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Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day? Thou Art More Lovely and More Temperate!

July 30, 2020 4:44 am

If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. There can no longer be any doubt that everything we call body shows a striving to become a whole. Individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-understanding and for altering their self-concepts, basic attitudes, and self-directed behaviour; these resources can be tapped if a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided. There are three conditions that must be present in order for a climate to be growth-promoting. These conditions apply whether we are speaking of the relationship between therapist and client, parent and child, leader and group, teacher and student, or administrator and staff. The conditions apply, in fact, in any situation in which the development of the person is a goal. The first element could be called genuineness, realness, or congruence. The more the therapist is oneself in the relationship, putting up on professional front or personal façade, the greater is the likelihood that the client will change and grow in a constructive manner. This means that the therapist is openly being the feelings and attitudes that are flowing within at the moment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

The term “transparent” catches the flavour of this condition: the therapist makes oneself transparent to the client; the client can see right through what the therapist is in the relationship; the client experiences no holding back on the part of the therapist. As for the therapist, what one is experiencing is available to awareness, can be lived in the relationship, and can be communicated, if appropriate. Thus, there is a close matching, or congruence, between what is being experienced at the gut level, what is present in awareness, and what is expressed to the client. The second attitude of importance in creating a climate for chance is acceptance, or caring, or prizing—what I have called “unconditional positive regard.” When the therapist is experiencing a positive, acceptant attitude toward whatever the client is at that moment, therapeutic movement or change is more likely to occur. The therapist is willing for the client to be whatever immediate feeling is going on—confusion, resentment, fear, anger, courage, love, or pride. Such caring on the part of the therapist is nonpossessive. The therapist prizes the client in a total rather than a conditional way. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

The third facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathetic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private World of the other that one can clarify not only the meaning of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive, active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know. How does this climate which I have just described bring about change? Briefly, as persons are accepted and prized, they tend to develop a more caring attitude toward themselves. As persons are empathically heard, it becomes possible for them to listen more accurately to the flow of inner experiencings. However, as a person understands and prizes self, the self becomes more congruent with the experiencings. The person this becomes more real, more genuine. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

Along with the person becoming more authentic, these tendencies, the reciprocal of the therapist’s attitudes, enable the person to be a more effective growth-enhancer for oneself. There is greater freedom. There is a body of steadily mounting research evidence which by and large supports the view that when these facilitative conditions are present, changes in personality and behaviour do indeed occur. Such research has been carried on from 1940 to the present. Studied have been made of the benefits of the person-centered psychotherapy with troubled individuals and with schizophrenics; of the facilitation of learning in the schools; of the improvement in other interpersonal relationships. In ever organism, at whatever level, there is an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfilment of its inherent possibilities. In human beings, too, there is a natural tendency towards a more complex and complete development. The term that must often been used for this is the “actualizing tendency,” and it is present in all living organism. Whether we are speaking of a follower or an oak tree, of an earthworm of a beautiful cockatiel, of an ape or a person, we will do well, I believe, to recognize that life is an active process, not a passive one. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

Whether the stimulus arises from within or without, whether the environment is favourable or unfavourable, the behaviours of an organism can be counted on to be in the direction of maintaining, enhancing, and reproducing itself. This is the very nature of the process we call life. This tendency is operative at all times. Indeed, only the presence or absence of this total directional process enables us to tell whether a given organism is alive of dead. The actualizing tendency can, of course, be thwarted or warped, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our Winter’s supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavourable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout—pale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. However, these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. However, under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back of wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavourable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behaviour is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the result may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life’s desperate attempt to become itself. This potent constructive tendency is an underlying basis of the person-centered approach. Custom, then, is a great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of evens with those which have appeared in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact, beyond what is immediately present to the memory and sense. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

If we did not have customs, we should never know how to adjust means to end, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once to all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation. However, here it ay be proper to remark, that though conclusions from experience carry us beyond our memory and senses, and assure us of matters of fact, which happened in the most distant places and most remote ages; yet some fact must always be present to the sense or memory, from which we may first proceed in drawing these conclusions. A person, who should find in a desert country the remains of pompous buildings, would conclude, that the country had, in ancient times, been cultivated by civilized inhabitants; but did nothing of this nature occur to one, one could never form such inference. We learn the events of former ages from history; but then we must peruse the volumes, in which this instruction is contained, and thence carry up our inferences from one testimony to another, till we arrive at the eye-witnesses and spectators of these distant evens. In a word, if we proceed not upon some fact, present to the memory or senses, our reasonings would be merely hypothetical. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

And, however, the particular links might be connected with each other, the whole chain of inferences would have nothing to support it, nor could we ever, by its means, arrive at the knowledge of any real existence. If I ask, why you believe any particular matter of fact, which you relate, you must tell me some reason; and this reason will be some other fact, connected with it. However, as you cannot proceed after this manner, in infinitum, you must at last terminate in some fact, which is present to your memory or senses; or must allow that your belief is entirely without foundation. When then is the conclusion of the whole matter? A simple one; though, it must be confessed, pretty remote from the common theories of philosophy. All belief of matter of fact or real existence is derived merely from some object, present to the memory or senses, and a customary conjunction between that and some other object. Or in other words; having found, in many instances, that any two kinds of objects, flame and heat, snow and cold, have always been conjoined together; if flame or snow be presented anew to the senses, the mind is carried by custom to expect heat or cold, and to believe, that such a quality does exist, and will discover itself upon a nearer approach. This belief is the necessary result of placing the mind in such circumstances. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

It is an operation of the soul, when we are so situated, as unavoidable as to feel the passion of love, when we receive benefits; or hatred, when we meet with injuries. All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able, either to produce, or to prevent. At this point, it would be very allowable for us to stop our philosophical researches. In most questions, we can never make a single step farther; and in all question, we must terminate here at last, after our most restless and curious enquires. However, still our curiosity will be pardonable, perhaps commendable, if it carry us on to still farther researches, and makes us examine more accurately the nature of this belief, and of the customary conjunction, whence it is derived. By this means we may meet with some explications and analogies, that will give satisfaction; at least to such as love the abstract sciences, and can be entertained with speculations, which, however accurate, may still retain a degree of doubt and uncertainty. Humans are the only mammal who are large-scale killers and sadist. Animals display intraspecific aggression (fighting against their own species), but they fight in a “nondisruptive,” nondestructive way. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

The data on the life of mammals in general and the prehuman primates in particular do not suggest the presence of an innate “destructiveness” which humans are supposed to have inherited from them. Indeed, if the human species had approximately the same degree of “innate” aggressiveness as that of chimpanzees living in their natural habitat, we would live in a rather peaceful World. In studying aggression among animals and especially among the primates, it is important to begin with a distinction between their behaviour in while living their own habit and their behaviour in captivity, that is, essentially, in zoos. Observations show that primates in the wild show little aggression, while primates in the zoo can show an excessive amount of destructiveness. This distinction is of fundamental importance for the understanding of human aggression because humans thus far in their history have hardly ever lived in their “natural habitat,” with the exception of the hunters and food gatherers and the first agriculturalists down to the fifth millennium Before Christ. “Civilized” humans have always lived in the “Zoo”—id est, in various degrees of captivity and unfreedom—and this still true, even in the most advanced societies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

The hamadryas baboons at the London Zoo in Regents Park (“Monkey Hill”) were studied in 1929-1930. Their area, 100 feet long and 60 feet wide, was large by zoo standards, but extremely small compared with the natural range of their habitat. There was a great deal of tension and aggression observed among animals. The stronger ones brutally and ruthlessly kept the weaker ones down, and even mothers would take food away from the hands of their babies. With the principal victims further studies suggest that there are at least two different elements in crowding which must be kept apart. One is the reduction of space; the other is e destruction of the social structure. The importance of the second factor is clearly born out of observation, mentioned earlier, that the introduction of a strange animal usually creates even more aggression than crowding. Of course, often both factors are present, and it is difficult to determine which of the two is responsible for the aggressive behaviour. Whatever the specific blend of these factors is in animal crowding, each of them can generate aggression. The narrowing down of space deprives the animal of important vital functions of movement, play, and the exercise of its faculties which can develop only when it has to search for its own food. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

Hence the “space-deprived” animal may feel threatened by this reduction of its vital functions and react with aggression. The breakdown of the social structure of an animal group is even more of a threat. Every animal species lives within a social structure characteristic for this species. Whether hierarchical or not, it is the frame of reference to which the animal’s behaviour is adapted. A tolerable social equilibrium is a necessary condition for its existence. Its destruction through crowding constitutes a massive threat to the animal’s existence, and intense aggression is the result one would expect, given he defensive role of aggression, especially when flight is impossible. Crowding can occur under the conditions of existence in a zoo. However, more often the animals in a zoo are not crowded but suffer from restriction of space. Captive animals, although they are well fed and protected have “nothing to do.” If one believes that satisfaction of all physiological needs is enough to provide for a feeling of well-being in an animal (and in humans), their zoo existence should make them very content. However, this parasitic existence deprives them of stimuli that would permit an active expression of their physical and mental faculties; hence they often become bored, dull, and apathetic. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

Unlike zoo chimpanzees, which generally look increasingly dull and vacant with the years, the older chimpanzees among those living in the wild seemed to be more lively, more interested in everything, and more human. The dull stimulus World provided by zoo cages results in boredom. An example is a silver-haired old chimpanzee who remained the leader of the group even though he was physically far inferior to younger apes; apparently life in freedom, with all its many stimulations had developed a kind of wisdom in him which qualified him as a leader. If crowding is an important condition for animal aggression, the question suggests itself whether it is also an important source of human aggression. There is no other remedy for rebellion, violence, and neuroses than to establish the balance of numbers in human societies and quickly to find effective means of controlling them at the optimum level. This popular identification of crowding with population density has created much confusion. Many people ignore the fact that the problem of contemporary crowding has two aspects: he destruction of viable social structure (particularly in the industrialized parts of the World), and the disproportion between the size of population and the economic and social basis for its existence, mainly in the non-industrialized parts of the World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

Humans need a social system in which one has one’s place and in which one’s relations to others are relatively stable and supported by generally accepted values and ideas. What has happened in modern industrial society is that traditions, and common values, and genuine social personal ties with others have largely disappeared. The modern mass human is isolated and lonely, even though they are part of a crowd; they have no convictions which they could share with others, only slogans and ideologies one gets from the communications media. One have become an a-tom (the Greek equivalent of “in-dividual” = indivisible), held together only by common, though often simultaneously antagonistic interests, and by the cash nexus. This phenomenon is called “anomie” and found that it was the main cause of suicide which had been increasing with the growth of industrialization. Anomie is the destruction of all traditional social bonds, due to the fact that all truly collective organization have become secondary to the state and all genuine social life have been annihilated. People living in the modern political state are a disorganized dust of individuals. In the traditional community (Gemeinschaf) and modern society (Gesellschaf) all genuine social bonds have disappeared. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

Population density as such, lack of social structure, genuine common bonds and interest in life are the causes of human aggression and can be show by many examples. One of the most striking are the kibbutzim in Israel, which are very crowded, with little space for the individual and little privacy (this was even more the case years ago when the kibbutzim were poor). Yet there was an extraordinary lack of aggressiveness among their members. The same holds true for other international communities all over the World. Another example are countries like Belgium and Holland, two of the most densely populated parts of the World, whose population is nevertheless not characterized by special aggressiveness. There could hardly be more crowding then there was at the Woodstock or the Isle of Wight youth festivals, and yet both were remarkably free from aggressiveness. To take another example, Manhattan Island was one of the most densely populated places in the World eighty years ago, but it was no then, as it is today, characterized by excessive violence. Anyone who has lived in a big apartment building where several hundred families live together knows that there are few places where a person has as much privacy and is as little intruded upon by the presence of next-door neighbours as in such a densely populated building. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

In those high-rise apartment buildings, some of the people are more aware of each other, watch and gossip each other’s private lives, and are constantly in each other’s field of vision; the same holds true, although to a much lesser degree, for suburban society. These examples tend to show that it is not crowding as such, but the social, psychological, cultural, and economic conditions under which it occurs that are responsible for aggression. It is obvious that overpopulation, id est, population density under conditions of poverty, causes stress and aggression; the big cities India, as well as the slums in American cities, are an example of this. Overpopulation and the resulting population density are malignant, when, due to the lack of decent housing, people lack the most elementary conditions for protection from immediate and constant intrusion by others. Overpopulation means that the number of people in a given society surpasses the economic basis for providing them with adequate food, housing, and meaningful leisure. There is no doubt that overpopulation has evil consequences and that the numbers must be reduced to a level which is commensurate with the economic basis. However, in a society which has the economic basis to support a dense population, the density itself does not deprive the citizen of one’s privacy, and it does no expose one to constant intrusions of others. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

An adequate standard of living, however, takes care only of the lack of privacy and constant exposure to others. It does not solve the problem of anomie, of the lack of Gemeinschaft, of the individual’s need to live in a World that has human proportions, whose members know each other as persons. The anomie of industrial society can only be removed if the whole social and spiritual structure is changed radically: if the individual is not only adequately fed and houses, but the interests of society become identical with the interests of each individual; when the relationship to one’s fellow human and the expression of one’s powers, rather than the consumption of things and antagonism to one’s fellow humans, become the principles which govern social and individual life. This is possible under the condition of high population density, but it requires radical rethinking of all our premises and radical social change. It follows from these considerations that all analogies from animal to human crowding are of limited value. The animal has an instinctive “knowledge” of the space and the social organization it needs. It reacts instinctively with aggression in order to remedy a disturbance of its space and social structure. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

It has no other way to respond to threats to its vital interests in these respects. However, humans have many other ways. They can change the social structure, they can develop bonds of solidarity an of common values beyond what is instinctually given. The animal’s solution to crowding is a biological instinctive one; human’s solution is social and political. “And again, I, Alma, having been commanded of God that I should take Amulek and go forth and preach again unto this people, or the people who were in the city of Ammonihah, it came to pass as I began to preach unto them, they began to contend with me, saying: Who art thou? Suppose ye that we shall believe the testimony of one human, although one should preach unto us that the Earth should pass away? Now they understood not the words which they spake; for they knew not that the Earth should pass away. And they said also: We will not believe thy words if thou shouldst prophesy that this great city should be destroyed in one day. Now they knew not that God could do such marvelous works, for they were a hard-hearted and a stiffnecked people. And they said: Who is God, that sendeh no more authority than one human among this people, to declare unto them the truth of such great and marvelous things? And they stood forth to lay their hands on me; but behold, they did not. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

“And I stood with boldness to declare unto them, yea, I did boldly testify unto them, saying: Behold, O ye wicked and perverse generation, how have ye forgotten the tradition of your fathers; yea, how soon ye have forgotten the commandments of God. Do ye not remember that our father, Lehi, was brought out of Jerusalem by the hand of God? Do ye not remember that they were all led by him through the wilderness? And have ye forgotten so soon how many times he delivered our fathers out of the hands of their enemies, and preserved them from being destroyed, even by the hands of their own brethren? Yea, and if it had no been for his matchless power, and his mercy, and his long-suffering towards us, we should unavoidably have been cut off from the face of the Earth long before this period of time, and perhaps been consigned to a state of endless misery and woe. Behold, now I say unto you that he commandeth you to repent; and except ye repent, ye can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God. However, behold, this is not all—he has commanded you to repent, or he will utterly destroy you from off the face of the Earth; yea, he will visit you in his anger, and in his fierce anger he will not turn away. Behold, do ye not remember the words which he spake unto Lehi, saying that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land? #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“And again it is said that: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. Now I would that ye should remember that ye should remember, that inasmuch as the Lamanites have not kept the commandments of God, they have been cut off from the presence of the Lord. Now we see that the word of the Lord has been verified in this thing, and the Lamanites have been cut off from his presence, from the beginning of their transgressions in the land. Nevertheless I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for them in the day of judgment than for you, if ye remain in your sins, yea, and even more tolerable for them in this life than for you, except ye repent. For there are many promises which are extended to the Lamanites; for it is because of the traditions of their fathers that caused them to remain in their state of ignorance; therefore the Lord will be merciful unto them and prolong their existence in the land. An at some period of time they will be brought to believe in his word, and to know of the incorrectness of the traditions of their fathers; and many of them will be saved, for the Lord will be merciful unto all who call on his name. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

However, behold, I say unto you that if ye persist in your wickedness that your days shall not be prolonged in the land, for the Lamanites shall be sent upon you; and if ye repent not they shall come in a time when you know not, and ye shall be visited with utter destruction; and it shall be according to the fierce anger of the Lord. For he will not suffer you that ye shall live in your iniquities, to destroy his people. I say unto you, Nay; he would rather suffer that the Lamanites might destroy all his people who are called the people of Nephi, if it were possible that they could fall into sins and transgressions, after having had so much light and so much knowledge given unto them of the Lord their God; yea, after having been such a highly favoured people of the Lord; yea, after having been favoured above every other nation, kindred, tongue, or people; after having had all things made known unto them, according to their desires, and their faith, and prayers, of that which has been and which is, and which is to come; having been visited by the Spirit of God; having converse with angels, and having been spoken unto by the voice of the Lord; and having the spirit of prophecy, and the spirit of revelation, and also many gifts, the gift of speaking with tongues, and the gift of preaching, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the gift of temptation; #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“Yea, an after having been delivered of God out of the land of Jerusalem, by the hand of the Lord; having been saved from famine, and from sickness, and all manner of diseases of every kind; and they having waxed strong in battle, that they might not be destroyed; having been brought out of bondage time after time, and having been kept and preserved until now; and they have been prospered until they are rich in all manner of things—and now behold I say unto you, that if this people, who have received so many blessings from the hand of the Lord, should transgress contrary to the light and knowledge which they do have, I say unto you that if this be the case, that if they should fall into transgression, it would be far more tolerable for the Lamanites than for them. For behold, the promises of the Lord are extended to the Lamanites, but they are not unto you if ye transgress; for has not the Lord expressly promised and firmly decreed, that if ye will rebel against him that ye shall utterly be destroyed from off the face of the Earth? And now for this cause, that ye may not be destroyed, the Lord has sent his angel to visit many of his people, declaring unto them that they must go forth and cry mightily unto this people, saying: Repent ye, for the kingdom in Heaven is nigh at hand. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“And not many days hence the Son of God shall come in his glory; and his glory shall be the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of his grace, equity, and truth, full of patience, mercy, and long-suffering, quick to hear the cries of his people and to answer their prayers. And behold, he cometh to redeem those who will be baptized unto repentance, through faith on his name. Therefore, prepare ye the way of the Lord, for the time is at hand that all humans shall reap a reward of their works, according to that which they have been—if they have been righteous they shall reap the salvation of their souls, according to the power and deliverance of Jesus Christ; and if they have been evil they shall reap the damnation of their souls, according to the power and captivation of the devil. Now behold, his is the voice of the angel crying, unto the people. And now, my beloved brethren, for ye are my brethren, and ye ought to be beloved, and ye ought to bring forth works which are meet for repentance, seeing that your hearts have been grossly hardened against the word of God, and seeing that ye are a lost and fallen people. Now it came to pass that when I, Alma, had spoken these words, behold, the people were wroth with me because I said unto them that they were a hard-hearted and stiffnecked people. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

“And also because I said unto them that they were a lost and a fallen people they were angry with me, and sought to lay their hands upon me, that they might cast me into prison. However, it came to pass that the Lord did not suffer them that they should take me at that time and cast me into prison. And it came to pass that Amulek went and stood forth, and began to preach unto them also. And now the words of Amulek are not all written, nevertheless a part of his words are written in this book,” reports Alma 9.1-34. O Thou Most High, Creator of the ends of the Earth, Governor of the Universe, Judge of all humans, Head of the Church, Saviour of sinner; Thy greatness is unsearchable, Thy goodness infinite, Thy compassions unfailing, Thy providence boundless, Thy mercies ever new. We bless Thee for the words of salvation. How important, suitable, encouraging are the doctrines, promises, and invitations of the gospel of peace! We are lost: but in it Thou hast presented to us a full, free and eternal salvation; weak: but here we learn that help is found in one that is mighty, poor: but in him we discover unsearchable riches, blind: but we find He has treasures of wisdom and knowledge. We thank Thee for Thy unspeakable gift. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

Thy Son is our only refuge, foundation, hope, confidence; we depend upon His death, rest in his righteousness, desire to bear his image; may His glory fill our minds, His love reign in our affections, His cross inflame us with ardour. Let us Christians fill our various situations in life, escape he snares to which they expose us, discharge the duties that arise from our circumstances, enjoy with moderation their advantages, improve with diligence their usefulness, and may every place and company we are in be benefited by us. O Most merciful God, incline Thy loving ears to my prayers, and illuminate my heart with the grace of the Holy Spirit, that I may be enabled worthily to minister to Thy Mysteries, and to love Thee with an everlasting love, and to attain everlasting joys, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We give Thee thanks, O Lord God of hosts, Who hast counted us worthy even now to stand at Thy holy Altar, and to entreat Thy compassion for our sins and for the errors of Thy people. Accept, O Lord, our supplication; make us worthy to offer unto Thee supplications and prayers and bloodless sacrifices for all Thy people; and enable us, whom Thou hast places in this ministry, by the power of Thy Holy Spirit, without condemnation and without offence, and keeping the witness of our conscience pure, to call upon Thee in every time and place. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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Thank you for the ears of Your dutiful concern for prayer, O merciful God, I bow down to you will, please grant my request, and allow the grace of the Holy Spirit, to illuminate our hearts, my heart; my I be worthy to serve at Thy mysteries. I know, that thou are the love of eternal love, and the joys of the age. During this time may I be worthy to receive your bountiful grace through Jesus Christ. Amen,

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Only the Power of Divine Holiness, Having Touched Our Existence, Can Bring Us Near to God!

July 17, 2020 1:07 am

I scarcely know myself. My mind roars like a turbulent sea in the storms of passion. If someone else could see my soul in this state, it would seem to one that it, like a skiff, plunged prow-first down into the ocean, as if in its dreadful momentum it would have to steer down into the depths of the abyss. One does not see that high on the mast a sailor is on the lookout. Roar away, you wild forces, roar away, you powers of passion; even if your waves hurl foam toward the clouds, you still are not able to pile yourselves up over my head—I am sitting a calmly as the king of the mountain. I am almost unable to find a foothold; like a water bird, I am seeking in vain to alight on the turbulent sea of my mind. And yet such turbulence is my element. I build upon it as the Alcedo ispida builds its nest upon the sea. Cockatiels ruffle their feathers when they see red. So it goes with me when I see green, every time I see a green cloak, and since my eyes often deceive me, all my expectations sometimes run aground on a porter from Frederik’s Hospital. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each had six wings; with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: The whole Earth is so full of his glory. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

“And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. And he said, Go, and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make heir ears heavy, and shut their eyes; least they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert, and be healed. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate. And the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. However, yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: As a teil tree, and as an oak, Whose substance is them, when they cast their leaves: So the holy seed shall be the substance thereof,” reports Isaiah 6. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

This is one of the greatest in the Old Testament (OT). It clearly reveals the essence of Biblical religion. The prophet describes the vision of his vocation in words and pictures which express at the same time his fundamental experience of God, his interpretation of human existence, and his conception of the prophet’s task. His experience of God is an experience of the holiness of God. He interprets human’s condition as one of uncleanness and inability to face God. The prophet’s task is paradoxically set against the natural meaning of prophecy. These three ideas belong together and comprise perhaps the highest expression ever given to the prophetic spirit. The prophet does not describe God Himself in any way. He speaks only of the train which filled the temple, of the Angels surrounding the Lord’s throne, of the shaking of the foundation, and of the smoke filling the house. In this manner he indicates that the revelation of God is at the same time the veiling of God. God can reveal Himself only by reaming veiled. However, even the veiled revelation makes Isaiah feel that he is perishing. If the Master had no patience with His disciples, He and they would soon part. If He had no belief in their eventual evolution, He and hey would never join in the Kingdom of Heaven. The facing of God, even if it be a mere approaching to His sphere, even if God Himself remain hidden, means the annihilation of humans. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The same feeling is expressed in the cry of the seraphim “Holy” has a double meaning, as he context clearly shows. It means the majesty of which the World is full; and it means purity as against human impurity. Glory without purity is the character of all pagan gods. And purity without glory is the character of all the humanistic ideas of God. Humanism has transformed the inaccessibility of God into the sublimity of His moral commands. Humanism has forgotten that God’s majesty, as experienced by the prophet, implies the shaking of the foundation wherever He appears, and the veil of smoke whenever He shows Himself. When God is identified with an element in human nature, as in humanism, the terrifying and annihilating encounter with majesty becomes an impossibility. However, “holy” means also moral perfection, purity, goodness, truth, and justice. God’s glory can fulfill all World, only because He is holy in this double sense. The glory of the gods who are not holy in this double sense can fulfill only one country, one family or tribe, one nation or state, or one sphere of human life. Consequently, they do no possess the truth and justice and purity of God Who is really God. They are demons aspiring to holiness, but excluded from it, because their glory is majesty without purity. Therefore, let us say, during this time particularly, “Thou only art holy!” #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

The prophet confesses that he is a man of unclean lips, and that he lives in the midst of a people with unclean lips. He emphasized his lips, because his work is preaching; but the impurity of his lips symbolizes the impurity of his entire existence, and of the existence of individuals and society as a whole. Isaiah exhibits profound insight, when he identifies himself with his unclean people in the very moment that he is made worthy of his exceptional vision. The difference between mystical and prophetic religion lies in that insight. For even in the greatest ecstasy, a prophet does not forget the social group to which one belongs, and its unclean character which he cannot lose. Consequently, the prophetic ecstasy, as opposed to the mystical ecstasy, is never an end in itself, but rather he means of receiving the divine commands which are to be preached to the people. Isaiah’s vision reveals the two conditions for prophetic existence. The lips of the prophet must first be purified by fire. He can then hear the Voice of God, the condition of his being sent by God. Nobody can be the prophet of God through his own strength; and nobody can absolve oneself. Only the power of Divine Holiness, having touched our existence, can bring us near to God. Something of our existence, sin, iniquity, or uncleanness must be burned away, must be annihilated. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Only through such annihilation can God speak to us and through us. However, whether or when He speaks to us at all does not depend upon us in any way. Isaiah did not produce either the vision or the purification. He was overcome with terror and awe. And he had to ac. For God asks, “Who will go for us?” God waits for the answer. He does not compel. Isaiah’s decision to go must be free. Freedom of decision is the second condition for prophetic existence. A prophet must decide whether or not one will dedicate oneself to the task. With respect to our fate and vocation we are free; with respect to our relation to God we are powerless. The majesty of God is evident in either case. The prophet then describes the content of the divine command. “Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes.” Our natural mora feelings refuse to accept such a paradox. For if we speak, we wish to make ourselves heard; and when we preach, we wish to convert and to heal. However, the prophet accepts the divine command. And when one’s natural feeling impels one to ask, “How long?” one receives the answer, “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate!” No hope or promise is expressed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

What is the meaning of that paradox? It means that the true prophets are in the actualization of His judgment against humankind. They are instruments in so far as the prophetic word always excites the opposition of humans with respect to both one’s vital existence and one’s moral and religious existence—indeed, particularly with respect to one’s religious existence. All people desire false prophets, who, through the glorification of their gods, glorify their followers and themselves. People long to be flattered in regard to their desires and virtues, their religious feeling and social activity, their will to power and utopian hopes, their knowledge and love, their family and race, their class and nation. And a false prophet can always be found to glorify the demon they worship. However, when the voice of the true prophet is raised, they shut their ears, they contradict one’s statements, and they ultimately persecute and kill one, because they are not able to receive one’s message. The order endures until the prophet’s words are fulfilled, and the cities are destroyed, and the land is made desolate. We are all eager for the prophetic spirit. We are anxious to lead the people to a new justice and to a better social order. We long to save the nations from the threatening doom. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

However, does our word, if it be God’s word, have a better effect than that which Isaiah saw in his vision and experienced in his life? Are we more than he was? Are our people today less devoted to demons than his people were? If not, can we expect anything other than what he was told to expect through his vision? We must pray for the prophetic spirit which has been dead for so long in the Churches. And one who feels that one has been given the prophetic task must fulfill it as Isaiah did. One must preach the message of a new justice and of a new social order in the name of God and His honour. However, one must expect to be opposed and persecuted not only by his enemies, but also by his friends, party, class, and nation. One must expect to be persecuted to the degree to which one’s word is the word of that God Who alone is holy, that God Who alone is able to create a holy people out of the remnant of every nation. One great advantage of the path of personal discipleship is that it requires no intellectual capacity, no special gifts of any kind, to get its profits and makes progress along its course. What could be simpler than remembering the master’s name and face? What could be easier than mentally turning to one every day in faith, reverence, humility and devotion? #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The advantage of having a living master is immense. Humans are so sense-bound that it is easier for one to follow an embodies ideal than a disembodied one, easier to understand truth in action than truth in the abstract. Should anyone have the god fortune to be taken under the wing of God, one’s progress will go forward at a far quicker rate than would otherwise be possible. It is not a little thing that one had someone to turn one in the right direction or that one’s movement in this direction is guided by an experienced pioneer. Although the master cannot do the disciple’s work for one, one can put the disciple in command of the special knowledge derived from long experience which can help one do the work more efficiently and more successfully. The master will teach with love what the student must learn with reverence. As the Master brings the disciple to clarify one’s own thinking and knowledge and awareness, the latter turns one’s attention to what is that one really does believe. The zeal of the Master will by slow degrees permeate the heart of the disciple. Under the Sunshine of this encouragement, inspiration, and stimulation, the inner life expands. Only those who have themselves feel it can understand how one is able to exert such drawing power and arouse such fervid devotion in disciples. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

The interpretation of history lies at the core of the modern situation. The interpretation of history is a philosophical, a political and a theological question. Coming out of the German philosophical tradition, we have been influenced by the historical thinking of the German idealist. In theology, the recurring question of the Church’s relation to culture and the modern emphasis on eschatology correspond to this primacy of history in modern thinking. If Christology implies an inquiry into the relation of Jesus the Christ to human thought and human life, then the Christological question is essentially historical: does the message of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ convey a reading of history which would be impossible without the Christ? To speak of history is to speak of past, present and future. However, nobody knows either past or present, present and future. Thus the present is the past; and it is equally true to say that the present is the future. The interrelationship of the past out of which the present is born, and the future of which the present is the matrix, constitutes the problem of time. This problem is further complicated by the fact that it is not enough to say, the present is also the past, and the present is the future. Besides a horizontal relation to past and future, the present as a vertical relation to the eternal: the present is eternity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

If it was deprived of an ultimate meaning, if it was but a moving, a flowing, a becoming and decaying, time would not be important. Thus the experience of the flow of time raises two distinct, yet connected, questions. To be on the mysterious boundary-line of the present, between the past which is no longer and the future which is not yet, raises the question of the meaning of time. The borderline is the truly propitious place for acquiring knowledge. Placed at the borderline which is the present, humans try to find the sense of the past and the direction of the future. They attempt to determine this sense in history. History is what gives meaning to time. So, it is important that we leave our monuments up, even if people do not understand them or are offended by them. In other words, history is essentially interpretative. It is not a collection of documents, a museum of facts, or a list of dates. This may be called erudition, but it is not history. Nor is history the past events themselves: it is their interpreted sense as we may discern it. As to the dimension of eternity in the present, it is religion, properly speaking. If it has an unconditional meaning, an unconditional depth, an unconditional reality, the flow of time is really. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

As we have seen, the perception of the Unconditional is the work of faith. Faith perceives the eternal dimension of the present. No interpretation of history can be ultimately satisfactory, unless it grasps the meaning of past and future in the light of the present as eternity. In this sense an interpretation of history is always implicitly religious. It is clear, then, that the concept of history has far-reading implications. If history is the meaning of time, it must be creative. The seasonal cycle of nature is not history, for it needs no explanation: it is complete as being, without lack, without need for something new or something better or something perfect. Instead, history deals with time as past and future seen through the present. And the future, since it is not yet, will be new. Accordingly, there is no history without the choice of a future; and there is no choice without freedom. History gives meaning to time through the mediation of a free decision or choice. The new, which occurs wherever history occurs, is meaning. In creating meaning, being gains freedom from itself, from the necessity of its nature. History exists where meaning is realized by freedom. The new which is produced by history is really new because it is produced by freedom. Freedom is the leap in which history transgresses the realm of pure being and creates meaning. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

To make my desires paramount is what Paul again descried as having a “flesh mine” or “mind of flesh,” which is a state of death, as reported in Romans 8.6. Such a mind “sows to one’s own flesh”—invests only in one’s natural self—and “out of that flesh reaps corruption,” reports Galatians 6.8. Corruption or coming apart is the natural end of the flesh. Flesh can only be preserved by being caught up within the higher life of the kingdom of God and this losing the life peculiar to it. In other words, when Jesus says that those who find their life or soul shall lose it, he is pointing out that those who think they are in control of their life—“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul,” as the poet William Ernest Henley said—will find that they definitely are not in control: they are totally at the mercy of forces beyond them, and even within them. They are on a sure course to disintegration and powerlessness, of lostness both to themselves and to God. They must surrender. By contrast, if they give up the project of being the ultimate point of reference in their life—of doing only what they want, of sowing to the flesh or to the natural aims and abilities of a human being—there can be hope. If they in that sense lose their life in favour of God’s life, or for the sake of Jesus and what he is doing on Earth—remember the ongoing World revolution he is now conducting—then their soul (life) will be preserved and thus given back to them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

There is an intimacy in the fellowship between teacher and disciple which is unique. There is an impersonality in this most personal of human relationships which is equally unique. No other relationships, whether familial or friendly, can compare with this relationship in depth or beauty or value. Mosiah forbids persecution and enjoins equality—Alma the younger and the four sons of Mosiah seek to destroy the Church—an angel appears and commands them to cease their evil course—Alma is struck dumb—all humankind must be born again to gain salvation—Alma and the sons of Mosiah declare glad tidings. About 100-92 Before Christ. And now it came to pass that the persecutions which were inflicted on the church by the unbelievers became so great that the church began to murmur, and complain to their leaders concerning the matter; and they did complain to Alma. And Alma laid the case before their king, Mosiah. And Mosiah consulted with his priests. And it came to pass that king Mosiah sent a proclamation throughout the land round about that there should not any unbeliever persecute any of those who belonged to the church of God. And there was a strict command throughout all the churches that there should be no persecutions among them, that there should be an equality among all humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

“That they should let no pride nor haughtiness disturb their peace; that every human should esteem one’s neighbour as oneself, labouring with their own hands for their support. Yea, and all their priests and teachers should labour with their own hands for their support, in all cases save it were in sickness, or in much want; and doing these things, they did abound in the grace of God. And there began to be much peace again in the land; and the people began to be very numerous, and began to scatter abroad upon the face of the Earth, yea, on the north and on the south, on the east and on the west, building large cities and villages in all quarters of the land. And the Lord did visit them and prosper them, and they became a large and wealthy people. Now the sons of Mosiah were numbered among the unbelievers; and also one of he sons of Alma was numbered among them, he being called Alma, after his father; nevertheless, he became a very wicked and an idolatrous man. And he was a man of many words, and did speak much flattery to the people; therefore he led many of the people to do after the manner of his iniquities. And he became a great hinderment to the prosperity of the church of God; stealing away the hearts of the people; causing much dissension among the people; giving a chance for the enemy of God to exercise his power over them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

“And now it came to pass that while he was going about to destroy the church of God, for he did go about secretly with the sons of Mosiah seeking to destroy the church, and to lead astray the people of the Lord, contrary to the commandment of God, or even the king—and as I said unto you, as they were going about rebelling against God, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto them; and he descended as it were in a cloud; and he spake as it were with a voice of thunder, which caused the Earth to shake upon which they stood; and so great was their astonishment, that they fell to the Earth, and understood not the words which he spake unto them. Nevertheless he cried again, saying: Alma, arise and stand forth, for why percecutest thou the church of God? For the Lord hath said: This is my church, and I will establish it; and nothing shall overthrow it, save it is the transgression of my people. And again, the angel said: Behold, the Lord hath heard they prayers of his servant, Alma, who is thy father; for he has prayed with much faith concerning thee that thou mightiest be brought to the knowledge of the truth; therefore, for this purpose have I come to conceive thee of the power and authority of God, that the prayers of his servants might be answered according to their faith. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

“And now behold, can ye dispute the power of God? For behold, doth not my voice shake the Earth? And can ye not also behold me before you? And I am sent from God. Now I say unto thee: Go, and remember the captivity of thy fathers in the land of Helam, and in the land of Nephi; and remember how great things he has done for them; for they were in bondage, and he has delivered them. And now I say unto thee, Alma, go thy way, and seek to destroy the church no more, that their prayers may be answered, and this even if thou wilt of thyself be cast off. And now it came to pass that these were the last words which the angel spake unto Alma, and he departed. And now Alma and those that were with hum fell again to the Earth, for great was their astonishment; for with their own eyes they had beheld an angel of the Lord; and his voice was as thunder, which shook the earth; and they knew that there was nothing save the power of God that could shake the Earth and cause it to tremble as though it would part asunder. And now the astonishment of Alma was so great that he became dumb, that he could not open his mouth; yea, and he became weak, even that he could not move his hands; therefore he was taken by those that were with him, and carried helpless, even until he was laid before his father. And they rehearsed unto his father all that had happened unto them; and his father rejoiced, for he knew that it was the power of God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

“And he caused that a multitude should be gathered together that they might witness what the Lord had done for his son, and also for those that were with him. And he caused that the priests should assemble themselves together; and they began to fast, and to pray to the Lord their God that he would open the mouth of Alma, that he might speak, and also that his limbs might receive their strength—that the eyes of the people might be opened to see and know of the goodness and glory of God. And it came to pass after they had fasted and prayed for the space of two days and two night, the limbs of Alma received their strength, and he stood up and began to speak unto them, bidding them o be of good comfort: for, said he, I have repented of my sins, and have been redeemed of the Lord; behold I am born of the Spirit. And the Lord said unto me: Marvel not that all humankind, yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters; and thus they become new creatures; and unless they do this, they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God. I say unto you, unless this be the case, they must be cast off; and this I know, because I was like to be cast off. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

“Nevertheless, after wading through much tribulation, repenting nigh unto death, the Lord in mercy hath seen fit to snatch me out of an everlasting burning, and I am born of God. My soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity. I was in the darkest abyss; but now I behold the marvelous light of God. My soul was racked with eternal torment; but I am snatched, and my soul is pained no more. I rejected my Redeemer, and denied that which had been spoken of by our fathers; but now that they may foresee that he will come, and ha he remembereth every creature of his creating, he will make himself manifest unto all. Yea, every knew shall bow, and every tongue confess before him. Yea, even at the last day, when all humans shall stand to be judged of him, then shall they confess that he is God; then shall they confess, who live without God in the World, that the judgment of an everlasting punishment is just upon them; and they shall quake, and tremble, and shrink beneath the glance of his all-searching eye. And now it came to pass that Alma began from this time forward to teach the people, and those who were with Alma at the time the angel appeared unto them, traveling round about through all the land, publishing to all the people things which they had heard and seen, and preaching the word of God in much tribulation, being greatly persecuted by those who were unbelievers, being smitten by many of them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

“However, notwithstanding all this, they did impart much consolation to the church, confirming their faith, and exhorting them with long-suffering and much travail to keep the commandments of God. And four of them were the sons of Mosiah; and their names were Ammon, and Aaron, and Omner, and Himni; these were the names of the sons of Mosiah. And they traveled throughout all the land of Zarahemla, and among all the people who were under the reign of king Mosiah, zealously striving to repair all the injuries which they had done to the church, confessing all their sins, and publishing all the things which they had seen, and explaining the prophecies and the scriptures to all who desired to hear them. And thus they were instruments in the hands of God in bringing many to the knowledge of the truth, yea, to the knowledge of their Redeemer. And how blessed are they! For they did publish peace; they did publish good tidings of good; and they did declare unto the people that the Lord reigneth,” reports Mosiah 27.1-37. O LORD our God, Who by Thine own presence dost shed the abundance of Thy Holy Spirit on those who are set apart, by Thine inscrutable power, to become Ministers, and to serve Thy spotless Mysteries; keep Thy servant, whom Thou hast willed to be promoted to the ministry of a Deacon, that he may hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience, with all virtue. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Please vouchsafe him the grace given to Thy first Martyr Stephen, who was first called by Thee to the work of this ministry; and enable him to administer according to Thy goodness,–for they that minister rightly purchase to themselves a god degree;–and fill him, by the presence of Thy holy and life-giving Spirit, with all faith, and love, and power, and sanctification. For Thou art our God, and to Thee we render glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. O LORD, we commune with Thee every day, but week days are Worldly days, and secular concerns reduce Heavenly impressions. We bless Thee therefore for the day scared to our souls when we can wait upon Thee and be refreshed; we thank Thee for the institutions of religion by use of which we draw near to Thee and Thou to us; we rejoice in another Lord’s Day when we call off our minds from the cares of the World and attend upon Thee without distraction; please let our retirement be devout, our conversation edifying, our reading pious, our hearing profitable, that our souls may be quickened and elevated. We are doing to the house of prayer, pour upon us the spirit of grace and supplication; we are going to the house of praise, awaken in us every grateful and cheerful emotion; we are going to the house of instruction, give testimony to the word preached, and glorify it in the hearts of all who hear; may it enlighten the ignorant, awaken the careless, reclaim the wandering, establish the weak, comfort the feeble-minded, make ready a people for their Lord. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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O God, great in power, unsearchable in understanding, wonderous in counsels towards the children of humans, do Thou fill with the gift of the Holy Spirit him whom Thou hast willed to undertake the degree of the Priesthood; that he may be worthy to stand before Thy holy Altar unblameably, to announce the Gospel of Thy kingdom, to administer the Word of Thy truth, to offer gifts and spiritual Sacrifices unto Thee, and to renew Thy people in the laver of Regeneration; that at the second coming of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, Thine Only-begotten, Son, he may go fort to meet Him and by the multitude of Thy mercies receive his reward: for Thy venerable and majestic Name is blessed and glorified. Please be a sanctuary to all who cannot come, forget not those who never come, and do thou bestow upon us benevolence towards our dependans, forgiveness towards our enemies, peaceableness toward our neighbours, openness towards our fellow-Christians. #CresleighHomes

It is Not Found in the Solid Earth or Twinkling Stars, but When the Skies Grow Dark, the Stars Begin to Shine!

July 9, 2020 2:01 am

In the United States of America there is more space where nobody is then where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is. As we know, there is no human experience, nor would experience be possible at all, without the intervention of a subjective aptitude. What is this subjective aptitude? Ultimately it consists in an innate psychic structure which allows humans to have experiences of this kind. Thus the whole nature of humans presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. The human system is tuned in to woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite World where there is water, light, air, slat, carbohydrates, excreta. The form of the Word into which humans are born is already inborn in them as a virtual image. Likewise parents, wife, children, birth, and death are inborn in humans as virtual images, as psychic aptitudes. These a priori categories have by nature a collective character; they are images of parents, wife, and children in general, and are not individual predestinations. We must therefore think of these images as lacking in solid content, hence as unconscious. They only acquire solidity, influence, and eventual consciousness in the encounter with empirical facts, which touch the unconscious aptitude and quicken it to life. They are in a sense the deposits of all our ancestral experience, but they are not the experiences themselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

So at least it seems to us, in the present limited state of our knowledge. (I must confess that I have never yet found infallible evidence for the inheritance of memory images, but I do not regard it as positively precluded that in addition to these collective deposits which contain nothing specifically individual, there may also be inherited memories that are individually determined.) An inherited collective image of woman exists in a man’s unconscious, with the help of which he apprehends the nature of woman. This inherited image is the third important source for the femininity of the soul. Now, everything that is true of the persona and of all autonomous complexes in general also holds true of the anima. She likewise is a personality, and this is why she is so easily projected upon a woman. So long as the anima is unconscious she is always projected, for everything unconscious is projected. The first bearer of the soul-image is always the mother; later it is borne by those women who arouse the man’s feelings, whether in a positive or a negative sense. Because the mother is the first bearer of the soul-image, separation from her is a delicate and important matter of the greatest educational significance. Accordingly among primitives we find a large number of rites designed to organize this separation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

The mere fact of becoming adult, and of outward separation, is not enough; impressive initiation into the “men’s house” and ceremonies of rebirth are still needed in order to make the separation from mother (and hence from childhood) entirely effective. Just as the father acts as a protection against the dangers of the external World and thus serves his son as a model persona, so the mother protects him against the dangers that threaten from the darkness of his psyche. In the puberty rites, therefore, the initiate receives instruction about these things of “the other side,” so that he is put in a position to dispense with his mother’s protection. The modern civilized man has to forgo this primitive but nonetheless admirable system of education. The consequence is that the anima, in the form of the mother-imago, is transferred to the wife; and the man, so soon as he marries, becomes childish, sentimental, dependent, and subservient or else truculent, tyrannical, hypersensitive, always thinking about the prestige of his superior masculinity. The last is of course merely the reverse of the first. The safeguard against the unconscious, which what his mother meant to him, is not replaced by anything in the modern man’s education; unconsciously, therefore, his ideal of marriage is so arranged that his wife has to take over the magical role of the mother. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Under the cloak of the ideally exclusive marriage he is really seeking his mother’s protection, and thus he plays into the hands of his wife’s possessive instincts. His fear of the dark incalculable power of the unconscious gives his wife an illegitimate authority over him, and forges such a dangerously close union that the marriage is permanently on the brink of explosion for internal tension—or else, out of protest, he files to the other extreme, with the same results. That little episode opens up a whole train of thought about inner Worlds and separate realities. What do we make of the vision or dream that Johnny Owen has at the age of three? He saw a large mysterious underground cavern, with all the light focused on a great pillar of flesh with something like a head on top, enthroned on a royal chair. Twenty years passed before he fully understood this experience, when he rediscovered this same vision in the phallic rituals of some primitive tribes. How had that vision come to him at the age of three? In what real World does this phenomenon belong? Read the story of Robert Monroe (1971), a hardheaded businessman and engineer, who, after some puzzling experiences, found himself one night floating up to the ceiling of his room, looking down on his own body and that of his wife. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

His account of these experiences, in which he tells of his initial fright, then his increasing willingness to take journeys out of his body, is startling indeed, and often very convincing. One cannot help but ponder the question: What reality can encompass such experiences, as well as the real experiences I know? How about Don Juan, the ageless Yaqui Indian, who opened whole new Worlds to the stubbornly skeptical anthropologist, Carlos Castaneda? Worlds of magical events, of flights through the air, of a nonordinary reality where death is not different from life, where the man of knowledge has a spirit ally, where the impossible is experienced. Rubbish, you say? His own experiences were enough to force Castaneda to recognize that there exist separate realities completely alien to the thinking of the modern scientific mind. I think of John Lilly, a scientist trained at the California Institute Technology, who went on to study neuroanatomy, medicine, and psychiatry, and who is perhaps best known for his twelve years of work with dolphins, trying to communicate with these animals, who he believes are at least as intelligent as human beings. To trace his path from his beginnings as a scientist who believed only in mechanical models of reality, to his present view that there are various levels of altered consciousness (which he had achieved and helped others to achieve), is mind-boggling. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

Along the way, he came convinced that the dolphins could read his thoughts. Lilly’s experiences in a sensory deprivation tank, where he floated in warm water with absolutely minimal input of sight, sound, touch, or taste—were fascinating. He discovered that the inner World, without any external stimuli, was incredibly rich, sometimes frightening, often bizarre. In trying to understand this inner World, he experimented with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD), with both illuminating and terrifying results. This led to meditation, unbidden thought transmission, and higher and higher state of consciousness in which he—like many before him, who were called mystics—experienced the Universe as a unity, a unity based on love. Quite a distance from this Caltech training! These and other accounts cannot simply be dismissed with contempt or ridicule. The witnesses are too honest, their experiences too real. All these accounts indicate that vast and mysterious Universe—perhaps an inner reality, or perhaps a spirit World of which we are all unknowingly a part—seems to exist. Such a Universe delivers a final crushing blow to our comfortable belief that we all know what the real World is. Where have my thoughts led me in relation to an objective World of reality? It clearly does not exist in the objects we can see and feel and hold. It does not exist in the technology we admire so greatly. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

It is not found in the solid Earth or the twinkling stars. It does not lie in a solid knowledge of those around us. It is not found in the organizations or customs or rituals of any one culture. It is not even in our own known personal Worlds. It must take into account mysterious and currently unfathomable separate realities, incredibly different from an objective World. I, and many others, have come to a new realization. It is this: The only reality I can possibly know is the World as I perceive and experience it at this moment. The only reality you can possibly know is the World as you perceive and experience it at this moment. And the only certainty is that those perceived realities are different. There are as many real Worlds as there are people! This creates a most burdensome dilemma, one never before experienced in history. From time immemorial, the tribe or the community or the nation or the culture as agreed upon what constitutes the real World. To be sure, different tribes or different cultures might have held sharply different World views, but at least there was a large, relatively unified group which felt assured in its knowledge of the World and the Universe, and knew that this perception was true. So the community frowned upon, condemned, persecuted, even killed those who did not agree, who perceived reality differently. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

Copernicus, even though he kept his findings secret for many years, was eventually declared a heretic. Galileo established proof of Copernicus’s views, but in his seventies, he was forced to recant this teaching. Giordano Brun was burned at the stake in 1600 for teaching that there were many Worlds in the Universe. Executioners set the stake up in line with the scaffold, then the trunk and the rest were covered with logs and faggots, and the fire was put to the straw mixed with this wood, and they stunk a match and watched him go up in flames are he screamed, “My God, have pity on me! Jesus, Help me!” Individuals who deviated in their perceptions of religious reality were tortured and killed. In the mid-1800s, Ignaz Semmelweis, an intense young Hungarian physician-scientist, was driven insane by his persecutors because he made the then absurd claim that childbed fever, that dread scourge of the maternity room, was carried from one woman to another by invisible germs on the hands and instruments of the doctors. Obvious nonsense, in terms of the reality of his day. In our own American Colonies, those who were even suspected of having psychic powers were considered witches and were hanged or crushed under great sones. History offers a continuing series of examples of the awful price paid by those who perceived a reality different from the agreed-upon real World. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Although society has often come around eventually to agree with its dissidents, as in the instances I have mentioned, there is doubt that this insistence upon a known and certain Universe has been par of the cement that holds a culture together. Today we face a different situation. The ease and rapidity of Worldwide communication means that everyone of us is aware of dozens realities; even though we may thin some of them absurd (like reincarnation) or dangerous (like communism which is becoming a staple in California’s democratic party), we cannot help but be aware of them. No longer can we exist in a secure cocoon, knowing that we all see the World in the same way. Because of this change, I want to raise a very serious questions: Can we today afford the luxury of having “a” reality? Can we still preserve the belief that there is a “real World” upon whose definition we all agree? I am convinced that this is a luxury we cannot afford, a myth we dare no maintain. Only once in recent history has his been fully and successfully achieved. Millions of people were in complete agreement as to the nature of social and cultural reality—an agreement brought about by the mesmerizing influence of Adolph Hitler. This agreement about reality marked the destruction of Western culture. I do not see it as something to be emulated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

In Western culture during this century—especially in the United States of America—there has also been an agreed-upon reality of values. This gospel can be stated very briefly: “More is better, bigger is better, faster is better, and modern technology will achieve all three of these eminently desirable goals.” However, now that credo is a crumbling disaster in which few believe. It is dissolving in the smog of pollution, the famine of overpopulation, the Damocles’ sword of the nuclear bomb. We have so successfully achieved the goal of a “bigger bang for a buck” that we are in danger of destroying all life on this planet. Our attempt, then, to live in the “real World” which all perceive in the same way have, in my opinion, led us to the brink of annihilation as a species. I will be so bold as to suggest alternative. It appears to me that they way of the future must be to base our lives and our education on the assumption that there are as many realities as there are persons, and that our highest priority is to accept that hypothesis and proceed from there. Proceed where? Proceed, each of us, to explore open-mindedly the many, many perceptions of reality that exist. We would, I believe, enrich our own lives in the process. We would also become more able to cope with the reality in which each one of us exist, because we would be aware of many more options. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

A World with the possibility of countless realities might well be a life full of perplexity and difficult choices, demanding greater maturity, but it would be an exciting and adventurous life. The question may well be raised, however, whether we could have a community or a society based on this hypothesis of multiple realities. Might not such a society be a completely individualistic anarchy? That is not my opinion. Suppose my grudging tolerance of your separate World view became a fully acceptance of you and your right to have such a view. Supposed that instead of shutting out the realities of others as absurd or dangerous or heretical or stupid, I was willing to explore and learn about those realities? Suppose you were willing to do the same. What would be the social result? I thin that our society would be based not on a blind commitment to a cause or creed or view of reality, but on a common commitment to each other as rightfully separate persons, with separate realities. The natural human tendency to care for another would no longer be, “I care for you because you are the same as I,” but, instead, “I prize and treasure you because you are different from me.” Idealistic, you say? It surely is. How can I be so utterly naïve and “unrealistic” as to have any hope that such a drastic change could conceivably come about? #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

I base my hope partly on the view of World history so aptly stated by Charles Beard: “When the skies grow dark, the stars begin to shine.” So we may see the emergence of leaders who are moving in this new direction. I base my hope, even more solidly, on the view enunciated by Lancelot Whyte, the historian of idea, in his final book before his death. It is his theory, in which he is not alone, that great steps in human history are anticipated, and probably brought about, by changes in the unconscious thinking of thousands and millions of individuals during the period preceding the change. Then, in a relatively short space of time, a new idea, a new perspective, seems to burst upon the World scene, and change occurs. He gives the example that before 1914, patriotism and nationalism were unquestioned virtues. Then began the faint unconscious questioning which built an unconscious tradition reversing a whole pattern of thought. This new perspective burst into open between 1950 and 1970. “My country, right or wrong” is no longer a belief to live by. Nationalistic wars are out of date and out of favour, and even though they continue, World opinion is deeply opposed. Whyte (1974) points out that “at any moment the unconscious levels are ahead of the conscious in the task of unifying emotion, thought and action!” (p.107) #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

For me, this line of thought is entirely congenial. I have stated that we are wiser than our intellects, that our organisms as a whole have a wisdom and purposiveness which goes well beyond our conscious thought. I believe that this idea applies to the concept I have been presenting thus far. I think that men and women, individually and collectively, are inwardly and organismically rejecting the view of one single, culture-approved reality. I believe they are moving inevitably toward the acceptance of millions of separate, challenging, exciting, informative, individual perceptions of reality. I regard it as possible that this view—like the sudden and separate discovery of the principles of quantum mechanics by scientists in different countries—may begin to come into effective existence in many parts of the World at once. If so, we will be living in a totally new Universe, different from any in history. Is it conceivable that such a change can come about? Here lies the challenge to educators—probably the most insecure and frightened among any of the professions—battered by public pressures, limited by legislative restrictions, essentially conservative in their reactions. Can they possibly espouse such a new of multiple realities as I have been describing? Can they begin to bring into being the changes in attitudes, behaviours, and values that such a World view would demand? #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Certainly, by themselves they cannot. However, with the underlying change in what Whyte calls “the unconscious tradition,” and with the assistance of the new person whom I and many others see emerging in our culture, it is just conceivable that they might succeed. If nations follow their past ways, then, because of the speed of World communication of separate views, each society will have to exert more and more coercion to bring about a forced agreement as to what constitutes the real World and its values. Those coerced agreements will differ from nation to nation, from culture to culture. The coercion will destroy individual freedom. We will bring about our own destruction through the clashes caused by differing World views. However, I have suggested an alternative. If we accept as a basic fact of all human life that we live in separate realities; if we can see those differing realities as the most promising resource for learning in all the history of the World; if we can live together in order to learn from one another without fear; if we can do all this, then a new age could be dawning. And perhaps—just perhaps—humankind’s deep organic sensing are paving the way for just a change. “And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God,” reports 1 Corinthians 6.11. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

One of the amazing things about the human being is that it is capable of restoration, and indeed of a restoration that makes it somehow more magnificent because it has been ruined. This is a hopeful but strange thought. How it is so should become clear as we proceed. However, for now we want to see clearly what goes on within the person who is “unruined,” as we might say. In particular, we must see what is the basic shift (given regeneration and forgiveness) that can lead to the reordering of the six universal dimensions of the human self in subordination to God. The key to understanding the overall reordering is provided by what we learned about the human ruin in the past. For as the surest source of destruction to humans is to obey themselves, so the only haven for safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let thus, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our mind to the service of God. With theses words, we simply restate the basic point of view of Christ’s people through the ages. By service, I mean not only that which consists in verbal obedience, but that by which the mind, diverted of its own carnal feelings, implicitly obeys the call of the Spirit of God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

It is part of the task of a spiritual director to point out tactfully but firmly the faults and deficiencies of one’s disciples, to make them more aware of what is needed in their moral self-correction. The spiritual directors who is over-severe in one’s correction of the aspirant’s faults, needs correcting oneself. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this World, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve that God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will,” reports Romans 12.2. The spiritual leader who is always soft and sentimental may help some of one’s pupils but one would help them more if, at the same time, one were also hard and firm. The first attitude will attract more to one, but without the second to balance it neither one nor they will get the proper view of life. A true teacher must warn one’s followers against false expectations and irredeemable promises, “And to be renewed in the sprit of your minds,” reports Ephesians 4.23. It is not enough to one has the penetration to perceive the truth; one must also have the courage to tell it to one’s disciples, even though one knows it will shock them. There is a need for people to have caution, discernment, and even secrecy in this matter. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” reports Galatians 2.20. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Disciples often go to a spiritual leader for their emotional comfort, they do not come for their ego’s emotional quietus. They want to remain enclosed in its little circle, not to be taken completely out of it. “Now there was a place in Shemlon where the daughters of the Lamanites did gather themselves together to sing, and to dance, and to make themselves merry. And it came to pass that there was one day a small number of them gathered together to sing and to dance. And now the priests of king Noah being ashamed to return to the city of Nephi, yea, and also fearing that the people would slay them, therefore they durst not return to their wives and their children. And having tarried in the wilderness, and having discovered the daughters of the Lamanites, they laid and watched them; and when there were but few of them gathered together to dance, they came forth out of their secret places and took them and carried them into the wilderness; yea, twenty and four of the daughters of the Lamanites they carried into the wilderness. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites found that their daughters had been missing, they were angry with the people of Limhi, for they thought it was the people of Limhi. Therefore they sent their armies forth; yea, even the king himself went before his people; and they went up to the land of Nephi to destroy the people of Limhi. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

“And now Limhi had discovered them from the tower, even all their preparation for war did he discover; therefore he gathered his people together, and laid wait for them in the fields and in the forests. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites had come up, that the people of Limhi began to fall upon them from their waiting places, and began to slay them. And it came to pass that the battle became exceedingly sore, for they fought like lions for their prey. And it came to pass that the people of Limhi began to drive the Lamanites before them; yet they were not half so numerous as the Lamanites. However, they fought for their lives, and for their wives, and for their children; therefore they exerted themselves and like dragons did they fight. And it came to pass that they found the king of the Lamanites among the number of their dead; yet he was not dead, having been wounded and left upon the ground, so speedy was the flight of his people. And they took him and bound up his wounds, and brought him before Limhi, and said: Behold, here is the king of the Lamanites; he having received a wound has fallen dead, and they have left him; and behold, we have brought him before you; and now let us slay him. However, Limhi said unto them: Ye shall not slay him, but bring him hither that I may see him. And they brought him. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

“And Limhi said unto him: What cause have ye to come up to war against my people? Behold, my people have not broken the oath that I made unto you; therefore, why should ye break the oath which ye made unto my people? And now the kind said: I have broken the oath because thy people did carry away the daughters of my people did carry away the daughters of my people; therefore, in my anger did I cause my people to come up to war against thy people. And now Limhi had heard nothing concerning this matter; therefore he said: I will search among my people and whosoever has done this thing shall perish. Therefore he caused a search to be made among his people. Now when Gideon had heard these things, he being the king’s captain, he went forth and said unto the king: I pray three forbear, and do not search this people, and lay not this thing to their charge. For do ye not remember the priests of thy father, whom this people sought to destroy? And are they not in the wilderness? And are not they the ones who have stolen the daughters of the Lamanites? And now, behold, and tell the king of these things, that he may tell his people that they may be pacified towards us; for behold they are already preparing to come against us; and behold also there are but few of us. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

“And behold, they come with their numerous hosts; and expect the king doth pacify them towards us we must perish. For are not the words of Abinadi fulfilled, which he prophesied against us—and all this because we would not hearken unto the words of the Lord, and turn from our iniquities? And now let us pacify the king, and fulfill the oath which we have made unto him; for it is better than we should lose our lives; therefore, let us put a stop to the shedding of so much blood. And now Limhi told the kind all the things concerning his father, and the priests that had fled into the wilderness, and attributed the carrying away of their daughters to them. And it came to pass that the king was pacified towards his people; and he said unto them: Let us go forth to meet my people, without arms; and I swear unto you with an oath that my people shall not play thy people. And it came to pass that they followed the king, and went forth without arms to meet the Lamanites. And it came to pass that they did meet the Lamanites; and they king of the Lamanites did bow himself down before them, and did plead in behalf of the people of Limhi. And when the Lamanites saw the people of Limhi, that they were without arms, they had compassion on them and were pacified towards them, and returned with their king in peace to their own land,” reports Mosiah 20.1-26. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

God of all Good, I bless Thee for the means of grace; please teach me to see in them Thy loving purposes and the joy and strength of my soul. Thou hast prepared for me a feast; and though I am unworthy to sit down as guest, I wholly rest on the merits of Jesus, and hide myself beneath his righteousness; when I hear his tender invitation and see his wonderous grace, I cannot hesitate, but must come to Thee in love. By Thy Spirit enliven my faith rightly to discern and spiritually to apprehend the Saviour. While I gaze upon the emblems of my Saviour’s death, may I ponder why he died, and hear him say, ‘I gave my life to purchase yours, presented myself an offering to expiate your sin, shed my blood to blot out your guilt, opened my side to make you clean, endure your curses to set you free, bore your condemnation to satisfy divine justice.’ O May I rightly grasp the breadth and length of this design, draw near, obey, extend the hand, take the bread, receive the cup, eat and drink, testify before all humans that I do for myself, gladly, in faith, reverence and love, receive my Lord, to be my life, strength, nourishment, joy, delight. In the supper I remember his eternal love, boundless grace, infinite compassion, agony, cross, redemption, and receive assurance of pardon, adoption, life, glory. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

As the outward elements nourish my body, so may Thy indwelling Spirit invigorate my soul, until that day when I hunger and thirst no more, and sit with Jesus at his Heavenly feast. O God, Who desirest not the death, but the repentance of sinners, we beseech Thee, in Thy loving-kindness, to turn Thy people to Thyself; that when they devote themselves to Thee, Thou mayest remove the scourges of Thine anger; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, mercifully to drive away from Thy faithful, together with their own errors, the destructive fury of diseases; that as Thou deservedly scourgest them when they go astray, Thou mayest cherish them with Thy pity when they are brought back; through Jesus Christ our Lord. The kind of master needed and sought after by those who are on the religio-mystic-occult path is one who will take a keen interest in their personal life as well as spiritual welfare, one who is willing to help them with any and every problem, one who by virtue of residence or correspondence is always and quickly available to them. The philosophic master is not like this but of a different kind. One is not a missionary telling others that they must follow the Quest but an educator telling them that they may follow it if they so choose. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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We beseech Thee, O Lord, give effect to our devout supplication, and mercifully turn away the famine (or the pestilence); that the hearts of humans may know that these scourges both proceed from Thine indignation, and cease by Thy compassion; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #CresleighHomes

The World is so Full of a Number of things, I am Sure We Should All be as Happy as Kings and Queens!

July 6, 2020 2:08 am

Because we are part of Nature, we are evolutionary products of the Nature of which we are active participants; our minds are inseparably joined with the functioning of our brains; and as an inseparable unity of body and personhood, we can have no conscious (or “real”) survival after death. With courage, vision, and reliance on our own human resources, we can solve the problems we have created and which are imposed on us by natural circumstances or happenstance. Although most of us are conditioned by the past and even the present, we have genuine freedom of creative choice and action, withing certain objective limits. Not only is it your existential freedom, but also your responsibility in exercising that freedom. People need to engage in things that give them a chance to experience themselves as an entity separate from their environment, with the capacity to respond upon their own initiative rather than merely reacting. It is always good to address the overriding issue of racism and its concomitant effect (id est, feelings of inferiority, self-doubt, lack of self-worth, and so on). Some people possess the belief that they have to be better than the majority in order to be accepted as an equal or any progress that one has made in one’s career was due to them being marginalized rather than one’s abilities—both have an element of truth when viewed in a sociohistorical context. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

To invalidate this experience with substitute psychospeck explanations (jargon of psychology and psychoanalysis, especially when regarded as trite or trivial, id est inferiority complex, paranoia, and so one) will only serve to mystify and do further violence to the experience. In other words, it is important for people to understand the sociohistorical precedence for the presents attitudes one feels victim to Whether one’s experience is valid in an objective sense is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because the sociohistorical context already provides for the possibility of the pervasiveness of these racist attitudes. However, it is equally important for one to realize one’s own responsibility in exercising one’s freedom to transcend the negative confines of the sociohistorical context. What one is to confront ultimately is not the inferiority and self-doubt imposed from without but inferiority that emerges from within when the choice is made to abandon, not only responsibility, but also the ability to respond. For many, the veil of inferiority and self-doubt can be lifted when one begins to experience oneself as a person apart from one’s race or gender or job; that is, as one who is free to choose, to act, and to be. While social constructions like race can be a source of identity, that which is invalid racial cultural heritage (id est, nonbeing, inferiority) and that which is valid immediate experience (id est, freedom, meaning, beings) are reconciled in an existential encounter that encompasses the sociohistorical context. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

To dismiss the influence of either past or present social context would be delusional. However, freedom comes with the awareness that one’s persona and collective history does not determine present choice but rather acknowledges the past in order that one may fruitfully move beyond it to facilitate the cycle of freedom. One’s journey toward freedom begins with one’s recognition that the choices one made in the past could be made meaningful in the present when one recognizes one’s responsibility for those choices. Moreover, personal acknowledgment of one’s ability to respond opens one up to heretofore unrecognized potentialities. When seeking therapy, racial/ethnic heritage of your therapist is unimportant. What is important is that the therapist be grounded in a broad education that offers one the necessary sensitivity to the sociohistorical influences on the client. An existential framework can lend invaluable perspective to that understanding. Nowhere is the perception of being hyperconstricted, of being dismissed and wiped away, more acute than in the general American community today; and many people White, Black, Asian, Native American, Latino and Indian are a representative casualty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The average aspirant does not find the true teachers because one would not behave oneself correctly if one did. Sooner or later one would abuse the lofty character of the relation of discipleship ad seek to force it to become a half-Worldly one. It is probably true to say that even imperfect teachers, who are all that the public is likely to know, often receive from their followers frantic appeals for this or that personal intervention or frenzied outpourings concerning this or that personal material problem for which immediate help is demanded. However, even when the aspirant has lined oneself up with an embodied master or invisible adept, a scriptural personage or one’s own higher self, one may start to assume that the higher power or person is henceforth going to settle all one’s personal troubles without one’s own higher self, one may start to assume that the higher power or person is henceforth going to settle all one’s personal troubles without one’s own exertions being called for. This is a piece of wishful thinking. The very purpose of evolution would be defeated if one were to be deprived of the opportunity of tackling one’s problems and troubles for oneself: it is only so that one’s capacities can stretch out and one’s understanding enlarge itself. We may sympathize with the need of troubled disciples, but a wrong notion of what constitutes the teacher-disciple relation would not help them. It will lead to false hopes and the anguish of subsequent disappointment. For what is it they are really trying to do? #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

From their first day in the real World, especially with lives being lost, cultures being degraded, businesses being forced to shut, people being made to stop working and stay home, land being taken away, foreclosures, evictions, and so forth, people are told to disparage themselves. Lacking their own cultural yardstick, many are squeezed into the yardstick of the majority and distance oneself from that which is dynamic in oneself. Becoming increasingly depersonalized, some may choose to drop out of college after two years, abandoning the idea of a degree. Surprisingly, however (or perhaps not so surprisingly, given one’s driven, overcompensatory needs), individuals often are then able to work their way into a management position. Yet, these positions resolve little in their lives—especially in their desolated cores. People are both attached to and reviled by their core. It keeps them safe, buffering them from the risks of success; but it also suffocates one and chokes off their developmental promise. Although many individuals are mostly depressed, therefore, they are also periodically grandiose—to counter their empty spirit. It is important to find a therapist who can help to break this debilitating cycle. It is helpful to pause over one’s expansive and constrictive fears, clarify them, and learn to become response-able toward them, turning them to one’s advantage. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Yet, before many can face this formidable task, one must deal with more immediate matters—such as their debts to their creditors. These can be dealt with at the social-advocacy level by finding someone to tangibly help one with one’s obligations. This kind of assistance, it should be noted, is extremely significant with the Existential-Integrative framework. Until people are both ready and capable of change, experiential inquiry is fruitless. It is highly important, therefore, to clear the space for such experiential inquiry if fruitless. It is highly important, therefore, to clear the space for such experiential inquiry by addressing the crises that prevent it. Once a person’s debts are alleviated, this will help to expand a person’s self-esteem. This can be facilitated at the cognitive-behavioural levels—reinforcing appropriate spending habits, rationally restricting one’s outlook on work, and so on. This reconditioning will help one feel more accomplished and will broaden one’s capacity for choice. The Adlerian concepts of inferiority-superiority (which refers to the practice and belief that people as individuals should be validated, connected, and made to feel significant) are helpful, but limited in their sphere of application. It must also be revealed to one how one keeps oneself from full presence and thus sets oneself up for dysfunction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

There are two exercises in combination—and the help from a sensitive doctor’s demystification of racism—will help one to see how one can empower one’s life and how one can productively respond to adverse conditions. They will take one out of the loop of extremism, moreover—where one was either too little or too much—and reveal to one the complexity (both freeing and limiting) of one’s liberation. In the final analysis, does one become successful? Yes, we are assured—but much in the manner of Sisyphus, who could ultimately respond to, and take responsibility for, one’s own destiny. In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect occurs when an activity that has been interrupted may be more readily recalled. It postulates that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. There is an ingredient, the invitation to sickness or the invitation to wellness. I think it would manifest itself in a multilevel way, but as expression of a fundamental commitment. Let us take the witches first of all, those who want to send out sickness waves. They probably are operating on the following assumption: “Other people are no darn good. They are worthless, and life is not worth living anyway.” That is one way of trying to describe or infer their philosophy of life. This attitude permeates presumably all of their interpersonal transactions and their sickness-making manifests itself almost in operant conditioning in terms. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

If every time the other person utters something that looks like joy or hope they say, “Nay,” they respond to joy or hope with negative reinforcement. And they disconfirm or punish any idiosyncratic expression from the other that reveals the other’s identity. The sick-maker is a genius for making others feel worthless, like nobody, as not worthy of attention. You see this in lots of mothers and fathers. And sometimes in those acquaintances that give you pain in the neck. The healers seem to operate on the philosophy that life is good. People are good. Individuality and self-disclosure are good. There is hope. In interpersonal transactions they welcome diversity, strength, self-confidence, groping, trying. They confirm the other. When somebody is trying to do something impossible, they do not say, “It is impossible, why waste the effort?” They say, “Good, good; try it.” If the person fails, rather than say, “I told you so,” they pick one up, and say, “Never mind. Dusty yourself off and try again, try again.” The healers and witches embody fundamental attitudes, what Dr. Freud termed Eros and Thanatos. This implies some people are destructive to health. If a person feels sick, hopeless, and worthless as long as one is involved with this person, and one feels better when the individual is away from one, what is to stop a therapist from saying, “Stay away from this person; one is a public-health menace to you”? #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

If the other person is a parent or a spouse, a neighbor, the mayor, governor, or fake news media, I do not know any magic solution. You and the individual wrestle with the dilemma. It is a conflict, but it is better to know what the conflict is and wrestle with it, than to deny it. Find out the cost of choosing this way or choosing that way. Then seek the guts to choose a way our or a way to live with the conflict. There is always the possibility, too, that somebody who lives with a lethal spouse, lethal parent, lethal fake news media, or lethal politicians may themselves have elicited this lethality. They may have invited the lethal one’s lethality. It is they themselves that changed their ways of being with that other person. For example, the individual may have repressed one’s anger and one’s strength. If one expressed them to spouse, parent, fake news media or politicians, this might have shut off the lethality of the other. I have seen it happen. A therapist can ask, “Why do you not tell your mayor or governor to go to hades?” The person says, “I could never say that.” However, one may be helped to express one’s anger and find one’s strength. One gets the message across, and the mayor and governor stops having a lethal effect on one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

It is a fascinating thought that just as there are bubonic-plague carries whom public-health official want to corral, and syphilis carriers, TB carries, COVID-19 carries—what about the “pain-in-the-neck-producers,” the “psychosis-producers,” the “disorganization-producers,” who are, in a sense, a public-health menace, who spread misery wherever they go? Should not these be identified and corralled? It is a possibility. What is to stop a teacher, at great risk, from saying to the parents of students who are in dysfunctional homes or apartments that, “I really believe your child is having difficulty in school because there is difficulty in the home”? I think they will get the message (if things do not improve and their health and grades keep declining, I am going to have to contact the proper authorities). Man, that is a rough problem, and you have to grope wit it. Grope that is my considered professional advice. Grope and do not give up. The main thing we can do is work with the child and hope that one can find oneself and muster up enough strength to go beyond one’s difficulties. Keep groping. That is a worthwhile motto for any person involved with the arts of counseling, therapy, or teaching—where no techniques yet invented can be guaranteed to bring about successful attainment of aims. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The therapist, like the artist, must continually grope for new ways to implement one’s objective, or bringing desirable human possibilities into being. Change is never easy. To pioneer is anxiety-arousing for the individual and threatening to colleagues. It seems it would be much simpler to go back to being the authority. It is hard being a person to people who depend on you. Many people have found the only way to handle the doubt of people who need them is to find ways of including them in the learning process. Individuals are finding that if they are to carry out a quiet revolution in the community and World, they definitely need a support group. This can be small, perhaps only two or three people, but a resource of persons where one does not need to defend one’s point of view, and can freely discuss the successes and failures, the problems faced, the difficulties unresolved. However, a facilitator is also taking the risk of threatening the administration. How is that dealt with? Many people are expected to write down behavioral objectives for each political representative or for each city and state, and later to give evidence that these objectives have been achieved. The anxiety that underlies these demands—sometimes encased in the law—is understandable. The public hopes that people are learning, and this has been the only way they can see of determining whether learning is taking place. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

What is a revolution? A redefinition of the facts of life, such that the new definition and the old definition of the same facts cannot coexist. Clearly, to advance a revolution threatens the power of a conventional administration, and a consequent risk to the facilitator, who is radical in the true sense of going to the root of the problem. This risk cannot be ignored. Nature has placed humankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasures. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of cause and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a human may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality one will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. However, enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to be improved. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

A day-by-day parceling out of grace—and only as much as we need—may seem inconsistent with the abundant generosity of God. This is not the case at all. Rather, as we say in the past, God continually works to keep us aware of our dependence on Him. We were created for a simple, childlike dependence on Him, but since the Fall we have tended to resist that dependence. God well knew this tendency when He gave this warning through Moses to the Israelites: “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ However, remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth, ad so confirms His covenant, which He swore to your forefathers, as it is today,” reports Deuteronomy 8.17-18. It is noteworthy that this warning occurs shortly after the reminder in verses 2-3. “Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that humans do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD,” Deuteronomy 8.2-3. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

There the Israelites were reminded of their days of extremity and very obvious dependence on God for their daily food. However, God warned them that, even after forty years of such conscious dependence, the day would come when they would look around at their bountiful supply of food and say, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” Such a self-sufficient attitude is obviously detrimental to our relationship with God, so He works to keep that from happening. He allows our respective thorns in the flesh to remain, giving us grace sufficient to cope with them only day by day. From time to time He brings extraordinary crises into our lives, as He did when Paul was forced to say, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. However, this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead,” reports 2 Corinthians 1.8-9. Despite his ever-present thorn, Paul was brought to a crisis extremity to learn anew to rely not on himself but on God. Whether it is the continuing thorn in the flesh or the extraordinary crisis that sometimes occurs, both are intended by God to keep us conscious of our human weakness and our dependence on Him, so that we might experience the sufficiency of His grace and the adequacy of His power. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Paul’s attitude towards his weakness was vastly different from our usual modern response. We abhor weakness and glory in self-sufficiency and humanmade accomplishment. Even Christians flock to hear the sports superstar or the popular entertainer give one’s testimony, simply because of that person’s fame and status. How many of us would make any effort to hear a person who said, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses. I delight in weaknesses. For wen I am weak, then I am strong”? I think of how I have struggled with my own weaknesses instead of delighting in them. I think of the disappointment of failing to reach important goals, of humiliations suffered that were too painful to ever share with anyone, of somewhat minor but very annoying lifetime physical infirmities. Only in the last few years, have I realized what a significant contribution those disappointments, heartaches, and frustrations—especially in their cumulative effect—have made on my walk with God and my service for Him. I think I am only beginning to understand a little bit the validity of Paul’s statement, “when I am weak, then I am strong.” Sometimes when I am introduced as a speaker, I cringe inwardly as the person introducing me waxes eloquent about my accomplishments. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

I sit there and think, What if they knew the other side of the story? Would they all get up and leave? Yet ironically, it is the other side of the story, the humiliations and heartaches, the failures and frustrations—not the successes and accomplishments—that have qualified me to be there to speak. Those difficult times have driven me to the Lord. I will be honest. It was not that I wanted to lean of God; I had no other choice. However, I am finally learning that in weakness I find strength—His strength. Every believer must learn that human weakness and divine grace go hand in and together. Paul had learned that lesson well. He said, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness so that Christ’s power may rest on me,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.9. Paul had learned that God’s grace is indeed sufficient; His divine enabling through the power of the Holy Spirit would sustain him in the midst of the torments of his thorn, and in the depths of other weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.10. The anguish Paul experienced was real anguish, and the grace he received was real grace. It was not theoretical, nor make-believe, nor merely whistling in the dark to keep courage. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

No, Paul’s experienced a very concrete expression of God’s love and power as the Holy Spirit ministered comfort and encouragement to him in the midst of affliction. Alma believers and write the words of Abinadi—Abinadi suffers death by fire—he prophesies disease and death by fire upon his murderers. About 148 Before Christ. “And now it came to pass that when Abinadi had finished these sayings, that the king commanded that the priests should take him and cause that he should be put to death. However, there was one among them whose name was Alma, he also being a descendant of Nephi. And he was a young man, and he believed the words which Abinadi had testified against them; therefore he began to plead with the kind that he would not be angry with Abinadi, but suffer that he might depart in peace. However, the kind was more wroth, and caused that Alma should be cast out from among them, and sent his servants after him that they might slay him. However, he fled from before them and hid himself that they found him not. And he being concealed for many days did write all the words which Abinadi had spoken. And it came to pass that the kind caused that his guards should surround Abinadi and take him; and they bound him and cast him into prison. And after three days, having counseled with his priests, he caused that he should again be brought before him. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“And he said unto him: Abinadi, we have found an accusation against thee, and thou art worthy of death. For thou hast said that God himself should come down among the children of humans; and now, for this cause thou shalt be put to death unless thou wilt recall all the words which thou hast spoken evil concerning me and my people. Now Abinadi said unto him: I say unto you, I will not recall the words which I have spoken unto you concerning this people, for they are true; and that ye may know of their surety I have suffered myself that I have fallen into your hands. Yea, and I will suffer even until death, and I will not recall my words, and they shall stand as a testimony against you at the last day. And now king Noah was about to release him, for he feared his word; for he feared that the judgments of God would come upon him. However, the priests lifted up their voices against him, and began to accuse him, saying: He has reviled the king. Therefore the king was stirred up in anger against him, and he delivered him up that he might be slain. And it came to pass that they took him and bound him, and scourged his skin with faggots (a bundle of sticks or twigs bound together as fuel, a fascine, a torch, excreta), yea, even to death. And now when the flames began to scorch him, he cried unto them saying: #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“Behold, even as ye have done unto me, so shall it come to pass that thy seed shall cause that many shall suffer the pains that I do suffer, even the pains of death by fire; and this because they believe in the salvation of the Lord their God. And it will come to pass that ye shall be afflicted with all manner of diseases because of your iniquities. Yea, and ye shall be smitten on every hand, and shall be driven and scattered to and fro, even as a wild flock is driven by wild and ferocious beasts. And in that day ye shall be hunted, and ye shall be taken by the hand of your enemies, and then ye shall suffer, as I suffer, then pains of death by fire. Thus God executeth vengeance upon those that destroy his people. O God, receive my soul. And now, when Abinadi had said these words, he fell, having been put to death because he would not deny the commandments of God, having sealed the truth of his words by his death,” reports Mosiah 17.1-20. O Lord my Lord, this is Thy day, the Heavenly ordinance of rest, the open door of worship, the record of Jesus’ resurrection, the seal of the sabbath to come, the day when saints militant and triumphant unite in endless song. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

I bless Thee for the throne of grace, that here free favour reigns; that open access to it is through the blood of Jesus; that they veil is torn aside and I can enter the holiest and find Thee ready to hear, waiting to be gracious, inviting me to pour out my needs, encouraging my desires, promising to give more than I ask or think. However, while I bless Thee, shame and confusion are mine: I remember my past misuse of sacred things, my irreverent worship, my base ingratitude, my cold, dull praise. Please sprinkle all my past sabbaths with the cleansing blood of Jesus, and may this day witness deep improvement in me. Give me in rich abundance the blessings the Lord’s Day was designed to impart; may my heart be fast bound against Worldly thoughts or cares; please flood my mind with peace beyond understanding’ may my meditations be sweet, my acts of worship life, liberty, joy, my drink the streams that flow from Thy throne, my food the precious word, my defence the shield of faith, and may my heart be more knit to Jesus. Almighty and merciful God, we beseech Thee to give us rest from the storm of war; for Thou wilt bestow on us all good things if Thou givest us peace both of soul and body; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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There is a Plea, a Tear in Your Eye and Both are Equally Beautiful—I Accept them Both With Equal Right!

July 1, 2020 1:34 am

An individual attains the “good life” by harmoniously combining personal satisfactions and continuous self-actualization with significant activities that contribute to the welfare of one’s human community. No human is an island, nor is one just part of the mob; one is both an individual and a member of one’s society and culture and World. It is remarkable concerning the operations of the mind, that, though most intimately present to us, yet, whenever they become a reflection, they seem involved in obscurity; nor can the eye readily find those lines and boundaries, which discriminate and distinguish them. The objects are too fine to remain long in the same aspect or situation; and must be apprehended in an instant, by a superior penetration, derive from nature, and improved by habit and reflection. It becomes, therefore, no inconsiderable part of science barely to know the differ operations of the mind, to separate them from each other, to class them under their proper heads, and to correct all that seeming disorder, in which they lie involved, when made the object of reflection and enquiry. This task of ordering and distinguishing, which has no merit, when performed with regard to external bodies, the objects of our senses, rise in its value, when directed towards the operations of the mind, in proportion to the difficulty and labour, which we meet with in performing it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

And if we can go no further than this mental geography, or delineation of the distinct parts and powers of the mind, it is at least a satisfaction to go so far; and the more obvious this science may appear (and it is by no means obvious) the more contemptible still must the ignorance of it be esteemed, in app pretenders to leaning and philosophy. Nor can there remain any suspicion, that this science is uncertain and chimerical; unless we should entertain such a scepticism as is entirely subversive of all speculation, and even action. It cannot be doubted, that the mind is endowed with several powers and faculties, that these powers are distinct from each other, that what is really distinct to the immediate perception may be distinguished by reflection; and consequently, that there is a truth and falsehood in all propositions on this subject, and a truth and falsehood, which lie not beyond the compass of human understanding. There are many obvious distinctions of this kind, such as those between the will and understanding, the imagination and passions, which fall within the comprehension of every human creature; and the finer and more philosophical distinctions are no less real and certain, though more difficult to be comprehended. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

Some instances, especially late ones, of success in these enquiries, may give us a juster notion of the certainty and solidity of this branch of learning. And shall we esteem it worthy the labour of a philosopher to give us a true system of the planets, and adjust the position and order of those remote bodies; while we affect to overlook those, who, with so much success, delineate the parts of the mind, in which we are so intimately concerned? But may we not hope, that philosophy, if cultivated with care, and encouraged by the attention of the public, may carry its researches still father, and discover, at least in some degree, the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations? Imagination is that motion of the soul which actual sensation generates. It is the power which out of itself produces forms, a force related to all the powers. It fashions all the likenesses of things, and it is a faculty of assimilating all other things to itself. Imagination detects the species of things. It purifies the objects of sense. It prepares for reason the inferior nature and puts it in shape to be cognized. The bridges body and soul, and is a mean between the material object and the immaterial form thereof. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Astronomers had long contented themselves with proving, from the phenomena, the true motions, order, and magnitude of the Heavenly bodies: Cornelius Van Till a philosopher, at last, arose, who seems, from the happiest reasoning, to have also determined the laws and forces, by which the revolutions of the planets are governed and directed. The like has been performed with regard to other parts of nature. And if prosecuted with equal capacity and caution, there is no reason to despair of equal success in our enquiries concerning the mental powers and economy. It is probable, that one operation and principle of the mind depends on another; which, again, may be resolved into one more general and universal: And how far these researches may possibly be carried, it will be difficult for us, before, or even after, a careful trial, exactly to determine. This is certain, that attempts of this kind are every day made even by those who philosophize the most negligently: And nothing can be more requisite than to enter upon the enterprise with thorough care and attention; that, if it lie within the compass of human understanding, it may at last be happily achieved; if not, it may, however, be rejected with some confidence and security. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

This last conclusion, surely, is not desirable; nor ought it to be embraced too rashly. For how much must we diminish from the beauty and value of this species of philosophy, upon such a supposition? Moralist have hitherto been accustomed, when they considered the vast multitude and diversity of those actions that excite our approbation or dislike, to search for some common principle, on which this variety of sentiments might depend. And though they have sometimes carried the matter too far, by their passion for some one general principle; it must, however, be confessed, that they re excusable in expecting o find some general principles, into which all the vices and virtues were justly be to resolved. The like had been the endeavour of critics, logicians, and even politicians: Nor have their attempts been wholly unsuccessful; though perhaps longer time, greater accuracy, and more ardent application may bring these sciences still nearer their perfection. To throw up at once all pretensions of this kind may justly be deemed more rash, precipitate, and more strict and rigid, than even the boldest and most affirmative philosophy, that had ever attempted to impose its crude dictates and principles on humankind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

What though these reasonings concerning human nature seem abstract, and of difficult comprehension? This affords no presumption of their falsehood. On the contrary, it seems impossible, that what has hitherto escaped so many wise and profound philosophers can be very obvious and easy. And whatever pains these researchers may cost us, we may think ourselves sufficiently rewarded, not only in point of profit but of pleasure, if, by that means, we can make any addition to our stock of knowledge, in subjects of such unspeakable importance. However as, after all, the abstractedness of these speculations is no recommendation, but rather a disadvantage to them, and as this difficulty may perhaps be surmounted by care and art, and the avoiding of all unnecessary detail. Phantasms decay in memory, and a human is said to have remembered only when one knows one has had the experience before. Behaviour of the imagination, both in its reproductive and creative roles, can be drawn from three kinds of imagination—imaginative activity that illuminates things past, present, and future. In linking imagination with the memory and with things past, we see the imaginations role in making past experience available to reason for deliberation and judgment, and available to the will for satisfaction and action. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Imagination takes images directly from the senses and helps resurrect them from memory and presents them to reason whenever they have become subject to analysis and judgment. To the senses and memory it is thus agent and messenger. To reason, on the other hand, it is like a lawyer who presents needed materials for judicial decision, and like a deputy who delivers reason’s degree to the will for execution. It is true that the Imagination functions as a go-between in both provinces, the judicial and the ministerial, assisting alike messenger, agent, and deputy, and attorney. For Sense gives up all kinds of idols [the forms and images it worships] to the Imagination for Reason to judge of; and Reason again when it has made its judgment and selection, sends them over to Imagination before the decree be put in executive. For voluntary motion is ever preceded and incited by imagination; so that imagination is as common instrument to both—both reason and will. Because of its association with reason when a prudential decision was at stake, the action of imagination could reveal qualities of truth and goodness. So the faculty could be Janus-like, showing two faces as sisters should, the face toward reason having the print of truth and the face toward action have the print of goodness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

It its role as messenger imagination is clearly subservient to sense, memory, and reason. It helps these faculties to communicate with each other; it works with them without participating in creation, simply presenting the record of things past and done. The power of an image to incite voluntary movement is also possible. Imagination is the first internal beginning of all voluntary motion. The imagination assists and understands principally in matter of invention. It supplies a variety of objects whereon to work. It assists the will by quickening, alluring, and sharpening its desire towards some convenient object, for some plausible fancy does more prevail with tender Wills, than a severe and sullen Argument, and hath more powerful insinuations to persuade, than the peremptoriness of Reason has to command. We should unfold some interpretations of Christian symbols. Christ and the New Being are no doubt fundamental, yet they are not alone. Other aspects have to be pointed to by means of other symbols. One of these brings us to the brink of the strict and rigid doctrine and cases of to question the divinity of Christ. It is the symbol of Christ as the Logos or Word of God. Jesus as the Christ is the Logos. However, that statement is paradoxical. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

That is, it contradicts the doxa, the opinion derived from human’s existential predicament and all expectation imaginable on the basis of the predicament. This opinion formulates the universal fact of estrangement. The paradox is that a human being, living under the conditions of estrangement, nevertheless conquered and dominated them. One should not examine this from the standpoint of logic, but from that of experience: The paradox is a new reality and not a logical riddle. Statements concerning the Christ are not therefore to be justified on the level of philosophical logic. They stand or fall on the strength of the revelatory situation which imposes them, which is all the more remarkable since “logos” and “Word” are of philosophical origin and have philosophical connotations. The doctrine of the Word of God has been obscured by various meanings which Christianity has attributed to the expression. The first meaning is the closet to its philosophical origin. The Word, or Logos, is the first of all principle of the divine self-manifestation in the ground of being itself. The ground is not only an abyss in which every form disappears; it also is the source from which every form emerges. The ground of being has the character of self-manifestation; it has logos character. This is not something added to the divine life; it is the divine life itself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Other meanings of the term Word are derivative. The Word is the medium of creation, the dynamic spiritual World which mediates between the silent mystery of the abyss of being and the fullness of concrete, individualized, self-related beings; the manifestation of the divine life in the history of revelation; the manifestation of divine life in the final revelation; the documentation of the final revelation; he message of the Church as proclaimed in her preaching and teaching. The important element in this Christology is that the first, second, third, and fourth meanings of the term Word all coincide in the event of Jesus as the Christ. This is to say that the Christ is the New Bring able to conquer the situation of estrangement because e is primordially the principle of the divine self-manifestation. That which appeared in the history of humankind in the shape of Jesus and which was recognized as the New Being by the Apostles in no other than the very abyss and ground of everything that is. The symbol of the Word, in itself, can be detached from a historical manifestation. It could be the self-manifestation of God, the demonstration of being-itself to being-itself, the infinite depth and wisdom of the divine. It is all this, and also something more: the manifestation of being-itself in one concrete human being, Jesus. This is borne out by applying the symbol of “the Word of God” to the Christ. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

At this point, the symbol of the Word interlocks with Trinitarian thinking. The Word is the Word of God, the self-manifestation of the divine life, not an added achievement of it, but the divine life as such. That God may be called, not only God, but also Word, is one of the bases of Trinitarian theology. We should therefore examine the meaning of the Trinitarian symbols. The doctrine of the Christ dovetails into a doctrine of God and, more specifically, of God as Thee. The doctrine of revelation is based on a Trinitarian interpretation f the divine life and its self-manifestation. The problem of the Trinity as the divine life prior to a knowledge of the Christ is frequently discussed. The Trinity is a symbol which ontological reflection elaborates. It points toward a basic implication of being-itself, when being-itself is understood not as a static background to the Universe, but as the live ground from which all stems. Being-itself is life. It is pregnant with all the forms that have come out in time. However, since it is being-itself, the ground, the mothers or the womb of all it cannot be dependent on what will be born of it. Being-itself is living even before concrete forms have come to be. When we say “before,” we naturally speak symbolically. However, this symbol of anteriority is necessary. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

The symbol of anteriority expresses the natural doctrine that God is Creator even before creation. His life does not depend on his works. He is life. Thus the idea of the living God requires a distinction between the abysmal element of the divine, the form element, and their spiritual unity. Since life is not static, we may establish a symbolic distinction between the divine abyss out of which the life of God manifests itself, the self-manifestation of this life and, thirdly, the unity of the two. The abyss is a pole of ultimacy; the form a pole of concreteness. And both are one. The Trinitarian problem is the problem of the unity between ultimacy and concreteness in the living God. Each type of monotheistic religion, since it has conceived of God as living, has developed a form of Trinitarian thinking. Monarchical monotheism saw life emanating from the highest God in a multitude of incarnations and demi-gods. Mystical monotheism was Trinitarian in developing the relation of Brahman-Atman, the absolute, to the concrete gods of Hindu piety. Finally, the exclusive monotheism of the Bible made room for the element of meditation in the divine life, and there arose mediating figures. First, hypostatized divine qualities like Wisdom, Word, Glory; second, divine messengers; third, the divine-human figure through whom God works the fulfilment of history, the Messiah. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

In the fully developed Christian thinking, the three elements of life, fathomless abyss, sprouting ground, and the unity of the two, are called Father, So, Spirit. A beautiful page of Systematic Theology I shows that interrelatedness of the three. The first principle is that which makes God, God. It is the root of his majesty, the unapproachable intensity of his being, the inexhaustible ground of being. This is God in terms of power to be. The second principle of God’s self-objectivization; it opens the divine ground, its infinity and its darkness, and it makes its fullness distinguishable, definite, finite. This is God in terms of meaning and structure. Finally, the third principle of Spirit, is the actualization of the other two. It ensures that God remains God, in that the logos-process of definite structuring returns to its infinite ground: The finite is posited as finite within the process of divine life, but it is reunited with the infinite within the same process. In the Trinity, there is a numerical problem. The trinitarian problem has nothing to do with the trick questions how one can be three and three be one. If it is treated as a matter for abstract speculation, it becomes a meaningless juggling with words and numbers. Forgotten is the fact that Trinitarian terms like Father, Son, Spirit, or in the traditional nomenclature, persone, relations, processions, generation, spiration, are symbols pointing to aspects of being-itself as living. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Making them objects that somehow have to be reconciled in spite of the fact that they are contradictory misses the entire meaning of Trinitarian thinking. The theology of the life of God becomes an attempt to square the circle, to make one into three and three into one. Instead, Trinitarian theology must be dialectical. As such, it is not a speculation on the incomprehensible or the absurd, but on all life. Dialectics determine all life-processes and must be applied in biology, psychology, and sociology. The description of tensions in living organism, neurotic conflicts and class struggles, is a dialectical. Life itself is dialectical. From this existential basis, Trinitarian thought applies dialectics to the life of God and makes it a symbol of life. If applied symbolically to the divine life, God, as a living God must be described in dialectical statements. He has the character of all life, namely, to go beyond himself and to return to himself. The meaning of these symbols, therefore, does not derive from logical speculation on numbers or philosophical speculation on the categories. Their meaning arises out of the revelatory situation in which all life appears as partaking of the pattern of divine life; it is inseparable from the experience of life. The Trinitarian symbols become empty if they are separated from their two experiential roots—the experience of the living God and the experience of the New Being in Christ. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

God sees Himself in Himself, because He sees Himself through His essence; and He sees other things not in themselves, but in Himself; inasmuch as His essence contains the similitude of things other than Himself. Abinadi is protected by divine power—he teaches the Ten Commandments—salvation does not come by the law of Moses alone—God Himself will make an atonement and redeem His people. About 148 Before Christ. “And now when the king had heard these words, he said unto his priests: Away with this fellow, and slay him; for what have we to do with him, for he is mad. And they stood forth and attempted to lay their hands on him; but he withstood them, and said unto them: Touch me not, for God shall smite you if ye lay your hands upon me, for I have not delivered the message which the Lord sent me to deliver; neither have I told you that which ye requested that I should tell; therefore, God will not suffer that I shall be destroyed at this time. However, I must fulfill the commandments wherewith God has commanded me; and because I have told you the truth ye are angry with me. And again, because I have spoken the word of God ye have judged me that I am mad. Now it came to pass after Abinadi had spoken these words that the people of the king Noah durst not lay their hands on him, for the Spirit of the Lord was upon him; and his face shone with exceeding luster, even as Moses’ did while in the mount of Sinai, while speaking with the Lord. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

“And he spake with power and authority from God; and he continued his words saying: Ye see that ye have not power to slay me, therefore I finish my message. Yea, and I perceive that it cuts you to your hearts because I tell you the truth concerning your iniquities. Yea, and my words fill you with wonder and amazement, and with anger. However, I finish my message; and then it matters not whiter I go, if it so be that I am saves. However, this much I tell you, what you do with me, after this, shall be as a type and a shadow of things which are to come. And now I read unto you the remainder of the commandments of God, for I perceive that they are not written in your hearts; I perceive that ye have studied and taught iniquity the most part of your lives. And now, ye remember that I said unto you: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of things which are in Heaven above, or which are in the water under the Earth. And again: Thou shat not bow down thyself unto them, nor severe them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me; and showing my mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the same of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold one guiltless that taketh His name in vain. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day, the sabbath of the Lord thy God, thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor they maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made Heaven and Earth, and the sea, and all that in them is; wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shall not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not cover thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covert thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his mule, not anything that is thy neighbour’s. And it came to pass that after Abinadi had made an end of these sayings that he said unto them: Have ye taught this people that they should observe to do all these things for to keep these commandments? I say unto you, Nay: for if ye had, the Lord would not have caused me to come forth and to prophesy evil concerning this people. And now ye have said that salvation cometh by the law of Moses. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

“I say unto you that it is expedient that ye should keep the law of Moses as yet; but I say unto you, that the time shall come wen it shall no more be expedient to keep the law of Moses. And moreover, I say unto you that salvation doth not come by the law alone; and were it not for the atonement, which God Himself shall make for the sins and iniquities of His people, that they must unavoidably perish, notwithstanding the law of Moses. And now I say unto you that it was expedient that there should be a law given to the children of Israel, yea, even a very strict law; for they were a stiffnecked people, quick to do iniquity, and sow to remember the Lord their God; therefore there was a law given them, yea, a law of performances and of ordinances, a law which they were to observe strictly from day to day, to keep them in remembrance of God and their duty toward Him. However, behold, I say unto you, that all these things were types of things to come. And now, did they understand the law? I say unto you, Nay, they did not all understand the law; and this because of the hardness of their hearts; for they understood not that there could not any human be saved except it were through the redemption of God. For behold, did not Moses prophesy unto them concerning the coming of the Messiah, and that God should redeem His people? #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

“Yea, and even all the prophets who have prophesized ever since the World began—have they not spoken more or less concerning these things? Have they not said that God Himself should come down among the children of humans, and take upon Him the form of man, and go forth in mighty power upon the face of the Earth? Yes, and have they not said also that He should bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, and that He, Himself, should be oppressed and afflicted?,” reports Mosiah 13.1-35. So far, Trinitarian theology has been dealt with independently of Christology. Yet, in the history of Christianity, Christology was primary. The experience of the New Being in Christ prompted the definition of a Trinitarian doctrines. The revelatory constellation in which Jesus was know as the Christ coincided with the revelatory situation in which life is experienced as power, ground and unity. In an ecstasy which went deeper than ever into the event of the Christian revelation, Jesus as the Christ was identified with the second principle of divine life, with the pregnant womb of all forms, with the creative ground of the finite, who eternally produces the finite potentialities in Himself. Thus the experience of the New Being determined the form that Trinitarian thinking would take in Christianity. It prompted Christians to define the Christ as the Logos of Trinitarian theology. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

The decisive element of the relation of the Christ to the Logos became part of Christology. The universal Trinitarian intuition encountered the experience of the New Being and furnished it with new symbols. The Christ was not only the Messiah, the Mediator, the Son of Humans; He was also the Son of God, the Word of God. The Trinity is a symbol of God’s life. That the Christ is one of the Trinity is a symbol. It means that the New Being which, in Christ, subjected itself to the conditions of existence without being destroyed by them, is being-itself, the ground of all. The event of Jesus as the Christ has universal significance, not because of any universal mission conferred on Him arbitrarily, but because the Christ is the rich, inexhaustible source of all life. He is Being as ever New. Beyond object and subject, beyond essence and existence, He breathes all the essences out of His infinite ground and He calls them back to Himself in their finite existential forms. Experiencing in the flesh the conditions of estrangement which are human’s daily bread, He overcomes and saves them by relating them to their eternal ground. He is the focal point of all existence and life, the Christ, the New-Being, the second principle of the divine Life. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

O God of Truth, I thank Thee for the holy Scriptures, their precepts, promises, directions, light. In them may I learn more of Christ, be enabled to retain His truth and have grace to follow it. Please help me to lift up the gates of my soul that He may come in and show me Himself when I search the Scripture, for I have no lines to fathom its depths, no wings to soar to its heights. By his assistance my I be enabled to explore all its truth, love them with all my heart, embrace them with all my power, engraft them into my life. Bless to my soul all grains of truth garnered from Thy word; may they take deep root, be refreshed by Heavenly dew, be ripened by Heavenly rays, be harvested to my joy and Thy praise. Please help me to gain profit by what I read, as treasure beyond all treasure, a fountain which can replenish my dry heart, its waters flowing through me as a perennial river on-drawn by Thy Holy Spirit. Please enable me to distil from its pages faithful prayer that grasps the arm of Thy omnipotence, achieves wonders, obtains blessings, and draws down streams of mercy. From it please show me how my words have often been unfaithful to Thee, injurious to my fellow-humans, empty of grace, fully of folly, dishonouring to my calling. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

The question of helping students more individually is a question of practical functioning. The teacher wishes to keep one’s own freedom and at the same time leave them free too. The aim of a teacher is not to create a philosophical elite for its own sake but for the larger sake of humankind. The starting of a cult to gain a personal following would be abhorrent to the spirit of any truly selfless spiritual guide, but the creation of a school for spiritual development and philosophical learning one might consider helpful to many earnest but bewildered students of life. The true master is to work for the few. There are several agencies who will spread their activities thinly on a wide surface but one’s will penetrate to a deeper level. Theirs will be more showy but one’s more effective. May Christ our Lord, Who is the Head of every beginning, please grant us so to pass through the coming year with faithful hearts, that we may be able in all things to please His ever loving eyes. O God, Who art the Self-same, Whose years shall not fail, please grant us to spend this year as Thy devoted servants, according to Thy pleasures. Please fill the Earth with fruit, please grant our bodies to be free from disease, or souls from offenses; please take away scandals, and please keep far from our borders all manner of calamitous events; through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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Then please write Thy own words upon my heart and inscribe them on my lips; so shall all glory be to Thee in my reading of Thy Word! Him who hath put on Christ our God, do Thou preserve, as an invincible wrestler, against the vain assaults of his adversaries and ours; and please grant that all they who are adorned with the incorruptible crown may be victorious even unto the end;–for it is Thine to pity and to save, and to Thee we render glory, with Thine unbegotten Father, and Thy most holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. #CresleighHomes

Women Swear and Men Gossip, Yet I Shall Attempt so Justice with Mercy!

June 27, 2020 12:27 am

At the beginning of the World Series, I experienced a completely new emotion, when the National Anthem was played. This time, I thought, it is being played for me, as much as for anyone else. This is organized major league baseball, and I am standing here with all the others; and everything that takes place includes me. Remember that day when you moved into the first place of your own? You were the king of your castle: nobody to answer to, nobody to share chores with. You could watch the TV shows you wanted to watch, eat the foods you wanted to eat, and clean up or not. What a great setup! It is also usually a very temporary state of affairs. One day—sooner than they might have imagined—most men wake up and find themselves married or living with a significant other or roommate. And whenever living space is shared, differences of opinion inevitably arise over the care and use of those spaces. If not handled thoughtfully, these differences can turn into conflicts. Fortunately, the complexities of thoughtful home sharing can be vastly simplified by thinking of your house as a series of discrete spaces—each with its own set of issues. Keep these key issues firmly in mind, and life will be blissfully peaceful on the homes front. The two rooms that have the most potential for conflicts are the kitchen and the bathroom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

When we asked women to identify the leading case of conflict in the kitchen, they gave one overwhelming answer: When it comes to cleaning up, especially after themselves, men do not do their share. If you go into the kitchen to make something to eat, clean up the mess before you start eating and do not leave any dishes in the sink because the kitchen is really the soul of Cresleigh Homes. It is where the family gathers and makes meals and often eats. It is the room that requires the most cooperation to keep it clean and functioning. Sincerity matters. If you say you will clean the dishes, then do it. Forgetting sets a pattern, and it established a precedent that your words is not good. In any relationship, the trust the grows out of keeping your promises is a cornerstone of its success. The bathroom is the one place where we all truly want to be private and comfortable. In an ideal World, everyone would have a bathroom that was theirs and theirs alone. In reality, however, most of us share a bathroom with a significant other, and perhaps with others family members or roommates. This overlap of personal space is where trouble starts. Women tend to be very particular about the bathroom. They do not like the toilet seat to be left up, no urine on the toilet seat, and no water or shaving stubble left on the counter. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Always makes sure you flush the toilet, and put the toilet seat back down. It is not sexist because we all have to sit down at sometime. In the middle of the night no one wants to fall in the toilet. If there is a fan in the bathroom, turn in on before you use the shower or the toilet and also makes sure to clean the bathtub out when you bathe. Try not to clean the bathroom with bleach because it could ruin someone’s clothes. When it comes to bathroom behaviour, it is almost always a good idea to be accommodating of your partner’s needs and desires. This delicate area is generally not the place to make a stand on some point of personal self-expression. And a closed door is an unspoken request for privacy, and it should be honoured at all times. There is no questions that I have got to be cleaned up: shaved, combed, dressed nicely, and smelling good by the time we leave the house or sit down at the dinner table. In the Middle Ages, knights in shining armour met each other encased from head to toe in metal. Often they simply could not be identified and had no idea if the other knight was friend or foe. So they took to lifting off their helmets to reveal their identities to each other. The servers at banquets in the Middle Ages were required to remove their hats as a mark of deference to the patrons. The removing of a head covering became a custom and evolved into the removal of a hat being a mark of respect. This action had remained a custom ever since. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

When you enter a person’s home, removing your hat is a symbol of your respect for the owner. Likewise, as you enter a restaurant, taking off your cap is the right thing to do for the people you are with and for the other diners. Anytime you enter a place of worship, your baseball cap should come off. However, when you enter a store or other public space, you can keep your cap on. Each of us is responsible for the image we project. Taking that responsibility seriously is a clear signal of your respect for others. If you choose to go on a date without cleaning up first, you are responsible when your date decides she does not want to see you again. Pass gas, spitting, or let loose with a string of expletives when you are with a group of friends, and they may forgive one episode—but make it a habit, and you could quickly find yourself without friends. These are not random examples, many people responded that these are pet peeves. Failing to bathe, passing gas, and foul languages all emerged as major issues—as did smoking, chewing gum, and spitting. Clean hair and nails are a must; a well-groomed man is very attractive! Soap and water are affordable enough for everyone to be clean. Sometimes, especially when cigars are involved, men forget that their exhaled smoke is generally viewed as obnoxious, invasive, and annoying. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

It is worth remembering that many people often have an especially visceral reaction to cigar smoke. If you choose to light up a stogie in a private home or a public place that allow it, check with everyone in your group first to make sure no one minds—then offer cigars to anyone who wants one, including women. However, do not forget that cigar smoke can linger in your clothes. Furthermore, people also have different opinions about what constitutes swearing. That is why I always try to keep colourful language out of my presentations; I do not want to risk offending any participants, and the use of swear words is not going to enhance my message one bit. Being careful to choose our words so we do not often our listeners is a lesson we all need to relearn periodically. Even when you are with a group of friends accustomed to using profanity, if you think that someone—anyone—in the group might be bothered by it, then be considerate and hold your tongue. And if you are not sure…hold it anyway. Just like we think men are the only gender that swears, we also think that women are the only gender that gossips. Well, it is not true. Women swear and men gossip. In fact, I am amazed how much some men gossip, even when live sports were being played, one can frequently hear men talking about other men more than anything else. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Unfortunately, gossip is insidious. Unlike a joke, which is a momentary thing, gossip lingers. It clouds our opinion of the people being gossiped about, but it also makes one thing less of the slanderer. So, whether it is on the golf course, at the water cooler, or over lunch, make the effort to put a stop to gossip when you hear it. At the very least do not contribute to it and do not repeat what you hear. A more proactive stance would include indicating you are uncomfortable with the conversation, offering a defense of the individual, and refusing to be part of gossip and make the proactive effort, women notice their willingness to stand up for another person, and they appreciate it. Also, when in your care, consciously work to be considerate of other people in your car and the cars around you. That is how to combat road rage. If you are upset, consider pulling off the road in a safe place. The prince Lestat in Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned may have been a sadist, and he did not understand what it took to make a relationship work. Look at any relationship that is in trouble, and it is a good bet, if it is not because of money, a failure to communicate is the issue. Half of all communication is listening. So being a good listener is critical to the success of your communication with your wife, significant other, family, friends, strangers, and work colleagues. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Safe. That is what communication in a relationship needs to be. Out of that safety and sincerity grow trust, confidence, and a better, stronger relationship. Figure out how to focus on the other person. It is worth the effort for both of you and for your relationship. When you are trying to communicate, whether one on one or in a group setting, the skill of listening to others is just as important as your ability to express yourself. Besides paying close attention to what the other person is saying, make it clear that you are listening carefully by looking directly at the other person who is speaking. Do no interrupt until that person is done making his or her point. Then respond by asking questions and offering observations based on what is said. Make a habit of listening effectively, and you will find that your relationships will grow and deepen. Your voice communicates a lot about how you are really feeling. If your words indicate genuine interest but your voice is a monotone, what is the message you are sending? You really do not mean what you are saying: Tone. Anger, frustration, joy, concern. People react not only to your words but how they are said and the tone of your voice. When you were growing up, how often did you hear these words from your father or mother: “Do not take that tone of voice with me.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Speed. Speed kills. In conversation, speed makes comprehension difficult, so slow down. The people or person you are talking with needs a little time to process what you are saying, especially if it is a serious, important subject. Speaking clearly. Mumbling, grunting—not only are you hard to understand, it sounds like you are trying not to be understood. Instead of contributing to the conversation you sound as if you are trying to avoid it. Accent. People come from different nationalities, even different areas of the United States of America. If you have an accent that is different from the person or people with whom you are talking, it may make it more difficult for them to understand you. In that case, speed is doubly problematic. And speaking clearly becomes even more important for you to be understood. Good listeners honour the person they are with by the way they focus on that person. Look them in the eyes. Eye contact is a key part of any interaction. Nod or say “Uh huh.” Simple nonverbal cues can demonstrate that your focus is squarely on the person and not somewhere else. Ask a question or repeat a point. Question and comments show you are really a part of the conversation and are hearing what the other person has to say. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Avoid nervous habits. Even if you are paying attention to what a person is saying, if you are playing with an object, it sends the message that you are distracted. Wait your turn. It is very annoying to be in midsentence and suddenly have the person you are talking to start talking right over you. A good listener waits for a natural break, that momentary pause before jumping in with a comment or question. The method of a philosophic teacher is not to make the decisions of the pupil for one but rather to lead one to make them for oneself. The teacher will outline the process of arriving at the correct conclusion, but one will not deprive the pupil of responsibility of trusting that process and accepting its outcome. The teacher may even make available information which will be helpful to the student in arriving at a decision, but beyond that one cannot go if the student is to arrive at a decision, but beyond that one cannot go if the student is to arrive at independence and maturity. The relationship which we find in mystical or the Old-World circles, which leaves the pupil completely or continuously dependent upon one’s guide and causes one to come constantly running hither and tither for advice as to what one should do next, will only increase the helplessness of the pupil. The philosophic way is to help one develop one’s own ability to dispose of problems and confront situations effectively. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The philosophic method is to lead one to a point where one requires no teacher. The mystical method is to lead one to the point where one cannot do without the teacher. The teacher who demands blind obedience from one’s pupil belongs to a vanishing age. The teacher who strives to make one’s pupil’s own mind understand each step of the way one travels belongs to the coming age. The first often ends by enslaving one’s followers, whereas the second ends by liberating them. The first is a dictator, the second a companion. The first creates nonentities, the second, humans. A wise teacher will no lecture to one’s students, will not try the superficial way of telling them every detail of truth. However, by discussion questioning and encouragement one will help them to elicit it for themselves and thus enable them to make it deeply and lastingly their own. The right way to teach humans is to propose truth, not impose it. A philosophic teacher often prefers to let the student make one’s own discoveries on the basis of clues provided rather than lead one into rigid imprisoning doctrines. The true teacher should stimulate thought and not stereotype it. If an aspirant is fortunate enough to get direct and personal guidance on this kind, one is fortunate indeed. The master gives a candidate the seeds and teaches one how to cultivate them: how to water, nourish, and tend the plants which sprout up from them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The highest type of teacher does not want and will not encourage a blind unquestioning acceptance of one’s own views. The true teacher interprets the divine will for one’s disciple but does not impose it on one. Such a guidance may proffer advice and tender suggestions but one will never issue orders and dictate decisions. Instead of trying to deprive the student of one’s capacity to intuit truths for oneself, the disinterested teacher will try to create it. A genuine teacher will not seek to dominate the soul of a student, will not strive to impose one’s own will upon one. For the teacher desires to see a natural and not a forced artificial growth, to free humans and not to enslave them. The real master spiritualizes one’s disciple but does not debilitate one. The self-actualized who does not want to enslave disciples, will guide them to do what they themselves ought to be doing, but are weakly and foolishly expecting one to do for them. A prudent master prefers not to help people but to help them to help themselves. If you do not put into one’s hands the knowledge and equipment wherewith one can acquire strength, it is merely a mockery to admonish a weakling to become strong. It is the teacher’s duty to foster one’s disciple’s creativeness, not his imitativeness—to encourage the disciple to develop one’s own inspiration. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

The average teacher takes from one’s own personal experience what helped one most or what one’s own teacher led one to, and passes it on to the student as being “the Path,” the only way to God, the sole method of arriving at truth—whether this particular way or method suits the individual type or one’s degree of development or not. One almost forces it on the student, even if it is contrary to the latter’s entire temperament or need. The poor student finds oneself imprisoned and locked up in one’s teacher’s personal opinions and practices, as if nothing good existed outside them. The wisest master lets the disciple develop in one’s own way, according to one’s own individuality. Such a teacher will be the student’s motivating influence while, paradoxically, encouraging one to preserve one’s independence. What the wise teacher does is to wait for the right situations to develop in which one’s own efforts can be most fruitful. One has waited for years, reserving the full expression of one’s powers until the crucial hour when the aspirant is ready to receive one. Until then, one must conceal one’s identity. One’s wisdom in refusing to influence the student’s decisions will not be apparent at first. Indeed it will be regarded as unwisdom—and one’s attitude will be felt as unsympathetic. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

It is not the business of a master to save the disciple from suffering so much as to save one from the faults in oneself which create suffering. One may suggest and advise but never impose one’s will upon yours. One turns a lamp upon your problems but leaves you free to work the out for yourself. It seems that certain topics can dominate men’s conversations. The problem is some of those topics really are not particularly interesting to some people. What is inappropriate talk? Talk about pleasures of the flesh, bathroom business and finances. Jokes can be a great conversational gambit, but be careful about the kind of jokes you tell. Somewhat indecent or poor comments and jokes in poor taste may be funny when you are alone with your buddies, but they may be resented when in mixed company or in front of kids and may provoke an adverse and dangerous reaction. If you cannot be sure a joke or a question will be well received, then it is better to keep it to yourself. I was asked to give a seminar to the staff of a large ski area including the ski and snowboard instructors. One issue the company wanted to address was word choice. It turned out that some of the younger instructors were using a word that was actually costing the ski area business. Parents were writing comments indicating they were not going to purchase any more family lessons because they were fed up with hearing it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

The word: we cannot mention it. That word is extremely derogatory, and when said repeatedly over an hour it is awfully offensive to these parents. And that offensiveness was costing the company revenue. To the young instructors, the word was harmless—a normal part of their vocabulary and popular music—and they thought it was hip, witty, and trendy and should not elicit such a reaction. However, it did. Even though a particular word you use may be totally innocent or acceptable to you, if the person you are speaking to is offended by it, then perhaps you need to find an alternative. Also, nonverbal cues are important. When you are talking with someone face-to-face you are giving nonverbal cues that enhance what you are saying. Those cues can reinforce your words or belie them. When you are with another person, not only do the words you say matter, your image maters as well. You can roll your eyes and imply your disgust or frustration. You can purse your lips and suggest impatience or simmering anger. You can jiggle your foot or drum your fingers and communicate your nervousness. You can sit back, slouched, with your arms crossed and indicate your nonreceptiveness. When you say one thing and your body says another, you are not communicating effectively. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

A master’s work is not to issue command which must be obeyed by enslaved disciples, but to formulate principles which must be understood by enlightened ones. It is not to create belief but to strengthen knowledge. King Laman dies—his people are wild and ferocious and believe in false traditions—Zeniff and his people prevail against them. About 187-160 Before Christ. And it came to pas that we again began to establish the kingdom and we gain began to possess the land in peace. And I caused that there should be weapons of war made of every kind, that thereby I might have weapons for my people against the time the Lamanites should come up again to war against me people. And I set guards round about the land, that the Lamanites might not come upon us again unawares and destroy us; and thus I did guard my people and my flocks, and keep them from falling into the hands of our enemies. And it came to pass that we did inherit the land of our fathers for many years, yea, for the space of twenty and two years. And I did cause that the men should till the ground, and raise all manner of grain and all manner of fruit of every kind. And I did cause that women should spin, and toil, and work, and work all manner of fine linen, yea, and cloth of every kind, that we might clothe our nakedness; and thus we did prosper in the land—thus we did have continual peace in the land for the space of twenty and two years. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

And it came to pass that king Laman died, and his son began to stir his people up in rebellion against my people; therefore they began to prepare for war, and to come up to battle against my people. However, I had sent my spies out round about the land of Shemlon, that I might discover their preparations, that I might guard against them, that they might not come upon my people and destroy them. And it came to pass that they came up upon the north of the land of Shilom, with their numerous hosts, men armed with bows, and with arrows, and with swords, and with cimeters, and with stones, and with slings; and they had their heads shaved that they were naked; and they were girded with a leathern gridle about their loins. And it came to pass that I caused that the women and children of my people should be hid in the wilderness; and I also caused that all my old men that could bear arms, and also all my young men that were able to bear arms, should gather themselves together to go to battle against the Lamanites; and I did place them in their ranks, every man according to his age. And it came to pass that we did go up to battle against the Lamanites; and I, even I, in my old age, did go up to battle against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that we did go up in the strength of the Lord to battle. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Now, the Lamanites knew nothing concerning the Lord, nor the strength of the Lord, therefore they depended upon their own strength. Yet they were a strong people, as to the strength of humans. They were a wild, and ferocious, and blood thirsty people, believing in the tradition of their fathers, which is this—Believing that they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem because of the iniquities of their fathers, and that they were wronged in the wilderness by their brethren, and they were also wronged while crossing the sea; and again, that they were wronged while in the land of their first inheritance, after they had crossed the sea, and all this because that Nephi was more faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord—therefore he was favored of the Lord, for the Lord heard his prayers and answered them, and he took the lead of their journey in the wilderness. And his brethren were wroth with hum because they understood not the dealings of the Lord; they were also wroth with him upon the waters because they hardened their hearts against the Lord. And again, they were wroth with him when they had arrived in the promised land, because they said that he had taken the ruling of the people out of their hands; and they sought to kill him. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

And again, they were worth with him because he departed into the wilderness as the Lord had commanded him, and took the records which were engraven on the plates of brass, for they said that he robbed them. And thus they have taught their children that they should hate them, and that they should murder them, and that they should rob and plunder them, and do all they could to destroy them; therefore they have an eternal hatred towards the children of Nephi. For this very cause has king Laman, by his cunning, and lying craftiness, and his fair promises, deceived me, that I have brought this my people up into this land, that they may destroy them; yes, and we have suffered these many years in the land. And now I, Zeniff, after having told all these things unto my people concerning the Lamanites, I did stimulate them to go to battle with their might, putting their trust in the Lord; therefore, we did contend with them, face to face. And it came to pass that we did drive them again out of our land; and we slew them with a great slaughter, even so many that we did not number them. And it came to pass that we returned again to our own land, and my people again began to tend their flocks, and to till their ground. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

And now I, being old, did confer the kingdom upon one of my sons; therefore, I say no more. And may the Lord bless my people. Amen. The philosophic teacher leaves to the individual pupil how one shall apply these principles to one’s own life, and does not try to chalk out precise details of such a practice for one. One’s unwillingness to give specific advice on practical personal matters should not be construed as unwillingness to help, or as lack of interest in them. It is only that one wants the solution to come straight out of the student’s own being, so that the growth will be the student’s too. O God, I know that I often do Thy work without Thy power, and sin by my cold, heartless, blind service, my lack of inward light, love, delight, my mind, heart, tongue moving without Thy help. I see sin in my heart in seeking the approbation of others; this is my vileness, to make human’s opinion my rule, whereas I should see what good I have done, and give Thee glory, consider what sin I have committed and mourn for that. It is my deceit to preach, and pray, and to stir up others’ spiritual affections in order to beget commendations, whereas my rule should be daily to consider myself more vile than any human in my own eyes. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

However, Thou does show Thy power by my frailty, so that the more feeble I am, the more fit to be used, for Thou does pitch a tent of grace in my weakness. Please help me to rejoice in my infirmities and give Thee praise, to acknowledge my deficiencies before others and not be discouraged by them, that they may see Thy glory more clearly. Please teach me that I must act by a power supernatural, whereby I can attempt things above my strength, and bear evils beyond my strength, acting for Christ in all, and having His superior power to help me. Let me learn of Paul whose presence was mean, his weakness great, his utterance contemptible, yet Thou did account him faithful and blessed. Lord, let me lean on Thee as he did, and find my ministry thine. Almighty and everlasting God, please bring us to the fellowship of Heavenly joys; that Thou mayest vouchsafe an entrance into Thy kingdom to those that are born again of the Holy Ghost, and that the lowly flock may reach that place whither the mighty Shepherd had gone before; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Please hear us, O Almighty God; and as Thou hast bestowed on Thy family the perfect grace of Baptism, so do Thou dispose their hearts to the attainment of eternal bliss; though Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

In the #DIY mood? Learn how to create your own raised vegetable planters in this week’s blog post up now! Link in bio. 🍅🌽🥦 https://www.instagram.com/p/CB6fAsOpl1v/O God, Who by the Baptism of Thine Only-streams of water; grant that we who are born again of Water and the Spirit may attain an entrance into eternal joys; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #CresleighHomes

You Do Not Love Me, You Do Not Care What Happens to Me! Give the Heaven’s Above More than Just a Passing Glance!

June 22, 2020 1:09 am

For some people it is difficult to find peace. They can forgive from their heart of hearts, but find no rest, for then the doubt awakens; they are the one who caused the problem; they are the occasion of the calamity; it was their pride that craved the unusual. Then they repent, but one will find no rest, for then the accusing thoughts acquits one of the charges: the aggressor was the one who with their cunning instilled this plan into their souls. Then the individual hates; one’s heart finds relief in curses, but one still finds no repose. Once again one reproaches oneself—reproaches oneself because one has hated, one who oneself is a sinner, reproaches oneself because regardless of how cunning the aggressor was one’s self always remains guilty. It is oppressive for the individual that someone has decided to deceive them, but still more oppressive, one is almost tempted to say, that one is no longer listens humbly to one’s voice but is able to hear the many voices at the same time. Then recollection awakens in one’s soul, and one forgets blame and guilt; able to recollect the beautiful moments, and is dazed in an unnatural exaltation. With an indescribable but cryptic, blissful, unnamable anxiety, one is able to listen to music the one’s self evoked and yet did not evoke; always there was harmony. Yet, it is terrible that one can scarcely control the anxiety that grips one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

One is carried along into that kingdom of mist, into that dreamland where one is frightened by one’s own shadow at every moment. Often, futilely trying to tear away from it; following along like an ominous shape, like an accuser who cannot speak. How strange! One has allowed someone else to spread the deepest secrecy over everything, and yet there is an even deeper secrecy, that one’s self is in on the secret and that one came to know I in an unlawful way. To forget the whole thing is not possible. Some Black women are comfortable with the many different ingredients of their identity, and they are women committed to freedom from oppression. They find themselves constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of themselves, and present that as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or deny the other parts of themselves. They do not want to isolate themselves from their White, Hispanic, or Asian counterparts, but would like the ability to be included in the discussion. The need for multiple consciousness in feminist movement—a social movement encompassing law, literature, and everything in between—has long been apparent. Since the beginning of the feminist movement in the United States of America, Black women have been discussing the fact that their experience calls into question the notion of a unitary “women’s experience.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

In the first wave of the feminist moment, Black women’s realization that White leaders of the suffrage may have not been aware of what women of colour have to suffer with, especially when they do not adhere to typical gender status. However, through conversations, publications of a diverse voice of authors, and television shows and movies, the second wave of Black women are again speaking loudly and persistently, and at many levels their voices have begun to be heard. Feminist have adopted the notion of multiple consciousness as appropriate to describe a World in which people are not oppressed only or primarily on the basis of gender, but also on the basis of race, class, sexual orientation, and other categories in inextricable webs. Moreover, multiple consciousness is implicit in the precepts of the feminism itself. Feminist method starts with the very radical act of taking women seriously, believing that what they say about themselves and their experience is important and valid, even when (or perhaps especially when) it had little or no relationship to what has been or is being said about them. In feminist legal theory, however, the move away from univocal toward multivocal theories of women’s experience and feminism has been slower than other areas. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

In feminist legal theory, the pull of the second voice, the voice of abstract categorization, is still powerfully strong: “We the People” seems in danger of being replaced by “We the women.” And in feminist legal theory, as in the dominant culture, it is mostly White, heterosexual, and socioeconomically privileged people who speak for all women. Not surprisingly, because of the cries of the unheard are becoming so strong, the story they tell about “women,” despite its claim to universality, seems to actually be becoming more inclusive. Some of the best examples have been in the film in TV industry. Little Fires Everywhere, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington examines the roles of women of different ethnic backgrounds, classes, and socioeconomic backgrounds. How to Get Away With Murder, starring Viola Davis was extremely powerful, especially final episode where she has to defend herself and her lifestyle. The Family That Prey’s Together, Good Deeds, Why Did I Get Married, Temptations: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, by Tyler Perry are also good film the help others to understand the plight of women of colour, as well as Losing Isaiah starring Halle Berry. So even if feminist theories are still catching up to modern times, art is imitating life. And White middle-class women, as well as the rest of the World are becoming more aware of what their sisters have to endure. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

The notion that there is a monolithic “women’s experience” that can be described independent of other facets of experience like race, class, and sexual orientation is called gender essentialism. Gender essentialism is no longer reducing the lives of people who experience multiple forms of oppression because racism, sexism, and homophobia are being discussed and are now better understood by different people all over the World. Those who produce the “story of woman” are making sure they appear in it. They are ensuring that they are storytellers and, in a position, to decide which of all the many facts about women’s lives are going into the story, and which ought to be left out. Women want to make sure that none of their voiced are at the bottom of a hierarchy of oppression. Middle-class American women, tradition suggest, feel emotion more than men do. The definitions of “emotional” and “cogitation” in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language reflect a deeply rooted cultural idea. Yet women are also thought to command “feminine wiles,” to have the capacity to premeditate a sigh, an outburst of tears, or a flight of joy. In general, they are thought to manage expression and feeling not only better but more often than men do. How much the conscious feelings of women and men differ is an issue I leave aside here. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

However, women are, in fac, more likely to have access to their emotions. Early in childhood boys but no girls must relinquish their primary identification with the mother. To achieve this difficult task, the boy (but not the girl) must repress feelings associated with the other in the difficult effort to establish himself as “not like mother,” as a boy. The consequence is a repression of feeling generally. The girl, on the other hand, because she enters a social and sexual category the same as that as her mother, does not have to relinquish identification with her or sacrifice her access to feelings through repression. If this interpretation is valid (and I find it plausible), we might expect women to be more in touch with their feelings, which are, as a consequence, more available for conscious management. Men may manage feelings more by subconscious repressing, women more by conscious suppressing. Therefore, the evidence seems clear that most women do more emotion managing than men. And because the well-managed feeling has an outside resemblance to spontaneous feeling, it is possible to confuse the condition of being more “easily affected by emotion” with the action of willfully managing emotion when the occasion calls for it. #Randolphharris 6 of 25

Especially in the American middle class, women tend to manage feeling more because in general they depend on men for a level of support, and one of the various ways of repaying their debt is to do extra emotion work—especially emotion work that affairs, enhances, and celebrates the well-being and status of others. When the emotional skills that children learn and practice at home move into the marketplace, the emotional labour of women becomes more prominent because men in general have not been trained to make their emotions a resource and are therefore less likely to develop their capacity for managing feeling. There is also a difference in the kind of emotion work that men and women tend to do. Many studies have also told us that women adapt more to the needs of others and cooperate more than men do. These studied often imply the existence of gender-specific characteristics simply exist passively in women? Or are they signs of a social work that women do—the work of affirming, enhancing, and celebrating the well-being and status of others? I believe that much of time, the adaptive, cooperative women is actively working showing difference. This deference requires her to make an outward display called the “seriously” good girl in her and to support this effort by evoking feelings that make the “nice” display seem more natural. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Girls are generally trained to be “seriously” good and to be ashamed of being bad whereas boys are asked to be good in formalistic ways but covertly invited to be ashamed of being “too” good. Oversocialization into “sugar-and-spice” demeanor produces feminine skills in delivering deference. Women who want to put their own feelings less at the service of other must still confront the idea that if they do so, they will be considered less “feminine.” What it takes to be more “adaptive” is suggested in a study of college students. Students were asked “If a boy or girl had all the other qualities you desire, would you marry this person if you were not in live with him or her?” In response, 64 percent of men, but only 24 percent of the women said No. Most of the women answered that they “did not know.” As one put it: “I do not know, if he were that good, may I could bring myself around to loving him.” Other research indicates that men have a more romantic orientation to love, women a more realistic orientation. That is, males may find cultural support for a passive construction of love, for seeing themselves as falling head over heels, or walking on air. The female is not pushed hither and yon by her romantic compulsions. On the contrary, she seems to have a greater measure of rational control over her romantic inclinations than the male. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Women are more often than men describing themselves as “trying to make myself love,” “talking myself into not caring,” or “trying to convince myself.” A content analysis of 260 protocols showed that more women than men (33 percent versus 18 percent) spontaneously used the language of emotion work to describe their emotions. The image of women as “more emotional,” more subject to uncontrolled feelings, has also been challenged by a study of 250 students at UCLA, in which only 20 percent of the men but 45 percent of the women said that they deliberately show emotion to get their way. This pattern is also socially reinforced. When women sent direct messages (persuading by logic, reason, or an onslaught of information), they were later rated as more aggressive than men who did the same thing. As one woman put it: “I pout, frown, and say something to make the other person feel bad, such as ‘You do not love me, you do not care what happens to me.’ I am not the type to come right out with what I want; I will usually hint around. It is all hope and a lot of beating around the bush.” The emotional arts that women have cultivated are analogous to the art of feigning among those whose wishes outdistance their opportunities for class advancement. As for many others who are less affluent, it has been in the woman’s interest to be the better actor. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

The use of feminine wiles (including flattery) is felt to be a psychopolitical style of the subordinate; it is therefore disapproved of by women who have gained a foothold in the man’s World and can afford to disparage what they do no need to use. As the psychologist would say, the techniques of deep acting have usually high “secondary gains.” Yet these skills have long been mislabeled “natural,” a part of woman’s “being” rather than something of her own making. The intensity of devotion rather than the value of offerings must always govern the master’s response. The self-actualized has an official position, which is accompanied by appropriate duties. They include: taking a personal interest in the disciples’ inner welfare and growth; instructing them in the truth, and in the way to its attainment; inspiring them telepathically with glimpses of the higher states; encouraging them to persevere in traveling along the way; warning them against the pitfalls and obstacles. The teacher’s duty is to give direction, provide knowledge, warn against pitfalls, correct errors. It is not one’s duty to save others necessary efforts of will and thinking. The master powerfully removes the sluggishness of the intellect of one’s disciple; clarifies one’s ideas about what is eternal and what is perishable, what is real and what is unreal, what is material and what is mental; and what open to one the realm of truth slowly but unmistakably by constant appeal to one’s reason. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

The first service of the Master is to point out the way, both inwardly and outwardly, to the disciple. This shortens one’s journey by several lifetimes, which would otherwise have to be spent in wanderings, explorings, gropings, and searchings. It is to expound truth and correct errors, to place an example before the others, and to purify them by one’s company that such a teacher appears in the outer World. Another phase of one’s work is to stimulate the yearning for higher attainment where it exists, and to inculcate it where it does not. Nature, also, mourns for a lost good. “Day unto day utter speech, and night unto night show knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the World. In them has one set a tabernacle for the Sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of one’s chamber, and rejoice as a strong human to run a race,” reports Psalm 19.2-5. It is one’s work to show others what they cannot see for themselves—their own higher possibilities. One’s function is to interpret humans—and more especially spiritual humans—to themselves. One’s task is to make known to other humans their God like possibilities within themselves. One’s mission is not to being humans pleasure, but to raise them to appreciate truth. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

The teacher assists one’s students to attain a degree of concentration beyond that which they are able to achieve by themselves. One detonates the higher potentialities of each disciple, breaks the closed circle of one’s senses, and leads one toward a moral and mystical regeneration. “For the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of one who has subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travels in pain together until now,” reports Romans 9.19-22. The duty of any spiritual teacher is to lead the seeker to God, to find one’s own source of inner light and strength and thus not to lean on outside human beings. A self-actualized individual who is quite competent does help the learner: one shows the way, illuminates problems, untangles knots, dispels confusions, explains meanings, and encourages effort. Tutelage has its place. One who directs anyone’s wakening spiritual faith that person’s teacher. If one guides us to notice hitherto unobserved truths, if one lead our thought and faith away from hitherto strongly held errors, then a teacher fulfills a useful function. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

A teacher’s services include the unveiling and exposing of psychic or mystic experiences which are merely self-suggested or mainly hallucinatory. One cannot do more than help them find and fulfill their own ways to the goal, but it is enough. A teacher has to be firm at some times, gentle at others. “And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth: for the first Heaven and the first Earth were passed away; and there was no more sea…And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations,” reports Revelations 21.1, 22.1-2. Each year when Good Friday and Easter Sunday approach us our thoughts turn toward the great drama of redemption, culminating in the pictures of the Cross and Resurrection. Who is redeemed? Some humans alone; or humankind, including all nations; or the World, everything that is created, including nature, the stars and the clouds, the winds and the oceans, the stones and the plants, the animals and our own bodies? The Bible speaks again and again of the salvation of the World, as it speaks of the creation of the World, and the subjection of the World to anti-Divine forces. And World means nature as well as humans. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

So let us ask today: what does nature mean to us? What does it mean to itself? What does it mean to the great drama of creation and salvation? A threefold answer is contained in the words of the psalmist, the apostle and the prophet: the psalmist sings of the glory of nature; the apostle shows the tragedy of nature: and the prophet pronounces the salvation of nature. The hymn of the psalmist praises the glory of God in the glory of nature; the letter of the apostle links the tragedy of nature to the tragedy of humans; and the vision of the prophet sees the salvation of nature in the salvation of the World. So let us listen once more to the words of the psalmist, about the glory of nature, in their precise meaning. “The Heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament shows the work of his hands. Day unto day pour forth the story, night unto night announces the knowledge. There is no speech, no language! Their voice cannot be heard! However, their music goes out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the World.” The 19^th Psalm points to an antique belief held by the ancient World and expressed by poets and philosophers: that the Heavenly bodies, the Sun and the Moon and the Stars, produce by their movement a harmony of tines, sounding day and night from one end of the World to the other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

These voices of the Universe are not heard by human ears; they do not speak in human language. However, they exist, and we can perceive them through the organs of our spirit. Shakespeare says: “There is not the smallest orb which thou beholds, but in his motion like an angel sings, such harmony is in immortal souls; but whilst this muddy vesture of decay does grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.” The psalmist has heard it; he knows that the stars are sounding: the glory of creation and its Divine Ground. Are we able to perceive the hidden voice of nature? Does nature speak to us? Does it speak to you? Or has nature become silent to us, silent to the humans of our period? Some of you may say, “Never before in any period has nature been so open to humans as it is today. The mysteries of the past have become the knowledge of children. Through every scientific book, through every laboratory, through every machine, nature speaks to us. The technical use of nature is the revelation of its mystery.” The voice of nature has been heard by the scientific mind, and the answer is the conquest of nature. However, is this all that nature says to us? If one only arouses the human to recognition of the necessity of taking a new road, a spiritual guide’s duty to an erring human will not be fully carried out. It will not be enough to show one the path. One must also keep them steadfast on the path. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

I was sitting under a tree with a great biologist. Suddenly he exclaimed, “I would like to know something about this tree!” He, of course, knew everything that science had to say about it. I asked him what he meant. And he answered, “I want to know what this tree means for itself. I want to understand the life of this tree. It is so strange, so unapproachable.” He longed for a sympathetic understanding of the life of nature. However, such an understanding is possible only by communion between human and nature. Is such communion possible in our period of history? Is nature not completely subjected to the will and willfulness of humans? This technical civilization, the pride of humankind, has brought about a tremendous devastation of original nature, of the land, of animals, of plants. It has kept genuine nature in small reservations and has occupied everything for domination and ruthless exploitation. And worse: many of us have lost the ability to live with nature. We fill it with the noise of empty talk, instead of listening to its many voices, and, through them, to the voiceless music of the Universe. Separated from the soil by a machine, we speed through nature, catching glimpses of it, but never comprehending its greatness or feelings it power. Who is still able t penetrate, meditating and contemplating, the creative ground of nature? #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

A Chinese emperor asked a famous painter to paint a picture of a rooster for him. The painter assented, but said that it would take a long time. After a year the emperor reminded him of his promise. The painter replied that after a year of studying the rooster he had just begun to perceive the surface of its nature. After another year the artist asserted that he had just begun to penetrate the essence of this kind of life. And so on, year after year. Finally, after ten years of concentration on the nature of the rooster, he painted the picture—a work described as an inexhaustible revelation of the divine group of the Universe in one small part of it, a rooster. Compare the emperor’s wise patience and the painter’s saintly contemplation of an infinitely small expression of the divine life, with the exuberances of our contemporaries, who rush in their cars to some famous view and exclaim, “How lovely!”—referring, no doubt, not to the view, but to their own appreciation of beauty. What blasphemy of the glory of nature! and consequently of the divine ground, the glory of which sounds through the glory of nature. Praising the glory of nature does not mean speaking of the beauty of nature alone and forgetting its overwhelming greatness and terrible power. Nature never manifest shallow beauty or merely obvious harmony. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

We must try to conform to the humanity, intuition, sensitivity, and the intelligence needed to understand the message from the Universe. One who teachers well, learns oneself. Many of the historical statues in American are representations for hopes of a greater time. The welcoming of the second coming of Christ. Some of these monuments are universally admired and accepted by all people of all nations as the symbol of FREEDOM, and many of these relics evokes a profound veneration and strike a responsive chord from all liberty-loving people everywhere. To make these statues of these great characters and to erect in them that part of the country which gave them their early development and growth into public life is an honour. Human spirit finds its expression through a particular individual, likewise a spirit in finding its self-expression in permanent materials of bronze or stone and deserves to be focalized and located so that they may have a place and standing in our World. When life sinks to a low, these monuments constantly fed the human spirit with hope and promise. The closer the arts bring us to our souls’ ideal the more worthy are they to their exalted mission. These statues bring us in contact with the harmonies of nature, awakening responsive echoes in our innermost souls. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

This art, these wizard-like creations, revives he ashes of the past, makes us appreciate how far we have some, so we never forget our roots. If we destroy our history, we will forget our past and are doomed to recreate the same mistakes. We have a new wave of immigrants who know nothing about our culture, and these monuments serve as reminders that we must never repeat slavery, genocide, nor economic oppression. They stand for the freedom of this nation and are part of its founding. Without these markers, Americans will lose their way. For instance, no one can find reference to the Prison’s of the River in Sacramento. The only place I found it recorded was on a fading, plastic plague in Sacramento. It was a reference to the Witch Trials that took place in this city in the mid-1800s. The LaGrange served as Sacramento’s jail until November 1859 when it sank in a week-long storm, killing 449 people. There were more than 950 suspected witches and Jewish refugees on board. In February of 1986, archaeologist located what is believed to be wreckage of LaGrange, which was imprisoned by the rip-rap and must, just south of the “I” Street Bridge. Now, it would be nice to have a monument to remember these people and their sacrifice. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

Certain teachers develop an unhealthy lust for power, imposing their personal will on hapless disciples. The teacher whose motives get mixed up, whose desire to help and serve others twins around one’s desire to gain money, prestige, influence, or power is one who begins to teach before one is ready to do so. Both one and one’s disciples will have to pay the price for one’s premature activities. It is better to have no teacher at all than to have one who has psychologized oneself into the delusion that one has reached the God-realized state, who mistakes self-deception for self-realization. The Saints become the sons and daughters of Christ through faith—they are then called by the name of Christ—King Benjamin exhorts them to be steadfast and immovable in good works. About 124 Before Christ. “And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin has thus spoken to this people, he sent among them, desiring to know of his people if they believed the words which he had spoken unto them. And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou has spoken unto us; and also, we know their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“And we, ourselves, also, though the infinite goodness of God, and the manifestations of his Spirit, have great views of that which is to come; and were it expedient, we could prophesy of all things. And it is the faith which we have had on things which our kind has spoken unto us that has brought us to this great knowledge, whereby we do rejoice with such exceedingly great joy. And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us, all the remainder of our days, that we may not bring upon ourselves a never-ending torment, as has been spoken by the Angel, that we may not drink out of the cup of the wrath of God. And now, these are the words which king Benjamin desired of them; and therefore he said unto them: Ye have spoken the words that I desired; and the covenant which ye have made is a righteous covenant. And now, because of the covenant which ye shave made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he has spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and daughters. And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh; therefore, I would that ye should take upon you the name of Christ, all you that have entered into the covenant with God that ye should be obedient unto the end of your lives. And it shall come to pass that whosoever does this shall be found at the right hand of God, for one shall know he name by which one is called; for one shall be called by the name of Christ. And now it shall come to past, that whosoever shall not take upon one the name of Christ must be called by some other name; therefore, one finds oneself on the left hand of God. And I would that ye should remember also, that this is the name that I said I should give unto you that never should be blotted out, except it be through transgression; therefore, take heed that ye do not transgress, that the name be not be blotted out of your hearts. I say unto you, I would that ye should remember to retain the name written always in your hearts, that ye are not found on the left hand of God, but that ye hear and know the voice by which ye shall be called, and also, the name by which God shall call you. For how knows a human the master who one has not served, and who is a stranger unto one, and is far from the thoughts and intents of one’s heart? And again, does a human take a mule which belongs to one’s neighbour, and keep him or her? #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“I say unto you, Nay; one will not even suffer that one shall feed among one’s flocks, but will drive one away, and cast one out. I say unto you, that even so shall it be among you if ye know not the name by which ye are called. Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, hat you may be brought to Heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of one who created all things, in Heaven and in Earth, who is God above all. Amen,” reports Mosiah 5.1-15. Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the World who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behaviour. And the important thing was that you never let down doing the best that you were able to do—it might be poor because you might not have very much within you to give, or to help people with, or to live your life with. However, as long as you did the very best that you were able to do, then that was what you were put here to do and that was what you were accomplishing by being here. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

O my Lord, please forgive me for serving Thee in sinful ways—by glorying in my own strength, by forcing myself to minister through necessity, by accepting the applause of others, by trusting in assumed grace and spiritual affection, by a faith that rests upon my hold on Christ, not on Him along, by having another foundation to stand upon besides Thee; for thus I make flesh my arm. Please help me to see that it is faith stirred by grace that does the deed, that faith brings a human nearer to Thee, raising Him above mere human, that Thou does act upon the soul when thus elevated and lifted out of itself, that faith centres in Thee as God all-sufficient, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, as Go efficient, mediately, as in Thy commands and promises, immediately, in all the hidden power that faith sees and knows to be in Thee, abundantly, with omnipotent effect, in the revelation of Thy will If I have not such faith I am nothing. It is m duty to set Thee above all others in the mind and eye; but it is my sin that I place myself above Thee. Lord, it is the special evil of sin that every breach of Thy laws arises from contempt of Thy Person, from despising Thee and Thy glory, from preferring things before Thee. Please help me to abhor myself in comparison of Thee, and please keep me in a faith that words by love, and serves by grace. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

I give Thee thanks, O Lord, holy Father, Almighty, everlasting God, Who hast refreshed me with the most holy Body and Blood of Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and I pray that this Sacrament of our salvation, which I, unworthy sinner have received, may not turn to my judgment nor condemnation, according to my deserts, but to the profit of my body and soul, unto life eternal. Lord Jesus Christ, Almighty and everlasting God, please be merciful to my sins through my reception of Thy Body and Blood. For Thou has said, “He that Eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood dwells in Me, and I in One.” Therefore I humbly beseech Thee to create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me, and strength me with Thy free Spirit, and cleanse me from all vices and the crafts of the devil, that I may attain to the partaking of Heavenly joys; Who lives and reigns in God. The person who constantly tries to make other persons over into a copy of oneself, who tries to change their living habits or thinking-ways into the same as one’s own, who seeks zealously to proselytize their religious beliefs, is too often merely asserting one’s own ego and practising a subtler, more self-deceptive form of egotism. If one really felt love for them, as one often professes, one would leave their freedom to choose what suit them, not thrust oneself and one’s own beliefs aggressively upon them. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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Up to a Certain Point it is Good for Us to Know that there are People in the World Who Will Give Us Love!

June 20, 2020 1:20 am

No matter how urgent our social needs are, all of us have needs for solitude, for times alone with ourselves. Again, the optimum selfhood experience includes a balance of solitariness, sociality, and peripheral interactions (“spectatorship”). There is in each of us a need for privacy and time alone. It is not so much a need to reject or repudiate others as it is a need to go within, to get acquainted or re-acquainted with our selfhood. We like to roam about our own house with no one to disturb us. Modern psychology had very modest beginnings. It set out to study memory, acoustic and visual phenomena, the association of ideas, and the psychology of animals. Wilhelm Wundt was perhaps the most important and influential figure in those early days of modern psychology. Psychologists then did not write for the general public, and they were not particularly well known. They wrote for their colleagues, and only a few novices showed any interest in their work and publications. When it shifted its focus to the motives behind human behaviour, that situation changed radically, however, and psychology started gaining in popularity. That field of inquiry has dominated psychology for the last hundred years. It concerns us all, of course, for we all want to know what it is that motivates us and why we act on the motives we do rather than on quite different ones. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

If psychology can promise us some clarity on those questions, then it can obviously be of great value to us. And so it was that motivational psychology became perhaps the most popular of all sciences, and in recent decades it has, if anything, gained popularity rather than lost. Every human action has a motive behind it, and in every case that motive is an independent and innate instinct. We are born with instincts in us just as animals are. If we are aggressive, the reason is our aggressive instinct. If we are servile, blame our servile instinct; if we are avaricious, our avaricious instinct; if we are jealous, chalk that up to our jealous instinct; if we enjoy cooperation, then that is our cooperative instinct at work. If we are quick to flee danger, that is our flight instinct, and so on and so forth. Indeed, if we tally up all the instincts the instinct theoreticians have come up with, the final count comes to about two hundred different instincts, each one of which will motivate a certain kind of human behaviour, just as a key on a piano will, when pressed, produce a certain note. However, the problem with this extremely interesting edifice is that it is not properly constructed. It is actually not a building at all but only a mental construction that has no basis in reality at all. Human aggression can be traced back to a more or less innate aggressive instinct. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

One weakness of instinct theory is its tendency to oversimplify. It is just too simple an answer to postulate an instinct for every single bit of human behaviour, and such postulation does not really explain anything. All it says is that actions have motives, that different actions have their own distinct motives, and that those motives are innate. However, none of that could be proved for most of the so-called instincts. There are a few—such as defensive aggression, flight, and also, to certain degree, behaviour involving pleasures of the flesh, though here we are even less sure of our ground—in which quasi-instinctive elements are present. However, here we must not overlook the fact that learning, the influence of culture and society, can significantly modify even those innate drives, so much so that in both humans and animals subjected to such modification the drives may almost disappear or, on the other hand, become greatly accentuated. The other weakness of the theory was that some instincts were strongly developed in some individuals and cultures yet almost nonexistent in others. There are, for example, primitive tribes that are extremely aggressive while others display practically no aggressiveness at all. The same has held true for individuals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

If someone comes to a psychiatrist today and says, “Doctor, I am so furious I would like to do something I cannot return from,” the psychiatrist does not say, “Aha, the aggressive instinct is very strong in this man.” Instead, he makes a diagnosis more along these lines: “This man must be ill. This aggressiveness he is expressing, this hatred that has built up inside him, is a sign of illness.” If the man’s aggressiveness were motivated by instinct, it would be normal, natural behaviour and not a symptom of illness. We find, too—and this is very important—that the most primitive of peoples, the hunter-gathers, the people at the very earliest beginnings of civilization, were the least aggressive of all human beings. If aggressiveness were innate, then it should have been most evident in the hunter-gatherers. In fact, just the opposite is true. It was the growth of civilization, starting about 4000 Before Christ; it was the creation of large cities, kingdoms, hierarchies, armies; it was the invention of war, the invention of slavery—and I use the word “invention” deliberately here, because neither of those things occur in nature—it was all these things that provided breeding grounds for sadism, aggression, and the desire to subjugate and destroy, ills that never existed to anywhere near that same degree among primitive, prehistoric peoples. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

It was the weakness in the instinct theory that prompted the behaviourists to propose a totally contrary view. They maintain that absolutely nothing is innate in us and that everything people do is the result of social conditions and of very clever manipulation on the part of society or of the family. Concepts like freedom and dignity are thought by B.F. Skinner to be “pure fictions. They do not exist at all but are simply products of influencing human beings in such a way that they will think they want to be free. Neither a desire for freedom nor a sense of human dignity is inherent in human nature.” Let me give you a simple example of the theory at work. Little Leo will not eat his spinach. If his mother punishes him, she will not—as many parents know—get very far. And Skinner agrees that punishment is not the correct method. There should be no great lectures about spinach. It should simply be served. And if little Leo nibbles at it, then his mother should give him a friendly smile and promise him an extra piece of cake. The next time the spinach appears on the table, little Leo will be more inclined to eat it. Once again he wins his mother’s smile, and this time she gives him a piece of chocolate. And so things continue until little Leo is conditioned, that is, until he had learned that he will get a reward if he eats his spinach. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Who does not like rewards? And after that a while Leo will eat his spinach with pleasure, preferring it to any other vegetable. Now it is true that things can work out just that way. Skinner has invested a great deal of effort in finding the cleverest ways to do this sort of thing. The reward is not automatically repeated every time, for instance. It is omitted once, then reintroduced. Many ingenious studies and experiments have been made to see how people can best be seduced, how rewards can be used to make them do what the person giving out the rewards wants them to do. Skinner is not interested in why the manipulator wants people to do what one asks them to do, for Skinner does not think that values can have any objective meaning. If we reflect on the situation of a psychologist in one’s laboratory, then it is easy enough to understand Skinner’s position. Whether the animals eat or do not eat is not of much interests. The only think of interest is whether one can induce them, with one method or another, to eat or not to eat. And since behavioursts regard human beings too, themselves included, as guinea pigs, they are not interested in the question of why and to what end they condition others. They are interested in only two things: whether they can condition someone and how they can do it best. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

The behaviourist separates human behaviour from human beings. One does not study people in the process of behaving; one studies only the product, and the product is behaviour. The human being who generates that behaviour is expressly put to one side. Human beings as such are unimportant; they are the subject of philosophy, of speculation. What interest the behaviourist is what people do. One chooses to ignore the question of why such astonishingly large numbers of people do not react the way they should react if the theory were correct. One is not disturbed by the fact that many people rebel, refuse o conform, do not fall for the subtle bribes that are ultimately the essence of this whole theory. The theory assumes that most people prefer to be bribed rather than to be themselves and to realize the potential of their own natures and talents. Instinct theory and behaviourism have one thing in common despite the great differences between them. Neither allows human beings the slightest control over their own lives. Instinct theory sees humans driven by impulses that lie far back in one’s human and animal pas. Behaviourism sees humans driven by whatever social constructs and conditions happen to be in effect. One is as dominated by the opportunistic and seductive tricks of one’s society as the human of instinct is by the history of one’s species. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

However, neither of the two, neither human model as proposed by the two theories, is based on what humans actually want, what one is, what is in accordance with one’s nature. The two major schools account for the greater part of what does by the name of “modern psychology” today. And I should ass that behavioristic psychology professors at American universities are behavioursts, and Soviet psychology follows very similar paths for obvious political reasons. Christianity claims the Essential Godmanhood has, in a concrete event and a concrete human, appeared within the conditions of existence, inside the weft of history, without falling from essence and without being distorted by the ebb and flow of existence. In Christ “Eternal Goodmanhood” had been seen. When it was seen Jesus was known as the Christ, the expectation of humankind finally fulfilled, the One who brings in the new eon, the New Being. Jesus is the Christ for us. And because the Christ means Essential Godmanhood, the Christ is God-for-us. Jesus would not have been the Christ, and, as the Christ, he would not have been the manifestation of Eternal Godmanhood, if humanity had not acknowledged him. For there is no revelatory situation without the ecstasy of recognition in which one discovers a manifestation of being-itself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

The symbol of the Christ, therefore, which is borrowed from the Jewish conception of the Messiah, or King, or Anointed, can easily be distorted. Jesus as the Christ must not be seen as a God walking on Earth, as a divine-human automaton without serious temptation, real struggle, or tragic involvement in the ambiguities of life. This would be a misunderstood myth. It could not be the manifestation of a reality in which one partakes. It would not be the revelation of the ground of being. Caught in existential estrangement, humans could not grasp the meaning of a divine-human avatar. A human being names Jesus who would not be subject to the involvements of existence could not be revelatory since humans could not step into the non-existential theological circle where one would make sense. On the contrary, the Christ has been known, touched with our hands, seen with our eyes. And he has been known, not only as a man named Jesus, but as Jesus who is called the Christ. This means that in Jesus we have the picture of a personal life which is subjected to all the consequences of existential estrangement but wherein existential estrangement is conquered in oneself and a permanent unity is kept with God. The ground of being, which we only perceive in hope, to which we are unconditionally committed without the evidence that we are in contact with it, dominated the ambiguities of existence in Christ. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Under its power, the power, the Christ did not undergo original sin; his existence did not imply a fall: it maintained in its integrality the dominion of Essential Goodmanhood over the tragedies of life. The universal quest of humankind has been for this return to unity, for this recovery of the ground of being which supports us and from which we are estranged. To perceive it in the Christ is to hear the good news that the Christ is the one who brings in the new eon, to expect the coming of a new state of things through him, the state of things in which we ourselves have recovered Essential Godmanhood and have risen from the state of estrangement to that of reunion with being-itself. The symbol of New Being is human’s quest to conquer the dichotomy between subject and object. New Being is essential being under the conditions of existence, conquering the gap between essence as existence. This symbol itself can misread. The Bing which is manifested in Christ is new indeed, but not in the sense that is has done away with the circumstances of estrangement that mark existential being. Tragedy is still here, but henceforth it has been conquered. It is there, but no longer as victorious. The New Being is new insofar as it is the undistorted manifestation of essential being insofar as it is the undistorted manifestation of essential being within and under the conditions of existence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

It is new in two respects: it is new in contrast to the merely potential character of essential being; and it is new over against the estranged character of existential being. In the Christ alone, human’s relation to the ground of being is fully actual and fully undistorted. In ourselves, subject as we are to existential estrangement, Godmanhood is only potential; it is a state of dreaming innocence in which we never were and from which, speaking symbolically, we feel when we came into being. Our actual being is divorced from it, and the constant dream of human has been for a return to the beginning, a restoration of that which has been lost because never had it, innocence, essence, Godmanhood. This is the New Being we long for. In Christ it has been manifested. Essential being has come o existence without distortion. Innocence has become experience without losing its pristine virginity. Estrangement has been conquered. The New Being has appeared in a personal life. We want to communicate to you an experience we have had that here and there in the World and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Out of their participation in the revelatory situation in which Jesus is perceived to be the Christ, Christians witness to the vision they have had of the New Reality, which is reconciliation, reunion, resurrection. The New Creation, the New Being, the New state of things. As we pray in faith, we become a vital part in the Lord’s work as He prepares the World for His Second Coming. The transcendent events we honour were the beginning of the prophesied last dispensation, in which the Lord is preparing His Church and His people, those who bear His name, to receive Him. As part of our preparation for Hid coming, He will lift each of us so we may rise to spiritual challenges and opportunities. The work of the Lord in these last days, is one of vast magnitude and almost beyond the comprehension of mortals. Its glories are past description, and its grandeur unsurpassable. It is the theme which has animated the bosom of prophets and righteous humans from the creation of the World down through every succeeding generation to the present time; and it is truly the dispensation of the fullness of times, when all things which are in Christ Jesus, whether in Heaven or on Earth, shall be gathered together in Him, and when all things shall be restored, as spoken of by all the holy prophets since the World began; for in it will take place the glorious fulfilment of the promises made to he fathers, while the manifestations of the power of the most High will be great, glorious, and sublime. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

We feel disposed to go forward and unite our energies for the upbuilding of the Kingdom, and establishing the Priesthood in their fullness and glory. The work which has to be accomplished in the last days is one of vast importance, and will call into action the energy, skill, talent, and ability of the Saints, so that it may roll forth with glory and majesty. “Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the Summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smoke the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole Earth. And in the days of these kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure,” reports Daniel 2.34-35, 44-45. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

The effect of standing before God by welcoming him before us will, by contrast, be the transformation of our entire life. All else that enters our mind, and especially the thoughts that first come to mind as we encounter various kinds of event that make up our lives, will be healthy, Godly, and good. The conclusions we “jump” to prompted by events around us will be those in harmony with the realities of a good-God-governed Universe, not the illusions of a Godless or a me-governed Universe, or one where humans are supreme—or no one is. My patterns of thinking will conform to the truth of scriptural revelation, and I will extend and apply those truths, under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, to all of the details of my daily life. Am I undertaking some task? Then I in faith do it with God, assuming and finding his power to be involved with me. That is the nature of His kingdom. Is there an emergency? I will mee it with the knowledge that God is in the midst of it with me and will be calm in a center of intense prayer. Am I praised? My thoughts (and feelings) will move immediately to the goodness of God in my life. Am I condemned or reproached? I know that God is supporting and helping me because He loves me and has a future for me. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Am I condemned or reproached? I know that God is over all and that He is working things out—that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called into the fulfillment of his purposes. And so forth. I constantly and thoughtfully engage myself with the ideas, images, and information that are provided by God through the Scriptures, His Son Jesus, and the lives and experiences of His people through the ages. In doing that, I am constantly nourished by the Holy Spirit in ways far beyond my own efforts of understanding. What I receive in response to my efforts is therefore also a gift, a grace. Spiritual (trans)formation of my thought life is achieved by the ministry of the Spirit in the midst of my necessary and well-directed efforts. This has special importance when I am faced with the presence of evil and suffering in human life, my own or at large. I realize that I will either allow my view of evil to determine my view of God and will cut Him down accordingly, or I will allow my view of God to determine my view of the evil and will elevate Him accordingly, accepting that nothing is beyond His power for God. King Benjamin continues his address—salvation comes because of the Atonement—Believe in God to be saved—retain a remission of your sins through faithfulness—impart of your substance to the poor—do all things in wisdom and order. About 124 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

“And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the Angel of the Lord, that he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and behold they had fallen to the Earth, for the fear of the Lord had come upon them. And hey had viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the Earth. And they all cried aloud with one voice, saying: O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created Heaven and Earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of humans. And it came to pass that after they had spoken these words the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come, according to the words which king Benjamin had spoken unto them. And king Benjamin again opened his mouth and began to speak unto them, saying: My friends and my brethren, my kindred and my people, I would again call your attention, that ye may hear and understand the remainder of my words which I shall speak unto you. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

“For behold, if the knowledge of the goodness of God at this time has awakened you to a sense of your nothingness, and your worthless and fallen state—I say unto you, if ye have come to a knowledge of the goodness of God, and His matchless power, and His wisdom, and His patience, and His long-suffering towards the children of humans; and also, the atonement which has been prepared from the foundation of the World, that thereby salvation might come to one that should put one’s trust in the Lord, and should be diligent in keeping his commandments, and continue in the faith even unto the end f his life, I mean the life of the mortal body—I say, that this is the human wo receives salvation, through the atonement which was prepared from the foundation of the World for all humankind, which ever were since the fall of Adam, or who are, or whoever shall be, even unto the end of the World. And this is the means whereby salvation comes. And there is none other salvation save this which hath been spoken of; neither are there any conditions whereby humans can be saved expect the conditions which I have told you. Believe in God; believe that he is, an that he created all things, both in Heaven and in Earth; believe that He has all wisdom, and all power, both in Heaven and in earth; believe that humans do not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

“And again, believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them. And again I say unto you as I have said before, that as ye have come to knowledge of the glory of God, or if ye have known of His goodness and have tasted of his love, and have received a remission of your sins, which causes such exceedingly great joy in your souls, even so I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and His goodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures, and humble yourselves even in the depth of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the Angel. And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true. And ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every human according to that which is one’s due. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

“And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness. However, ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another. And also, ye yourselves will succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that stands in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar puts up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish. Perhaps thou shalt say: The human has brought oneself one’s misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto one of my substance that one may not suffer, for one’s punishment are just—however, I say unto you, O human, whosoever does this the same has great cause o repent; and except one repents of that which one has done one perishes forever, and has no interests in the kingdom of God. For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on His name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy. And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another. And if ye judge the human who puts up one’s petition to you for your substance that one perish not, and condemn one, how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which does not belong to you but to God, to whom also your life belongs and yet ye put up no petition, not repent of the thing which thou hast done. I say unto you, wo be unto that human, for one’s substance shall perish with one; and now, I say these things unto those who are rich as pertaining to the things of this World. And again, I say unto the poor, ye who have not and yet have sufficient, that ye remain from day to day; I mean all you who deny the beggar, because ye have not; I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“And now, if you say this in your hearts ye remain guiltless, otherwise ye are condemned; and your condemnation is just for ye covet that which ye have not received. And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you—that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God—I would that ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every human according to that which one has, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants. And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a human should run faster than one has strength. And again, it is expedient that one should be diligent, that thereby one might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order. And I would that ye should remember, that whosoever among your borrow of one’s neighbour should return the thing that one borrowed, according as one does agree, or else thou shalt commit sin; and perhaps thou shalt cause they neighbour to commit sin also. And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“However, this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe them commandments of God, and continue in faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O human, remember, and perish not,” reports Mosiah 4.1-30. O Lord, I bless Thee that the issue of the battle between Thyself and Satan has never been uncertain, and will end in victory. Calvary broke the dragon’s head, and I contend with a vanquished foe, who with all one’s subtlety and strength has already been overcome. When I feel the serpent at my heel may I remember one whose heel was bruised, but who, when bruised, broke the devil’s head. My soul with inward joy extols the mighty conqueror. Heal me of any wounds received in the great conflict; if I have gathered defilement, if my faith has suffered damage, if my hope is less than bright, if my love is not fervent, if some creature-comfort occupies my heart, if my soul sinks under pressure of the fight. O Thou whose every promise is balm, every touch life, draw near to Thy weary warrior, refresh me, that I may rise again to wage the strife, and never tire until my enemy is trodden down. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Please give me such fellowship with Thee that I may defy Satan, unbelief, the flesh, the World, with delight that comes not from a creature, and which a creature cannot mar. Give me a draught of the eternal fountain that lies in Thy immutable, everlasting love and decree. Then shall my hand never weaken, my feet never stumble, my sword never rest, my shield never rust, my helmet never shatter, my breastplate never fall, as my strength rests in the power of Thy might. Tasting, O Lord, the fullness of Thy perfect sweetness, we beseech Thee that it may be to us for remission of sins and health of soul, through Thy mercy and grace. Receiving the Cup of the Lord’s Pasion, and tasting the sweetness of His most holy Body, let us give thanks and praise to Him, walking in His house with joy and gladness. We have received the Body of Christ, and drunk His Blood. We will fear no evil, for the Lord is with us. May Thy Blood be always life to us, and salvation of our souls, O our God. LORD our God, mercifully grant that we who have received the Body and Blood of Thine Only-begotten Son, may be far removed from the blindness of the unfaithful disciple, seeing that we confess and worship Christ our Lord, Very God and Humans. Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Cresleigh Homes

Learn smart ways to tackle that frustrating kitchen clutter in today’s Cresleigh Blog! 🧹 Link in bio. https://www.instagram.com/p/CBoRl1Xp7dZ/

Preserve in us, O Lord, the gift of Thy grace; that by the power and virtue of the Eucharist which we have received, we may be fortified against all evils of this life and of the life to come. #CresleighHomes

So We Have Asked the Wrong Question: Satan Said to Eve, “You Will be Like God, Knowing Good and Evil!”

June 19, 2020 1:35 am

A warmer climate, immigrations, and agricultural improvements have led to explosive population growth. We so many new mouths to feed the new growth in populations spelled disaster. Fertility rates combined with reduced harvest means the land can no longer support its population. While the abundance of labour has kept wages low, most Americans in the twenty first century have experienced a steady decline in living standards, marked by famine, poverty and poor health, leaving them vulnerable to infection. Medical examinations of many Americans find them overweight and suffering from prior illness from eating unhealthy foods because they are affordable. The destruction caused by COVID-19 will change humanity in two important ways. On an economic level, the rapid loss of population will lead to some important changes in America’s economic conditions. There will be more food to go around as well as more land and better pay for the surviving farmers and workers. People will begin to eat better and live longer. Living standards will also bring an increase in social mobility. Weakening the tyrannical oppression of the government, which will bring about political reforms. However, COVID-19 will also have an important biological impact. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

Because COVID-19 will wipe out some of the most frail and vulnerable people, it will leave behind a population with significantly different gene pool. Including genes that may help survivors resist the virus. Genetic mutations often confer immunity to different pathogens that work in similar ways. Riches are not from an abundance of Worldly goods, but from a contented mind. Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible. Their lives were not cracked or broken, as others’ were, but were bent into themselves; lost to others, they futilely sought to find themselves. In the same sense as it could be said that one’s journey through life was undetectable, in the same sense no victim fell before one. One lived much too intellectually to be a seducer in the ordinary sense. For some people, individuals are merely for stimulation; they discard them as trees shake off their leaves—one is rejuvenated, the foliage withers. I can think of nothing more tormenting than a scheming mind that loses the thread and then directs all its keenness against itself as the conscience awakens and it becomes a matter of rescuing oneself from this perplexity. The many exists from one’s foxhole are futile; the instant one has troubled soul already thinks it sees daylight filtering in, it turns out to be a new entrance, and thus, like panic-stricken wild game, pursued by despair, one is continually seeking an exit and continually finding an entrance through which one goes back into oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

Such a person is not always what could be called a criminal; one very often is oneself frustrated by one’s own schemes, and yet one is stricken with a more terrible punishment than is the criminal, for what is even the pain of repentance compared with this conscious madness? One’s punishment has a purely esthetic character, for even the expression “the conscience awakens” is too ethical to use about one; consciousness that manifests itself as a restlessness that does not indict one even in the profounder sense but keeps one awake, allow one no rest in one’s sterile restlessness. Nor is one insane, for one’s multitude of finite thoughts are not fossilized in the eternity of insanity. Who is and who is not a psychologist? And what is psychology? The answer to the first question would appear to be quite simple. Anyone who has not studied psychology and has not earn an academic degree in the field is not a psychologist. That would mean practically everyone is a nonpsychologist. However that is not really the case, and I would go so far as to claim that there is no such thing as a nonpsychologist, because we all practice and have to practice our own brands of psychology as we live our lives. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

We have to know what is going on inside other people. We have to try to understand them. We even have to try to predict how others will behave. To do so we do not have to go to a university laboratory. The laboratory of everyday life (to which it is not even necessary to go) gives us ample opportunity to think through and ponder any number of experiments and cases. So we have asked the wrong question. We should ask not whether we are psychologist. Whatever the answer to that question may be, I feel that the study of psychology can help us become better psychologist. That brings us to our second question: What is psychology? This question is much harder to answer than the first one. We will have to take a little time with it. The literal meaning of psychology is “science of the soul.” However, knowing that does not make any clearer to us precisely what this science of the soul is. What does it study? What are its methods? What are its goals? Most people think psychology is a relatively modern science. They have that impression because it is essentially only in the last 100 to 150 years that the word “psychology” ha come into use. However, they forget that there was a premodern psychology that began—let us say—about 500 years Before Christ and continued into the seventeenth century. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

Premodern psychology did not call itself “psychology,” however. It was known as “ethics” or often as “philosophy,” but that does not make it any the less psychology. What was the purpose of that premodern psychology? Our answer can be quite brief: Premodern psychology sought to understand the human soul in the interest of making people better. The motivation behind psychology was therefore moral. Indeed, we could even say religious. Aristotle wrote a psychological textbook, but he titled it Ethics. The Stoics produced a very interesting psychology, and some of you may be familiar with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. In Thomas Aquinas you will find a system of psychology from which you can probably learn more than you can from most modern textbooks. His discussion of such concepts as narcissism, pride, humility, modesty, inferiority complex, and many more are as interesting and profound as you will find anywhere. Spinoza, too, wrote a psychology and, like Aristotle, entitled it Ethics. Spinoza was probably the first great psychologist to recognize clearly the power of the unconscious when he said that we are all aware of our desires but we are not aware of the motives behind those desires. The modern period has seen the rise of a totally different psychology, which is no the whole not much more than a hundred years old. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

This modern psychology has a different purpose. Its goals is not to understand the soul so that we can become better human beings; its goal is—to state the case crudely—to understand the soul so that we can become more successful human beings. We want to understand ourselves and others so that we can take the upper hand in life, so that we can manipulate others, so that we can shape ourselves in ways that will favour our own advancement. One if we understand how much culture and the goals of society have changed, can we fully grasp the difference between the tasks of premodern and modern psychology. Now, I am sure that by and large people in classical Greece or in the Middle Ages were not all that much better than we are today. Their everyday behaviour was probably even worse than ours. However, despite that their lives were governed by an idea, and that idea was just the business of earning one’s daily pay check (bread) was not enough to make life worth living. Life had to have a meaning, and much of that meaning lay in human growth, in the development of our human powers. And therein lay the relevance of psychology. Modern humans see things differently. They are not as interested in being and becoming more as they are in having more. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

Modern humans want better careers, more money, more power, more respect. However, we know that more and more people are beginning to doubt whether goals like those will really make them happy. Word is getting around, and such doubt is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the United States of America, the richest and most economically advanced country in the World. God never removed Paul’s thorn, despite is anguished pleas. When Paul wrote these words, it had been fourteen years since he had received the surpassingly great revelations. During that time he had suffered many varied adversities. How could he have still needed the thorn to curb any temptation to become conceited? God had an even greater purpose for the thorn. He wanted Paul to experience the sufficiency of His grace. God wanted Paul to learn that the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit was all he needed. God wanted Paul to lean continually on the Spirit for strength. All things are naked to God’s eyes. God necessarily knows things other than Himself. For it is manifest that He perfectly understands Himself; otherwise His existence would not be perfect, since His existence is His act of understanding. Now if anything is perfectly known, it follows of necessity that its power is perfectly known. However, the power of anything can be perfectly known only by knowing to what is power extends. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

Since therefore the divine power extends to other things by the very fact that it is the first effective cause of all things, as is clear. God must necessarily know things other than Himself. And if we add that the very existence of the first effective cause is God, this appears still more plainly, God is His own act of understanding. Hence whatever effects pre-exist in God, as in the first cause, must be in His act of understanding, and all things must be in Him according to an intelligible mode: for everything which is in another, is in accord to the mode of that in which it is. God’s grace assumes our sinfulness, guilt, and ill-deservedness. Here we see it also assumes our weakness and inability. Just as grace is opposed to the pride of self-righteousness, so it is also opposed to the pride of self-sufficiency. The sin of self-sufficiency goes all the way back to the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Satan’s temptation of Eve was undoubtedly complex and many faceted. That is, it included what we would now consider a number of different temptations. However, one of those facets was the temptation of self-sufficiency. Satan said to Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Humankind was created to be dependent upon God: physically, “in him we live and move and have our being,” reports Acts 17.28. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

Some people, their religious services are a holy thing to them, unpriced and unpriceable. For it is done at the dictate of one’s higher self. We must recognize a sharp, clear-cut distinction between spiritual teaching as a duty and spiritual teaching as a business. The one expresses one’s true relationship to the disciple, the other seeks financial return from one. Spirituality is no commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. It must be worked for step by step and won by personal effort. This still remains true even though in the end it is conferred by Grace, for without such preparation the conferment is unlikely, nay almost impossible. This is not less true if the efforts may mostly be buried in the history of past lives. If any religious organization or cult-leader even mentions a price, a fee, or even a contribution as a prerequisite to Grace, initiation, or higher consciousness, then the devotee is being deceived by imposture. It is an ancient tradition that such instruction should be given free and that a teacher is degraded by receiving payment. God is costless. It is, as Jesus pointed out, as free as the wind which comes and goes. Whoever has realized it will gladly teach the way to anyone who is ripe and ready for one’s teachings. If any human puts a price on it and offers to sell it to you, be sure one is offering a false or shoddy imitation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

Note how Moses recalled the Israelites’ utter extremity and total dependence on God: God humbled them, caused them to hunger, fed them with food they had never seen before, taught them that humans live by the word that comes from God. Maybe this is due to Eve, but although many feminists’ legal theories are powerful and brilliant in many ways, they sometimes rely on gender essentialism—the notion that a unitary, “essential” women’s experience can be isolated and described independently of race, class, sexual orientation, and other realities of experience. The result of this tendency toward gender essentialism, is not only that some voices are silenced in order to privilege others (for this is an inevitable result of categorization, which is necessary both for human communication and political movement), but that the voices that are silenced turn out to be the same voices silenced by the mainstream legal voice of “We the People”—among them, the voices of Black women. This result troubles me for two reasons. First, the obvious one: As a humanitarian, the experience of Black women is too often ignored both in feminist theory and in legal theory, and gender essentialism in feminist legal theory does nothing to address the problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

A second and less obvious reason for my criticism of gender essential is that contemporary legal theory needs less abstraction and not simply a different sort of abstraction. To be fully subversive, the methodology of feminist legal theory should challenge not only law’s content but its tendency to privilege the abstract and unitary voice, and this gender essentialism also fails to do. In accordance with my belief that legal theory, including feminist legal theory, is in need of less abstraction, and should introduce the voices of more Black women. However, just because people do not represent everyone equally does not mean that they are racist. Some of the people who are not diverse are antiracist. Yet, just as law itself, in trying to speak for all persons, ends up silencing those without power, feminist legal theory is in danger of silencing those who have traditionally been kept from speaking, or who have been ignored when they spoke, including Black women, poor White women, and sometimes even rich young White men. The first step toward avoiding this danger is to give up the dream of gender essentialism. Second, in using a racial critique to attack gender essentialism in feminist legal theory, my aim is not to establish a new essentialism in its place based on the essential experience of Black women. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

Nor should my focus on Black women be take to mean that other women and even men are not silenced either by the mainstream culture or by feminist legal theory. Third, every experience is unique and no categories or generalizations exists at all. Even a jurisprudence based on multiple consciousness must categorize; without categorization each individual is as isolated as most alienated people believe themselves to be, and there can be no moral responsibility of social change. We need to make our categories explicitly tentative, relational, and unstable, and to do so is all the more important in a discipline like law, where abstraction and “frozen” categories are the norm. Avoiding gender essentialism need not mean that the Holocaust and a corncob are the same. Although the tactful acceptance of clumsy efforts by others to help may be a burden to the stigmatized individual, more is asked of one. It is said that if one is really at ease with one’s differentness, this acceptance will have an immediate effect upon normals, making it easier for them to be at ease with one in social situations. The stigmatized individual is advised to accept oneself as a normal person because of what others can gain in this way, and hence likely one oneself, during face-to-face interaction. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

The line inspired by normals, then, obliges the stigmatized individual to protect normals in various ways. An important aspect of this protection has only been suggested; it will be reconsidered here. Given the fact that normals in many situations extend a stigmatized person the courtesy of treating one’s defect as if it were of no concern, and that the stigmatized is likely to feel that underneath it all one is a normal human being like anyone else, the stigmatized can be expected to allow oneself sometimes to be taken in and to believe that one is more accepted then one is. One will then attempt to participate socially in areas of contact which others feel are not one’s proper place. Thus Black writer describes the consternation she causes in a hotel beauty shop: “The shop was hushed and solemn as I was ushered in and I was hushed and solemn as I was ushered in and I was virtually lifted by the uniformed attendant into the chair. I tried a joke, the usual thing about getting a haircut once every three months even if I did not need it. It was a mistake. The silence told me that I was not a woman who should make jokes, not even good ones.” People do not only expect you to play your part; they also expect you to know your place. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

“Once at an open air restaurant, a waiter rushed to meet me, on the terrace where the tables were, no to help me, but to tell me that they could not serve a woman like me at that restaurant, as people visited to enjoy themselves and have a good time, not to be depressed by the sight minorities.” That the stigmatized individual can be caught taking the tactful acceptance of oneself too seriously indicates that this acceptance is conditional. It depends upon normals not being pressed past the point at which they can easily extend acceptance is conditional. It depends upon normals not being pressed past the point at which they can easily extend acceptance—or, at worst, uneasily extended it. The stigmatized are tactfully expected to be polite and not to press their luck (or they will be arrested); they should not test the limits of the acceptance shown them (because the police are not on their side and looking for a reason to incarcerate them), nor make it the basis for still further demands. Tolerance, of course, is usually part of the bargain. The nature of a “good adjustment” is not apparent. It requires that the stigmatized individual cheerfully and unselfconsciously accept oneself as essentially the same as normals, while at the same time one voluntarily withholds oneself from those situations in which normals would find it difficult to give lip service to their similar acceptance one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

More emotion management goes on in the families and jobs of the upper classes than in those of the lower classes, generally speaking. That is, in the class system, social conditions conspire to make it more prevalent at the top. In the gender system, on the other hand, the reverse is true: social conditions make it more prevalent, and prevalent in different ways, for those at the bottom—women. In what sense is this so? And why? Both men and women do emotion work, in private life and at work. In all kinds of ways, men as well as women get into the spirit of the party, try to escape the grip of hopeless love, try to pull themselves out of depression, try to allow grief. However in the realm emotional experience, is emotion work as important for men as it is for women? And is it important in the same ways? I believer that the answers to both questions is No. The reason, at the bottom, is the fact that women in general have far less independent access to money, power, authority, or status in society. They are a subordinate social stratum, and this has four consequences. First, lacking other resources, women make a resource out of feeling and offer it to men as a gift in return for the more material resources they lack. (For example, in 2017, overall, 57 percent of men earn $50,000.00 or more annually, while only 42 percent of women earn the same a year.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

The pay gap is still 20 percent for woman and Black women with graduate degrees earn 2 percent less than their White female counterparts. Thus, a woman’s capacity to manage feeling and to do “relational” work is for them a more important resource. Second, emotion work is important indifferent ways for men and women. This is because each gender tends to be called on to do different kinds of this work. On the whole, women tend to specialize in the polite and accommodating side of emotional labour and men tend to be more stern and less emotional. This specialization of emotional labour in the marketplace rests on the different childhood training of the heart that is given to girls and to boys. (“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. What are little body made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.”) Moreover, each specialization presents men and women with different emotional tasks of mastering anger and aggression in the service of “being nice.” To men, the socially assigned task of aggressing against those that break rules of various sorts creates the private task of mastering fear and vulnerability. Third, and less noticed, the general subordination of women leaves every individual women with a weaker “status shield” against the displaced feelings of others. For example, female real estate agents found themselves easier targets for verbal abuse from buyers so that male sales representatives often found themselves called upon to handle unwarranted aggression against them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

The fourth consequence of the power difference between the genders is that for each gender a different portion of the managed heart is enlisted for commercial use. Women more often react to subordination by making defensive use of physical beauty, charm, and relational skills. For them, it is these capacities that become most vulnerable to commercial exploitation, and so it is these capacities that they are most likely to become estranged from. For male workers in “male” jobs, it is more often the capacity to wield anger and make threats that is delivered over to the company, and so it is this sort of capacity that they are more likely to feel estranged from. After the great transmutation, then, men and women come to experience emotion work in different ways. Yet, wise teachers try to harmonize the contradictions. They use practical scientific ways along with mystical interior ones. The person who is fluent and articulate makes a better teacher so far as communication is concerned; but the person who has had divine experience, who knows what one is talking about, is still the best teacher of all. If one knows in experience as in theory, and if one possesses the ability to communicate this theory, then the impressions left will not be vague but quite distinct. A teacher who gives a well-argued discourse about Truth helps us, but so does the teacher who announces the Truth in non-discursive terms both are needful in their place. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

The self-actualized is one who not only knows the truth but can teach well what one knows—and not necessarily in words, for silence can also be used as an effective medium. King Benjamin continues his address—the Lord Omnipotent will minister among humans in a tabernacle of clay—blood will come from every pore as He atones for the sins of the World—His is the only name whereby salvation comes—humans can putt off the natural humans and become Saints through the Atonement—the torment of the wicked will be as a lake of fire and brimstone. About 124 Before Christ. “And again my brethren, I would call your attention, for I have somewhat more o speak unto you; for behold, I have things to tell you concerning that which is to come. And he things which I shall tell you are made known unto me by an Angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me. And he said unto me: Awake, and hear the words which I shall tell thee; for behold, I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy. For the Lord hath heard thy prayers, and hath judges of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thee that thou mayest rejoice; and that thou mayest declare unto thy people, that hey may also be filled with joy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

“For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from Heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst humans, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases. And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of humans. And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than humans can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people. And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary. And lo, he cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the children of humans even through faith one one’s name; and even after all this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and hall scourge hi and shall crucify him. And he shall rise the third day from the dead; and behold, he standeth to judge the World; and behold, all these things are done that a righteous judgment might come upon the children of humans. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

“For behold, and also his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned. However, wo, wo unto one who knoweth that one rebelleth against God! For salvation cometh to none such except it be through repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord God hath sent his holy prophets among all the children of humans, o declare these things to every kindred, nation, and tongue, that thereby whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might receive remission of their sins, and rejoice with exceedingly great joy, even as though one had already come among them. Yet the Lord God saw that his people were a stiffnecked people, and he appointed unto them a law even the law of Moses. And many signs, and wonders, and types, and shadows showed he unto them, concerning his coming; and also holy prophets spake unto them concerning his coming; and yet they hardened their hearts, and understood not that the law of Moses availeth nothing except it were through the atonement of his blood. And even if it were possible that little children could sin they could not be saved; but I say unto you they are blessed; for behold, as in Adam, or by nature, they shall, even so the blood of Christ atoneth for their sins. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

“And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of humans, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. For behold he judgeth, and his judgment is just; and the infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; but humans drink damnation to their own souls except they humble themselves and become as little children, and believe that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. For the natural human is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless one yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural human and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon one, even as a child doth submit to one’s father. And moreover, I say unto you, that the time shall come when the knowledge of a Saviour shall spread throughout every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. And behold, when that time cometh, none shall be found blameless before God, except it be little children, only through repentance and faith on the name of the Lord God Omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

“And even at this time, when thou shalt have taught thy people the things which the Lord thy God hath commanded thee, even then are they found no more blameless in the sight of God, only according to the words which I have spoken unto thee. And now I have spoken he words which the Lord God hath commanded me. And thus saith the Lord: They shall stand as a bright testimony against this people, at the judgment day; whereof they shall be judged, every human according to one’s work, whether they be good, or whether they be evil. And if they be evil they are consigned to an awful view of their own guilt and abominations, which doth cause them to shrink from the presence of the Lord into a state of misery and endless torment, from whence they can no more return; therefore they have drunk damnation to their own souls. Therefore, they have drunk out of the cup of the wrath of God, which justice could no more deny unto them than it could deny that Adam should fall because of one’s partaking of the forbidden fruit; therefore, mercy could have claim on them no more forever. And their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever. Thus hath the Lord commanded me. Amen,” reports Mosiah 3.1-27. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

Mighty God, I humble myself for faculties misused, opportunities neglected, words ill-advised, I repent of my folly and inconsiderate ways, my broken resolutions, untrue service, my backsliding steps, my vain thoughts. O bury my sins in the ocean of Jesus’ blood and please let no evil result from my fretful temper, unseemly behaviour, provoking pettiness. If by unkindness I have wounded or hurt another, do thou pour in the balm of Heavenly consolation; if I have turned coldly from need, misery, grief, please do not in just anger forsake me: If I have withheld relief from penury and pain, do not withhold They gracious bounty from me. If I have shunned those who have offended me, please keep open the door of Thy heart to my need. Please fill me with an over-flowing ocean of compassion, the reign of love my motive, the law of love my rule. O Thou God of all grace, please make me more thankful, more humble; please inspire me with a deep sense of my unworthiness arising from the depravity of my nature, my omitted duties, my unimproved advantages, Thy commands violated by me. With all my calls to gratitude and joy may I remember that I have reason for sorrow and humiliation; O give me repentance unto life; cement my oneness with my blessed Lord, that faith may adhere to one more immovably, that love may entwine itself round one more tightly, that one’s Spirit may pervade every fibre of my being. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

Then please send me out to make one know to my fellow-humans. The spiritual guide must be someone to be trusted more than any human to be looked to for guidance, knowledge, hope, inspiration, and warning. One respects every confidence that is reposed in one and keeps all confession in the hidden archives of memory. Whatever confidence one receives during the interview, the other person may feel sure that it will not be betrayed. The person who professes to guide others spiritually and to inspire them with high ideals cannot escape being watched. If one resents the ordeal, one’s service o them will be impaired; but if one accept it, one shows thereby that one is not looking for self-glory. Contempt and slander will be the unequal reward some will pay one; miscomprehension and minification will be received from others. One will accept them unconcernedly. No true master will take money for one’s services. O God, the Bread of our life, look upon us; be Thou the Guardian of our bodies; be Thou the Saviour of our souls. Believing that we have received from the holy Alter the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord and God, let us pray to the Unity of the Blessed Trinity, that it may be granted to us evermore, in fullness of faith, to hunger and thirst after righteousness; and that we, being strengthened with the grace of the saving Food, may so do His work, that we may possess the Sacrament which we have received, not for judgment, but for healing, through our Lord Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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O LORD my God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, make me ever to seek and love Thee, and by this Holy Communion which I have received never to depart from Thee; for Thou art God, and beside Thee there is none else, for ever and ever. #CresleighHomes

If Someone Breaks a Law and Harms Someone Else, What Should Happen?

June 15, 2020 11:59 pm

No one is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency. Through a small part of evolution which is devoted to free will, we learn and grow. One who allows oneself to learn and grown in this way never frowns at the mistake of others, but, instead, forgives them. Laws permeates American society. Laws have been defined as a system of rules. Another way to think about this is to think in terms of Law and laws. While laws (little “l”) are the specific rules that we have to restrict, regulate, and/or promote behaviour, Law (big “L”) is a larger concept: an ideal that is based in the values, structure, process, procedures, and purpose of a legal system. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was put on the books as a “law” that outlawed forms of discrimination, while the value of equality is promoted in the United States of America’s “Law.” There are different notions of Law. For some, such as human rights advocates, the purpose of Law is to promote and uplift human personality, while for others, such as libertarians, its purpose is to protect individual property rights. In evaluating the little “l” (law) in relation to justice, we ultimately are discussing the big “L” (Law). One can evaluate their agreement with a particular law based upon the larger perspective of Law they uphold. In the United States of American, Law is frequently associated with the norm “equal justice under law,” which emphasizes the value of equality in the legal process, procedures, and structure. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Others critique what they see are the current norms and values promoted by the structures of the Untied States’ legal system. The equality norm can be viewed and implemented in different ways. For example, you can treat likes alike, and unlikes unlike, or you can endorse equality of status in which unlikes are valued equally. The current United States’ legal system promotes the former, an understanding of equality that does not adequately address gender inequality. Law, as a concept, can also be understood by juxtaposing it with the other subject material in this essay. In relation to the economy, some argue that the economy and issues such as workers’ right and workplace discrimination. Additionally, although laws can attempt to regulate social relations, they have frequently failed to do so justly. Legal theory must hear and respond the intersecting identities of everyone. Law are an institutional response to certain human behaviour that can be destructive. Some would argue that laws are a reaction to human nature, and that the legal system and its laws must be consistent with the morality of human nature in order to be considered legal. Additionally, laws are used in the governance of many societies and human behaviours. This brings us to the issue of politics. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Politics is the process through which societies create laws. However, in the application of law, politics is supposed to be absent. This is why lady justice has a blindfold—she cannot see the disputant and therefore cannot show favoritism. Legal systems require a connection with morality in order to it to be considered truly legal. However, some disagree. They argue that laws are commands, backed by threat of sanctions, from a sovereign, to whom people have a habit of obedience. There, it may seem that laws are not necessarily based in morality, and they can be defined as an expression of the sovereign will, backed by sanctions. Yet, this can make the legal system look like nothing more than a gun person writ large. So, it is debated that the legal system should be viewed as a facilitator, a problem solver. Many see the legal system as one of rules that impose obligations. Some obligations are direct injunctions and requirements (primary rules): drive on the right-hand side of the road; no smoking in classrooms; income taxes due on April 15. Other rules, secondary rules, are about the creation and application of these primary rules: the Treasury Department will collect taxes; the Board of Regents has jurisdiction over classroom safety and health. These rules determine who have the power to make (primary) rules. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Jurisprudence is the theory behind law, the philosophy of law. Scholars discuss what law is in analytic jurisprudence, and what it ought to be in normative jurisprudence. There are different schools of thoughts on jurisprudence, such as natural law, legal positivism, legal realism, and critical legal studies: Natural law theories connect morality and law. Natural law, in this school of thought, is different than human-made law. Existing outside any state structure or society, natural law is seen as natural to human beings and thus consistent with human nature. Any law that is not consistent with human nature is not a true law; an unjust law is no law at all. Human nature can be a test of a valid law. However, legal positivists believe that there is not necessarily a connection between morality and law. Law is a practical endeavor that varies over time and space. Legal positivist believe that law is a human construction. Legal realists, on the other hand believe law is a prediction of what the courts will decide. Under this system of thought, law is not a system of rules that the judge mechanically applies; instead the judge makes the law. The rules allow free play and, consequently, other factors (such as class, temperament, excreta) help determine judicial decisions. Legal realists believe that it is the real World practice of law that determines what law is. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Critical legal studies, the newest of these schools, began to develop in the 1970s. An early formative statement adopted by the Critical Legal Conference states: “The central focus of the critical legal approach is to explore the manner in which legal doctrine and legal education and the practices of legal institutions work to buttress and support pervasive system of oppressive, inegalitarian relations. Critical theory works to develop radical alternatives, and to explore and debate the role of law in the creation of social, economic and political relations that will advance human emancipation.” This multifaceted field is critical of traditional understandings of law. Scholars in this field argue that legal doctrines are hegemonic. They propose that legal doctrines reflect the ideas of the dominant, most powerful social groups, and so they renationalize and support existing inequality. There are many other ideas about law but the preceding four paradigms are major contributions on which others have built. Let us apply the typology of jurisprudence that we developed above with Plato’s “Crito,” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and the work of John Rawls. A reading within this section, Plato’s “Crito” (360 BCE) is a dialogue between Socrates and Socrates’ friend Crito. Socrates awaits his execution after his trial and conviction for impiety and corrupting the youth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Socrates awaits his execution after his trial and conviction for impiety and corrupting the youth. Crito has come to Socrates having prepared to smuggle him out of prison and into exile. Although both agree that the trial and degree of execution were unjust, the two men enter into a dialogue about whether or not Socrates should escape and, therefore, disobey Athenian law. Ultimately, Socrates decides not to attempt escape because of his commitment to Athenian laws, rooted ultimately in his belief that all laws must be obeyed because to do otherwise risks chaos and unhappiness. Socrates believes that human nature, as unwieldy as it is, needs to be controlled bylaws, and thus he supports, and therefore must abide by, the laws in place, whether or not it currently results in just outcomes. Of all the pieces you will read, this argument exemplifies the traditional legal positivism. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963), on the other hand, argues that sometimes a just person must openly disobey an unjust law. He believes in higher law principles that guarantee, among other things, equality for all humankind in law. For King, an unjust law is one that conflicts with God’s laws; it degrades human personality. A just law can be recognized by its tendency to uplift humans, treating them with respect. King supports civil disobedience to resist unjust laws, but this requires a willingness to accept suffering. King’s position typifies the natural-law approach. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Rawls does not accept King’s natural-law criterion for the adequacy of law. Instead, he proposes that we test justice in law via a thought experiment. This thought experiment begins with the “original position,” a room in which individuals enter and communicate. These individuals are cloaked in a “veil of ignorance,” which does not allow them to see their own personal characteristics (such as their race, gender, class, nationality, age, or other distinctions). They are aware, however, of the societal conditions outside the room (such as the existence of poverty and its deleterious impact). Rawls suggests that their ignorance about where they fit in the scheme of things will enable them to come up with just and fair principles about how to treat one another outside this room. Each individual must be aware that, when they leave the room, they may discover that they are in the worst position in society. This will encourage them to agree on a reasonable social safety net that improves the position of the people worst-off in society. In the end, Rawls argues, these individuals will decide upon the following principles: (1) everyone should have equal opportunities and (2) there can be inequality but only when it benefits all individuals. Law, if consistent with these principles, would be considered just. For Rawls, a legal positivist, the only thing one can say about human nature is that it is rational and self-interested. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

If someone breaks a law and harms someone else, what should happen? Your perspective on humans, jurisprudence, and law will help determine your responses. The utilitarian perspective argues that justice is promoted by pursuing “utility.” Utility is measured by examining the potential “happiness” (+) and unhappiness (id est, “mischief”) (-) created by an act. According to this theory, good laws should increase the total happiness of the community and exclude what subtracts from it. Punishments are mischief; thus, punishment should only if it promises to exclude a greater evil. It is interesting to contrast Bentham’s “greatest good for the greatest number” approach with that of Immanuel Kant (1797/2000). Kant argues for retribution where a wrong occurs. Against utilitarianism, and for a priori principles and not a set of feelings, Kant argues for the principle of equality between the crime and the penalty (like for like, murder for murder). In fact, he argues the famous premise that, even if a society is dissolving, it should still kill the last murderer because, if it did not, the bloodguiltiness would remain with the people. Punishment is more than an abstraction. It occurs every day in the United States, where it is a highly institutionalized, bureaucratic process. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

We can consider the reality of punishment as in the contemporary United States of America, where it is highly institutionalized, bureaucratic process. We can consider the reality of punishment as it is practiced in the contemporary United States of America, asking under what conditions (if any) it can be considered just or unjust. The development of the prison in Western society were brought into fortition because the acts were once considered punishable when committed against the sovereign (such as a king). Punishment occurred to the body and was a public spectacle (such as hangings, quarterings, and beheadings). Enlightenment thinkers critiqued these methods of punishment and argued for reform. Society changed, as did punishment. Although not promoted by reformers, imprisonment because the preferred method of punishment. The development of prisons occurred alongside other social developments designed to condition individuals to societal norms. Punishable acts became considered as those committed against the public/community and punishment would occur largely behind closed doors, in prisons that focused on correcting the individual and their souls. As opposed to grotesque scenes in public, punishment now functions to condition people to societal norms, not only within the prison, but also within a society. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

By promoting societal norms amongst each other, we being the punitive procedure to the entire society. Those not adhering to societal norms become delinquents. Consequently, a central theme we have to consider is power. To be able to define the good and the bad is power. Therefore, as punishment occurs to condition individuals to societal norms, punishment is connected with power and prisons are mechanisms of power. We have traced the development of prisons and the relationship with power, now we have to move this discussion to present day. Many people are currently calling on prison reforms and abolition. Prison is an industrial complex that supports ever expanding prison system. The prison industrial complex recognizes the societal, economic, and political conditions that exist and support the use of prisons as punishment. Many are calling for a re-imagining of our system as a whole because people belonging to a lower economic class or are a marginalized group are often hindered in the criminal justice system. For example, they do not usually have the resources that other groups have to afford private legal defense and the acts they are more likely to be charged with (as compared to other acts such as white-collar crime) are punished more harshly. White-collar crime is now synonymous with a full range of fraud committed by businesses and government professionals. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

White-collar crimes are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trusts and are not dependent on the application of threat of physical force or violence, but can lead to a loss of live(s). The motivation behind these crimes is financial—to obtain or avoid losing money, property, or services or to secure a personal or business advantage. These are not victimless crimes. A single scam can destroy a company, devastate families by wiping out their life savings, or cost investors billions of dollars (or even all three). Today’s fraud schemes are more sophisticated than ever, and the FBI is dedicated to using its skills to track down the culprits and stop scams before they start. Still, many people are critical of the current criminal justice system and punishments. Other critics have suggested alternatives to our system of punishment, such as restorative justice. This alternative to imprisonment concerns itself first with the restoration of the community, the victim, and the perpetrator. Some are advocating for a restorative justice that takes into account indigenous models of justice. For example, this model would support a system focused on identifying and addressing underlying societal issues and social problems, rather than a system which only responds to criminal activity after it has taken place. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Each individual analysis offers new problems even to the most experienced analyst. In each individual one finds oneself confronted with difficulties one has never encountered before, with attitudes which are hard to recognize and still harder to explain, with reactions which are far from transparent at first sight. Looking back at the intricacy of the neurotic character structure, and at the many factors involved, this variety is not surprising. Differences in inheritance and in the experiences a person has gone through during one’s life, particularly in one’s childhood, produce a seemingly boundless variation in the construction of the factors involved. However, in spite of all these individual variations the crucial conflicts around which a neurosis grows are practically always the same. In general they are the same conflicts to which the healthy person in our culture is also subject. It is something of a truism to say that it is impossible to distinguish clearly between neurotic and normal, but it may be useful to repeat it once more. Many people, confronted by conflicts and attitudes that they recognize in their own experience, may ask themselves: Am I neurotic or not? The most valid criterion is whether or not the individual feels disabled by one’s conflicts, whether one can face them and deal with them directly. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

When we have recognized that neurotic persons in our culture are impelled by the same underlying conflicts, and that in a diminished degree the normal person is also subject to them, we are confronted again with the question that was raised at the beginning: what are the conditions in our culture which are responsible for the fact that neuroses center around these particular conflicts I have described, and not others? Dr. Freud has given this problem but limited consideration; the reverse side of this biological orientation is a lack of sociological orientation, and thus he tends to attribute social phenomena primarily to psychic factors and these primarily to biological factors (libido theory). This tendency has led psychoanalytical writers to believe, for example, that wars are caused by the working of the death instinct, that our present economic system is rooted in anal-erotic drives, that the reason the machine age did not start two thousand years ago is to be found in the narcissism of that period. Dr. Freud sees a culture not as the result of a complex social process but primarily as the product of biological drives which are repressed or sublimated, with the result that reaction formations are built up against them. The more complete the suppression of these drives, the higher the cultural development. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Since the capacity for sublimation is limited and since the intensive suppression of primitive drives without sublimation may lead to neurosis, the growth of civilization must inevitably imply a growth of neurosis. Neuroses are the price humanity has to pay for cultural development. The implicit theoretical presupposition underlying this train of thought is a belief in the existence of biologically determined human nature, or more precisely, a belief that oral, anal, genial, and aggressive drives exits in all human beings in approximately equal quantities. Variations in character formation from individual to individual, as from culture to culture, are due, then, to the varying intensity of the suppression required, with the additional qualification that this suppression affects the different kinds of drives in varying degrees. Historical and anthropological findings do not confirm such a direct relationship between height of culture and the suppression of pleasures of the flesh or aggressive drives. The error consists primarily in assuming a quantitative instead of a qualitative relation. The relation is not between quantity of culture but between quality of individual conflicts and quality of cultural difficulties. The quantitative factor cannot be disregarded, but it can be evaluated only in the context of the entire structure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

In Heaven myriads of myriads of Angels continuously say in loud unison: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power of riches and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing.” And every created thing which is in Heaven and on the Earth and under the Earth and on the sea, and all thing sin them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honour and glory and dominion forever and ever,” reports Revelation 5.12-13. Now, this angelic vision is precisely the vision that possesses the thought life of the renovated heart; and you can see how it would grip the whole person and one’s Earthly environment. This is what it is to “hallow” God’s name. It is what we pray for in The Lord’s Prayer. However, sad to say, even our Christian meetings and environments are for the most part far from it. It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these early years of the twenty-first century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity. However, why a moral calamity? Because absolutely nothing can inform, guide, and sustain radical and radiant goodness in the human being other than this true vision of God and the worship based thereon. Only this vision can jerk the twisted condition of humanity right. Nothing straight can be constructed from such warped wood as that which humans are made. And humanly speaking this is true. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

However, what is impossible with humans is possible with God. “And now there was no more contention in all the land of Zarahemla, among all the people who belonged to king Benjamin, so that King Benjamin has continual peace all the remainder of his days. And it came to pass that he had three sons; and he called their names Mosiah, and Helorum, and Helaman. And he caused that they should be taught in all the language of his fathers, that thereby they might become humans of understanding; and that they might know concerning the prophecies which had been spoken by the mouths of their fathers, which were delivered them by the hand of the Lord. And he also taught hem concerning the records which were engraven on the plates of brass, saying: My sons, I would that ye should remember that were it not for these plates, which contain these records and these commandments, we must have suffered in ignorance, even at this present time, not knowing the mysteries of God. For it were not possible that our father, Lehi, could have remembered all these things, to have taught them to his children, except it were for the help of these plates; for he having been taught in the language of the Egyptians therefore he could read these engravings, and teach them to his children, and so fulfilling the commandments of God, even down to this present time. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

“I say unto you, my sons, were it not for these things, which have been kept and preserved by the hand of God, that we might read and understand of his mysteries, and have his commandments always before our eyes, that even our father would have dwindled in unbelief, and we should have been like unto our brethren, the Lamanites, who know nothing concerning these things, or even do not believe them when they are taught them, because of the traditions of their fathers, which are not correct. O my sons, I would that ye should remember that these sayings are true, and also that these records are true. And behold, also the plates of Nephi, which contain the records and the sayings of our fathers from the time they left Jerusalem until now, and they are true; and we can know of their surety because we have them before our eyes. And now, my sons, I would that ye should remember to search them diligently, that ye may profit thereby; and I would that ye should keep the commandments of God, that ye may prosper in the land according to the promises which the Lord made unto our fathers. And many more things did king Benjamin had made an end of teaching his sons, that he waxed old, and he saw that he must very soon go the way of all the Earth; therefore, he thought I expedient that he should confer the kingdom upon one of his sons. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“Therefore, he had Mosiah brought before him; and these are the words which he spake unto him, saying: My son, I would that ye should make a proclamation throughout all this land among all this people, or the people of Zarahemla, and the people of Mosiah who dwell in the land, that thereby they may be gathered together; for on the morrow I shall proclaim unto this y people out of mine own mouth that thou art a king and a ruler over this people, whom the Lord our God hath given us. And moreover, I shall give this people a name, that thereby they may be distinguished above all the people which the Lord God hath brought out of the land of Jerusalem; and this I do because they have been a diligent people in keeping the commandments of the Lord. And I give unto them a name that never shall be blotted out, except it be though transgression. Yes, and moreover I say unto you, that if this highly favoured people of the Lord should fall into transgression, and become a wicked and an adulterous people, that the Lord will deliver them up, that thereby they become weak like unto their brethren; and he will no more preserve them by his matchless and marvelous power, as he has hitherto preserved our fathers. For I say unto you, that if he had not extended his arm in the preservation of our fathers they must have fallen into the hands of the Lamanites, and become victims of their hatred. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“And it came to pass that after king Benjamin had made an end of these sayings to his son, that he gave him charge concerning all the affairs of the kingdom. And moreover, he also gave him charge concerning the records which were engraven on the plates of brass; and also the plates of Nephi; and also, the sword of Laban, and the ball or director, which le our fathers through the wilderness which was prepared by the hand of the Lord that thereby they might be led, everyone according to the heed and diligence which they gave unto him. Therefore, as they were unfaithful they did not prosper nor progress in their journey, but were driven back, and incurred the displeasure of God upon them in remembrance of their duty. And now, it came to pass that Mosiah went and did as his father had commanded him, and proclaimed unto all the people who were in the land of Zarahemla that thereby they might gather themselves together, to go up to the temple to hear the words which his father should speak unto them,” Mosiah 1.1-17. Please Hear, O Lord, our prayers, that they Holy Communion of our redemption ma both bestow on us assistance for this life, and procure for us everlastings joys; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Sovereign God, Thy cause, not my own, engages my heart, and I appeal to Thee with greatest freedom to set up Thy kingdom in every place where Satan reigns; please glorify Thyself and I shall rejoice, for to bring honour to Thy name is my sole desire. I adore Thee that Thou art God, and long that others should know it, feel it, and rejoice in it. O that all humans might love and praise Thee, that Thou mightiest have all glory from the intelligent World! Let sinners be brought to Thee for Thy dear name! To the eye of reason everything respecting the conversation of others is as dark as midnight, but Thou canst accomplish great things; the cause is thine, and it is to Thy glory that humans should be saved. Lord, please use me as Thou wilt, do with me what Thou wilt; but, O, promote Thy cause, let Thy kingdom come, let Thy blessed interest be advanced in this World! O do Thou bring in great numbers to Jesus! Let me see that glorious day, and give me to grasp for multitudes of souls; let me be willing to die to that end; and while I live let me labour for Thee to the utmost of my strength, spending time profitably in this work, both in health and in weakness. It is Thy cause and kingdom I long for, not my own. O, answer Thou my request! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Is that a Monet? No, wait, that’s just your gorgeous backyard on display thanks to the extra-large windows in your dining room. Who needs a statement piece when your landscaping can speak for itself. 🤩 // #MillsStation Residence 2
Being strengthened with the gift of our redemption, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that true faith may ever make it a help towards our everlasting salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Mathematics possess not only the truth, but supreme beauty–a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-2/

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Randolph Harris II International Institute

Category Archives: Jealousy

There is a Plea, a Tear in Your Eye and Both are Equally Beautiful—I Accept them Both With Equal Right!

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