love expect through the discovery of human intimacy and community. One feeds the other. Care of the soul, then requires an openness to love’s many forms. Because we are one with God, we are one with all people, and that allows us to feel our union with people and nature. We feel that we belong to life, love life, and into the joy of living. We enter into companionship and cooperation with them. And there is something within us that reaches out and embraces the whole World. Something within the core of our being blesses everything we touch, brings life and happiness and joy to everyone. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Do not let your life be full of regrets of the past. As our trust in God grows, we open our hearts, seeking to do his will, and waiting for answers that will help us understand. Know that we have something inside of us that acts as a healing force, restoring everything to its natural and native perfection. In time and by degrees, we receive God’s gracious strength and direction. As we silently listen to the spirit within us and think of its perfection, we know that we are born again—born into joy and hope and gladness, born into love and faith and assurance. Silently, release every negative thought from your mind. With a growing understanding of the Lord’s grace and mercy, we will find that our self-willed hearts begin to accept gratitude. We will receive new hope and fresh guidance through the Holy Ghost. God’s way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the World to come. Some may thing they have failed too many times and feel too weak to change sinful acts or Worldly desires of the heart. However, if we earnestly appeal to God, he takes us as we are—and makes us more than we ever imagined. Truly dedicated to the Savior, we can say with confidence that it will work out. I pray that we will focus on the simplicity that is in Christ and allow his grace to lift and carry us. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
God Never Made a Promise that was too Good to be True!
My Love is something valuable to much which I ought not to throw away without reflection. It imposes duties on me for whose fulfillment I must be ready to make sacrifices. If I love someone, he or she must deserve it in some way. Love is one of the most powerful of human impulses. My love is valued by all my own people as a sign of my preferring them, and it is an injustice to them if I put a stranger on part with them. In order to appreciate the mystery of love, we have to give up the idea that love is a psychological problem and that with enough understanding and guidance we can finally do it right, without illusion and folly. Granted that loyalty is whole hearted devotion to an object of some kind, what kind of thing is this object? Is it an abstract entity, such as an idea or collective being? Or is it a person or group of persons? The idealist contends that loyalty is the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion to a person to a cause. Its object is a cause beyond your private self, greater than you are, it is impersonal and superpersonal. As a cause it is something that transcends the individual, an eternal reality. Apart from familiar metaphysical and logical objections to this concept of a superpersonal reality, this view has the ethical defect of postulating duties over and above our duties to individual people and groups of people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The individual is submerged and lost in this superperson not only ontologically but also morally, for it tends to dissolve our specific duties and obligations to others into a superhuman good. Loyalty is a component of love and there are a range of emotions, giving us strong images of the saturation of the soul. God, being rational, will ordain what is good, but what God ordains is good in its own nature, not because God ordains it. Innate knowledge (notitia innata) is cognition through self-presence and belongs to the very essence of the soul; acquired knowledge (notitia illata) is the soul’s cognition of external things. Innate knowledge is superior to, and more certain than, acquired knowledge; for the soul cannot be mistaken about what belongs to its nature. Knowledge of the external World can be obtained either by intuition or by abstraction. By intuition one grasps a thing immediately in its concrete reality, so that nothing immediately in its concrete reality, so that nothing of the object escapes the penetrating and all-embracing act of the intellect. God knows all our thoughts, and they are made known by his spirit. The manifestation of love, charity personified, comes through the grace of Christ himself. May the joy of our fidelity to the highest and best within us be ours as we keep our love and our marriages, our society and our souls, as pure as they were meant to be. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Each individual is a unique institution in the Universe. Care of the soul is to recognize the necessity of love and loyalty. We can find some hints of how to care for the soul in times of love. Loyalty is a virtue that hold less of reason, than of bigotry and superstition. Loyalty is taken to refer to a relationship between persons—for instance, between a lord and his vassal, between a parent and his or her children, or between friends. Thus, the object of loyalty is ordinarily taken to be a person or group of persons. Loyalty is conceived as interpersonal, and it is also always specific; a person is loyal to their lord, their parents, or his or her comrades. When love is in control, the elements form compounds out of which arise more complex units, and eventually, animate beings. It is a door that opens out from the human reason into divine mystery. When we reflect on the tragedies of our own loves, when we slowly find our way through their miseries, we are being initiated into the mysterious ways of the soul. Love is the means of entry and our guide. There is a doorway or an entrance through which the mind must pass on its way to spiritual realization, and that door can be opened by none but the one who is to enter. Every person must discover God in one’s own way, but always within oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Now there are many approaches to the door, and no doubt many entrances to the door way to God. Every great spiritual leader has found a door through which God has entered. As we study the spiritual systems of the ages we discover that, though the approach has been varied, the temple of the spirit is one. God is all there is, and there is none beside him. This statement includes everything. In all the kingdoms that exist, in all the planes that exist, and deep within the self, hidden and yet felt, there is a High Priest ready to conduct us to the sacred and secret chamber of the self, where God and humans are one. The search for union passes into the realization, not that we are just with or in, but that we are of God. Love keeps us on the labyrinthine path. If we can honor love as it presents itself, taking shapes and directions we never have predicted or desired, then we are on the way toward discovering the lower levels of soul, where meaning and value reveal themselves slowly and paradoxically. There we are sailing trustingly toward fate, while plucking the strings of our own resources. Many have found entrance to this door through deep spiritual prayers, some through high inspirational enlightenment. True love and loyalty endure. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Righteous love and truth are never shaken. True love must include the idea of permanence. Love makes us instinctively reach out to Go and other people. Love comes with open hands and open heart. Since life cannot be lost, the whole purpose of our study is not for the salvation of the individual life, but the discovery of the self which the scripture tells us is hid with Christ in God. We have studied our techniques and we have come to understand something about how the science of mind works and how to use it, what to do and why. The opening of the door to the temple often calls for patience and waiting, painstaking and watchful prayer, for continual communion with God will allow us to discover knowledge of the divine. We have a need for perfection—this is, the fulfillment of both our intellectual and our emotional powers, which indeed are not existentially separate. The more adequate an idea, the more it is pleasing, liberating, and intrinsically human. The culmination of the ethical life—that is, the life devoted to freedom of the intellect—is found in the intellectual love of God. One must lose oneself in order to find oneself, but in so doing, one finds that what one had really discovered is God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Are we dreaming of success or failure? Of happiness or misery? Of aliments or Health? Our dreams are mental patterns that can lead us into a fuller and richer life, or can create phantom monsters that makes out lives a nightmare, whether we are asleep or awake. Dreams have meaning and psychic value, we must nevertheless allow for the possibility that this meaning may not be the same in every dream. One dream may have consideration of the fulfillment of a wish; another may turn out to be the realization of an apprehension; another may have a reflection as its content; other dreams may simply reproduce a reminiscence. Every person is the dreamer of one’s own dreams, and within each is the spiritual power to choose the patterns that one wishes to experience in life. You may be in pain today. Maybe you have suffered a loss, been through a disappointment. That is not the end. God still has a plan. Do not sit around nursing your wounds. Do not let bitterness and discouragement set the tone for your life. When you become weary and feel like quitting, there is a way to have your strength renewed—wait on the Lord. God wants us to arise. Wipe away the tears and take control of your life. God promises to make the rest of your life the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
My Master, the Spy
Sometimes stereotypes are creations of an entire society or nation, and they perform the function of building up the national feeling through putting down another nation or group. Such behavior is not really intentional cruelty, ignorance, or hostility to the other groups or nations, though it certainly may be unenlightened or narrow-minded. What is your test now will become your testimony. Let go of the discouragement, self-pity and get ready for God to do something new. Those advisories, annoying and harassing you are about to meet their ends. However, in the process, they have thrusted you forward into the fullness of your destiny. Experiments have taught us if practical experience has not already done so, that the improbable does occur, and that our picture of the World only tallies with reality when the improbably has a place in it. What guarantee is there that the five senses, taken together, do cover the whole of possible experience? They cover simply our actual experience, our human knowledge of facts or events. There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the sense. In these gaps is the darkness which hides the connection between things. This darkness is the source of our vague fears and anxieties, but also the home of the Gods. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The Gods alone see the connections, the total relevance of everything that happens; that which now comes to us in bits and pieces, the accidents which exist only in our heads, in our limited perceptions. In the political realm, a number of investigators, seeking to understand how personality factors might bear upon such behavior as political power-seeking among aspiring leaders, have turned their attention to the self-concept as an explanatory variable. Some of the more prominent explanations of the striving for political power can be traced to ideas on compensation for feelings of inferiority. An individual afflicted with organ inferiority may seek to compensate for his or her deficiencies in order to overcome one’s low feelings of self-worth. Demosthenes was a Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. As a boy, Demosthenes stuttered: in order to overcome this stuttering, he placed pebbles in his mouth and sought to shout down the waves. In another example, Napoleon’s drive for power was reported to stem from inferiority feelings about his diminutive stature. Power seekers pursue power as a means of compensation against low estimates of the self. However, low self-esteem may also be at the root of political apathy, since overwhelmingly low self-esteem might cause the individual to withdraw from the political arena entirely. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Similarly, political apathy might stem from the fact that the individual is so exhausted by one’s inner conflict that one has no interest or energy left for public affairs. Research findings are consistent in showing that people with low self-esteem are in general more likely to be politically apathetic. One large scale study of high school juniors and seniors showed that youngsters with low self-esteem were less likely to express interest in national or international affairs, to pay attention to political matters in the media, to have much political knowledge, and to be political opinion leaders. Furthermore, even those low self-esteem students who were politically interested were less likely to discuss politics, more likely to feel personally threatened by political discussion, less confident that other people would pay much attention to their political views, and more self-conscious about presenting their political ideas to other people. These low self-esteem youngsters were also more likely to report that they were distracted from public affairs by concern with their personal problems. However, keep in mind that there are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right. Courage is a door that can only be opened from the inside. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Personality will affect political attitudes of youngsters only if they are politically involved, the relationship of self-esteem to political attitudes controlling on political interest. In virtually every case, the relationship of self-esteem to political attitudes is stronger if political involvement is higher than if it is low. Furthermore, among those adolescents who were highly interested in political issues, those with high self-esteem are more likely to be knowledgeable about political figures, to have a better understanding of these essentials of democracy, to be less cynical about politics, and to feel more politically efficacious. These findings persisted when grade, gender, socioeconomic status, and intelligence were controlled. Those with low self-esteem, on the other hand, were more likely to support political protest activities. Qualitative research among adults has added to our understanding of how self-concepts—especially self-esteem—may influence political apathy or participation. One study showed that some adults were afraid to express political opinions for fear of making fools of themselves. Lacking confidence in their own knowledge and ability, these people retreated from political. However, low political participation also appeared to be fostered by a more fundamental and deep-rooted feeling of inefficacy and insignificance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Some people feel that they do not matter, that they make little difference in the broader scheme of things. These people expressed the idea that they were politically unimportant—an ordinary person, an average individual, a little person. Nothing they can do will make much political difference because the forces that control the World, including the political forces, were outside their control; political impotence formed the basis of political apathy. Apathy, of course, is not the only possible outcome of such an attitude. One reason many Germans were attracted to Hitler was that (like the American subjects described above) they felt ineffectual, impotent, and insignificant in the broader scheme of things. For this reason they attached themselves to a powerful political leader, who not only promised them national glory and, thereby, personal self-esteem, but also preached a doctrine asserting their inherent superiority to all others peoples. There are many other ways in which the self-concept has been show to be related to political orientations. People with low self-esteem are more likely to be chauvinistic, ethnocentric, and politically cynical, and to be low on democratic commitment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
There is also evidence that (among isolationists), those with low self-esteem are more likely to oppose social change, to believe in tradition and social order, to support a position of elitism, and to hold extreme political beliefs. In general, people with low self-esteem tend to hold political solutions of any political persuasion that makes their confused environments intelligible, orderly, and purposive. Other studies have also examined self-esteem among elected officials. However, self-esteem is not the only self-concept motive implicated in political behavior; self-consistency also plays a role. The study of adults found that some people avoided political activity on grounds of role self-concept incongruence. The individual’s view of oneself did not match the individual’s view of the qualities of a political activist. The political activist was seen as energetic, forceful, and dynamic, whereas the individual saw oneself or herself as passive and receptive. This lack of role-person fit was a deterrent to political participation. It is plain that the way one thinks about the self influences the way one thinks about the World, including the World pf politics. The political institution, like any other, is a realm of action, and whenever people act, their self-concepts are implicated. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Winchester Mystery House
Construction lasted for thirty-eight years on the Winchester Mystery House, one of North America’s most unusual and eccentric homes located in San Jose, California. Through the 160-room labyrinth-style mansion built by Sarah Pardee Winchester, there are many beautiful and extraordinary examples of the Queen-Anne Victorian Style architecture. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 