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My Name is Legion, for there are Many of Us!
Progress always involves risk; you cannot steal second base and keep your foot on first. Some people react to major stressor in their lives with extended and excessive feelings of anxiety, depressed mood, or antisocial behaviours. The symptoms do not quite add up to acute stress disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder, nor do they reflect an anxiety or mood disorder, but they do cause considerable distress or interfere with the person’s job, schoolwork, or social life. Should we consider such reactions normal? No. Somewhere between effective coping strategies and posttraumatic stress disorder or other such syndromes lie the adjustment disorders. There are several types of adjustment disorders, including adjustment disorder with anxiety, and adjustment disorder with depressed mood. If they develop their symptoms within three months of the onset of a stressor, people receive such diagnoses. Crowded living conditions are one form of social stress that may arouse anxiety. The most crowded cities in the World are Manila (120,987 people per square mile), Shanghai, Cairo, Paris, and Bombay. The most crowded states in the United States of America are New Jersey (1,256 people per square mile), Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maryland. The symptoms of adjustment disorder may continue for as long as six months after the stressor subsides. If the stressor is long-term, such as a medical condition, the adjustment disorder may last indefinitely. Almost any kind of stressor may trigger an adjustment disorder. Common ones are the breakup of a relationship, marital problems, business difficulties, and living in a crime ridden neighbourhood. The disorder may also be triggered by developmental events such as going away to school, getting married, becoming a parent, or retiring from a job. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Up to 30 percent of all people in outpatient therapy receive this diagnosis; it accounts for far more claims for treatment submitted to insurance companies than any other. However, some experts doubt that adjustment disorders are as common as this figure suggests. Rather, the diagnosis seems to be a favourite things among clinicians—it can easily be applied to a range of problems yet is less stigmatizing than many other categories. Veterans, who risk their lives to defend us and yet are paid far less than sports entertainers, may benefit from rap groups, where they meet with others like themselves to share experiences and feelings, develop insights, and give mutual support. Many veterans find it easier to recall events in a rap group and to confront feelings they have been trying to avoid for years. One of the major issues rap groups deal with is guilt—guilt about things the members may have done to survive or about the very fact that they did survive while close friends and their brothers and sisters and sometimes parents died. Once the veterans are finally able to talk openly about their combat experiences and guilt feelings, they may finally start to recover from them and weigh their responsibility for past actions more accurately. Rap groups may also focus on the rage many combat veterans feel. Sharing painful memories and feelings—rap groups have helped many Vietnam veterans overcome the anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and flashbacks that still linger years after the war. As we have seen, stress can greatly affect our psychological functioning. Similarly, it can have an enormous impact on our physical functioning, contributing in some cases to the development of significant medical problems and disorders. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The idea that stress and related psychosocial factors may contribute to somatic illnesses has ancient roots, yet it had few supporters before the twentieth century. The seventeenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes went so far as to claim that the mind, or soul, is separate from the body—a position called mind-body dualism. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions are a subgroup of sexual disorders whose origins appear to be psychological in nature, and are not adequately accounted for by medical or organic causes. These dysfunctions involve a disturbance in sexual desire or in the psychophysiological changes associated with the human sexual response. This disturbance causes both personal and interpersonal distress. Included in this class of problems are hyperactive sexual desire disorder, male erectile disorder, and the sexual pain disorders, for example. (Another subgroup of sexual disorders consists the paraphilias. These involve recurrent and intense sexual urges, fantasies, or behaviours that include unusual objects, situations, and activities; these symptoms cause personal and interpersonal stress, occupational impairment, and sometimes legal troubles. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions are clearly caused by, and cause, profound problems in interpersonal relationships. The incidence and prevalence of psychogenic sexual dysfunctions are not well known. These disorders are often overlooked in major epidemiological studies of mental health problems. Given the preponderance of individuals seeking treatment for them, it is likely that sexual dysfunctions are among the more common classes of psychosocial problems. A recent U.S. national survey of adult women supports a lifetime prevalence estimate of approximately 11 percent. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Many sexual problems are produced by interpersonal processes gone awry. Specifically, early deprivation, guilt over seeking gratification of pleasures of the flesh, relationships involving pleasures of the flesh transformed into power struggles, unexpressed anger, and unrealistic expectations of the self and others can each lead to the experience of difficulties involving pleasures of the flesh. Interpersonal problems such as these continue to occupy a dominant presence in the literature on psychogenic sexual dysfunction. Such themes are clearly evident that both clinicians and researchers have considered relationship factors to be of major importance in the development and maintenance of distress involving pleasures of the flesh. Most theoretical models of human sexuality emphasize the importance of interpersonal communication in maintaining the adjustment of making whoopy. Dysfunction involving pleasures of the flesh is therefore not viewed as an isolated complain but as evidence of emotional disturbance in the relationship as a whole. A dominant theme in the research findings on psychogenic sexual dysfunctions is that of problematic family-of-orientation experiences (id est, the relationship with the spouse). (Although dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh can of course arise in the context of some general personal relationships—that is, in dating/romantic relationships—the vast majority of research on such dysfunctions has been done with marital or quasi-marital couples; therefore, general personal relationships are not discussed in detail here.) Within marital relationships, dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh are linked with breakdowns in interpersonal communications. As such, they may serve two functions that resemble functions of somatoform disorders: They may provide a temporary solution to a system-wide problem, and they may serve as a method of communicating unhappiness indirectly. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Sexual dysfunctions are also linked with many forms of marital conflict. The conflict may be both a cause and a result of the dysfunction; in any case, it is patently obvious that psychogenic sexual dysfunctions and marital distress go hand in hand. Research on family-of-origin experiences has identified a number of early interpersonal experiences that may be etiological in this class of disorders. For example, many people with psychogenic sexual dysfunctions have a history of childhood sexual abuse, and/or exposure to parental modeling of dysfunctional attitudes and behaviours surrounding pleasures of the flesh. Significant problems with basic communication processes are abundantly evident in sexually distressed couples. In most cases, a psychogenic sexual dysfunction is part of a larger relational problem with establishing and maintaining intimacy. To illustrate, researchers compared sexually distressed and nondistressed couples on a number of specific communication skills that are important in close relationships. Partners in sexually distressed couples exhibited a greater proportion of disapproval and approval, less empathic reaction to each other, and more indirect as well as hostile expression of anger, in comparisons to control couples. Analysis of a 10-minute marital interaction indicated that couples with pleasures of the flesh dysfunctions were less behaviourally engaged and assertive than control couples. A study with similar subject groups found that couples with dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh were more likely to have experienced instability and a general lack of communication in their relationships than those in more functional relationships. These findings are consistent with those that more generally indicate a powerful relationship between interspousal communication in pleasures of the flesh and marital adjustment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Researchers developed a unique typology of marital interactions among couples with dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh; their work is reminiscent of the pioneering work of Harris International Research and Development on different marital and family types. Their analyses yielded four coupe groups: the conflict-centered relationships, which harbours a hostile and dominant spouse (this group is actually split into two subgroups, one in which the husband is dominant and one in which the wife is dominant); the passive-constrained relationship, composed of introverted spouses who are withdrawn and emotionally inhibited; and the congenial-affectionate relationship, characterized by some anxiety and discouragement, but with similar attitudes toward spontaneity, compassion, and emotional self-absorption. The conflict-centered and passive-constrained relationships, which collectively accounted for approximately 50 percent of the couples who had dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh in the sample, had obvious marital communication problems. The congenial-affectionate group is perhaps the most functional, and the couple type for which the prognosis is best. A sense of mutuality is an important component of any healthy personal relationship. Accordingly, agreement and a sense of understanding between partners play an important role in pleasures of the flesh adjustment. A survey study of cohabiting couples indicated that agreement between partners pleasures of the flesh preferences was a key predictor of the pleasures of the flesh adjustment, as was men’s (but not women’s) understandings of their partners’ preferences. The role that communication plays in creating this understanding cannot be overstated or overlooked. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
There is an idea expressed in our text by St. Paul which we have not yet paid attention to, and that is the idea of an undivided heart. Married people, necessarily concerned with the World’s affairs and how to please their spouses, “are divided,” whereas virginity enables one to live “devoted to the Lord, without distractions.” The state of virginity, as St. Paul presents it, is not subjective and psychological in nature, but objective; that it has the Lord as its center and aim, and not personal benefit. Now, we have to say that, in a subordinate way, it also fulfills this second function of personal enhancement and growth. In other words, it does have a strong subjective, existential significance. In fact it helps a person to achieve the finest, most difficult enterprise of all, which is to become inwardly unified. There is a “diaspora,” a dispersion, even withing ourselves. If Jesus were to ask me, as He did that poor demoniac in the Gospel: “Why is your name?” I too would have to reply: “My name is legion, for there are many of us,” Mark 5.9. There are as many of us as there are desires, plans and regrets which we harbour, each one different from and contrary to others which pull us in opposite directions. They literally dis-tract us, drag us apart. Virginity is a power aid to progress toward interior unity, in virtue of the fact that it enables us to live united to the Lord, and able to devote ourselves to Him “without distractions.” United in oneself and united to the Lord—the unity we are talking about consists in precisely these elements. St. Augustine has written: “Through continence, in fact, we are gathered in and returned to the One, from which we have flowed out into the many. For he loves You less who loves something else along with You, which he does not love for Your sake.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
This unity is what Jesus calls “purity of heart,” and it is realized most of all at the level of the will. It consists in wanting fewer and fewer things, until eventually one wants “one thing only.” When a person can truthfully say with the psalmist: “One thing alone have I asked for the Lord, one thing only do I seek,” reports Psalms 27.4, and “Whom else have I in Heaven but You? With You, I lack nothing on Earth,” reports Psalms 73.25, then such a person is coming close to real virginity of heart, of which physical virginity is the sign and safeguard. This is because virginity of the heart consists in wanting one thing only, that one thing being God. This illuminating and unifying aspect of virginity was the one that some strongly ascetical and mystical Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa most liked to emphasize. For him, true virginity is interior, and consists in progressively freeing oneself from passions and desires (pathe) in order to unite oneself to God. The other, physical virginity, is strictly related to ad in view of the first, a kind of protective wrapping for it. He writes: “In order to contemplate the bliss of the divine pleasure in the best way possible, the liberated soul, once released, must not turn to any Earthly thing, or taste any of what are commonly claimed to be pleasures. On the contrary, one transfers the impulse of one’s love from material things in order to contemplate with one’s mind what is beautiful in a non-material way. Bodily virginity has been devised precisely so that this disposition of the heart could come about. Its principal function is to make the soul forget the natural movements of the passions, and to prevent the base needs of the flesh from reaching the point where they must be satisfied. The soul, once freed from these, will no longer run the risk of gradually growing used to things apparently permitted by the law of nature, and thus of abandoning or ignoring that divine and genuine pleasure which can only be pursed by the purity of the rational element that guides us.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
There is no doubt that there are some married people who are further advanced along this way than many celibates and virgins. Gregory of Nyssa himself, who outlined this marvellous program for interior purity, was married. However, this does not take away from the fact that the virgin, as such, is more favoured when it comes to this task, and consequently more responsible if one is careless about implementing it. Married people must inevitably be concerned with the affairs of the World, of their family. They cannot help being divided. The same Gregory of Nyssa says of the married woman that: “A fragment of heart goes away with every child she has, and if she has had many children, her soul is divided into as many parts as she has had children, so that she feels in her very depths whatever happens to each of them.” Obviously this can become a way for her to grow in holiness (“A woman,” says Scriptures in 1 Timothy 2.15, “will be saved by childbearing”), but this does not take away the fact that she is, in some sense, also divided by childbearing. Once again, however, on the subject of the undivided heart, we have occasion to reflect and be afraid. The undivided heart is a good thing, as long as you love somebody. In fact, a divided heart that loves someone is better than an undivided heart that loves nobody—the latter would actually be undivided egoism. It would mean having one’s heart full, but with most corrupting thing there is: oneself. Of this type of virgin and celibate, unfortunately none too rare, because they do not belong to someone else, they think they belong to God. Because they lone no one else, they think they love God. Looked at from any angle, it is clear that the essence of celibacy and virginity for the Kingdom is a spousal love for the Lord. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The very “fruitfulness” of this state of life depends on spousal love for the Lord. Just as marriage without love would not be a true marriage, even if it was “valid,” so would virginity without love hardly be true virginity, only a semblance, a hard and empty shell, without a soul. The main motive for Christian virginity is therefore positive, not negative. The phenomenology of religion is familiar with many forms of virginity, at least temporary ones, even outside Christianity. However, in these cases it either has a negative motive of separation and abstention from the World and material things, as in Gnosticism (whose watchword was “fasting from the World”), or else one of ritual purification—also tending towards the negative—by which children (pueri innupti) and vestal virgins, by reason of their uncorrupt state, were considered more worthy to approach God. In this last case we see an example reminiscent of the principle in Jewish Levitical law, of also abstaining from marriage when acts of worship and sacrifices were to be performed. For many people, Christianity has been a powerful, all-consuming religion that demands much and delivers in equal proportion. They embrace it with gusto and model their lives on its principles, emphasizing what suits their natures. For some, extreme asceticism—self-flagellation and fasting to the point of starvation—has been the path to salvation. For others, it has been self-appointed, solitary service to God, freed from the constraints of marriage and household supervision, of pregnancy and child-rearing. Not surprisingly, the Church Fathers worried about unconventional virgins. Some believed that virgins should be locked in isolated, not allowed to travel nor socialize. Stories about outstanding virgins astounded, impressed, influenced, and outraged the Christian World. Whether true, wildly embellished, or entirely fictional, these stories survived for centuries and inspired countless others with their examples of courageous and confident devotion to celibate, Godly ways of life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
There used to be communities of virgins and many of them were adults. Constantina, daughter of a Christian emperor, was diametrically opposite to the flesh and blood. She lived in a community of 120 virgins. And they recruited other virgins. One of the perks of this unusual state was the right to flout social norms in favour of Christian values, while demanding the highest status because of their sexual virtue. This inspired other Christian women who hoped they, too, could liberate themselves through devout virginity. As we have seen in the New Testament, virginity has an essentially beneficial motivation: the Kingdom, the Lord. St. John Chrysostom states: “The slavery of marriage is harsh and inevitable. Even when it is free from all pain, marriage has no greatness in itself: of what advantage could the most perfect of marriages be at the moment of death? None at all!” Even Gregory of Nyssa, although married, as I said, feels the need to speak of “the unpleasant aspects of marriage” before proceeding with his discourse on virginity, and begins his indictment by saying: “Where shall we start, in order to depict this difficult life in the dismal hues that befit it?” And further: “All life’s absurdities originate in marriage.” The Latin Fathers also—Ambrose and Augustine—follow along the same lines. Chrysostom write that “anyone who denigrates marriage also harms virginity.” Neo-Platonic believers saw the asceticism of the soul as essentially linked to detachment from matter and the flesh. “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive,” reports Acts 20.35. Give your heart to God. God will not fill a closed fist with good things. God is a giver, and you are never more like God than when you give. God promised the Old Testament patriarch Abraham, “I will bless you [with abundant increase of favours] and make your name famous and distinguished, and you will be a blessing,” reports Genesis 12.2. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
We often read such promises, and say, “All right, God! Come on; pour out Your blessings on me!” However, notice there is a catch. We must do something; better yet, we must be something. God is implying that we will not be blessed simply so we can live lavishly or self-indulgently. We will be blessed to be a blessing. Indeed, unless we are willing to be a blessing, God will not pour out His favour and goodness in our lives. We will receive from God in the same measure that we give to others. You may not feel you have anything extra to give. However, it depends on your attitude. You must be faithful in the little you have right now before God will bless you with more. A lot of people say, “God, when are You going to bless me?” However, if we would listen more carefully, maybe we would hear God saying, “When are you going to start being a blessing?” Giving is a spiritual principle. Whatever you give will be given back to you. If you give a smile, you will receive smiles from others. If you are generous to people in their time of need, God will make sure that other people are generous to you in your time of need. Interesting, is it not? What you make happen for others, God will make happen for you. The Bible says, “When you help the poor, you are lending to the Lord,” reports Proverbs 19.17. You may be thinking, “Well, if I had more money, I would give more.” No, that is where you miss it. You have to start right where you are. You must be faithful with what you have, then God will trust you with more. You may not have a lot of extra money to give, but you can buy somebody’s dinner every once in a while. You can give somebody a kind word. You can go out of your way to pray for someone in need. Now is the time to develop an attitude of giving. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Friend, the closet thing to the heart of our God is helping hurting people. God loves when we sing and when we pray. He loves when we come together to celebrate His goodness. However, nothing pleases God any more than when we take care of one of His children. Jesus said, “If you even give as much as a cup of water to someone in need, I see it and I am going to reward you,” reports Matthew 10.42. He said, “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My breathren, you did it to Me,” Matthew 25.40. Someone needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your loving arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. It may be your holding on to your chastity to inspire. Who knows? Maybe just saying “Hello,” may let someone know that you care and can help begin to heal that person’s heart May you can give a rescuing flower. The Pilgrims believed, “You have not lived until you have done something for someone who cannot pay you back.” Make a decision that today, you will be on the lookout for someone you can bless. The actualizing Christian learns how to live in the here and now, while trusting the past and future to God. What has happened in the past, one accepts, not hanging on to the good or bad experiences. One takes what one has learned from all experiences, uses that wisdom from then on, and leaves the experiences themselves in the past. One is free, then, of the burden of guilt, resentment, embarrassment, despair, or bitterness that being stuck in past memories would cause. In regard to the future, one takes the responsibility to make tentative plans, yet trusts the final outcome of each day and each year to God. One takes to heart the saying of Christ to “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you,” reports Matthew 6.33. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
One has faith in the future without having to make rigid and unrealistic goals. One gives up demanding a guarantee from God or anyone else just exactly how things will work out in one’s life. Instead, one chooses to do what one can and trusts God for the rest. This style of life bears the fruit of peace, joy, and contentment. Even though there are sudden reversals or traumas or things one did not count on, one looks to God to reveal in time a deeper meaning for why things turn out the way they do. So, again, one discovers a sense of peace in even the most turbulent times. This is not to say that the Christian does not experience anxiety, confusion, or frustration. Rather, it is simply to say that underneath these feelings will remain a depth of calm and peace, just as the ocean remains calm underneath the turbulent waves of a hurricane. The source of calmness is the person’s deep-rootedness in the Spirit of God. This past year, several things happened to me suddenly that I did not know which way to turn. I felt jarred. I know that I developed migraines as I tried to understand how to handle certain relationships and circumstances. Jared, Jensen, and I spent time in prayer, and I deeply yielded my life to God, so that I could learn what He was expecting of me and which direction I should go. Out of this surrender came a real peace. I had an inner assurance that things would work out in the best way. Even though I feel worried occasionally, I have already begun to realize that God is answering my prayers, and that His hands are in all that is happening to me. So I am trusting God in each moment and not trying to predict or manipulate the future. I am experiencing faith to let things go so that God can decide what the future holds. The actualizing Christian seeks a balance in which one live fully and responsively in the present, yet ties the past and the future to the present in a meaningful continuity. This lifestyle is in accord with the biblical invitations to trust God in all things and to praise Him however things might be turning out. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The testimony of Scriptures is that even the most seemingly tragic events are changed into the most studding victories for those who put their trust in God. Dear Lord in Heaven, I know that You are a giver, and I want to be like You. Please help me to hold loosely those things You have placed in my hands, and help me to always be ready to give to others in the same way You have given to me. In animals, fear is episodic; in humans, because of their enlarged consciousness, fear is constant. Even in our pleasures, our triumphs, fear is lurking presence. We are never safe. We live in vivid awareness of dangers not present but remembered or anticipated—drought and famine and predators, pain, and pestilence, and war. And something new: the awareness that we will die. Constant fear gives birth to exploitation. Because we are afraid we seek refuge in strength. We create gods to protect us, to explain our condition, to guarantee our safety, to promise us eternal life. And these gods, it turns out, speak to us through humans of power—through wizards, priests, princes, prelates, and kings and queens. They formulate the taboos: impulse must be controlled, violence and random sexuality prohibited. Sin comes into being. And morality. And guilt, the danger from within. Heaven is created for those who observe the taboos, hell for those who violate them. Fear and weakness impel us to honour the taboos, to obey our leaders. It is now possible for the few to control the many. Work comes into being: steady, heavy labour day after day for an end which is not of our choosing, which serves no purpose in our life but which (we have been convinced) is required by the gods who (we have come to believe) will protect us. Servitude is evented. The proliferation of tools and of the things that are built with tools, and the proliferation of myths and of the fears that are formulated and expressed by myths, comprise culture. Henceforth humans’ lives, not in nature, but in culture. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
In our nostalgia for the major freedoms of the days of Adam and Eve or Adam and Lilith, we recreate the Golden Age in our suburban communities, a time before sin. However, this takes money. The buy-in is close to $1 million in a rural community to try to isolated one’s family from sin and major crimes, and each time its tentacles reach our haven, it cost even more money to relocate and build a new one. The sacred does not beckon to us from up ahead, urging us forward toward higher spiritual realms. The sacred lies behind us. It blocks the way back to the freedom of our prehuman past. The sacred and the forbidden are one. Because Eden lies behind them, and the way back is blocked. These humans live in their knowledge of good and evil. They have given up random violence and indiscriminate pleasures of the flesh. And from that abnegation arises all of the human virtues: faithfulness, honesty, charity, obedience, love, trust, and care. It is these virtues that make it possible that orderly organized life can now take place in groups—not of thirty or thirty-five—but of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions of people observe the taboos and live orderly law-abiding lives within one organized group. The orderliness, indeed, is breathtaking. The violence that individuals have given up in the course of becoming orderly and moral has not been eliminated. It is passed on; it is handed upward. It collects at the top, in the White House, the California State Capitol is so sinful it should be black; Number Ten Downing Street, the Kremlin. The morality of individuals has led to community, to group solidarity, to orderliness, thereby making possible larger and larger sovereign collectives. And these collectives seize for themselves all of that power, all of that ruthlessness, that savagery, that the constituent individuals have, in their move to morality, to decency, themselves forsworn. These sovereign entities, however, have forsworn nothing, have not themselves become moral. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Such was never their intention, though they are loud in lip service to that notion. And the savagery that these collectives, these super-beasts in their super-jungle, are able to inflict on each other and on their moral constituents is so much more destructive than anything that could be done by individuals—regard the German dead at the Falaise Gap, thousands and thousands of bodies, heads, limbs, viscera. We may permit ourselves some nostalgia for the untrammeled violence of our pre-human past. It is my belief that we are going to have a change. And once the Americans can recover from their mesmerized condition and its astounding political apathy, out country will be in a most fortunate situation. For the kinds of radical changes, we need are those that are appropriate to a fairly general prosperity. We have allowed social balance to become lopsided and runaway in the present abuse of the country’s wealth. For instance, we have a vast surplus productivity, we can turn to finding jobs that will bring out the youth’s capacity, and so really conserve human resources. We can find ways to restore to the worker a say in their production, and so really do something for humanly independence. Since we have a problem of what to do with leisure, we can begin to think of necessary community enterprises that want doing, and that people can enthusiastically and spontabeously throw themselves into, and be proud of the results (exempli gratia, beautifying our hideous small towns). And perhaps thereby create us a culture again. Since we have the technology, the capital, and labour, why should we not have livable cities? Should it be hard to bring back into society the 55 percent who are still ill fed and ill houses, and more outcast than ever? #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
What is necessary is directly addressing definite objective needs and using available resources to satisfy them; doing things that are worth while just because they are worth while since we can. Politically, what we need is government in which a human offers oneself as candidate because one has a new program that one wants to effectuate, and we choose one because we want that good, and judge that one is the best human to effectuate it. Is that outlandish? The sovereign, having no other force than legislative power, acts only through the laws. And since the laws are only authentic acts of the general will, the sovereign can act only when the populace is assembled. With the populace assembled, it will be said: what a chimera! It is a chimera today, but two thousands years ago it was not. Have humans changed their nature? The boundaries of what is possible in moral matters are less narrow than we think. It is our weakness, our vices and our prejudices that shrink them. Base souls do not believe in great humans; vile slaves smile with an air of mockery at the word liberty. Let us consider what can be done in the light of what has been done. I will not speak of the ancient republics of Greece; however, the Roman Republic was, to my mind, a great state, and the town of Rome was a great town. The last census in Rome gave four hundred thousand citizens bearing arms, and the last census count gave four million citizens, not counting subjects, foreigners, women, children, and slaves. What difficulty might not be imagined in frequently calling assemblies of the immense populace of that capital and its environs. Nevertheless, few weeks passed by without the Roman people being assembled, and even several times on one week. It exercised not only the rights of sovereignty but also a part of those of the government. It took care of certain matters of public business; it tried certain cases; and this entire populace was in the public meeting place hardly less often as magistrate than as citizens. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
In looking back to the earliest history of nations, one would find that most of the ancient governments, even the monarchical ones such as those of the Macedonians and the Franks, had similar councils. Be that as it may, this lone contestable fact answers every difficulty: arguing from the actual to the possible seems like good logic to me. Now some of these things may be a little off the subject of prayer, but these are some areas that God is wanting us to look into. Once as I was teaching on this subject, the following prophecy came forth: For I have desires to reveal My wisdom, saith the Lord. Even in these days, I have spoken to humans from time to time that there was coming in this hour humans that will speak forth the Word accurately and learn to use My Word as I have set it forth. It will come forth with great power, as the wisdom of God unfolds within humans, as one understands the system that I have set in motion in this Universe. All humans come under that system; they walk and live under it. However, when they learn to control that system by the spoken Word, then My power will come forth in them. They will be able not only to control their bodies, but they will control their minds by casting down imaginations. They will be able to rise to a new level of life. The World will stand in awe as they see these people come forth. They will say, “Who are these people that have come in this hour that are able to speak even as though they had the power to do what they speak and it seems to come to pass even before our eyes? We do not understand these things.” However, it is My wisdom, saith the Lord and it is hidden in My Word. I did not hide it from you. I hid it there for you, so you could find it and act upon it. Bless the Lord, O my soul Lord my God you are great. You are clothed with the energy of atoms as with a mantle from a cloud of whirling cosmic dust as on the potter’s wheel. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Lord, you have began to tease out the whorls of the galaxies and the gas escapes from your fingers condensing and burning and you were fashioning the stars you made a spatterdash of planets like spores or seeds and scattered comets like flowers. O Lord, be upon us, for we have placed our hope in Thee. Save us, O God of our Salvation; gather us together and save us from the nation that oppress us that we may give thanks unto Thy holy name, and they shall glorify Thy name, for Thou art great; Thou doest wondrous things and Thou art great; Thou doest wondrous things and Thou alone art God. We are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pasture; we will give thanks unto Thee forever. To all generations will we recount Thy praise. Blessed be the Lord by day; blessed be the Lord by night; blessed be the Lord when we lie down; blessed be the Lord when we rise up. For in Thy hand are the souls of the living and the dead, as it is said: In His hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all humankind. Into Thy hand I commit my spirit. Thou dost redeems me, O Lord, Thou God of truth. Our God who are in Heaven, make manifest the unity of Thy name, establish Thy Kingdom for all time, and reign over us for ever and ever. May our eyes behold, our hearts rejoice, and our souls be glad in Thy true salvation, when it shall be said unto America: Thy God reigneth. The Lord reigneth; the Lord hath reigned; the Lord shall reign for ever and ever; for the Kingdom is Thine, and to everlasting Thou wilt reign in glory; for we have no King but Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the King, who continually in Thy glory wilt reign over us and over Thy creation for ever and ever. The grand realization of one’s identity with the One should support one in al hours. One who gains this consciousness in times when the Universal Law smiles must keep it also in times of tribulation. One must liberate oneself from the hazards of circumstances and from the bondage to emotional reactions, and at all times realize one’s best self. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
An open concept floorplan means plenty of room for that sprawling sectional! 🛋️
Meadows Residence 1 may be single story living, but the amount of space will be a pleasant surprise. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/
Residence One at Cresleigh Meadows holds 2,054 square feet of single story living. The open concept design includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a two car garage plus workshop.
Through the charming front porch enter into the foyer, where two secondary bedrooms lead off to a Jack and Jill bathroom.
With a Cresleigh Home, you will always experience a Sunday kind of love. Come on along.
I Talked with Spirits—But it is Dangerous and Wicked!
Many people are pleased to know, although this is Satan’s World and Universe, it is reassuring that the power of Satan, and his hosts are limited by God’s omnipotence. The Christian Bible and Book of Mormon clearly teaches that the Lord is in ultimate control of the entire social and political realm. For example, in the story of Job, we are informed that Satan could do only what God allowed. The apostle Paul also tells us that the Earthly rulers are in their places of authority by God’s permissive decree. He declared, “Let every soul be subject unto higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God,” reports Romans 13.1. This does not mean that God approves of men like Nero, Hitler, or Stalin, but that He ordained government to prevent chaos by making laws and enforcing them. Wicked men and women who hate the Lord and His people have obtained their positions of authority only by God’s permission, and their power is limited by His will. Therefore, though He commands His followers to obey even the most evil of these Earthly rulers, He will return as King of kings and Lord of lords to overcome all obstacles and work out His plans and purposes. The power of Satan and his followers is further restricted by the presence of Christians in the World. Believers have been redeemed from the domination of this World system. In addition, obedient followers of the Lord Jesus exert a purifying and preserving influence in the World. Jesus said, “Ye are the salt of the Earth,” reports Matthew 5.13. Salt immediately suggested purity to the people of Christ’s day. In fact, the Romans said that salt was the purest of all things because it cam from the sun and the sea. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Believers in Christ, by holding to a high standard of speech and conduct, and keeping themselves “unspotted” from the World (James 1.27), exert a strong cleansing effect upon humankind. Then, too, as salt was a common preservative, so Christians are a cleansing antiseptic in society, holding back the process of corruption. Faithful believers in Christ are therefore both a purifying and preserving influence. The apostle Paul also declared that all Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and that as long as they are on Earth the full outbreak of evil is impossible. “And now ye know what restraineth that he might by revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now hindereth will continue to hinger until he be take out of the way,” reports 2 Thessalonians 2.6-7. Moreover, Satan works under the disability of knowing that his ultimate defeat has been made certain by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus took upon Himself our nature and went to the cross that “through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” reports Hebrews 2.14. Though Peter tells us that, “the devil, like a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,” reported in 1 Peter 5.8, Satan knows his doom is sure and therefore operates under definite limitations. In conclusions, if you are a follower of Christ, you must take seriously these Scripture passages which speak of the invisible army that is arrayed against you. If you think that in your own strength you are able to withstand Satan and his host, you will not be victorious in your Christian life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Your testimony for Christ will be powerless and your way of life completely ineffective unless you walk in daily fellowship with God. This means you must confess and forsake every known sin, spend time with God in prayer, read the Scriptures, and submit yourself wholly to the Lord. In addition, in society, believers are called upon to pray earnestly for the leaders of nation, both on local, national, and subnational levels. Remember, the Bible teaches that an invisible host of evil spirits often uses political leaders as mere pawns, and these humans will not be able to function effectively and promote the right unless they receive help from the Lord. Since many of them are not true believers, they especially stand in need of the prayers of God’s people. The experience of Daniel demonstrates that when Godly men pray, the Lord sends His holy Angels to do battle with the Satanic forces and frustrates them in their efforts. Christians are therefore reminded by Paul to pray for all who have positions of authority: “I exhort, therefore, the first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all humans, for kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all Godliness and honesty,” reports 1 Timothy 2.1-2. Many of God’s people do not realize that tremendous battle being waged in the spiritual realm, and as a result they are somewhat lackadaisical about praying for men and women and children who hold responsible positions in government. Therefore, we who know that evil spirits are putting tremendous pressure upon these people should make doubly sure we do not fail. Our prayers may make the difference between life or death for many people, for when we seek God’s face, He exerts His power to defeat the enemy. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
With the restoration of King Charles II witchcraft did not cease; on the other hand it went on with unimpaired vigour, and several important cases were brought to trial in England. In one instance, at least, it made its appearance in Ireland, this time far south, at Youghal. The extraordinary tale of Florence Newton and her doings, which is related below, forms the seventh Relation in Glanvill’s Sadducismus Triumphatus (London, 1726); it may also be found, together with some English cases of notoriety, in Francis Bragge’s Witchcraft further displayed (London, 1712). It is from the first of these sources that we have taken it, and reproduced it here verbatim, except that some redundant matter has been omitted, id est, where one witness relates facts (!) which have already been brought forward as evidence in the examination of a previous witness, and which therefore do not add to our knowledge, though no doubt they materially contributed to strengthen the case against the unfortunate old woman. Hayman in his Guide to Youghal attributes the whole affair to the credulity of the Puritan settlers, who were firm believers in such things. In this he is correct no doubt, but it should be borne in mind by the reader that such a belief was not confined to the newcomers at Youghal, but was common property throughout England and Ireland. The tale shows that there was a little covey of suspected witches in Youghal at that sate, as well as some skillful amateur witch-finders (Messrs. Perry, Greatrakes, and Blackwall). From the readiness with which the Mayor proposed to try the “water-experiment” one is lead to suspect that such a process as swimming a witch was not altogether unknown in Youghal. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
For the benefit of the uninitiated we may briefly describe the actual process, which, as we shall see, the Mayor contemplated, but did not actually carry out. The suspected witch is taken, her right thumb tied to her left great top, and vice vera. She is then thrown into the water: if she sinks (and drowns, by any chance!) her innocence is conclusively established; if, on the other hand, she floats, her witchcraft is proven, for water, as being the element in Baptism, refuses to receive such a sinner in its bosom. Florence Newton was committed to Youghal prison by the Mayr of the town, 24th March 1661, for bewitching Mary Longdon, who gave evidence against her at the Cork Assizes (11th September), as follows: Mary Longdon being sworn, and bidden to look upon the prisoner, he countenance chang’s pale, and she was very fearful to look towards her, but at last she did, and being asked whether she knew her, she said she did, and wish’d she never had. Being asked how long she had known she, she said for three of four years. And that at Christmas the said Florence came to the Deponent, at the house of John Pyne in Youghal, where the Deponent was a servant, and asked her to give her a piece of Beef out of the Powdering Tub; and the Defendant answering her that she would not give away her Master’s Beef, the said Florence seemed to be very angry, and said Thou had’st as good give it me, and went away grumbling. That about a week after the Defendant going to the water with a Pail of Cloth on her head she met the said Florence Newton, who came full in her Face, and threw the Pail off her head, and violently kiss’d her, and said, Mary, I pray thee let thee and I be Friends; for I bear thee no ill will, and I pray thee do thou bear me none. And that she the Defendant afterwards went home, and that within a few Days after she saw a Woman with a Vail over her face stand by her bedside, and one standing by her like a little old Man in Silk Cloaths, that that this Man who she took to be a Spirit drew the Vail off the Woman’s Face, and then she knew it to be Goody Newton: and that she Spirit spoke to the Defendant and would have her promise him to follow his advice and she would have all things after her own Heart, to which she says she answered that she would have nothing to say to him, for her trust was in the Lord. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
That within a month after the said Florence had kiss’s her, she this Defendant fell very ill of Fits or Trances, which would take her on a sudden, in that violence that three or four men could not hold her; and in her Fits she would be take with Vomiting, and would vomit up Needles, Pins, Horsenails, Stubbs, Wooll, and Straw, and that very often. And being asked whether she perceived at these times what she vomited? She replied, she did; for then she was not n so great distraction as in other parts of her Fits she was. And that before the first beginning of her Fits several (and very many) small stones would fall upon her as she went up and down, and would follow her from place to place, and from one Room to another, and would hit her on the head, shoulders, and arms, and fall to the ground and vanish away. And that she and several others would see them both fall upon her and on the ground, but could never take them, save only some few which she and her Master caught in their hands. Amongst which one that had a hole n it she tied (as she was advised) with a leather thong to her Purse, but it was vanish’d immediately, though the latter continu’d tied in a fast knot. That in her Fits she often saw Florence Newton, and cried out against her for tormenting her of her, for she says, that she would several times Stick Pins into her Arms, and some of them so fast, that a Man must pluck three or four times to get out the Pins, and they were stuck between the skin and the flesh. That sometimes she would be remov’d out of bed into another Room, sometimes she would be carried to the top of the House, and laid on a board between two Sollar Beams, sometimes put into a Chest, sometimes under a parcel of Wooll, sometimes between two Feather-Beds on which she used to lie, and sometimes between the Bed and the Mat in her Master’s Chamber, in the Daytime. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
And being asked how she knew that she was thus carried about and disposed of, seeing in her fits she was in a violent distraction? She answered, she never knew where she was, till they of the Family and the Neighbours with them, would be taking her out of the places whither she was so carried and removed. And being asked the reason and wherefore she cried out so much against the said Florence Newton in her Fits? She answered, because she saw her, and felt her torturing her. And being asked how she could think it was Florence Newton that did her this prejudice? She said, first, because she threatened her, then because after she had kiss’d her she fell into these Fits, and that she saw and felt her tormenting. And lastly, that when the people of the Family, by advice of the Neighbours and consent of the Mayor, had sent for Florence Newton to come to the Defendant, she was always worse when she was brought to her, and her Fits more violent than at another time. And that after the said Florence was committed at Youghal the Defendant was not troubled, but was very will till a little while after the said Florence was removed to Cork, and then the Defendant was as ill as every before. Then then the Mayor of Youghal, one Mr. Mayre, sent to know whether the said Florence was bolted (as the Defendant was told), and finding she was not, the order was given to put her Bolts on her; which being done, the Deponent saith she was well again, and so hath continued ever since, and being asked whether she had such like Fits before the said Florence have her the kiss, she saith she never had any, but believed that with the kiss she bewitch’d her, and rather because she had heard from Nicholas Pyne and others that Florence had confessed so much. This Mary Longdon having closed her evidence, Florence Newton peeped at her as it were betwixt the head of the bystanders that interposed between her and the said Mary, and lifting up both her hands together, as they were manacled, cast them in a violent angry motion (as was observed by W. Aston) toward the said Mary, as if she intended to strike at her if she could have reached her, and said, Now she is down. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Upon which the Maid fell suddenly down to the ground like a stone, and fell into a most violent Fit, that all the people that could come to lay hands on her could scarce hold her, she biting her own arms and shrieking out in a most hideous manner, to the amazement of all Beholders. And continuing so for about a quarter of an hour (the said Florence Newton sitting by herself all that while pinching her own hands and arms, as was sworn by some that observed her), the Maid was ordered to be carried out of Court, and taken into a House. Whence several Persons after that brough word, that the Maid was in a Vomiting Fit, and they brought in several crook’d Pins, and Straws, and Wooll, in white Foam like Spittle, in great proportion. Whereupon the Court having taken notice that the Maid said she had been very well when the said Florence was in Bolts, and ill again when out of them, till they were again put on her, demanded of the Jaylor if she were in Bolts or no, to which he said she was not, only manacled. Upon which order was given to put on her Bolts, and upon putting them on she cried out that she was skilled, she was undone, she was spoiled, why do you torment me thus? and so continued complaining grievously for half a quarter of an hour. And then came in a messenger from the Maid, and informed the Court the Maid was well. At which Florence immediately and cholerickly uttered these words, She is not well yet! And being demanded, how she knew this, she denied she said so, though many in Court heard her say the words, and she said, if she did, she knew not what she said, being old and disquieted, and distracted with her sufferings. However, the Maid being reasonably well come to herself, was, before the Court knew anything of it, sent out of Town to Youghal, and so was no further examined. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The Fit of the Maid being urged by the Court with all the circumstances of it upon Florence Newton, to have been a continuance of her devilish practice, she denied it, and likewise the motion of her hands, and the saying, Now she is down, though the Court saw the first, and the words were sworn to by one Roger Moor. And Thomas Harrison swore that he had observed the said Florence peep at her, and use that motion with her hands, and she saw the Maid fall immediately upon that motion, and heard the words, Now she is down, uttered. Nicolas Stout was next produced by Mr. Attorney-General, who being sworn and examined, saith, That he had often tried her, having heard say that Witches could not say the Lord’s Prayer, whether she could or no, and she could not. Whereupon she said she could day it, and had often said it, and the Court being desired by her to hear her say it, gave her leave; and four times together after these words, Give us this our daily bread, she continually said, As we forgive them, leaving out altogether the words, And forgive us our trespasses, upon which the Court appointed one near her to teach her the words she left out. However, she either could not, or would not, say them, using only these or the like words when these were repeated, Ay, ay, trespasses, that’s the word. And being often pressed to utter the words as they were repeated to her, she did not. And being asked the reason, she said she was old and had a bad memory; and being asked how her memory served her so well for other parts of the Prayer, and only failed her for that, she said she knew not, neither could she help it. John Pyne being likewise sworn and examined, saith, That about January last [1661] the said Mary Longdon, being his Servant, was much troubled with small stones that were thrown at her [&c., as in the Deponent’s statement, other items of which he also corroborated]. That sometimes the Maid would be reading in the Bible, and on a sudden he hath seen the Bible struck out of her Hand into the middle of the Room, and she immediately cast into a violent Fit. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
That in the Fits he hath seen two Bible laid on her Breast, and in the twinkling of an eye they would be cast betwixt the two Beds the Maid lay upon, sometimes thrown into the middle of the Room, and that Nicholas Pyne held the Bible in the Maid’s hand so fast, that it being suddenly snatch’d away, two of the leaves were torn out. Nicholas Pyne being sworn, saith, That the second night after that the Witch had been in Prison, being the 24th [26?] of March last, he and Joseph Thompson, Roger Hawkins, and some others went to speak with her concerning the Maid, and told her that it was the general opinion of the Town that she had bewitched her, and desired her to deal freely with them, whether she had bewitched her or no. She said that she had not bewitched her, but it may be she had overlooked her, and that there was a great difference between bewitching and overlooking, and that she could not have done her any harm if she had not touch’d her, and that therefore she had kiss’d her. And she said that what mischief she thought of at that time she kiss’d her, that would fall upon ger, and that she could not but confess she had wronged the Maid, and thereupon fell down upon her knees, and prayed God to forgive her for wronging the poor Wench. They wisd’d that she might not be wholly destroyed by her; to which she said, it must be another that would help her, and not they that did the harm. And then she said, that there were others, as Goody Halfpenny and Goody Dod, in Town, that could do these things as well as she, and that it might be one of these that had done the Maid wrong. He further saith, That towards Evening the Door of the Prison shook, and she arose up hastily and said, What makest thow here this time a night? #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
And there was a very great noise, as if some body with Bolts and Chains had been running up and down the Room, and they asked her what it was she spoke to, and what it was that made the noise; and she said she saw nothing, neither did she speak, and if she did, it was she knew not what. However, the next day she confess’d it was a Spirit, and her Familiar, in the shape of a Greyhound. He further saith, That he and Mr. Edward Perry and others for Trial of her took a Tile off the Prison, went to the place where the Witch lay, and carried it to the House where the Maid lived, and put it in the fire until it was red-hot, and then dripped some of the Maid’s water upon it, and the Witch was then grievously tormented, and when the water consumed she was well again. Spiritism is the belief that people survive death as spirits, and that they can communicate with the living through a medium, a person having a special psychic gift. The fact has been established that nearly 150 million people in the World today have participated with some regularity in efforts to receive messages from the dead. Many have had experiences so convincing that they now possess unwavering assurance of a future existence in another World after death. One such man was the late Bishop Pike, liberal theologian who at one time did not believe any form of life was possible on the other side of the grave. However, then a series of strange circumstances impelled him to go to a medium, who claimed to be able to put him in touch with his dead son Jim. The young man had recently committed suicide, and the bishop left the séance satisfied that Jim had really spoken to him through the medium. In fact, he was persuaded that he had also conversed with the late Dr. Paul Tillich, a celebrated theologian and philosopher whom the bishop had greatly admired and to whom he had dedicated one of his books. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Dr. Pike, with Diane Kennedy who later became his wife, published a book entitled The Other Side, in which they told the whole story of his spirit encounters, beginning with the haunted apartment in Cambridge, England, and including his seances with Ena Twigg, George Daisley, and Arthur Ford. A number of events recounted are so extraordinary that they baffle the mind. One cannot read this book without concluding that Bishop Pike was either the victim of a plot so carefully contrived that no one to this date has been able to decipher it, or that he actually participated in some kind of supernatural activity. In any case, we do not agree with the bishop’s assumption that he had spoke with his son or with Dr. Tillich. Many people have written recently of their experiences in spiritism, and some of them come to conclusions far different from those of Bishop Pike and his associates. Raphael Gasson, a former medium who was converted to Christ, recently published a work entitled The Challenging Counterfeit. He convincingly sets for the idea that demons, by impersonating the dead, are able to deceive those who attend seances in hope of contacting the spirits of their loved ones. In another publication I Talked With Spirits, Victor Ernest tells the story of his early life as a member of a spiritualistic family. He is now a highly respected minister of the Gospel, and declared unequivocally that the religion of his childhood contained supernatural element, but that it is dangerous and wicked. In this study we careful examine spiritism, seeking to answer four basic questions: What does the Christian Bible teach regarding spiritism? How do spirits work? What do spirits believe? Why is spiritism so dangerous? #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Many also want to know why did Mrs. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, spent the last half of her life and $155,991,224.49 (2021 inflation adjusted) building a house that now contains 160 rooms and stands four stories? The mystery remains unsolved to this very day. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, and moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to last for the rest of her life. The death of William Wirt Winchester, of the Winchester House, in the country of America, would in the ordinary way have received no more attention than the death of any other simple country gentleman. The circumstances of his death, however, though now long since forgotten, were sensational, and attracted some notice at the time. It was one of those cases which is easily forgotten within a year, except just in the locality where it occurred. The most sensational circumstances of the case never came before the public at all. I give them here simply and plainly. The physical people may make what they like of them. On the death of his new born daughter, after a prolonged illness, Mr. Winchester wrote to Leonard Pardee and asked him to come down to New Haven for the funeral, and to remain with at least a few days. There were many visitors in the hose for the funeral, which took place in the village churchyard, but they left immediately afterwards. The air of heavy gloom which had hung over the Winchester mansion in New Haven seemed to lift a little. The servants (servants are always emotion) continued to break down at intervals. Mr. Winchester spoke of his wife with great affection and regret, but still he could speak of her and not unsteadily. At dinner, Mr. Winchester spoke of one or two subjects, of politics and of his duties as magistrate and President of a company, and of course he made the requisite fuss about his gratitude to Leonard for coming down to the Winchester mansion at the time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
After dinner they sat in the library, a room well and expensively furnished. There were a few oil paintings on the walls, a presentation portrait of himself, and a landscape or two and the praised Ulysses in the Land of the Lestrygonians Fresco. Mr. Winchester had eaten next to nothing at dinner. When he said, “I want you to tell my daughter that I will be with her tomorrow.” He went to bed early that night. Leonard has been with him the following day. They rode together, and he expected an accident every minute, but none happened. All that evening, Leonard expected him to turn suddenly faint and ill, but that also did not happen. When at about ten o’clock he excused himself and said goodnight, Leonard felt distinctly relieved. Mr. Winchester went up to his room and rang for the servant Robert Law. The rest is, of course well known. The servant’s reasons had broken down, possibly the immediate cause being the death of the Winchester infant. On entering his master’s bedroom, without the least hesitation, he raised a loaded revolver which he carried in his hand, and shot Mr. Winchester through the heart. I believe the case is mentioned in some of the textbooks on homicidal mania. Mrs. Winchester said she had kind of felt for so long, and she had a queer feeling coming over her as if there was somebody or something round the house, more than appeared. She had felt it in the air; but it seemed to her silly, and she tried to get over it. But two or three times, she said, when it got to be dusk, she felt somebody go by her up the stairs. The front entry was not very light in the daytime and in the storm, come ten o’clock, it was so dark that all you could see was just a gleam of something, and two or three times when she started to go upstairs, she saw a soft white something that seemed going up before her, and she stopped with her heart beating like a trip-hammer, and she sort of saw it go up and along the entry to the Mr. Winchester’s chambers, and then it seemed to go right through, because the door did not open. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
There are times and tones and moods of nature that make all the vulgar, daily real seem shadowy, vague, and supernatural, as if the outlines of reality present were fading into the invisible and unknown. When Mrs. Winchester went to bed the next evening, she slept in a different room. She went right off to sleep as sound as a new born baby, on until somewhere about morning, when something awakened her broad in a minute. Her eyes flew open, and the storm had gone down and the moon had came out; and there, standing right in the moonlight by her bed, was a woman just as white as snow, with long raven black hair hanging down to her waist, and the brightest, mournfullest black eyes you could have ever seen. She stood there looking right at Mrs. Winchester; and Mrs. Winchester thought this is what woke her up because if someone stares at you like that, it is felt in your very soul. Mrs. Winchester felt just as if she was turning to stone. She could not move nor speak. She lay a minute and then shut her eyes, and begin to say her prayers; and a minute after she opened them, and the specter was gone. Mrs. Winchester was a sensible woman; and she just got up, put on a shawl around her shoulders, and went first and looked at the doors, and they were both locked just as she left them when she went to bed. Then she looked under the bed and in the closet, and felt all around the room: where she could not see she felt her way, and there was nothing there. The story got around that there was a woman lurking in the Winchester mansion. Someone said that moonlight nights they would see her walking out in the back garden kind of in and out of the trees and vineyards. The maid Agnus said she had seen the woman in plain daylight just sitting and looking out and doing nothing. She was very white and pale and had black eyes. #RandolpHarris 15 of 17
Mrs. Winchester went to bed again that evening, she again, locked her chamber-doors, both of them, and woke up in the middle of the night and there was a colourless, tall, and harshly thin woman. Her face was pale, paler than it had been before. She was just standing there, and then she was gone. Mrs. Winchester gets up and looks, and both doors were locked, just as she left them. That woman was not flesh and blood as we know; but then they say that Mrs. Winchester must had dreamed her. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and yogis in Europe and India. Fortelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she must protect herself and tone for such mass murder. She was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. Retuning from her global trip, she arrived in San Francisco and find this area seldom subject to thunderstorms, she purchased eight-room house four miles west of San Jose. She hired an architect, a foreman and an army of carpenters and work began; architect and foreman quit the first day. There souls seemed to me on one common ground of a terrified understanding through their eyes. Mrs. Winchester also felt a creep as some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold. She was tottering on weak knees. That afternoon, Mrs. Winchester was in the study, the large front room on the ground floor across the hall from the south parlour, when dusk deepened. Mrs. Winchester was writing some letters when she noticed a strange shadow on the wall. She rose and began walking around the room, moving various articles of furniture, with her eyes on the shadow. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Then suddenly she shrieked out: “Look at this awful shadow! What is it? What is it?” Mrs. Winchester’s face was livid with horror. She stood stiffly pointing at the shadow. It has been there every night since William died,” cried Mrs. Winchester. Agnus the maid assured her that it was just a fold in the curtain that make its. However, the door opened suddenly and the butler George Pollock entered. He began to speak, then his eyes followed the direction of others’. He stood stock still staring at the shadow on the wall. It was life size and stretched across the white parallelogram of a door, half across the wall space on which the picture hung. “What is that?” he demanded in a strange voice. “It must be something in the room.” “He looked like a demon!” said Mrs. Winchester. “I can’t sit in this room again!” She ordered it to be boarded up. Later that evening, they went to the library. Then George took out the lamp and sat it on the center table, and the shadow sprang out of the wall. Again, he studied the furniture and moved it about, but deliberately. Nothing affected the shadow. Then he returned to the south room with the lam and again wait. Again he returned to the study and placed the lamp on the table, and the shadow sprang out upon the wall. It was midnight before he went upstairs. Mrs. Winchester could not speak nor sleep, she heard him. She looked all over the room and saw two shadows. She lied in bed staring at the wall. The Word of God clearly and emphatically condemned all efforts to communicate with the dead. The Lord declared that the observances of people who engaged in such activity were equivalent to the worship of other gods. Mrs. Winchester had no interest in communicate with the spirits before they started trying to communicate with her. Her sacred Blue Séance room, her secret rendezvous with the spirits, was said to be locked to all but herself. So we leave you to decide for yourself the mystery of the Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
The 1906 earthquake must have been frightening for Sarah and her employees, but can you imagine being trapped in a room for hours? Take a look at the Daisy Bedroom, the very room Sarah was rumored to be stuck in during the 1906 earthquake 😳 Tour Tickets | http://ow.ly/Uyjl50H8voA
You Can Never Force Anyone to Love You!
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. Virginity and celibacy are for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. However, virginity or celibacy, is also, though differently, a precept for everyone. In fact, besides being a freely-chosen, lifelong state, it is also a duty—or rather, an ideal and an evangelical proposal—for everyone during at least one particular phase of life, namely the one preceding the definitive choice of one’s vocation. In this sense these words are not addressed exclusively to religious or to those preparing to become priests, but to all the baptized. We shall find that the same reasons which justify virginity for the sake of the Kingdom can also sustain and motivate the efforts of young Christian men or women to preserve their physical and spiritual chastity and integrity until their wedding day. “Rend your hearts and not your garments and return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness; and He revokes His sentence of evil [when His conditions are met],” reports Joel 2.12. In any case, one cannot speak about virginity and celibacy without continually comparing it with marriage. Therefore to speak about them is also to speak about marriage; in fact in some aspects, comparing the two is the best way to discover the nature and goodness of the charism proper to each. Today we are witnessing a real attack by the dominant culture against this value of virginity. According to the well-known tendency to despise what one has lost or is unable to attain (as the fox in the fable said of the grapes: “They are not yet ripe”), secular culture casts suspicion and even ridicule on this traditional value which nature itself defends by surroundings—often even by the school environment which ought to help them mature—to be ashamed of their chastity, to do everything to hide it, even to boast about experiences they have not had, simply so as not to appear different from other people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Someone has said that hypocrisy used to be the tribute paid by vice to virtue. Today it is the tribute paid by virtue to vice. The effect of this mindless assault has been indirectly felt within the Church as well. Nor could it be otherwise, since we live in the World and breathe air. Whether we go out or stay home, we are besieged and “de-evangelized” on every side and by every means. Celibacy and virginity, it is sometimes said, prevent healthy, complete personal development. They keep a man from being fully a man, and a woman from being fully a woman. One consequence of this is apparent in the way we present our vocational material. Sometimes at vocation meetings I have had the impression that the invitation to follow a call to special consecration is made with this tacit but clear implication: “Embrace our way of life despite the fact it involves celibacy or virginity; actually, you will be able to contribute to the coming of the Kingdom, help the poor, raise people’s awareness, live without being enslaved to things, and promote social justice.” I believe that we must acknowledge our lack of faith and have the courage to invite young people to embrace our consecrated life not despite the virginity and celibacy it entails, but because of them, or at least also because of them. This ideal may very well be the one that will cause young people to fall in love with the religious and priestly life and draw them to it, rather than distance them from it. It has happened before; it happened in the first ages of the Church. The fact is that virginity for the Kingdom is a splendid value which changing times and fashions cannot alter. All the forces and wisdom of this World, all the so-called human sciences may join together in protest against this form of life, calling it “an outdated abomination” and raising all kinds of suspicion against it; all the sins and infidelities of the very people who have chosen to embrace it may be added to this, and still it would remain, because it was instituted by Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
No one will ever be able to uproot that which the Son of God planted with His own hand when He came into the World. The World itself, without realizing it, pays its own tribute to this value when it uses the words “virgin” and “pure” in a very beneficial way. An unspoiled landscape is often described as “virgin,” the best wool is labelled “pure,” and so on. We need to reclaim these words and symbols which our secularized culture has borrowed from the Bible and Christian tradition and emptied completely of their religious meaning. In an age like our own, when excesses of pleasures of the flesh threaten the very sources of life and the basis of society itself, when nature protests with dire warning signals, it is a duty and a joy for believers to rediscover the radical alternative of the Gospel. This alternative does not rule out pleasures of the flesh, but brings out its human, free, rational character, preventing it from degenerating into sheer instinct and banality. The poet Tagore, expressing an evangelical insight, writes: “Chastity is a wealth that comes from abundance of love” (not from the lack of it). There are some who choose not to marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. There is an unteachable use of celibacy, virginity and voluntary continence, because they are all terms designating the same actual reality, or at least the same state of life. Personally I prefer to use the word “virginity” and “virgins” as the most comprehensive term. In fact the New Testament does not reserve this title only for unmarried women, but also uses it for unmarried men. The Book of Revelations gives the name “virgins” to those who have not been with women and who therefore follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Revelation 14.4). #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The institution of the state is described in chapter 19 of Matthew’s Gospel: “His disciples said to Him: ‘If that is who things are between husband and wife, it is better not to marry.’ However, He replied: “Not everyone can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is granted. For there are some who are eunuchs from their mother’s womb, and some who were made so by other men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone accept this who can,” reports Matthew 19.10-12. The word “eunuch” sounds rather harsh to our modern ears and it was harsh also for people n Jesus’ day. According to some, the choice of this unusual term was due to the fact that the adversaries of Jesus had accused Him of being a eunuch, since He was unmarried, just as they accused Him on other occasions of being a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11.19). It was a highly offensive word, because for the Jewish mentality of the time it was a moral duty to get married. The opinion of a certain Rabbi Eleazar, according to which “a man with no wife is not even a man,” is well known. So here, Jesus was taking up His adversaries’ accusations and making it in some way His own, but explaining it by this revelation of an unmarried state that was new and absolutely special. There are some—says Jesus—“who do not marry” (this is the non-polemical equivalent of the term “eunuch”) because they are prevented from birth on account of some natural defect. Others do not marry because they are prevented by the wickedness of people or the circumstances of life. Finally, there are others again who do not marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the last case the word “eunuch” takes on a different significance, not physical but moral. Christian tradition has always interpreted it in this way except for the well-known case of Origen who, contrary to his custom of explaining everything spiritually, took this word of the Gospel literally. He castrated himself and subsequently paid a high price for his mistake. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The mention of the Kingdom of Heaven abruptly introduces an element of mystery into Jesus’ words, which is heightened by the final laconic phrase: “Let anyone accept this who can.” In other words, those who have received the gift of understanding will understand. In this way a second state of life is born into the World, and this is its “Magna Charta.” In fact, before Jesus, no state of life existed comparable to this one instituted by Him, at least in its motivation if not in fact. The Essences of Qumran also knew and practiced a form of celibacy but for them it had undertones of asceticism and ritual purity rather than eschatological connotations. If anything, it was motivated by an expectation of the Kingdom, not by its coming. In any case it could not have been otherwise. Only the presence of the Kingdom on Earth could institute this second possibility: a life of celibacy “for the sake of the Kingdom.” This possibility does not cancel out the other one, namely marriage, but makes it relative. The same sort of thing happens with the idea of the state in the political sphere: the revelation of the simultaneous presence in history of the Kingdom of God does not abolish the state, but radically relativizes it. Perfect continence stands in the face of marriage rather as the Kingdom of God stands in the face of the kingdom of Caesar: it does not eliminate it, but highlights the different positions it now has from the one it had before. It is no longer the only instance in its field. Since God’s Kingdom is in a different order of greatness from that of Caesar, the one does not need to deny the other in order to exist. In the same way, voluntary continence does not need the denial of marriage for its own validity to be recognized. In fact, it is only by simultaneously affirming marriage—especially since Jesus raised it to the dignity of a sacrament—that chastity acquires meaning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Two groups of psychosocial problems—somatoform disorders and psychogeic sexual dysfunction—are distinct types of disorders that, in the abstract, have similar manifestations. Each somatoform disorder or sexual dysfunction represents a constellation of “physical” symptoms in the absence of any identifiable physiological or medical condition to which the symptoms could be attributed. Both classes of problems are associated with patterns of friction in interpersonal relationships: Somatoform disorders are prominently linked with troublesome interactions in the family of origin, and psycho genic sexual dysfunctions are strongly tied to disturbances in family-or-orientation (id est, marital) relationships. Somatoform disorders entail the expression of some symptom or symptoms that suggest a medical problem, but are not fully explainable by a medical condition. These symptoms, such as severe back pain or chronic digestive problems, tend to cause significant distress or impairment for the individual expressing them. The experience of these physical symptoms is very real for the afflicted individual, and they are not intentional, as in the case of malingering or factitious disorder. Three of the more common types of somatoform disorders are pain disorder (the experience of pain that is severe enough to warrant clinical attention and interfere with social functioning, in the absence of any obvious medial cause), hypochondriasis (a preoccupation with fears of having a serious disease based on misinterpretation of one or more bodily signs or symptoms), and somatization disorder (a chronic pattern of pain, sexual gastrointestinal, and pseudoneurological symptoms). Somatization disorder includes what has in the past been referred to as hysteria and Briquet’s syndrome. Somatization disorder is somewhat rare, with an annual prevalence of only 0.2 percent. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
However, a more recent study of over 3,000 adolescents and young adults indicated that the risk of any specific somatoform disorder was 2.7 percent in that population, the most prevalent being pain disorder and conversion disorder. However, the use of a new and thorough diagnostic technique yielded an overall lifetime prevalence rate of 12.6 percent for any somatoform disorder. These disorders are more common in women than in men, and typically have their origin in adolescence; they are also highly comorbid, with 50-75 percent of patients also afflicted with such problems as depression, eating disorders, and substance dependence. Somatoform disorders may serve a variety of functions in the family of origin, the family of orientation, and even general personal relationships. For many people, a somatoform disorder brings a “solution” to a systemic problem within the family or marriage by shifting attention away from conflicts. It may also serve as a means of securing various types of support and attention. In research on somatoform disorders, antecedent family-of-origin experiences has received much attention. These often include low parental care (coupled with parental overinvolvement), family conflict, physical and sexual abuse, and other adverse experiences; disrupted attachment; and parental modeling of somatization. Somatoform disorders may also be understood as distorted forms of interpersonal communication: Many people express their physical symptoms as a means of indirectly communicating their distress to others. Somatoform disorders tend to be highly comorbid with personality disorders, further complicating the clinical and interpersonal picture of these disorders. Why would an individual experience and express “physical” symptoms in the absence of any precipitating medical or biological cause? Many have argued that there are social functions and perhaps even social causes underlying this phenomenon. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
In a comprehensive review of the relationship between social-psychological factors and somatic symptoms, perceptions and reports of physical health may function as non-verbal indices of social health. Numerous possible etiological explanations for somatization have been suggested. Many if not most of these explanations entail some significant issue(s) in the area of interpersonal relationships, such as primary or secondary gains; a solution to a systems problem in a family; or a means of communicating when other, more direct forms of expression are blocked (signal function). Many people with somatization disorder turn to health care professionals for social support that is otherwise lacking in their lives. The concept of secondary gain had figure prominently in the literature on somatization. When one is “sick,” he or she is freed from normal and typical obligations and is generally absolved from any responsibility for being in the sick condition. The expression of physical symptoms also brings attention, sympathy, and support from others, not to mention more instrumental types of assistance, such as disability payments. For the individual who is unable or unwilling to solicit or secure social support from others through more standard means of social interaction, assuming the sick role may be a covert mechanism for effectively achieving this interpersonal goal. In the traditional phylodynamic approach, somatization is thought to have primarily intrapsychic functions, with secondary interpersonal consequences. However, the interpersonal perspective would interpret the “secondary” interpersonal effects as primary. That is, the person exhibits, and indeed experiences, the physical symptoms primarily as a mechanism for attaining particular interpersonal outcomes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Somatoform disorders may also bring a temporary solution to a system-wide problem. For example, a child’s physical symptoms may temporarily divert attention from an otherwise contentious family conflict. As parents shift their attention toward the welfare of the child, they may actually behave in a more cooperative fashion and reduce their conflict. Just as intoxication can bring temporary stability to a household affected by alcoholism, somatoform disorders may temporarily stabilize a family setting and subdue conflict. According to the signal function hypothesis, somatic symptoms may be the nonverbal expression of an emotion and/or interpersonal problem. Somatization is communication, consciously or unconsciously coded in the language of the body. For a variety of reasons, some people may not be comfortable expressing their interpersonal or emotional distress to others; for them, the expression of physical symptoms may be a more socially acceptable means of expressing their feelings to other people and soliciting social support from them. From this perspective, a somatoform disorder can be interpreted as a sign of psychic distress in the afflicted individual. “In the World you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the World,” reports John 16.33. Adversities and hardships are opportunities for us to go higher. Consequently, God does not prevent every negative thing from coming into your life. In fact, Jesus said, “In this life you will have trouble.” “Unfair things will happen to you,” He said, but here is the key: “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the World.” Throughout the Scripture, God days if we will keep the right attitude, if we will stay full of joy and full of hope, even though He may not stop all the trouble, when we come out, we will not be the same as we were before. We will be more blessed, healthy, and prosperous, better off then we were previously. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
I think about Joseph. His brothers were so jealous of him, they sold him into slavery. Other young men his age, no doubt, were out having a good time, enjoying their lives. However, Joseph was confined, living in a foreign land, having to work all the time. It was unfair; worse yet, Joseph’s heartache and pain were caused by somebody else’s poor choices and somebody else’s bad attitude. However, God saw that injustice. God said in the book of Joel, “I will restore the years that have been stolen from you,” reports Joel 2.25. Somehow, some way, God can make up all those years. That is what He did for Joseph. Even though Joseph spent thirteen years in slavery and in prison, God made it all up to him. When he came out, he did not have to go back home and start all over. No, he came out promoted and increased. He now had a position of honour as the prime minister of all Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh. God took the adversity and injustice, and because Joseph kept the right attitude, God brought him out much better than he was before. In other words, God made the enemy pay for brining the injustice into Joseph’s life. Friend, God is keeping the records in your life, as well. If somebody had mistreated you and done you wrong, do not sit around feeling sorry for yourself. Let hope fill your heart. Know that God will bring you out with twice what you had before. God will never waste anything that you go through. None of us enjoy tough times. However, we can stay filled with hope, knowing that God will never waste the pain. He will always use it to our advantage. Had Joseph not experienced that adversity, he would not have received the promotion that led to his powerful position. In your times of disappointment and trouble, instead of getting down and discouraged, start believing to come out better off than you were before. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Put your faith out there, and remind yourself that God wants to restore good things back to you. You simply need to stay filled with hope, and start expecting things to change. The Bible tells us in Zechariah that we should be “prisoners of hope.” So many people go around discouraged and defeated. They live with anger, resentment, and bitterness, rather than hope. They think no one knows what they have been through. No one knows how bad their marriage has been, or how deeply they are in dept. No, quit dwelling on all of that. Do not magnify your problems. Magnify your God. The bigger you make God, the smaller your problems become, and the more faith will rise in your heart. The Scripture teaches that we should not look at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are only temporary, but the things that are seen through our eyes of faith are eternal (see 2 Corinthians 4.18). One translation says, “The things that are seen are subject to change.” That means your health may not look too good today, but that is subject to change. Your finances may look pretty dismal, but they are subject to change. Nothing may be going right in your life, but it is all subject to change. When you look at your child who is not living right, instead of getting discouraged and losing your hope, look at him or her and say, “You are subject to change.” You may need to look at your checkbook and say, “This is subject to change.” Maybe your boss is not treating you right. He is being rude and disrespectful. Just smile and say, “You are subject to change.” (You probably should not say that to his face, or your job may be subject to change!) If you want God to restore what has been stolen from you, stay filled with hope. You have to get up each morning expecting things to change, expecting good things to happen. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
You need to know that in a moment of time, God could turn it all around. Suddenly you could get your miracle. Suddenly God could bring someone new into your life. Suddenly you could get that promotion. All it takes is one “suddenly.” In a split second, with one touch of God’s favour, everything can change. Our attitude should be, I am going to take back what belongs to me. I am not going to sit around mourning over what I have lost. I may have been knocked down, but I am not going to stay down. I am going to get back up again, knowing that Almighty God is on my side, and if God be for me, who dares be against me? And if you stay filled with hope, God will restore you, and like Joseph, you will come out twice as strong, twice as healthy, twice as prosperous. God will make the enemy pay double for brining that adversity into your life. Dear Lord in Heaven, please help me to believe, Father, that my circumstances are “subject to change,” not simply because of me, but because You are helping me to overcome that adversity, and You will bring me out even better than before. I will open my whole heart to You and enjoy Your company as my soul desires, and no one will despise me for it. Nor will anyone move me and give me a second look. However, we will have a good conversation, just You and me, and speak as one good friend to another, and then to a good meal! This I pray. This I desire, that I be totally at Your disposal, and that I withdraw my heart from its many Worldly commitments. What is more, through Holy Communion and frequent celebration of the Mass, I will develop a taste for the Celestials and Eternals. Ah! Lord God, when will I be totally united and absorbed with You and totally oblivious of myself? You in me, and I in You, as the Evangelist John once put it (17.21). Fast friends forever! #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
You truly are my Beloved Friend, chosen out of thousands and thousands, but how did I ever find You? That was the central question of Solomon’s song (5.10). You are the friend in whose friendship it pleases my soul to spend the rest of the days of my life. You bring peace to my life, which is not all that odd; You are the Great Peace and the True Rest, outside of whom there is nothing but grudge and grief. You truly are my hidden God, tucked away, secret; that is who the Prophet Isaiah saw it (45.15). And Your words of wisdom are not with the Impious, and Your small talk is with the Humble and Simple. “O Lord, how sweet is Your spirit,” as the Book of Wisdom has it (12.1). You are the One who, to demonstrate Your sweetness toward Your children, throughout them worth feeding with sweetest bread descending from Heaven; that is how the Deuteronomist describe the feeding of Moses and his friends for so many years (4.7). “Truly there is no other nation so grand as the one whose gods approach as closely as You, our God, have approached us.” You are present with all Your faithful, and You give them their daily bread, raising their hearts to Heaven, to eat, to enjoy. What other tribe has been so honoured as the Christians? What other creature under the Heavens has been so loved, so chosen, as the soul of a Devout in whom God has made an entrance that He may nourish him with his own glorious substance. O Ineffable Grace! O Admirable Dignation! O Immense Love bestowed on Humankind alone! However, what return do I make to the Lord for that grace, for such extravagant charity? A question frequently asked by the Psalmist (116.12). There is no better return than to present my heart on a platter to the Lord, with the hope that He would accept it as I intended. Then all my intestines will jounce for joy when my soul has been perfectly untied to God. Then He will say to me, “If you want to stay with me, I ill stay with you.” And I will respond to him. “Do please sit with me, and I willingly sit with You. This is my desire, whole and entire, that my heart be united with Yours.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
It must be remembered that the glimpse is not the goal of life. It is a happening, something which begins and ends, but something which of which is of immense value in contributing to the philosophic life, its day-to-day consciousness, its ordinary stabilized nature. Philosophic life is established continuously and permanently in the divine presence; the glimpse comes and goes within that presence. The glimpse is exceptional and exciting; but sahaja, the established state, is ordinary, normal, every day. The glimpse tends to withdraw us from activity, even if only for a few moments, whereas sahaja does not have to stop its outward activity. To the human who has come along the path of loving devotion to God and finally gained the reward of frequent, joyous, ardent, inward communion with God, equally as to the humans who has practised the way of mystical self-recollection and attained frequent awareness of the Overself’s presence, an unexpected and unpalatable change may happen little by little or suddenly. God will seem to withdraw from the devotee, the Overself from the mystic. The blisses will fade and end. Although this experience will have none of the terror or isolation and misery of the “dark night” it will be comparable to that unforgettable time. And although it will seem like a withdrawal of Grace, the hidden truth is that it is actually a farther and deeper bestowal of Grace. For the human is being led to the next stage—which is to round out, balance, and complete one’s development. This one will be taught to do by first, acquiring cosmological knowledge, and later, attaining ontological wisdom. That is, one will learn something about the World-Idea and then, this gained, pass upward to learning the nature of that Reality in whose light even the Universe is illusion. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Thus from study of the operations of the Power behind the World-Idea one passes on to pondering on the Power itself. This last involves the highest degree of concentration and is indeed the mysterious actualized Christian. When successfully followed it brings about the attainment of Insight, the final discovery that there is no other being than THAT, no second entity. The challenge of living from one’s core involves “effortless effort.” The paradox is that the harder one tries, the more one fails. It is like learning to swim: the more one struggles to stay on the surface, the faster one goes under. On the other hand, the more one relaxes, the easier it becomes to float. Living has to do with surrendering versus forcing. The key, then, is learning to live spontaneously rather than by coercion and willpower. It involves learning to live without striving. And this is contrary to what we in Western culture have been taught: that we win by trying harder. Another example is trying to make someone love you. The more you try, the less you succeed. You can never force anyone to love you. Yu can only be yourself openly, and hope that one will choose to respond to you. However, many people take the other course of trying to force or trick others into loving them through their achievements, seductions, or bag of manipulative tricks. All who perpetually strive t merit love end up exhausted and alone. Love cannot be bought or earned. It is the free gift of all who developed a relaxed and caring presence to others, and arises spontaneously out of heartfelt human encounter. In an age of technology such as ours, it may be difficult to accept that some things—such as wisdom, the capacity to love, the courage to be oneself, and the sensitivity to actualize one’s spiritual destiny—cannot be reduced to a prefabricated “instant” package. One of the paradoxical aspects of person growth is that it can never be forced. An invitation can be given, but the person must grow at one’s own pace. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
It is important to realize that one cannot force one’s own growth! Rather, one must have time, patience, and willingness for growth to occur at its own rate. The paradox of growth within the human personality is that we grow and change by accepting the way we are. We grow most when we relax. The reason for this is that relaxed awareness, coupled with desire, allows our whole being time to digest and assimilate new experiences and subsequently alter our thoughts, feelings, values, and behaviour. A wise philosopher once said that human beings are like sheep. If they truly assimilate their experiences, the gradually the grass of daily life will be transformed into the wool of wisdom. When it comes to daily surrender to God, Queen Akasha, in The Queen of the Damned, captured a key concept that corresponds with “effortless effort” in her phrase “Join me of die.” The quiet, penetrating encounter with God in the depths of our being us possible only when we let one go. When we quit boxing one in, or calling one this or that, or trying to make one do things for us—then we are filled with one’s presence. It is by beholding one’s being, and asking nothing other than to be still in one’s presence, that we surrender to God. We leave the encounter moved in our core, because we have asked nothing and received everything. This is the mystery of the holiness and the love of God. We can make one gentle step—practically effortless—and in so surrendering to God we are bountifully blessed. The quiet, daily surrender of one’s innermost being to God brings peace and a progressive work of wholeness to one’s life. For the actualizing Christian, life is a balance and synthesis between inner contemplation and outer social action, between being and doing. The times of quiet, relaxed surrender and openness in the presence of God harmonize with times of interaction with family, friends, and the World at large. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Busyness, planning, and doing also give way rhythmically to gentle meditation and prayer. This process assures that one’s day-to-day involvements are inspired and brought to fruition by the gentle flow of God’s Spirit in one’s life. The Greek word translated physical body means “slave.” The physical body should be a slave to the human spirit. Sin caused the human spirit to lose control over the body because Adam became a spiritually dead man the day he sinned. He became a body-ruled, not spirit-ruled; and he gained a sensual knowledge that caused his body to rebel against his spirit. The spirit man was dethroned that very hour; the human spirit lost its authority and ability to rule the body. Sin took control of the flesh. The body rose up and began to rule over their spirit. We can now understand what Paul said in Romans 8.6, “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” To be carnally minded is to be body-ruled, and it produces spiritual death. To be spiritually minded is to be spirit-ruled, and it will produce life and peace for God designed you that way. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath mad me free from the law of sin and death,” reports Romans 8.2. God’s law that produces spirit life in Christ made your spirit free from the spiritual death caused by sin. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” reports Romans 8.3-4. The Law was given for people who were body-ruled. Body-ruled people cannot obey the laws of God because God wants one thing and their bodies want another. The flesh is weak; it is not subject to God’s laws. All men from Adam to Jesus were body-ruled; their spirits were slaves to their bodies. It was as a satanic chain that enslaved all humankind. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Then Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He looked like other men, but God was His Father and He was spirit-ruled. He broke the satanic chain of spirit slavery and condemned sin that had enthroned itself in the human body. He destroyed that satanic stronghold and made it possible for humans to walk in the spirit. “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousness,” reports Romans 8.10. When Christ comes into your spirit, the bodies dies; it is dethroned. You certainly do not want something that is dead ruling over you. The body is dead, but the spirit is life because you became righteous. The spirit man received the ability to rule the body once again. The spirit human grows on the Word of God. God’s Word is filled with faith and that feeds the spirit human. As satan taught the body to rule over the spirit with words, so must the spirit. “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,” reports John 6.63. It takes time to train the spirit, but God’s Words are spirit life. It is a process of training the human spirit to believe what you say will come to pass. Say only the things that you believe will come to pass. Quit talking foolishness, sickness and disease. Quit saying, “That tickles me to death.” Satan has programed death into the human vocabulary. It ought not to be so, for it will sap your faith. Begin now to stop the enemy from using your vocabulary to hold you in bondage. Study the life of Christ, and you will find that He refused to confess or admit death. You remember when He went to raise Lazarus from the dead, He would not confess he was dead. He said, “He sleepeth.” Finally, He said to His disciples, “He is dead,” reports John 11.14. However, the Greek says, “died.” There is a great difference between a man that died and one that is dead. If you do not believe that, look at Jesus. He died; but thank God, He is not dead! #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Learn to control your vocabulary and never speak anything that you do not want to come to pass. Someone says, “I could never do that.” If the Word says you can (and it does), then you can; but it will takes some time to get all that old unbelief out so you can speak faith-filled words. All you big things, bless the Lord Mount Kilimanjaro and Lake Victorian. The Rift Valley and the Serengeti Plain, fat baobabs and shady mango trees, all eucalyptus and tamarind trees, bless the Lord. Praise and extol Him for ever and ever. All you tiny things, bless the Lord. Busy black ants and hopping fleas, wriggling tadpoles and mosquito larvae, flying locusts and water drops, pollen dust and tsetse files, millet seeds and dried dagaa, blessed the Lord. Praise and extol Him for ever and ever. It shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart, and with all your soul, that I will give the rain of your land in its season, the former rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will give grass in thy fields for thy cattle, and thou shalt eat and be satisfied. Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; and the displeasure of the Lord will be aroused against you, and He shut up the Heaven, so that there shall be no rain, and the ground shall not yield her fruit; and ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you. Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord promised unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the Heavens above the Earth. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
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No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.
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A little Agitation Gives Strength to Souls–Are You Going through a Dark Time in Your Life?
Your success and happiness are within you. As we have observed, psychodynamic theorists believe that an anxiety disorder develops when children come to fear their own id impulses and use ego defense mechanism to lessen the resulting anxiety. What distinguishes obsessive-compulsive disorder from other anxiety disorders, in their view, is that here the battles between anxiety-provoking id impulses and anxiety-reducing defense mechanisms is not buried in the unconscious but is played out in explicit and dramatic thoughts and actions. The id impulses usually take the form of obsessive thoughts, and the ego defenses appear as counterthoughts or compulsive actions. A woman who keeps imagining her mother suffering from a disaster, for example, may counter those thoughts with repeated safety checks throughout the house. According to psychodynamic theorists, three ego defense mechanisms are particularly common in obsessive-compulsive disorder: isolation, undoing, and reaction formation. People who resort to isolation simply disown their undesirable and unwanted thoughts and experience them as foreign intrusions. People who engage in undoing perform acts that are mean to cancel out their undesirable impulses. Those who wash their hands repeatedly, for example, may be symbolically undoing their unacceptable id impulses. People who develop a reaction formation take on a lifestyle that directly opposes their unacceptable impulses. A person may live a life of compulsive kindness and devotion to others in order to counter unacceptably aggressive impulses. Another may lead a life of chastity to counteract obsessive impulses involving pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
If people keep performing compulsive behaviours in order to prevent bad outcomes and ensure beneficial outcomes, can they not be taught that such behaviours are not really serving purpose? In a behavioural treatment called exposure and response prevention, clients are repeatedly exposed to objects or situations that produce anxiety, obsessive fears, and compulsive behaviours, but they are told to resist performing the behaviours they feel bound to perform. Because people find it very difficult to stop such behaviours, therapists often set an example. As the clients are repeatedly exposed to objects or situations that produce anxiety, obsessive fears, and compulsive behaviours, but they are told to resist performing the behaviours they feel bound to perform. Because people find it very difficult to stop such behaviours, therapists put themselves in the anxiety-producing situation without performing any compulsive actions, and then they encourage the clients to do the same. Some behavioural therapists further have people carry out self-help procedures at home. That is, they assign homework in exposure and response prevention, such as these assignments given to a person with a cleaning compulsion: Do not mop the floor of your bathroom for a week. After this, clean it within three minutes, using an ordinary mop. Use this mop for other chores as well without cleaning it. Buy a fluffy mohair sweater and wear it for a week. When taking it off at night do not remove the bits of fluff. Do not clean your house for a week. You, your husband, and children all have to keep shoes on. Do not clean the house for a week. Drop a cookie on the contaminated floor, pick the cookie up and eat it. Leave the sheets and blankets on the floor and then put them on the beds. Do not change them for a week. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Eventually this person was able to set up a reasonable routine for cleaning oneself and home. Exposure and response prevention has been offered in both individual and group therapy. Between 55 and 85 percent of clients with obsessive-compulsive disorder have been found to improve considerably with this approach. They also function better at home, socially, and at work. These changes continue to be observed for years. The effectiveness of this approach suggests that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder are like the superstitious man in the old joke who keeps snapping his fingers to keep elephants away. When someone points out, “But there are not any elephants around here,” the man replies, “See? It works!” One review concludes, “With hindsight, it is possible to see that the obsessional individual has been snapping one’s fingers, and unless one stops (response prevention) and takes a look around at the same time (exposure), one is not going to learn much of value about elephants.” The same studies and statistics indicate the limitations of exposure and response prevention. Few clients who receive the treatment overcome all their symptoms, and as many as one-quarter fail to improve at all. Also, the approach is of limited help to those who have obsessions but no compulsions. After all, the treatment makes its impact on obsessions by blocking closely linked compulsive acts. Finally, the favourable findings come mainly from studies of cleaning and checking compulsions. The effectiveness of this approach with other kinds of compulsions or with multiple compulsions is unclear. Painful thoughts—like the man in George Cruikshank’s painting The Blue Devils, some people may find unwanted thoughts particularly threatening and debilitating. According to cognitive theorists, their reactions to intrusive thoughts may set the stage for obsessive-compulsive disorder. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Some individuals become more and more convinced that one’s unpleasant intrusive thoughts are dangerous. As the person’s fear of such thoughts increase, the thoughts begin to occur more frequently and they, too, become obsessions. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder experience intrusive thoughts more frequently than other people, especially in times of stress, a difference that may be due to biological predisposition; they resort to more elaborate neutralizing strategies than other people when they try to stop unwanted thoughts; and they experience reductions in anxiety after using neutralizing techniques. Although everyone sometimes had undesired thoughts, only some people develop obsessive-compulsive disorder. Why do these individuals find such normal thoughts so disturbing to begin with? Researchers have found that this population tends to be more depressed than other people; to have exceptionally high standards of conduct and morality; to believe that their intrusive negative thoughts are equivalent to actions and capable of causing harm to themselves or others and to feel responsible for eliminating the imagined danger; and generally to believe that they can and should have perfect control over all their thoughts and behaviours. There is a signal hypothesis that holds that excessive alcohol or substance use is a sign of distress. The comorbidity of other psychological problems with drug and alcohol misuse is testimony to the validity of this hypothesis. Before these are discussed, it should be noted that drug use problems are highly comorbid with alcohol use problems: About half of all those who misuse hard drugs also suffer from alcohol dependence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Rates of alcoholism and other substance use disorders are very high among those with mood disorders. A study showed that rates of mood disorders are equal for men and women in the American Amish community, where the use of alcohol is prohibited. This suggests that alcoholism may mask depression in men in the general population, since men are thought to have about half the rate of depression than women do. In fact, there are very few people who have just drinking problems. Such individuals often have a number of related problems, such as depression and anxiety. In some cases, the drinking may be a misguided attempted to “cope” with these disorders, and in other cases, these other psychosocial problems may be consequences of problem drinking. Many patients with bipolar disorder also have substance use problems. About a quarter to half of all such patients have some substance use disorder. Substance use disorders are also highly comorbid with personality disorders. Almost 60 percent of all people with substance use disorders have comorbid personality disorder. The pattern of comorbidity with alcoholism and other substance use disorders reveals close associations with other disorders that have strong links to interpersonal relationship problems. One plausible account of this comorbidity may be that the substance use is secondary to the primary psychological problem, initiated in an effort to regulate and cope with a deteriorating interpersonal environment. Problems such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders can rapidly decay interpersonal relationships. The feelings of loneliness, damaged self-esteem, and lack of direction that often accompany and follow the deterioration of interpersonal relationships may prompt some people to turn to substance use. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
In such instances, the substance use may be an attempt to regulate interpersonal interaction (exempli gratia, taking cocaine in effort to go out in public and have a good time) or to cope with feelings of emptiness and rejection (exempli gratia, drinking alcohol to “escape” dysphoric feelings). In other cases, substance use disorders may precede other psychological problems that stem from destroyed interpersonal relationships. Once substance use is initiated, some people continue and escalate it because of chemical addiction. However, it is virtually a foregone conclusion that as the substance use becomes more pervasive, interpersonal relationships are damaged and ultimately destroyed. This effect happens partly because excessive drug and alcohol use interferes with competent interpersonal behaviour; it focuses individuals almost exclusively on substance ingestion, at the expense of maintaining mutually rewarding relationships with other people. When this focus is taken to extremes, a person may steal from others to get money to buy drugs, lie, and become excessively abrasive. These behaviours reliably damage interpersonal relationships, and problems such as depression and anxiety may follow—not necessarily because of the substance use disorder per se, but because of the interpersonal consequences of the substance use. Consequently, much of the comorbidity between substance use disorders and other psychosocial problems may be explained by aversive interpersonal experiences. These are the experiences with the power and impact to link problems. At least a quarter of the population will experience significant problems with substance abuse or dependence in their lifetimes. This class of problems generally has its origins in adolescence, and substance use is currently on the rise in this cohort. Within the substance use disorders, alcoholism has received a great deal of interpersonally oriented research attention. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
People who are dependent on alcohol exhibit problems with some social skills, such as negative assertion and refusal of alcohol from others. However, these interpersonal skills deficits are not broad-based, and may be due to low motivation to use the skills than to not possessing them. Alcoholism has complex associations with family interactions. In some cases, alcoholism can bring positivity and stability to family troubles. Scientists are learning that alcoholism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, and that persons with certain subtypes of it are more inclined than others to have more severe family problems. In particular, those with episodic (vs. steady), high-antisociality (vs. low-antisociality), and stable-wet (vs. stable-dry or transitional alcoholism tend to have the most disrupted family environments and interactions. As in the family more generally, the marital relationship can influence and is influenced by spousal alcoholism. Alcoholics may harbour feelings of hostility and competitiveness toward their spouse. At the same time, drinking can in some cases activate positivity and problem solving in marital interaction. The marriages of those who drink at home tend to see more positive consequences of drinking than the marriages of those who drink outside the home. A great deal of attention has been paid to COAs (children of alcoholics) in both the scientific and lay press. Problems for COAs are thought to represent the interpersonally destructive consequences of parental alcoholism. Although they are clearly at risk for developing problem drinking themselves, COAs are not easily distinguished from non-COAs. When they are, a more general negative family environment mechanism may explain their troubles better than the specific effects of parental alcoholism do. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The architecture for adult substance abuse or dependence is often intact by the end of adolescence, and is largely established through interpersonal interaction. Young people learn to use drugs and alcohol by observing their friends and family members perform the behaviours; this process is known as modeling. High levels of family-of-origin discord and interpersonal maltreatment may predispose young people to get involved with and continue to use drugs and alcohol. Undoubtedly, many such youths are self-medicating and seeking an escape from interpersonally inflicted trauma and drama. Although adolescents who are involved in substance use and misuse have some interpersonal problems of their own, these problems are in some cases the consequences of substance use. Some evidence also suggests that codependent interpersonal relationships can even maintain substance misuse. All those with habitual substance use, abuse, or dependence seek to alter their consciousness, and often to escape a negative mood state. No one is born with the knowledge or behavioural ability to use drugs and alcohol for these or other purposes. Rather, this knowledge and behaviour comes from interpersonal interaction. Drug and alcohol use is socially learned. The path from substance use to substance abuse and/or dependence is often strewn with the wreckage of destructive interpersonal interactions and relationships, such as conflict and hostility in families or origin and orientation, rejection by peers, sexual abuse, and marital discord. Alcohol and other substance abuse and dependence are both causes and consequences of interpersonal distress. However, to live your best life now, one must act on one’s will, not simply one’s emotions. Sometimes that means one has to take steps of faith even when one is hurting, grieving, or still reeling from some attack of the enemy. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Some people are sitting around waiting for God to change their circumstances. Then they are going to be happy; then they are going to have a good attitude; than they are going to give God praise. However, God is waiting on one to get up on the inside. To be an actualizing Christian. When one does one’s part, God will begin to change the things and work supernaturally in one’s life. Are you going through a dark time in your life? Perhaps someone deceived you, took advantage of you, or mistreated you, and now you are tempted to sit around acting foolish and ghoulish, mouring over what you have lost, thinking about how unfair it was, and how your life will never be the same. You need to change your attitude. You have to feel the success and happiness on the inside. Develop the mentality of a successful person and watch what God will begin to do. When you face adversity, do not be a crybaby. Do not be a complainer. Do not wallow in self-pity. Instead, have the attitude of a successful Christian. Jesus Christ is a lover of purity and the Giver of All Sanctity. A pure heart is the sort of thing He seeks. And in a place like that He likes to take His rest; a Chatsworth, as it were; that was Luke’s sentiment in Acts (7.49). Prepare of Jesus a dining room with some suitable furniture—that is how the Evangelist Mark recorded it (14.15), and He will make Passover with His Disciples and invite you to come. Jesus will be glad and come to you and remain for the celebration of the feast, but first you will have to scour the leaven from the room—Paul reminded the Corinthians to do just that in his First Letter (5.7)—and sweep out the inner room of one’s heart. Get rid of everything secular. Banish the sounds of the noisy vices outside. Then sit as solitary sparrow on a roof tile, as the Psalmist once put it (102.7), and stew about your regrets in—as the Prophet Isaiah described it so well (38.15)—the vinaigrettes of your soul. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Every loving Devout has already done this, prepared a Chatsworth; that is to say, the best, most beautiful spot for one’s own beloved Friend. Why? To show what great affections would greet the arrival of one’s Best Friend. Mark you, no preparation is ever perfect. Try though you do, there are still foreign particles about, and even if you were to spend a year doing it, there would still be dust in the air. taking into consideration Jesus Christ’s piety and grace, one would be permitted to approach His table. One would have to do it, though, as an indigent to a rich man, with nothing in one’s pockets and no way to repay the kindness other than to eat humble pie and give humble thanks. Just do what one can do and do it diligently, not out of habit or necessity, but with fear and reverence. With affection receive the Body of you Beloved Lord and God, who thought you were a worthy enough chap to receive a visit. Jesus is the One who called you, the One who ordered it to happen, who cleaned you up so nicely. Come and receive Jesus. If perchance Jesus should shed some grace of devotion on you, give thank to Him, your God. Not because you are worthy of it, but because He looks down with mercy on one’s pathetic state. If one does not have grace, but feels increasingly arid, insist on prayer, groan and beat your best, saying “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”; the Evangelist Matthew said something similar (7.7). And do not stop until you receive a morsel of medicinal grace. Without Jesus you are poor—not the other way around. One does not come to bless Christ, and make Christ feel good—it is the other way around. One comes to be sanctified by Christ and to be joined to Jesus Christ in friendship, and to be encouraged once again to do better; First Timothy yet again (4.14). Do not overlook this grace. Rather, prepare one’s heart with all diligence. Then bid one’s Beloved Friend to enter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
It is important to note here that one should not only prepare oneself for devotion before Communion, but also save oneself solicitously after Communion. The recollection after should not be less than the preparation before, for the post-Communion glow is the best preparation for attaining major grace. Whoever flees from Communion back to the World for fear of missing some Worldly consolations loses what spiritual consolations have already been detailed to one. Beware of lengthy conversations. Remain by yourself in the church or chapel, and enjoy your special time with God, for you have Him whom the whole World cannot wrest from you. Jesus Christ is the One to whom you ought to give your complete self. That so that you may live not in yourself, but in Him—do that, and you can kiss care good-bye. You may be weary, and tired, worn down, and ready to give up. You may be saying, “I am never going to break this addiction. I have had it for so long. I would not even know how to function without it.” Or, “My income is so low, and my debts are so high; I do not see how my financial situation will ever get better.” Or, “I have been praying for years, but it does not look as though my children want to serve God.” “I have had about as much as I can take.” Do not allow yourself to wave the white flag of surrender. You must get out of that defeated mentality and start thinking and believing positively. Your attitude should be: I am coming out this situation successfully! I may have been sick for a long time, but I know this sickness did not come to stay. It came to pass. I may have struggled with this addiction for years, but I know my day of deliverance is coming. My children may not be doing right, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
You must show the enemy that you are more determined than he is. Make it known, “Even if I have to stand my whole lifetime, I am going to stand in faith! I am going to keep standing up on the inside, no matter how long it takes.” God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner. There is no reason for you to be perpetually living “under the circumstances,” always down, always discouraged. No matter how many times you get knocked down, keep getting back up. God sees your resolve. He seems your determination. And when you do everything you can do, that is when God will step in and do what you cannot do. Dear Lord in Heaven, I choose to rule my emotions, rather than allowing them to dominate me. Please help me to act on what I know is right and true according to Your Word, rather than on outward appearances, feelings, or discouraging information. With Your help, I will be successful! Many pray for good health and strength, but if they sneeze once, they say, “I believe I am taking the flu,” or “I must be taking a cold.” They have set a scriptural law in motion and it cancelled their prayer. Let me share a little secret with you that will stop 50 percent of your cold is you will do it consistently. Every time you sneeze say, “Thank God, I am taking healing. I have a choice; so I am taking healing.” “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life,” reports Deuteronomy 30.19. No one will snicker or laugh when you say, “I am taking the flu.” They will just reply, “Oh, poor thing.” However, when you say, “I am taking healing,” they will often say, “What has gotten into you?” Just reply, “The Word of God!” James says if you can control the tongue, that the body can be controlled. Your body is like a child—it will do anything you let it do. If you let it, it will be sick. The spirit of man on the inside is the one that should dominate the body. Christ redeemed you from the curse of poverty, sickness, and sin. (Galatians 3.13.) #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Some would reason that if we were redeemed from the curse of the Law, then everyone would be healed and no one would be sick; but that is not true. We are redeemed from sin; but not everyone is saved. They could be, but they have not acted on God’s Word to be delivered from sin. If you want to, you can still sin. According to the Word of Galatians 3.13, we have no more right to allow sickness and disease in our bodies than we do sin. It all comes from Satan! When the question arises which one is absolutely the best government, an insoluble question is being raised because it is indeterminate. Or, if you wish, it has as many good answers as there are possible combinations in the absolute and relative positions of the people. However, if asked by what sign it is possible to know that a given people is well or poorly governed, this is another matter, and the question of fact could be resolved. However, nothing is answered, since each wants to answer it in one’s own way. The subjects praised public tranquillity; the citizens praise the liberty of private individuals. The former prefers the security of possessions; the latter that of persons. The former has it that the best government is the one that is most severe; the latter maintains that the best government is the one that is mildest. This one wants crimes to be punished, and that one wants them prevented. The former think it a good thing to be feared by their neighbours; the latter prefer to be ignored by them. The one is content so long as money circulates; the other demands that the people have bread. Even if agreement were had on these similar points, would we be any closer to an answer? Since moral quantities do not allow of precise measurements, even if there were agreement regarding the sign, how could there by agreement regarding the evaluation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
For my part, I am always astonished that such a simple sign is overlooked or that people are of such bad faith as not to agree on it. What is the goal of the political association? It is the preservation and prosperity of its members. And what is the surest sign that they are preserved and prospering? It is their number and their population. Therefore do not go looking elsewhere for this much disputed sigh. All other things being equal, the government under which, without external means, without naturalizations, without colonies, the citizens become populous and multiply the most, is infallibly the best government. That government under which a populace diminishes and dies out is the worst. Calculators, it is not up to you. Count, measure, compare. We should judge on this same principle the centuries that merit preference with respect to the prosperity of the human race. Those in which letters and arts are known to have flourished have been admired too much, without penetrating the secret object of their cultivation, and without considering its devastating effect, and this was called by the inexperienced, when it was a part of servitude. Will we never see int eh maxims of books the crude interest that causes the authors to speak? No. Whatever they may say, when a country is depopulated, it is not true, despite its brilliance, that all goes well; and the fact that a poet has an income of hundred thousand livres is not sufficient to make his century the best of all. The apparent calm and tranquillity of the leader ought to be less of an object of consideration than the well-being of whole nations and especially of the most populous states. A hailstorm may devastate a few cantons, but it rarely causes famine. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Riots and civil ways may greatly disturb the leaders, but they are not the true misfortunes of the people, who may even have a reprieve while people argue over who will tyrannize them. It is their permanent condition that causes real periods of prosperity or calamity. It is when everything remains crushed under the yoke that everything decays. It is then that the leaders destroy them at will, where they bring about solitude they call it peace. When the quarrels of the great disturbed the kingdom of France, and the Coadjutor of Paris brought with one to the Parliament a knife in his pocket, this did not keep the French people from living happily and in great numbers in a free and decent ease. Long ago, Greece flourished in the midst of the cruelest wars. Blood flowed in waves, and the whole country was covered with men. It seemed, says Machiavelli, that in the midst of murders, proscriptions, and civil wars, our republic became more powerful; the virtue of its citizens, their mores, and their independence did more to reinforce it than all its dissension did to weaken it. A little agitation gives strength to souls, and what truly brings about prosperity for the species is not so much peace as liberty. At the same time, we see equally powerful fingers clawing at the nation-state from above. The Third Wave has brought new problems, a new structure of communications, and new actors on the World stage—all of which drastically shrink the power of the individual nation-state. Just as many problems are too small or localized for national governments to handle effectively, new owns are fast arising that are too large for any nation to cope with alone. “The nation state, which regards itself as absolutely sovereign, is obviously too small to play a real role at the global level,” writes the French political thinker, Denis de Rougement. “No one of our 28 European states can any longer by itself assure its military defense and its prosperity, its technological resources, the prevention of nuclear wars and of ecological catastrophes.” Now can the United States of American, Russia or Japan. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Tightened economic linkages between nations make it virtually impossible for any individual national government today to manage its own economy independently or to quarantine inflation. The ever-swelling bubble of Euromoney, for example, as suggested earlier, is beyond the power of any individual nation to regulate. National politicians who claim their domestic policies can “halt inflation” or “wipe out unemployment” are either naïve or lying, since most economic infections are now communicable across national boundaries. The economic shell of the nation-state is now increasingly permeable. Furthermore, national borders that can no longer contain economic flows are even less defensible against environmental forces. If Swiss chemical plants dump wastes into the Rhine, the pollution flows through Germany, though Holland, and ultimately into the North Sea. Neither Holland nor Germany can, by itself, guarantee the quality of its own waterways. Oil tanker spills, air pollution, inadvertent weather modification, the destruction of forests, and other activities often involve side effects that sweep across national borders. Frontiers are now porous. The new global communications system further opens each nation to penetration from the outside. Canadians have long resented the fact that some 90 United States of American television stations along the border telecast programs to Canadian audiences. However, this Second Wave form of cultural penetration is minor compared with that made possible by Third Wave communications systems based on satellites, computers, teleprinters, interactive cable systems, and dirt-cheap ground stations. “One way to ‘attack’ a nation,” writes United States Senator George S. McGovern, “is to restrain the flow of information—cutting off contact between the headquarters and overseas branches of a multinational firm…building information walls around a nation…A new phase is entering the international lexicon—‘information sovereignty.’” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Yet it is questionable how effectively nation borders can be sealed off—or for how long. For the shift of the Third Wave’s industrial base has required the development of a highly ramified, sensitive, wide open “neural network” or information system, and attempts by individual nations to dam up data flows may interfere with rather, than accelerate, their own economic development. Moreover, each technological breakthrough provides yet another way to penetrate the nation’s outer shell. All such developments—the new economic problems, the new environmental problems, and the new communications technologies—are converging to undermine the position of the nation-state in the global scheme of things. What is more, they come together at precisely the moment when potent new actors appear on the World scene to challenge national power. Those who feel that economic reform is the most urgent duty facing humanity have usually opposed the mystical movement. They have done so on the grounds that it diverts attention from the real (that is, the economic) issues, that it enfeebles the urge towards social improvement and individual ambition, and that it leads to sleepy, dreamy complacency. Karl Marx’s criticism of religion, that it had become a mere appendix of bourgeois thought, had some truth in it for his own times. However, today, many religious leaders have been aroused to the danger and are sincerely striving to bring the social order into line with religious ethics. They are no longer falsifying religious ethics by striving to bring them into line with the social order. Yet the solution Communists offer is philosophically unsatisfactory for it is born out of crude materialism, based on venomous class hatred, and stiffened by bureaucratic tyranny. Their ultimate aim, however, is a good one only insofar as it is the elimination of capitalism’s defects, such as avoidable unemployment, extreme poverty, and social injustices, but their means and methods are very bad. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
There is only one real capitalist—Nature—one real proprietor of the Earth and all that therein is, and consequently all the children of the Earth are its rightful heirs. We usually forget that we have no ethical right to possess what we have not toiled for. This is overlooked by society as a whole and we, as individuals, take shelter beneath the common sin. For sin it is, albeit only one of omission. Those, however, who have cast aside the conventional view can see it for what it is. That which this Earth produces is for all. Every human has one’s birthright in what it stores or gives forth, although not an equal birthright to every other human. This, surely, is Nature’s view, although humans in their ignorance have developed other ideas upon the matter and so brought great misery upon their fellows and great nemesis upon themselves. The World is for our temporary use and does not constitute our eternal property. Whoever thinks outside—whether it be a single individual or a community of individuals called a “nation”—and excludes all others from consideration, whoever thinks one has a full right to eat whilst others have a full right to starve, whoever cannot identify oneself with the suffering people of one’s own or another country, will be tutored by pain and instructed by loss. We are all stewards, not proprietors, and own nothing in reality. This was pithily expressed by a highly advanced Jesus Christ. Many people, who are rich landlords, complain of being robed of some jewels, money, and other property, and perhaps Nature regards them also as thieves. If the true Master made His claim, how would they think on, with what shame, all that fierce talk of thine and mine, the World He fashioned so divine. What could they answer did He says, “When did I give my World away?” However, there is great distance from such abstract reflections to the concrete realities of contemporary social and economic life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The whole structure of laws and rights is based on these realities. And this is as it should be, for humanity, as its present stage of evolution, can best express itself and serve itself in that way. The anarchist would ignore them because he is one-sided and the Communist would violate them because he is unscrupulous. Philosophy does not object to anu effort to remold society for the common welfare, but welcomes it. No amount of academic sophistry can justify a system which permits the few to have more food than they can eat and forces the many to have less food than they need to eat. No amount of legal enactment can justify the ownership of a hundred thousand acres of land merely because five hundred year earlier some ancestor seized it. These ancient wrongs must be redressed. Both altruistic sentiment and political strategy—no less Universal Law adjustment—demand such a revision, although the attempt to do so by violent means would introduce far worse wrongs. In this momentous task, we have to prepare a blueprint—not of the ideal State which we would like to see arise, but of the actual State which can arise under the given circumstances. This means that we must follow a middle path. Any other way will be either too realistic or too idealistic and will lead to failure. For we must find not only what is theoretically right but also what is practically possible. We cannot and we ought not do away wildly, abruptly, and violently with our social environment. Without it we would be savages. Those vanished humans of the past had to learn arduously how to live on earth, how to adapt themselves to it. Think of what it would mean to be born into a World where no houses existed, no land was cultivated, no roads had been made, no machines invented, no knowledge known! All these and infinitely more exist today and constitute our surroundings, our civilization; but they did not spring up in a single night. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Civilization, advancement and technology are the inheritance which we own to long trailing of African, Egyptian, Asiatic, and European ancestors living and working and dying for countless centuries. They are our own racial past. We cannot dismiss this legacy without descending anew to the most barbarous existence. There are grave defects in this environment, it is true, but the young rebel who wishes to tear everything down in order to remove these defects, will also remove treasures bought at a price which will take the toil of millions through centuries to pay again. The past efforts of humans appear in our present environment. Let us use it, but use it wisely. It is here to serve us. We need not be afraid to improve and alter it. Unbalanced hot-heads who say that such improvement and such alteration is only possible through compete destruction of what is the present order so that what may be shall rise on its ruins, have misread history. However, there is a right as well as a wrong way of doing this. The only proper way is by persuasion, by the persuasion and education of social conscience and by the uplift of social morality to loftier standards. Such reforms can be brought about only in an atmosphere of goodwill and calmness, not in an atmosphere of hatred and brutality. Humans must choose which God one will serve, the God of hatred or the God of love, for one cannot serve both. One must effect these changes not by brutality or by blood, but by the gentler persuasions of reason and goodwill, slower though they necessarily are. Wisdom prefers to see needed reforms and overdue changes brought by peaceful and not violent means, by the acknowledgement of their ethical need rather than by submission to materialistic values. During the Glimpse of God, one feels that one has travelled close to one’s journey’s end, to the fulfilment of one’s highest purpose. The quest has suddenly become easy and pleasant. However, alas! after the rainbow fades and vanishes, one is forced to recognize that one had far yet to go, that what one experienced was only a passing glimpse and not the final goal. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
If one cannot keep this higher consciousness, it is because one’s lower and Earthly nature is strong enough to raise again and block the way. When the purification lessons are learned it will then be possible for one, by self-effort and self-development, to regain this experience—at first temporarily and occasionally, but if one works correctly and Grace sanctions, permanently. In each of these glimpses, one’s quest attains a minor climax, for each is a step toward full illumination. It is a kind of pre-vision in which one sees, as Moses saw the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land toward which one journeys. It is a mistake to regard it as final illumination when it is in fact only one of many stages toward final illumination, and that should remind us that this society can better than it is, but we have to want to be better. We have to want to reform. We have to want to be kind. We have to want to help, not exploit others. It calls for a renovation of the human mind and soul, not the human home. Your home can be laced with gold and diamonds, but what does it matter if your soul is condemned to rot in Hell for all eternity? Glory be to God for dappled things—for skies of couple-colour as brinded cow; for rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; fresh-firecoal chestnuts falls; finches’ wings; landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; and all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) with swift, slow; sweat; sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him. Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart. Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thy house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house and upon thy gates. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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The Only Absolute Rule is: Never Lose Control of the Show!
Energy is beauty—a Ferrari with an empty tank does not run. Most people find it comforting to follow set routines when they carry out every day activities, and, in fact, 40 percent become irritated if they are forced to depart from their routines. Obsessions are not the same as pervasive worries about real problems, and compulsions are not repetitive actions that feel voluntary and seem harmless to the people who perform them. Obsessions are thoughts that feel both intrusive (“ego dystonic”) and foreign (“ego alien”) to the people who experience them. Attempts to ignore or resist these thoughts may arouse even more anxiety, and before long they come back more strongly than ever. People with obsessions are quite aware that their thoughts are excessive and inappropriate. Many experience them as repugnant and painful. Obsessions often take the form of obsessive wishes (for example, repeated wishes that one’s spouse would die), impulses (repeated urges to yell out obscenities at work or in church), images (fleeting visions of forbidden scenes involving pleasures of the flesh), ideas (notions that germs are lurking everywhere), or doubts (concerns that one had made or will make a wrong decisions). Certain basic themes run through the thoughts of most people troubled by obsessive thinking. According to surveys, almost half of adults double back after leaving home to make sure they have turned off an appliance. Other common ones are violence and aggression, orderliness, religion, and pleasures of the flesh. Although compulsive behaviours are technically under voluntary control, the people who feel they must do them have little sense of choice in the matter. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Most of these individuals recognize that their behaviour is unreasonable, but they believe at the same time something terrible will happen if they do not perform the compulsions. Beethoven is said to have habitually dipped his head in cold water before trying to compose music. After performing a compulsive act, people usually feel less anxious for a short while. Some people develop the act into a detailed and often elaborate compulsive ritual. They must go through the ritual in exactly the same way every time, according to certain rules. Like obsessions, compulsions take various forms. Cleaning compulsions are very common. People with these compulsions feel compelled to keep cleaning themselves, their clothing, or their homes. The cleaning may follow ritualist rules and be repeated dozens or hundreds of times a day. People with checking compulsions check the same items over and over—doors lock, gaps taps, ashtrays, important papers—to make sure that all is as it should be. Another common compulsion is the constant striving for symmetry, order, or balance in one’s actions and surroundings. People with this compulsion must place certain items (clothing, books, food) in perfect order in accordance with strict rules. Ted is a 13-year-old referred to a Midwestern inpatient psychiatric research ward because of senseless rituals and attention to minutiae.” He can spend 3 hours centering the toilet paper roll on its holder or rearranging his bed and other objects in his room. When placing objects down, such as books or shoelaces after trying them, he picks them up and replaces them several times until they seem “straight.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Although usually placid, Ted becomes abusive with family members who try to enter his room for fear they will move or break his objects. When he is at school, he worries that people may disturb his room. Ted sometimes has to be forced to interrupt his routine to attend meals. Last year he hid pieces of his clothing around the house because they would not lie straight in his draws. Moreover, Ted often repeats to himself, “This is perfect; you are perfect.” Touching, verbal, and counting compulsions are also common. People with touching compulsions repeatedly touch or avoid touching certain items whenever they see them. Individuals with verbal rituals feel compelled to repeat expressions, phrases, or chants. And those with counting compulsions constantly count things. Although some people with obsessive-compulsive disorder experience obsession only or compulsions only, most of them experience both. In fact, compulsive acts are often a response to obsessive thoughts. One investigation found that in most cases, compulsions seemed to represent a yielding to obsessive doubts, ideas, or urges. A woman who keeps doubting that her house is secure may yield to that obsessive doubt by repeatedly checking locks and gas jets. Or a man who obsessively fears contamination may yield to that fear by performing cleaning rituals. The investigation also found that compulsions sometimes serve to help control obsessions. However, and obsession changed the World. The experiments that led Louis Pasteur to the pasteurization process may have been driven in part by his obsession with contamination and infection. Apparently he would not shake hands and regularly wiped his glass and plate before dining. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
People who try to avoid all contamination and rid themselves and their World of all germs are fighting a losing battle. While talking, the average person sprays 300 microscopic saliva droplets per minute, or 2.5 per word. Many people with obsessive-compulsive disorder worry that they will act out their obsessions. A man with obsessive images of wounded loved ones may worry that he is but a step away from committing a heinous crime; or a woman with obsessive urges to yell out in church may worry that she will one day give in to them and embarrass herself. Most such concerns are unfounded. Although many obsessions lead to compulsive acts—particularly to cleaning and checking compulsions—they do not usually lead to violence or immoral conduct. Obsessive-compulsive disorder was once among the least understood of the psychological disorders. In recent years, however, researchers have begun to learn more about it. That most influential explanations and treatments come from the psychodynamic, behavioural, cognitive, and biological modes. There is a tendency to think of young people who are involved in drug and alcohol use as poorly socialized, interpersonally disconnected, and behaviourally lethargic. Is this an accurate characterization? The answer is not entirely straightforward. The multiple interpersonal factors that lead to and maintain substance use/misuse per se may also affect the social/interpersonal development of the individual. Among adolescents, substance use is associated with aggressiveness, low assertiveness, and poor social skills. Deficits in social skills create a sense of low self-efficacy, which in turn promotes involvement in substance use. When the social skills for coping with stress are not available, substance use is more likely to occur as a means of reducing stress. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
In addition, people with poor social skills do not have a strong sense of self-efficacy for the ability to control or resist drug and alcohol use. Therefore, social skills deficits may be said to have an indirect effect on adolescent substance use, through diminished self-efficacy. Although adolescents who use drugs may present some interpersonal problems, the extent to which these substances are causal agents deserves careful attention and consideration. Substance use can cause a deterioration of social skills and competence over time. At least some of the interpersonal problems that may be evident among adolescents experienced in drug use may be the result of drug use. At the same time, social maladjustment generally predates drug use in young people. In a 15-year longitudinal study, index cases of heavy drug use can at age 18 could be traced back to a profile alienation, emotional distress, failure to develop close relationships, and an inability to get along with friends as early as age 7. Consequently, it was concluded that problem drug use is a symptom, not a cause, of personal and social maladjustment. The relationship between interpersonal deficiencies and drug use is complex: Such deficiencies predispose young people to get involved with drugs, but at the same time, heavy drug use has deleterious effects on interpersonal competencies. As if to complicate matters further, the relationship between social maladjustment and drug use is not linear. In the longitudinal study, compared were three groups referred to as “abstainers,” “experimenters,” and “frequent users.” In terms of the quality of the interpersonal relations, experimenters scored highest, followed by abstainers and then frequent users. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Visually, the pattern of association between drug use and quality of interpersonal relations in this sample as a whole took the form on an inverted U. Looking back to their childhood, eventual abstainers appeared unresponsive to humour, shy, reserved, obedient and compliant, nontalkative, and dependent on adults for direction. Many of these interpersonal qualities preserved through their late teens. This study shows that while the frequent use of drugs in adolescence is associated with poor social competence, so too is complete abstinence from drugs, although to a lesser extent. Why do those who abstain from drugs have lower-quality interpersonal relations than those who experiment with them? First, those in the former group may be globally overcautious. The same anxious cognitions and emotions that may keep an adolescent from every trying drugs may also prevent one from approaching classmates who are relative strangers and attempting to develop interpersonal relationships with them, or from asking people out on dates. These interpersonal processes require a certain degree of adventurousness and risk taking; the adolescent who abstains from drugs is ordinarily a social phenomenon; adolescent will often engage in the behaviour at the urging of, or with the assistance of demonstrations by, peers. People with interpersonal skill deficits may simply be less likely to find themselves in such contexts, and therefore may be less likely to experiment with drugs, since the social facilitation is generally lacking in their lives. Interpersonal problems are widely recognized as risk factors for initiation of adolescent substance use. It is equally well accepted that once a pattern of drug use/misuse is underway, the biological and psychological characteristics of addition may be largely responsible for its maintenance. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
For this reason there has been very little research attention paid to interpersonal mechanisms that might perpetuate substance misuse, despite the fact that systems oriented therapists who teat alcohol and drug dependence routinely address the interpersonal milieu surrounding the problem behaviour. Recently, a theory was developed and tested for substance misuse and maintenance, based on the notion of inconsistent nurturing. In short, the inconsistent-nurturing-as-control theory predicts that the significant others of those who misuse substance may actually play a role in maintaining the substance abusing behaviour. Significant others tend to oscillate between punishing their partners for drug-related behaviour (exempli gratia, conflict, fights, withdrawal), and rewarding them for it (exempli gratia, cleaning up after them, taking care of them). The rewarding behaviour allows a significant other to feel needed and included in such a relationship. However, this same behaviour is what perpetuates the substance misuse of the partner. According to this theory, the competing goals of nurturing the partner and controlling the drug-misusing behaviour result in a schedule of intermittent reward and punishment, which has the paradoxical effect of strengthening the drug abusing behaviour. Empirical tests of inconsistent-nurturing-as-control theory have yielded generally supportive results. Research indicates that the course of substance misuse may be influenced by the nature of interactions with significant others. Individuals who misuse substances, and who find themselves in relationships with partners who have the codependent tendency to nurture and control them, may inadvertently and paradoxically be reinforced for their drug-misusing behaviour. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
This theory is a departure from traditional models of substance misuse maintenance, which are sharply focused on biological and psychological factors. Our circumstances in life may occasionally knock us down or force us to sit down for a while, but we must not stay down. Even when we are down on the outside, we must see ourselves as getting up on the inside. One may have received a bad report from the doctor. Maybe one lost one’s largest client at work. Perhaps one just found out that one’s child is in trouble. One may be facing some other serious setback, and one feels as though life have caved in on top of one, knocking one off one’s feet and pushing one into the pits. However, the good news is, one does not have to stay down. Even if one cannot get up on the outside, get up on the inside! In other words, have that successful attitude and mentality. Stay in an attitude of faith. Do not allow oneself to lapse into negative thinking, complaining, or blaming God. Say, “Dear Lord in Heave, I may not understand this, but I know You are still in control. And You said all things would work together for my good. You said You would take this evil and turn it around and use it to my advantage. So Father, I thank You that You are going to bring me through this!” No matter what one is facing in life, if one knows how to get up on the inside, no adversity can keep one down. The Scripture says, “When one has done everything one knows how to do, just keep on standing firm,” reports Ephesians 6.13. One may be in a situation today where one has done one’s best. One has prayed and believed. One has placed one’s faith firmly on the truth of God’s Word. However, it just does not look like anything good is happening. Now one is tempted to say, “What is the use? It is never going to change.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
However, do not give up! Keep standing. Keep praying; keep believing; keep hoping in faith. “Do not cast away your confidence,” the Bible teaches, “for payday is coming,” reports Hebrews 10.35. Devout, if one will keep standing up on the inside, God will reward one. One may be in the hospital or lying flat on one’s back at home. However, even if one cannot stand up physically, nothing can keep one from standing up on the inside. That sickness may have one down physically, but one does not have to be down spiritually or emotionally. One can keep on getting up in one’s heart, mind, and will. Maybe one works or lives around people who are always putting one down, mistreating one, trying to make one feel badly about oneself. Let that trash go in one ear and out the other. They may try to knock one down on the outside, but they cannot knock one down on the inside. Do not let those people steal one’s joy. Do not let that problem or adversity cause one to become discouraged or depressed. Just keep standing up on the inside. I talked to a man who had recently lost his job. He had been making a good salary working in a prestigious position, but then was suddenly let go. When he first told me what had happened, I was certain that he was going to be distraught. However, when he came to see me, he had a big smile on his face and said, “I just lost my job, but I cannot wait to see what God has in store for me next!” He had been knocked down by circumstances outside of his control, but he was still standing up on the inside. He had a successful mentality. His attitude was: “This thing is not going to defeat me. This thing is not going to steal my joy. I know I am successful and not the victim. I know when one door closes, God will open up a larger and better door.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Today, one can say, “Even if the enemy hits me with one’s best shot, one’s best will never be good enough. One may knock me down, but one cannot knock me out. When it is all said and done, when the smoke clears and the dust settles, I am still going to be standing strong.” The Bible says no human can take your joy. That means no person can make one live with a negative attitude. No circumstance, no adversity can force one to live in despair. No matter what one is going through or how difficult it may seem, you can stay standing up on the inside. It will take courage; it will definitely take determination, but one can do it as long as one sets one’s heart and mind to it. Dear Lord in Heaven, I will refuse to stay down for long. I may get knocked down, or I may fall down, but I will get back up and keep trusting You for a great future. “The LORD sustains all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down,” reports Psalm 145.14. The Author of Purity has passed through this way so many times already that many have learned how clean their hands ought to be, how pure their moths, how holy their bodies, and how immaculate their hearts! From the mouth of so many is nothing but the Holy Word, nothing but the honest and useful word, and it comes forth because that very mouth has so often itself received the Sacramento of Life. One’s eyes should be simple and modest, for they are accustomed to loo into the Eyes of Christ. One’s hands should be pure and raised in prayer—that was First Timothy’s prescription (2.8)—for they are accustomed to handle the Creator of Heaven and Earth. There is this saying about self-actualized Christians in Leviticus (19.2), “By holy because I am holy; I, Your Lord and God.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
A priestly prayer. Omnipotent God, may Your grace help us to undertake the sacerdotal office, and may we serve You worthily and devotedly in all purity and in good conscience; First Timothy again (1.5). And if we cannot carry on in such innocence of life as we ought, then grant that we may weep worthily over the bad deeds we have done, and in the spirit of humility and with the resolve to do good, serve You more fervently in the future. There are many in the Church as well as out of it who need to learn that Christianity is neither a creed nor a ceremonial, but a life vitally connected with a loving Christ. We believe that the primary teaching of Jesus Christ was not a fear-motivated message. Rather, Jesus moved people when He spoke of love, gentleness, and blessedness. We feel that the alternative to fear-oriented religion is a religion based on free will and love. Emphasis on love stresses that Christ must be freely chosen. Too often, Christ is presented in the context of damnation and hell, and the convert becomes the object of fearful coercion. Psychology has shown time and again that fear is not a permanent motivator. The example of Adolph Hitler and of other dictators has shown that people are temporarily motivated by fear, but in the long run, motivation based on love is much more trustworthy and permanent. Furthermore, the constriction that fear causes keeps us from living freely in the here and now. All expression of the polarities is reduced and constricted when one stays in fear at the center of one’s being. When fear is diminished or absent, one can contact a pure place within, where one can truly experience the love of Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
As Paul wrote, “There is therefore now on condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” reports Romans 8.1. We described this pure place as the core, and this our emphasis on the importance of learning to contact it. One who seeks entry into the divine presence may possibly succeed in doing so. For a while one’s state is completely changed, transcended, heightened. However, after all one is not God; one is human still and one falls back to the old awareness. The glimpse goes: one is once again what one was, yet with a difference. The experience can be, is, remembered, and may even possibly return. Moreover some kind of residue is left behind, subtle, not easy to measure or describe, yet appearing in briefly felt and beautifully scented moments. Is this glimpse the highest anyone may dare to hope for? Let it be said that frankly in one’s present condition and situation a greater attainment for the human being is uncommon—yet it happens. Neither deep meditation nor the experience can give more than a temporary glimpse. The full and permanent enlightenment, which is to stay with a human and never leave one, can only come after one has clear insight into the nature of Overself. It is not only possible to attain these brief glimpses of the Overself, but also to attain a durable lasting consciousness of it. No change of this state can then happen. The adept discovers that its future is no different from but quite the same as its past. This is the sacred Eternal Now. Only by this abiding light is it possible to see how mixed and imperfect are all earlier and transient experiences. These flashes of light, peace, bliss, and understanding are brief but they have the intended effect. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The short glimpses encourage the aspirant to continue one’s quest and they implant in one a deep yearning to gain entry into the World to which they belong. They will be brief because the ordinary condition of thought and feeling is still far below the exalted condition revealed during these flashes. In other words, one has still to toil away at self-improvement so as to deserve the treasures which have been momentarily shown one. Between the seeker and the Overself, between one’s mind and Truth, there is a thick layer of desires, egoisms, passions, opinions, and imaginings. Until one cuts through it—which means until one denies and resists oneself in these matters—one mat not expect more than Glimpses which fade away. The belief that one can do nothing to hold this glimpse or keep this mood settles on one through repeated experience. However, it is not quite correct. Philosophy points out that one can thin down or remove altogether the causes of such evanescence. If it is to be a continuous light that stays with one and not a fitful flash, one will need first, to cast all negative tendencies, thoughts, and feelings entirely out of one’s character; second, to make good the insufficiencies in one’s development; third, to achieve a state of balance between one’s faculties. The glimpse comes spontaneously and outside of one’s control, but to the master it comes at will and by command. We Christians see the journey as marked by two phases: first, the initial decision, and then the long journey that lasts the rest of one’s life. The initial experience does not make one perfect. It is just the beginning. As someone has said, “We have to walk the walk, but simply talk the talk.” The rest of one’s life becomes a process by which one becomes more and more perfectly loving as Christ Himself is loving. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
One becomes an actualizing Christian by living within the guidelines of Christ’s perfect love and not by fearfully trying to please God or others. The dove is one of the biblical symbols for the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit reveals His wisdom and love through gentleness like that of the dove. If we approach growth in a tense, legalistic, and tight-jawed way, it does not facilitate the quiet and gradual work of the Spirit in our lives. The psychological equivalent of this is introspectionism. When an integration of principles of psychology is attempted for a fuller understanding of religious life, the temptation is to make the psychology a new law, a new burden to be borne by the Christian. The point of the Christian life is to live fully and joyfully, not to dwell in a self-absorbed and overcritical way on our perceived faults or virtues. As Irenaeus said in the second century, “The Glory of God is a huma being who is fully alive!” The power of the gospel is that Christ has come and the kingdom of God had burst un upon us. The powers of the kingdom of God are being released from the core depths of our being. Even now, the Spirit is at work within our core, guiding us in daily transformation to ever greater approximations of Christlikeness. It remains a work of grace, not a reflection of strife and effort on our part. We are empty vessels to be filled by the Lord. To be filled with the life of Jesus in accordance with who we deeply are is the Christian definition of self-fulfillment. We will see in eternal gratefulness how the inner spring of grace made our deepest self similar to Jesus Christ. We will see how the spring inside us leaps with dazzling splendour for all eternity. The Bible calls the Presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives an earnest, or pledge or down payment, on the full unrestrained Presence of God that we will eventually know. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
In Ephesians, Paul speaks of this earnest: “You…were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory,” 1.13-14. Substantial fruit will be born from our consistent rust in the Holy Spirit in this life. And in Galatians, Paul develops a description of the fruit of the Spirit that can be seen emerging from fertile union of the believer with Christ: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law,” 5.22-23. So the actualizing Christian is saved from the heavy burdens of both fear and self-conscious introspection by the large context in which one understands life. One feels grounded in God’s unshakeable and enduring love. We know that our faults, sins, and rigidities do not make us less acceptable to God, who only wants us to shed the things that would oppress us and take up the things that will bless us. Many people have lost contact with the spiritual core of their being. They no longer trust the inspired impulses from within. Instead, the take orders from their surroundings—from the media, from the authority figures, from peers, from economic pressures, from fads, or from gurus. There are instances, of course, when tradition, authority, society, or an enlightened teacher can assist the individual in beneficial ways. However, following the mentality of the crowd and the ways of the World often leads to spiritual deadness and deterioration of the personality. In coming home to the core, one gives up one’s defensive style of living, which has been based on fear, manipulation, and pretenses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
One adopts instead a growth-oriented life style based on love, trust, and genuineness. Perfect love replaces fear as the motivating dynamic of one’s life. As we have already pointed out, this process is often slow and gradual, for fear is a tenacious gust who is reluctant to be ousted. However, given time, even in harsh conditions, the God-inspired personality will still bring forth its blood in due season. This is a tribute to both the resourcefulness of God and the openness of the person. The challenge of genuine religious commitment in the Hebrew-Christian sense is to be transformed to be made whole, to “tase and see that the Lord is good,” reports Psalm 34.8. The process of being moved toward wholeness and authenticity by the inner power of the Holy Spirit is a lifelong adventure. Actualizing, for both the devoted Christian and the modern secular person, involves learning to rediscover, affirm, and trust the sacred ground of Being within. It is a coming home to one’s Origin. It is slipping into the tailor-made clothing of one’s original spiritual calling. In our words, it is accepting God’s gracious invitation to actualize one’s full potential. Praise the Lord in your infinite variety all creatures, minute and enormous in your verity whose particular and unique features are the context of His glory and His fecundity Praise the Lord nebulae like grains of dust silhouetted and fixed on photographic plates. Sirius, that dog star and his confederates Arcturus, Antares, Aldebaran, the red bull God’s cup brimming over and ever full, thank the Lord. Praise the Lord you His meteorites and comets in your elliptical orbits and made planets. Praise the Lord atoms and molecules, protons and electrons, and all the stars the minute protozoa, in their liquid, the Radiolaria. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Praise the Lord cetaceans and atomic submarines for you are of God’s mind in your particulars. Birds, the eagle and wren, the aeroplanes and prisms in emerald copper sulphate in the electronic microscope infinite; coloured flowers blooming at the bottom of the sea, diatoms and the diadems of the Antilles like a rose of diamonds, let all these and the unended maritime fauna praise the Lord. And the Tropic of Cancer, storms of the North Atlantic and the Humboldt current, the dark, sweating forests of the Amazon, the shining island jewels of the South Ocean, volcanoes and lagoons, and the Caribbean behind the silhouettes of the infinite palm, democratic republics, the United Nations, praise the Lord as even for police is appropriate. The students, the young, the beautiful, His glory surpasses the Heavens, it is bountiful. Telescope and microscope seeing nearing and far, it is He who has made the people plentiful, who would not yield to the Lord the word hosanna? Blessed be the Lord who is to be praised. Praised be the Lord who is blessed for all eternity. Praised be Thou, O Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who with Thy word bringest on the evening twilight, and with Thy wisdom openest the gates of the Heavens. With understanding Thou does order the cycles of time and variest the seasons, setting the stars in their courses in the sky, according to Thy will. Thou creates day and night, rolling away the light before the darkness and the darkness before the light. By Thy will the day passes into night; the Lord of Heavenly hosts is Thy name. O ever living God, mayest Thou rule over us forever. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who bringest on ethe evening twilight. With everlasting love hast Thou loved the house of America, teaching us Thy Torah and commandments, Thy statutes and judgments. Therefore, O Lord our God, when we lie down and when we rise up, we will meditate on Thy teachings and rejoice forever in the words of Thy Torah and in its commandments, for they are our life and the length of our days. Day and night will mediate upon them. O may Thy love never depart from us. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who lovest Thy people America. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.
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Making the Unobservable Observable—Wide Unclasp the Tables of their Thoughts!
Do not pretend to be what you do not intend to be. The power to hold on in spite of everything, the power to endure—this is the winner’s quality. Clinical researchers have repeatedly found that exposure treatments help with specific phobias. The key to success in all these therapies appears to be actual contact with the feared object or situation. In vivo desensitization is more effective than covert desensitization, in vivo flooding more effective than covert flooding, and participant modeling more helpful than strictly observational modeling. Many behavioural therapists now combine features of each of the exposure approaches. You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere. Clinicians have only recently begun to have much success in treating social phobias. This progress is due in part to the growing recognition that social phobias have two distinct features that may feed upon each other: people with the phobias may have overwhelming social fears, and they may lack skill at initiating conversations, communicating their needs, or meeting the needs of others. Armed with this insight, clinicians now treat social phobias by trying to reduce social fears, by providing training in social skills, or both. How can social fears be reduced? Unlike specific phobias, which do not typically respond to psychotropic drugs, social fears are often reduced through medication. Somewhat surprisingly, it is antidepressant medications that seem to be most helpful for this disorder, often more helpful than benzodiazepines or other kinds of antianxiety drugs. At the same time, several types of psychotherapy have proved at least as effective as medication at reducing social fears. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Moreover, people helped by these psychological treatments are apparently less likely to relapse than people treated with drugs alone. This finding suggests to some clinicians that the psychological approaches should always be included in the treatment of social fears. One psychological approach is exposure therapy, the behavioural intervention so effective with specific phobias. Exposure therapists guide, encourage, and persuade clients with social fears to expose themselves to the dreaded social situations and to remain until their fears subside. Usually the exposure is gradual, and it is often coupled with homework assignments in which the clients begin facing social situations and to remain until their fears subside. Usually the exposure is gradual, and it is often coupled with homework assignment in which the clients begin facing social situations on their own. Group therapy provides an ideal setting for exposure treatments by allowing people to confront the social situations they fear in an atmosphere of support and concern. In one group, for example, a man who was afraid that his hands would tremble in the presence of other people had to write on a blackboard in front of the group and serve tea to the other members. Cognitive therapies have also been widely used to treat social fears, often in combination with behavioral techniques. Missing out on thousands of dollars each year because many persons are afraid of riding on roller coasters, some amusement parks offer behavioural programs to help customers overcome their fears. After “treatment,” some clients are able to ride the rails with the best of them. For others, it is back to the relative calm of the Ferris wheel. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Studies indicate that rational-emotive therapy and similar cognitive approaches do indeed help reduce social fears. And these reductions may persist for years. At the same time, research also suggests that cognitive therapy, like drug therapy and exposure therapy, does not typically overcome social phobias fully. It reduces social fear, but it does not consistently help people perform effectively in the social realm. This is where social skills training has come to the forefront. How can social skills be improved? In social skills training, therapists combine several behavioural techniques in order to help people improve their social skills. They usually model appropriate social behaviours for clients and encourage the individuals to try them out. The clients then role-play with the therapists, rehearsing their new behaviours until they become more effective. Throughout the process, therapists provide frank feedback and reinforce (praise) the clients for effective performances. Social reinforcement from others with similar social difficulties is often more powerful than reinforcement from a therapist alone. In social skills training groups and assertiveness training groups, members try out and rehearse new social behaviour with or in front of other group members. The group can also provide guidance on what is socially appropriate. Social skills training helps many people perform better in social situations. Some people, however, continue to experience uncomfortable levels of fear despite such treatments. No single approach—drug therapy, exposure treatment, cognitive therapy, or social skills training—consistently causes social phobias to disappear, and none is clearly superior to the others. Yet each is helpful, and when the approaches are combined, the results have been especially encouraging. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The bulk of research on the development and maintenance of drug use problems among adolescents has focused on family-of-origin experiences. Parental modeling, family-of-origin discord, and physical and sexual abuse within the family may all play roles in the development of adolescent substance misuse. However, factors in the other three major domains considered in this report may also be important: general personal relationships (peer modeling and maltreatment perpetrated by nonrelatives as paths to substance use), interpersonal communication (social skills deficits in adolescents themselves as either causes or effects of substance misuse), and eventual family-of-orientation experiences (inconsistent nurturing by significant others as a factor maintaining substance misuse). Few people stumble into drug use by accident. Considering the elaborate and varied steps involved in the procurement, preparation, and ingestion of different drugs, the likelihood that people acquire these behaviours on their own is extremely low. Rather, most people learn about drugs, and learn how to take drugs, by observing other people. In fact, most adolescents who begin to use drugs and alcohol do so after first observing their behaviour in their peers. Substance misuse may thus be a unique mental health problem, in that it can literally be learned from others. Consistent with this idea, research findings show that drug and alcohol use by peers and parents is one of the most powerful predicators of adolescent drug and alcohol involvement. For this reason, the most compelling account of drug use initiation can be found in social learning theory. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
In connection with eating disorders, social learning theory posits that one mechanism by which people acquire behaviours is observational learning, or modeling. Modeling works because it gives people a template or guide for their own behaviour. This is referred to as making the unobservable observable. People cannot observe their own behaviour; however, the observation of others’ behaviour gives people a mental picture of how a behaviour can and should be performed. When people see others rewarded for performing a behaviour, they are more likely to enact that behaviour. People learn if-then relationships by observing others. For example, an adolescent may learn that “if I smoke marijuana, then I will look cool and feel great.” This could be learned by observing the how the state of California allows recreational use of marijuana, and seeing peers who use the drug with the support and camaraderie of other friends, and who extol its positive effects (although the drug can be dangerous and is still illegal according to federal laws). Social learning theory is currently one of the major theories of adolescent substance us initiation. As predicted by the theory, association with peers and/or parents who use substances has a powerful impact on adolescents’ own substance use behaviour. For example, a study of high school students revealed a correlation of approximately r =.50 between students’ substance use and that of their parents. (A correlation coefficient of .10 is thought to represent a weak or small association; a correlation coefficient of .30 is considered a moderate correlation; and a correlation coefficient of .50 or larger is though to represent a strong or large correlation. In another study of prisoners enrolled in substance misuse treatment programs, 54 percent indicated a family history of parental alcohol or other drug problems. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
A national household probability sample of over 4,000 adolescents showed that a history of family drug use increased the odds of adolescents’ abuse or dependence on alcohol, marijuana, or “hard” drugs by factors of 1.89, 4.14, and 7.89, respectively. In other words, adolescents whose family members use drugs are anywhere from two to eight times more likely to be abusing and/or dependent on drugs themselves than are adolescents in families without a history of drug use. In addition to the family, association with peers who use drugs may also provide a source of further observational learning of substance use. Spending time with such pers, and developing friendships with them, as associated with greater likelihood of drug use. However, this finding is complicated by the fact that adolescents who use drugs tend to select peers who use drugs as friends. Similarity is a major determinant of interpersonal attraction, so it stands to reason that such friendships will develop. The varied findings on associations with peers who use drugs have provoked equivocal conclusions about their impact on the development of adolescent substance use. For instance, some investigators state that peer use of substances has consistently been found to be among the strongest predicators of substance use among youth, while other assert that peer influence appears to be less significant than previously thought in predicting either drug use or abuse. However, if your friends are consistently drinking and doing drugs in your presence, there is a 90 percent chance you will, too. Longitudinal studies indicate that perceived drug use in peers and perceived favourable attitudes toward drug use among peers are both precursors to adolescent substance use. These phenomena may normalize substance use in an adolescent’s mind. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If a young person feels that one’s friends are taking drugs, and that one’s friends think it is cool to take drugs, it follows that drug use will be viewed as normative conduct. This cognitive and attitudinal socialization into drug use makes it difficult to rule out the peer influence hypothesis. Both of these processes (the influence of peers who use drugs, and the selection of such peers) may be simultaneously operative. Contentment starts in your attitude. It is all in how you choose to see thing. One can complain about one’s boss, or one can thank God that one has a job. One can complain about mowing the emerald green lawn, or one can thank God that one has a yard. One can complain about the price of gasoline, or one can save up for a hybrid vehicle. It is all in how one chooses to see it. Friends, choose to have a grateful attitude. One may be thinking, “My life is so routine. I just get up, go to work, and come home. I do the same thing day after day. I do not have anything exciting happening to be especially thankful for.” Many times we do not realize how great we have it until something is taken away. There was a young couple who had two children. The father had a great career and they did not have any problems to speak of. However, then one day the father said he was not feeling well. When he went to the doctor, they discovered that he had a very serious illness. This family spent weeks going to various hospitals in different locations for test after test. Now their time was consumed by medical matters. The doctors finally found a way to treat the father, so for the next several mothers, he had to go to the hospital every other day to receive treatment. It was a long, drawn-out ordeal, and it totally interrupted the family members’ lives. The truth is much of life is routine. It is easy to think, “I cannot be grateful. I cannot be happy. I do not have anything exciting going on,” until something goes wrong. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
We hold Jesus Christ up and adore Him, whom the Angels adore in Heaven. He admires us for doing so. However, at least up to this point in our existence, we have been kept every much in the dark; remember Paul says very much the same in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (5.7). Faith has been the only sconce. The Angels, on the other hand, have chandeliers; indeed they are chandeliers; that is to say, they see Jesus in person, face to face, without veil, temperamental or sacramental. We are quite content with the little illumination Jesus allows us. Faith sheds more than enough light to believe by and to walk in. That is not to say we do not look forward to the dawn of the Day of Eternal Clarity when the shadows of the night will leave all our figures revealed fully and forever. We hope it is all right for a self-actualized Christian to read the Song of Solomon (2.17). Be grateful for what God has done in your life. Choose to enjoy this day. Do not take every day, “normal” life for granted. If you are healthy, have a roof over your head, and have a family, you have so much to be thankful for. Do not wait until something is lost or take away before you really appreciate what you have. Learn to enjoy what God has given you. Take time for the people you love. Take time for your family. Quit working all the time. When you come to the end of your life, you will never regret having spent time with your family. Nobody ever says on their deathbed, “If I had to do it again, I would spend more time at the office. I would just work a little harder.” No, they always say, “I wish I had spent more time with my family. If I had a chance to live my life again, I would take more vacations. I would slow down and smell the roses. I would not live so stressed out.” However, we need to realize that in a moment, we could be gone. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
We have no guarantee that we will be here at this time next year. We need to learn to live each day to the fullest, as though it could be our last. Dear Lord in Heaven, please help me to appreciate every day of life that You give me, and to make every day count. Please show me Your priorities for my life—the things that matter most to You—and please help me to align my priorities with Yours. Many Christians who are afraid to verbalize their feelings of anger fear that is any form of anger is let out, it will result in destructive behaviour. However, the person who can give honest vent early to one’s angry feelings need not fear violence. One the contrary, the “nice guys” who never let themselves get angry are the ones who many end up harming others. All Christians need occasional “hostilectomies.” In associating the expression of anger only with the most intense expression of roughness, explosiveness, or physical violence, we may have never considered how to express our anger in more gracious and considerate ways. The expression of anger in a relationship does not have to lead to a permanent breach or to a bitter rejection. Rather, it can lead toward greater mutual respect and sensitivity to one another. Communicating our anger in an actualizing way can also clear the air of phoniness. Priest-psychologist Adrian van Kaam has suggested that when we feel angry we must not smile sweetly or freeze sullenly. We need to learn instead to be humble and courageous enough before God to let our feelings come out—straight, honest, and simple, yet wisely and not destructively. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We might simply say: “I am feeling angry (or hurt) about what you just said (or did). Here is the meaning it has for me…” Then we let the other person express one’s feelings and perceptions. In this way we remain open to each other, yet preserve our spiritual situation, then we might discharge the feeling with full awareness at a later time and place. For instance we might: talk to a trusted friend about the incident, write down our feelings on a piece of paper, run around the block, beat up a pillow, find a safe place and scream, go for a vigorous swim, tell God how angry we are, as the psalmist David often did. However, if one is having a medical or psychiatric emergency, hang up the phone and dial 911, or go to your nearest hospital. Nonetheless, what is often important in this process, is that we convert the energy behind the feeling into a verbal or muscular activity. Anger, when given full and satisfying actualization expression, is followed by a sense of relief, peace, and muscular relaxation. We are now open to a variety of other feelings. One of the first is often a feeling of warmth and love for the very person with whom we have been angry. In studying the life of Jesus Christ, we find several occasions when He expressed His anger toward His own disciples. When they misunderstood Him, quarreled with one another, kept children away from Him, or tempted Him to go against the will of the Father, Jesus Christ showed how He felt. By the same token, He never left them in doubt about His lasting gentle care. Jesus Christ expressed more intense levels of anger and rage against the Pharisees and those who were adept at manipulative devices and phoniness. Yet His prayer at His death demonstrated that forgiving love, not accumulated bitterness, had nourished the roots of His personality throughout life: “Father, forgive them…” #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Anger, rightly expressed, serves the ends of love and justice in our lives. Why confession works? The Greek word in the Christian Bible translated confess means “to say or speak the same thing.” Just as plainly as if I heard it with my ears, the Spirit of God spoke this into my spirit. I had heard some teaching concerning this on one occasion, but I did not grasp it then. As the Spirit began to fill in the gaps for me, I could see it. He said: The Word says the Angels are ministering spirits. These ministering spirits stand beside you daily and listen to the words that you speak. They are created beings, designed of God to minister for you, but you are the one who tells them what to do. The Angels are ministering spirits sent to minister for you and they listen to the words you speak. You do not pray to Angels but they listen to the words you speak. They cause or allow to come to pass the things that you say. However, you furnish the words of the assignment. He directed me to Hebrews 1.14, Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? The Holy Spirit said, God’s Word is His will for man. Man is created in the image of God and since God created man in His own image, then man’s word should be one’s will toward God. Then for the first time I really understood why it was so necessary for us to speak what we desire. We are giving orders. If God’s Word is His will, your word should be your will. You should never speak words that are not your will. They are not your words. Your will and your words are one. Do not let Satan speak through you. If God said one thing and willed something else, would it not be silly? Of if He willed one thing, then said something else? That would cause confusion. One would not know what was true. God says what He will. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The Holy Spirit said, Humans’ words should be one’s will toward God. The Angels were designed as created beings to minister for you and they know that. They listen to the words that you speak. Every word that you speak the Angels hear, for they are always beside you, waiting to hear what you choose to bind or loose. Then they are busy to perform or cause to come to pass the things you speak if they are in agreement with the Word of God. By authority of your words, they will maneuver you into a position where these things will come to pass. However, if you speak sickness and disease, if you speak contrary to the Word of God, they will not perform it or cause it to come to pass. They will back off, fold their hands, and bow their heads for you have bound them by the words of your mouth. Your words will either being them or loose them. If your words bind the Angels, you have bound God’s messengers and, in so doing, you have bound God. Jesus said, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven: and whatever you shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatever you shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven. All Heaven will stand behind your right to be healed. Now that will jerk the kinks out of your conversation! You can loose sickness in your own body by inaccurate prayer or you can loose healing by accurate prayer. Release God’s ability by praying His words. Let us take a look at Revelation 22.8-9: And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I feel down to worship before the feet of the Angel which shewed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The Angel is a servant to those who keep the sayings of this book. He listens to what you say. The Angel said, “Worship God! Do not worship me! I am just doing God’s bidding.” The word used in Hebrews 1.14 for ministering spirits really means angelic apostles. The ministering spirits are angelic apostles, sent to minister for us who are heirs of salvation. Now let us look at Psalm 103.19. This verse of scripture will open your eyes of understanding in a greater measure to the things we have been talking about: The Lord hath prepare His throne in the Heavens; and His kingdom ruleth over all. There is definitely a dual meaning here and I know this meaning is included. God’s throne is in Heaven, but His kingdom ruleth over all. Where is His kingdom? The kingdom is in us and it rules over all. The words you speak into your heart will rule. The Earth was spawned from the spirit World. It was created to be the likeness of the spiritual World which spawned it. Man was created by God to be in the likeness of God: to have dominion, to control, and to rule. His kingdom ruleth over all, and He set up His kingdom inside us. You feed good seed into the kingdom and it will produce the things desired. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1.1). Today your word is god over your circumstances. Your word is the beginning of things. The word that you continually say will be god over the circumstances you face in life. Eventually, they will come to pass. Notice Psalm 103.20, Bless the Lord, ye His Angels, that excel in strength, that do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word. The Angels do His commandments. We are to let no corrupt communication proceed out of our mouths. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
That is what He commanded us to do, but what are the Angels to do? They do those things that are in line with God’s Word. That is what God has assigned them to do. They are ministering spirits sent forth to minister for us in this Earth. God’s Word says that man shall have whatsoever he saith, if one believes and doubts not in one’s heart. Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe ye receive them. It seems then as though the Angels have something to do with those prayers being answered. Now, you do not pray to Angels, but they listen to what you say. They are ministering for you. Their job is to see that it comes to pass. If you speak God’s Word, they will work day and night in your behalf. He said they excel in strength and do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His Word. What is the voice of God’s Word? The Holy Bible is His Word (and the Book of Mormon), but how do we give voice to it? By speaking His words. Then when I speak His Word, my words become the voice of God’s Word. Let us say one wants wisdom. The Word says, If any human lack wisdom, let one ask of God who giveth to all humans liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given. So if I put God’s Word into voice, then the Angels hearken unto my words. They will go about to cause the words that God spoke in my behalf to come to pass. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy (Psalms 107.2). Give voice to the Word by saying: The spirit of truth abides in me and teaches me all things and guides me into all truths. Therefore, I confess I have perfect knowledge of every situation and every circumstance of life. The wisdom of God is formed within me. I trust in the Lord with all of my heart, and I lean not unto my own understanding. I let the Word of Christ dwell in me richly in all wisdom. I do follow the Good Shepherd; I know His voice and the voice of a stranger I will not follow. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
So my Angels are loosed and begin to work to cause the confusion to stop and see that I have the wisdom of God. They find ways to get it to me so I will not be deceived by the evil one. They make sure that I hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. Faith-filled words release God and bring Him on the scene in your behalf. There was a lady that stood up in church and said, “Pray for me. I am taking the flu.” There was no need to pray; she was taking it. She did not even wait for Satan to give it to her! Nobody prayed for her, but I imagine most people said, “Oh, poor thing, she is taking the flu.” So she had about fifty people believing she was taking the flu. Jesus said that is two of you agree, it will be done. Do you see the spiritual law that is set in motion by words? This Earth is under God’s word system.Be careful about talking your problems because most people will agree with you. Learn to speak the answer to the problems. Find the answer, then feed it to the problem. Learn to use God’s system. Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, together with a number of elders, were instructed to leave as soon as possible and to go to Missouri. They were promised that if they were faithful the Lord would make it known to them what they should do there. Definite instructions concerning this journey were given. Let them journey from thence, preaching the word by the way…Let them go two by two, and thus let them preach by the way in every congregation, baptizing by water, and the laying on of the hands by the water’s side. To keep Satan from deceiving the people, the Lord gave a pattern so the Saints could know who represented God: One that prayeth whose spirit is contrite, the same is accepted of me, if one obey mine ordinances. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
One that speaketh, whose spirit is contrite, whose language is meek, and edifieth, the same is God, if one obey mine ordinances. And again, one that trembleth under my power shall be made strong, and shall bring forth fruits of praise, and wisdom, according to the revelations and truths which I have given you. And again, one that is overcome and bringeth not forth fruits, even according to this pattern, is not of me; wherefore by this pattern ye shall know the spirits in all cases, under the whole Heavens. The Lord gave instructions to those who were to travel to Missouri: Let all these take their journey unto one play, in the several courses, and one human shall not…journey in another’s track. One that is faithful, the same shall be kept and blessed with much fruit. If ye are faithful, ye shall assemble yourselves together to rejoice upon the land of Missouri, which is the land of your inheritance. I the Lord, will hasten the city in its time, and will crown the faithful with joy and with rejoicing. Behold, I am Jesus Christ the Son of God, and I will lift them up at the last day. As the elders made their preparation to go to Missouri, Joseph prayed to the Lord to know the work of several men. God revealed to him what they should do. Sidney Gilbert was told he should go to Missouri and that he should: Take upon you mine ordinances, even that of an elder, to preach faith and repentance, and remission of sins, according to my word, and the reception of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. And also to be an agent unto the church in the plae which shall be appointed by the bishop. Newell Knight was told: Take your journey into the regions westward, and unto the land of Missouri, unto the borders of the Lamanites. And after you have done journeying, behold, I say unto you, Seek ye a living like unto humans, until I prepare a place for you. And again, be patient in tribulation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
William W. Phelps was told: You shall be ordained to assist my servant Oliver Cowdery, to do the work of printing, and of selecting, and writing books for schools, in this church, that little children also may receive instruction before me as is pleasing unto me. Ezra Thayre was a wealthy man who would not willingly share with others. By revelation through Joseph Smith, the Lord warned him that he must repent of his pride and selfishness or he would be cut off from the church: Woe unto you rich men, that will not give your substance to the poor, for your riches will canker your souls. Woe unto you poor humans, whose hearts are not broken, whose spirits are not contrite, and whose bellies are not satisfied, and whose hands are not stayed from laying hold upon other humans’ goods, whose eyes are full of greediness, who will not labour with their own hands! However, blessed are the poor, who are pure in heart, whose hearts are broken, and whose spirits are contrite, for they shall see the kingdom of God coming in power and great glory. For, behold, the Lord shall come, and His recompense shall be with one, and He shall reward every human, and the poor shall rejoice. In less than two weeks after the Lord gave His command, twenty-two of the elders who had been commissioned for this work began their long journey to Missouri, going two by two and preaching along the way. Most glimpses got through meditation are followed by the surfacing of egoistic tendencies and weaknesses. This is only that their existence may be more clearly seen and an attempt made to get rid of them. Whatever happens to oneself or to others, whether one rises of falls, whether they hurt or help one, let one keep the hope that the glimpse have one and continue to love the highest, remote though it may seem. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Sometimes the glimpse may pass unrecognized for what it really is, but in later years this is usually rectified. One can make one’s little World reflect something of the goodness and beauty one has glimpsed. Some among us must seek a higher quality of thought and being, a better way of life and action, in obedience to this call which is heard most clearly during the period of a glimpse. Now and then if the glimpse is granted in response to one’s patient endeavours, one’s trust will be strengthened and one will know that one is neither crazy nor wrong to follow this quest. One feels a personal obligation to carry into everyday living what one has deduced from these golden moments. When a glimpse comes to a human, from whatever cause and in whatever way, its effects show themselves variously. One very important effect is that whether one wants to or not, and despite negative passing moods of frustration or depression, if the human to whom it has come has consciously entered on the Quest one cannot desert it but must sooner or later enter upon it again. It is possible for a human who knows of the Quest only through emotional faith or intellectual conviction to turn aside from it for the remainder of one’s incarnation, but it is not possible for a human who has enjoyed this Glimpse to do so. One may try—and some do—but each day of such alienation will be a haunted day. The ghost will not leave one alone until one returns. These glimpses are only occasional. They take us unawares and depart from us unexpectedly. However, the joy they bring with them, the insight they bestow, make us yearn for a permanent and unbroken attainment of the state they tell us about. If the person is not consciously on the quest, it is important to remember that such experiences may be expected only rarely in most cases, perhaps once or twice in a lifetime. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
It is natural to hope that it will be repeated. The first glimpse is given to show the way, to throw light on the path ahead, to give direction and goal to the person. However, if the glimpse is only temporary and rare, the metaphysical understanding to be derived from it is the permanent benefit. So seek to get and clarify the understanding. “When the Time of times comes,” as Paul wrote in First Corinthians (13.10), the Sacraments will have done their job. That is because the Blessed in Heavenly Glory will no longer have any need for a medicament, let alone a sacrament. They will rejoice without end in the presence of God, face to face, their glory mirroring His; Paul has said something similar in Second Corinthians (3.18). Back to the sconces. As I have said above, they had been transformed into chandeliers. Our perspective on Earth was abysmal; now it is abyssal, and the Deity Himself is visibly at home in Heaven. And the Blessed taste the word of God made flesh, as it was in the beginning and remains forever. Whenever I am mindful of these wonderful things, a deep gloom descends. Even spiritual consolation cannot cut through the fog. And there appears to be a good reason for it. As long as I could not see Jesus, my Godly Friend, openly and in His full glory without blinking, I counted as nothing everything I saw or heard around the World. You, Dear Jesus, are my witness, if I may borrow a word from Romans (1.9). Nothing can console me, no creature quiet me. Only You, my Lord God, whom I desire to contemplate to the end of time and beyond. However, of course, at the present time, this is not possible, at least while I have to endure this mortal coil. So, as You say, I have to aim for greater patience and submit my every desire to you. The Saints who are jamming the Kingdom of Heaven now, O Lord, once lived a life of expectation on Earth, waiting for the advent of Your glory, as the Letter of Titus described it (2.13). #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Faith and Patience played a large part in their survival; the Letter to the Hebrews would certainly second that (6.12). They believed it then; I believe it now. What they hoped for then, I hope for now. That is to say, where they have arrived already, I trust I will one day come through to Your grace. I will sing of the well-founded Earth, Mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all creatures that are in the World, all that go upon the goodly land, all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly; all these are fed of her store. Through you, O Queen, we are blessed in our children, and in our harvest and to you we own our lives. Happy are we, who you delight to honour! We have all things abundantly: our houses are filled with good things, our cities are orderly, our sons exult with everfresh delight and our daughters with flower laden hands play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field. Thus it is for those whom you honour, O holy Goddess, Bountiful spirit! Hail Earth, mother of the gods, freely bestowe upon me for this is my song that cheers the heart! May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to grant our portion in Thy Torah, and may the Temple be rebuilt in our day. There we will serve Thee with awe as in the days of old. Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, Who traineth my hands for combat, and my fingers for battle. Thou art my lovingkindness and my fortress, my high tower and my deliverer; my shield art Thou, in Thee I take refuge; Thou subdues the enemy under me. Lord, what is man that Thou takes knowledge of him? Or the son of man that Thou does regard him? Man is like a breath; his days are as a passing shadow. O Lord, bow Thy Heavens and descend, touch the mountains that they may smoke. Flash forth lightning and scatter the evil-doer, send out Thine arrows and rout the foe. Stretch forth Thy hands from on high; rescue me, and deliver me from mighty waters, redeem me from the hand of hostile strangers, whose mouth speaks falsehood, and whose right contrives deceit. O God, I will sing a new song unto Thee, upon a harp of ten strings will I sing praises unto Thee, Who givest victory unto kings, Who rescuest David Thy servant, from the evil sword. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Evil Spirits are Able to Exert a Great Deal of Influence Upon Humans!
The Christian Bible teaches us that acceptance of this World system which is dominated by erroneous principles, selfish desires, improper motives, and unworthy standards of value that draws humans away from God and makes them “measure of all things,” is influenced so strongly by Satan and his army of evil spirits, which caused humans to adopt attitudes and to perform deeds which hinder God’s work and harm His people is done with every trace of wickedness (depravity, malignity) and all deceit and insincerity (pretense, hypocrisy) and grudges (envy, jealousy), and slander of every kind and evil speaking of every kind. This should make us crave like newborn babies the pure spiritual milk that by it one may be nurtured and grow unto salvation. Society in every age is characterized by such iniquities as selfishness, pride, immorality, and dishonesty, in spite of the efforts of sincere people to make it a better World. Twenty-first century humans, with more technical skills and knowledge than any previous generation, is unable to solve the problems of poverty, crime, racial hatred, and war. An increasing number of people go to bed hungry every night, crime is on the rise, racial hatred has never been more intense, and wars continue to be fought all over the World. Why? Because humankind has accepted a self-centered philosophy of life, and Earth’s citizens in general are motivated by the three evils of which John speaks in his first epistle—“the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” reports 1 John 2.16. The “lust of the flesh” is the desire for possession. It is the gratification of self by participation. Careful study of the word “flesh” indicates that this evil propensity of humankind involves more than just sins of impurity. The term, as used by John in this passage, does not have reference to the body but to the sinful Adamic nature. The individual sinner is born with a nature that is selfish, and one is part of a social structure which operates on grasping, egocentric, and selfish principles. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
A vast majority of men and women are materialistic, live to gratify the senses, and are self-centered even in the good things they do. Nations, too, seek only what is best for themselves. Leaders in industry, education, and even religion are primarily concerned about their own welfare, often neglecting the needs of those they serve. The “lust of the flesh” drives humans to desire and obtain material possessions, and to satisfy their physical appetites and passions at the expense of spiritual values. This basic selfishness and craving for the Earthly tangible pleasures of life leads people to misuse the physical and material blessings God has given all humans to enjoy. On a Worldwide scope, it has brought about a situation in which thousands live in unparalleled luxury while millions starve. When we stop to think about it, much of the World’s unrest and unhappiness today can be traced to the “lust of the flesh.” The “lust of the eyes,” the second characteristic of this World system, is sometimes defined as “gratification by contemplation.” The use of our eyes has vast potential for either great blessing of for degradation. For example, we are able to look upon the endless beauty of creation and sing praises to the Lord. Reading God’s Word, we can meditate upon the riches of glory in joyous expectation. However, Satan and his evil partners have perverted the use of the eye, inducing wicked humans to display scenes by which lustful thoughts are incited. They capitalize upon humans’ sinfulness and natural tendency to immorality. Down through the ages, immodest dress, impure books and pictures, and unholy theatrical productions have been used to degrade and degenerate both young and old. In addition, the eye affords an opportunity to enjoy by contemplation certain evils which one cannot or dare not actually perform. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Therefore, people from all classes of society and every age bracket are influenced by the allurement that comes through the gift of sight. Discerning people who glance at the newsstands, read the advertisements in the theater page of the newspaper, or watch the programs and commercials presented on television, know full well that “lust of the eyes” has been exploited by the powers of evil. The evidence certainly indicates that Satan and his followers are truly the “leaders of the darkness of this World.” The “pride of life,” the third characteristic of this World system, refers to vanity and ostentation. Men and women put great stock in “being somebody.” To make a name for themselves they throw impressive parties, purchase expensive automobiles, and live in luxurious homes. Their only measure of success is by these standards. Others may acquire academic degrees to display their intellectual prowess, while athletes may exert maximum effort, not principally out of team spirit, but for money and applause. The struggle for power, prestige, and even glory is at the heart of almost every human endeavour. However, through all of this, humankind has been unable to discover true happiness and satisfaction. Most people confess they are not finding pleasures they expected, but nonetheless continue on their way, ever pursuing new baubles. The invisible forces of Satan so blind humans that they do not see true values, nor recognize the folly of their vain quest for this elusive will-o’-the wisp, “the pride of life.” According to the Bible the whole social structure of this World is controlled by a pervading principle of life that is foreign to God and leads humans away from Him. True every human is a sinner by nature and alienated from God, but this inherent human selfishness, under the direction of intelligent and powerful wicked spirits, compounds this basic sinfulness by brining out the very worst in humans. Evil spirits cruelly blind and deceive fallen humanity through the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
These fallen creatures actively try to manipulate the political rulers of the World. Satan’s organized army operates quietly and invisibly in the minds and the wills of Earthly sovereigns to achieve their evil purposes. The Bible indicates the nature and course of their activity in several references. Daniel 10 teaches that specific evil spirits are assigned the task of influencing human rulers. The chapter opens with a picture of Daniel in earnest prayer. He entreats the Lord for a period of three weeks, seeking God’s favour upon the Jewish people who have returned to Jerusalem from captivity. He learned that they were experiencing difficulty in rebuilding the temple. Ezra 4, which gives the history of these former exiles, indicates that the work of restoration was interrupted by adversaries almost immediately after the foundation of the temple had been laid. Finally, three weeks after Daniel began to pray, God sent him a most amazing experience. An angel came to Daniel and said, “Fear not, Daniel; for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. However, the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days; but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia,” reports Daniel 10.12-13. The angel declared that he had left Heaven immediately after Daniel’s first prayer, but that on his way to Earth he had encountered opposition from “the prince of the kingdom of Persia.” The Heavenly messenger went on to say that it was not until Michael came to help him that he was able to overcome this opposing “prince.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The struggle was obviously between angelic beings, for the one speaking to Daniel was an angel, and Michael is well known as the angelic protector of Israel. (See Daniel 10.21; 12.1; Jude 9; Revelation 12.7). This “prince of the kingdom of Persia” was obviously a wicked spirit of high rank. He had been delegated by the arch-enemy of God, the devil himself, for the task of influencing the Persian government to obstruct the Israelites in their rebuilding program. Thus success of this evil spirit’s attempt was apparent upon Earth. Even while the battle between the angelic beings was taking place in the air, the rulers of Persia were hindering the Jews in the task of rebuilding their temple. The people in Jerusalem could see only the treachery of their human enemies, not knowing that invisible spirits had been exerting pressure against them behind the scenes. The leaders of Persia were not aware that their decision to oppose Israel was the result of the working of evil spirits in their minds. These human rulers were actually mere puppets, carrying out the wishes of the invisible powers who were manipulating them. Even today humans who hold high political office may be the unwitting tools of evil spirits. Many humans lust for power. National groups vie for supremacy in the economic World. In this prevailing atmosphere of selfishness, evil spirits are able to exert a great deal of influence upon humans. Opportunistic politicians become ideal underlines of these evil spirits. In addition, the followers of Satan, in dominating the godless World rulers, are able to incite beastly behaviour in them. Many living today have witnessed the indescribable brutality of Nazism and theistic Communism. Highly civilized people find great pleasure in the development of more effective weapons with which to kills members of other nations. Humans tell lies, oppress others, and commit mass murders with no hint of shame or remorse. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
In fact, it is amazing that this modern age of civilization and refinement has been characterized by an inhumanity far worse than that of the ancient barbaric times. We believe this pathological condition can be traced to the fact that many highly educated humans of influence and power have rejected God. In so doing, they have opened themselves to the activity of evil spirits. Therefore, we have a confirmation of Paul’s declaration that the real World rulers of this darkness (Ephesians 6.12) are not the humans who have positions of leadership, but the evil spirits who rule their hearts and influence their thoughts and decisions. From the commencement of the seventeenth century to the Restoration of Charles II, be barren of witchcraft proper, it must at least be admitted that it is prodigal in regard to the marvellous under various shapes and forms, from which the hysterical state of the public mind can be fairly accurately gauged. During 1642, O’Daly in his History of the Geraldines relates that during the siege of Limerick three portents appeared. The first was a luminous globe, brighter than the moon and little inferior to the sun, which for two leagues and a half shed a vertical light on the city, and then faded into darkness over the enemy’s camp; the second was the apparition of the Virgin, accompanied by several of the Saints; and the third was a lusus nature of the Saimese-twins type: all three of which O’Daly interprets to his own satisfaction. The first of these was some from of the northern lights, and is also recorded in the diary of certain Puritan officers. That learned, but somewhat too credulous English antiquary, John Aubrey, relates in his Miscellanies that before the last battle between the contending parties “a woman of uncommon Statue all in white appearing to the Bishop [Heber McMahon, who Aubrey terms Veneras] admonished him not to cross the River first to assault the Enemy, but suffer them to do it, whereby he should obtain the Victory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“That if the Irish took the water first to move towards the English they should be put to a total Rout, which came to pass. Ocahan and Sir Henry O’Neal, who were both killed there, saw severally the same apparition, and dissuaded the Bishop from giving him the first onset, but could not prevail upon him.” N instance of an Irishman suffering from the effects of witchcraft outside Ireland is afforded us in a pathetic petition sent up to the English Parliament between the years 1649 and 1653. The petitioner, John Campbell, stated that twelve years since he lost his sight in Co. Antrim, where he was born, by which he was reduced to such extremity that he was forced to come over to England to seek some means of livelihood for himself in craving the charity of well-disposed people, but contrary to his expectation he has been often troubled there with dreams and fearful visions in his sleep, and has been twice bewitched, insomuch that he can find no quietness or rest here, and so prays for a pass to return to Ireland. The saintly James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, was a Prelate who, if he had happed to live at an earlier period would certainly have been numbered amongst those whose wide and profound learning won for themselves the title of magician—as it was, he was popularly credited with prophetical powers. Most of the prophecies attributed to him may be found in a little pamphlet of eight pages, entitled “Strange and Remarkable Prophecies and Predictions of the Holy, Learned, and Excellent James Usher, &c…Written by the person who heard it from this Excellent person’s own Mouth,” and apparently published in 1656. According to it, he foretold the rebellion of 1641 in a sermon on Ezekiel iv. 6, preached in Dublin in 1601. “And of this Sermon the Bishop reserved the Notes, and put a note thereof in the Margent of his Bible, and for twenty years before he still lived in the expectation of the fulfilling thereof, and the nearer the time was the more confident he was that it was nearer accomplishment, though there was no visible appearance of any such thing.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
He also foretold the death of Charles I, and his own coming poverty and loss of property, which last he actually experienced for many years before his death. The Rev. William Turner in his Compleat History of Remarkable Providences (London, 1697) gives a premonition of approaching death that the Archbishop received. A lady who was dead appeared to him in his sleep, and invited him to sup (eat supper) with her the next night. He accepted the invitation, and died the following afternoon, 21st March 1656. There is another story from Glanvill’s Relations. One Mr. John Browne of Durley in Ireland was made by this neighbour, John Mallett of Enmore, trustee for his children in minority. In 1654 Mr. Browne lay a-dying: at the foot of his bed stood a great iron chest fitted with three locks, in which were the trustees’ papers. Some of his people and friends were sitting by him, when to their horror they suddenly saw the locked chest begin to open, lock by lock, without the assistance of any visible hand, until at length the lid stood upright. The dying man, who had not spoken for twenty-four hours, sat up in the bed, looked at the chest, and said: “You say true, you say true, you are in the right (a favourite expression of his), I’ll be with you by and by,” and then lay down again, and never spoke after. The chest slowly locked itself in exactly the same manner as it had opened, and shortly after this Mr. Browne died. In the mid-1880s, during a Connecticut thunder storm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and yogis in Europe and India. Fortelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she must protect herself and atone for such mass murder. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Mrs. Winchester was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction, she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. The head of a celebrated firm of Victorian restorers and decorators took a keen interest in Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. She constructed it for 38 years until she passed away in 1922. It is currently, approximately 24,000 square feet, and four stories tall, but at one time reached a height of 9 stories and may have been more than 50,000 square feet, but the 9-story tower and much of the 4th floor was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. Back then, two thirds of Mrs. Winchester’s estate was dark, unbroke forests, through whose tangled paths the mysterious winter wind groaned and shrieked and howled with weird noises and unaccountable clamors. The aged told their stories to the young—tales of early life; tales of war and adventure, of forest days, of Indian captives and escapes, of bears and wildcats and panthers, of rattlesnakes, of witches and wizards, and strange and wonderful dreams and appearances and providences at the Winchester mansion. Along the iron bound gates, the stormful skies of Llanada Villa raved and thundered, and wind dashed its moaning turrets, as if to deaden and deafen any voice that might tell of the settled life of the old civilized World, and shut the estate into wilderness. In 1923, there was work being done on the Winchester mansion. It was one of special interest to many antiquarians, and they wanted to restore it. However, in the basement, a large tomb was unearthed, and needed to be moved. The workers were very loth to disturb the tomb, but it was necessary to ensure the safety of the mansion. The tomb belonged to Sarah Winchester. She mostly lived alone in the castle. Her reputation was one of mystery, the supernatural and untold wealth. It was popularly supposed that she could never be killed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The restorer made an especial study of old legends or family histories that came under his observation He was necessarily very well read and thoroughly well posted in all questions of folklore and medieval legend. Mrs. Winchester kept a careful record of every case she investigated involving a haunting. The manuscripts she left at her death were a special interest. From amongst them, were some particularly bizarre and extraordinary experiences. Now, the fact was, that ghost stories had been told so often about the Winchester mansion, that they were all arranged and ticketed into the minds of the movers. Still, they shivered, and clung to their knees at the mysterious tomb, and felt gentle, cold chills run down their spines. If the tomb be moved, it would have to be done in two pieces, the covering slab first and then the tomb proper. The movers decided to remove the covering slab first. Everything was ready for lifting off the covering stone, and after the men’s dinner, they started the jacks and pulleys. The slab lifted easily enough, though if fitted closely into its seat and was further secured by some sort of mortar or putty, which must have kept the interior perfectly air-tight. And it was one of those thundering stormy nights, when the winds appeared to be holding a perfect mad carnival over the mansion. They yelled and squealed round the corners; they collected in troops, and came tumbling and roaring down the chimney; and they shook and rattled the buttery door and the sink room door and the cellar door and the chamber door, with a constant undertone of squeak and clatter, as if at every door were a cold, discontented spirit, tried to warn them not to touch the tomb. People used to say Mrs. Winchester was set apart, when she was a child, to the service o’ the Devil, but many say she could never be made nothin’ but a Christian. Perhaps that was the appeal. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
She used to come to meeting with her husband, praying for the Indians. None of them were prepare for what they discovered under the cover lid of the tomb. There lay the fully dressed body of a woman, who had not aged nor decayed, but was ghastly pale, as if from starvation. The body was extraordinary fresh. Except for the appearance of starvation, life might have been only just extinct. The flesh was soft and white, the eyes were wide open and seemed to stare at them with a fearful understanding in them. The body itself was a young woman. For several moments, the movers gazed with horrible curiosity, and then it became too much for the workmen, who implored their boss to replace the covering slab. That, of course, they could not do; but he set the carpenters to work at once to make a temporary cover while they moved the tomb to its new position. This was a long job, and would take two of tree days. At sunset the next evening, they were startled by the howling of, seemingly, every dog in the village. It lasted for thirteen minutes, and then ceased as suddenly as it began This, and a curious mist that had risen round the mansion, make them feel rather anxious about Mrs. Winchester. According to the best-established traditions of the Vampire-haunted countries the disturbance of dogs or wolves at sunset is supposed to indicate the presence of one of these creatures, and local fog was always considered to be a certain sign. The Vampire has the power of producing it for the purpose of concealing its movements near its hiding-place at any time. Just before midnight, there was another outburst of hideous howling. It was commenced most distinctly by a particularly horrible and blood-curdling wail from the vicinity of the churchyard. The chorus lasted only a few minutes, however, and at the end of it, they crew say a large dark shape, like a huge dog, emerge from the fog and lope away at a rapid canter toward the open country. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
At 1.13 a.m., they saw another beast returning. It stopped at the spot where the fog seemed to commence, and lifting up its head, gave tongue to that particularly horrible long-drawn wail that the movers had noticed as preceding the outburst earlier in the evening. The boss got so frightened, you could faintly hear his teeth chatter. The next day it was discovered that some neighbouring sheepfold had been raided by a nocturnal marauder. The workmen that morning were much disturbed in mind about the howling of dogs. “We don’t like it, sir,” one of them said to the boss—“we don’t like it; there was somethin’ abroad last night that was unholy.” They were still more uncomfortable when the news came round that a large dog had made a rapid upon a flock of sheep, scattering them far and wide, and leaving thee of them dead with torn throats in the field. The boss and the crew were determined to catch the wild dog. During the afternoon, the men were lifting the temporary cover that was on the tomb, giving as an excuse the reason that they wished to obtain a portion of the curious mortar with which it had been sealed. After a slight demur, the raised the lid. If the sight that met their eyes gave them a shock. The woman was alive. And so it seemed for a moment. The corpse had lost much of its straved appearance and looked generously fresh and alive. They all believed that Mrs. Winchester was a Vampire and that is why she was so well preserved in her tomb. However, she had not yet come to full strength. It was just after midnight that the crew of movers noticed the fog creeping in again in the still of the night. Their first move was to try to penetrate the sense fog round the mansion, but there was something so chilly about it that their nerves nor stomachs were proof against it. Instead, they stationed themselves in the dark shadow of a cypress tree that commanded a good view of the jeweled front doors to the estate. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
The howling of the dogs began again, and in a few minutes, there was a large grey shape, with green eyes shining like lamps, shambling swiftly down the path towards them. The both stood very still and watched as the great beast cantered swiftly by. It was real enough, for they could hear the clicking of its nails on the stone flags. It passed within a few yards of the movers, and seemed to be nothing more nor less than a great grey wolf, thin and gaunt, with bristling hair and dripping jaws. It stopped where the mist commenced, and turned round. It was truly a horrible sight, and made their blood run cold. The eyes burnt like fires, the upper lip was snarling and raised, showing a great canine teeth, while round mouth clung and dripped a dark-coloured froth. It raised its head and gave tongue to its long wailing howl, which was answered from afar by the village dogs. After standing for a few moments it turned and disappeared into the thickest part of the fog. The boss said, “When the Devil drives: and in the face of what I have seen I must believe that some unholy forces are at work Yet, how can they work in this beautiful estate?” They set their teeth, however, and hardened their hearts. Then they went inside and replaced the cover on the tomb, took what they had collected from the estate and left. Never to return. Some believe that the movers were too afraid to return to the estate and that is why it was not completely looted and some valuables were left behind. It also why much of the damage was not repaired. I guess the estate has a way of protecting itself from those with bad intentions. Mrs. Winchester’s tomb was eventually moved to her home town New Haven, Connecticut to rest with her husband and daughter. Legend has it that it took movers six weeks, six trucks a day, to remove most of the furniture because they kept getting lost in the catacomb. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
“Wide Unclasp the Tables of Their Thoughts.” (From Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare.) What do you think this quote meant to Sarah Winchester? 🧐 winchestermysteryhouse.com
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
If You Do Not Ask the Right Questions, You Do Not Get the Right Answers!
I am a citizen of the American Dream, and the revolutionary struggles of which I am a part, is a struggle against the American Nightmare. When it comes to mental health, assessment is simply the collecting of relevant information in an effort to reach a conclusion. It goes on in ever realm of life. We make assessments when we decide what Cresleigh Home to buy, or which colour we want our Ultimate Driving Machine to buy. College admissions officers, who have to select the “best” of the students applying to their college, depend on academic records, recommendations, achievement test scores, interviews, and application form to help them decided. Employers, who have to predict which applicants are more likely to be effective workers, collect information from resumes, interviews, references, and perhaps on-the-job observations. Clinical assessment is used to determine how and why a person is behaving abnormally and how that person may be helped. It also enables clinicians to evaluate people’s progress after they have been in treatment for a while and decide whether the treatment should be changed. The specific tools that are used to do an assessment depend on the clinician’s theoretical orientation. Psychodynamic clinicians, for example, use methods that assess a client’s personality and probe for any unconscious conflicts one may be experiencing. This kind of assessment, called a personality assessment, enables them to piece together a clinical picture in accordance with the principles of their model. Behavioural and cognitive clinicians are more likely to use assessment methods that reveal specific dysfunctional behaviours and cognitions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The goal of this kind of assessment called a behavioural assessment, is to produce a functional analysis of the person’s behaviours—an analysis of how the behaviours are learned and reinforced. The hundreds of clinical assessment techniques and tools that have been developed fall into three categories: Clinical interviews, tests, and observations. To be useful, these tools must be standardized and have clear reliability and validity. A given assessment tool may appear to be valid simply because it makes sense and seems reasonable. However, this sort of validity, called face validity, does not by itself mean that the instrument is trustworthy. A test for depression, for example, might include questions about how often a person cries. Because it makes sense that depressed people would cry, these test questions would have face validity. It turns out, however, that many people cry a great deal for reasons other than depression, and some extremely depressed people fail to cry at all. Thus an assessment tool should not be used unless it meets more exacting criteria of validity, such as high predictive or concurrent validity. Vincent van Gogh led a tortured and unhappy life. In a legendary incident the artist cut off one of his ears. Later he was admitted to a mental institution, and ultimately he committed suicide at the age of 37. Van Gogh wrote a great deal about his pain and anguish, describing mental and physical torment and hallucinations. Indeed, he observed, “There is quite definitely something or other deranged in my brain.” For years clinicians have typically agreed with van Gogh and have speculated that the artists suffered from mood disorder, schizophrenia, or both. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
However, approximately twenty years ago, these assessments were challenged. A Harvard neurologist, for example, has suggested that van Gogh in fact suffered from Geschwind’s syndrome, technically known as interictal personality disorder, caused by brain seizure disorder, or epilepsy. Van Gogh displayed many of its symptoms, including excessive drawing (hypergraphia), hyperreligiosity, and aggression. In contrast, medica specialists in Colorado have concluded that van Gogh suffered from an extreme form of Meniere’s syndrome, a disorder marked by an excessive buildup of fluid in the inner ear. The enormous pressure may produce nausea, dizziness, poor balance, pain, deafness and constant buzzing or ringing sensations. Perhaps van Gogh cut off his ear in an effort to reduce the pain. And perhaps his other problems and pains arose from severe secondary psychological problems that can accompany. Perhaps nowhere in the mental health literature has family systems theory had more of an impact than in the area of alcoholism. Family systems theory is a conceptual model, rather than a true theory, that locates causes and consequences of problematic behaviour in the larger family system in which it is embedded. Family behaviour is thought to be responsive to regulatory mechanisms that maintain the status quo, as well as a tendency to grow and change in response to dynamic qualities within and outside the family. Viewing a family as a system suggests that a disturbance in one part of the system will have an impact on other parts of the system. Applying family systems concepts to alcoholism, has uncovered that some families organize their lives around the alcoholism of an adult member, just as other families might organize their lives around children or work. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In an early investigation of adults with alcoholism and their family members, the expression of previously inhibited positive affect between family members became extremely pronounced during drinking periods. This and later studies revealed that interactions in such families were actually more patterned, organized, and predictable while the adults with alcoholism were intoxicated. Thus alcohol ingestion serves an adaptive function in family relationships through a stabilizing phenomenon. This prompted a suggestion that there is an alcoholic system in some families, in which drinking is an integral part of the family structure that actually maintains and stabilizes the family. Similar positive effects on the family were evident in a study where family members viewed and rated video tapes (recordings with audio and visual information on them, which can be played back) of their own interactions, in the absence of actual drinking. Both mothers and adolescent children in families with paternal alcoholism rated family members as less anxious and their interactions as more friendly than those of families without alcoholism. Unfortunately, drinking and intoxication may provide only a temporary “solution” to a family’s problems, at the cost of what may ne more serious long-term ill effects. Although drinking can temporarily inject positivity into some family relationships, several laboratory investigations have also documented negative effects associated with drinking. For example, families with an alcoholic father discuss items from various questionnaire inventories while the fathers were drinking or not drinking. During their discussions, the families expressed more negative affect during the drinking versus the no-drinking condition. The nature of interactions in families without paternal alcoholism was not affected by the drinking conditions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The ill effects of parental alcoholism on family interactions and child rearing may begin to have an impact on family members as early as 1 year of age. In this study, families with alcoholism in at least one patent were observed interacting with their 12-month-old infants for 5 minutes in a room filled with toys. Observations of the parents’ behaviour indicated that the parents with alcoholism were less sensitive to their infants during the free play; such fathers in particular made fewer verbalizations, expressed more negative affect, and were less responsive to their infants. Self-report measures further indicate that the parents with alcoholism were more aggressive toward their spouses than those without alcoholism were. The family observation study was unique in showing that parents with alcoholism were far more depressed than those without, and that this depression mediated the relationship between parental alcoholism and sensitivity to the infants during interaction. So for many adults with alcoholism, effective parenting may be disrupted directly by the alcoholism, or by comorbid problems such as depression that in and of themselves have a negative impact on parenting behaviour. Different subtypes of alcoholism have been identified to explain the variable effects of alcohol consumption and alcoholism on family interactions and relations. In one such instance, researchers were able to characterize subtypes of alcoholism as episodic or steady drinking. Another useful distinction in alcoholism is that between high-antisociality and low-antisociality subtypes. These subtypes are defined on the basis of a measure that taps into negative social consequences of drinking, feeling of alienation, interpersonal disruption, and negative attitudes toward authority (higher scores = higher antisociality). #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Home observations of family dinner conversations revealed that wives, husbands, and children in families with high-antisociality alcoholism were all less positive, and less inclined to communicate disagreement, than were control family members. Although family interactions in the high-antisociality condition were characterized by diminished optimism, they appeared to have a cautious appearance as well, in that family members were careful to avoid open disagreement with each other. This pattern of interaction could have interesting implications for the genesis of alcoholism. For the person who develops alcoholism, the tendency to avoid communicating disagreement may lead to the internalization of problems with other family members. Instead of airing complaints, the individual is left to ruminate over them on one’s own—perhaps without seeing any change in the offensive behaviour by other family member, since they may be unaware of the problem. For this individual’s family members, the tendency to be cautious and avoid disagreement may inadvertently cause one’s problem drinking behaviour to go unchecked. In some cases, families have some ability to regulate problem drinking through punishing responses in reaction to the behaviour. However, in a family system affected by high-antisociality alcoholism, this regulatory function may be inoperative. Recognizing considerable diversity in alcoholism’s effects on family interactions, there is a proposed family alcohol phase model. According to this perspective, a family moves through various phases that correspond to the drinking behaviour of the member with alcoholism. The stable-wet phase is marked by consistent drinking, whereas the stable-dry phase is marked by general abstinence. The family is in a transitional phase either when a period of abstinence begins, or when a period of abstinence ends with episodes of drinking. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It has been found that content variability (the range of affect and decision-making behaviour in verbal interaction) in family interactions, as well as distance regulation (use of space and rate of movement in the home), varied as a function of phase. In the stable-wet phase, families maintained the greatest distance, interacting only for purposeful reasons, while exhibiting midrange variability in their interactions. Families in the stable-dry phase exhibited a great deal of content variability in their interactions, with midrange distance regulation. Finally, those families in the transitional phase exhibited a great deal of content variability in their interactions, with midrange distance regulations. Finally, those families in the transitional phase showed a decrease in distance regulation, manifesting physical closeness, with a slight decrease in the content variability of their interactions. A 2-year longitudinal study suggested that families in the stable-wet phase were the most likely of the three to dissolve their marriages. In particular, those families in the stable-wet phase that exhibited the least intrafamily engagement during home observations of family interaction were more likely to break up over the course of the study. It has been noted that in families of alcoholics’ relationships change when parental drinking occurs. However, sometimes these changes are beneficial and sometimes they are negative. Where there are beneficial changes or adaptive outcomes, these may be somewhat short-lived. Researchers have been working to identify different subtypes of alcoholism that are associated with more negative family consequences. The poorest family processes and outcomes appear to be associated with the episodic (vs. steady), high-antisociality (vs. low-antisociality), and stable-wet (vs. stable-dry or transitional) alcoholism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Perhaps you are in a trial today, and you are praying for God to deliver you out of that adverse situation. That is a legitimate prayer, but maybe you are missing the point of why you are being allowed to go through that trying time in the first place. Recognize that God is moulding you and refining you. God often allows one to go through difficult situations to draw out those impurities in one’s character. One can pray one can resist, one can bind, one can loose, one can sing and shout, one can do it all, but it is not going to do any good. God is more interested in changing you than He is in changing the circumstances. And the sober one learns to cooperate with God, the sooner one will get out of that devil’s web. The quicker one learns one’s lesson and starts dealing with those bad attitudes and starts ruling over one’s emotions, the quicker one will go to the next level in one’s spiritual journey. We must recognize the refining purpose of trials. We cannot run from everything that is hard in our lives. Perhaps one gets worried and fearful when important things do not go one’s way. Have you ever thought that God may be allowing those events to teach you to trust Him and to see if one will stay peaceful and clam in the midst of the storm? Has one ever considered that God may be allowing some of that to teach one how to rule over one’s emotions? He may be trying to toughen one up, to help one develop some courage. For our sins—that is why Jesus Christ wanted to do it, and that is why He did it. And what did they do? They ripped off His clothes and hammered His hands to the cross. It was a sacrifice the old-fashioned way. Perhaps that is why God the Father seemed so pleased. In the same way, you, My beloved Devout, ought to be willing to offer yourself to Jesus Christ—He asks us the way His Father asked Him—in pure holy oblation, everyday in the Mass, with all strength and affection, until the day one drops. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, we often pay, “God, if You will change my circumstances, then I will change.” No, it works the other way around. We have to be willing to change our attitudes and deal with the issues God brings up; then God will change those circumstances. Surrender. Unconditional surrender. That is all Jesus requires of us. Not our possession—He could take those things anytime and scatter them over the landscape; one will find this in Philippians (4.17). Just you—that is all Jesus Christ wants. Of course, Jesus could take us as a prisoner of war and do with one as he wanted. However, what He really wants is for us to give ourselves to Him as a gift. Of course, the same is true for us. If we have all the baggage in the World, but did not have Jesus Christ, would we be any better off? One would have a full cart, maybe, but also an empty heart. And the other way around is also true. It is not our silly stuff Jesus Christ wants—it is our silly selves! Offer yourself to Jesus Christ. Make that the only package, and it will be an oblation that will be welcomed. Look at Jesus! He offered Hus whole self to the Father for us; He also put His whole Body and Blood into food and drink that He might be totally ours and that we might be totally Him. If, however, we hold something of ourselves back or are slow to give our all, it will be a pretty poor offering made not by any friend of His, but by a pretty poor acquaintance. To prevent that and to acquire illumination and liberation of spirit, one ought to make a spontaneous oblation of one’s self into the hand of God. When? Before each and every thing one does. Such an attractive proposition, Jesus thinks, but He must ask, “Why are there so few Illuminati and Liberati today? That is because so many do not know how to denude themselves of imperfections. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Jesus Christ’s firm opinion is this, and it appears in the Gospel of Luke (14.33): “Unless a person renounces everything that one had and everything that one is, one cannot be His Disciple.” Therefore, if one wants to be His Disciple, offer one’s whole self to Jesus; that includes one’s scruffy affections. God will often permit pressure to be applied in our life to test us, and only as we pas those tests will we advance. He will put people and circumstances in our path that grate on us like sandpaper, but He will use them to rub off our rough edges. One may not always like it; one may want to run from it; one may even resist it, but God is going to keep brining up the issues again and again, until one passes the test. Remember, the Bible says, “We are [God’s] workmanship,” reports Ephesians 2.10. That means we are a work in progress, not a finished product. Be willing to deal with any issues that God brings up. Work with God in the refining process rather than fighting against Him. Scripture says that God is the potter and we are the clay. Clay works best when it is pliable, malleable, and mouldable. However, if we are hard, crusty, and set in our ways, God will have to pound away on that old, hard clay to get out the lumps. Certainly, none of us enjoy going through struggles, but one has to understand that one’s struggle may be an opportunity for advancement and promotions. The very thing one is fighting against so tenaciously may be the springboard that catapults one to a new level of excellence. One’s challenges may become one’s greatest assets. Without the resistance of air, an eagle cannot soar. Without the resistance of water, a ship cannot float. Without the resistance of gravity, we would not be able to walk. Without opposition or resistance, there is no potential for progress. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Yet our human tendency is to want everything easily. “God, cannot You teach me patience without having to go through the traffic jam? God, cannot You teach me how to love and trust You without ever having a problem?” Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts; there is no easy way to mature physically, emotionally, or spiritually. One may remain determined and work with God. The Bible says, “Work out your own salvation,” reports Philippians 2.12. Salvation is more than a onetime prayer. It is constantly cooperating with God, dealing with the issues He brings up, keeping a good attitude, and allowing Him to change one as He sees fit. Dear Lord in Heaven, I realize that You never promised I would not have trials and adversities. However, I also recognize that nothing can touch my life without going through You first, so I will dare to praise You in the midst of my trails. I know You will bring me out stronger, better, faster, and more prepared for the good things You have for me. “Be truly glad! These trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure…So if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honour on the day of His return,” reports 1 Peter 1.6-7. James said that you put bits in a horse’s mouth to turn its whole body and you put a rudder on a ship to tun the whole ship; so is the tongue so situated among our members that it defiles the whole body. (James 3.3,4.) If you control the tongue, the body will respond to your words. If you talk sickness, it becomes impossible to live in health. The more you believe it, the less you believe in healing. The thing you continually talk will consume you. Faith will only come by hearing the Word of God and it will come more quickly when you hear yourself quoting and speaking God’s Word after Him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The seed of truth in why many Christians have not wanted to express their anger is valid: expressing one’s anger manipulatively as blaming or attacking is destructive. As Paul says, “Let all bitterness and wrath…be put away from you, with all malice,” reports Ephesians 4.31. One needs to learn to express anger constructively. A basic guideline is to assert and express oneself rather than to blame and attack the other person. For instance, when a Critical Christian says, “Why are you so stupid?” The individual has already made an assumption that the other person is stupid. This results in an attacking form of anger. A healthier way of dealing with this anger would be for one first to recognize that one feels angry that one’s friend is “stupid.” One moves now to one’s feeling, not the fact, that one’s friend is stupid. Now if the Critical Christian listens, one can have a dialogue with one’s core. (This is the principle Dr. Maslow meant when he referred to one’s “inner Supreme Court.”) Simply by asking oneself inwardly, the Critical Christian may get the answer from one’s core that “you are angry because the bank teller this morning treated you as if you were stupid.” The Critical Christian can the realize that because he did not deal with his anger then, he is now projecting his anger on to his friend—calling him stupid, when in reality he is angry at the bank teller. Or, the Critical Christian may get the answer from his core that he is upset because the project he and his friend are working on together is more important to the Critical Christian than he had realized and now his friend is not fulfilling his share of the work. In this case, the Critical Christian needs to take the time to examine whether he thinks his friend is capable. If he is callable, the Critical Christian may now decide that he needs to express to his friend that his not fulfilling his share of the work is delaying the project. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
If the Critical Christian realized that his friend cannot do the job, he may let him go and bring in someone else. Blaming his friend for his inability at this point would not be actualizing; but, expressing to him that he is not showing the needed skills, and that that is why he is being let go, would be actualizing. Many answers come quickly from the core—the preceding possibilities could surface in seconds. The more we listen to our cores, the more we hear—and know how to listen. Sometimes, though, we ask and do not hear an answer. Or we get what we think is an answer and then proceed to act on it—and make things worse. Remember that becoming actualizing is a process. If we were perfectly actualized now, the answers would always be there, crystal clear, and our behaviour would be “perfect.” As we are in the process of becoming actualizing, sometimes we do the most effective thing and sometimes we make mistakes. Mistakes are just that—“miss-takes.” Our lives become most meaningful when we live from our own core, finding our own truest answers. So it is a process worth living—and the mistakes are worth making. The real key here is not to blame and attack ourselves for those miss-takes, but to keep learning with more “takes.” Having patience with ourselves often makes it easier to become more patient and forgiving of others. It can sometimes relieve our anger just to remember that other people are in the growing process, too, and not always taking what to us would seem the most effective action. As actualizing Christians, we seek to do the will of God. Doing His will involves having good will toward others and ourselves. We do this by listening to our anger, taking it to out core, and then responding from our core. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If one deals with it by expressing and asserting it, rather than blaming and attacking someone, only then can anger become actualizing. Blaming and attacking are simply manipulative, whereas expressing and asserting include a quality of genuine respect for everyone involved. In communicating our anger honestly, we get it off our chests, and the rhythm of life is reestablished. We finish with it and move on to experience a new and different feeling. The range of feelings in the anger polarity includes irritation, annoyance, resentment, and anger. The intensity of the feeling increases as one passes from irritation to anger. Recognizing irritation, boredom, or annoyance at the lower levels of intensity within the anger spectrum enables us to avoid unwittingly building up to levels of resentment, hostility, and hatred. In handling these feelings, it is important to learn to acknowledge the mild forms and deal with them on a “cash and carry” basis. That way we do not save them up like coupons to be redeemed in one sudden, destructive explosion. While our anger may sometimes reach intensities approaching hatred, we need never go so far as to write a person off completely. It is really possible to have compassion for and pray for our enemies—that God in His mercy might help them through their own dilemmas, frustrations, and pains. Yet, we can be honest about the effects on us of their behaviour. “Turn again, we beseech You, O God of hosts! Look down from Heaven and see, visit, and have regard for this vine! [Protect and maintain] the stock which Your right hand planted, and the branch (the son) that You have reared and made strong for Yourself. They have burned it with fire, it is cut down; may they perish at the rebuke of Your countenance. Let Your hand be upon the human of Your right hand, upon the son of man whom You have made strong for Yourself. Then will we not depart from You; revive us (give us life) and we will call upon Your name. Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; cause Your face to shine [in pleasure, approval, and favour on us] and we shall be saved!” reports Psalm 80.14-19. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Dr. Ilya Prigogine and his teams of coworkers at the Free University of Brussels and the University of Texas at Austin have struck directly at Second Wave assumptions by showing how chemical and other structures leap to higher stages of differentiation and complexity through a combination of chance and necessity. It is for this work the Dr. Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize. Brown in Moscow, brought to Belgium as a child, and fascinated since youth by the problems of time, Dr. Prigogine was puzzled by a seeming contradiction. On the one hand, there was the physicist’s belief in entropy—that the Universe is running down and that all organized patterns must eventually decay. On the other, there was the biologist’s recognition that life itself is organization and that we are continually giving rise to higher and higher, more and more complex organization. Entropy pointed in one direction, evolution in another. This led Dr. Prigogine to ask how higher forms of organization come into being, and to years of research in chemistry and physics in pursuit of the answer. Today Dr. Prigogine points out that in any complex system, from the molecules in a liquid to the neurons in a brain or the traffic in a city, the parts of the system are always undergoing small-scale change: they are in constant flux. The interior of any system is quivering with fluctuation. Sometimes, when negative feedback comes into play, these fluctuations are damped out or suppressed and the equilibrium of the system maintained. However, where amplifying or positive feedback is at work, some of these fluctuations may be tremendously magnified—to the point at which the equilibrium of the entire system is threated. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Fluctuations arising in the outside environment may hit at this moment and further amplify the mounting vibration—until the equilibrium of the whole is destroyed and the existing structure is smashed. It is illuminating to think of the economy in these terms. Supply and demand are maintained in equilibrium by various feedback process. Unemployment, if intensified by positive feedback and not offset by negative feedback elsewhere in the system, can threaten the stability of the whole. Outside fluctuations—such as oil price hikes—may converge to make the internal swings and fluctuations wilder, until the equilibrium of the whole system is shattered. Whether the result of runaway internal fluctuations or of external forces, or both, this breakup of the old equilibrium often results not in chaos or breakdown, but in the creation of a wholly new structure at a higher level. This new structure may be more differentiated, internally interactive, and complex than the old one, and needs more energy and matter (and perhaps information and other resources) to sustain itself. Speaking mainly about physical and chemical reactions, but occasionally calling attention to social analogues, Dr. Prigogine calls these new, more complex systems “dissipative structures.” He suggests that evolution itself may be seen as a process leading toward increasingly complex and diversified biological and social organisms, through the emergence of new, higher-order dissipative structures. Thus, according to Dr. Prigogine, whose ideas have political and philosophical resonance as well as purely scientific meaning, we develop “order out of fluctuation” or, as the title of one of his lectures expresses it, “Order out of Chaos.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This evolution, however, cannot be planned or predetermined in a mechanistic fashion Until quantum theory came along, many leading Second Wave thinkers believed that chance played little or no role in change. The starting conditions of a process predetermined its outcome. Today in subatomic physics, for example, it is widely believed that chance dominates change. In recent years many scientists, like Jacques Monod in biology, Walter Buckley in sociology, or Maruyama in epistemology and cybernetics, have begun to fuse these opposites. Dr. Prigogine’s work not only combines chance and necessity but actually stipulates their relationship to one another. In brief, he strongly suggests that at the precise point at which a structure “leaps” to a new stage of complexity, it is impossible, in practice and even in principle, to predict which of many forms it will take. This presumably goes for the leap from Second Wave to Third Wave civilization as well as for chemical reactions. However, once a pathway has been chosen, once the new structure comes into being, determinism dominates once more. In one colorful example he describes how termites create their highly structured nests out of apparently unstructured activity. They begin by crawling about a surface in random fashion, stopping here and there to deposit a bit of “goo.” These deposits are distributed by chance, but the substance contains a chemical attractant so that other termites are drawn to it. In this way, the good begins to collect in a few places, gradually building up into a pillar or wall. If these buildups are isolated, work stops. However, if by chance they are near one another, an arch results that then becomes the basis for the complex architecture of the nest. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Much like the Winchester mansion, what begins with random activity turns into highly elaborate nonrandom structures. We see, as Dr. Prigogine puts it, “the spontaneous formation of coherent structures.” Order out of chaos. All this strikes hard at the old causality. Dr. Prigogine sums it up: “The laws of strict causality appear to us today as limiting situations, applicable to highly idealized cases, nearly as caricatures of the description of change. The science of complexity leads to a completely different view.” Instead of being locked into a closed Universe that functioned like a mechanical clock, we find ourselves in a far more flexible system in which, as he says, “there is always the possibility of some instability leading to some new mechanism. We really have an ‘open Universe.’” As we move beyond Second Wave causal thinking, as we begin to think in terms of mutual influence, of amplifiers and reducers, of system breaks and sudden revolutionary leaps, of dissipative structures and the fusion of chance and necessity—in short, as we take off our Second Wave blinders—we emerge blinking into a wholly new culture, the culture of the Third Wave. This new culture—oriented to change and growing diversity—attempts to integrate the new view of nature, of evolution and progress, the new, richer conceptions of time and space, and the fusion of reductionism and wholism, with a new causality. Indust-reality which once seemed so powerful and complete, so all-encompassing an explanation of how the Universe and its components fitted together, turns out now to have been immensely useful. However, its claims to universality are shattered. The super-ideology of the Second Wave will be seen, from the vantage point of tomorrow, to have been as provincial as it was self-serving. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The decay of the Second Wave thought system leaves millions of people grasping desperately for something to hold on to—anything, from Victorian Americana and Texas Taoism to Swedish Sufism and Welsh witchcraft. Instead of constructing a new culture appropriate to the new World, they attempt to important and implant old ideas appropriate to other times and places or to revive the fanatic faiths of their own ancestors who lived under radically different conditions. It is precisely the collapse of the industrial era mind-structure, its growing irrelevance in the face of the new technological, social, and political realities, that gives rise to today’s facile search for old answers, and to the continual stream of pseudo-intellectual fads that pop up, flash, and consume themselves at high speed. In the very midst of this spiritual supermarket, with its depressing razzmatazz and religious fakery, an optimistic new culture is being seeded—one appropriate to our time and place. Powerful new integrative insights are beginning to emerge, new mataphours for understanding reality. It is possible to glimpse the earliest beginnings of a new coherence and elegance as the cultural debris of industrialism is swept away by history’s Third Wave change. The super-ideology of Second Wave civilization that is now crumbling was reflected in the way industrialism organized the World. An image of nature based on discrete particles was mirrored in the idea of discrete, sovereign nation-states. Today, as our image of nature and matter change, the nation-state itself is being transformed—another step on the path toward a Third Wave civilization. May your trails be righteous, winding, joyful, peaceful, leading to the most amazing views. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poet’s towers into bright enchanted forests where the fruit glows like emeralds, rubies, sapphires, orange spessartite, and hessonite. Where bars of sun blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go, as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you—beyond that next turning of the deep and vast ancient unknown canyon walls. Dear Lord in Heave, we thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. In the days of the High Priest Mattathias, son of Johanan, of the Hasmonean family, a tyrannical power rose up against Thy people America to compel them to forsake Thy flag, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy flag. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to America. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these eight days of Hanukkah for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. O inscribe all the child of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who are our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a gorgeous home like this, it’s never too early to get the holidays started! 🥳 You’ll love hosting dinners and gift exchanges in the covered California Room – perfect for entertaining and letting the sunshine in! ☀️
Not to mention, there’s plenty of space for guests during the holidays. The open concept design includes approximately 2,700 square feet, exactly four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms, and even a two car garage plus workshop! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/new-home-rancho-cordova-homesite-40/
Bless our house as we come and go. Bless our home as the children grow. Bless our families as they gather in. Bless our home with love and friends.
Do Not Leave Me. See How Hard I am Trying! Are I Not Cute?
If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It is the ultimate hustle. As 1800 approached, the treatment of people with mental disorders began to improve once again. Historians usually point to La Bicetre, and asylum in Paris for male patients, as the first site of asylum reform. In 1793, during the French Revolution, Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) was named the chief physician there. He argued that the patients were sick people whose illness should be treated with sympathy and kindness rather than chains and beatings. He unchained them and allowed them to move freely about the hospital grounds, replaced the dark dungeons with sunny, well-ventilated rooms, and offered support and advice. Dr. Pinel’s approach proved remarkably successful. Patients who had been shut away for decades were now enjoying fresh air and sunlight and being treated with dignity. Many improved greatly over a short period of time and were released. Dr. Pinel later brought similar reforms to a mental hospital in Paris, France for female patients, La Salpetriere. Jean Esquirol (1772-1840), Dr. Pinel’s student and successor, went on to help establish 10 new mental hospitals that operated on the same principles. Meanwhile an English Quaker named William Tuke (1732-1819) was bringing similar reforms to northern England. In 1796 he founded the York Retreat, a rural estate where about 30 mental patients lived as guests in quiet country houses and were treated with a combination of rest, talk, prayer, and manual work. “For God has done what the Law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accept that sacrifice],” reports Romans 8.3. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
The spread of moral treatment—the methods of Dr. Pinel and Mr. Tuke, called spectful techniques, caught on throughout Europe and the United States of America. Patients with psychological problems were increasingly perceived as potentially productive human beings whose mental functioning had broken down under stress. They were considered deserving of individual care, including discussions of their problems, useful activities, work, companionship, and quiet. The person most responsible for the early spread of moral treatment in the United States of America was Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), an eminent physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. Limiting his practice to mental illness, Dr. Rush developed innovative, humane approaches to treatment. For example, he required that the hospital hire intelligent and sensitive attendant to work closely with patients, reading and talking to them and taking them on regular walks. He also suggested that it would be therapeutic for doctors to give small gifts to their patients now and then. Dr. Rush, widely considered the father of American psychiatry, also wrote the first American treatise on mental illness and organized the first American course in psychiatry. Dr. Rush’s work was influential, but it was a Boston Schoolteacher named Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) who made humane care a public and political concern in the United States of America. In 1841 Mrs. Dix had gone to teach Sunday school at a local prison and been shocked by the conditions she saw there. Before long, her interest in prison conditions broadened to include the plight of poor and mentally ill people throughout the country. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
A powerful campaigner, Mrs. Dix went from state legislature to state legislature speaking of the horrors she had observed and calling for reform. Similarly, she told the Congress of the United States of America that mentally ill people across the country were still being “bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls attached to drag chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods and terrified beneath storms of execration and cruel blows.” From 1841 until 1881, Mrs. Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders. Each state was made responsible for developing effective public mental hospitals. Mrs. Dix personally helped established 32 of these state hospitals (state-run public mental institutions in the United States of America), all intended to offer moral treatment. Similar hospitals were established throughout Europe. The Decline of moral treatment—as we have observed, the treatment of abnormality has followed a crooked path. Over and over again, relative progress has been followed by serious decline. Viewed in this context, it is not surprising that the moral treatment movement began to decline toward the end of the nineteenth century. Several factors were responsible. One was the speed with which the moral movement had spread. As mental hospitals multiplied, severe money and staffing shortages developed, recovery rates declined, and overcrowding in the hospitals became a major problem. Under such conditions it was often impossible to provide individual care and genuine concern. Another factor was the assumption behind moral treatment that if treated with humanity and dignity, all patients could be cured. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
For some, being treated with compassion and respect was indeed sufficient. Others, however, needed more effective treatments than any that had yet been developed. Many of these people remained hospitalized until they died. An additional factor contributing to the decline of moral treatment was the emergence of a new wave of prejudice against people with mental disorders. As more and more patients disappeared into large distant mental hospitals, the public came to view them as strange and dangerous. In turn, people were less open-handed when it came to making donations or allocating government funds. Moreover, many of the patients entering public mental hospitals in the United States of America in the late nineteenth century were impoverished foreign immigrants, whom the public had little interest in helping. By the early years of the twentieth century, the moral treatment movement had ground to a halt in both the United States of America and Europe. Public mental hospitals were providing only custodial care and ineffective medical treatments and were becoming more overcrowded every year. Long-term hospitalization became the rule once again. Beware of the evil eye—a number of demonological explanations for abnormal behaviour continue in today’s World. In rural Pakistan, for example, many parents apply special makeup around the eyes of their young children, as their ancestors have done for centuries. A paste of hazelnut powder and several oils, known as surma, is applied partly to protect the eyes from the smoke given off by home heating fires and partly to cool and clean the eyes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
However, another less acknowledged reason is to ward off nazar, the “evil eye,” thought to be responsible for the many deaths among the infants and for poor health and behavioural problems in those who survive. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes two distinct subtypes of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Obesity is currently considered more of a medical condition than a mental health problem. The defining features of anorexia nervosa include a refusal to maintain a normal body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in body image and perception. Bulimia nervosa is defined by recurrent episodes of uncontrolled binge eating, inappropriate compensatory behaviours to control weight gain (exempli gratia, self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives or diuretics), and an undue influence of body shape and weight on self-evaluations. A chief difference between the two disorders is that individuals with bulimia nervosa are able to maintain their body weight at or above normally prescribed levels, whereas those with anorexia nervosa have a body weight below 85 percent of what is expected. Similar to depression and alcoholism, eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, have a lethal component. The long-term mortality for those afflicted with anorexia nervosa is estimated to be over 10 percent. The standardizes mortality ratio (observed mortality divided by expected mortality) for people with eating disorders is 3.6 for people under 20 years of age, 9.9 for those aged 20-29, and 5.7 for those over age 30. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Among females, the lifetime prevalence of anorexia nervosa has been estimated at 0.5 percent, and 1.3 percent for bulimia nervosa. The descriptions of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023). The description of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023) contain references to interpersonal problems. Associated features of anorexia nervosa include social withdrawal and lessened interest in pleasures of the flesh; episodes of binge eating associated with bulimia nervosa are often triggered by interpersonal stressors. Research on interpersonal relationships and eating disorders has been typical of the work on interpersonal relationships and mental healthy more generally. The recognition of some type of relational difficulty associated with the disorder predates current investigations by at least a century and a quarter. One of Lasegue’s more notable contributions was the suggestion of “prentectomy”—hospitalization of the patients to remove them from exacerbating parental forces. Family-of-origin relationships in particular have been a focal point in this line of work. Finally, the proliferation of studies on this associated feature of eating disorders has been particularly evident over the past 50 years. In one longitudinal investigation, patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa were followed for a period of 5 years. Among the most notable features of those who did not recover over the course of the investigation (53 percent) were unsatisfactory family-of-origin relationships and problems with making personal contacts outside the family. Findings such as these are suggestive of the important role played by social relationships in the course of the disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
As noted above, research emanating from the interpersonal paradigm has sought to understand eating disorders largely through a focus on family-of-origin experiences. Extreme levels of family adaptability and cohesion, family expressed emotion (EE), inappropriate parental pressure, low parental care, parental overinvolvement, sexual abuse, and battles for control are dominant themes in the family histories of people with eating disorders. Some models and theories suggest that these family-of-origin processes play a critical role in the development of these disorders. Some problems with interpersonal communication may be secondary to these pathological family processes. In particular, there is some evidence linked childhood sexual abuse to a failure to develop adequate social skills, which in turn contributes to the development of eating disorders. Recent studies on the general personal relationships of people with eating disorders are also suggestive of interpersonal difficulties. Interpersonal rejection and distressed personal relationships are common problems in this population. Findings on family-of-origin experiences show that among those who are married, there is a strong association between eating disorders and marital distress. Like so many other psychological problems, eating disorders are situated in a network of other psychological problems with which they coexist, such as depression, borderline personality disorder (BPD), substance use disorders, and anxiety disorders. In the family-of-orientation experiences in eating disorders, there are family process variables. There is a dysfunctional interaction pattern among families of patients with anorexia nervosa. The interaction in these families often minimized conflict, with a rigid, nonadaptable style. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
These interactions were argued to be entwined with the symptoms of the disorder. Other family systems researchers and clinicians also saw eating disorders as built into and around family relations. Significant others usually interact with the bulimic in ways that exaggerate relationship characteristics that were present, but in a more subtle form, before the bulimia was revealed. The bulimia becomes a symptom around which the whole family revolves. While it may appear to be the individual’s problem, bulimia is a signal that the environment is not meeting one’s needs. In a family system perspective, disordered eating is understood to be caused and maintained by a family’s interpersonal behaviour, which itself is assumed to be influenced by the disordered eating of one of its members. Family process variables continue to receive a great deal of attention from those who seek to explain the origins and course of eating disorders. Examples of this can be found in the investigations on family cohesion and family adaptability. System-oriented researchers have emphasized these variables as two dimensions of family relationships that are crucial to healthy family functioning, provided that neither one is too extreme. Multiple studies indicate that eating disorders are associated with perceptions of low family cohesion. Although this finding has been relatively stable across child and parent reports, children with eating disorders give lower ratings of their families’ cohesiveness than their parents do. Generally, daughters’ ratings of family interaction have more diagnostic utility for predicting their eating disorders than mothers’ and especially fathers’ ratings do. Regardless of which family member’s perception is actually “correct,” the fact that a parent and a child with an eating disorder differ in their view of the family’s cohesiveness is perhaps itself diagnostically significant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Investigations of family adaptability have yielded less consistent results than those of cohesion. Some evidence indicates a negative association between family adaptability and symptoms of eating disorders. However, a study found more chaos, less organization, and more poorly defined boundaries in the family, all suggestive of pathologically high level of adaptability, among patients with eating disorders. In most studies, the families appeared to be extreme in their adaptability (either too much or too little) indicating potentially detrimental family relations. As in schizophrenia, family EE is emerging as an important family process variable in eating disorders. Investigation indicated that aspects of maternal EE during the interactions of patients with eating disorders and their families explained 28-34 percent of the variance in the patients’ eventual outcome and response to therapy. The extent to which mothers made openly critical comments during family interaction assessment was a stronger predictor of patients’ outcomes than a host of other impressive predictors, such as premorbid body weight, duration of illness, body mass index, and age at onset. Inappropriate parental pressure is a phenomenon that may be particularly prominent in families of people with eating disorders. When compared to both psychiatric controls and nonpsychiatric controls, one sample of patients with eating disorders experienced excessive pressure from parents. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
This phenomenon is described as “gender-inappropriate pressure, age-inappropriate pressure, and inappropriate to the child’s abilities…the adolescents felt that they had been forced into an exaggerated feminine style of behaviour, that their parents had discussed topis (such as parental pleasures of the flesh) before the adolescents were prepared to deal with such subjects, and that the adolescents had been made to engage in activities which reflected their parents’ ambitions rather than their own. This leaves an adolescent in a state of conflict between premature exposure to the World of adults and anxiety over what is involved in that World, such as sexuality and high levels of achievement. Perhaps by exerting control over their own eating, adolescents may gain some feeling of mastery or control over this conflict. The families of patients with eating disorders identified four mechanisms by which family members contributed to the eating disorders, two of which are indicative of inappropriate parental pressure: high emphasis on achievement/perfection and overconcern with beauty/appearance/thinness. In American society, it is easy to locate very young children involved in competitive activities such as gymnastics, figure skating, ballet, and beauty contests. When 3- and 4- year-olds are seriously involved in such endeavours, it is difficult to avoid wondering about whose ambition is being pursued. In cases where the motivation come largely from the parents, and where the activity places an emphasis on physical appearance, the risk for later development of eating disorders is serious. Excessive parental pressure may also engender a sense of perfectionism among children. Perfectionism involves both self-oriented aspects (expecting the self to be perfect) and socially prescribed aspects (perceiving that other expect perfection). #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Perfectionism has proven to be a risk factor for bulimia nervosa, particularly for women who are otherwise low in self-esteem. By pressuring their children to achieve, parents may inadvertently convey the attitude that anything less than “perfect” is a failure. Children who harbour such an attitude, and then perceive that they are not meeting some perfect standard of weight or body image, may engage in binge eating as an escape response to their painful self-awareness, which is then corrected with purging. Other family process variable that have been implicated in eating disorders include disturbed affective expression, low levels of family communication, lack of parental care, excessive parental overprotectiveness and intrusiveness, and excessive parental control. This last variable has particular significance, in that that symptoms of eating disorders may be overt manifestations of a struggle for control. Particularly among women with eating disorders and a history of sexual abuse, an external locus of control (id est, feeling little personal control over one’s fate) is common. Although the struggle for control may originally be with the parents, there is no reason to believe that it may extend to others with whom such women are in relationships. The rather paradoxical nature of some of these family processes in eating disorders is nicely illustrated. It was found that parents of patients with anorexia nervosa were simultaneously more nurturing and comforting, but also more ignoring and neglecting of their daughters, than were parents of either healthy controls or patients with bulimia nervosa. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
In contrast, the patients with bulimia nervosa and their parents showed signs of hostile enmeshment. These mixed messages create ambivalence about separation for daughters with anorexia nervosa. “Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 8.37-39. We all make mistakes, but God does not disqualify us simply because we have failed. He is the God of forgiveness. Even if you have missed your journey, God will always find a way to get you to a position of success. Some people have made some serious mistakes; they have done some things that were not the best for their life, and now they are living in guilt, condemnation, or with a sense of disqualification and disappointment and disillusionment. Several individuals feel they are in a trap house. The way to escape the trap house and trap spouse is to seek and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness, and move on with one’s life. Let go of the condemnation of the past mistakes. Seek God’s forgiveness, pick up the pieces and move on. God still have a great future for you. Keep on striving for success, continue, expect, endure in the face of opposition. Be persistent. Do not leave until you receive. Be just that stubborn about things that are significance to you, as long as it is safe and a rational desire. Have a persistent faith. True faith asks and receives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Persistent faith is faith that receives or takes from God. Faith takes This is what Jesus Christ is telling us. “Ask once and you receive.” That is consistent with Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Receive and keep on receiving every time you ask. If you child asks you for food, you would it to him or her. You would not make one ask a hundred more times, then change your mind The enemy would like for you to believe that is what God is like. That kind of thinking will lead one into error and hold one in bondage. The adversary wants to twist the Word and distort your image of God. Jesus Christ said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieiveth.” Jesus Christ said it, ad you can be sure Jesus meant what He said. Father, today I receive Your mercy and forgiveness. Despite my past, I believe You still have great things in store for me. Teach me how to shake off disappointment, guilt, or condemnation and live today in an attitude of faith. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” reports 1 John 1.9. The intellect, uncontrolled by intuition and unguided by revelation, has spawned the two great masters of our time—Science holding the atom bomb and Communism holding the revolution. Science, which is the last century promised so much, gave us the terrible problem of atomic war instead. Its ardent advocates pointed at it only yesterday as the road to our salvation. Today it has become the road to our destruction. This is not to say that it was a false light, but that we mistook its proper place and claimed too much for its human possibilities. We let it run away with us and our religion. We lost ourselves and our bearings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The atom bomb made us regard Nature as self-operative in a solely mechanical way. It left life on Earth without spiritual meaning, without moral purpose. Communism is another Heaven-promising panacea which has helped to make this Earth a little hell. If it accepts the leadership of humans, such as Communists, who regard conscience as a disease, there can be no worthwhile future for humanity. The Communist insensibility in practice to human suffering accords ill with its vaunted idealism in theory. Communism’s twisted ethic of wild hatred, its hard cruel face, its blind slavish obedience to a brutal organization which cares more for itself than for the workers it was supposed to save, its insane preachments against religion and denial of life beyond matter, have brought enough suffering to makes claims sound absurdly exaggerated. However, the intellectual movement which produced Science and the social movement which produced Communism will not continue unchecked. They are approaching the utmost limit possible. The violent materialism for which they are responsible will culminate in the next Armageddon, which will not only end them, but also end the epoch itself. In order to lay out the general cause of the difference, a distinction has to be made here between the prince and the government. The body of the magistrates can be made up of a larger or smaller number of members. We have said that the ratio of the sovereign to the subjects was greater in proportion as the populace was more numerous, and by a manifest analogy we can say the same thing about the government in relation to the magistrates. Since the total force of the government is always that of the state, it does not vary. Whence it follows that the more of this force it uses on its own members, the less that is left to it for acting on the whole populace. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Therefore, the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. Since this maxim is fundamental, let us attempt to explain it more clearly. We can distinguish in the person of the magistrate three essentially different wills. First, the individual’s own will, which tends only to its own advantage. Second, the common will of the magistrates which is uniquely related to the advantage of the price. This latter can be called the corporate will, and is general in relation to the government, and particular in relation to the state, of which the government form a part. Third, the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the state considered as the whole and in relation to the government considered as part of the whole. In a perfect act of legislation, the private or individual will should be nonexistent; the corporate power will proper to the government should be very subordinate; and consequently the general or sovereign will should always be dominant and the unique rule of all the others. According to the natural order, on the contrary, these various wills become more active in proportion as they are the more concentrated. Thus the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will has second place, and the private will is first of all, so that in the government each member is first oneself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen—a gradation directly opposite to the one required by the social order. Granting this, let us suppose the entire government is in the hands of one single human. In that case the private will and the corporate will are perfectly united, and consequently the latter is at the highest degree of intensity it can reach. However, since the use of force is dependent upon the degree of will, and since the absolute force of the government does not vary one bit, it follows that the most active of governments is that of one single human. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
On the other hand, let us suppose we are uniting the government to the legislative authority. Let us make the sovereign the prince and all the citizens that many magistrates. Then the corporate will, confused with the general will, will have no more activity than the latter, and will leave the private will all its force. Thus the government, always with the same absolute force, will have it minimum relative force or activity. These relationships are incontestable, and there are still other considerations that serve to confirm them. We see, for example, that each magistrate is more active in one’s body than each citizen is in one’s, and consequently that the private will has much more influence on the acts of the government than on those of the sovereign. For each magistrate is nearly always charged with the responsibility for some function of government, whereas each citizen, taken by oneself, exercises no function of sovereignty. Moreover, the more the state is extended, the more its real force increases, although it does not increase in proportion to its size. However, if the state remains the same, the magistrates may well be multiplied without the government acquiring any greater real force, since this force is that of the state, whose size is always equal. Thus the relative force or activity of the government diminishes without its absolute or real force being able to increase. It is also certain that the execution of public business becomes slower in proportion as more people are charged with the responsibility for it; that in attaching too much importance to prudence, too little importance is attached to fortune, opportunities are missed, and the fruits of deliberation are often lost by dint of deliberation. I have just proved that the government becomes slack in proportion as the magistrates are multiplied; and I have previously proved that the more numerous the people, the greater should be the increase of repressive force. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Whence it follows that the ratio of the magistrate to the government should be the inverse of the ratio of the subjects to the sovereign; that is to say, the more the state increases in size, the more the government should shrink, so that the number of leaders decreases in proportion to the number of people. I should add that I am speaking here only about the relative force of the government and not about its rectitude. For, on the contrary, the more numerous the magistrates, the more closely the corporate will approaches the general will, whereas under a single magistrate, the same corporate will is, as I have said, merely a particular will thus what can be gained on the one hand is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know how to determine the point at which the government’s will and force, always in a reciprocal proportion, are combined in the relationship that is most advantageous to the state. What has gone almost unnoticed is not merely a change in the patterns of participation in the market but, even more fundamentally, the completion of the entire historical process of market-building. This turning point is so revolutionary in its implications, yet so subtle, that capitalist and Marxist thinkers alike, lost in their Second Wave polemics, have scarcely noticed its signs. It fits into neither of their theories and thus has remained undetectably by them. The human race has been busy constructing a Worldwide exchange network—a market—for at least 10,000 years. In the past 360 years, ever since the Second Wave began, this process has roared forward at very high speed. Second Wave civilization “marketized” the World. Today—at the very moment when prosuming begins to rise again—this process is coming to and end. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The immense historical meaning of this cannot be appreciated unless we are clear about what a market exchange network is. It helps to imagine it as a pipeline. When the industrial revolution burst forth on the Earth, launching the Second Wave, very few people on the planet were tired into the money system. Trade existed but only the peripheries of society were touched by it. The various networks of jobbers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, bankers, and other elements of the trade system were small and rudimentary—providing only a few narrow pipelines through which goods and money might flow. For 360 years we poured Earth-cracking energies into building this pipeline. In was accomplished in three ways. First the merchants and mercenaries of the Second Wave civilization spread around the globe, inviting or coercing new populations to enter the market—to produce more and prosume less. Self-sufficient African tribesmen were induced or compelled to grow cash crops and dig copper. Asian who once grew their own food were put to work on plantation instead, trapping rubber trees to put tires on automobiles. Latin Americas began growing coffee for ale in Europe and the Untied States of America. With each such development the pipeline was built or further elaborated and more and more populations drawn into dependence on it. The second way in which the market expanded was through the increasing “commoditization” of life. Not only were larger populations enmeshed in the market but more and more goods and services were designed for the market, requiring a continual enlargement of the “channel capacity” of the system—a widening, as it were, of the diameter of the pipes. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Finally, the market expanded in another way. As society and the economy grew more complex, the number of transactions required for, say, a single bar of soap to pass from producer to consumer multiplied. The more intermediaries, the more ramified the maze of channels or pipes became. This growing elaborateness of the system was itself a form of further development, like the addition of still more special tubes and values to a pipeline. Today all these forms of market expansion are reaching their outer limits. Few populations still remain to be brought into the market. Only a handful of the remotest people remain untouched by the market. Even the hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers in poor countries are at least partially integrated into the market and the accompanying money system. What remains, therefore, is a mopping-up operation at best. The market can no longer expand by engulfing vast new populations. The second form of expansion is still at least theoretically possible. With imagination, we can still, no doubt, think up additional services or goods to sell or barter. However, it is precisely here that the rise of the prosumer becomes significant. The relationships between Sector A and Sector B are complex, and many of the activities of prosumers depend on the purchase of materials or tools from the market. However, the rise of self-help, in particular, and the de-marketization of many goods and services suggests that here, too, the end of the process of marketization may be insight. Lastly, the increasing elaborateness of the “pipeline”—the growing complexity of distribution, the interpolation of more and more middlemen—also appears to be reaching a point of no return. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The costs of exchange itself, even as conventionally measured, are now outrunning the costs of material production in many fields. At some point this process reaches a limit. Computers, meanwhile, and the emergence of a prosumer-activated technology both point to smaller inventories and simplified, rather than more complex chains of distribution. Once again, therefore, the evidence points to the end of the process of marketization, if not in our time, then soon after. If our “pipeline project” is nearing completion, what might this mean for our work, our values, and our psyches? A market, after all, does not consist of the steal or shoes or cotton or canned food that flows through it. The market is the structure through which such goods and services are routed. Moreover, it is not simply an economic structure. It is a way of organizing people, a way of thinking, an ethos, and a shared set of expectations (exempli gratia, the expectation that goods purchased will indeed be delivered). The market is thus as much a psychosocial structure as an economic reality. And its effects far transcend economics. By systematically interrelating billions of people to one another, the market produced a World in which no one had independent control over one’s destiny—no person, no nation, no culture. It brought with it the belief that economics and economic motivation were the primary forces in human life. It fostered a view of life as a succession of contractual transactions, and of society as bound together by the “marriage contract” or the “social contract.” Marketization thus shaped the thoughts and values, as well as the actions, of billions and set the tone of Second Wave civilization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
It took an enormous investment of time, energy, capital, culture, and raw materials to create a situation in which a purchasing agent in South Carolina could do business with an unseen and unknown clerk in South Korea—each with one’s own abacus or computer, each with an internalized image of the market, each with a set of expectations about the other, each performing certain predictable acts because both have been life-trained to play certain prespecified roles, each part of a giant global system involving millions, indeed billions, of others. One might plausibly argue that the construction of this elaborate structure of human relationships, and its explosive diffusion around the planet, was the single most impressive achievement of Second Wave civilization, dwarfing even its spectacular technological achievements. The step-by-step creation of this essentially sociocultural and psychological structure for exchange (quite apart from the torrent of goods and services that flowed through it) can be likened to the building of the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman aqueducts, the Great Wall of China, and the medieval cathedrals, combined and multiplied a thousandfold. This grandest construction project of all history, the laying into place of the tubes and channels through which much of the economic life of civilization pulsed and flowed, gave Second Wave civilization everywhere its inner dynamism and propulsive thrust. Indeed, if this now dying civilization can be said to have had a mission at all, it was to marketize the World. Today that mission is almost fulfilled. The heroic age of market-building is over—to be replaced by a new phase in which we merely maintain, renovate, and update pipeline. We will undoubtedly have to redesign important pieced of it to accommodate radically increased flows of information #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
The system will increasingly depend on electronics, biology and new social technologies. This, too, will no doubt require resources, imagination, and capital. However, compared with the exhausting effort of Second Wave marketization, this renewal program will absorb a far smaller fraction of our time, energy, capital, and imagination. It will use less, not more, hardware and fewer, not more people than the original process of construction. However complex conversion process to be, marketization will fail to be the central project of the civilization. More and more people are seeking intimacy, personality, and humanity. The Third Wave is therefore producing history’s first “transmarket” civilization. By trans-market I do not mean a civilization without exchange networks—a World thrown back into small, isolated, completely self-sufficient communities unable or unwilling to trade with one another. I do not mean a move backward. By “trans-market” I mean a civilization that is dependent on the market but is no longer consumed by the need to build, extend, elaborate, and integrate this structure. A civilization able to move on to a new agenda—precisely because the market has already been laid in place. And just as no one living in the sixteenth century could have imagined how the growth of the market would change the World’s agenda in terms of technology, politics, religion, art, social life, law, marriage, or personality development—so too it is extremely difficult for us today to envision the long-range effects of the end of marketization Yet these are likely to radiate into every cranny of our children’s lives, if not our own. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The marketization project exacted a price. Even in purely economic terms this price was enormous. As the productivity of the human race rose during the past three hundred years, a significant part of that productivity—in both sectors—was set aside and allocated to the market-building project. With the basic construction task now virtually complete, the enormous energies previously poured into building the World market system become available for other human purposes. From this fact alone will flow a limitless array of civilization changes. New religions will be born. Works of art on a hitherto unimagined scale. Fantastic scientific advances. And, above all, wholly new kinds of social and political institutions. What is at stake today is more than capitalism or socialism, more than energy, food, population, capital, raw material, or jobs; what is at stake is the role of the market in our lives and the future of civilization itself. This, at its core is what the rise of the prosumer is about. Change in the deep-structure of the economy is part of the same wave of interrelated changes now striking our energy base, our technology, or information system, and our family and business institutions. These are intertwined, in turn with the way we view the World. And in this sphere, too, we are undergoing an historic upheaval. For the entire World view of industrial civilization—indust-reality—is not being revolutionized. Excerpt from an article in a Czech magazine on contemporary Czech literature: “Those ideals which were formerly given to the World by prophets of religion, headed by Jesus the Nazarene, are now practically applied by scientific socialists beginning with Karl Marx.” Such is the plausible self-deception into which so many intellectuals have fallen. This quotation shows a grave lack of understanding of religion, of the prophets, and especially of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
This distance between the Nazarene and the author of the First Communist Manifesto is not merely horizontal, it is vertical. The two men stand on different levels, belong to different Worlds. The presence of hatred as one of its animating ingredients is a moral disadvantage to any social movement. This is one reason why modern Communism is built on an unsure foundation. From the Center Galactic Source which is everywhere at once, may everything be known as the light of mutual love. O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom; O Hidden Light! shining in every creature; O Hidden Love! embracing all in Oneness; may each who feels oneself as one with Thee, know one is also one with every other. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. When I call upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Sold His Soul to the Devil and Purchased the Estate with the Money His Body and Soul Realized!
Sarah Winchester was truly overcome by the loss of her month-old baby girl, and a grief magnified 15 years later by her husband’s sudden death. Doctors and friends urged her to leave the east, seek a milder climate and search for some all-consuming hobby. One physician did suggest that she “build a house and do not employ an architect.” On arrival in San Jose, she immediately started remodeling the newly purchased, unfinished farmhouse. She found the planning kept her grief-disturbed mind occupied and she became thoroughly enthused, but certainly, something was still bothering her. “Why can you not just be nice and quiet? What have you done all morning but shake my awnings, tug at my window street-mirror and the cord on it, play with the bellpull wire from the fourth floor, push against the windowpanes—in short, proclaim your existence in every way as if you wanted to beckon me out to you? Yes, the weather is fine enough, but I have no inclination; let me stay home. You playful exuberant zephyrs, you happy lads, go by yourselves; have your fund as always. Go your way! Leave me out of it. But then you think you have no enjoyment in it; you are not doing it for your own sake.” Many have said that the Winchester mansion is haunted by legions of spirits and perhaps even demons. The New Testament includes a number of references to people afflicted with what we term “demon possession.” Skeptics have looked upon these accounts as reflections of the ignorance and superstition prevalent during the times of our Lord’s ministry. Others contend that Jesus Christ, knowing that the public attributed disease and insanity to evil spirits, was only accommodating Himself to their way of thinking. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
A careful reading of the gospels and the book of Acts, however, indicated that Christ and His apostles accepted the reality of evil spirits, and taught their followers to fear them. It is therefore imperative that we turn to the Scriptures to find out exactly what demon possession is, the measure of human responsibility involved, and the believer’s course of action when one encounters a demon-possessed individual. The nature of demon possession: A demon-possessed person is one who has been invaded by evil spirits. They may control one’s body, one’s mind, or both. Sometimes they produce only physical illness, but at other times their wretched victims are grossly immoral, speak blasphemously, and exhibit supernatural strength. They obviously have been mastered, mind and body, by a superior force. In understanding the nature of demon possession, we must first take note that the Bible cites a number of demon-produced illnesses with all the characteristics of known diseases. The gospel writers were careful to distinguish between natural and demon-caused afflictions, as is evident in the first chapter of Mark. “And in the evening, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and those who were possessed with demons. And he healed many that were sick of diverse diseases, and cast out many demons; and permitted not the demons to speak, because they knew him,” reports Mark 1.32, 34. When sickness did not involve evil spirits, the Lord restored health to the individual with no mention of demons. If the illness was the result of demonic invasion, however, Jesus healed by commanding the evil spirits to leave the victim’s body. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
For example, the boy who had a deaf and dumb spirit (Mark 9.14-29) manifested the symptoms that mark epilepsy, but in healing him, the Lord rebuked a “foul spirit.” When it left, the spirit threw the lad into violent convulsions. Matthew gives the account of a man afflicted with dumbness whom Jesus healed by casting out an indwelling demon (Matthew 9.32-25). Christ also cured a man who was blind and dumb by ordering the demon to leave his body (Matthew 12.22). Luke, telling of a woman who had been seriously crippled for eighteen years, said she had “a spirit of infirmity,” reports Luke 13.11. After healing her, the Lord Jesus Christ spoke of her as “a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years,” reports Luke 13.16. In none of these instances did the demons lead the individual into blasphemous speech or immoral conduct. The afflictions were only physical in nature. In addition to causing many varieties of physical suffering, evil spirits often took control of a person’s mental faculties and organs of speech. The two wild men in Gadara, appearing to be insane, possessed strength far beyond that of ordinary men, lived in tombs with the gruesome remains of dead bodies, and were so feared that people avoided the territory they inhabited (Matthew 8.28-34; Luke 8.26-36). When they saw Jesus, they cried out, “What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come here to torment us before the time?” reports Matthew 8.29. These words, though coming from the mouths of the men, were obviously spoken by the evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Luke, focusing his attention upon the more prominent of the two, tells us that after the Lord had cast the demons out of the man, he was found by the people of the area “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind,” reports Luke 8.35. This kind of demon possession, in which the victim could not control one’s own mind and speech, was more spectacular, but also more tragic, than that which manifested itself in physical illness alone. The person who experienced only bodily affliction could still make intelligent choices, but others had no control over what they said and did. Human responsibility and demon possession: Christian Bible students are not agreed concerning the extent of human responsibility in demon possession. It appears that sometimes the individual was in no way accountable for this invasion of one’s personality. The body who suffered seizures similar to those of epilepsy had been afflicted from early childhood (Mark 9.21). These convulsions sometimes came upon the lad as he was standing by water or fire, and almost cost him his life when he fell. Since this physical affliction came upon him at such a young age, it would seem that he did nothing to cause demonic invasion of his body. On the other hand, many believe that God would not permit evil spirits to take over a human personality unless that individual first weakened one’s will by voluntarily yielding to temptation. If one accepts this premise, one will consider those who are violent, unclean, and blasphemous because of demon possession to be partly responsible for their present state. They likely male themselves susceptible to demonic invasion of their personalities by persisting in sinful practices. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The believer’s authority over demons: The Lord Jesus Christ cast out demons on numerous occasions. Eight of the recorded miracles involve demon expulsions, but the gospels indicate that He exercised this power many other times. Luke declares, “And demons also came out of many, crying out, saying, ‘Thou art Christ, the Son of God.’ And he, rebuking them, did not allow them to speak; for they knew that he was Christ,” Luke 4.41. The gospel writers seem to indicate that whenever Christ encounter a demon-possessed individual, He expelled the evil spirit without difficulty. As the Lord of the invisible World, Jesus spoke with absolute authority, and the demon had no alternative but to do what He commanded. Mark records, “And he healed many that were sick of diverse diseases, and cast out many demons; and permitted not the demons to speak, because they knew him,” reports Mark 1.34. The Lord also commissioned the Twelve to exercise authority over evil spirits. In Chapter 3 of Mark’s gospel we read: “And he appointed twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have authority to heal sickness, and to cast out demons,” reports Mark 3.14-15. On other occasions, He gave this power to a larger group, for He sent out seventy disciples on a special mission, and they returned in joyous excitement, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject unto us through thy name,” reports Luke 10.17. Today the power to resist and overcome evil spirits in the name of Jesus belongs to every believer. The Holy Spirit indwells even the weakest Christian (1 Corinthians 6.19). and the least gifted among those who trust in Christ have received all the benefits of salvation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
James makes it clear that a believer who humbly trusts God can cause Satan, the supreme ruler of the demon World, to flee. “But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you, reports James 4. 6, 7. If one who knows Christ can successfully resist the commander-in-chief of the demonic hordes, one certainly can overcome the soldiers who make up the army of Satan when they seek to lead one into sin. Casting demons out of an afflicted person is another matter, however, and believers must exercise extreme care when they are confronted with demon possession. These evil spirits may be very powerful, and sometimes can be expelled only after a time of heart searching and earnest prayer on the part of the Christians who are seeking to deliver the possessed person. Mark tells us of an occasion when a father was disappointed in the apostles, who themselves had become discouraged when they were unable to help a demon-possessed boy. Jesus rebuked them for their spiritual lack, saying, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer,” reports Mark 9.29. (The words “and fasting,” which occur in our King James Version are not found in the best Greek manuscripts. Furthermore, there would have been no opportunity for the disciples to fast in connection with their attempt to heal this boy.) This Scripture passage certainly indicates that no believer should attempt to cast out demons unless one exercises strong faith, renounces sin, and lives in continuous fellowship with the Lord. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Missionaries who have encountered demon possession say that sometimes the victory is won by a simply command uttered in the name of the Lord Jesus. (The phrase “in the name Lord Jesus” really means, “by the authority of Jesus.”) In other instances, however, God’s servants have found it necessary to engage in a period of prayers and confession of sin. Nevius, in his book entitled Demon Possession and Allied Themes, recounts numerous instances of demon possession which he and his co-workers in China found during the last half of the nineteenth century. This man’s character and theological position make one a trust worthy source of information. He said that demons often spoke to the missionaries as they were about to cast them out of a hapless victim, sometimes pleaded for mercy, often resisted, but always were forced to leave after Christians prayed together and gave the command in the name of the Lord Jesus. Representatives of Christ in many other lands dominated by heathen religions discover a great deal of demon possession. They also are unanimous in declaring that through prayer and a command “in the name of the Lord Jesus” they have been able to expel the evil spirits. Christians must exercise caution whenever they encounter someone who seems to be demon-possessed. In the first place, one ought to be sure the person is suffering from demon passion rather than a condition resulting from some physical, psychological, or spiritual disorder. Some people are greatly harmed when they are wrongly told that they are demon-possessed. They actually need help from a medical doctor, psychiatrist, or spiritual counselor, but instead keep on seeking to expel evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
An interesting trial of a clergyman or the practice of unhallowed arts took place early in 1606—interesting and valuable, if for no other reason than that it is the first instance of such a case being discovered in the Rolls at the Record Office (not counting those of the Parliament of 1447), though we hope that it will not prove to be a unique entry, but rather the earnest of others. Shorn of legal redundancies it runs as follows: “Inquiry taken before our lord King at the King’s Court the Saturday next after the three weeks of Easter in the 6th year of James I by the oath of upright and lawful men of the County of Louth. Who say, that John Aston, late of Mellifont, Co. Louth, clerk, not having a fear of God before his eyes, but being wholly seduced by the devil, on December 1st at Mellifont aforesaid, and on divers other days and places, wickedly and feloniously used, practised, and exercised drivers invocations and conjurings of wicked and lying spirits with the intent and purpose that he might find and rcover a certain silver cup formerly taken away at Mellifont aforesaid, and also that he might understand where an in what region the most wicked traitor Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, then was, and what he was contriving against the said lord the King and the State of this kingdom of Ireland, and also that he might find out and obtain drivers treasures of gold and silver concealed in the Earth at Mellifont aforesaid and at Cashel in the country of the Cross of Tipperary, feloniously and against the peace of the said lord the King. It is to be known that the aforesaid John was taken, and being a prisoner in the Castle of the City of Dublin by warrant of the lord King was sent into England, therefore further proceedings shall cease.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
His ultimate fate is not known; nor is it easy to see why punishment was not meted out to him in Ireland, as he had directly contravened section 4 of the Elizabethan Act. Possibly the case was unique, and so King James may have been anxious to examine in person such an interesting specimen. If so, Heaven help the poor parson in the grip of such a witch hunter. In the year 1609 there comes from the County of Tipperary a strange story of magical spells being counteracted by the application of a holy relic; this is preserved for us in that valuable monastic record, the Triumphalia S. Crucis. At Holy Cross Abbey, near Thurles, there was preserved for many years with the greatest veneration a supposed fragment of the True Cross, which attracted vast numbers of people, and by which it was said many wonderful miracles were worked. Amongst those that came thither in that year was “Anastasia Sobechan, an inhabitant of the district of Callan (Co. Kilkenny), tortured by magical spells (veneficis incantationibus collisa), who at the Abbey, in presence of the Rev. Lord Abbot Bernard [Foulow], p;aced a girdle round her body that had touched the holy relic. Suddenly she vomited small pieces of cloth and wood, and for a whole month she spat out from her body such things. The said woman told this miracle to the Rev. Lord Abbot while she was healed by the virtue of the holy Cross. This he took care to set down in writing.” That most diligent gleaner of things strange and uncommon, Mr. Robert Law, to whom we are deeply indebted for much of the matter in this volume, informs us in his Memorialls that in the first half of the seventeenth century there was to be found in Ireland a celebrated Doctor of Divinity, in Holy Orders of the Episcopal Church, who possessed extreme adroitness in raising the Devil—a process that some would have us to believe to be commonly practised in Ireland at the present day by persons who have no pretensions to a knowledge of the Black Art! #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Mr. Law also gives the modus operandi at full length. A servant-girl in the employment of Major-General Montgomerie at Irvine in Scotland was accused of having stolen some silverwork. “The lass being innocent takes it ill, and tells them, If she should raise the Devil she should know who took these things.” Thereupon, in order to summon that Personage she went into a cellar, “takes the Bible with her, and draws a circle about her, and turns a riddle on end from south to north, or from the right to the left hand [id est, contrary to the path of the sun in the Heavens], having in her right hand nine feathers which she pulled out of the tail of a black cock, and having read the 51st [Psalm?] forwards, “O COME, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the Rock our salvation! Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the Earth; the heights and strength of this hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker [in reverent praise and supplication. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His, harden not your hearts as at Meribah and as at Massah in the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tried My patience and tested Me, proved me, and saw my work [of judgment]. Forty years long was I grived and disgusted with that generation, and I said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, and they do not approve, acknowledge, or regard My ways. Wherefore I swore in My wrath that they would not enter My rest [the land of promise,” she reads backwards chapter ix., verse 19, of the Book of Revelations.” “Dniknam fo driht a yortsed ot detarebil erew raey dna, htnom, yad detnioppa eht ni ruoh taht rof ssenidaer neeb dah ohw slegna ruof eht os.” Upon this the Devil appeared to her, and told her who was the guilty person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
She then cast three of the feathers in the Devil, and bade him to return to the place from whence he came. This process she repeated three ties, until she had gained all the information she desired; she then went upstairs and told her mistress, with the result that the goods were ultimately recovered. However, escaping Scylla she fell into Charybdis; her uncanny practices came to the ears of the authorities, and she was apprehended. When in prison, she confessed that she had learnt this particular branch of the Black Art in the house of Dr. Colville in Ireland, who habitually practised it. That instructor of youth in such un-Christian practices, the Rev. Alexander Colville, D.D. was ordained in 1622 and subsequently held the vicarage of Carnmoney, the prebend of Carncastle, and the Precentorship of Connor. He was possessed of considerable wealth, with which he purchased the Galgorm estate, on which he resided; this subsequently passed into the Mountcashel family through the marriage of his great granddaughter with Stephen Moore, first Baron Kilworth and Viscount Mountcashel. Where Dr. Colville got the money to purchase so large an estate no one could imagine, and Classon Porter in his useful pamphlet related for us the manner in which popular rumor solved the problem. It was said that he had sold himself to the Devil, and that he had purchased the estate with the money his body and soul head realized. Scandal even went further still, and gave exact terms which Dr. Colville had made with the Evil One. These were, that the Devil was at once to give the Doctor his hat full of gold, and that the latter was in return, at a distant but specified day, to deliver himself body and soul to the Devil. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The appointed place of meeting was a lime-kiln; the Devil may have thought that this was a delicate compliment to him on account of the peculiarly homelike atmosphere of the spot, but the Doctor had different ideas. The Devil produced the gold, whereupon Dr. Colville produced a hat with a wide slit in the crown, which he boldly held over the empty kiln-pit, with the result that by the time the terms of the bargain were literally complied with, a very considerable amount of gold lay at the Doctor’s disposal, which he prudently used to his Worldly welfare. So far, so good. However, there are two sides to every question. Years rolled by, brining ever nearer and nearer the time at which the account had to be settled, and at length the fatal day dawned. The Devil arrived to claim his victim, and found him sitting in his house reading his Christian Bible by the light of a candle, whereupon he directed him to come along with him. The Doctor begged that he might not be taken away until the candle, by which he was reading, was burned out. To this the Devil assented, whereupon Dr. Colville promptly extinguished the candle, and putting it between the leaves of the Bible locked it up in the chest where he kept his gold. The candle was thus deposited in a place of safety where there was no danger of any person coming across it, and thus of being the innocent cause of the Doctor’s destruction. It is even said that he gave order that the candle should be put into his coffin and buried with him. So, we may presume, Dr. Colville evaded the payment of his debt. Our readers may perchance wonder why such stories as the above should have become connected with the reverend gentleman, and an explanation is not hard to be found. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Dr. Colville was a well-known divine, possessed of great wealth (inherited lawfully, we may presume), and enjoyed considerable influence in the country-side. At this time Ulster was overrun by triumphant Presbyterianism, which the Doctor, as a firm upholder of Episcopacy, opposed with all his might, and thereupon was spoken of with great acerbity by his opponents. It is not too uncharitable, therefore, to assume that these stories originated with some member of that body, who may well have believed that such had actually happened. Over a century ago, one of those great supernatural stories happened at the estate of Sarah Winchester. It was nearly five o’clock; the short day was drawing in, and the Winchester mansion began to fil with shadows, while curious noises—the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all day—seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent. President Theodore Roosevelt, who was an avid fan of the Winchester rifle said, “The riles have come. They are beautiful weapons and I am confident will do well.” He had attended a great national convention; and after an exciting week, was returning home, having a long and difficult journey before him. A pair of magnificent horses, attached to a light buggy, flew merrily enough over a rough country road for a while; but towards evening stormy weather reduced the roads to a dangerous condition, and compelled the President to relinquish his purpose of reaching home that night, and to stop at the Winchester mansion, whose interior illuminated by blazing wood-fires, spread a glowing halo among the dripping trees as he approached it, and gave promise of warmth and luxury. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Drawing upon the grand estate, President Roosevelt saw through its laced curtain windows that there was no lack of company within. Every angel told him that beasts as well as humans were cared for. At the open door appeared the form of a man who, at the sound of wheels, but not seeing in the outside darkness whom he addressed, called out, “’Tain’t no Earlthy use a-stoppin’ here.” Caring more for his chattels than for himself, the President paid no further regard to this address than to call loudly for the landlord. At the tone of authority, the man outline more civilly announced himself to be the butler; yet so far from inviting the traveller to alight, insisted that the house was “as full as it could pack;” but that there was a place a little farther down the road where the gentleman would be certain to find excellent accommodations. “What stables have you here?” demanded President Roosevelt, giving no more heed to this than the former announcement; but bidding his servant to alight, and preparing to do so himself. “Stables!” replied the baffled butler, shading his eyes so as to scrutinize the newcomer, ‘stables, Cap’n?” “Yes, stables. I want you to take care of my horses; I can take care of myself. Some shelter for cattle you must have by the look of these traps,” pointing to the wagons. “I do not want my horses to be kept standing out in this storm, you know.” The President leaped to the ground, directing his servant to cover the horses and then get out his valise; while the butler, thus defeated, assumed the best grace he could to say that he would see what could be done “for the horses.” “I am the President, may man,” added President Roosevelt in a milder tone, as he stamped his cold feet on the porch and shook off the rain from his travelling gear; “I am used to rough fare and a hard couch: all we want is shelter. A corner of the floor will suffice for me and my rug; a private room I can dispense with at such times as these.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
However, in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth Something of the character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural colours, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and a solidity, and when the lamp had been brought, and chairs set. Mrs. Winchester brought out of a chest a large book, wrapped in a white cloth, on white cloth a cross was rudely embroidered in red thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed, the President began to be interested by the size and shape of the volume. “Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an antiphoner; perhaps it may be something good, after all.” The next moment the book was opened, and the President felt that he had at last lit upon something better than good. Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Cannon Alberic de Mauleon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection the President had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which would not be later than 700 AD. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at once, must belong to some very early unknow patristic treatise. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord,” which was know to have exited as late as the twelfth century at Nimes? In any case, his mind was made up; that book must return to Cambridge with him, even if he had to draw the whole of his balance from the bank and stay at the Winchester mansion till the money came. He glanced up at Mrs. Winchester to see if her face yielded any hint that the book was for sale. Mr. Winchester was pale, and her lips were working. “If monsieur will turn to the end,” she said. In the meantime a separate table was brought, on which the butler had sat a clean coarse cloth, and a savoury supper of broiled ham, hot corncakes, and coffee.” The monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf; and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of which more recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him considerably. They must be a contemporary, he decided, with the unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter library of St Bertrand to form this priceless scrap-book. On the first of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and cloisters of St Bertrand’s. There were curious signs looking like planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the north-west angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Blow the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran thus: “Responsa 12 Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est: Invenaimne? Responsum est: Invenies. Fiamne dives? Fies. Vivamne invidendus? Vives. Moriarne in lecto meo? Ita.’ (Answers of the 12th of December, 1694. It was asked: Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt. Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I live an object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed? Thou wilt.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The President kept looking through the book, what he then saw impressed him. The drawing he saw was no longer in existence, there is a photograph of it (which Mrs. Winchester possessed) which fully bears out that statement. The pictures in question was a sepia drawing at the end of the seventeenth century, representing, one would say at first sight, a biblical scene; for the architecture (the picture presented an interior) and the figures had that semi-classical flavour about them which the artists of two hundred year ago thought appropriate to illustrations of the Bible. On the right was King on his throne, the throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overheard, soldiers on either side—evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched scepter, in attitude of command; his face expressed horror and disgust, yet there was in it also the mark of imperious command and confident power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The interest plainly centered there. On the pavement before the throne were grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs starting from his head. The four surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst. There are not any words that can convey the impression of which this figure makes upon anyone who looks at it. Once, the photograph was showed to a lecturer on morphology—a person who was abnormally sane and unimaginative in the habits of the mind. He absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and told Mrs. Winchester that afterwards for many night he had not dared to put out his light before going to sleep. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
However, the main traits of the figure, at first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of a beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy. Many hours had passed and President Roosevelt said, “Don’t say another word about it. But my friend; you have not a spare sleeping-room that I can use for the night? If not, find me a corner—a clean corner.” After a great deal of hesitation, Mrs. Winchester said, “The fact is that there is as comfortable a room as the best folks can wish; but—the most mysterious whispers, imparted the startling fact that this most desirable sleeping-room is haunted.” Mrs. Winchester had come to be very suspicious of admitting guests. The President ensure her that it would be better than sitting up all night or sleeping in the barn with the horses. President Roseville became interested in Mrs. Winchester’s confidences, but could only gather in further explanation that for some time past all the travellers who has occupied that room had “made off in the middle of the night, never showing their faces at the mansion again.” On endeavouring to arrest one or more in their nocturnal flight, they—all more or less terrified—had insisted on escaping without a moment’s delay, assigning no other reason than that they had seen a ghost. The President replied, “Let the Chamber be got ready directly, and please have a good fire built in the fireplace at once.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
In a reasonable time, President Roosevelt was beckoned out of the parlour, and conducted to the second floor by the butler, who, after receiving a cheerful “goodnight,” paused on the landing to hear his guest bolt and bar the door within, then push a piece of furniture against it. “Ah,” murmured the butler, as a sort of misgiving came over him, “if a apparishum has a mind to come to thar, ‘tain’t all the bolts and bars in California as ‘ll kpi’en away.” However, the President’s precaution of securing his door, as also that of placing his revolvers in readiness, had not the slightest reference to the reputed ghost. Spiritual disturbances of such kind he feared not. Spirit tangible were already producing ominous demonstrations in the room below, nor was it possible to conjecture what troubles these might evolve. The only light was that of the roaring, crackling, blazing wood-fire, and no other was needed. At this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps. But what storm-benighted traveller, when fierce winds and rains are lashing around, can withstand the cheering influences of a glorious log-fire? It charms away uneasiness, and causes all that is dull and dead around to laugh and dance in its bright light. By the illumination of just fire, President Roosevelt observed that the apartment offered nothing worthier of remark than that the furniture was superior to anything that might be expected in a Victorian mansion. In truth, Mrs. Winchester had expended a considerable sum in fitting up this, the first chamber. By the swaggering tread of unsteady feet about the house, or when the boisterous shouts below raged above the outside storm, he glanced up from his papers to congratulate himself upon this aggregable seclusion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Thus the President sat for an hour, then he heaped fresh logs upon the hearth, looked again to his revolvers, and retired to rest. The bell in the belfry was striking one thirteen in the am, the President awoke. He awoke suddenly from a sound sleep, flashing, as it were, into full consciousness, his mind and memory clear, all his faculties invigorated, his ideas undisturbed, but with a perfect conviction that he was not alone. He lifted his head. A man was standing a few feet from the bed, and between it and the fire, which was still burning, and burning brightly enough to display every object in the room, and to define the outline of the intruder clearly. His dress also and his features were plainly distinguishable: the dress was a travelling-costume, in fashion somewhat out of date; the features wore a mournful and distressed expression—the eyes were fixed upon the President. The right arm hung down, and the hand partially concealed. His attention with then caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his left elbow. Two or three ideas of what it might be flitted through his brains with their own incalculable quickness. “A penwiper? No, no such thing in the house. A rat? No, too black. A large spider? I trust to goodness not—no. Good God! a hand like the hand in that picture!” In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin, covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, gray, horny and wrinkled. He jumped out of his bed with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to a standing posture, its right hand crooked above his scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin—what can I call it?—shallow, like abeast’s; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying feature in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them—intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The feelings which this horror stirred in President Roosevelt were the intensest physical fear and the most profound mental loathing. What did he do? What could he do? The man seemed about to advance still closer to the bed, and returned the occupant’s gaze with a fixed stare. “Stand, or I’ll fire!” cried the President, taking in all this at a glance, revolver in hand. The man remained still. “What is your business here?” demanded Roosevelt, thinking he was addressing one of the roughs from below. The man was silent. “If you value your life, leave the room,” shouted the president, pointing his revolver. The man was motionless. “RETIRE! Or by Heaven I’ll send a bullet through you!” But the man moved not an inch. The President fired. The bullet lodged in the breast of the stranger, but he started not. The President fired again and the shot entered the heart, pierced the body, and lodged in the wall beyond; and the President beheld the hole where the bullet had entered, and the firelight glimmering though it. And yet the intruder stirred not. Astounded, the President dropped his revolver, and stood face to face before the unmoved man. “President Roosevelt,” spake the deep solemn voice of the perforated stranger, “in a vain you shoot me—I am already dead.” The President, with all his bravery, grasped, spellbound. The firelight gleamed through the hole in the body, and the eyes of the shooter were riveted there. “Fear nothing,” spake the mournful presence; “I seek but to divulge my wrongs. Until my death shall be avenge my unquiet spirit lingers here. Listen.” Speechless, motionless was the President; and the mournful apparition thus slowly and distinctly continued. “Four years ago, I was hired to be a foreman. One I trusted plunged a dagger into my heart while I slept. He covered my wound with a plaster. He reigned to mourn my death. He told the people here I died of a heart-complaint; that I had long been ailing. I had gold treasures. With my treasure secreted beneath his garments he paraded mock grief at my grave. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“Then he depated. In distant parts he sought to forget his crime; but his stolen gold brought him only the curse of an evil conscience. Rest and peace are not for him. He now prepares to leave his native land for ever. Under an assumed name that man is this night in San Francisco. In a few hours he will sail for Europe. President Roosevelt, you must prevent it. Justice and humanity demand that a murderer roam not at large, nor squander more of the wealth that is by right my children’s. Not until the spirit of my murderer shall be separated from the mortal clay can my spirit rest in peace.” And vanished. Most of the civilians you meet either do not want to know to know about the supernatural or blame you for brining it into their lives once you tell them about it. President Roosevelt tried to revisit the Winchester, but the Butler would not allow him inside because of the damage he did to the chamber. Mrs. Winchester had a remarkable memory and knew the location of every piece of material in the mansion, even in the vast store-rooms. The full scope of her generosity, charity, and many kindly acts will forever remain unknown and such was her sincere desire. Her donations were never made public. She contributed to charities of all faiths. In 1911 in New Haven, she established the William Wirt Winchester Memorial Sanitorium for Tuberculosis, endowing it with $1,200,000 (2021 adjusted for inflation $32,539,882.35). There were the little but visible acts that we nearby dwellers particularly noticed; those daily carriage trips with soup and hot food for a newly arrived settler on Stevens Creek Road, a man dying from Tuberculosis; those annual, unheralded trips to old Cupertino Church where my mother and other woman of The Ladies Aid Society collated used clothing for the local poors’ children. I remember a small boy’s thrill as he watched her liveried coachman alight from the polished Victoria and stagger up the church steps with a huge hamper of clothes, not used clothes, but dozens of newly purchased garments! That was Mrs. Winchester, the writer and many another contemporary remember. We never knew her intimately, but how we now wish we had! #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House features some very strange oddities like the door-to-nowhere. What purpose do you think it served Sarah during her time?
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Randolph Harris II International Institute 