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

January 5, 2020 4:28 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sometimes an Angel Has to Fall to Know One Was in Heaven—Are You Living?

January 1, 2020 12:46 am

Make sustained rapid improvement a way of life. Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. If it is in the right direction, there is nothing wrong in change. To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often. Start by doing what is necessary; then do what is possible; and suddenly you are doing this impossible. God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform; God plants his foot steps in the sea, and rides upon the storm. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance. Some people think that it seems God does not exist because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. And the word “God” means that He is infinite goodness. They say, if God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the World. Therefore, God does not exist is their thought. However, it is said in the person of God: “I am Who am,” reports Exodus 3.14. We know God exists. It is certain, and evident to our senses that in the World some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is noting else than the reduction of something in a state of actuality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

However, nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thu that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cld. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, exempli gratia that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. However, this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the World of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient case of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible, Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinite, because in all efficient cases following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient cases, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. However, if there be no first cause it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name Go. The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. However, it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been noting in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence—which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. However, every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go out to infinite in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in other their necessity. This all beings speak of as God. The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But “more” and “less” are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something in which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God. The fifth way is taken from the governance of the World. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God. Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil. This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it to produce good. Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle. The human situation is one of finiteness—all flesh is grass and the grass withereth. It is one of sin—we receive double for all our sins. It is one of vanity and pride—we are brought to nothing and fall utterly. However, in spite of one’s realistic knowledge of human nature and density, darkness and light follow each other; after the depth of sin and punishment, the prophet announces forgives and liberation. However, the wave falls, and the prophet asks himself how he could have made such an announcement, when all the goodness of mortal beings is as the flower of the field, which faces because the breath of God blows upon it. However, he does not remain in the depths of his melancholy: over against human mortality the word of God shall stand forever. There is something eternal to which we can cling: Be not afraid, the Lord God shall come with strong hand. So the wave rises, and then again it falls: the nations are as a drop of water and a piece of dust; all nations are as nothing before God, they are counted as less than nothing. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Again the wave rises: God stands above the circle of the Earth, above all created things, above the highest and the lowest! And when once more the wave falls and the servant of God complains that he does not receive justice from God, the answer is that God acts beyond human expectation. He gives power to the faint and to one that hath no might God is increaseth strength. God acts paradoxically; He acts beyond human understanding. How shall we interpret these words? Is there a way to unite the heights and depths contrasted in this essay? Shall we understand the words of consolation and hope as vain promises, never fulfilled in the past and never to be fulfilled in any future? Shall we understand then as an escape from the realization of Human’s real situation, through mysticism and poetic elevation? If so, what about the probing realism of the prophet’s analysis of the human situation? One saw history as it is, but at the same time one looked beyond history to the ultimate power and meaning and majesty of being. One knew two orders of being: the human, political, historical order, and the divine, eternal order. Because one knew these two orders, one could speak as one did, moving continually between the depth of human nothingness and the great height of divine creativity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Let us look at these orders, these different natures, and their interrelation. In speaking of them we speak of ourselves, because we belong to both of them in every moment of our life and history. The human order, the order of history, is primarily the order of growing and dying. “Surely the people is grass.” Human’s experience of melancholy, awakened by fading and perishing nature, is symbolic of one’s transitoriness. Generations after generations grow up, struggle, suffer, enjoy and disappear. Should we take all this seriously? Should we take it more seriously than the growing and fading of the grass? He prophet, when one was asked to speak one’s nation, raised the question: Why speak to them? They are grass. We could continue: Why write and work and struggle for them? They are grass. What matter, when after a few years all those for whom we wrote and spoke and struggled will have vanished? They were grass, the grass withered, the flowers faded. That is the order of history. However, the other appears at the horizon: the word of God shall stand forever. Second, the order of history is an order of sin and punishment. The exile, following the destruction of Jerusalem, was, as all the prophets said, the punishment of the people for their sins. We do not like words such as “sin” and “punishment.” They seem to us old-fashioned, barbaric, and invalid in the light of modern psychology. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

However, whenever I have met exiles of high moral standards and insights, I have discovered that they feel responsible for what has happened within their own countries. And very often I have met citizens who democratic countries, citizens of this country, who have expressed a feeling of guilt for the situation of the World today. They were right, and the exiles were right: they are responsible, as are you and I. Whether or not we call it sin, whether or not we call it punishment, we are beaten by the consequences of our own failures. That is the order of history. However, at the horizon the other order appears, saying that our struggles are not in vain, that our iniquity is pardoned. There is a third element in the order of history, uniting finiteness and sin: the tragic law which controls the historical process, the law which ordains that human greatness utterly fall. There is human greatness in history. There are great and conquering nations and empires; there are even nations and empires which manifest a certain righteousness. There are princes and even good princes; there are judges and even just judges. There are states and constitutions and even states and constitutions which provide a certain amount of freedom; there are social orders and even some which provide a certain amount of equality. There are creative spirits and even some which have the power of knowledge and understanding. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

However, just in being great and powerful and righteous they touch the divine sphere, and they become arrogant, and they are brought to nothing. They are without roots; they wither; the divine storm blows over them, and they vanish. That is the subject of Greek tragedy. That is the message f the prophet to the nations of the World. They are all subject to the law of tragic self-destruction—the bad and the good, individuals and nations, the weak and the heroic. And again the other order, the order beyond history and tragedy, appears at the horizon: He gives power to the faint and their strength is renewed, so that they shall mount up with wings as eagles. The order beyond the order of history is the divine order. And it is paradoxical: humans are like grass, but the word of God spoken to them shall stand forever. Humans stand under the law of sin and punishment, but the divine order breaks through it and bring forgiveness. Humans faint, falling from the height of their moral goodness and youthful power, and just when they have fallen and are weakest, they run without weariness and rise up with wigs as eagles. God acts beyond all human assumptions and valuations. He acts surprisingly, unexpectedly, paradoxically. The negative character of the historical order is the beneficial character of the divine order. The weak and despairing, the sinful and tragic in the historical order are the strong and victorious in the divine order. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The prophet speaks of the paradoxical destiny of the servant, the elected nation. Described as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, it is despised and rejected in the human order. Who does not think, hearing these words, of the exiles not only of Israel but of all nations of the World? However, the divine order appears. The exiled nation, or (as the Christians later, historically wrong, spiritually right, interpreted it) the Man on the Cross, represents another order, an order in which the weakest is the strongest, the most humiliated, the most victorious. The historical, human order is overcome by the suffering servant, the crucified Saviour. If we doubt this paradox, if we despair about our human situation, if our exile is without hope or meaning for us, the prophet should fill us with shame for the arrogance of our rationalism and the narrowness of our moralism, of history. He asks, “Who has directed the Spirit of God? With whom took He counsel and who instructed Him and taught Him the path of Justice?” We always wish to teach God the path of justice. We tell Him that He must punish the bad and reward the good, especially in relation to ourselves. However, He accepts no counsel concerning the course of history, as He took no counsel concerning the structure of the World, with all its natural destruction, cruelty, and transitoriness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The divine order cannot be judged according to the measures of the historical order, the measures of human comfort and morality, democracy and civilization. That was the answer Job received from God when he struggled with Him about the unintelligible injustice of his historical fate. God did not justify Himself in moral categories; He triumphantly pointed to the unexplorable greatness of nature which cannot be measured according to the measure of human righteousness. However, if the divine order and the historical order have nothing to do with each other, how can the divine order concern us at all? How can eternity and forgiveness and divine help concern us if we are in the other order, the historical order, standing under the law of finiteness and weakness and punishment? How can the divine order comfort us in our misery? How can we listen to the words of the prophets which tell us of the end of our warfare? There are three answers to this question. First, the divine order is not the historical order; and we should not confuse these two orders. No life is able to overcomes finiteness, sin, and tragedy. The illusions of our period have been that modern civilization can conquer them, and that we can achieve security in our own existence. Progress seemed to have conquered tragedy; the divine order seemed to be embodied in the progressive, historical order. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

However, for nearly three decades our generation has received blow after blow, destroying that illusion, and driving to despair and cynicism those who wanted to transform, and thought they could transform the historical order into a divine order. Let us learn from the catastrophe of our tie at least the fact that no life and no period are able to overcome finiteness, sin, and tragedy. The second answer is that there is another order to which we, as human beings, belong, an order which makes beings always dissatisfied with what is given to one. Humans transcend everything in the historical order, all the heights and depts of one’s own existence. One passes, as no other being is able to pass, beyond the limits of one’s given World. One participates in something infinite, in an order which is not transitory, not self-destructive, not tragic, but eternal, holy, and blessed. Therefore, when one listen to the prophetic word, when one hears of the everlasting God and of the greatness of His power and the mystery of His acts, a response is awakened in the depth of one’s soul; the infinite within one is touched. Every being knows, in some depth of one’s soul, that is true. Our despair itself, our inability to escae ourselves in life and in death, witnesses to our infinity. The third answer is that the two orders, the historical and the eternal, although they can never become the same, are within each other. The historical order is not separated from the eternal order. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

What is new in the prophets and in Christianity, beyond all paganism, old and new, is that the eternal order reveals itself in the historical order. The suffering servant of God and the enemies because of whom one suffers, the Man on the Cross and those who fainted under the Cross, the exiled and persecuted in all periods of history, have all transformed history. The strong in history fall; the strength of each of taken from us. However, those who seem weak in history finally shape history, because they are bound to the eternal order. We are not a lost generation because we are a suffering, destroyed generation. Each of us belongs to the eternal order, and the prophet speaks to all of us: Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people! I have learned that there are not different types but qualifications of love, since the different qualities are presented, by efficiency or deficiency, in every act of love. This insight, however, does not make the distinction of the qualities of love less important. If, as I shall suggest, one has to distinguish the libido, the philia, the eros, the agape qualities of love we must ask: how are they related to each other? What is meant if one speaks of love without qualification? Which quality of love is adequate to the Great Commandment? Which to its emotional quality? #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Whenever the word love is used one also speaks of self-love. How is self-love related to the qualities of love, to its ontological and to its ethical character? First of all one must ask whether self-love is a meaningful concept at all. Considering that love presupposes a separation of the loving subject, and the loved object, is there such a separation in the structure of the self-consciousness? I am very doubtful about using the term self-love, and if it is used, abut using the term self-love, and if it is used, about using in it any except a metaphorical sense. Besides this terminological question, one must ask how the different qualities of love are related to what is metaphorically called self-love, and how it is related to the ethical and to the ontological nature of love. This survey of the problems and confusion, connected with the use of the term love is equaled by a survey of the confusions and problems connected with the public discussion of the concept of power. I may tell an anecdote which has more symbolic than analytical meaning. I have been warned not to announce a lecture on “Love, Power, and Justice” in the Untied States, because power would be understood as the product of the electrical power companies, and justice as the fight against the policy of the Federal Government to provide for affordable electrical power by the regulation of rivers according to the pattern of the Tennessee Valley Authority. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Power in the sense presupposed by this story is electrical power. In the same way the term power can be applied to all physical causes, although theoretical physics has got rid of this anthropomorphic symbol and has replaced it by mathematical equations. However, present-day physics speaks of power-fields in order to describe the basic structures of the material World. This is at least an indication of the significance the term power has even in the most abstract analysis of physical occurrences. Physicists are usually conscious of the fact that they use an anthropomorphic metaphor when they use the term power. Power is a sociological category and from there it is transferred to nature (just as is law). However, the term metaphor does not solve the problem. We must ask, how is it possible that both physics and social science use the same word, power? There must be a point of identity between the structure of the social and the structure of the physical World. And this identity must be manifest in the common use of the term power. There is, however, only one way of discovering the root meaning of power, namely to ask about its ontological foundation. And this, of course, is one of the purposes of these lectures. Within the social realm the meaning of power is burdened by another ambiguity, the relation of power and force. This duality is almost exclusively restricted to the human sphere. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

For only in humans, that is in the being whose nature is finite freedom, the distinction of power and force is meaningful. One speaks of power politics, and one often does so with moral indignations. However, this is the consequence of mere confusion. Politics and power politics are one and the same thing. There are no politics without power, neither in a democracy nor in a dictatorship. Politics and power politics point to the same reality. It does not matter which term you are using. Unfortunately, however, the term power politics is used for a special type of politics, namely that in which power is separated from justice and love, and is identified with compulsion. This confusion is possible because there is indeed a compulsory element in the actuality of power. However, this is only one element, and if power is reduced to it and loses the form of justice and the substance of love, it destroys itself and the politics based on it. Only penetration into the ontological roots of power can overcome the ambiguities in the relation of power and compulsion. If power is distinguished from compulsion the question arises whether there is a power which is neither physical nor psychological, but spiritual. Compulsion uses both physical and psychological means in order to exercise power, must conspicuously in the terror methods of dictatorships. No compulsion at all is presupposed in spiritual power. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Nevertheless, one assumes that spiritual power is the greatest, that it is the ultimate power. One does so whenever one says that God is Spirit. It is meet and right that we should give thanks to Thee, O Lord God, through Jesus Christ Thy Son, Who, being God Eternal, was pleased to becomes Man for our salvation. O the one, peerless, manifold Mystery of our Saviour! For He, being one and the same, God mist high, and perfect Man, both supreme High priest and most scared Sacred Sacrifice, according to His Divine power created all things, according to His human condition delivered humans; by virtue of His Sacrifice He atoned for the polluted, in right of His Priesthood He reconciled the alienated. O the peerless Mystery of redemption! Wherein those ancient wounds were healed by the Lord’s new medicine, and the judgment passed before on the first human rescinded by the privileges of our Saviour. The one in self-indulgence extended one’s hands to the tree, the other patiently fitted His to the Cross; therefore deservedly did the punishment borne by innocence become the discharge of the debtor, for with good right are debts remitted to debtors when discharged on their behalf by Him Who owed nothing. “And it came to pass that they began to spread upon the face of the land, and to multiply and to till the Earth; and they did wax strong in the land,” reports Ether 6.18. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Creator and Redeemer God, Author of all existence, source of all blessedness, I adore thee for making me capable of knowing thee, for giving me reason and conscience, for leading me to desire thee; I praise thee for the revelation of thyself in the gospel, for thy heart as a dwelling place of pity, for thy thoughts of peace towards me, for thy patience and thy graciousness, for the vastness of thy mercy. Thou hast moved my conscience to know how the guilty can be pardoned, the unholy sanctified, the poor enriched. May I be always amongst those who not only hear but know thee, who walk with and rejoice in thee, who take thee at they word and find life there. Keep me always longing for a present salvation in Holy Spirit comforts and rejoicings, for spiritual graces and blessings, for help to value my duties as well as my privileges. May I cherish simplicity and Godly sincerity of character. Help me to be in reality before thee as in appearance I am before humans, to be religious before I profess religion, to leave the World before I enter the church, to set my affections on things above, to shun forbidden follies and vanities, to be a dispenser as well as a partaker of grace, to be prepared to bear evil as well as to do good. O God, make me worthy of this calling, that the name Jesus may be glorified in me and I in him. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

NOW SELLING! Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse. Dining rooms are perhaps the best evidence of the revolution that took place in society in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution not only made all the furniture, dishes, and silver plate possible, but also created a new class of people to use them. Early in the nineteenth century, the existence of a dining room at all was the mark of gentry. The landed gentry of the South and the merchant shippers of the North might boast a separate room just for eating, but they represented only a very small part of the population. By the 1860s, a separate dining room was considered de rigueur (prescribed or required by fashion, etiquette, or custom) for even a cottage.

When the guest filed into a Victorian dinner in the late nineteenth century, they found small menus on the table describing what cuisine they would be served. Staff set and removed plate for every course, and no one used fingers to touch the food. There were special forks and ladles and knives for every conceivable food: oyster ladles and forks; tomato servers; fish knives and forks; cake knives and servers forks; different spoons for clear sup, for cream soup, for dessert, for fruit, for breakfast coffee, for dinner coffee, and for tea. The volume and variety of silver-plated flatware and hollowware would baffle any modern dinner. What is so amazing about Victorian table manners is how successful they were. We may no longer use all the cutlery, but we have internalized their whole system of suppressing bodily functions and being proper. Cresleigh homes residence 4 osfer a formal dining room. Have your cake and eat it with whipped cream!

Style is displayed in exquisite proportions in residence 4, of Cresleigh homes, at Brighton Station. This 3,501 square foot home has a superb floor plan, which has a cache of thoughtful amenities. The chef inspired kitchen has a huge island, and opens up to the large great room, with an optional fireplace. Notice the abundance of storage in the butler’s pantry, and walk-in pantry. There is also a cozy home management office on the first floor, along with a formal dining room, coat closet, and a master suite with its own bathroom. The first floor also boast of a powder room for guest, a mud room and a 3-car tandem garage, which easily holds a family fleet, or a portion of it that can be converted into an optional workshop.

An elegant stairway leads to the master suite on the second floor, which offers both conviences and quiet seclusion. Included are many special features: a coffee bar, bathroom with deep soaker tub, multiple vanities, and walk-in closet. There are two more bedrooms, complimented by a charming loft, which could be converted into a 5^th bedroom with only a little rearranging, and there is another full bathroom that comes standard. This come contains 3.5 bathrooms and up to five bedrooms. There is also outdoor livability with a large covered porch with an optional outdoor fireplace, and extended patio. How will you customize your home?

Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District. These chic residences (1-4) reflect Cresleigh Ranch’s exuberant spirit, varied architectural traditions, and incomparable landscape. Happy Exploring! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-4/

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

December 28, 2019 4:27 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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There I Will be Just to Make Sure You Keep Your Heart Alone and Fancy and Free—No One Else Can Have it!

December 27, 2019 3:10 am

The World we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking. Experience has shown each one of us that reality is very easily able to deceive ourselves to believe something which later experience shows us is not so. How can I tell whether this tentative belief has some real relationship to observed facts? I can use, not one line of evidence only, but several. I can surround my observation of the facts with various precautions to make sure I am not deceiving myself. I can consult with others who have also been concerned with avoiding self-deception, and learn useful ways of catching myself in unwarranted beliefs, based on misinterpretations of observations. I can, in short, begin to use all the elaborate methodology which science has accumulated. I discover that stating my hypothesis in operational terms will avoid my blind alley and false conclusions. If, as a scientist, I like the way I have gone about my investigation, if I have been open to all the evidence, if I have selected and sued intelligently all the precautions against self-deception which I have been able to assimilate from others or to devise myself, then I will give my tentative belief to the findings which have emerged. I will regard them as a springboard for further investigation and further seeking. It has been suggested that one can rely upon one’s audience to accept minor cues as a sign of something important about one’s performance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

If in the last few years, you have not discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse, you may need to be give the kiss of life. Feedback is a convenient fact that has an inconvenient implication. By virtue of the same sign-accepting tendency, the audience may misunderstand the meaning that a cue was designed to convey, or may read an embarrassing meaning into gestures or events that were accidental, inadvertent, or incidental and not meant by the performer to carry any meaning whatsoever. In response to these communication contingencies, performers commonly attempt to exert a kind of synecdochic responsibility, making sure that as many as possible of the minor events in the performance, however instrumentally inconsequential these events may be, will occur in such a way as to convey either no impression or an impression that is compatible and consistent with the over-all definition of the situation that is being fostered. When the audience is known to be secretly skeptical of the reality that is being impressed upon them, we have been ready to appreciate their tendency to pounce on trifling flows as a sign life we have been less ready to appreciate that even sympathetic audiences can be momentarily disturbed, shocked, and weakened in their faith by the discover of a picayune discrepancy in the impressions presented to them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Some of these minor accidents and unmeant gestures happen to be so aptly designed to give an impression that contradict the one fostered by the performer that the audience cannot help but be startled from a proper degree of involvement in the interaction, even though the audience may realize that in the last analysis the discordant event is really meaningless and ought to be completely overlooked. The crucial point is not that the fleeting definition of the situation caused by an unmeant gesture is itself so blameworthy but rather merely that it is different from the definition officially projected. This difference forces an acutely embarrassing wedge between the official projection and reality, for it is part of the official projection that it is the only possible one under the circumstances. Perhaps, then, we should not analyze performances in terms of mechanical standards, by which a large gain can offset a small loss, or a large weight a smaller one. Artistic imagery would be more accurate, for it prepares us for the fact that a single note off key can disrupt the tone of an entire performance. You are what you are and where you are because of what has gone into your mind; you change what you are and where you are by changing what goes into your mind. To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

In regard to the findings of science, the subjective foundation is well shown in the fact that at times the scientist may refuse to believe one’s own findings. “The experiment showed thus and so, but I believe it is wrong,” is a theme which every scientist has experiences at some time or other. Some very fruitful discoveries have grown out of the persistent disbelief, by a scientist, in one’s own findings and those of others. In the last analysis one may place more trust in one’s total organismic reactions than in the methods of science. There is no doubt that this can result in serious error as well as in scientific discoveries, but it indicates again the leading place of the subjective in the use of science. Wading along a coral reef in the Caribbean this morning, I saw a large blue fish—I think. If you, quite independently, saw it too, then I feel more confident in my own observation. This is what is known as intersubjective verification, and it plays an important part in our understanding of science. If I take you (whether in conversation or in print or behaviorally) through the steps I have taken in an investigation, and it seems to you too that I have not deceived myself, and that I have indeed come across a new relationship which is relevant to my values, and that I am justified in having a tentative faith in this relationship, then we have the beginnings of Science with a capital S. It is at this point that we are likely to think we have created a body of scientific knowledge. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Actually there is there is no such body of knowledge. There are only tentative beliefs, existing subjectively, in a number of different persons. If these beliefs are not tentative, then what exists are strict and rigid doctrines, not science. If on the other hand, no one but the investigator believes the finding then this finding is either a personal and deviant matter, an instance of pathology, or else it is an unusual truth discovered by a genius, which as yet no one is subjectively ready to believe. When one repeats oneself in a redundant way, one is revealing one’s desire to be seen as a member of some group. However, others may not care. Reflections and interpretations may be experienced by other individuals as expressions of the message, “I do not really care about you, I care about my expense, or my comfort, or the rightness of my theories or reflections or interpretations.” Or, these same reflections and interpretations, whether awkward or apt, may be heard as repetitions of, “I wan you to be healthier, I want to help you, I am trying to be helpful.” I believe that trust and hope are not contributors to healing. Rather, they are the experienced aspect of a total organismic healing, or reintegration process. Trust and hope are indications that the healing or reintegration or transcendence process has been set in motion. Trust and hope do not cause healing. They are healing. We can look at healing from various perspectives. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

From a psychological standpoint, healing appears as a state of trust and hope. At a physiological level, it is revealed as changes in white-cell count or in some endocrinological changes. At a behavioral level, healing is manifested in growing vigor and relevance of responding. Continued distrust and hopelessness in a patient undergoing any kind of therapy may be regarded as indications that the disintegration process is unremitting. The patient’s acquiescence to determiners of one’s existence is persisting and may culminate in death or total withdrawal into psychosis. Anything a therapist does which invites an unwell person to trust, to be self-revealing, and to have hope that a better life is possible is therapeutic. The onset of these psychological states signifies that the healing process or desirable personality reorganization has already begun. For people in the healing, the helping, and the teaching professions, here is something most neglect. The most valuable experience I have had finding opportunities to grow and to have my growth confirmed, beyond training, that has maintained my growth edge, is contact with colleagues who are of goodwill and before whom I have not be afraid to be myself; that is, be like a patient, a pupil, a teacher, or a groping, bungling, well-intentioned person trying to make sense of what one is doing and wanting to benefit from somebody else’s experience. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Out of informal friendships and informal workshop meetings, more formal workshops such as those held by the American Academy of Psychotherapist evolved. At Academy workshops 50 or 75 therapists spend five days and nights, at each other—liking one another, hating one another, and sharing with one another what we do, what we do not do, why do we do it, and so on. If they do not have of this sort available to them, I think therapists stultify. If such are not available, then a therapist has to find someone one can trust, to tangle with, in order to avoid becoming smug, pompous, rude, and convinced that one has “the word.” One of the greatest dangers of being a teacher, a psychotherapist, a nurse, a minister, or anybody else involved in trying to help others change is the delusion that one “has made it,” that all-American fantasy. There is no one like a self-disclosing colleague to prod one out of such smug pomposity, and invite one back to the task. Change is an inevitable journey. All things are constantly changing, transforming, becoming, something different. Guiding change so that it is successful is what leadership is all about. Indeed, the measure of a leader may well be one’s capacity to understand and deal successfully with change—to stimulate it, shape it, guide it, manage it, and keep it going in the right direction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. Seek the rapids, not the calm of the lake. Take the calm to reflect and prepare for the rapids. If we face permanent white water, we will see the need for and experience change. People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those of us who are doing it. Americans always do the right thing after they try everything else first. When there is a discrepancy between an individual’s actual social identity and one’s virtual one, it is possible for this fact to be known to us before we normal contact one, or to be quite evident when one presents oneself before us. One is a discredited person, and it is mainly one I have been dealing with until now. As suggested, we are likely to give no open recognition to what is discrediting one, and while this work of careful disattention is being done, the situation can become tense, uncertain, and ambiguous for all participants, especially the stigmatized one. The cooperation of a stigmatized person with normal in acting as if one’s known differentness were irrelevant and not attended to is one main possibility in the life of such a person. However, when one is differentness is not immediately apparent, and is not known beforehand (or at least known by one to be known to others), when in fact one’s is a discreditable, and not a discredited, person, then the second main possibility in one’s life is to be found. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The issue is not that of managing tension generated during social contacts, but rather that of managing information about one’s failing. To display or not to display; to tell or not to tell; to let on or not to let on; to lie or not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when, and where. For example, while the mental patient is in the hospital, and when one is with adult members of one’s own family, one is faced with being treated as insane, when one knows this is not just. However, for the ex-mental patient the problem can be quite different; it is not that one must face prejudice against oneself, but rather that one must face unwitting acceptance of oneself of individuals who are prejudiced against persons of the kind one can be revealed to be. Wherever one goes one’s behavior will falsely confirm for the other that they are in the company of what in effect they demand but may discover they have not obtained, namely, a mentally untainted person like themselves. By intention or in effect the ex-mental patient conceals information about one’s real social identity, receiving and accepting treatment based on false suppositions concerning oneself. It is this second general issues, the management of undisclosed discrediting information about self, that I am focusing on in these notes, in brief, “passing.” He concealment of creditable facts—reverse passing—of course occurs, but is not relevant here. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

There are many other examples. Sometimes only a change of viewpoint is needed to convert a tiresome duty into an interesting opportunity. I knew a physician who was careful to refrain from using external symbols of her status, such as car-license tags, her only evidence of profession being an identification carried in her wallet. When faced with a public accident in which medical service was already being rendered the victim, or in which the victim was past helping, she would, upon examining the victim at a distance from the circle around one, quietly go her way without announcing her competence. In these situations, she was what might be called a female impersonator. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the World. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. The traditional view point is neither scientifically testable nor easily compatible with evolution. Unfortunately, this traditional understanding of the good life, freedom, community, and tolerance is not scientifically testable. Moreover, Dr. Darwin’s theory of evolution caused many to lose their belief in the existence of natures, human or otherwise. The concepts of unchanging essences and of complete discontinuities between every eidos (type) and all others make genuine evolutionary thinking impossible. I agree with those who claim that the essentialist philosophies of Aristotle and Plato are incompatible with evolutionary thinking. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

The implications of moving species from the metaphysical category that can appropriately be characterized in terms of natures t a category for which such characterizations are inappropriate are extensive and fundamental. If species evolve in anything like the way that Dr. Darwin thought they did, then they cannot possibly have the sort of natures that the traditional philosophers claimed they did. If species in general lack natures, then so does Homo Sapiens as a biological species. If Homo sapiens lacks a nature, then no reference to biology can be made to support one’s claims about human nature. Perhaps all people are persons, share the same personhood, and so forth, but such claims must be explicated and defended with no reference to biology. Because so many moral, ethical, and political theories depend on some notion or other of human nature, Dr. Darwin’s theory brought into question these theories. The implications are not entailments. One can always dissociate Homo sapiens from human being, but the result is a much less plausible position. Things remain the same because it is impossible to change very much without changing most of everything. Nothing in the World is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Success is a journey, not a destination. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. When we think about the idea that is a person or group dissociates the species-specific designation Homo sapiens from the designation human being, with all of its attendant moral and theological implications (a being might presuppose a creator), then that person or group has a less plausible position. Why? Why should that which we see, hear, feel, taste, or touch (or observe through scientific method) have sway over any cultural debate, since the entire conclusion in the debate rests on a giant “if”—if a species evolved in anything like the way Dr. Darwin thought they did? Well, if naturalistic evolution is the story of how we came to be, then there is no human nature answering to a divine blueprint and no good life that expresses that nature. There are only accidentally formed individual human beings who are free to create whatever versions of happiness they wish. According to the modern view, the good life is the satisfaction of any pleasure or desire that someone freely and autonomously chooses for oneself. The successful person is the individual who has a life of pleasure and can obtain enough consumer goods to satisfy one’s desires. Freedom the right to do what I want, not the power to do what I by nature ought to. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Community gives way to individualism with the result that narcissism—an inordinate sense of self-love and self-centered involvement—is an accurate description of many people’s lives. If I am free to create my own moral Universe and version of the good life, and there is no right or wrong answer to what I should create, then morality—indeed, everything—ultimately exists to make me happy. When a person considers ending a pregnancy prematurely or physician-assisted suicide, the person’s individual rights are all that matter. Questions about virtue or one’s duty to the broader community simply do not arise. However, as a colleague informed me, death by suicide reflects poorly on the community, perhaps even more so than a murder. Tolerance has come to mean that no one is right and no one is wrong and, indeed, the very act of stating that someone else’s views are immoral or incorrect is now take to be intolerant (of course, from this same point of view, it is all right to be intolerant of those who hold to objectively true moral or religious positions). Once the existence of knowable truth in religion and ethics is denied, authority (the right to be believed and obeyed) gives way to rhetoric, the speech writer is replaced by the makeup man, and spirited but civil debate in the culture wars is replaced by politically correct special-interest groups who have noting left but political coercion to enforce their views on others, which has been the job of the TV news media especially in the twenty-first century. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

While the Christian faith clearly teaches that believers are to be involved as good citizens in the state, nevertheless, it is obvious why so many secularists are addicted to politics today because political power is a surrogate for a Higher Power. Once God died in the New World—that is, once the concept of God no longer informed the major idea—generating the centers of society turned secular—there would be turmoil and horrible secular wars unchecked by traditional morality because the state would come to be a surrogate god for many. Finally, individual rights have come to dominate our public discussion of mortal issues. The public square—those aspects of society where all citizens must interface regardless of personal views; for example, public schools, and government—has become unveiled: religious, moral, and political debate therein is no longer informed by a clear, robust vision of the moral life shared by most citizens and taken to be true and rational. Once objective duty, goodness, and virtue were abandoned under the guise of scientism and secularism, the only moral map that could replace objective morality is called minimalistic ethics—anything whatever is morally permissible provided only that you do not harm someone else. Many schools resist change while others avidly seek it. If we do not want our schools to atrophy and die, we need educational leaders who can bring about progress by daring to be change managers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down. The World changes faster than the people in it. Individual rights are important, and, for the Christian, they are grounded in the image of God and not in the state. In other words, the Christian believes that human rights are derived from the image of God in us; they do not ultimately come from the state. However, there are more fundamental questions of virtue and duty that are relevant to the overall development of a moral outlook. For example, the abortion debate should not be framed primarily as a debate about the right to life versus the right to choice Basically, it should be discussed in terms of this question: When faced with the question of abortion, what does a woman or a community committed to moral virtue and duty do? When issues of virtue and duty to others is brought to the foreground and rights are relegated to a secondary position in the moral context, the tenor of the debate changes drastically. How then was the Devil dressed? O, he was in his Sunday best; his coast was red, and his breeches were blue, and there was a hole where his tail came through. Until Christians can do a better job of seeing these issues and articulating them in terms of objective duty, the Jack Kevorkians will continue to win the debate (if that is what we should call the media rhetoric that surrounds the framing of moral dilemmas), precisely because the Kevorkians are on the side of individual rights. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

If the only morally relevant question to ask a patient is whether or not one freely and competently chooses physician-assisted suicide, then we are left with no moral categories in which to introduce more basic questions of duty and virtue. And this is where our secular society is at present, given its commitment to scientism that emerged into no small measure because a marginalized and inarticulate church withdrew into privatized religion as she welcomed the Torjan horse of anti-intellectualism within her walls. “I look out on Earth…lo, all is chaos; I look at Heaven…its light is gone; I look out on the mountains…they are trembling; and all the hills are swaying! I look out…lo, the sown land lies a desert; and the towns are all razed by the Lord’s rage. For thus has the Lord said: The whole land shall be desolate…and for this shall the Earth mourn and the Heavens above be black…I have purposed it and will not repent; neither will I turn back from it. At the noise of the horsemen and the archers the land is all in flight, beings taking refuge within woods and caves, and climbing upon the rocks. Every city shall be abandoned, and not a being dwell therein. You ruined creature, what will you do!” reports Jeremiah 4.23-30. From the moment when the divine soul succeeds in taking full possession of a being’s thought and feeling, will and flesh, one’s motives, words, acts, and desires become obscure and mysterious to other beings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The World changes faster than the people in it. “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed. However, my kindness shall not depart from thee; neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that has mercy on thee!” reports Isaiah 54.10. A ship in port if safe, but that is not what ships are built for. “The foundations of the Earth do shake. Earth breaks to pieces, Earth is split in pieces, Earth shakes to pieces, Earth reels like a drunken man, Earth rocks like a hammock; under the weight of its transgression Earth falls down to rise no more! Life up your eyes to Heaven and look upon the Earth beneath: For the Heavens shall vanish away like smoke. And the Earth shall grow old like a robe; the World itself shall crumble. However, my righteousness shall be forever, and my salvation knows no end,” reports Isaiah 24.18-20. It is hard to speak after the prophets have spoken as they have in these pronouncements. Every word is like the stroke of a hammer. There was a time when we could listen to such words without much feeling and without understanding. There were decades and even centuries when we did not take them seriously. Those days are gone. Today we must take them seriously. For they describe with visionary power what the majority of human beings in our period have experienced, and what, perhaps in a not too distant future, all humankind will experience abundantly: “The foundations of the Earth do shake.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

The phrase, “Earth is split in pieces,” is no merely a poetic metaphor for us, but a hard reality. That is the religious meaning of the age into which we have entered. The Bible has always told us of the beginning and the end of the World. It speaks of eternity before the World was founded; it speaks of the time when God laid the foundations of the Earth; it speaks of the shaking of these foundations of the Earth; it speaks of the shaking of these foundations and of the crumbling of the World. In one of the later books, Second Peter, it says that “the Heavens will vanish with a crackling roar, and the elements will melt with fervent heat, the Earth also and the works therein shall be burnt up.” This is no longer vision; it has become physics. We know that in the ground of our Earth, and in the ground of everything in the World that has form and structure, destructive forces are bound. Laying the foundations of the Earth means binding these forces. When the unruly power of the smallest parts of our material World was restrained by cohesive structure, a place was provided in which life could grow and history develop, in which words could be heard and love be felt, and in which truth could be discovered and the Eternal adored. All this was possible because the fiery chaos of the beginning was transformed into the fertile soil of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

However, out of fertile soil of the Earth a being was generated and nourished, who was able to find the key to the foundation of all beings. That being was human. One has discovered the key which can unlock the forces of the ground, those forces which were bound when the foundations of the Earth were laid. One has begun to use this key. One has subjected the basis of life and thought and will to one’s will. And one’s willed destruction. For the sake of destruction one used the forces of the ground; by one’s thought and one’s work one unlocked and untied them. That is why the foundations of the Earth rock and shake in our time. Oh God of the Trinity, Whose Name is ineffable, Who purifies the cavern of human’s heart from vices, and makest it whiter than the snow; bestow on us Thy compassions; renew in our inward parts, we pray Thee, Thy Holy Spirit, by Whom we may be able to show forth Thy praise; that being strengthened by the righteous and princely Spirit, we may attain a place in the Heavenly Jerusalem; through Jesus Christ our Lord. An old man is not necessarily much wiser than a young one. Wisdom cannot be measured by the calendar. We should not respect the years, but their fruit. However, we are still supposed to respect our elders. If a being has found wisdom at the cost of one’s years, we should respect one. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

However, we should not fall into the concealed if persuasive fallacy of honoring advice when it comes from an elder and you know it is bad or unhealthy. When thinking of the self-actualized person, it also gives rise in many minds to the picture of a creature belonging to an extinct species, a boring creature with pompous speech and portentous manner. Yet the lack of the ability to laugh at oneself—and certainly the lack of any sense of humour at all—characterizes fools and not the self-actualized. “ And then shall my revelations which I have caused to be written by my servant john be unfolded in the eyes of all the people. Remember, when ye see these things, ye shall know that the time is at hand that they shall be made manifest in very deed. Therefore, when ye shall receive this record ye may know that the work of the Father has commenced upon all the face of the land. Therefore, repent all ye ends of the Earth, and come unto me, and believe in my gospel, and be baptized in my name; for one that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but one that believeth not shall be damned; and signs shall follow them that believe in my name. And blessed is one that is found faithful unto my name at the last day, for one shall be lifted up to dwell in the kingdom prepared for one from the foundation of the World. And behold it is I that hath spoken it. Amen,” reports Ether 4.16-19. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

O Supreme moving cause, may I always be subordinate to thee, be dependent upon thee, be found in the path where thou doest walk, and where thy Spirit moves, take heed of estrangement from thee, of becoming insensible to thy love. Thou dost not move beings like stones, but dost endue them with life, not to enable them to move without thee, but in submission to thee, the first mover. O Lord, I am astonished at the difference between my receivings and my deservings, between the state I am now in and my past gracelessness, between the Heaven I a bound for and the hell I merit. Who made me to differ, but thee? for I was no more ready to receive Christ than others; I could not have begun to love thee hadst thou not first loved me, or been willing unless thou hadst first made me so. O that such a crown should fit the head of such a sinner! such high advancement be for an unfruitful person! such high advancement be for an unfruitful person! such joys for so vile a rebel! Infinite wisdom cast the design of salvation into the mould of purchase and freedom; let wrath deserved be written on the door of hell, but the free gift of grace on the gate of Heaven. I know that my sufferings are the result of my sinner, but in Heaven both shall cease; grant me to attain this Heaven and be done with sailing, and may the gales of thy mercy blow me safely into harbour. Let thy love draw me nearer to thyself, wean me from sin, mortify me to this World, and make me ready for my departure hence. Secure me by thy grace as I sail across this stormy sea. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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There is Always a Moment in Life When the Doors Open and Lets the Future in!

December 21, 2019 3:05 am

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the Universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capitol of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the World there is no other being exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another being like you. Even your physical form is a wonder! You make become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven, a Reese Witherspoon, an Aaliyah, a Beyonce, an Oprah. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work; we al must work to make this World worthy of its population. The love of one’s country is a natural thing, but why should love stop at the border? We are all leaves of a tree and the tree is humanity. Our youth are the people who are going to carry on what we have started. They are going to move in and take over our church, schools, universities, and corporations. The fate of humanity is in their hands. There is always a moment in life when the doors open and lets the future in. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Humanity needs more models than critics. While generalizations can be misleading, it is safe to safe to say that from the arrival of the Pilgrims to the middle of the nineteenth century, American believers prized the intellectual life for its contributions to the Christian journey. The Puritans were highly educated people (the literacy rate for men in early Massachusetts and Connecticut was between 89 and 95 percent) who founded colleges, taught their children to read and write before the age of sic, and studied art, science, philosophy, and other fields as a way of loving God with the mind. Christians must rely on the Holy Spirit in their intellectual pursuits, but this does not mean they should expend no mental sweat of their own in defending faith. Faith is a power or skill to act in accordance with the nature of the kingdom of God, a trust in what we have reason to believe is true. Understood in this way, we see that faith is built on reason. Before we dedicate ourselves completely to it, we should have good reason for thinking that Christianity is true. We should have solid evidence that our understanding of a biblical passage is correct before we go on to apply it. And so on. For many, religion is identified with subjective feelings, sincere motives, personal piety, and blind faith. When you ask someone how they know God lives, they will tell you God lives in their heart. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Many people can give you concrete proof that God lives because of the things they have learned in the Bible about miracles and divine intervention, and people have set snares and placed traps in their path and even poisoned some, and by the grace of God, individuals can testify that they have overcome these hardship because of God. Therefore, our private experiences are proof that God exists. People might try to tell you that you are cursed because you are experiencing hardships, bullies want to make you hopeless, but you know for a fact that you are blessed and it is by the grace of God that you have been saved and have overcome many trials and tribulations and that is something you can testify to. In our hearts and intellectual life, the Lord must be glorified. In many cases where an individual’s stigmatization is associated with one’s admission to a custodial institution such as a correctional facility, sanatorium, below market rate housing, or an orphanage, much of what one learns about one’s stigma will be transmitted to one during prolonged intimate contact with those in the process of being transformed into one’s fellow-sufferers. As already suggested, when the individual first learns who it is that one must now accept as one’s own, one is likely, at the very least, to feel some ambivalence; for these others will not only be patently stigmatized, and thus not like the normal person one knows oneself to be, but may also have other attributes with which one finds it difficult to associate oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

A girl with a new visual impairment describes her experience in a facility for the blind. “My questions about a guide dog were politely turned aside. Another sighted worker took me in tow to show me around. We visited the Braille library; the classrooms; the clubrooms where the blind members of the music and dramatic groups meet; the recreation hall where on festive occasion the blind dance with the blind; the bowling alleys where the blind play together; the cafeteria, where all the blind gather to eat together; the huge workshops where the blind earn a subsistence income by making mops and brooms, weaving rugs, caning chairs. As we moved from room to room, I could hear the shuffling of feet, the muted voices, the tap-tap-tapping of canes. Here was the safe, segregated World of the sightless—a completely different World, I was assured by the social worker, from the one I had just left. I was expected to join this World. To give up my profession and to earn my living making mops. The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired would be happy to teach me how to make mops. I was to spend the rest of my life making mops with other blind people, eating with other blind people, dancing with other blind people. I became nauseated with fear, as the picture grew in my mind. Never had I come upon such destructive segregation.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Given the ambivalence built into the individual’s attachment to one’s stigmatized category, it is understandable that oscillations may occur in one’s support of, identification with, and participation among one’s own. There will be “affiliation cycles” through which one comes to accept the special opportunities for in-group participation or comes to reject them after having accepting them before. There will be corresponding oscillation in belief about the nature of own group and the nature of normal. For example, adolescence (and the high school peer group) can bring a marked decline in own-group identification and a marked increase in identification with normal. The later phases of the individual’s moral career are to be found in these shifts of participation and belief. The relationship of the stigmatized individual to the informal community and formal organizations of one’s own kind is, then, crucial. This relationship will, for example, mark a great difference between those whose differentness provides them very little of a new “we,” and those, such as marginalized group members as someone who should take pride in one’s infirmary and not seek to get well. In any case, whether the stigmatized group is an established one or not, it is largely in relation to this own-group that it is possible to discuss the natural history and the moral career of the stigmatized individual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Our youth need our presence more than they need our presents. With even the most reluctant individual there is a small part of them that desperately want to learn and be accepted. The strength of the desire is determined by our acceptance and belief in him or her. Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege than the raising of the next generation. Every one needs tenderness for what they are, and respect for what they may become for the greatest natural resource that any nation can have is its people. Therefore, we must learn to foster greater love for each other so that society may grow. The withdrawal of the corporate body of Christ from the public sphere of ideas is mirrored by our understanding of what is required to produce an individual disciple. However, spiritual life of faith, it is our heart, it is how we operate. What is more important for our youth is that they stay pure in college and, perhaps, witness, have a quiet time, and pray regularly. Obviously, these are important because the purpose of college is not just to get a job, but rather, it is to discover vocation, to identify a field of study in and through which one can serve Christ and Lord. And one way to serve God in this way is to learn to think in a Christian manner about our major. A person’s Christianity does not begin at a dorm Bible study, when class is over; it permeates all of one’s life, including how one thinks about the ideas in one’s college major. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Training the mind is an essential responsibility of the home, the church, and the school. Unless evangelicals prod young people to disciplined thinking, they waste—even undermine of Christianity’s most precious resources. However, if faith and reason are polar opposites, and if discipleship is private and sacred but college studies are public and secular, then training the intellect will not be valued as a part of the youth’s mentoring. That is why our discipleship materials often leave Christian young people vulnerable to atheistic college professors with an agenda to mislead the youth. I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. This withdrawal and marginalization of the church has had devastating consequences for our attempt to produce vibrant, confident disciples and to penetrate our culture with a Christian Worldview and the gospel of Christ. These consequences are very evident. We should train business people to develop a Christian understanding of economic theory, capitalism, business ethics, or moral issues in the employer/employee relationship. The mystery of the future and the mystery of the past are untied in the mystery of the present. Our time, the time we have, is the time in which we have “presence.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

However, how can we have “presence”? When we think of it, is not the present moment gone? Is not the present the ever-moving boundary line between past and future? However, a moving boundary is not a place to stand upon. If nothing were given to us expect the “no more” of the past and the “not yet” of the future, we would not have anything. We could not speak of the time that is our time; we would not have “presence.” The mystery is that we have a present; and even more, that we have our future also, because we remember it in the present. In the present our future and our past are ours. However, if we think of the never-ending flux of time, there is no “present.” The riddle of the present is the deepest of all the riddles of time. Again, there is no answer except from that which comprises all time and lies beyond it—the eternal. Whenever we say “now” or “today,” we stop the flux of times for us. We accept the present and do not care that it is gone in the moment we accept it. We live in it and it is renewed for us in every new “present.” This is possible because every moment of time reaches into the eternal. It is the eternal that stops the flux of time for us. It is the eternal “now” which provides for us a temporal “now.” We live so long a “it is still today”—in the words of the letter to the Hebrews. Not everybody, and nobody all the time, is aware of this “eternal now” in the temporal “now.” However, sometimes it breaks powerfully into our consciousness and gives us the certainty of the eternal, of a dimension of time which cuts into time and gives us our time. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

People who are never aware of this dimension lose the possibility of resting in the present. As the letter to the Hebrews describes it, they never enter into the divine rest. They are held by the past and cannot separate themselves from it, or they escape toward the future, unable to rest in the present. They have not entered the eternal rest which stops the flux of time and gives us the blessing of the present. Perhaps this is the most conspicuous characteristic of our period, especially in the New World and particularly in this country. It lacks the courage to accept “presence” because it has lost the dimensions of the eternal. “I am the beginning and the end.” This is said to us who live in the bondage of time, who need a present to stand upon. Each of the modes of time has its peculiar mystery, each of them carries its peculiar anxiety. Each of time drives us to an ultimate question. There is one answer to these questions –the eternal. There is one power that surpasses the all-consuming power of time—the eternal: He Who was and is and is to come, the beginning and the end. He gives us forgiveness for what has passed. He gives us courage for what is to come. He is God and God gives us rest in His eternal Presence. The activity of the senses discloses their chief function: they are reporters. As is true of all motion, sensory action is in response to the stimulus of surrounding things. The reports consist of information from sources external to the organ and they are made available to the mind of beings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Indeed, it is from the sense that all knowledge in nature must be sought, unless humans mean to go mad. Thus the sense, sound, sight, touch, taste, and smell provide for human’s guidance the materials of knowledge and counsel with which the understanding, reason, and imagination must work. Among the reporters, the sense of sight had the chief office in giving information. Volition, or choice, is the exercise of will, the capacity of the person to originate things and events that would not otherwise be or occur. By “originate” where we mean to include two of the things most prized in human life: freedom and creativity. When properly understood, these are really two aspects of the same thing, which is power to do what is good—or evil. The power in question belongs to individuals alone. Nothing makes them originate the good (or evil) they do. It is possible for them to not do it. Or to do it. Although a free action has many conditions, those conditions do not an action make. If it is our act, there must be added to those conditions the inner and always unforced “yes” or “no” by which the person responds to the situation. This response is our unique contribution to reality. It is ours, it is us, as nothing else is. Without the inner “yes” there is no sin, for only that “yes” (or “no”) is just us. The thought of sin is not sin and is not even temptation. Temptation is the thought plus the inclination to sin—possibly manifested by linger overt the thought or seeking it out. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

However, sin itself is when we inwardly say “yes” to the temptation, when we would do the deed, even though we do not actually do it. Similar distinction must be drawn with reference to doing what is good and right. These distinctions with reference to volition or choice will turn out to be very important later in our discussion. Now we need to be very clear on this point: the capacity for volition, and the acts of wiling in which it is exercised, from the spirit in beings. In this narrow and focused sense, the spiritual is not just the nonphysical, but it is the central core of the nonphysical part in beings. In us there is much that is not physical that also is not spirit—that is, not of the will. There is, then, a spirit in beings—a spirit that is one’s spirit. It is this that is the human spirit. And if we are to understand spiritual formation, we must understand what the spirit of the human being is. Spirit is, in general, that which is self-initiating and self-sustaining. Only God is purely spiritual, pure creative will and character. Only God can truly say, “I am that I am,” reports Exodus 3.14. God is, in his fundamental and overall nature, unbodily, personal power. Human beings have only some small element of spirit—unbodily, personal power—right at the center of who they are and who they become. It is, above all, this spirit (or will) that must be reached, cared for, and transformed in spiritual formation. The human will is primarily what must be given a Godly nature and must then proceed to expand its Godly governance over the entire personality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Thus will or spirit is also the heart in the human system: the core of its being. That is why we have the biblical teaching that human good and evil are matters of the heart. It is the heart and spirit that God looks at in relating to humankind, and in allowing us to relate to him. When we are able to free the individual from defensiveness, so that one is open to the wide range of one’s own needs, as well as the wide rage of environmental and social demands, one’s actions may be trusted to be beneficial, forward-moving, constructive. We do no need to ask who will socialize one, for one of one’s own deepest needs is for affiliation and communication with others. As one become more fully oneself, one will become more realistically socialized. We do not need to ask who will control one’s aggressive impulses; for as one becomes more open to all of one’s impulses, one’s need to be liked by others and one’s tendency to give affection will be as strong as one’s impulses to strike out or to seize for oneself. One will be aggressive in situations in which aggression is realistically appropriate, but there will be no runaway need for aggression. One’s total behavior, in these and other areas, as one moves toward being open to all one’s experience, will be more balanced and realistic, behavior which is appropriate to the survival and enhancement of highly social terrestrial beings. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

I have little sympathy with the rather prevalent concept that beings are basically irrational, and that one’s impulses, if not controlled, will lead to destruction of others and self. Human’s behavior is exquisitely rational, moving with subtle and ordered complexity toward the goals of one’s organism is endeavoring to achieve. The tragedy for most of us is that our defenses keep us from being aware of this rationality, so that consciously we are moving in one direction, while organismically we are moving in another. However, in our person who is living the process of the good like, there would be a decreasing number of such barriers, and one would be increasingly a participant in the rationality of one’s organism. The only control of impulses which would exist, or which would prove necessary, is the natural and internal balancing of one need against another, and the discovery of behaviors which follow the vector most closely approximating the satisfaction of all needs. The experience of extreme satisfaction of one need (for aggression, or pleasures of the flesh, and so forth) in such a way as to do violence to the satisfaction of other needs (for companionship, tender relationship, and so forth)—an experience very common in the defensively organized person—would be greatly decreased. One would participate in the vastly complex self-regulatory activities of one’s organism—the psychological as well as physiological thermostatic controls—in such a fashion as to live in increasing satisfaction and harmony in society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

In this process of living the good life, it also involves a wider range, a greater richness, than the constricted living in which most of us find ourselves. To be part of this process means that one is involved in the frequently and frightening satisfying experience of a more sensitive living, with greater range, greater variety, greater richness. It seems to me that clients who have moved significantly in therapy live more intimately with their feelings of pain, but also more vividly with their feelings of ecstasy; that anger is more clearly felt, but so also is love; that fear is an experience they know more deeply, but so is courage. And the reason they can thus live fully in a wider range is that they have this underlying confidence in themselves as trustworthy instruments for encountering life. I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even through the person in this process would experience each one of these feelings at appropriate times. However, the adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one’s potentialities. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Living the good life also involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, one chooses as the good life this process of becoming. Even when we were fill of transgression, because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. It is by grace we have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the Heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Jesus Christ has already paid for every blessing you and I will ever receive from God the Father. God’s salvation for Christ’s sake carries with it all the provisions we need, not only for eternity but for all this life as well. “Train yourself to be Godly. For physical training is of some value, but Godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come,” reports 1 Timothy 4.7-8. Whether or not we have disciplined ourselves will make a huge difference in this life. We are all members of one another, and we are each either elevated or depressed by the inner lives of one another. Some of us affect others like a joyous tide, lifting them upward, but some of us are like undertows to the Body of Christ. Spiritual discipline holds huge promise for this present life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

As for the life to come, spiritual discipline builds the enduring architecture of one’s soul on the foundation of Christ—gold, silver, and precious stones which will survive the fires of judgment and remain a monument to Christ for eternity. Some many minimize the importance of spiritual discipline now, but it is part of living the good life. Godliness has value for all things! The disciplined Christian gives and gets the best of both Worlds—the World now and the World to come. The word discipline may raise the feeling of stultifying constraint in some minds—suggesting a claustrophobic, restricted life. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The obsessive, almost manic discipline of Mike Singletary liberated him to play like a wild man on the football field. Hemingway’s angst over the right word freed him to leave a mark on the English language second only to Shakespeare. The billion sketched of the Renaissance great set Michelangelo free to create the skies of the Sistine Chapel. Churchill’s painstaking preparation freed him to give great impromptu speeches and brilliant ripostes. The disciplined drudgery of the musical greats like Armin van Burren and Ruben de Ronde released their genius. And, brothers and sisters in Christ, spiritual discipline frees us from the gravity of this present age and allows us to soar with the saints and Angels. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

This doctrine of faith is especially based upon statements from authority, inasmuch as its principles are obtained by revelation: thus we ought to believe on the authority of those whom the revelation has been made. Nor does this take away from the dignity of this doctrine, for although the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest, yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest. However, sacred doctrine makes use even of human reason, not, indeed, to prove faith (for thereby the merit of faith would come to an end), but to make clear other things that are put forward in this doctrine. Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity. Hence the Apostles says: “Bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 10.5. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Eternal King of all, that being purified by the sacred fast, we may come with sincere minds to partake of Thy holy things; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that renewing our sacred observations with annual devotion, we may please Thee both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, that our earnest devotion may become fruitful through Thy grace; for then shall our fast be profitable to us, if it is well-pleasing to Thy loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Lord, high and holy, meek and lovely, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine; let me find thy light in my darkness, thy life in my death, thy joy in my sorrow, thy grace in my sin, thy riches in my poverty, thy glory in my valley. “And when he had said these words, behold, the Lord showed himself unto him, and said: Because thou knowest these things ye are redeemed from the fall; therefore ye are brought back into my presence; therefore I show myself unto you. Behold I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the World to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the So. In me shall all humankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and daughters,” reports Ether 3.13-14. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

Character is ultimately who we are expressed in action, in how we live, in what we do, and so the children around us know: they absorb and take stock of what they observe, namely us—we adults living and doing things in a certain spirit, getting along with one another in various ways. Our children add up, imitate, file away what they have observed and so very often later fall in line with the particular moral counsel we wittingly or quite unself-consciously have offered them.

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The Illuminate Has a Cosmic Outlook—One thinks and Feel for All Creatures No Less than for Oneself!

December 20, 2019 3:01 am

If we are to keep our feet on the ground, we must put some responsibility on our shoulders. Cherishing humanity is the mark of a civilized society. The best security blanket the World can have is beings who respect each other. It is important that we unite in the mightiest, the biggest arms race in history, a race to put our arms around the ones we love, around all our family. Let us embrace humanity with the love, courage, hope, respect, education, opportunity, and let the imperatives of our arms race fix our global priorities so that no being in the World shall in effect be denied the right to dream. For the lesson we teach today is not confined to the walls of our homes, once it is implanted in the hearts and the minds of the community, it can change the World. Yesterday you may have been discouraged, but today you see something you did not see before. Maybe this is what yesterdays are for. In the business World, financially troubled companies forced into bankruptcy have two options, popularly knows as Chapter 7 and Chapter 11, after the respective chapters in the federal bankruptcy code. Chapter 11 deals with what we could call a temporary bankruptcy. This option is chosen by a basically healthy company that, given time, can work through its financial problems. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Chapter 7 is for a company that has reached the end of its financial rope. It is not only deeply in debt, it has no future as a viable business. It is forced to liquidate its assets and pay off its creditors, often by as little as ten cents on the dollar. The company is finished. It is all over. The owners or investors lose everything they have put into the business. No one like Chapter 7 bankruptcy. How many of us declare spiritual bankruptcy and what kind? I suspect many of us declare temporary bankruptcy. Having trusted in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, sometimes we lose faith because life seems hard and unfair, and we take sometime to sulk. However, then we are reminded that humans have free will and that Jesus Christ paid our debt of sins and secured for us the gift of eternal life. And that God has been working overtime to protect of from snares in life. There is nothing more we can do to earn our salvation, but behave righteously and follow the golden rule, which is to treat others like we want to be treated. Therefore, we subtly and maybe even unconsciously revert back to a working relationship with God in our Christian lives. We recognize that our best efforts can get us into Heaven, and they earn God’s blessings in our daily lives. After becoming more spirituality enlightened, we do away with obvious sins, and we see some beneficial changes in our lives. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

As a result of our increased faith and righteous behavior, we emerge from bankruptcy and pay our own way in the Christian life. It seems this sacred doctrine of faith is not a science. For every science proceeds from self-evident principles. However, sacred doctrines proceeds from articles of faith which are not self-evident, since their truth is not admitted by all: “For all beings not have faith,” reports 2 Thessalonians 3.2. Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science. And because we have faith, if we lost our faith for good, that would be Chapter 7 bankruptcy, something that it permanent. However, it is not our place to judge others who do not believe in God, we must never force our belief system on to others. Saving faith is begotten, nourished, protected, and strengthened because it is a sacred doctrine. Even when we backslide in our spiritual faith, or we fail to do what we should have done, we have not forfeited all blessings from God for some undetermined period of time. We are legalistic by nature, and we know that if we ask for forgiveness and repent, God will forgive us and add to our faith more virtues such as goodness, knowledge, self-control, and love. And we find the Bible is filled with exhortations to do good works and pursue the disciplines of spiritual growth. There is a time in our lives when we are saved. “For it is by grace you have been saved,” reports Ephesians 2.8. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Sanctification is our growth in Christlikeness. It is a progressive experience covering our entire Christian lives from salvation to glorification. Glorification occurs at the time we depart from this life to be with Christ. (Glorification actually achieves its complete fulfillment at the resurrection, of course, but even now those who are with Christ are described as “the spirits of righteous beings made perfect,” reports Hebrews 12.23.”) That is why sacred doctrine is nobler than a science for it deal with eternal bliss, to which is an ultimate end. All true Christians readily agree that justification is by grace through faith in Christ. And if we stop to think about it, we agree that glorification is also solely by God’s grace. Jesus purchased for us not only forgiveness of sins (justification) but also eternal life (glorification). Our concept of the Christian life is a justification based on grace, Christian life based on grace, and glorification based on grace. That is, the entire Christian life from start to completion is lived on the basis of God’s grace to us through Christ. The Christian’s total debt has been paid by Christ. The law of God and the justice of God have been fully satisfied. The debt of our sins has been marked “Paid in Full!” God is satisfied and so are we. We have peace with God, and we are delivered from a guilt conscience. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

We are brought into God’s Kingdom by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we are motivated to obedience by grace; we are called to serve and enabled to serve by grace; we receive strength to endure trials by grace; and finally, we are glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace. Grace is God’s free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment. It is the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him. Grace stands in direct opposition to any supposed worthiness on our part. To say it another way: Grace and works are mutually exclusive. “And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace,” reports Paul in Romans 11.6. Our relationship with God is based on either works or grace. There is never a works-plus grace relationship with God. Furthermore, grace does not first rescue us from the penalty of our sins, furnish us with some new spiritual abilities, and then leave us on our own to grow in spiritual maturity. “Rather, one who began a good work in you [by His grace] will [also by His grace] carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus,” reports Philippians 1.6. Therefore, after beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to obtain your goal by human effort? #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

A characteristic of the person who is living the process of the good life appears to be an increasing trust in one’s organism as a means of arriving at the most satisfying behavior in each existential situation. Again, let me explain what I mean. In choosing what course of action to take in any situation, many people rely upon guiding principles, upon a code of action laid down by some group or institution, upon the judgment of others (from wide and friends to Emily Post), or upon the way they have behaved in some similar past situation. Yet, as I observe the clients whose experiences in living have taught me so much, I find that increasingly such individuals are able to trust their total organismic reaction to a new situation because they discover to an ever-increasing degree that if they are open to their experience, doing what “feel right” proves to be a competent and trustworthy guide to behavior which is truly satisfying. The person who is fully open to one’s experience would have access to all of the available data in the situation, on which to base one’s behavior; the social demands, one’s own complex and possibly conflicting needs, one’s memories of similar situations, one’s perception of the uniqueness of this situation, and so on. The data would be very complex indeed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

However, one could permit one’s total organism, one’s consciousness participating, to consider each stimulus need, and demand, its relative intensity and importance, and out of this complex weighing and balancing, discover that course of action which would come closest to satisfying all one’s needs in the situation. An analogy which might come close to a description would be to compare this person to a giant electronic computing machine. Since one is open to one’s experience, all of the data from one’s sense impression from one’s memory, from previous learning, from one’s visceral and internal states, is fed into the machine. The machine takes all of these multitudinous pulls and forces which are fed in as data, and quickly computes the course of action which would be the most economical vector of need satisfaction in this existential situation. This is the behavior of our hypothetical person. The defects which in most of us make this process untrustworthy are the inclusion of information which does not belong to this present situation, or the exclusion of information which does. It is as when memories and pervious learnings are fed into the computations as if they were this reality, and not memories and learnings, that erroneous behavioral answers arise. Or when certain threatening experiences are inhibited from awareness, and hence are withheld from the computation or fed into it in distorted form, this too produces error. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

However, our hypothetical person would find one’s organism thoroughly trustworthy, because all of the available data would be used, and it would be present in accurate rather than distorted from. Hence one’s behavior would come as close as possible to satisfying all one’s needs—for enhancement, for affiliation with others, and the like. In this weighing, balancing, and computation, one’s organism would not by any means be infallible. It would always give the best possible answer for the available data, but sometimes data would be missing. Because of the elements of openness to experience, however, any errors, any following of behavior which was not satisfying, would be quickly corrected. The computations, as it were, would always be in process of being corrected, because they would be continually checked in behavior. Perhaps you will not like my analogy of an electronic computing machine. Let me return to the clients I know. As they become more open to all of their experiences, they find it increasingly possible to trust their reactions. If they feel like expressing anger they do so in a safe and constructive manner and find that this comes out satisfactorily, because they are equally alive to all of their other desires for affection, affiliation, and relationship. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

My clients are surprised at their own intuitive skill in finding behavioral solutions to complex and troubling human relationships. It is only afterward that they realize how surprisingly trustworthy their inner reactions have been in bring about satisfactory behavior. It appears that the person who is psychologically free moves in the direction of becoming a more fully functioning person. One is more able to live fully in and with each and all of one’s feelings and reactions. One makes increasing use of all one’s organic equipment to sense, as accurately as possible, the existential situation within and without. One makes use of all of the information one’s nervous system can thus supply, using it in awareness, but recognizing that one’s total organism may be, and often is, wiser than one’s awareness. One is more able to permit one’s total organism to function freely in all its complexity in selecting, from the multitude of possibilities, that behavior which in this moment of time will be most generally and genuinely satisfying. One is able to put more trust in one’s organism in this functioning, not because it is infallible, but because one can be fully open to the consequences of each of his or her actions and correct them if they prove to be less than satisfying. It is human’s own fault, however, if through failure to seek spiritual guidance or understanding, none is vouchsafed to one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Jesus told of, “As, and it shall be given unto you.” When the pupil is ready, the Master appears. This means that such is the wonderful sensitivity of the mind, such is the reality of telepathic power, that when a being’s search for truth has reached a crisis, one will meet the being who or the source which can best resolve that crisis. However, the crisis itself must be filled with uncertainty and doubt, with helplessness and despair before the mysterious forces of God will begin to move toward one’s relief. It should seem to one them most momentous consequence that is shall be brought to a satisfactory end, if life in the future is to have any meaning for one at all. There must be a sense of inner loneliness so acute that the outer loneliness compares as nothing with it. There must be no voice within one’s World which can speak to one’s condition. This critical period must fill one’s mind with exaggeration of its own self-importance to such an extent as to blot out every other value from life. It will be at such an opportune moment, when one’s search for truth will be most intense and the required preparation for meeting its bearer most complete, that the bearer oneself will arise and bring into one’s night the joyful tidings of dawn. The influence of such a being or source at such a period is incalculable. If we recall the rare hours when we encountered the best persons, we there found ourselves. God’s greatest gift is a Teacher. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

The seeker knows at last that even if one has not found the truth, one is at least on the way to finding it. One has begun to find harmony with oneself. If the strong yearning for truth be absent, a being may meet a thousand masters of the quest but one will neither recognize them for what they are nor experience any exaltation in their presence. This yearning must indeed be as strong as the hunger of a starving being or the desperation of a traveler lost in the desert. One’s desperate need drives one to go in search of help wherever one can find it. In obedience to this inner urge one should take a path which will lead one to the friendship of the few enlightened beings living in one’s time and bring one to their presence. As a result one is more able to experience all of one’s feelings, and is less afraid of any of one’s feelings; one is one’s own sifter of evidence, and is more open to evidence from all sources; one is completely engaged in the process of being and becoming oneself, and thus discovers that one is soundly and realistically social; one lives more completely in this moment, but learns that this is the soundest living for all time. One is becoming a more fully functioning organism, and because of the awareness of oneself which flows freely in and through one’s experience, one is becoming a more fully functioning person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Any view of what constitutes the good life carries with it many implications, and the view I have presented is no exception. I hope that these implications may be food for thought. One is free—to become oneself or to hide behind a façade; to move forward or to retrogress; to behave in ways which are destructive of self an others, or in ways which are enhancing; quite literally free to live or die, in both the physiological and psychological meaning of those terms. Yet as we enter this field of psychotherapy with objective research methods, we are, like any other scientist, committed to a complete determinism. From this point of view every thought, feeling, and action of the client is determined by what preceded it. There can be no such thing as freedom. The dilemma I am trying to describe is no different than that found in other fields—it is simply brought to sharper focus, and appears more insoluble. This dilemma can be seen in a fresh perspective, however, when we consider it in terms of the definition I have given of the fully functioning person. We could say that in the optimum of therapy the person rightfully experiences the most complete and absolute freedom. One wills or choose to follow the course of action which is the most economical vector in relationship to all the internal and external stimuli, because it is that behavior which will be most deeply satisfying. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

However, this is the same course of action which from another vantage point may be said to be determined by all the factors in the existential situation. Let us contrast this with the picture of the person who is defensively organized. One wills or chooses to follow a given course of action, but finds that one cannot behave in the fashion that one chooses. One is determined by the factors in the existential situation, but these factors include one’s defensiveness, one’s denial or distortion of some of the relevant data. Hence it is certain that one’s behavior will be less than fully satisfying. One’s behavior is determine, but one is not free to make an effective choice. The fully functioning person, on the other hand, not only experiences, but utilizes, the most absolute freedom when one spontaneously, freely, and voluntarily chooses and wills that which is also absolutely determined. I am not so naïve as to suppose that this fully resolves the issue between subjective and objective, between freedom and necessity. Nevertheless it has meaning for me that the more the person is living the good life, the more one will experience a freedom of choice, and the more one’s choices will be effectively implemented in one’s behavior. I believe it will be clear that a person who is involved in the directional process which I have termed “the good life” is a creative person. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Because one who is living the good life is a creative being, with one’s sensitive openness to one’s World, one’s trust of one’s own ability to form new relationships with one’s environment, one will be the type of person from whom creative products and creative living emerge. One would not necessarily be “adjusted” to one’s culture, and one would almost certainly not be a conformist. However, at any time an in any culture one would live constructively, in as much harmony with one’s culture as a balanced satisfaction of needs demanded. In some cultural situations one might in some ways be very unhappy, but one would continue to move toward becoming oneself, and to behave in such a way as to provide the maximum satisfaction of one’s deepest needs. Such a person would, I believe, be recognized by the student of evolution as the type most likely to adapt and survive under changing environmental conditions. One will be able to creatively make sound adjustments to new as well as old conditions. One will be a vanguard of human evolution. When dealing with the World, one holds no self-image of a flattering kind to buttress one’s ego, in which one prefers to remain inconspicuously—unless a particular work of service withdraws one outwardly from this humility. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Those who are deceived too quickly by appearances to take the trouble to try and penetrate them may find one a cold being. However, the truth is that one has feeling, not passion. There is dynamic power within one, but it is always impersonal and always calm. It is never used to gratify personal vanity or egoistic aggression. The self-actualized being knows more secrets than one ever tells, and knows, too, how to keep them well. The self-actualized being hears the answers of Life to the questions of humans where the latter hears nothing. It is impossible to forget the unflattering dignity of such a being, in whom all those littleness which betray mediocrity have been submerged and dissolved forever. Here at last is a being who stand out from the herd become of one’s essential goodness and complete integrity, one’s fine insight and lonely dignity. Faith and a disciplined mental life are not natural enemies. A well-formed mind held a place of honor. And it is believed that the Christian mind could be the best mind. Because the World we live in is full of influences that would shape the way we think—and consequently how we act and live—we need more rigorous discipline to be Christians and thinking people, not less. Love your God with all your mind in its spiritual formation line. Thought brings things before our minds in various ways (including perception and imagination) and enables us to consider them in various respects and trace out their interrelationships with one another. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Thought is that which enables our will (or spirit) to range far beyond the immediate boundaries of our environment and the perceptions of our sense. Though it one consciousness reaches into the depths of the Universe, past, present, and future, by reasoning and scientific thinking, by imagination and art—and also be divine revelation, which comes to us mainly in the form of thought. Feeling inclines us toward or away from things that come before our minds in thought. It involves a tone that is pleasant or painful, along with an attraction or repulsion with respect to existence or possession of what is thought of. How we feel about food, automobiles, relationships, positions, and hundred of other things illustrates this point. Notice that feeling and thought always go together. They are interdependent and are never found apart. There is no feeling without something being before the mind in thought and no thought without some optimistic or pessimistic feeling toward what is contemplated. What we call indifference is never a total absence of feelings, good or bad, but simply an unusually low degree of feeling, usually negative. The connection between thought and feeling is so intimate that the mind is usually treated as consisting of thought and feeling together. I shall do so here. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Of course the mind thus understood—or understood in any way you like—is a quite complicated aspect of the person, with numerous subdivisions built into both thought and feeling. In the ruined soul, the mind becomes a fearful wilderness and a wild intermixture of thought and feeling, manifested in willful stupidities, blatant inconsistencies, and confusions, often to the point of obsession, madness, or possession. This condition of mind is what characterizes our World apart from God. Satan, the prince of this World, hold sway over it. O Glorious, holy, Almighty God, Who being ever pitiful to the manifold wanderings of humankind, didst doubtless for this end guide the Magi, who dwelt in dark superstition, by the light of a star to Thy sacred cradle, that Thou mightiest kindle al beings who were walking in their own errors with the desires of knowing Thee; kindle us also, we pray Thee, with the saving ardour of love for Thee, that we who have already known Thee by The gracious illumination, may be enabled to cleave to Thee forever. Grant, O Almighty God, that we may be able continually to shake off the yoke of Egyptian servitude and sin, and to appear before Thy Majesty in our Heavenly country; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Lord, to Thy faithful people that they may enter on the venerable solemnity of this fast with fitting piety, and go through it with undisturbed devotion; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolpHarris 17 of 18

Grant us, O Lord, to enter on the service of our Christian warfare with holy fasting; that as we are to fight against spiritual powers of wickedness, we may be fortified by the assistance of self-denial; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who by The Word dost marvelously work out the reconciliation of humankind; grant, both be subjected to Thee with all our hearts, and be united to each other in prayer to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who in Thy deep counsel and foresight for humankind, hast appointed holy fasts, where by the hearts of the weak might receive salutary healing; do Thou purify our souls and bodies, O Saviour of body and soul, O loving Bestower of eternal happiness! through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let Thy gracious favour carry us through the fast which we have begun; that as we observe it by bodily discipline, so we may be able to fulfill it with sincerity of mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant to us, O Almighty God, that by the annual exercise of Lenten observances we may advance in knowledge of the mystery of Christ, and follow His mind by conduct worthy of our calling, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the assistance of Thy grace; that being intent, as becomes us, on fasting and prayer, we may be delivered from bodily and spiritual enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Yea, Lord, I know that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not lie,” reports Ether 3.12. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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

December 18, 2019 2:11 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It is a Lifting-Up into One’s Mind When You Have Reached the Very Edge of Your Own Mind!

December 10, 2019 2:59 am

It is not the human thoughts which the teacher sends out, so much as the spiritual power within the disciple which is aroused by those thoughts, that matters. Our ideals are important to us as is the love of books and the love of knowledge and the love of truth and free information and letting people discover things for themselves. We can say in a preliminary manner, that spiritual formation for the Christian basically refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner World of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself. In the degree to which spiritual formation in Christ is successful, the outer life of the individual becomes a natural expression or outflow of the character and teachings of Jesus. Christian spiritual formation is focuses entirely on Jesus. Its goal is an obedience or conformity to Christ that arises out of an inner transformation accomplished through purposive interaction with the grace of God in Christ. Obedience is an essential outcome of Christian spiritual formation. When humans forget it, they are reminded of their divine linkage by prophets, teachers, and enlightened individuals. One of the advantages of having a personal teacher is that, to some extent, you can watch his or her mind work. The master can see the disciple’s character and motives, hidden complexes and unrevealed weaknesses better than one can oneself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Teachers affect eternity; they can never tell where their influence stops. So long as one’s experience and results have not established sufficient confidence in one’s intuitive guidance and sufficient trust in one’s philosophic knowledge, one needs to continue travelling with a teacher. What the earnest mind is struggling to formulate to itself vaguely and uncertainly and unclearly, the teacher states decisively, assuredly, and definitely. That Christ be formed within you is the eternal watchword of Christian spiritual formation. This ideal is fortified by the deep moral and spiritual insight and in part of the process of proving that the spirit gives life. There are various wrong behaviors: acting out of anger, looking to lust, heartless divorce, verbal manipulation, returning evil for evil, and so forth. However, as abundant experience teaches, to strive merely to act in conformity with his expressions of what living in the kingdom of God from the heart is like is to attempt the impossible. And it will also lead to doing things that are obviously wrong and even ridiculous—such as self-castration as presumed act of devotion to Christ, which unfortunately has repeatedly occurred in Christian history. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

The outward interpretation of spiritual formation, emphasizing specific acts as it does, will merely increase the righteousness of beings. However, we must go beyond it to achieve genuine transformation of who we are through Christ, so we can live richly in his kingdom. If we were studying the process of growth in plants, we would assume certain constant conditions of temperature, moisture and Sunlight, in forming our conceptualization of the process. Likewise in conceptualizing the process of personality change in psychotherapy, there are elements which will denote or characterize the change itself. When beings in the past have asked themselves the purpose o life, some have answered, in the words of the catechism, that the chief end of beings is to glorify God. Others have thought of life’s purpose as being the preparation of oneself for immortality. Some has settled on a much more Earthy goal—to enjoy and release and satisfy every sensual desire. Still many—and this applies to much of humanity—regard the purpose of life as being to achieve—to gain material possessions, status, knowledge and power. Some have made it their goal to give themselves completely and devotedly to a cause outside of themselves such as Christianity, or capitalism. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Adolph Hitler has seen his goal as that of becoming the leader of a master race which would exercise power over all. In sharp contact, many in the East have striven to eliminate personal desires, to exercise the utmost of control over themselves. I mention these widely ranging choices to indicate some of the very different aims beings have lived for, to suggest that there are indeed many goals possible. Nonetheless, our first value dimension involves a preference for a responsible, moral, self-restrained participation in life, appreciating and conserving what beings have attained. The second-place stress upon delight in vigorous action for overcoming of obstacles. In involves a confident initiation of change, either in resolving personal and social problems, or in overcoming obstacles in the natural World. The third dimension stresses the value of a self-sufficient inner life with a rich and heightened self-awareness. Control over persons and things is rejected in favor of a deep and sympathetic insight into self and others. The fourth underlying dimension values a receptivity to persons and to nature. Inspiration is seen as coming from a source outside the self, and the person lives and develops in devoted responsiveness to this source. The fifth and final dimension stresses sensuous enjoyment, self-enjoyment. The simple pleasures of life, an abandonment to the moment, a relaxed openness to life, are values. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

This is a significant study, one of the first to measure objectively the answers given in different cultures to the question, what is the purpose of my life? It has added to our knowledge of the answers given. It has also helped to define some of the basic dimension in terms of which the choice is made. When we look at these dimensions, it is as if persons in various cultures have in common five major tones in the musical scales on which they compose different melodies. It is clear that the very expression of the fear is part of what we are becoming. Instead of simply being a façade, as if it were one is coming closer to being oneself, namely a frightened person hiding behind a façade because one regards oneself as too awful to be seen. However, the main overall effect of higher education upon student values is to bring about general acceptance of a body of standards and attitudes characteristic of collegebred men and women in the World community. The impact of the college experience is to socialize the individual, to refine, polish, or shape up one’s values so that one can fit comfortably into the rank of global college alumni. Nonetheless, I find that many individuals have formed themselves by trying to please others, but again, when they are free, they move away from being this person. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

One professional man, looking back at some of the process he has been through, writes, toward the end of therapy: “I finally felt that I simply had to begin doing what I wanted to do, not what I thought I should do, and regardless of what other people feel I should do. This is a complete reversal of my whole life. I have always felt I had to do things because they were expected of me, or more important, to make people like me. The hell with it! I think from now on I am going to just be me—rich or poor, good or bad, rational or irrational, logical or illogical, famous or infamous. So thanks for your part in helping me to rediscover Shakespeare’s—‘To thine own self be true.’” People seem to move toward more openly being a process, a fluidity, a changing. They are not disturbed to find that they are not the same day to day, that they do not always hold the same feelings toward s given experience or person, that they are not always consistent. They are in flux, and seem more content to continue in this flowing current. The striving for conclusions and ends states seems to diminish. An existing individual is constantly in process of becoming, and translates all one’s thinking into terms of process. It is with one as it is with a writer and one’s style; for one only has a style who never has anything finished, but moves waters of the language every time one begins, so that the most common expression comes into being for one with the freshness of a new birth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

I find that people move toward being a process of potentialities, being born, rather than being or becoming some fixed goal. It also involves being a complexity of process. I find that this desires to be all of oneself in each moment—all the richness and complexity, with noting hidden from oneself, and nothing feared in oneself—this is a common desire in those who have seemed to show much movement in therapy. To be that self which one truly is involves still other components. One which ha perhaps been implied already is that the individual moves toward living in an open, friendly, close relationship to one’s own experience. This does not occur easily. Often as a person sense some new facet of oneself, one initially rejects it. Only as one experiences such a hitherto denied aspect of oneself in acceptant climate can one tentatively accept it as a part of oneself. Many cannot tolerate the experience of one’s childish feelings, but gradually as one comes to accept and embrace them as a part of oneself, to live close to them and in them when they occur. One type of wise person is one whose wiseness comes from working in an establishment which caters either to the wants of those with a particular stigma or to actions that society takes in regard to these persons. For example, nurse and physical therapist can be wise; they can come to know more about a given type of prosthetic equipment than the patient who must learn to use it so as to minimize one’s mobility impairment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Other types of wise persons are the individuals who are related through the social structure to a stigmatized individual—a relationship that leads the wider society to treat both individuals in some respects as one. Thus the loyal spouse of the mental patient, the daughter of a wealthy CEO, the parent of a physically disabled child, the friend of someone visually impaired, the family of the hangman, are all obliged to share some of the discredit of the stigmatized person to whom they are related. One response to this fate is to embrace it, and to live within the World of one’s stigmatized connection. It should be added that persons who acquire a degree of stigma in this way can themselves have connections who acquire a degree of stigma in this infirmary twice-removed. The problems faced by stigmatized persons spread out in waves, but of diminishing intensity. For instance, there was a 12-year-old girl who was left out of all social activities because her father was a successful CEO. She tired to be nice and friendly to everyone but it was no use. The girls at school told her that their mother’s did not want them to associate with her because it will be bad for their reputations. Her father had some bad publicity in the papers and even through he is running a successful business people are envious of him. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

The girl wanted to know if there was anything someone could do because she was very lonesome; it was no fun being alone all the time. Her mother tried to take her places, but the girl wanted to be with people her own age. In general, the tendency for a stigma to spread from the stigmatized individual to one’s close connections provides a reason why such relations tend either to be avoided or to be terminated, where existing. Persons with a courtesy stigma provide a model of “normalization,” showing how far normal could go in treating the stigmatized person as if one did not have a stigma. (Normalization is to be distinguished from “normification,” namely, the effort on the part of a stigmatized individual to present oneself as an ordinary person, although not necessarily making a secret of one’s failing.) Further, a cult of the stigmatized can occur, the stigmaphobic response of the normal being countered by the stigmatized response to the wide. The person with a courtesy stigma can in fact make both the stigmatized and the normal uncomfortable: by always being ready to carry a burden that is not really theirs, they can confront everyone else with too much morality; by treating the stigma as a neutral matter to be looked at in a direct, off-hand way, they open themselves and the stigmatized to misunderstanding by normal who may read offensiveness into this behavior. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

The relation between the stigmatized and one’s stand-in can be an uneasy one. The person with a failing may feel that reversion to type may occur at any moment, and at a time when defenses are down and dependency is up. One person showed a tendency to move away, hesitantly and fearfully, from a self that he is not. In other words even though there may be no recognition of what one might be moving toward, he is moving away from something. And of course, in doing so one is beginning to define, however negatively, what he is. At first this may be expressed simply as a fear of exposing what he is. Thus one eighteen-year-old boy says, in an early interview: “I know I am not so hot, and I am afraid they will find it out. That is why I do these things…They are going to find out some day that I am not so hot. I am just trying to put that day off as long as possible. If you know me as I know myself—I am not going to tell you the person I really think I am. There is only one place I will not cooperate and that is it. It would not help your opinion of me to know what I think of myself.” A phrase or two, coming from an inspired being, may set a subconscious process working in the mind of another and lead oneself in the end to acquire a new truth. Those who come forward as gurus driven by the ego, the ambitions, and ulterior motives are not gurus at all. They are trespassers on a fine vocation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

We must remember that those who work to earn a livelihood and come home tired have not the time or strength to think for themselves. For them the ready-made support of established religion is indeed helpful, while the guidance of sincere, competent, and available teachers is even more sought. Modern cynics and skeptics see no harm in paying those to whom we entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing. Teachers are the important link to the future and the World of knowledge and self-esteem for children. We need to strengthen the chain that brings us together in a worthwhile and noble cause—teaching! Let us continue to strengthen the chain that brings us together. We are a team but we are only as strong as our weakest link. To follow one’s path, rejecting the idea of seeking the expert help, tested knowledge, and accumulated experience of a Master is to follow a haphazard course of trial and error. The determination to maintain such independence and to make one’s own way by one’s own effort is not of much use. One will be far better off working under guidance than without it. If one as an aspirant has been led safely upwards past the delusory sidetrack and bypaths which detain so many other seekers, one is most fortunate. Only in this way can one’s consciousness arrive at what really constitutes the Highest Truth. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

As the strata of the Earth preserves in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expectations, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in place where only the literary paleontologist regards them. One is wise who knows the sources of knowledge—where it is written and where it is to be found. The library is not only there as a socially owned and governed institution, a true people’s information service; it is staffed by men and women who maintain high respect for intellectual values. Because they are also the traditional keepers of the books, the libraries have a healthy sense of the hierarchical relationship between data and ideas, facts and knowledge. Teaching is necessary. How can those who do not know the true cause of their afflictions know the way out of them? Someone must warn them, someone must awaken them. In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

A being who approached God with deep longing for Him, and earnest prayer, will find god if one has no guru. However, a teacher is necessary because very few people have his deep yearning and therefore the guru is necessary for them. When the going gets tough, the teacher inspires and encourages seekers of God not to give up, but to stick to the Quest, regardless of the many long years it takes. It is always pleasant to learn that a seeker has found a good teacher. It may be puzzling then to hear that the teacher can no longer continue with one’s pupil. However, in such a case, the individual should not be unnecessarily distressed, because one can most certainly continue to make progress on the Quest irrespective of whether or not one has an outward teacher. All one needs to do is to pray humbly to God, whose love and forgiveness will accompany one always where a human teacher cannot. The instruments of Christian spiritual formation therefore involve much more than human effort and actions under our control. Well-informed human effort certainly is indispensable, for spiritual formation is no passive process. However, Christlikeness of the inner being is not a human attainment. It is, finally, a gift of grace. Though we must act, the resources for spiritual formation extend far beyond the human. They come from the interactive presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who place their confidence in Christ. They also come from the spiritual treasures—people, events, traditions, teachings—stored in the body of Christ’s people on Earth, past and present. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

Therefore we must understand that spiritual formation is not only formation of the spirit or inner being of the individual, though that is both the process and the outcome. It is also formation by the Spirit of god and by the spiritual riches of Christ’s continuing incarnation in his people—including, most prominently, the treasures of his written and spoken word and the amazing personalities of those in whom one has most fully lived. Grant unto us, we pray Thee, O Lord our God, that we who rejoice to keep the feast of the Nativity of Jesus Christ our Lord, may by walking worthily of Him attain to fellowship with Him, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to Thy people an inviolable firmness of faith; that as they confess Thine Only-begotten Son, the everlasting partaker of Thy glory, to have been born in our very flesh, of the Virgin Mother, they may be delivered from present adversities, and admitted into joys that shall abide; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that Thy Church may alike apprehend both parts of the one Mastery, and adore One Christ, very God and very Man, neither divided from our nature nor separate from Thine essence; though the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “And it came to pass that Alma ate bread and was filed; and he blessed Amulek and his house, and he gave thanks unto God,” reports Alma 8.22. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

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There is One Place Where I Can Find Out Who I am and What I am Going to Become—And that is the Soul!

December 8, 2019 5:09 am

The cockatiels were singing a celestial melody in the early afternoon. Their rhythmic ditty mingled with the soft sweetness of the just-blooming Winter Jasmine, Snowdrops, and the air so crisp and cool you could snap it with your fingers. The lush shade of the evergreen trees was offset by the autumnal flashed of red, orange and yellow. Meghan breathed in the air that was full of the promise of the coming Winter. In the single matter of learning prayer alone one will encounter all sorts of obstacles within oneself and difficulties without. If one places oneself under the training of an expert preceptor, whose long experience in this matter and natural gift for guiding others makes one’s advice mentally enlightening and practically useful, the hardships will be much more easily and quickly overcome. The beginner cannot take one’s lessons from the skies. Even if only to impart the right atmosphere and inculcate the right ideas, one has to find a teacher. When they need to speak, you listen; when they need to listen, you speak; when they need to question, you answer; and when they need to answer, you question. Knowing when is just a part of what makes one a great teacher. Teachers inspire dreams, shape lives, and give us hope for the future. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

The use of a teacher is, firstly, suggestive. One’s influence is a definite assistance to incline us to travel along the proper path. It is, secondly, protective, for under one’s constant guidance we learn to be weary of pitfalls. More people need to spend as much time looking into their soul, as they spend on social media. When the lights go out in our brains, the Dark Ages are coming again! The illuminate stands on the very apex of the pyramid of knowledge. That is why one can understand the position of all others and sympathize with them, too. The being of the instinctivists lives the past of the species, as the being of the behaviorists lives the present of one’s social system. The former is a machine that can only produce social patterns of the present. Instinctivism and behaviorism have one basic premise in common: that beings have no psyche with its own structure and its own laws. For instinctivism, the same sense holds true. Some psychologist may criticize others dealing with humans (Humanpsychologen) who claim that anything psychic can only be explained psychologically, for instance, on the basis of psychological premises. (The “only” is a slight distortion of their position of the sake of a better argument). #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

On the contrary, if there is an area where we certainly cannot find the explanation for psychic events and experiences, it is the area of the psyche itself; this is so for the same reason that we cannot find an explanation for digestion in the digestive processes, but in those special ecological exposed a number of organisms to selective pressures which made them assimilate not only inorganic foodstuffs, but also those of an organic nature. In the same way psychical processes are also achievements which have come about as a result of selective pressures of life—and species—preserving value. Their explanation is in every sense pre-psychological. Put in simpler language, it is maintained that one can explain psychological data by the evolutionary process alone. The crucial point here is what is meant by “explain.” If, for instance, one wants to know how the effect of fear is possible as the result of the evolution of the brain from the lowest to the highest animals, then this is a task for those scientists who investigate the evolution of the brain. However, if one wants to explain why a person is frightened, the data on evolution will not contribute much to the answer: the explanation must be essentially a psychological one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Perhaps the person is threatened by a stronger enemy, or is coping with one’s own repressed aggression, or suffers from a sense of powerlessness, or a paranoid element in one makes one feel persecuted, or—many other factors that alone or in combination may explain one’s fright. To want to explain the fright of a particular person by evolutionary process is plainly futile. There is a premise that the only approach to the study of human phenomena is the evolutionary one, means that we understand the psychical process in a being exclusively by knowing how, in the process of evolution, one became what one is. Similarly, it is suggested that digestive processes are to be explained in terms of conditions as they existed hundreds of millions of years ago. If the physician was concerned with the evolution of digestion, rather than with the causes of the particular symptom in this particular patient, could a physician dealing with disturbances of the digestive tract help one’s patient? For some, evolution becomes the only science, and absorbs all other sciences dealing with humans. It seems that if humans understand the evolutionary process which made them become what they are now, humans understand themselves only and sufficiently. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

In spite of the great differences between instinctivistic and behavioristic theory, they have a common basic orientation. They both exclude the person, the behaving being, from their field of vision. Whether beings are the product of conditioning, or the product of terrestrial evolution, one is exclusively determined by conditions outside oneself; of has no part in one’s own life, no responsibility, and not even a trace of freedom. Humans are puppets, controlled by strings—instinct or conditioning. However, this theory holds some weight with corrupt politicians, the TV News media, the evil wealthy, and corrupt fractions of law enforcement influences individuals to spy on their neighbors, act out, and set people they do not like up, in lieu of dropping criminal charges against the aggressor, and/or illegally giving the aggressor government benefits and cash payments to target certain innocent individuals. Essentially, these aggressors are no longer operating through their own will, they are now puppets and slaves controlled by a tyrannical faction of beings or an organization. At this level, sacrifice is an admission of the pitiful finitude and powerlessness of humans in the face of mysterium tremendum (a mystery before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated, is both repelled and attracted. Thus, God can appear both as wrathful or awe-inspiring, on the one hand, and as gracious and loveable, on the other) of the Universe, the immensity of what transcends one and negates one’s significance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

At this level sacrifice affirms reality, bows to it, and attempts to conciliate it. Sacrifice, then, is not an irrational aberration, but a basic human reflex of truth, a correct expiation of natural guilt. One basic motive of society is the symbolic expiation of guilt, which we see as a very complex phenomenon grounded in the truth of the human condition. Guilt is one of the serious motives of humans, not to be tossed off lightly. If we are to understand the happenings of history, these happenings have to be seen as resulting from the composite of human motives, not simply from the aberrations of power of the elusiveness of a dream. The new technology and the promise of abundance are the dream that keeps humankind mesmerized; oppressiveness of tyranny would not have been tolerated but for the beneficial goods that flowed out of the megamachines. However, people bear tyranny because of its rewards not only to their stomachs but also their souls. They support tyranny by willingly marching off to war not only because that reduces the frustration they feel at home toward authority, not only because it enables them to project their hatreds on the enemy, but also because it expiates their guilt. How else explain the parents that we read about during each war who, when told about the tragic death of their son or daughter, have expressed regret that they had not more to give? #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

This age-old essence of primitive gift giving; it chills us only by the nature of the sacrifice that they make so willingly and by the secondhand god to whom it is offered—the nation-state. However, it is not cynical or callous: in guilt one gives with a melting heart and with choking tears because one is guilty, one is transcended by the unspeakable majesty and superlativeness of the natural and cultural World, against which one feels realistically humbled; by giving one draws oneself into that power and merges one’s existence with it. Furthermore—and this takes us deeper into the problem—sacrifice and scapegoating are not technical tricks to overcome anxiety. The spilling of blood, because it is a life substance, may be a magical effort to grow crops. Of course. In one of its forms scapegoating is also magical in origin: a ritual is performed over a goat, by which all the tribe’s uncleanliness (sin) is transferred to the animal; it is then driven off or killed, leaving the village clean. It is the same way that Jesus was done and Queen Akasha in Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned. This act not only represented an arrangement of life but a real spiritual purge that qualifies one to triumph over death. I doubt that enslaved people were sacrificed at an upper-class feast of the Maya merely to give it a properly genteel elegance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

It is true that primitives have often spilled blood in order simply to gloat and strut over an enemy; but I think the motive is more elemental than merely to give to feasts a pleasant veneer. Humans spill blood because it makes their hearts glad and fills out their organisms with a sense of vital power; ceremoniously killing captives is a way of affirming power over life, and therefore over death. The sacrificer may seem nonchalant about it, but this is because beings like to experience their power effortlessly and smoothly, as though they were accustomed by nature to dispose of the strongest force she had to offer. (Detroit car makers who sell power and speed—with their business person’s realism about the truths of life—have long known this.) Also, consider gift giving, it relates not only to guilty but fundamentally to power. The sacrifice is a gift, a gift to the gods which is directed to the flow of power, to keeping the life force moving there where it has been blocked by sin. With the sacrifice humans feeds the gods to give them more power so that one may have more. The sacred food has the strength of life. The sacrifice of living things adds visible life power to the stream of life; the more living things sacrificed, the more extravagant release of power, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

When a king died, the ancient custom of sacrificing wives, enslaved people, and cavaliers was not only that they should continue to serve the master in the in the invisible World—that was a matter of course. What they achieved by suffering and dying together as living sacrifices was to bring extravagant new life into being. The sacrifice was a means for establishing a communion with the invisible World, making a circle on the flow of power, a bridge over which it could pass. So, for example, in the simple building sacrifice when one took possession of a piece of ground: the sacrifice expulsed the demonic spirits in the soil and released powers that literally purged the place and made building upon it safe. Now this idea of flux and flow of power may not be so hard for us to understand today—as we saw Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash on 25 August 2001, and the 9 September 2001, the twin towers were taken down and nearly 4,000 lives were immediately lost. Some believe it is evidence of a primitive culture in American practicing rituals. The Nazi experience is also a grim refresher course on the metaphysics of mass slaughter. Nazis were animated by a spiritual concept: they had a whole philosophy of blood and soil which contained the belief that death nourishes life. We recognize the familiar archaic idea that the sacrifice of life makes life flow more plentifully. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Because of this idea that death mystically replenishes life and the birth of insurance companies for people and other assets, it has required insurance companies to go a step further to prevent the loss of life by offering Kidnap and Ransom Insurance that also covers extortion. This is an effort to keep people from sacrificing innocent lives to collect a cash payout. These insurance companies offer for $2,000, for instance, $5 million in coverage to pay to have a person who is illegally detained released, pay their ransom or pay extortion demands. Furthermore, a death potlatch is what we discussed before when stated that people think death mystically replenishes life. Well, Dr. Karl Brandt, plenipotentiary in charge of all medical activities in the Reich, when asked about his attitude toward the killing of human beings in the course of medical experiments, replied, “Do you think that one can obtain any worthwhile fundamental results without a definite toll of lives? The same goes for technologic development. You cannot build a great bridge, a gigantic building—you cannot establish a speed record without deaths!” In similar vein, many SS men took a curious pride in the fact that even in peacetime they had many fatalities during “realistic” military training. Human bodies were encased in the concrete fortifications and bunkers, as though such bodies could give strength to inanimate matter. And a man was encased in the concrete of the original Bay Bride in Oakland, California USA, which was recently demolished. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

The psychological question is for most disputants the only question. When your ordinary doctor of divinity has proved to one’s own satisfaction that an altogether unique faculty called “conscious” must be postulated to tell us what is right and what is wrong; or when your popular-science enthusiast has proclaimed that “apriorism” (the doctrine that knowledge rests upon principles that are self-evident to reason or are presupposed by experience in general) is an exploded superstition, and that our moral judgments have gradually resulted from the teaching of the environment, each of these persons thinks that ethics is settled and nothing more is to be said. The familiar pair of names, Intuitionist and Evolutionist, so commonly used now to connote all possible differences in ethical opinion, really refer to the psychological questions alone. The discussion of this question hinges so much upon particular details that it is impossible to enter upon it all within the limits of this paper. So many of our human ideals must have arisen from the association with acts of simple bodily pleasures and reliefs from pain. Association with many remote pleasures will unquestionably make a thing significant of good ness in our minds; and the more vaguely the goodness is conceived of, the more mysterious will its source appear to be. However, it is surely impossible to explain all our sentiments and preferences in this simple way. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

The more minutely psychological studies human nature, the more clearly it finds there traces of secondary affections, relating the impressions of the environment with one another and with our impulses in quite different ways from those mere associations of coexistence and succession which are practically all that pure empiricism can admit. Take the love of stimulants; take bashfulness, acrophobia (the terror of high places), motion sickness syndrome, haemophobia (to faint at the sight of blood), the susceptibility to musical sounds; take the emotion of the comical, the passion for poetry, for mathematics, or for metaphysics—no one of these things can be wholly explained by either association or utility. They go with other things that can be so explained, no doubt; and some of them are prophetic of future utilities, since there is nothing in us for which some use may not be found. However, their origin is in incidental complications to our cerebral structure, a structure whose original features arose with no reference to the perception of such discords and harmonies as these. Well, a vast number of our moral perceptions also are certainly of this secondary and brain-born kind. They deal with directly felt fitness between things, and often fly in the teeth of all the prepossessions of habit and presumptions of utility. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

The moment you get beyond the coarser and more commonplace moral maxims, The Decalogues (The Ten Commandments) and Poor Richard’s Almanacs (a collection of periodicals, which contain humor, information, and proverbial wisdom), you fall into schemes and positions which to the eye of common-sense are fantastic and overstrained. The sense for abstract justice which some person have is as eccentric a variation, from the natural-history point of view, as is the passion for music or for the higher philosophical consistencies which consumes the soul of others. The feeling of the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity; and of the essential vulgarity of others, as querulousness, anxiety, egoistic fussiness, and so forth, are quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the more ideal attitude for its own pure sake. The nobler thing tastes better, and what is all that we can say. Experience of consequences may truly teach us what things are wicked, but what have consequences to do with what is mean and vulgar? If a being has shot his wife’s paramour, by reason of what subtile repugnancy in things is that we are so disgusted when we hear that the wife and the husband have made it up and are living comfortably together again? Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a World in which Messrs (plural of MR. for example, Mr. Hollingsworth, Mr. Toth, Mr. Wallace). #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Francois Marie Charles Fourier, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris’s utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain? To what, once more, but subtile brain-born feelings of discord can be due all these recent protests against the entire race-tradition of retributive justice? –I refer to Tolstoi with his ideas of non-resistance, to Mr. Bellamy with his substitution of the punitive ideal. All these subtileties of the moral sensibility go as much beyond what can be ciphered out from the laws of association as the delicacies of sentiment possible between a pair of young lovers go beyond such precepts of the etiquette to be observed during engagement as are printed in manuals of social form. No! Purely inward forces are certainly at work here. All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Our ideals have certainly many sources. They are not all explicable as signifying corporeal pleasures to be gained, and pains to be escaped. And for having s constantly perceived this psychological fact, we must applaud the intuitionist school. Whether or not such applause must be extended to that school’s other characteristics will appear as we take up more questions. The vital spirit has a special affinity for the body; indeed, it abhors leaving the flesh, because it has no connaturals neat at hand. It may, perhaps, rush to the extremities of the body, to meet something that it loves, but it is loth to go forth. Novital spirits have two appetites. They desire to multiply. Unhappily finding nothing like: One drop of water moves towards another, and flame to flame; but much more does this appear in the escape of the spirit into the external air, because it is not carried to a particle like itself, but to a very World of connaturals…the going forth and escape of the spirit into the air is a double action arising partly from the appetite of the spirit, and partly from the appetite of the air; for the common air is a needy thing, and seizes everything with avidity, as spirits, odours, rays, sounds and the like. The vital spirit is held to exercise two functions that nonvital spirits do not reveal. First, it seems to play a controlling role in the governing the growth and decay of body parts and tissues. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The lifeless spirit maintains itself by feeding on adjacent parts. The amount and rate of its feeding determine the time span of its host’s existence. Since inanimate things exist far longer than animate beings, the vital spirit, present only in things living, is in part responsible for the body’s growth, sustenance, and corruption. It disturbs and restrains and intensifies and increases the processes involved in the consumption or depredation of the human body and the repair or refreshment thereof. In the most direct of ways, then, the vital spirit is vital. The vital spirit, in the second place, seems to be the efficient cause of all actions and functions undertaken by the body’s principal organs and members. Digestion is the function of the stomach, seeing that of the eye, and so on. The action in each case is properly that of the organ and member involved. They can be regarded as the material cause of the action. However, no action, no matter how specific to a member, would come if the vital spirit were not present: The actions or functions of the individual members follow the nature of the members themselves; as attraction, retention, digestion, assimilation, separation, excretion, perspiration, and even the sense itself, depend upon the properties of the several organs, as the stomach, liver, heart, spleen, gall, brain, eye, ear, and the rest. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

However, yet none of these actions would ever be set in motion without the vigour, presence, and heat of the vital spirit. Thus, the vital spirit is some sort of force-carrying, or force-bearing, substance without which no animal or human activity is possible. Perhaps the notion of “vehicle” fits here. If so, we are reminded of the efficient cause and that it is nothing else than the vehicle of form. So spiritual transformation, the renovation of the human heart, is an inescapable human problem with no human solution. It is something that can be learned from a survey of World history, World cultures, and past and present efforts to deal with human life by religion, education, law, and medicine. And when we take into consideration the many techniques that are taught in the various psychologies and competing spiritualities of our own day, this observation unfortunately stands firm. Genuine transformation of the whole person into the goodness and power seen in Jesus and his Father, God—the only transformation adequate to the human self-remains the necessary goal of human life. However, it is possessed beyond the reach of programs of inner transformation that draw merely on the human spirit—even when the human spirit is itself treated and ultimately divine. And spiritual formation has now presented itself as a hopeful possibility for responding to the crying, unmet need of the human soul. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The hope springs once again for a response to the need that is both deeply rooted in Christian traditions and powerfully relevant to circumstances of contemporary life. “And then shall ye know that I am an honest person, and that I am sent unto you from God,” reports Helaman 9.36. O, God, Who makest us glad with the yearly expectation of our redemption, grant that as we joyfully receive Thine Only-begotten Son as our Redeemer, we may also see Him without fears when He cometh as our Judge. Only through our Lord, who with Thee four things from which the Master is entirely free, we come to understand that God has no foregone conclusions, no arbitrary pre-determinations, no obstinacy, and no egoism. Grant, O merciful God, that for the reception of the transcendent mystery of Thy Son’s Nativity, the minds of believers may be prepared, and also the hearts of unbelievers subdued. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord who is working for an infinite duration of time, peace will come. Therefore, we must be infinitely patient. O God, Who art pleased to save, by the Nativity of Thy Christ, the race of beings, which was mortally wounded in its chief, grant us this healing blessing. God we beseech Thee, that we may not cleave to the author of our perdition, but be transferred to the fellowship of our Redeemer, Who with Thee the plane of negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviour does not exist. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

Coming Soon!

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The People are Reasonable or Even Humble and Pure and Express Coherence—It is a Miraculous Exception!

December 5, 2019 3:07 am

A well-chosen soul has innumerable dishes, all of admirable flavour. Readiness is achieved in different ways, depending upon what there is to be learned. It takes faith in your abilities, and in your future even when you do not believe. Life requires a person to have an essence of humanity to create the spark that glows warmly inside of them. The influence you have on others will be etched in their souls forever. Readiness may require painful and protracted effort—thinking, reading, watching, writing, talking, and doing. Other times it may be attained effortlessly, almost inadvertently. Either way, timing is critical. Knowing how to learn or how to teach is essentially knowing when to press and when to wait. Styles of learning and teaching are characterized by their mix of pressure and patience. If we did not have souls, many people thirsty for knowledge would dehydrate. Wise people have always known that when the unconscious speaks, to pay attention. The breakdowns or check-outs that we have referred to are final outcomes of not listening. The symptoms and suffering are but the voice of the real self, the voice of human being protesting in a voice so loud it can no longer be neglected. Before the breakdown, the voice murmured softly from time to time; but its murmurings were in a code, a forgotten language that could not be understood. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

And so the person persisted in the ways of behaving, the ways of construing oneself and other people, that had become increasingly good neither for one’s growth nor for one’s well-being. The healthier personality listens to one’s boredom, one’s anxiety, one’s dreams and fantasies and gropes for change in ways of meeting the World that will permit great realization of potential self. For stigmatized people, typically when one member of the category happens to come into contact with another, both may be disposed to modify their treatment of each other by virtue of believing that they each belong to the same group. Further, in being a member of the category, an individual may have an increased probability of coming into contact with any other member, and even forming a relationship with the individual as a result. A category, then, can function to dispose its members to group-formation and relationships, but its total membership does not thereby constitute a group. Whether or not those with a particular stigma provide the recruitment base for a community that is ecologically consolidated in some way, they are likely to support agents and agencies who respect them. (Interestingly, we have no word to designate accurately the constituents, following, fans, subjects, or supporters of such representatives.) #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Members may, for example, have an office or lobby to push their case with the Press or Government, differing here in terms of whether they can have a being of their own kind, a “native” who really knows, as do those with a hearing impairment, visual impairment, those addicted to a substance, someone of a particular culture or ethnic background, or someone who is not as affluent as other, as do those seeking a second chance. (Action groups which serve the same category of stigmatized person may sometimes be in slight opposition to each other, and this opposition will often reflect a difference between management by natives and management by the dominate group.) Another of their usual tasks is to appear as speakers before various audiences of mass appeal and of the stigmatized; they present the case for the stigmatized and, when they themselves are natives of the group, provide a living model of fully-normal achievement, being heroes of adjustment who are subject to public awards for proving that an individual of this kind can be a good person. Indeed, the healthier personality transcends the contradiction between the conscious and unconscious, between being fully focused and grandly unfocused—one can oscillate between the extremes and push them further than the less healthy individual. When one focuses, one is fully focused and when one lets go, one really lets go. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Healthy personality is manifested by a mode of being that we can call authenticity, or more simply, honest. Less healthy personalities, people who function less than fully, who suffer recurrent breakdowns or chronic impasses, may usually be found to be liars. They say things they do not mean. Their disclosures have been chosen more for cosmetic value than truth. The consequence of a lifetime of lying about oneself to others, of saying and doing things for their sound and appearance, is that ultimately the person loses contact with one’s real self. Because of its destructive character competitiveness in neurotic persons gives rise to a huge amount of anxiety, and consequently leads to a recoiling from competition. The question now is, Whence comes this anxiety? It is understandable without any difficulty that one source is a fear of retaliation for the ruthless pursuit of ambition. One who steps on all others, humiliates and crushes them as soon as they have or want to have success, must have the fear that they will want just as intensely to defeat one. However, such a retaliation fear, although it will be active in everyone who achieves success at the expense of others, is scarcely the whole reason for the neurotic’s increased anxiety and one’s consequent inhibition toward competition. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Experience shows that retaliation fear alone does not necessarily lead to inhibitions. On the contrary, it may result merely in a cold-blooded reckoning with the imaginary or real envy, rivalry or malice of others, or in an attempt to expand one’s power in order to be protected from any defeat. A certain type of successful person has only one goal, the acquisition of power and wealth. However, if the structure of such personalities is compared with that of definitely neurotic persons there is one striking difference. The ruthless success-hunter does not care for the affection of others. One neither wants nor expects anything from others, neither help nor any kind of generosity. One knows that one can reach what one wants by one’s own strength and efforts alone. One will, of course, make use of other people, but one cares for their good opinion only in so far as it is useful in attaining one’s own goal. Affection for its own sake means nothing to one. One’s desires and one’s defenses go along one straight line: power, prestige, possession. If there is nothing within one to interfere with one’s strivings, even one who is driven to this kind of behavior by internal conflicts will not develop the usual neurotic characteristics. Fear will only push one into enhanced efforts to be more successful and more invincible. The neurotic person, however, pursues two ways that are incompatible: an aggressive striving for a “no one but I” dominance; and at the same time an excessive desire to be loved by everyone. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

For the neurotic, this situation of being caught between ambition and affection is one the central conflicts in neuroses. The main reason why the neurotic becomes afraid of one’s own ambition and demands, why one does not even want to recognize them, and why one checks them or recoils from them altogether, is that one is afraid of losing affection. In other words, the reasons why the neurotic checks one’s competitiveness is not that one has particularly stringent “super-ego demands” which prevent too great an aggressiveness, but that one finds oneself caught in a dilemma between two equally imperative needs: one’s ambition and one’s need for affection. The dilemma is practically unsolvable one. One cannot step on the people and be loved by them at the same time. Yet in the neurotic the pressures is so great that one does try to solve it. In general one attempts a solution to two ways: by justifying one’s drive for dominance and the grievances resulting from its nonfulfillment; and by checking one’s ambition. The justification is important as a strategy: it is attempted to make the demands incontestable so they will not block the way toward being loved. If one disparages others in order to humiliate them or crush them in a competitive fight, one will be deeply convinced that one is being wholly objective. If one wants to exploit others one will believe and try to make them believe that one is in great need of their help. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Often those with a particular stigma sponsor a publication of some kind which gives voice to shared feelings, consolidating and stabilizing for the reader one’s sense of the realness of one’s group and attachment to it. Here the ideology of the members if formulated—their complaints, their aspirations, their politics. The names of well-known friends and enemies of the group are cited, along with information to confirm the goodness or the badness of these people. Success stories are printed, tales of heroes of assimilation who have penetrated new areas of normal acceptance. Atrocity tales are recorded, recent and historic, of extreme mistreatment by the dominate group, or those perceived as normals. Exemplary moral tales are provided in biographical and autobiographical form illustrating a desirable code of conduct for the stigmatized. The publication also serves as a forum for presenting some division of opinion as to how the situation of the stigmatized person ought best to be handled. Should the individual’s failing require special equipment, it is here advertised and reviewed. The readership of these publications provides a market for books and pamphlets which present a similar line. Those who come to serve as representatives of a stigmatized category are usually a little more vocal, a little better know, or a possibly better connected than one’s fellow-sufferers. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Therefore, one’s effort to gain attention for a movement may actually absorb one’s whole day, and one maybe become a professional at it. Once those who are actually making a difference in the community and helping others who are villainized attains a high occupational, political, or financial position—how high depending on the stigmatized group in question—a new career is likely to be thrust upon one, that of representing one’s category. One finds oneself too eminent to avoid being presented by one’s own as an instance of them. (The weakness of a stigma can thus be measured by how eminent a member of the category may be and yet manage to avoid these pressures). The authentic being manifested by healthier personalities takes the form of unself-conscious disclosure of self in words, decisions, and actions. It is a risky way of being, especially in a social setting that punishes all forms of action and disclosure that depart from some current stereotype of the ideal or acceptable being. The healthier person will doubtless experience many a bruise for being and disclosing who one is, but one prefers to accept these blows rather than lose oneself or sell oneself (one’s authentic being) for short-run acceptability. Indeed, there is much reason to suspect that authenticity before others is the same mode of being that permits a being to have access to the underground realm of experiencing, the unconscious. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Defensiveness and concealment of self before others unfortunately are the same modes of being that screen off a being’s unconscious, one’s preverbal experiencing from oneself. The currents of feeling, fantasy, memory, and wish that would get a being criticism from others also produce anxiety in oneself; so one blocks these from the view of self and others in the service of self-defense. In time, one succeeds in fooling oneself as much as other into believing one is the person one is so expertly seeming to be. In truth one is an invisible person. Whatever is authentic of one, whatever is most spontaneous and alive (one’s experience of one’s possibilities), is buried so deep not even one can cognize it. One of the reasons less healthy personalities are so self-conscious, so deliberate in their choice of word and action before others, is that they dread letting something slip out that truly expresses their being, something which will get them into trouble. They are, as it were, idolaters of the state of artificial grace known as “staying out of trouble.” In fact, they have sold their souls and possibilities for a good, but false name. All this is not to say that healthier personalities are always fully visible, fully transparent, before the gaze of self an others. Such chronic self-revelation may be itself idolatrous, and is suicidal in certain circumstances. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Good intent or sincere motive cannot by itself be enough to protect the unwise individual against one’s own gullibility, the uncritical against one’s own folly, and the uninformed against one’s own miseducation. All this is as true of the quest itself as of that part of its practice called deep prayer. Certainly we would expect a healthier personality to have enough common sense, judgment, even cunning, to preserve oneself in a hostile environment, dropping one’s guard only when one is among trusted and loving friends. And, in fact, a healthy personality will have been able to enter into and maintain relationships of trust and love with one or more people, people whom one has let know one and whom one knows and responds to. Seductive activities, phenomena, ideas, or guides may try to lure one from this straight course into time-wasting sideshows or dangerous directions. Reform, psychism, politics, perverted teachings or counterfeit ones may call but must not be heeded. One has a long way to go yet and must take care to keep on the right road. Another dimension of healthy personality concerns the realm of values itself. Healthier personalities seek and find meaningful values and challenges in life, such that there is an element of direction, of focus, to their existence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Less healthy personalities, estranged as they are from their real selves, usually pursue only cliched goals and values current in their present social milieu. These latter goals frequently do not challenge or inspire the average person to the fullest integration and expression of one’s unique being; they do not “turn one on” or keep one going. The upshot is that one will often feel trapped or, worse, feel that one is “losing one’s mind.” The latter fear is mostly likely to occur when a person looking at the externals of one’s present situation finds that one has accomplished or has been given “everything to make a being happy”—but that one, in honesty, is miserable, bored, and does not know what to do next. One has loved ones, a family, material success, a nice house, car, and so on; but one finds one’s work increasingly boring, more like a treadmill, and one’s relationships with others empty, formal, and all too predictable; and one entertains fantasies of leaving one’s loved ones, chucking it all, and going to Las Vegas, only to repress these ideas with the anxious thought, “I must be insane to harbor such notions.” One might scurry into further “busy-work,” commence drinking to excess, create excitement by treading along primrose paths at great risk, or do others searching in the outer World for some new meanings. One looks in the wrong place, the right place being within one’s own experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

The healthier personality, less estranged and less afraid of one’s real self, can look within and without and create or find new sources of value, new directions of commitment, even when these elicit some criticism from others in one’s World. One is freer to invest value in more aspects of the World than one’s less healthy counterpart. The few who have a broad experience of life, whose reason is sufficiently alive to judge both fruits and roots correctly and whose intuition is sufficiently active to recognize nobility when meeting it, want the whole truth and nothing less, will find a friend (for one will not wish to be anything more) who will decline to permit others to hold a fanciful vision of an Earthly perfection which is non-existent; who will be humble, sane, and balanced above all things, and yet prove with time—if they themselves prove loyal—to be also a sure and benevolent guide in this dark forest where so many wander bewildered, deceived, or self-deceived. Excessive unreflective saint-worship raises exaggerated and false hopes. It has unreflective saint-worship raises exaggerated and even false hopes. It has historically often ended with exploitation of the worshipper. However, even where it does not, it is still incompatible with healthy self-development; an affectionate respect is wiser and safer. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Let us not ask a teacher to be a god, because thereby we are liable to deceive and endanger ourselves, but let us ask one to be competent and illumined, truthful and helpful and compassionate. Today society asks more of educators than ever before. You are required to be social workers, computer experts, juvenile officers, mediators, researchers, business partners, interdisciplinary team members, and chemical dependency counselors. You must provide for children who do not speak the native language of the country; who are gifted learners, visual learners, kinesthetic learners, voracious leaners, and reluctant learners; who are emotionally disturbed, hungry, and without a home. We ask you to teach children how to drive, get along with others, how to maintain proper social hygiene, balance a checkbook, make healthy choices, use new technologies—and yes, how to read, write, and do arithmetic. Sokrates did not have an overhead projector. He asked questions that bothered people and 3,500 years later people are still talking about him. The soul is the wardrobe of humanity; whence beings properly informed may bring something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use. A healthy personality lives in and with one’s body, one is an embodied self. One is able freely to move one’s body, which has a look of grace, coordination, and relaxation. One dances through life, to state this idea in its most extreme but essentially accurate form. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

By contrast, the less healthy personality is afraid to live in one’s body. One represses one’s bodily experiencing and feels one’s body alternately numb and dead or as a dangerous and stinking cesspool charged with explosive nitroglycerine. One must take care lest an urge, a feeling, an impulse, or a movement break through the tight control. For one, this would be disastrous. One of the most common evidences of disembodiment is muscular tension that reveals itself as stiffness in body posture, awkwardness in gait, the mouth a thin red line, the jaws clenched, and the face an immobile mask, frozen in false smile or anxious frown or counterfeit dignity; the voice emits sounds that are jerky, pressured, constricted. Touch such an average person on the arm or place one’s arm around his or her shoulders, and one will instantly stiffen, experience panic, jump as if stabbed, and perhaps experience a mixture of sexual arousal and guilt or anxiety. The healthier person has a more fully lived and experienced body. One’s face is mobile and expressive; one speaks in a voice that is free, but one which is fighting off an impulse to say something else at the same moment that the present speech is being emitted. It is no accident that the average people receive psychotherapeutic benefit from instruction in vocalization or freely expressive dance and from massage and other forms of direct experience with their bodies. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Indeed, the therapists of the future will without doubt be obliged to learn to live gracefully with their own bodies and learn ways of inviting their clients to get back into theirs. Not by our own exertions alone, and not by gift or grace of an external being alone, can we be brought to final realization, but by both. Those who can let themselves be uplifted by some inspired or enlightened person should understand that one is capable of lifting them to the point of touching their best self, the divinity within them. Some may even gain a glimpse of it, a memorable unforgettable experience. However, will they let it happen? We are not left to find out for ourselves that the truth is. Now and then messengers appear among us, each bearing one’s own personal communication about the existence of a higher power and the need of a higher life. We may help our souls in drawing to us the goal by surrendering to the guidance of a competent spiritual adviser or we may obstruct it by clinging to the ego’s. However, an incompetent adviser will also obstruct it, and in fact become a channel for the ego’s truth-obscuring tactics. The difficulty of the task of self-improvement is not to be underrated and it is because of this as well as for other reasons that seekers since ancient times have been advised to obtain the help of a teacher. From one they can get inspiration, guidance, and a certain telepathically transferred strengthening power which is called Grace. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

In nature the physical is a totally different type of reality from the spiritual side of the human being, which remains hidden in a way the physical World never can be. This is by now an old story, but often repressed or forgotten. Science misses the heart. Paradoxically, the spiritual side of us—though it is not perceivable by the senses and though we can never fully grasp it in any way—is never entirely out of our mind. It always stands in the margin of our consciousness, if not the center. It is really the only thing that is celebrated (or degraded) in the arts, in biography and history, and in most of our popular writings in magazines and the like. Their emphasis is continually upon what people think and feel, on what they might or should do and why, and on what kind of character they have. Human beings gossip about nothing else, and now much of what is called news is really just gossip. However, that only emphasizes how we are constantly aware of the spiritual side of life. We know immediately that it is what really matters. We pay more attention to it—in ourselves and others—than to anything else. And there is a deep, if often perverted, wisdom in this. For the spiritual simply is our life, no matter what grand theories we may hold or what we may say when trying to be intellectual, well informed, and up-to-date. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The swelling protest from the human depths has recently been shouting at us that the physical and public side of the human Universe cannot sustain our existence. “Humans shall not live by bread alone.” We would do well to listen, no matter who is talking. Those are, of course, words from Jesus. And his way is truly the way of the heart, or spirit. If we would walk with him, we must walk with him at that interior level. There are very few who really do not understand this about him. He saves us by realistic restoration of our heart to God and then by dwelling there with his Father though the distinctively divine Spirit. The heart thus renovated and inhabited is the only real hope of humanity on Earth. The statement that “Humans shall not live by bread alone” was adapted by Jesus from the history of the Jewish experience with God. Jesus was, among other things, the most profound and powerful expression of that experience. However, it was also given new and profound meaning by one’s death and resurrection. Through them he established a radically new order of life on Earth within the kingdom of God. It was free of any specific ethnic or cultural form. All human beings can now live the life of the renovated heart by nourishing ourselves constantly on one’s persona presence—now here in our World, beyond his death and ours. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

We are much interested in the causes of bodily corruption and of prolongation of life. Perhaps decay is due chiefly to the parasitic action of the lifeless spirits and if this action could be controlled life could be extended. Living spirits, on the other hand, seem to be self-subsisting. They need a friendly body if they are to exist; yet they are essential to life itself and thus seem more to give to living processes than to take away. The living spirit seems to require three things for its subsistence. First, the spirit must have room to move according to its nature, particularly requiring space for its motion in the ventricles of the brain and the nerves perpetually. Blows to the head and some parts of the body constrict its movement and sometimes kill it. Its own motion is constantly reinforced by the pulsation of the heart and the rhythms of breathing. Second, through its own nature is flammeous, its condition must be more cold than hot, and respiration provides the proper refrigeration. Third, the body, as the home of the spirit, must be properly fed and maintain a state of good health. Feeling, or alimentation, involves the organs and parts of the body directly, and concerns the spirit, if at all, only indirectly. As for the requirement of aliment, it seems to belong more to the parts than to the living spirit. Consequently, a human may easily believe that the living spirit subsists in identity, and bot by succession or renovation. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Contrary to what many say today, our deliverance (salvation) does not arise out of the murky human depths from which our natural life springs—whether that includes an oversoul or collective unconsciousness or not. However, Jesus moves into and through those very depths, whatever they contain, to bring us home to God. There, too, he is Master. The spiritual renovation and the spirituality that comes from Jesus is nothing less than an invasion of natural human reality by supernatural life from above. The vital spirit has a long, continuous period of existence, probably from the birth of the body to its death. Its vital force does not flare up and down, like a flame, being perpetually generated and extinguished, and of no sensible duration. This spirit must not be confused with the rational soul in being, which is certainly not propagated, nor subject either to repair or death. The vital spirit has a special affinity for the body; indeed, it abhors leaving the flesh, because it has no connaturals near at hand. It may, perhaps, rush to the extremities of the body, to meet something that it loves, but it is loth to go forth. One may not be affluent outwardly but one will be rich inwardly. One may have to endure troubles but one will endure them without worry. One will show this high degree of advancement by the assured direction of one’s efforts, the unflinching strength of one’s purpose, and the effective results of one’s work. “Because of meekness and lowliness of the heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter with hope and perfect love, which endureth,” reports Moroni 8.26. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

O God, Who didst look on beings when one had fallen down into death, and resolved to redeem one by the Advent of Thine Only-begotten Son; grant, we beseech Thee, that they confess His glorious Incarnation may also be admitted to the fellowship of Him, their Redeemer; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. O Wisdom, that camest out of the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things; come to teach us the way of understanding. O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, Who didst appear to Moses in the flame of the burning bush, and gavest the Law on Sinai; come to deliver us with an outstretched arm. O Root of Jesse, Who standest for an ensign to the people; before Whom kings shall shut their mouths, Whom nations shall entreat; come to deliver us now, tarry not. O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel, Who openest and no being shutteth, and shuttetest and no being openeth, come and bring forth the prisoner out of the prison-house, where one sitteth in darkness and the shadow of death. O Day-spring, Splendour of the eternal Light, and Sun of Righteousness; come an enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. O King of Gentiles, Thou Whom they long for, and Corner-stone that makest both one; come and save humans, Whom Thou formedst out of the clay. O Emmanuel, our King and Law-giver, the Expected One of the Gentiles, and their Saviour; come to save us, O Lord our God! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Randolph Harris II International Institute

Category Archives: innocent

Sometimes an Angel Has to Fall to Know One Was in Heaven—Are You Living?

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

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

CRESLEIGH RIVERSIDE AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the low $400’s

Now Selling!

There is Always a Moment in Life When the Doors Open and Lets the Future in!

The Illuminate Has a Cosmic Outlook—One thinks and Feel for All Creatures No Less than for Oneself!

CRESLEIGH RIVERSIDE AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the low $400’s

Now Selling!

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

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

Coming Soon!

#CresleighHomes

It is a Lifting-Up into One’s Mind When You Have Reached the Very Edge of Your Own Mind!

Cresleigh Homes

There is One Place Where I Can Find Out Who I am and What I am Going to Become—And that is the Soul!

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

Coming Soon!

The People are Reasonable or Even Humble and Pure and Express Coherence—It is a Miraculous Exception!

Cresleigh Homes

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