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Some people claim that no one cares about your success because they really want to see the journey of how you got there. However, I do not believe that is true. When you are down and struggling and stuck with a bunch of rejections, bad news, failure, and debt, do you notice that no one is around, people avoid you, and no one offers help. Yet, when you are successful and doing well, you have all of the friends in the world. More than you will ever need. In the process of living, we will face struggles, many of which will cause us to suffer and to experience pain. Many people will suffer in personal struggles, while others will suffer as they watch their loved ones in pain. To gain strength in our struggles, we must have an optimistic perspective of the principles in the plan of salvation. We must realize that we have a personal Savior whom we can trust and turn to in our times of need. We must also learn and live in the principles that the Lord has given to receive the strength needed during our struggles. In the Grand Counsil in Heaven, the decision was made to “make an earth whereon these may dwell,” reports Abraham 3.24. This earth is the place to prove ourselves worthy and to prepare to return to the presence of the Lord. He explained, “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them,” reports Abraham 3.25. #RandolphHarris 1 of 29
Before we can achieve the creative awareness, we need to overcome the manipulations in our lives, we must learn to identify, experience, and honestly express real feelings, not counterfeit emotions. Some of the manipulator’s repertoire of counterfeit emotions follow. Substituting one emotion for another. Many of us express anger when we pretend anger instead of express hurt. Thus, we hear the lady tears welling in her eyes, cry out: “You make me so mad!” She is not made at all; she is hurt. Her body does not like. Using the same counterfeit pattern, we express anger when we are really afraid. “You make me so angry when you forget to take your medicine,” a young woman screams at her ill mother. Her anger hides her fear. She is worried about her mother health. If she does not take her medicine, she might die. Feelings as a delayed reaction. Here we meet the person whose pace is so slow that he says: “I was mad at you last week.” Last week? It took him a week to find out? Not really. He knew how he felt last week, but he was afraid to express it then for fear he would be attacked in return. A favorite poly of the withdrawing and avoiding manipulator is to hide his or her real emotion at the time it is felt to avoid contact with another. The delayed reaction also provides an advantage to the manipulator: time to prepare a surprise attack. It is just another way to control rather than to make contact with another. #RandolphHarris 2 of 29
Making a virtue of not having normal feelings, or pretending you do not. Most of us know some couple who boast that they have never had a fight. Our response would have to be “Tommyrot!” Normal people who have any contact at all with each other must rub each other the wrong way at times. Of course, they have fights. They have them because they have normal feelings, as much as they would like to appear virtuously free of them. Confusing your feelings with facts. You say to someone, “You are stupid!” Your statement is not a fact at all, since you have not actually measured that person’s intelligence. If you said instead, “I feel that you are stupid,” then you would be stating a fact about your feelings, not a fact about the other individual’s intelligence. Expressing your feelings as you are poised for flight. Such a person may let true feelings slip out, but is ready to run the instant anyone reacts to them. A sign of immaturity, such timidity stunts one’s emotional growth and the development of relationships. With all his strenuous efforts toward perfection and with all his belief in perfection attained, the neurotic does not gain what he most desperately needs: self-confidence and self-respect. Even though godlike in his imagination, he still lacks the earthy self-confidence of a simple shepherd. The great positions to which he may rise, the fame he may acquire, will render him arrogant but will not bring him inner security. #RandolphHarris 3 of 29
He still feels at bottom unwanted, is easily hurt, and needs incessant confirmation of his value. He may feel strong and significant as long as he wields power and influence and is supported by praise and deference. However, all of these feelings of elation collapse easily when, in a strange environment, this support is lacking; when he incurs failure; or when he is by himself. The kingdom of haven does not come through external gestures. Let us survey what happened to self-confidence in the course of a neurotic development. Apparently, for self-confidence to grow, the child needs help from the outside. He needs warmth, feeling welcome, care, protection, an atmosphere of confidence, encouragement in his activities, constructive discipline. These factors given, he will develop “basic confidence,” to use a well-chosen term of Marie Rasey’s which includes both confidence in others and in self. Instead, a combination of injurious influences prevents a child’s healthy growth. However, there are some reasons which render it specifically difficult for him to arrive at a proper self-evaluation. A blind adoration may inflate his feeling of significance. He may feel wanted, liked, and appreciated not for what he is but merely for satisfying his parents’ needs for adoration, prestige, or power. A rigid regime of perfectionist standards may evoke in him a feeling of inferiority for not measures up to such demands. Misdemeanors or bad marks at school may be severely reprimanded, while good behavior or good marks are taken for granted. Move toward autonomy or independence may be ridiculed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 29
All these factors, in addition to a general lack of genuine warmth and interest, give him the feeling of being unloved and unworthy—or at any rate of not being worth anything unless he is something he is more. Moreover, the neurotic development, initiated by the early unfavorable constellation, weakens him at the core of his being. He becomes alienated from himself and divided. His self-idealization is an attempt to remedy the damage done by lifting himself in his mind above the crude reality of himself and others. And, as the stories of the devil’s pact, he gets all the glory in imagination and sometimes in reality. However, instead of solid self-confidence, he gets a glittering gift of most questionable value: neurotic pride. The two feel and look so much alike that an understandable confusion is created in most minds about their differences. A definition in an ole edition of Webster, for instance, says that pride is self-esteem, based either on real or imagined merits. The distinction is made between real and imagined merits, but they are both called “self-esteem,” as if this difference did not greatly matter. The confusion also develops through the fact that most patients regard self-confidence as a mysterious quality arising from nowhere but most desire to have. It is but logical then that they expect the analyst to instill it into them in some way or other. Which always reminds me of a cartoon in which a rabbit and a mouse got an injection of courage; they then grew give times their ordinary size, were bold and full of indomitable fighting spirit. #RandolphHarris 5 of 29
What the patients do not know—and are anxious indeed not to realize—is the strict cause-and-effect relation between existing personal assets and the feeling of self-confidence. This relation is not any less definite than the way in which the financial status of a person depends upon his properties, his savings, or his earning capacity. If these factors are satisfactory, a person will have a feeling or economic security. Or, to take another example, the fisherman’s confidence rests on such concrete factors as his boat being in good shape, his nets being mended, his knowledge of weather and water conditions, and his muscular strength. What are regarded as personal assets vary to some degree with the culture in which we live. For Wester civilization, they include such qualities or attributes as having autonomous convictions and acting upon them, having the self-reliance that stems from tapping our own resources, assuming responsibility for ourselves, taking a realistic appraisal of our assets, liabilities and limitations, having strength and directness of feelings, and having the capacity for establishing and cultivating good human relations. The well-functioning of these factors shows subjectively in a feeling of self-confidence. To the extent that they are impaired, self-confidence will be shaky. Healthy pride likewise is based on substantial attributes. It may be a warranted high regard for special achievements, such as feeling proud of a deed of moral courage or of a job well done. Or it may be a more comprehensive feeling of our own value, a quiet feeling of dignity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 29
Once upon a time there was a man named George, who was equally celebrated for slaying dragons and for fertilizing barren women. He wandered around the countryside as a completely free spirit—or so it seemed. Cantering through the meadows on a summer’s day, he saw columns of smoke and forks of flame shooting upward in the distance. As he approached the scene, he heard a terrible roaring, mingled with the shrill screams of a maiden in distress. “Aha!” he cried, couching his lance. “This is my third dragon and maiden in less than a week. I will slay the dragon, and no doubt my bravery will be richly rewarded.” A moment later, he cried to the dragon: “Avast, lubber!” and to the maiden: “Have no fear!” The dragon drew back and began to paw the ground in anticipation not only of a double meal, but also of what he loved best, a good fight. The maiden, whose name was Ursula, threw her arms out and cried: “My hero! I am saved.” She was delighted, not only in anticipation of being saved and watching a good fight, but also (since she was not really a maiden) at the prospect of showing gratitude to her rescuer. George and the dragon backed off from each other, preparing for the charge, whole Ursula cheered them both on. At the moment, another figure appeared on the scene, richly accoutered with a silver-mounted saddle and fat alforjas filled with gold coins. #RandolphHarris 7 of 29
“Hey boy!” cried the new arrival. George turned and said in surprise: “Father! How nice to see you!” He turned his back on the dragon, dismounted from his horse, and went to kiss his father’s foot. A lively conversation ensured, with George saying, “Yes, father. Certainly, father. Whatever you say, father.” Neither Ursula nor the dragon could hear father’s side of the conversation, but it soon became apparent that it was going to go on indefinitely. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” said Ursula, stamping her foot in disgust. “Some hero! As soon as his old man appears, he’s right over there bowing and scraping, and he has no time for poor little me.” “You said it,” said the dragon. “This is going to go on forever.” So, he turned off his flame thrower and rolled over and fell asleep. However, eventually, the old man rode off, and George was ready to return to the fray. He couched his lance again, and waited for the dragon to get up and charge and Ursula to cheer him on. Instead, Ursula said: “Jerk!” and walked away. The dragon got to his feet and said: “Crumb!” and he, too, walked away. When George saw that, he yelled: “Hey dad!” and galloped after his father. Ursula and the dragon both turned at the same moment and both shouted after him: “Too bad he’s so old, or I would take him on instead of you.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 29
When I was young, several times it happened that I was “in love” and enjoying serenity and peace. Then I noticed frictions building, and I left before they could be damaging to either of us. This seemed to me best. I did not wish to be harmful to the other or to myself. I was called “callous.” It did not seem that way to me. However, when I had been called “callous” often enough, I thought I was, and stayed—with damage to all of us, including the children, which it took years to heal, and some of it is not entirely clearly up yet. The “loose morals” and “irresponsibility” (about work, with employers) of Hawaiians, Navajos, and Hopis seem to me to make better sense, to be more human, because they are less damaging to other humans and to my humanity. That we “criticize our neighbors for what are our own faults,” could be easily misunderstood. When my neighbor chains his dog on a short leash and blows smoke in the dog’s eyes, I do not like this, but it is not something that I do or even have ever wanted to do. However, when I have “held” someone insistently so that I could tell this individual what one did not wish to hear, is that different? It is not the act itself, but what the act is doing. As a child, when my mother told a “story” to someone who had come to the door, I wished she would not do it. I was “criticizing her”—to use grown-up language. However, I did not yet know this way to think about it. I did not blame her. I wished she would not do it because it opened up a path to me that I did not wish to go, and if she had done this, I would not have known it was there. #RandolphHarris 9 of 29
I knew only honesty until something else was shown to me. It was a very strong factor in my close identification with my father that he was honest. This I liked. I felt steady. He also made it possible for me to be honest with him—when I was small. Later on, he did not. If I want to be told the truth, I must be willing to accept it. And if I wish to have love, I must be willing to receive it. Now, when I feel critical of other people, I often notice that what I am really feeling is, “Please do not do that. It is what I do not want to do, and I so easily fall into it when you are doing it.” This is certainly true of stereotyped chatter about world affairs, gossip, literature, anecdotes, and such, and people who are forever planning, who never live now. Other people’s intellect/ego calls out mine, and then I do not like me. I would like there to be an irreligious order where I could go at times, to be with others who wish to work out the same corrections in themselves, to strengthen me in making mine. However, it can also be simply and directly true that what I criticize in others may be something that I do, too. It is certainly wise to look into myself and check—and also ask others whether it seems to them that I have this fault. It may seem to me that I am only “reminding” someone else (being helpful) while to others it may seem that I am “always nagging.” Then I may understand better how someone else’s nagging (as it seems to me) appears to them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 29
Because people do not feel their inward divinity, they often deny it. In ancient and even medieval times, they were satisfied that it did exist because their simplicity, their uncultivated intellects, created no barriers to this feeling or to faith in it on the authority of tradition and their prophets. We must understand the inevitability of their present skepticism and prove the fact of the Soul as logically, as evidentially as possible. Yet to offer intellectual proof alone is not enough, although a truly excellent step forward. We must also show them how to get the experience of verification for themselves. Skepticism makes conditions which require that truth be presented in a rational form and argued out. Otherwise, the intellectual reactions to it will not be fair and just to its value. The value of metaphysical skepticism is to overcome mental inertia, to liberate us from strict and rigid doctrines, and to teach us tolerance. It frees us to search for higher truths and nobler values. They may try to escape from their doubts, perhaps by stifling them, perhaps by ignoring their very existence, perhaps by going to the guru and getting his reassurance again. This course may succeed for a time, even for a lifetime. However, it is not conducive to their true welfare. There are two ways open to a skeptic. One is to seek the actual experience of transcending intellectual proof of it. The first is a hard and long way; the second short and easy. #RandolphHarris 11 of 29
Just as the very presence of suffering starts a search for its relief, so does the very existence of doubt cause a search for truth to begin. We must begin by suspecting the data furnished by our five senses. We must learn that appearances are dubious, that they are not to be accepted without searching enquiry. Not only is he to question the dogma which orthodoxy hands him but even the doubts which skepticism offers instead of them. Those skeptics who reject the possibility of attaining truth are already stating something as truth and thereby refuting their own theory. Because there is no room in philosophic study for naivete or gullibility, those who suffer from these mental disabilities should first get cured. Where belief comes too easily, error may follow too quickly. To doubt everything and stop at that point, to assent to nothing but criticize every presentation, to meet all affirmative statements with the skeptic’s questions—this is the product of sharp intellect, blunt speech, and negative feeling. If a man is too suspicious of being deceived, he may err when truth is presented to him, and so miss the change of acquiring it. Balance is needed here as elsewhere. To bring one’s natural skepticism into a fine balance with the intellectual sympathy, these subjects demand is not an easy task, but he must try to do it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 29
We can accept nothing on trust as far as the quest of truth is concerned, although we can and needs must accept most things on trust, so far as the practical purposes of life are concerned. No arguments are capable of moving the absolute skeptic, for he does not look into its truth but only into tis weaker places. If you do not know whether God exists, do not fall into the error of denying that he does exist. It is an error because it is something which we do not know and to make such a positive statement has no justification. In the West, physical bulkiness, with large, prominent musculature, has long been a masculine ideal, and such robustness has been praised in popular magazines and valued by women in their men. Heavy musculature has been cultivated by violent exercise, vigorous calisthenics, and comparable feats of endurance. One function of such heaviness (not obesity, just heavy musculature) is to decrease sensitivity to pain and to enhance endurance. In the East, perhaps because patterns of nourishment have been different, slenderness is more the rule. The disciplines of Hatha yoga have been employed in India for several thousand years as a way to bring the body under more control, so that meditation and contemplation will not be obstructed by an insensitive, or a tense, uncomfortable body. Hatha yoga is one part of the Hindu religion and is one of the means of achieving the experience of “union of inner and outer,” or dissolving the ego and unifying awareness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 29
Since prehistoric times, controlled fire has been a source of comfort and warmth, but uncontrolled fire has brought death and destruction. Some of the most important lessons have been learned in the aftermath of tragic fires that resulted in devastating loss of life. The success of the Sacramento Fire Department depends on their ability to think critically and creatively and to communicate their intention and decision to others. The ability to communicate clearly—to get their intent and ideas across so that others understand their message and act on it—is one of the primary qualities of leadership. While you are a college student, your channels of communication include presentations and term papers. When you become a Sacramento Fire Fighter, Paramedic, or EMT, these channels will expand to include training meetings, briefings, and operation orders. The means to effective communication within the Sacramento Fire Department has required team members to develop their speaking and writing skills so that they are able to deliver any message to any audience effectively. They also keep in mind that communication also includes receiving messages from others through reading and listening. #RandolphHarris 14 of 29
Early in your career with the Sacramento Fire Department, much of your communication is direct. For example, coaching team members often requires communication that is one-on-one, immediate, and spoken. Later in your career with the Sacramento Fire Department, as your leadership responsibilities increase, you will inform subordinates and leaders through written orders, procedures, memos, and e-mail. This form of communication is indirect—it goes through other people or processes, is time-delayed, and written. As a member of the Sacramento Fire Department, your ability to communicate—to write, speak, and listen—affects your ability to inform, tech, coach, and motivate those around you. The good news is that you can develop these essential skills. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of these skills. In Sacramento Fire Department operations, as elsewhere, the inability to write and speak can have tremendous costs. History is replete with examples of misunderstood messages. For example, many Civil War scholars believe that victory at Gettysburg may have depended on how a subordinate interpreted Confederate GEN Robet E. Lee’s use of the word “practicable.” [On the first day of the battle of Gettysburg, Pa, Confederate attacks drove Union troops through the town to the top of Cemetery Hill, a half mile south.] The battle so far appeared to be another great Confederate victory. #RandolphHarris 15 of 29
However, General Lee could see that so long as the enemy held the high ground south of town, the battle was not over. He knew that the rest of the [Union] Army of the Potomac must be hurrying toward Gettysburg; his best chance to clinch the victory was to seize those hills and ridges before they arrived. So, General Lee gave Ewell discretionary orders to attack Cemetery Hill “if practicable.” Had Jackson still lived, he undoubtedly would have found it practicable. However, Edwell was not Jackson. Thinking the enemy position too strong, he did not attack—thereby creating one of the controversial “ifs” of Gettysburg that have echoed down the years. The Gettysburg vignette illustrates the parts of the communication process. General Lee was the sender. He sent the message: Attack Cemetery Hill. Ewell, the receiver, read the words, “if practicable,” decided that Union artillery on the hill made an attack not “practicable,” and did not attack. The words, “if practicable” made the message vague. (Who and what should define “if practicable”?) Obstacles to communication, such as this lack of clarity—along with other considerations, such as the demands of time, the ease of understanding the sender’s speech, the ability to read the sender’s handwriting, or the distractions in the area—make up what communications theorists call noise. Noise works against the clarity of communication. #RandolphHarris 16 of 29
Looking again at the vignette above, you find that General Lee never checked with Ewell to see if he understood General Lee’s intent: “What do you intend to do?” Ewell never checked to see if he understood General Lee’s intent: “What do you mean by ‘if practicable’?” The communication process included no feedback. Assume for a moment, as some historians do, that General Lee intended that Ewell attack Cemetery Hill immediately and decisively. (Those historians argue that General Lee was used to issuing such vague orders to the aggressive Stonewall Jackson, who had died a few months earlier.) Throwing Billy Yank off the hilltop might well have allowed General Lee to command the battlefield, perhaps even forcing the advancing Union armies to withdraw. That might have led to General Lee’s domination of southern Pennsylvania, choking off Washington from the North and ending the war on the Confederacy’s terms. If that were General Lee’s intent, the message failed. Ewell did not attack. The Union held onto the high ground and won the battle two days later—the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. Effective communication occurs when the receiver’s perceived idea matches the sender’s intended idea. The receiver understands what the sender means, not just what the sender says or writes. And that is why people like to hire and work with people they know and trust. Those who have the required skills for the job. #RandolphHarris 17 of 29
“I wouldn’t do any other job, I enjoy this one too much. I’ve spent my life preparing for it, and it would be hard for me to find employment doing something else. I don’t think I’d want to, I wouldn’t be as happy. I’m with the Sacramento Fire Department for the long haul. I’m still single, and I’m still young. I’m hoping to advance here as far as I can go, but I still have this desire to work in a very heavy urban area, such as New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia. It’s just something that I need personally to do. Here in Sacramento, I’ve only been a captain a year, and I’m looking forward to getting my own company. I would like to have a shifting on the new rescue company that’s going to be put into service here in the near future. I like what I’m doing now because I work with different people all the time and ride different territories. It’s good experience. I’ve been fortunate enough to work in a battalion where most of the people are like me, interested from a very early age, want to do their best, very gung-ho. Professional, very professional. When the company looks bad, everybody looks bad, and people’s perception of us will go down. I try to be as professional as I can, because that’s the way it should be. We should be good.” When intelligence is applied so thoroughly as to yield a whole view and not merely a partial view of existence, when it is applied so persistently as to yield a steady insight into things rather than a sporadic one, when it is applied so detachedly as to be without regard to personal preconceptions, and when it is applied so calmly that feelings and passions cannot alter its direction, then and only then, does a man become truly reasonable and capable of intellectually ascertaining truth. #RandolphHarris 18 of 29
If you see a fire truck stopped in the street without the lights on, be very careful. Sometimes there is an emergency situation and you should not pass the fire truck. It might be a good idea to safely turn around and go another way. Sometimes fire fighters are getting back into their vehicle and if you pass the apparatus, you may collide with a firefighter who is on foot. Also, be sure to look at their signals, sometimes emergency vehicles are in motions, albeit, slowly, and drivers try to pass them, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. Also, if you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. #RandolphHarris 19 of 29
As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. Islam is the fastest growing religion in America, out pacing Christianity. While American was once a nation of generations, there are still many indigenous people lift and others who have been here for generations. To protect America and make sure it will remain a land of the free and home of the brave, we must be patriotic and put Americans first. Democrats and Atheists would like nothing more than red blooded American warriors to become slaves in their own country. They would like nothing more than to close American schools so children can be forced into child labor again. It is not time to roll back, nor will it ever be to remove protection for American citizens. If you have not noticed, crime is spreading to communities that had never seen crime before. Homelessness is on the rise. #RandolphHarris 20 of 29
In fact, Governor Gavin Newsom of Democratic controlled California, brags about being the world’s “fifth largest economy,” but it also facing a $12 billion deficit, looking to cut $747 million for state worker’s pay, pushing to keep medical insurance for illegal immigrants, and has the largest homeless population in the nation. If they are all officially counted, California has approximately 4 million homeless people. The highest home prices in the nation, the highest taxes and the most unfriendly business regulations known to man. The average home price in California is nearly $1,000,000.00 USD, while the average salary is $96,036.00, meaning that most Californians cannot even afford to buy a home. California is having an affordability crisis. In 2025, many people in California saw their bills increase by an estimated $500 a month. This includes things like food, automobile insurance, homeowner’s insurance, electricity. In fact, more than 3 million people in California are facing household hardship, and more than 300,000 of them are facing eviction soon. This comes at a time when California is having a shortage of affordable housing. This is caused by nearly half a century’s old laws that discourage homes sales and encourage higher rents. Meanwhile, China, where we are sending all of our jobs and money has more than 50 ghost cities. Ghost cities are regions will housing has been overdeveloped to the point that these places are uninhabited. Because California is so hostile towards people and businesses, more than 360 companies have fled the state since 2020. Businesses like Chevron, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard are amongst the names on that list. #RandolphHarris 21 of 29
Also, more than 500,000 people a year are abandoning California because it is too expensive to live in, crime is out of control, and they are losing their jobs due to companies relocating. More than 100 companies have announced layoffs in California for 2025. Intel is cutting 15,000 jobs, PayPal 2,500 and Meta has terminated 4,000 employees. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. Accordingly, California has more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Having the Southern American boarder open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risks to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security relevant alerts, such as end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure is the 2025 Palisades fires because Southern California ran out of water, when they are located next to an ocean and they could have simply created desalinating plants to help with the water shortage. The water is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. #RandolphHarris 22 of 29
The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 23 of 29
In an effort to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars. American made cars used to be the envy of the World and because American car brands are offering a wide range of options, from family SUVs to electric vehicles and luxury sedans, we are now seeing a resurging interest. American made cars are equal or superior to those made overseas. The Chevrolet Trax, for instance, is a well-designed, fuel efficient, and safe SUV. And as you know, there is no better car on Earth than 1950-1970s American Muscle Car. As an incentive to buy American made cars, President Trump plans to made interest on loans for American cars tax deductible. Americans surely make superior products, but we are buying things from other nations. American food imports have risen by 300 percent since 1999. American farmland declined by nearly 20 million acres between 2017 and 2022. As of 2022, there were 880.1 million acres of land dedicated to farming, compared to 900.1 million in 2017. The data shows there are now little more than 1.9 million farms in the country. Americans and American corporations spent $136 billion on food and beverages from other countries. It is a national security risk to lose American Farms and farmers. If there is a war, and most of our meat, produce, poultry, dairy, and fruit is coming from foreign counties, we stand the risk of starving. With war breaking out all over the World, in these uncertain times, it is very important to bring American farms back. Las Vegas is running out of buildable land and is expected to reach its maximum number of homes in 2032. So, home prices are expected to rise dramatically. #RandolphHarris 24 of 29
Additionally, with inflation rates at an all-time high, American being in an unofficial recession for about a decade, all insurance in California is becoming unaffordable. State Farm has received an approval for an emergency rate increase, which was approved by the California Insurance Commissioner, to stabilize the market and protect policyholders. Starting 1 June 2025, homeowners will see an average of 17 percent increase, rental dwellings will see an increase of 38 percent, and Condo owners will see a rate increase of 15 percents. These rate increases are due to the distressed caused by the recent wildfires, which accumulated over $7 billion in claims. Furthermore, in 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1107, also known as the Protection California Drivers Act, into law which increases the minimum auto lability limits for bodily injury to $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident. Senate Bill 1107 also increased the minimum liability limits for property damage to $15,000 per accident and the DMV deposit for uninsured drivers to $75,000. The bill went into effect on January 1, 2025. This means that drivers with existing policies with lower limits will renew at the new minimum limits on or after January 1, 2025, and insurance premiums could increase by as much as 54 percent. America is in a state of crisis right now because of mismanagement by democrats. With the median household income in Sacramento County being $88,724 and a 4-bedroom 2.5-bathroom Cresleigh home costing $798,059, how are people able to afford homes? Because an $800,000 home with a one percent downpayment of $8,000, 30-year fixed loan at 4.176 percent interest comes with a monthly mortgage payment of $4,241. #RandolphHarris 25 of 29
The maximum percentage of your gross income that you should earmark for a monthly mortgage payment is calculated at 28 percent, and no more than 36 percent of your gross income to all debts, including mortgage. If you take 28 percent of the median household income per home in Sacramento County, homeowners can only afford a mortgage of $2,070.23 per month. And if you take 36 percent of their gross income to all debts, including mortgage, they should be devoting no more than $2,661.72 a month to these debts. Mortgage lenders must be using some kind of sorcery to get buyers into these expensive homes. To afford one of these homes using traditional guidelines, a household would need to gross $11,280.24 per month or $135,362.88 per year, but the median household in Sacramento County is grossing $7,393.67 or $88,724.00 and that typically means two to four people in the home are working and contributing to the mortgage. Prices in Sacramento County are actually rivaling the Bay Area, and the Bay Aera is so expensive because they have more higher paying jobs and is a tourist destination. And with the State of California being in a budget deficit of $12 billion, Governor Gavin Newsom Granted 700,000 illegal immigrants free health care at a cost to taxpayers of $3 billion annually, while cutting vital programs for veterans, school children, the disabled and the homeless, and is proposing to fast-track his plan to build a $20 billion water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by eliminating environmental reviews and limit avenues for legal challenges. Gavin Newsom only cares about the environment when his policies allow him to raise taxes and restrict freedoms. Gavin Newsom has been a total tyrant with no regard for taxpayers and does not have a mind for business and should be impeached as soon as possible. #RandolphHarris 26 of 29
Meanwhile, with President Trump, we are seeing crime rates sharply decrease, and he recently secured $10 trillion in investments. If elected president for an unprecedented third term, to make housing more affordable and to offset the cost of homeowner’s insurance and auto insurance, President Trump plans to abolish property taxes. Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and have the ability to support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrant to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in American, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. #RandolphHarris 27 of 29
When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in American which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt.When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the nation debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by send more money overseas. Buying American made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards in regard to pollution. American companies have to be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Moreover, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. It is inborn in the human minds to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. #RandolphHarris 28 of 29
As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again,” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. We must think before we can understand the soul’s existence; we must understand before we can realize it. The earliest beginnings of thought, as apart from instinct, when it was itself still but a lurking tendency, belong far back in primeval time. The human intellect as we find it today, so rich and developed an instrument for the consciousness of the ego, did not arrived at this fulness without a series of graduated stages. We have had plenty of scientific thinking, business thinking, and political thinking long enough, but we have had very little inspired thinking. That is the world’s need. The intellect is cradled in selfishness but runs the evolutionary track into reason where it will one day finish at the winning-post of selflessness. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 29 of 29
Experience an unforgettable journey back to the time of kings and queens with this entry ticket for The Winchester Mansion in Santa Clara, California which was the residence of Sarah L. Winchester. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After tour, there will be time enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
We wish to express our gratitude to our families, ancestors, spirits, and friends and to our many associates and clients, whose lives touched our lives and whose ideas helped us to grow. We would also like to thank our employees and care takers for putting the technical ideas of this estate into conversational style, and we are, of course, extremely thank to all of our patrons for helping to keep the legacy of the Winchester Family alive. The Winchester Mystery House is full of surprises. What was your favorite, “Oooh!” moment during your visit at the mansion? (And for those of you who still have to check it off your bucket list… we will hopefully see you soon.) https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company. Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs – not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/
BMW continues to dominate the luxury car space. With its top ranking in Consumer Reports’ Auto Brand Report Card and consistent market share growth, BMW has demonstrated its ability to produce high-performing, reliable vehicles that meet consumer demands.
BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/
Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers
Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html
If You Loved Me, You Would…
Justice, reason, truth once shone in the Jacobin heaven, performing the function of fixed stars, which can, at least, serve as guidelines. The reason for this was the fact that German nineteenth-century thinkers, particularly Hegel, wanted to continue the work of the French Revolution while suppressing the causes of its failure. Hegel thought that he discerned the seeds of the Terror contained in the abstract principles of the Jacobins. According to him, absolute and abstract freedom must inevitably lead to terrorism; the rule of abstract law is identical with the rule of oppression. For example, Hegel remarks that the period between the time of Augustus and Alexander Severus (A.D. 235) is the period of the greatest legal proficiency but also the period of the most ruthless tyranny. To avoid this contradiction, it was therefore necessary to wish to construct a concrete society, invigorated by a principle that was not formal and in which freedom could be reconciled with necessity. German philosophy therefore finished by substituting, for the universal but abstract reason of Saint-Just and Rousseau, a less artificial but more ambiguous idea: concrete universal reason. Up to this point, reason had soared above the phenomena which were related to it. Now reason is, henceforth, incorporated in the stream of historical events, which it explains while deriving its substance from them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
It can certainly be said that Hegel rationalized to the point of being irrational. However, at the same time, he gave reason an unreasonable shock by endowing it with a lack of moderation, the results of which are now before our eyes. Into the fixed ideas of this period, German thought suddenly introduced an irresistible urge to movement. Truth, reason, and justice were abruptly incarnated in the progress of the world. However, if there was to be one, by committing them to perpetual acceleration, German ideology confused their existence with their impulse and fixed the conclusion of this existence at the final stage of this historical future. These values have ceased to be guides in order to become goals. As for the means of attaining these goals, specifically life and history, no preexistent value can point the way. On the contrary, a large part of Hegelian demonstration is devoted to proving that moral conscience, by being so banal as to obey justice and truth, as though these values existed independently of the world, jeopardizes, precisely for this reason, the advent of these values. The rule of action has thus become action itself—which must be performed in darkness while awaiting the final illumination. Reason, annexed by this form of romanticism, is nothing more than an inflexible passion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
The ends have remained the same, only ambition has increased; thought has become dynamic, reason has embraced the future and aspired to conquest. Action is no more than a calculation based on results, not on principles. Consequently, it confounds itself with perpetual movement. In the same way, all the disciplines that characterized eighteenth-century thought as rigid and addicted to classification were abandoned in the nineteenth century. Just as Dr. Darwin replaced Linnaeus, the philosophers who supported the doctrine of an incessant dialectic replaced the harmonious and strict constructors of reason. From this moment dates the idea (hostile to every concept of ancient thought, which, on the contrary, reappeared to a certain extent in the mind of revolutionary France) that man has not been endowed with a definitive human nature, that he is not a finished creation but an experiment, of which he can be partly the creator. With Napolean and the Napoleonic philosopher Hegal, the period of efficacy begins. Before Napolean, men had discovered space and the universe; with Napolean, they discovered time and the future in terms of this world; and by this discovery the spirit of rebellion is going to be profoundly transformed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
In any case, it is strange to find Hegel’s philosophy at this new stage in the development of the spirit of rebellion. Actually, in one sense, his work exudes an absolute horror of dissidence: he wanted to be the very essence of reconciliation. However, this is only one aspect of a system which, by its very method, is the most ambiguous in all philosophic literature. To the extent that, for him, what is real is rational, he justifies every ideological encroachment upon reality. What has been called Hegel’s panlogism is a justification of the condition of fact. However, his philosophy also exalts destruction for its own sake. Everything is reconciled, of course, in the dialectic, and one extreme cannot be stated without the other arising; there exists in Hegel, as in all great thinkers, the material for contradicting Hegel. Philosophers, however, are rarely read with the head alone, but often with the heart and all its passions, which can accept no kind of reconciliation. Nevertheless, the revolutionaries of the twenty-first century have borrowed from Hegel the weapons with which they definitively destroyed the formal principles of virtue. All that they have preserved is the vision of a history without any kind of transcendence, dedicated to perpetual strife and to the struggle of wills bent on seizing power. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
In its critical aspect, the revolutionary movement of our times is primarily a violent denunciation of the formal hypocrisy that presides over bourgeois society. The partially justified pretension of modern Communism, like the more frivolous claims of Fascism, is to denounce the mystification that undermines the principles and virtues of the bourgeois type of democracy. Divine transcendence, up to 1789, served to justify the arbitrary actions of the kind. After the French Revolution, the transcendence of formal principles of reason or justice serves to justify a rule that is neither just nor reasonable. This transcendence is therefore a mask that must be torn off. God is dead, but Stirner predicted, the morality of principles in which the memory of God is still preserved must also be killed. Therefore, atheist not only want you to believe God is dead, they want to remove Him from the government, and banish Him from your memory so society can totally decay and the world become unlivable due to harsh climate changes, sharply rising housing and food prices, and social chaos. The hatred of formal virtue—degraded witness to divinity and false witness in the service of injustice—has remained one of the principal themes in history today. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
Nothing is pure: that is the cry which convulses our period. Impurity, the equivalent of history, is going to become the rule, and the abandoned earth will be delivered to naked force, which will decide whether or not man is divine. Thus, lies and violence are adopted in the same spirit in which a religion is adopted and on the same heartrending impulse. Still, the feelings of callousness and ruthlessness can also be exaggerated. The taboos on feelings of tenderness, sympathy, and confidence can be just as great in some neurotics as the taboos on hostility and vindictiveness are in others. These people feel that they should be able to live without any close personal relations, so they believe that they do not need them. They should not enjoy anything; so, they believe they do not care. Their emotional life then is less distorted than plainly impoverished. Naturally, the emotional pictures engendered by the inner commanders are not always streamlined. The orders issued can be contradictory. You should be so sympathetic that you shun no sacrifices whatever, but you should also be so coldblooded that you can carry out any act of vengeance. As a result, a person is convinced at times that he is callous and at others that he is extremely kindhearted. In other people so many feelings and wishes are checked that a general emotional deadness ensues. #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
There may be, for instance, a taboo on wanting anything for themselves, which puts the lid on all alive wishes and create pervasive inhibitions about doing anything for themselves. Then, partly because of these inhibitions, they develop just as pervasive claims on the grounds of which they feel entitled to have everything in life presented on a silver platter. And then, the resentment over the frustration of such claims may be choked off by a dictate that they should put up with life. We are less aware of the harm done our feelings by the pervasive should than of other damage inflicted by them. Yet, it is actually the heaviest price we pay for trying to mold ourselves into perfection. Feelings are the most alive part of ourselves; if they are put under a dictatorial regime, a profound uncertainty is created in our essential being which must affect adversely our relations to everything inside and outside ourselves. We can hardly overrate the intensity of the impact of the inner dictates. The more the drive to actualize his idealized self prevails in a person, the more the shoulds become the sole motor force moving him, driving him, whipping him into action. When a patient who is still far removed from his real self discovers some of the cramping effects of his should, he can nevertheless be entirely unable to consider relinquishing then because without them—so he feels—he would or could not do anything. He may sometimes express this concern in terms of the belief that one cannot make other people do the “right” thing except by force, which is an externalized expression of his inner experience. The shoulds then acquire a subjective value for the patient which he can dispense only when he experiences the existence of other spontaneous forces in himself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
When we realize the enormous coercive power of the shoulds, we must raise one question. What does it do to a person when he recognizes that he cannot measure up to his inner dictates? To anticipate the answer briefly: then he starts to hate and despise himself. We cannot, in fact, understand the full impact of the should unless we see the extent to which they are interwoven with self-hate. It is the threat of a punitive self-hate that lurks behind them, that truly makes them a regime of terror. When all five feelings, anger, fear, hurt, joy, love, are expressed honestly, the individual is more real, more actualized. However, manipulators, aware of the power of feelings, will try to use them to control others. By using anger, a manipulator attempts to intimidate and create fear in others. All of us have met manipulators who by their shouting and screaming keep others from communicating with them. Some manipulators provoke anger in others in order to play the role of the weak victim of the brutal attack. The weak victim can then easily shame the others into compliance. “Gotcha!” A manipulator also uses fear in tandem with hate. He sits at the console and gives ‘em what he thinks they need; a little fear today, a little hate tomorrow. Some days he gives them both. And they stand together and shiver and think he is the greatest guy in the world and [they] love him. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
The “silent treatment” is a tried-and-true favorite of manipulators. The manipulator looks as if he or she has been auditioning for a sinus medication commercial. Note the squint of the eyes, the furrow of the brow, the downward curve of the lips—the pained expression that can only come from eight undrained sinus cavities. However, no matter how many entreaties the victim makes to find out what is wrong, the response is always, “I am okay. What makes you think something is wrong? Do not mine me, I will just go to bed early.” Manipulators do not like to express joy they might feel, and they sure do not want anyone else to either. They are the joy killers: “You are sure lucky you got an A on your term paper, but I have heard that Professor Winchester grades easy on papers and hard on the final exam.” Love, perhaps the least likely to be thought is as a manipulative weapon, is paradoxically one of the most common manipulative techniques. How often has the phrase, “If you loved me, you would…” been used to win a point, gain a goal, or exert control over a partner? A clever manipulator can use love to dominate a relationship or, conversely, to bring one to an end by saying, for example, “If you really loved me, you would let me go.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 27
However, we do not overcome our doubts by suppressing them, we do not meet our misgivings by denying them, and we do not refute falsehood by shirking questions which happen to be inconvenient. I am too much aware of the diversity of intellectual truths to regard them as other than merely relative. Therefore, I prefer a light skepticism. Is it not ironic that the only creature in the universe which doubts God’s existence is also the only one—up to that grade—which contains the proof of that existence? The countless germs, worms, insects, reptiles, and mammals below man lack the rational capacity to question, while the higher types of individuated beings above him know too much to utter such a doubt. Reason begins by being skeptical of everything else. It ends by becoming skeptical about itself. It is unwise skeptically to let these truths vanish from our sight, as though we had not even heard of them, for then the grove of old suffering will have to be cut anew. These secret doubts, these inward vacillations, must be faced and overcome. To doubt is not to deny. If we were to end in it, we must begin with doubt in order to clear the ground, but we would be in a sorry state. No doctrine is so sacred that it is not to be questioned. Man cannot escape from his duty to doubt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
Each generation must reflect in its own way on the conundrums of existence and be vigorously alive to its own problems, which are not wholly the problems of other epochs, and must face them in a fresh living manner. However, when uneasy doubt is pushed to the extreme of settled cynicism, when needful caution is elongated to paralyzing cowardice, when skepticism is grown so big that it cannot let the divine get past it into his heart, then the man falls into a bog of materialism and becomes its pitiable victim. Doubt has a legitimate use in the would of thought. Without it, we should be at the mercy of every charlatan, every fool, every exploiter, and every false doctrine. We need not be ashamed therefore to avail ourselves of it at times. Doubt tears the veil off deceit and exposes humbug hidden beneath benevolence. We need not be afraid to question everything, to doubt everything, even the words we use and our own very selves. If we take nothing for granted, we have nothing but falsehood, illusion, and self-deception to lose. How shall we begin this study? The best way is the only way for us. We must begin by doubting everything; thus, alone may we hope to end by knowing everything. Although we have to begin our metaphysical life by doubting accepted values, we cannot end there; we cannot love forever in an atmosphere of suspended judgment. If tentative, even without reaching absolute certainty, the process of active living demands that sooner or later, we commit ourselves to a definite standpoint. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
In adulthood, many of us are live deviant school boys. Perhaps without realizing it, we continue to play the same childish game and risk far more than a bruised shoulder in the process. Unwillingness to accept the responsibility for and consequences of one’s actions is an all-too-common condition in today’s world. Who has not hurt of the drunken driver who uses his host for allowing him to get drunk, or of the accident victim who claims damages from the physician who tries to help him? Perpetrators of the most heinous crimes often plead guilty by reason of insanity or claim that they are victims of society’s ills. The reckless blame alcohol. Christians blame the devil. Abusers and adulterers blame the broken homes of their childhood. And, if they do not want to, there are enough who agree with them to ensure that no one need feel terribly guilty for long. The habit of shifting the burden of guilt onto someone else, while perhaps understandable in a secular setting, has more serious consequences in a spiritual one. There too it has an ancient but not honorable tradition. When his sacrifice was not accepted, Cain blamed God. “I was worth,” he said, “for his offering thou didst accept and not mine,” reports Moses 5.38. Even the very elite have sometimes succumbed to the temptation to blame others for their disobedience or their failure to receive blessings. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
When faced with the consequences of transgression, rather than looking to ourselves as the source of the discomfort which always accompanies sin, many of us tend to blame someone else. Rather than getting out of a vicious and senseless circle, we fault our neighbor for our pain and try to pass it on. However, to repent, we must leave the circle. The first step in the repentance process has always been simply to recognize that we have done wrong. If we are so hedged about by pride, rationalization, machismo, or a misdirected sense of self-esteem as to prevent us from every admitting that we are part of the problem, we are in trouble. We then may not even know of our need to repent. We will have no idea whether the Lord is pleased with us or not and may become past feeling. “We are swift to do iniquity but slow to remember the Lord your God. Ye have seen an angel, and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words; wherefore, he has spoken unto you like unto the voice of thunder, which did cause the earth to shake as if it were divided,” reports 1 Nephi 17.45. To fail to repent is to perish. “And except ye repent, ye shall perish; yea, even your lands shall be taken from you, and ye shall be destroyed from off the face of the earth,” reports Helaman 7.28. To excuse misconduct by blaming others is presumptuous at best and is fatally flawed with regard to spiritual things, for “we believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression,” reports Articles of Faith 1.2. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
People typically eat without consideration of what they need for optimum nourishment or for full consciousness of body and world. Excessive eating is a sedative, insuring that persons will not feel the impact of their life styles upon them. Fasting has played a crucial role in every religious tradition and every discipline that aims at enlightenment. Avoiding food for periods ranging from a day to a month or longer will result not only in some loss of weight, but also in heightened somatic perception and keener senses of touch, taste, and smell. In my own experiences at fasting, I have gone no longer than six days without food; I completed a partial fast for forty days, however, limiting my nourishment to vegetable and fruit juices. The fasting was not unlike a trip to another culture—it gave me a changed perspective upon the situation within which I had been enmeshed. Many persons in recent years have begun to experiment with vegetarian diets, with organically grown foods, with foods that have not been preserved with chemicals. Such intelligent concern with one’s nourishment is quite compatible with healthy personality, and it certainly contributes to the experience of re-embodiment. Just as we need nourishing food to survive physically, we need the gospel of Jesus Christ to survive spiritually. Our souls are nourished by whatever speaks of Christ and lead us to Him, whether it is written in the scriptures, spoken by latter-day prophets, or taught by other humble servants of God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
Paramedics, EMTs, and firefighters with the Sacramento Fire Depart also save our souls and lives by providing medical care, and identifying and remediating hazards and teaching us how to rectify those threats. To bring their vision to life and accomplish their personal mission, members of the Sacramento Fire Department set definite goals. One way they think about these goals is by thinking of their vision and mission as their life strategy and their goals as tactics that will help then work within and toward that strategy. The Sacramento Fire Department thinks of goals as dots they connect to create the picture described by their vision and mission. They are the short-term milestones that keep them on track and help them achieve their greater mission. However, how do they write effective goals? One technique is that they write SMART goals. SMART goals have built-in features that help the Sacramento Fire Department attain them. Here is an example of how they write SMART goals. If your vision, is to be an excellent firefighter and your mission in support of that is to attain excellent performance reviews, how exactly do you get there? A SMART goal that implements those vision and mission statements might be to eat a balanced diet, get proper rest, go to the gym, show up for work early, and display discipline and determination. Notice how the goals seta specific measurable benchmark and an attainable deadline. If you find it helpful, you can write goals for your job, class, home or whatever you want to exceed in. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
The last step in this process is to prioritize your SMART goals. Put them in order of importance, time due, or time required to complete, overall attainability, cost, geographic location, outside help, required, or another organizing scheme. You should not randomly list your goals; otherwise, you will waste time and effort. Whether you do the small stuff first and the challenging ones later—or vice versa—is up to you, but organize your time and effort. Leadership is not magnetic personality—that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not “making friends and influencing people”—that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. Crafting a personal vision statement, mission statement, and SMART goals is a key step in how members of the Sacramento Fire Department develop their identity as adults and members of a team. Vision, mission, and goals help bring out the best qualities of personality in the Sacramento Fire Departments and makes them desirable role models for their peers and the public. You never know the limit of your potential until you reach it—and then step further. A clear vision, a specific mission, and definite goals are important tools that will help you reach and then exceed your expectations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
“It can’t be the money that keeps me in, I’ll tell you that. It can’t be the money. It’s just that, even after I’ve been off a week, I still have that desire to get back and get in there. I like the action. I enjoy getting out there and helping people. A lot of guys don’t like to say that. It’s not the macho image. But there are so many out there who need some help, it’s unreal. Especially in the areas where I’ve been working. I never worked in high-class areas, but in my areas it gives you a good feeling to help people who need it. I can go home and say I love life. Very seldom am I down, very seldom. I think that the department has helped. I would say to a young man coming in that it’s going to be a rough road ahead, it’s not going to be easy by a long shot. You have to put a lot into it. Of course, the outlook is different now than when I came in, and much to the better. It’s tough for old-timers to give up the old macho way with smoke, for instance. That’s dumb. I did it, but it’s dumb. Now the new guys are oriented to wearing a mask at all times, and this is a great safety feature. With a young guy coming in now, it’s a good job, and you get out of it what you put into it. There are guys that come in strictly for security, and there are guys that come in for the love of the job. There’s a twenty-two-year-old fellow coming in now, and that’s all he wants—the fire department. Luckily he got up on the list, and he was sweating taking the physical, and he was sweating taking the interview. He finally got appointed, and he’s elated. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
“He called me up at work. ‘Hey, are there any openings at your house? I want to come and work with you.’ I said, ‘You don’t want to come here.’ He said, ‘Yes, I do.’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t make a better choice if you want to get experience and work with a bunch of guys that are like a top-notch baseball team. It’s a team that’s always there. If someone has a problem, somebody can look out for you.’ I love it. I feel good about my life. I enjoy the department, and with working on the side on my other jobs, I have enough money to enjoy the other things in life, vacations, taking trips. If I had stayed with the post office, I would have been a different person. In the Sacramento Fire Department, when I’ve been off for a week or two, either sick or on a double, I think, ‘Boy, I hope I can get back to work soon. I’m ready to go back.’ A week off, fine, that’s enough. I’m ready to get back.” Because truth has been bound up with such absurdities, often for self-interested motives, it behooves us to accept no message without due investigation and deep caution. Because people do not feel their inward divinity, they often deny it. In ancient and even medieval times, they were satisfied that it did exist because their simplicity, their uncultivated intellects, created no barriers to this feeling or to faith in it on the authority of tradition and their prophets. We must understand the inevitability of their present skepticism and prove the fact of the Soul as logically, as evidentially as possible. Yet to offer intellectual proof alone is not enough, although a truly excellent step forward. We must also show them how to get the experience of verification for themselves. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
If you see a fire truck stopped in the street without the lights on, be very careful. Sometimes there is an emergency situation and you should not pass the fire truck. It might be a good idea to safely turn around and go another way. Sometimes fire fighters are getting back into their vehicle and if you pass the apparatus, you may collide with a firefighter who is on foot. Also, be sure to look at their signals, sometimes emergency vehicles are in motions, albeit, slowly, and drivers try to pass them, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. Also, if you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. Islam is the fastest growing religion in America, out pacing Christianity. While American was once a nation of generations, there are still many indigenous people lift and others who have been here for generations. To protect America and make sure it will remain a land of the free and home of the brave, we must be patriotic and put Americans first. Democrats and Atheists would like nothing more than red blooded American warriors to become slaves in their own country. They would like nothing more than to close American schools so children can be forced into child labor again. It is not time to roll back, nor will it ever be to remove protection for American citizens. If you have not noticed, crime is spreading to communities that had never seen crime before. Homelessness is on the rise. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
In fact, Democratic controlled California brags about being the world’s “fifth largest economy,” but it also has the largest homeless population in the nation. If they are all officially counted, California has approximately 4 million homeless people. The highest home prices in the nation, the highest taxes and the most unfriendly business regulations known to man. The average home price in California is nearly $1,000,000.00 USD, while the average salary is $96,036.00, meaning that most Californians cannot even afford to buy a home. California is having an affordability crisis. In 2025, many people in California saw their bills increase by an estimated $500 a month. This includes things like food, automobile insurance, homeowner’s insurance, electricity. In fact, more than 3 million people in California are facing household hardship, and more than 300,000 of them are facing eviction soon. This comes at a time when California is having a shortage of affordable housing. This is caused by nearly half a century’s old laws that discourage homes sales and encourage higher rents. Meanwhile, China, where we are sending all of our jobs and money has more than 50 ghost cities. Ghost cities are regions will housing has been overdeveloped to the point that these places are uninhabited. Because California is so hostile towards people and businesses, more than 360 companies have fled the state since 2020. Businesses like Chevron, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard are amongst the names on that list. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
Also, more than 500,000 people a year are abandoning California because it is too expensive to live in, crime is out of control, and they are losing their jobs due to companies relocating. More than 100 companies have announced layoffs in California for 2025. Intel is cutting 15,000 jobs, PayPal 2,500 and Meta has terminated 4,000 employees. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. Accordingly, California has more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Having the Southern American boarder open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risks to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security relevant alerts, such as end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure is the 2025 Palisades fires because Southern California ran out of water, when they are located next to an ocean and they could have simply created desalinating plants to help with the water shortage. The water is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
In an effort to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars. American made cars used to be the envy of the World and because American car brands are offering a wide range of options, from family SUVs to electric vehicles and luxury sedans, we are now seeing a resurging interest. American made cars are equal or superior to those made overseas. The Chevrolet Trax, for instance, is a well-designed, fuel efficient, and safe SUV. And as you know, there is no better car on Earth than 1950-1970s American Muscle Car. As an incentive to buy American made cars, President Trump plans to made interest on loans for American cars tax deductible. Americans surely make superior products, but we are buying things from other nations. American food imports have risen by 300 percent since 1999. American farmland declined by nearly 20 million acres between 2017 and 2022. As of 2022, there were 880.1 million acres of land dedicated to farming, compared to 900.1 million in 2017. The data shows there are now little more than 1.9 million farms in the country. Americans and American corporations spent $136 billion on food and beverages from other countries. It is a national security risk to lose American Farms and farmers. If there is a war, and most of our meat, produce, poultry, dairy, and fruit is coming from foreign counties, we stand the risk of starving. With war breaking out all over the World, in these uncertain times, it is very important to bring American farms back. Las Vegas is running out of buildable land and is expected to reach its maximum number of homes in 2032. So, home prices are expected to rise dramatically. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
Additionally, State Farm did ask the California Department of Insurance if they could raise homeowner insurance rates by 22 percent, but this request was denied. However, in 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1107, also known as the Protection California Drivers Act, into law which increases the minimum auto lability limits for bodily injury to $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident. Senate Bill 1107 also increased the minimum liability limits for property damage to $15,000 per accident and the DMV deposit for uninsured drivers to $75,000. The bill went into effect on January 1, 2025. This means that drivers with existing policies with lower limits will renew at the new minimum limits on or after January 1, 2025, and insurance premiums could increase by as much as 54 percent. America is in a state of crisis right now because of mismanagement by democrats. If elected for an unprecedented third term, to make housing more affordable and to offset the cost of homeowner’s insurance and auto insurance, President Trump plans to abolish property taxes. Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and have the ability to support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27
Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrant to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in American, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in American which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the nation debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by send more money overseas. Buying American made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards in regard to pollution. American companies have to be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Moreover, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. It is inborn in the human minds to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again,” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
The Winchester Mystery House
Experience an unforgettable journey back to the time of kings and queens with this entry ticket for The Winchester Mansion in Santa Clara, California which was the residence of Sarah L. Winchester. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After tour, there will be time enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
We wish to express our gratitude to our families and friends and to our many associates and clients, whose lives touched our lives and whose ideas helped us to grow. We would also like to thank our employees and care takers for putting the technical ideas of this estate into conversational style, and we are, of course, extremely thank to all of our patrons for helping to keep the legacy of the Winchester Family alive. The Winchester Mystery House is full of surprises. What was your favorite, “Oooh!” moment during your visit at the mansion? (And for those of you who still have to check it off your bucket list… we will hopefully see you soon.) https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company. Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs – not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/
BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/
Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers
Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html
Those Who Do Good Can Sleep Only in the Tomb
When people receive the necessities of life as a result of their trade-union movement, and the people are also properly educated about the movement, they will be greatly strengthened and the entire nation’s powers of resistance in the struggle for existence will be increased. The trade-unions are indispensable since they are the building blocks for the future council of economics and they will be the equivalent of our current parliamentary groups. It is always important that the most clearly capable and honest person is found to act as an official, administrator, or leader for the movement. When people are granted a high degree of personal liberty in their work, experience has shown that when a man is given extensive free, his capacity for work increases greatly, much more than it does by coercion from above. Lack of freedom prevents the natural process of elimination from occurring therefore the system that allows the most capable, able, and diligent people to be promoted is blocked. Do not let us confuse, even for a moment, the imposing figure of Saint-Just with the sad spectacle of Marat—Rousseau’s monkey, as Michelet rightly calls him. However, the drama of Saint-Just lies in having at moments joined force, for superior and much deeper reasons, with Marat. Factions join with factions, and marginalized people with marginalized people, and in the end, it is not even sure that the scaffold functions in the service of the will at all. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
However, at least Saint-Just will affirm, to the bitter end, that it functions in the service of the general will, since it functions in the service of virtue. “A revolution such as ours is not a trial, but a clapt of thunder for the wicked.” Good strikes like a thunderbolt, innocence is a flash of lightning—a flash of lightning that brings justice. Even the pleasure-seekers—in fact, they above all—are counterrevolutionaries. Saint-Just, who said that the idea of happiness was new to Europe (actually it was mainly new for Saint-Just, for whom history stopped at Brutus), remarks that some people have an “appealing idea of what happiness is and confuse it with pleasure.” They, too, must be dealt with firmly. Finally, it is no longer a question of majority and minority. Paradise, lost and always coveted by universal innocence, disappears into this distance; on the unhappy earth, racked with the cries of civil and national wars, Saint-Just decrees, against his nature and against his principles, that when the whole country suffer, then all are guilty. The series of reports on the factions abroad, the law of the 22 Prairial, the speech of April 15, 1794, on the necessity of the police, mark the stages of this conversation. The man who with such nobility held that it was infamous to lay down one’s arms while there remained, somewhere in the world, one master and one slave, is the same man who had to agree to suspend the Constitution of 1793, and to adopt arbitrary rule. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
In the speech that he made to defend Robespierre; he rejects fame and posterity and only refers himself to an abstract providence. At the same time, he recognized that virtue, of which he made a religion, has no other reward but history and the present, and that it must, at all costs, lay the foundations of its own reign. He did not like power which he called “cruel and wicked” and which, he said, “advanced toward repression, without any guiding principle.” However, the guiding principle was virtue and was derived from the people. When the people failed, the guiding principle become obscured and oppression increased. Therefore, it was the people who were guilty and not power, which must remain, in principle, innocent. Such an extreme and outrageous contradiction could only be resolved by an even more extreme logic and by the final acceptance of principles in silence and in death. Saint-Just at least remained equal to this demand, and in this way was at least to find his greatness and that independent life in time and space of which he spoke with such emotion. For a long time he had, in fact, had a presentiment that the demands he made implied a total and unreserved sacrifice on his part and had said himself that those who make revolutions in this world—“those who do good”—can sleep only in the tomb. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Convinced that his principles, in order to triumph, must culminate in the virtue and happiness of his people, aware, perhaps, that he was asking the impossible, he cut off his own retreat in advance by decaling that he would stab himself in public on the day when he despaired of the people. Nevertheless, he despairs, since he has doubts about the Terror. “The revolution is frozen, every principle has been attenuated; all that remains are red caps worn by intriguers. The exercise of terror has blunted crime as strong drink blunts the palate.” Even virtue “unites with crime in times of anarchy.” He said that all crime sprang from tyranny, which was the greatest crime of all, and yet, confronted with the unflagging obstinacy of crime, the Revolution itself resorted to tyranny and became criminal. Thus, crime cannot be obliterated, nor can factions, not the despicable desire for enjoyment; the people must be despaired of and subjugated. However, neither is it possible to govern innocently. Thus, evil must be either suffered or served, principles must be declared wrong or the people and mankind must be recognized as guilty. Then, Saint-Just averts his mysterious and handsome face: “It would be leaving very little to leave a life which ne must be either the accomplice or the silent witness of evil.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Brutus, who must kill himself if he does not kill others, begins by killing others. However, the others are too many; they cannot all be killed. In that case, he must die and demonstrate, yet again, that rebellion, when it gets out of hand, swings from the annihilation of others to the destruction of the self. This task, at any rate, is easy; once again it suffices to follow logic to the bitter end. In his speech in defense of Robespierre, shortly before his death, Saint-Just reaffirms the guiding principle of his actions, which is the very dame principle that leads to his condemnation: “I belong to no faction, I shall fight against them all.” He accepted then, and in advance, the decision of the general will—in other words, of the Assembly. He agreed to go to his death for love of principle and despite all the realities of the situation, since the opinion of the Assembly could only really be swayed by the eloquence and fanaticism of a faction, which is to die for them. In the stifling heat of Paris in July, Saint-Just, ostensibly rejecting reality and the world, confesses that he stakes his life on the decision of principles. When this has been said, he seems to have a fleeting perception of another truth, and ends with a restrained denunciation of his colleagues Billaud-Varennes and Collot d’Herbois. “I want then to justify themselves and I want us to become wiser.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The style and the guillotine are here suspended for a moment. However, virtue, in that it has too much pride, is not wisdom. The guillotine is going to fall again on that head as cold and beautiful as morality itself. From the moment that the Assembly condemns him until the moment when he stretches his neck to the knife, Saint-Just keeps silent. This long silence reigned around thrones and that is why he wanted to speak so much and so well. However, in the end, contemptuous of the tyranny and the enigma of a people who do not conform to pure reason, he resorts to silence himself. His principles do not allow him to accept things as they are; and, things not being what they should be, his principles are therefore fixed, silent, and alone. To abandon oneself to principles is really to die—and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love. Saint-Just dies, and, with him, all hope of a new religion. “All the stones are cut to build the structure of freedom,” said Saint-Just; “you can build a palace or a tomb of the same stones.” The very principles of The Social Contract presided at the erection of the tomb that Napoleon Bonaparte came to seal. Rousseau, who was not wanting in common sense, understood very well that the society envisioned by The Social Contract was suitable only for gods. His successors took him at his word and tried to establish the divinity of man. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The red flag—a symbol of martial law and therefore of the executive under the ancient regime—became the revolutionary symbol on August 10, 1792. A significant transfer about which Jaures comments as follows: “It is we the people who are the law. But it is not so easy as that to become God. Even the ancient gods did not die at the first blow, and the revolutions of the nineteenth century were intended to achieve the final liquidation of the principle of divinity. Paris rose to place the Kind under the rule of the people and to prevent him from restoring an authority of principle. The corpse which the rebels of 1830 dragged through the rooms of the Tuileries and installed on the throne in order to pay it derisory homage has no other significance. The king could still be, at that period, a respected minister, but his authority is now derived from the nation, and his guiding principle is the Charter. He is no longer Majesty. Now that the ancien regime had definitely disappeared in France, the new regime must again, after 1848, reaffirm itself, and the history of the nineteenth century up to 1914 is the history of the restoration of popular sovereignties against ancien regime monarchies; in other words, the history of the principle of nations. This principle finally triumphs in 1919, which witnesses the disappearance of all absolutist monarchies in Europe. (With the exception of the Spanish monarchy. But the German Empire collapsed, of which Wilhelm II said that it was “the proof that we Hohenzollerns derive our crown from heaven alone and that it is to heaven alone that we must give an accounting.”) #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Everywhere, the sovereignty of the nation is substituted, in law and in fact, for the sovereign king. Only then can the consequences of the principles of 1789 be seen. We survivors are the first to be able to judge them clearly. The Jacobins reinforced the eternal moral principles to the extent to which they suppressed the things which up to then, had supported these principles. As preachers of a gospel, they wanted to base fraternity on the abstract law of the Romans. They substituted the law for divine commandments on the supposition that it must be recognized by all because it was the expression of the general will. The law found its justification in natural virtue and then proceeded to justify natural virtue. However, immediately a single faction manifest itself, this reasoning collapses and we perceive that virtue has need of justification in order not to be abstract. In the same way, the bourgeois jurists of the eighteenth century, by burying under the weight of their principles the just and vital conquests of their people, prepared the way for the two contemporary forms of nihilism: individual nihilism and State nihilism. Law can reign, in fact, in so far as it is the law of universal reason. (Hegel saw clearly that the philosophy of enlightenment wanted to deliver man from the irrational. Reason reunites mankind while the irrational destroys unity.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, it never is the law of universal reason, and it loses its justification if man is not naturally good. A day comes when ideology conflicts with psychology. Then there is no more legitimate power. Thus, the law evolves to the point of becoming confused with the legislator and with a new form of arbitrariness. Where turn then? The law has gone completely off its course; and, losing its precision, it becomes more and more inaccurate, to the point of making everything a crime. The law still reigns supreme, but it no longer has any fixed limits. Saint-Just had foreseen that this form of tyranny might be exercised in the name of a silent people. “Ingenious crime will be exalted into a kind of religion and criminals will be the sacred hierarchy.” However, this is inevitable. If major principles have no foundation, if the law expresses nothing but a provisional inclination, it is only made in order to be broken or to be imposed. Sade or dictatorship, individual terrorism or State terrorism, both justified by the same absence of justification, are, from the moment that rebellion cuts itself off from its roots and abstains from any concrete morality, one of the alternatives of the twenty-first century. The revolutionary movement that was born in 1789 could not, however, stop there. God, for the Jacobins, is not completely dead, any more than He was dead for the romantics. They still preserve the Supreme Being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Reason, in a certain way, is still a mediator. It implies a pre-existent order. However, God is at least dematerialized and reduced to the theoretical existence of a moral principle. The bourgeoisie succeeded in reigning during the entire nineteenth century only by referring itself to abstract principles. Less worthy than Saint-Just, it simply made use of this frame of reference as an alibi, while employing, on all occasion, the opposite values. By its essential corruption and disheartening hypocrisy, it helped to discredit, for good and all, the principles it proclaimed. Its culpability in this regard is infinite. From the moment that eternal principles are put in doubt simultaneously with formal virtue, and when every value is discredited, reason will start to act without reference to anything but its own success. It would like to rule, denying everything that has been and affirming all that is to come. One day, it will conquer. Russian Communism, by its violent criticism of every kind of formal virtue, puts the finishing touches to the revolutionary work of the nineteenth century by denying any superior principle. The regicides of the nineteenth century, who draw the ultimate conclusions from the logic of rebellion and want to make the earth a kingdom where man is God. The reign of history begins and, identifying himself only with his history, man, unfaithful to his real rebellion, will henceforth devote himself to the nihilistic revolution of the twenty-first century, which denies all forms of morality and desperately attempts to achieve the unity of the human race by means of a ruinous series of crimes and wars. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The Jacobin Revolution, which tried to institute the religion of virtue in order to establish unity upon it, will be followed by the cynical revolutions, which can be either of the right or of the left and which will try to achieve the unity of the World so as to found, at last, the religion of man. All that was God’s will henceforth be rendered to Caesar. If he lacks it, just as the religious devotee will be moved sooner or later to seek personal experience, so the mystical votary will be moved to seek intellectual enlightenment if he too lacks it. However, such an inner movement will only develop where aspiration is strong and continuous, sincere and self-critical. A man’s consciousness of himself includes not only his thoughts and acts but also the understanding of them. The intellectual, the scientist or politician, businessman or professional, who has become cold, dry, materialistic, and insensitive, is unbalanced. Yet he thinks he is so levelheaded. A man can get intoxicated by his intellectual-logical thinking as he can with wine, or as the mystic with devotional rapture. The fine balance needed for the clear reception of truth is then absent. All correct thinking must be, and is, accompanied by intense reverence; whilst all ardent devotion of the Divine must be rightly directed towards That which is genuinely divine—and not towards that which is often erroneously thought to be so. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
If this development is one-sided, there is then the danger that can be seen illustrated anywhere one foes—that is, of knowledge degenerating into dried-up intellectualism, no longer able to influence morals nor control conduct, and of devotion degenerating into superstitious hysteria. To perceive the truth intellectually for the first time through someone else’s eyes or book is very important. And to glimpse the truth intuitionally through one’s own experience is still more important. Many people lack the broad knowledge which is necessary to form proper judgments or humanitarian appeals; many lack the patience which is necessary to scrutinize these appeals at all adequately while most people lack the impartiality to analyze a situation with insight. This is where the philosopher’s counsel may be useful. Even from a rigorously practical standpoint, the man who is incapable of reasoned thoughts is less likely to get on in the World. He will not forget, in being reasonable, to be reverent also. Care is to be taken that the deceptions into which both his logic and his sentimentality are liable to fall, are avoided by the use of sharp discrimination. He has not only to guard against wishful thinking and comfortable believing whenever those collide with truth. He has also to guard against passion-distorted thinking and emotion-warped believing. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Where to from here? Liberation of the body is now a dom-species convention. A sizable predom elite is learning how to use their brains. This is neurogenetic progress. Self-actualization of body and brain are basic tools for creating future plan-its. Post-terrestrial futures can only be fabricated by women and men who have pride in their bodies, who understand how to use and direct their bodies precisely and who can fuse their aesthetics in exquisite love linkages with others. To move confidently into the future, we must be guided by men and women who understand that we can control and change our own realities by the responsible, self-actualized use of our brains. When the Mutation Time comes, those who do not want to be mutated can leave. Has the DNA code labored (or played) for two and a half billion years to produce as final product, you, the second post-Hiroshima, post-911 generation, suntanned, languorous, post-political, sophisticated, laid back, affluent, polymorphous orgasm, self-actualized, sensory consumers? You have arrived at this state of intelligent self-control and responsible self-expression, but I know that you want your evolution to continue. In the second stage of this program, we shall learn how to S.M.I.L.E. We shall consider three ideas that, ready or not, like it or not, will determine the future of every gene-pool on the planet. DNA Code labored (or played) for two and a half billion years to produce its final product: YOU. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
In the Sacramento Fire Department, many assignments require specialized training. Indeed, most large departments have teams of fire fighters who respond to specific types of calls. Members of these teams are usually required to be fire fighters before they begin additional training. Your vision is the guiding theme of your personal life and career. Your vision is a long-term picture that establishes your priorities for making short-term decisions. Your vision grows out of your values and, as a fire fighter, EMT, or paramedic, from the core of the Sacramento Fire Department Values you have adopted. Vision provides direction for members of the Sacramento Fire Department; it motivates them to perform to their potential and beyond. A vision reduces the likelihood of complacency, drifting, and mediocre performance. The strong vision the members of the Sacramento Fire Department adhere to makes them great role models. When others see that the firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics have a clearly defined vision in their life and career, they imitate them. When one becomes a lieutenant, others look to you and your vision to provide the framework and context not only for your command decisions but also for the orders you give and the work you ask them to perform. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Many people and organizations find it helpful to record their vision as a vision statement. This forces you to ask yourself some profound questions: What should your vision statement day? What do you want to be known for? What are the most important things in your life? What do you want to achieve? Think also about the model you will want to project to trainees, your colleagues, and, when you become a lieutenant, to your crew members. You vision should include what matters most to you, so when you write your vision statement, you need to reflect on and clarify your values. Think about words that best express who you want to be. A vision statement is usually very concise—no more than a sentence or two. So you will need to select only about five or six values or characteristics to go into your vision statement. Of course, your priorities will shift as you get older, gain experience, and advance in your career. That is members of the Sacramento Fire Department think about their vision statement as a living document, something that can and will change with time. They are not carving their vision in stone. Many plan to revisit their statement, reflect on their priorities, and make changes every year or two. Here is an example of a possible vision statement: “I am determined to be the best firefighter among my peers, the best student to my teachers, the best athlete to my coaches, and the best son (or daughter) to my parents that I can possibly be. I pledge to use my strengths to better my weaknesses in all areas of my life.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Sounds like a promise, does it not? That is what a vision statement is: a commitment to your future, put into words to help guide your efforts. “Firefighting will always be part of my life. It becomes a major challenge at times, but I feel good about it. I’ve got too much invested. I’ve got ten years on the job, and with the ranks I’ve gone through, I can’t just say, ‘That’s enough, I want to quit.’ That’s what’s nice about the American way: if you’re dissatisfied with this fire service, there are a lot of other fire companies that could use your help, especially if you’re educated in the fire service. Operating as a chief at a house fire is a tremendous responsibility. It’s something you have to do. I don’t regret spending my whole professional life in firefighting, not one bit. I honestly can say I have not seen another profession or job that has interested me at all. It’s all I have ever wanted to do. When I was in the Army, I tried desperately to get into the fire service withing the military, but that turned out to be an impossibility. I’ve had other assignments in the Sacramento Fire Department, in fire prevention and even some office-type work I didn’t like at all. It was an education, and it helped me, but my first love is suppression. And I wanted out of those jobs as fast as I could get out of them to get back on the engine, so to speak. I’m not even interested in promotion above battalion chief level, because that means a desk job. And I want to be on the street. I hate to see somebody’s house burn down, I want to be there to say it.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
If you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. Islam is the fastest growing religion in America, out pacing Christianity. While American was once a nation of generations, there are still many indigenous people lift and others who have been here for generations. To protect America and make sure it will remain a land of the free and home of the brave, we must be patriotic and put Americans first. Democrats and Atheists would like nothing more than red blooded American warriors to become slaves in their own country. They would like nothing more than to close American schools so children can be forced into child labor again. It is not time to roll back, nor will it ever be to remove protection for American citizens. If you have not noticed, crime is spreading to communities that had never seen crime before. Homelessness is on the rise. In fact, Democratic controlled California brags about being the world’s “fifth largest economy,” but it also has the largest homeless population in the nation. If they are all officially counted, California has approximately 4 million homeless people. The highest home prices in the nation, the highest taxes and the most unfriendly business regulations known to man. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The average home price in California is nearly $1,000,000.00 USD, while the average salary is $906,036.00, meaning that most Californians cannot even afford to buy a home. California is having an affordability crisis. In 2025, many people in California saw their bills increase by an estimated $500 a month. This includes things like food, automobile insurance, homeowner’s insurance, electricity. In fact, more than 3 million people in California are facing household hardship, and more than 300,000 of them are facing eviction soon. This comes at a time when California is having a shortage of affordable housing. This is caused by nearly half a century’s old laws that discourage homes sales and encourage higher rents. Meanwhile, China, where we are sending all of our jobs and money has more than 50 ghost cities. Ghost cities are regions will housing has been overdeveloped to the point that these places are uninhabited. Because California is so hostile towards people and businesses, more than 360 companies have fled the state since 2020. Businesses like Chevron, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard are amongst the names on that list. Also, more than 500,000 people a year are abandoning California because it is too expensive to live in, crime is out of control, and they are losing their jobs due to companies relocating. More than 100 companies have announced layoffs in California for 2025. Intel is cutting 15,000 jobs, Pay Pal 2,500 and Meta has terminated 4,000 employees. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. Accordingly, California has more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Having the Southern American boarder open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risks to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security relevant alerts, such as end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure is the 2025 Palisades fires because Southern California ran out of water, when they are located next to an ocean and they could have simply created desalinating plants to help with the water shortage. The water is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
In an effort to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars. American made cars used to be the envy of the World and because American car brands are offering a wide range of options, from family SUVs to electric vehicles and luxury sedans, we are now seeing a resurging interest. American made cars are equal or superior to those made overseas. The Chevrolet Trax, for instance, is a well-designed, fuel efficient, and safe SUV. And as you know, there is no better car on Earth than 1950-1970s American Muscle Car. As an incentive to buy American made cars, President Trump plans to made interest on loans for American cars tax deductible. Americans surely make superior products, but we are buying things from other nations. American food imports have risen by 300 percent since 1999. American farmland declined by nearly 20 million acres between 2017 and 2022. As of 2022, there were 880.1 million acres of land dedicated to farming, compared to 900.1 million in 2017. The data shows there are now little more than 1.9 million farms in the country. Americans and American corporations spent $136 billion on food and beverages from other countries. It is a national security risk to lose American Farms and farmers. If there is a war, and most of our meat, produce, poultry, dairy, and fruit is coming from foreign counties, we stand the risk of starving. With war breaking out all over the World, in these uncertain times, it is very important to bring American farms back. Las Vegas is running out of buildable land and is expected to reach its maximum number of homes in 2032. So, home prices are expected to rise dramatically. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Additionally, State Farm did ask the California Department of Insurance if they could raise homeowner insurance rates by 22 percent, but this request was denied. However, in 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1107, also known as the Protection California Drivers Act, into law which increases the minimum auto lability limits for bodily injury to $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident. Senate Bill 1107 also increased the minimum liability limits for property damage to $15,000 per accident and the DMV deposit for uninsured drivers to $75,000. The bill went into effect on January 1, 2025. This means that drivers with existing policies with lower limits will renew at the new minimum limits on or after January 1, 2025, and insurance premiums could increase by as much as 54 percent. America is in a state of crisis right now because of mismanagement by democrats. If elected for an unprecedented third term, to make housing more affordable and to offset the cost of homeowner’s insurance and auto insurance, President Trump plans to abolish property taxes. Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and have the ability to support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrant to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in American, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in American which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the nation debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by send more money overseas. Buying American made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards in regard to pollution. American companies have to be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Moreover, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. It is inborn in the human minds to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again,” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.” President Trump
Drinking and driving is dangerous, illegal, and irresponsible.
If you’re planning to drink tonight, arrange a safe ride in advance. Here are a few alternatives:
Use ride-sharing apps or a taxi.
Take public transportation.
Designate a sober driver.
If you think a Taxi is expensive, remember, driving while drunk can cost you your job, your home, your family, your life and the lives of others.
Old Soldiers Never Die
Our problems can never be solved by dealing with them as we do, in passion and prejudice, unless indeed we find a new passion for Rightness and a new prejudice for Truth. The integrity of a man’s intellectual conscience will one day demand from every man a search for spiritual knowledge to confirm, sustain, or even replace his present spiritual faith. The studies should stimulate him to start, continue, or intensify the exercises, regimes, and practices, but they cannot act as a substitute for them. When it is hard to balance the claims of opposing doctrines, it is easier to substitute feeling for thinking. A manipulator’s life involves four fundamental characteristics: deception, unawareness, control, and cynicism. The actualizer’s life is marked by four opposing characteristics: honesty, awareness, freedom, and trust. Manipulators use deception, tricks, techniques, and maneuvers. They put on an act, and play roles to create an impression. Their expressed feelings are deliberately chosen to fit a “secret agenda.” Unawareness is another technique used my manipulators. They miss meaning and significance in experience, through the use of a collection of common heuristics and logical fallacies that lead individuals to focus on cues that are consistent with their opinion and filter out cues that are inconsistent with their viewpoint. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Manipulators control people by deliberately concealing their motives from their opponents. Manipulators tend to be cynics. They distrust themselves and others. Down deep, they do not trust human nature. They see relationships as having only two alternatives: to control or to be controlled. In a sharp contrast, actualizers tend to be honest and authentic. Actualizers are able to be and to express their feelings, whatever they may be. There is a congruence between an actualizer’s feelings and expressions, actions and situations. Actualizers also tend to be very aware. They have an accurate perceptions, appropriate responses. Actualizers fully see and listen to themselves and others. They find meaning and significance in life experience. Actualizers express their freedom through spontaneity. They have the freedom to be and to express their potentials, and this allows them to master life rather than be puppets. They are subject, instead of being objects. Actualizers also have deep trust in themselves and others. They can relate to and cope with life in the here and now. Without deserting the use of sharp reasoning, yet without abandoning the piety of worshipful feeling, an actualizer follows obediently the light which has been show him. Using the symbols of the Light of Christ, it is a harmonious cooperation of head and heart. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Humans have many actualizing potentials. Some we come to appreciate or value more than others. The more we can appreciate all aspects of ourselves, the more fully actualizing we become. We can be angry at times, loving at others, strong sometimes and weak sometimes. We must fearlessly subpoena our faith to appear before the court of common sense; if it is afraid to do that, it is not worthy of being held. As actualizers, we want vigorous facts, not the vague sentimentalities. However, as manipulators, each aspect ourselves that we disvalue becomes an act of disowning a part of ourselves. And what we disown, we must treat as “things.” When we do something we dislike, we say, “That is not like me!” “It came over me,” instead of “I regret that I did that”or “I am sorry I said that.” Soon this tendency to disown or to deny ourselves spreads into all areas of our lives. When the home team is losing, it is no longer “our team” but “that team.” Similarly, one’s spouse becomes a “nag,” a “ball and chain,” a “meal ticket.” When you feel like an “it,” others about you seem like “its” too. As actualizers, we appreciate ourselves and others and do not need to manipulate others to control them. We operate from a position of self-worth rather than from a position of deficiency. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
The manipulator, always assuming a deficiency in self and others, is compelled to fight. Life is a battle with strategy, tactics, tricks, or games necessary for survival. When a manipulator loses a battle or contest, he or she feels that everything is lost. The actualizer, assuming sufficiency in self and others and not hampered by the manipulator’s battle gear, sees life as an endless array of exciting opportunities to learn and to grow and to share. While the manipulator is a many-faceted person of antagonistic opposites, the actualizer is a many-faceted person of complementary opposites. From Dictator to Leader. The leader guides and serves rather than controls and dictates. The leader is forceful and decisive, yet not domineering and arbitrary. The complementary opposite to the leader is the empathizer. The empathizer not only talks, but also listens and is aware of his or her weaknesses. Although the empathizer has high expectations of self and others, he or she can understand and accept human fallibility. The actualizer integrates his or her leadership and empathy. The qualities of leadership and empathy are dependent upon each other. Without empathy, a leader is more likely to be a dictator; without leadership, the quality of empathy may be hollow. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
From Calculator to Respecter. The respecter, rather than using or exploiting others, creatively participates in cooperative endeavors with others. The respecter, trusting and respecting the qualities of self an others, is able to bring out the best in both. The complementary opposite of the respecter is the appreciator. The appreciator is able to celebrate and admire the talents of others without envy. He or she can tolerate differences in others and does not need to have others to think, believe, and behave the same as he or she thinks, believes, and behaves. The actualizer integrates his or her respect and appreciation. A respecter without appreciation is a calculator. Appreciation without the creativity and cooperation of a respecter is like a birthday card bought but never given. From Bully to Assertor. The assertor, confident of his or her rights and strength, is direct and straightforward. Assertors do not view others as enemies to be vanquished, but are also not afraid to stand up and be counted. The complementary opposite of the assertor is the cater. The carer is not the obsequious Nice Guy, but is affectionate and friendly. The actualizer integrates his or her assertion and caring. An assertor without caring is a bully. And a carer who will not assert his or her needs is just playing the “martyr” role. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
From Judge to Expresser. The expresser is not judgmental of others, but is able to express his or her convictions strongly and well. The complementary opposite of the expressor is the guide. The guide does not presume to protect and teach others, but willingly encouraged others onto the path of understanding. A guide, knowing that each person must find his or her own way, offers the greatest gift one can give to another: belief in him or her. The actualizers integrates his or her expression and guidance. The actualizer does not think for others but with others, having his or her own opinions and beliefs at the same time he or she allows others to have theirs. The mystical attack upon intellect has sufficient basis to justify it up to a certain point. However, when it goes beyond that point and unreservedly praises the holy imbecile and listens with bated breath to his utterances, it renders a disservice to mysticism. If all this enormous human evolution is to end in men feeling like children and acting like fools, is there not a danger that they may go father and turn into idiots? Life, today, is too challenging to be met successfully by the brainless or foolish. It is also nonsense for any mystic of the religious devotional school to say that intellect is useless and unnecessary on the spiritual path. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
It may be so on his particular path—although even there his assertion is arguable—but it is certainly not so on the other paths. How can it harm a seeker to acquire all possible knowledge about the quest, to know all that he can gather from the history of mysticism, the biography of mystics, the psychology of mystical states, and the philosophy of mystical thinkers? Thus equipped, he is surely better equipped to find his way in what is, after all, a dim and obscure territory. And how can he learn these things without studying books, listening to lectures, discussing ideas, and exchanging experiences with others? If men of high intelligence are trained in theology, at some point the intelligence is forsaken or led to subserve faith. The cleavage of the mental functions in the form of an irrational attitude towards religion combined with a rational attitude towards everything else, is quite common. It is not distant from the mental disease called schizophrenia. Each mistake in action is the result of a preceding mistake in thought. What is lost by bringing a higher intelligence to they study of spiritual topics? If the person is sufficiently balanced to use it properly—nothing. Too many mystics of the emotional-devotional type have, while rightly scorning intellect’s limitations, wrongly decried reason’s services. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Dynamite serves the mining engineer and the road builder very well. Fire serves the kitchen cook very well. However, if he or she brings dynamite into contact with fire in the kitchen, both may destroy the individual. Knowledge is not only one’s power but also one’s protector. When the aspirant has great devotion to the Overself but little understanding of it, Nature will halt him at a certain stage of his spiritual career and compel him to redress the balance. Whatever the prevailing attitude, a great deal of the process is always externalized; it is experienced as going on between self and others. Variations in this regard concern the particular aspect that is externalized, and the way in which it is done. Roughly, a person may primarily impose his standards upon others and make relentless demands as to their perfection. The more he feels himself to be the measure of all things, the more he insists—not upon general perfection but upon his particular norms being measured up to. The failure of others to do so arouses his own irritation with himself for not being, at any moment and under all conditions, what he should be may be turned outward. Thus, for instace, when he is not the perfect lover, or is caught in a lie, he may turn angrily against those he failed and build up a case against them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Again, he may primarily experience his expectations of himself as coming from others. And, whether these others actually do expect something or whether he merely thinks they do, their expectations then turn into demands to be fulfilled. In analysis, he feels that the analyst expects the impossible from him. He attributes to the analyst his own feelings that he should always be productive, should always have a dream to report, should always talk about what he thinks the analyst wants him to discuss, should always be appreciative of help and show it by getting better. If he believes in this way that others are expecting or demanding things of him, he may, again, respond in two different ways. He may try to anticipate or guess at their expectations and e eager to live up to them. In that case, if he fails, he usually also anticipates that they would condemn him or drop him at a moment’s notice. Or, if he is hypersensitive to coercion, he feels that they are imposing upon him, meddling in his affairs, pushing him or coercing him. He then minds it bitterly, or even openly rebels against them. He may object to giving Christmas present, because they are expected. He will be at his office or at any appointment just a little later than expected. He will forget anniversaries, letters, or any favor for which he has been asked. He may forget a visit to relatives just because his mother had asked him to make it, although he liked them and meant to see them. He will overact to any request made. He will then be less afraid of the criticism of others than resentful of it. His vivid and unfair self-criticism also becomes tenaciously externalized. He then feels that others are unfair in their judgement of him or that they always suspect ulterior motives. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Or, if his rebellion is more aggressive, he will flaunt his defiance and believe the he does not in the least care what they think of him. The overreaction to requests made is a good lead to recognizing the inner demands. Reactions which strike us ourselves as being out of proportion may be particularly helpful in self-analysis. Also, we may draw certain faulty conclusions from self-observations. For example, a busy executive whom I saw occasionally, was asked by phone whether he could go to the pier and meet a refugee writer coming from Europe. He had always admired this writer and had met him socially on a visit to European. Since his time was jammed with conferences and other work, it would actually have been unfeasible to comply with this request, particularly since it might have involved waiting on the pier for hours. As he realized later on, he could have reacted in two ways, both of them sensible. He could either have said that he would think it over and see whether he could make it, or he could have declined with regret and asked whether there was anything else he could do for the writer. Instead, he reacted with immediate irritation and said abruptly that he was too busy and never would call for anybody at the pier. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Soon after this, he regretted his response, and later went to some length to find out where the writer was located so that he could help him if necessary. He not only regretted the incident; he also felt puzzled. Did he not think as highly of the writer as he had thought he did? He felt sure that he did. Was he not as friendly and helpful as he believed himself to be? If so, was he irritated because he was put on the spot in being asked to prove his friendliness and helpfulness? Here he was on a good track. The mere fact of his being able to question the genuineness of his generosity was for him quite a step to take—for, in his idealized image, he was the benefactor of mankind. It was, however, more than he could digest at this juncture. He rejected this possibility by remembering that afterward he was eager to offer and give help. However, while closing one avenue in his thought he suddenly hit upon another clue. When he offered help the initiative was his, but the first time he had been asked to do something. He then realized that he had felt the request as an unfair imposition. Provided he had known about the writer’s arrival, he would certainly have considered on his own the possibility of meeting hum at the boat. He now thought of many similar incidents in which he had reacted irritably to a favor asked and realized that apparently, he felt as imposition or coercion many things which in actual fact were mere requests or suggestions. He also thought of his irritability over disagreements or criticism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
The conclusion he arrived at was that he was a bully and wanted to dominate. Reactions of this kind are easily mistake for tendencies to dominate. What he had seen on his own was his hypersensitivity to coercion and to criticism. He could not stand coercion because he felt in a strait jacket anyhow. And he could not stand criticism because he was his own worst critic. In this context, we also could pick up the track he had abandoned when questioning his friendliness. To a large extent, he was helpful because he should be helpful and not because of his rather abstract love for humanity. His attitude toward concrete individuals was much more divided than he realized. Thus, any request plunged him into an inner conflict: he should accede to it and be very generous also he should not allow anybody to coerce him. The irritability was an expression of feeling caught in a dilemma which at that time was insoluble. The effects the should have on a person’s personality and life vary to some extent with his way of responding to them or experiencing them. However, certain effects show inevitably and regularly, though to a greater or lesser degree. The should always produce a feeling of strain, which is all the greater the more a person tries to actualize his shoulds in his behavior. He may feel that he stands on tiptoe all the time, and may suffer from a chronic exhaustion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Or he may feel vaguely cramped, tense, or hemmed in. Or, if his should coincide with attitudes culturally expected of him, he may feel merely an almost imperceptible strain. It may be strong enough, however, to contribute to a desire in an otherwise active person to retire from activities or obligations. Furthermore, because of externalizations, the shoulds always contribute to disturbances in human relations in one way or another. The most general disturbance on this score is hypersensitivity to criticism. Being merciless toward himself, he cannot help experiencing any criticism on the part of others—whether actual or merely anticipated, whether friendly or unfriendly—as being just as condemnatory as his own. We shall understand the intensity of this sensitivity better when we realize how much he hates himself for any lagging behind his self-imposed standards. Otherwise, the kinds of disturbance in human relations depend upon the kinds of prevailing externalization. They may render him too critical and harsh of others or too apprehensive, too defiant, or too complaint. Most important of all, the shoulds further impair the spontaneity of feelings, wishes, thoughts, and beliefs—id est, the ability to his own feelings, etcetera, and to express them. The person, then, can at best be “spontaneously compulsive” (to quote a patient) and express “freely” what he should feel, whish, think, or believe. We are accustomed to think that we cannot control feelings but only behavior. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
In dealing with others, we can enforce labor but we cannot force anybody to love his work. Just so, we are accustomed to think that we can force ourselves to act as if we were not suspicious but we cannot enforce a feeling of confidence. This remains especially true. And, if we needed a new proof, analysis could supply it. However, if the should issue an order as to feelings, imagination waves its magic wand and the border line between what we should feel and what we do feel evaporates. We consciously believe or feel then as we should believe or feel. For instance, Mac was a brave soldier and took good care of his men. However, one day, through ignorance or disobedience a lot of them got killed, and Mac blamed himself. That, along with malaria, malnutrition, and a few other things, caused him to break down. When he recovered, he worked and worked and worked so he would not think, but no matter how hard he worked he never seemed to get ahead, and there was always more work to be done if he wanted to get out of debt. Mac was a caterer and went to all sorts of weddings and other celebrations, but he never had anything to celebrate himself. He was always an onlooker, helping other people feel good with food, drunk, comfort, and advice, and that made him feel needed, as much as he could feel that way. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The worst time was at night when he was alone and his thoughts went round and round. The best times were on Saturday night, when he got drunk and could forget and was almost one of the crowd. This started long before he went into the army. His mother ran away with a soldier when he was six, and when he knew she was gone for sure, he fell into a raging fever and tried to die, because that meant she did not need him. He began to work hard very early in high school, but whenever he got a little ahead, his father would somehow trick him out of the money. If he bought something for himself, his father would sell it. He was jealous of the other boys at school because they had mothers, and got into lots of fights. He did not mind bloody noses in the schoolyard, but he could not stand the sight of dead bodies in the war. He was a good marksman, but he always felt sorry for the enemies he killed, not did he hold it against them that his own men got killed. Because he blamed himself for that, he felt that his dead buddies were watching from somewhere, so he was very careful not to add insult to injury by having a good time. Except when he was drunk, and that did not count—or did it? He could never be sure. Once or twice, he tried to crash his car, and did het badly banged up, but survived. His chief way of trying to kill himself was by smoking heavily even when he had bronchitis. After a long period of treatment, he made friends with his mother, and that made him feel better again. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Clinical Analysis. Thesis: The old soldier was not good enough for his mother and failed his friends. As a result, he is condemned to work hard forever without getting ahead. He is a spectator in life and cannot join in the fun. He is always willing to help others, and that means more work, but it makes him feel needed. Death will be his only release, but he cannot hurt the ones who love him by actual death by suicide. All he can do is slowly fade away. Clinical Diagnosis: Compensated schizophrenia. Song: Old Soldiers Never Die. Roles: Failed Rescuer, Persecutor, Victim. Switches: Victim (of mother and father) to Rescuer (of men) to Victim (of circumstances). Parental Precept: “Work hard and help people.” Parental Pattern: “Here is how to endure it—drink.” Parental Injunction: “Do not get ahead.” Position: “I am not-O.K.” Decision: “I will work myself to death.” Sweatshirt: Front—“I am a nice guy.” Back—“Even if it kills me.” Pastime: Reminiscing about the war. Game: “I am Only Trying to Help You.” Antithesis: Stop killing yourself. Permission: Tune in and get ahead. Classification—Old Solider is a nonwinner’s script because it is a point of honor with old soldiers not to get ahead. It is a Goal-Structured Cannot script with the slogan: “You cannot get ahead until they need you again.” It is based on an “After” plan, “After the war is over, you can only fade away.” The waiting time is filled by helping people and soldier talk. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The educated mind is repelled by superstition, the reasonable mind by fanaticism. Yet both need the fortifying support of a spiritual teaching. Every error rejected and every truth accepted strengthens a man in character and mind. Parts of the organizational structure of the Sacramento Fire Department are built from military traditions. Not everyone can become a fire fighter, EMT, or paramedic. Those who do succeed in achieving this status understand the vital mission of the Sacramento Fire Department. They understand that they must be healthy and in good physical condition and assertive enough to enter a dangerous situation yet mature enough to work as a member of a team. The job requires a person who has the desire to learn, the will to practice, and the ability to apply the skills of the trade. A fire fighter, EMT, and paramedic are constantly learning as the body of knowledge about fires expands and the technology used in fighting fires and saving lives evolves. The job can also be stressful, however. The most frequent reasons for “stressing out” fall into three main categories: The unsettling effects of change, the feeling that an outside force is challenging or threatening you, the feeling that you have lost personal control. Life events such as marriage, changing jobs, divorce, or the death of a relative or friend are the most common cases of stress. Although life-threatening events are less common, they can be the most physiological and psychologically acute. They are usually associated with public service career fields in which people experience intense stress levels because of imminent danger and a high degree of uncertainty—police officer, fire and rescue worker, emergency relief worker, and the military. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
You may not plan to enter a high-stress career, but as a college student, you may find that the demands of college life can create stressful situation. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) notes some of the more common stressors for college students: Increased academic demands, being on your own in a new environment, changes in family relations, financial responsibilities, changes in your social life, exposure to new people, ideas, and temptations, awareness of your sexual identity and orientation, preparing for life after graduation. Symptoms of distress fall into three general, but interrelated, categories—physical, mental, and emotional. Review this list carefully. If you find yourself frequently experiencing these symptoms, you are likely feeling distressed: Headaches, fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, hypertension (high blood pressure), heart problems, such as palpitations, inability to focus/lack of concentration, sleep disturbances, whether it is sleeping too much or an inability to sleep, sweating palms/shaking hands, anxiety, and problems with pleasures of the flesh. Even when you do not realize it, stress can cause or contribute to serious physical disorders. It increases hormones such as adrenaline and corticosterone, which affect your metabolism, immune reactions, and other stress responses. That can lead to increases in your heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and physical demands on your internal organs. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Behavioral changes are also expressions of stress. They can include: Irritability, disruptive eating patterns (overeating or under eating), harsh treatment of others, increases smoking or alcohol consumption, isolation, compulsive shopping. A sustained high level of stress is no laughing matter. It can affect every area of your life—productivity in the workplace and classroom, increased health risks, and relationships, to name just a few. However, you can learn to manage your stress. The first step is understanding yourself better—how you react in different situations, what causes you stress, and how you behave when you feel stressed. Once you have done that, take the following steps: Set priorities. Use the time-management tips. Make a To-Do list. Decide what is really important to get done today, and what can wait. This helps you to know that you are working on your most immediate priorities, and you do not have the stress of trying to remember what you should be doing. Practice facing stressful moments. Think about the event or situation you expect to face and rehearse your reactions. Find ways to practice dealing with the challenge. If you know that speaking in front of a group of friends frightens you, practice doing it, perhaps with a trusted friend or fellow team member. If the pressure of taking test causes you to freeze up, buy some practice tests and work with them when there are no time pressures. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Examine your expectations. Try to set realistic goals. It is good to push yourself to achieve, but make sure your expectations are realistic. Watch out for perfectionism. Be satisfied with doing the best you can. Nobody’s perfect—not you, not your fellow Cadet, nobody. Allow people the liberty to make mistakes, remember that mistakes can be a good teacher. However, if you keep making the same mistakes over and over, people are going to think that there is something wrong with you. Live a healthy lifestyle. Get plenty of exercise. Eat healthy foods. Allow time for rest and relaxation. Find a relaxation technique that works for you—prayer, sports, reading a book, taking a bath, playing video games, or breathing exercises. Look for the humor in life, and enjoy yourself. Learn to accept change as part of life. Nothing stays the same. Develop a support system of friends and relatives you can talk to when needed. Believe in yourself and your potential. Remember that many people from disadvantaged backgrounds have gone on to enjoy great success in life. At the same time, avoid those activities that promise release from stress while actually adding to it. Drinking alcohol (despite what all those TV commercials imply), drinking caffeine, smoking, and overeating all add to the body’s stress in addition to their other harmful effects. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Here are some other strategies for dealing with stress: Schedule time for vacation, breaks in your routine, hobbies and fun activities. Try to arrange for uninterrupted time to accomplish tasks that need your concentration. Arrange some leisure time during which you can do things that you really enjoy. Avoid scheduling too many appointments, meetings, and classes back-to-back. Allow breaks to catch your breath. Take a few slow, deep breathe whenever you feel stressed. Breathe from the abdomen and, as you exhale, silently say to yourself, “I feel calm.” Become an expert at managing your time. Read books, view videos, and attend seminars on time management. Once you cut down on time wasters, you will find more time to recharge yourself. Learn to say, “no.” Setting limits can minimize stress. Spend time on your main responsibilities and priorities rather than allowing other people’s priorities or needs to dictate how you spend time. Exercise regularly to reduce muscle tension and promote a sense of well-being. Tap into your support network. Family, friends, and social groups can help when dealing with stressful events. All of us can improve our ability to recognize when we are under too much stress or anxiety. We can also improve our ability to turn to the Lord for help. “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and He shall sustain thee; He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved,” reports Psalm 55.22. By seeking guidance from the Lord to make a plan of what to do and when and how, the Savior will help us to manage our stress and anxiety. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“I don’t want to be on an ego trip, but I tell you there is nothing else in the World like firefighting. I have dedicated myself to it, and I’ve trued to implement a lot of things in the Sacramento Fire Department. As you get higher in rank, obviously, it gives you a better chance to do those things. I have a large family, and there are always money concerns. You say, ‘I wish I could afford to pay my kids’ way through college completely.’ I have a number of children who have completed college. I have a couple of degrees in fire science. I did teaching at a community college. I’ve done a lot of things in the Sacramento Fire Department to improve protective clothing and to improve our fire ground tactics to make things safer for firefighters. Obviously I could have made more money doing something else, but it wouldn’t be the same career. After twenty-seven years, if you’re doing a job, and you still like going to work and look forward to going to work, then you know it’s worthwhile. Money isn’t everything, I guess, compared to the special feeling you have being a firefighter. I have a son now who is going to take the fire exam. He had gone to college for a couple of years, then stopped. It’s really hard to postpone gratification. If he wants to be a firefighter, that’s great. I know he’ll make a living. Hopefully, he’ll have equal opportunity and a fair opportunity for promotion. That’s one of the sad parts of the fire service. We don’t want to eliminate anybody from equal treatment, but I think you end up with reverse discrimination, when other firefighters are entitled to something and don’t get it. A career in the fire service—there’s nothing like it. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
If you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
The Winchester Mystery House
Happy halfway to Halloween from the sheet ghost 🎃 it isn’t just a season, it’s a lifestyle 🏖️👻
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Sit Down on the Camel and Take a Picture
The value of religious knowledge lies in the fact that it is a safeguard against error for it shows how to discriminate between reality and the appearance of it. Neither the deceptions of individuals nor the errors of religious experience can succeed. The expansive type, for whom mastery of life is crucial, tends to identify himself with his inner dictates and, whether consciously or unconsciously, to be proud of his standards. He does not question their validity and tries to actualize them in one way or other. He may try to measure up to them in his actual behavior. He should be all things to all people; he should know everything better than everybody else; he should never err; he should never fail in anything he attempts to do—in short, fulfill whatever his particular should are. And, in his mind, he does measure up to his supreme standards. His arrogance may be so great that he does not even consider the possibility of failure, and if it occurs, discards it. His arbitrary rightness is so rigid that in his own mind he simply never errs. Moses’ concern for his people proved to be justified in the years following their entry into the land of Canaan. It was when they became settled in this goodly land that they began to take their abundance for granted and to forget the real source of these blessings. Moses had counseled them: “For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barely, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
“A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which He hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and His judgements, and His statutes, which I command thee this day: Least when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brough thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage…And thou say in thine heart, my power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth,” reports Deuteronomy 8.7-14, 17. Even if a man succeeded in getting others to accept his views, even if everyone accepted them, it is unlikely that they will accept them always. Every opinion has been written down in the books, including the opinion that truth requires us to hold no opinion. “Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you. But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the Kingdom of God. And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ, ye shall obtain riches, if you seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted,” reports Jacob 2.17-19. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Suggestions from outside enters largely into the opinions and beliefs, the views and outlook, of masses of people. It is just as true, possibly truer, of the mystically minded, be they seekers or gurus, be they Eastern or Westerners. What is really known—rather than echoed back—dwindles down to a residue. The coveting of wealth so often has resulted in avarice, dishonesty, and greed. The acquisition of wealth has frequently produced pride, self-satisfaction, and arrogance. An episode during the time of Alma in the Book of Mormon illustrates the cycle that has so often occurred when people are blessed materially by the Lord and then turn away from Him. In the instance referred to, the Nephite people were struggling to overcome the effects of a devasting civil strife and a Lamanite invasion, not unlike the struggles more than half of Americans face today. Not only had there been great loss of life; the destruction to lands and to property had been sufficient to seriously jeopardize the prospects of recovery. Alma describes conditions in these words: “But the people were afflicted, yea, greatly afflicted for the loss of their brethren, and also for the loss of their flocks and herds, and also for the loss of their fields of grain, which were trodden under foot and destroyed. And so great were their afflictions that every soul had cause to mourn; and they believed that it was the judgements of God sent upon them because of their wickedness and their abominations; therefore they were awakened to a remembrance of their duty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
“And they begun to establish the church more fully; yea, and many were baptized in the waters of Sidon and were joined to the Church of God,” reports Alma 4.2-4. He may be poised in the tranquility of these grand concepts or poisoned by the negative fogs of false ones. Convert a man to your opinion and you have him for long; compel him to adopt it and you have never really got him. The spiritual reawakening among the people had a dramatic effect. Peace returned to the land. The Church prospered in its rapid growth. Not surprisingly, the people soon began again to enjoy an abundant life. The spiritual blessings granted by the Lord were accompanied by the acquisition of material wealth. Unfortunately, the Nephites failed to meet this test. Within three years from the time of their earlier tragedy, Alma describes his people in this way: “The people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches, and their fine silks, and their fine-twined linen, and because of their many flocks and herds, and their gold and their silver, and all manner of precious things, which they had obtained by their industry; and in all these things were they lifted up in the pride of their eyes,” reports Alma 4.6. History repeatedly confirms that the abundance of earthly possessions can be both a blessing and a curse, depending upon the way these things are viewed and used. When we consume them on our own lust, we invoke tragedy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
We must work hard to elicit the truth from the medley of beliefs and opinions which rule us, and to extract the reality from the medley of illusions and glamours which hold us. Any fool can say, “I know,” that is, can have an opinion. Mass stupidity is not, and never can be, a satisfactory substitute for individual intelligence. Wealth is a relative thing. Conditions vary dramatically from place to place in the World today. America is indeed a chosen land that President Trump is helping to restore. That which some consider to be the necessities of life, to others would be abundance, and even extravagance. In any set of circumstances, the challenges related to an improvement in material prosperity remain the same. The message that echoes to us from the pages of history and from the counsels of the Lord and His prophets is clear: Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven. Seek not for riches to consume them on your own lusts. Thou shalt not covet. Clothe the naked. Feed the hungry. Relieve the sick and the afflicted. Pay tithes and offerings. In all things, acknowledge the Lord. Be grateful. Be humble. The words of Moses to the tribes of Isreal have appropriate application for us: “Fear the Lord thy God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Here therefore, O Isreal, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey,” reports Deuteronomy 6.2-3. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
And, “when thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good…which He hath given thee,” reports Deuteronomy 8.10. Far too often private opinions are passed off as God’s oracles, man-made institutions as God’s instruments, and group propaganda as factual history. The masses, lacking both discrimination and information, are led like sheep by the mass media. How credulous fool attain supernormal wisdom? How can the man who is unable to discriminate intelligently in small matters suddenly become able to discriminate in transcendent ones? The jump is not possible. The more a man is engulfed in his imagination, the less necessary it is for him to make actual efforts. It is sufficient, then, that in his mind his mind he is supremely fearless or honest, no matter how beset his is by fears or how dishonest he actually is. The border lines between these two ways of “ I should” and “I am” is vague for him—for that matter, probably not too sharp for any of us. The German poet Christian Morgenstern has expressed this concisely in one of his opens. A man was lying in a hospital with a broken leg after having been run over by a truck. He read that in the particular street in which the accident happened trucks were not allowed to drive. And so, he arrived at the conclusion that the whole experience was only a dream. For, “sharp as a knife,” he concluded that nothing can happen that should not happen. The more a person’s imagination prevails over his reasoning, the more the border line disappears and he is the model husband, father, citizen, or whatever he should be. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Most people do not know the difference between an opinion and a truth, and do not make the effort to distinguish between them. It is not better to force illusions into accord with the realities than to go on being pleasantly deceived by them? The self-effacing type, for whom love seems to solve all problems, likewise feels that his should constitute a law not to be questioned. However, when trying—anxiously—to measure up to them, he feels most of the time that he falls pitiably short of fulfilling them. The foremost element in his conscious experience is therefore self-criticism, a feeling of guilt for not being the supreme being. When carried to the extreme, both these attitudes toward the inner dictates render it difficult for a person to analyze himself. Tending toward the extreme of self-righteousness may prevent him from seeing any flaws in himself. And tending toward the other extreme—that of too readily feeling guilty—entails the danger of insights into shortcomings having a crushing rather than a liberating effect. The resigned type, finally, to whom the idea of “freedom” appeals more than anything else, is, of the three, most prone to rebel against his inner tyranny. Because of the very importance which freedom—or his version of it—has for him, he is hypersensitive to any coercion. He may rebel in a somewhat passive way. Then everything that he feels he should do, whether it concerns a piece of work or reading a book or having relations with pleasures of the flesh with his wife, turns—in his mind—into a coercion, arouses conscious or unconscious resentment, and in consequence makes him listless. If what is to be done is done at all, it is done under the strain produced by the inner resistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
We must not be doctrinaires, we must not sit at the sanctified feet of the god opinion. The intellectual purificatory work begins by clearing his mind of errors, illusions, and superstitions. These things lead him astray, both during prayer and out of it, from his search for truth. He may rebel against his should in a more active way. He may try to throw them all overboard, and sometimes go to the opposite extreme by insisting upon doing only what he pleases when he pleases. The rebellion may take violent forms, and then often is a rebellion of despair. If he cannot be the ultimate of piety, chastity, sincerity, then he will be thoroughly “bad,” be promiscuous, tell lies, afford others. Sometimes a person usually complies with the shoulds may go through a phase of rebellion. It is usually then directed against external restrictions. J.P. Marquand has described such temporary rebellions in a masterly way. He has shown us how easily they can be put down, for the very reason that the restricted external standards have a mighty ally in the internal dictates. And then afterward the individual is left dull and listless. Finally, others may go through alternating phases of self-castigating “goodness” and a wild protest against any standards. To the observant friend such people may present an insoluble puzzle. At times, they are offensively irresponsible in pleasures of the flesh or financial matters, and at others they show highly developed moral sensibilities. #RandolpHarris 8 of 24
So, the friend who has just been despairing of their having any sense of decency is reassured about their being fine persons after all, only to be thrown into severe doubts again shortly thereafter. In others, there may be a constant shuttling between an “I should” and “no, I will not.” “I should pay a debt.” No, why should I?” “I should keep to a diet. No, I will not.” Often these people give the impression of spontaneity and mistake their contradictory attitudes toward their should for “freedom.” Sincerity is not enough. Every aspirant needs this, of course, but he also needs other things. An aspirant may be totally sincere, yet may take a wrong direction. His mind may be filled with erroneous beliefs despite his sincerity. So to his sincerity, he should add right knowledge, for this will guide him, this will uphold him, and this will safeguard him. The result of a solely intellectual outlook devoid of religious faith or mystical intuition, is failure to offer mental peace or cherish moral goodness. Self-actualized people have a different sense of humor from the ordinary type. It is not hostile. It is not at someone else’s expense. It focuses more on the foolishness of the human situation. Their humor is usually thought-provoking, and many times they are able to laugh at themselves. President Lincoln’s humor, for example, was very much in this vein. He told one story that many believed could have applied to himself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
It seems that a woman on horseback on a narrow trail came upon a man on a horse. She stopped her horse, looked the man over, and blurted out, “Well, for the land’s sake, you are the homeliest man I ever saw!” The man replied, “Yes ma’am, but I can’t help that.” “No, I suppose not,” she replied, “but you might stay at home. Here is another story President Lincoln told, perhaps, to point out that common sense has a wisdom that transcends logic: “If three pigeons sit on a fence and you shoot and kill one of them, how many will be left?” President Lincoln asked. The answer was, “Two, of course.” To which he responded, “No, there won’t, for the other two will fly away.” We are not casting stones at intellectual knowledge; it has a place. However, let it be kept in its place. Let it not become a usurper. The higher mysticism first satisfies the intellect’s demands, then transcends them. It does not, like the lower mysticism, reject or ignore them. Although the intellect admittedly cannot grasp reality, it is nevertheless necessary in order to set a standard, to show what reality is, as such, so that it shall be recognized. A pair of scales cannot weigh themselves but they are necessary in order to weigh other things. Similarly, the intellect cannot yield reality but can measure it so to speak or indicate what is and what is not reality. Hence, it is most valuable as a corrective mysticism and religious experience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
The moral code which a man obeys is itself the result of his view of life, whether the latter be imposed on him from without or developed from within. To the Prophet Joseph Smith the Lord said: “I have made the earth rich, and behold it is my footstool, wherefore, again I will stand upon it.” When the mystical bent of mind is not steadied by rational reflection, there is grave danger of mistaking satisfaction for truth, utility for knowledge. “And I hold forth and deign to give unto you greater riches, even a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, upon which there shall be no curse when the Lord cometh,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 38.17-18. Dr. Maslow’s “healthy champions” all had some unselfish involvement with others. They behaved as though each member of the human race were a personal family member of the human race were a personal family member, worthy of affection in spite of the way each person may act. However, the self-actualizers also could express “righteous indignation” toward cruelty, hypocrisy, or phoniness in others. They tend to have deeper and more meaningful interpersonal relations than the average adult—close relationships with a few, rather than superficial relationships with many. These people are more able to be nondemanding and noninterfering with those they love, delighting in the loved ones for themselves, not for what the loved ones can provide in return—love without guile, design, or calculation of any selfish kind. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Dr. Maslow called this kind of love being love. Such a love, he said, “makes for less abstracting, less viewing of less-then-the whole, less atomizing or dissecting…structuring, organizing, shaping, modeling…” of the loved one, and the object of such love “remains more whole, more unified, which amounts to saying more itself.” A “being” lover sees more easily the nature of the loved one in his or her own right and in his or her own style of being. The opposite of being love Dr. Maslow called deficiency love, which is a manipulative kind of love. Manipulative lovers like to dissect the loved ones to discover and declare their faults as a means of gaining control over the loved ones. They like to mold and recreate the loved ones. Manipulators love because they feel a sense of lacking something in themselves, and they expect the loved one to fill their personal void. If the loved one fails to provide all the demands, their love is absolutely conditional and can be withdrawn. The futility and unwisdom of utter reliance upon feeling, unchecked by reason, was tragically evidenced by the sad case of Nijinsky, the famous Russian dancer, who after delighting audiences in the World’s chief capitals became insane and for more than twenty years had to withdraw from his artistic careers and pass most of his days in a sanatorium. Nijinsky kept a diary in the early days of his illness, in which we find sentences like the following: “I am God. I am God. I am God.” Throughout those pages, Nijinsky insist on feeling rather than thinking as a source of wisdom, and feeling he defines as “intuitions, proceeding from the unconscious.” The man who claimed to be God was, however, unable to fulfill himself as a human being. Why? Because he was really unbalanced for he rejected utterly the claims of Reason, and he denounced “mental” people as being “dead.” #RandolpHarris 12 of 24
Yes, mystical experience must collaborate with rational thought. However, there is a higher kind of mysticism, which prunes away the accidental and penetrates to the essential. Intellectual knowledge is certainly relative. However, what lies beyond it is for us ultimate truth. That there may be a truth beyond this in turn need not concern us at present, for nobody could either dispute it or demonstrate it. The urge for higher knowledge is not at act of the ego but prompting from the Overself. That it gets mixed, in tis earlier phases, with egotistic desires is true but these slowly fall away. Actualized people, Dr. Maslow’s research found, have a more efficient perception of reality than do others. They can see or perceive others intuitively and correctly. They cannot be conned. They do not come into situations with preconceptions, but seem able to leap to right conclusions. They also have a freshness of appreciation, and their senses are not dulled by seemingly common, everyday experiences. They experience joy in the miracles of everyday life that the rest of us hardly see, hear, or feel—a baby’s smile, a loving glance, a cooling delta breeze, a heartful compliment, a warm bed, a sunset, a lovely person’s profile. Each of Dr. Maslow’s subjects had some life task to fulfill that enlisted much of his or her time and energy. It was as if each of them had found and recognized some specific purpose to their being in the World that they pursued with great persistence. They did not ask what America could do for them, they asked what they could do to Make America Great Again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
America, to a self-actualized person, could be as large as just that—the world—or as small as a neighborhood or family. The intellect is a faculty that man is endowed with, not by Satan to trap him, but in accordance with the divine World-Idea. Man is learning how to use it. If he is using it wrongly today, the consequences will tutor him in time and he will use it rightly tomorrow. When the mystical bent of the mind is not steadied by rational reflection, there is grave danger of mistaking satisfaction for ruth, utility for knowledge. Socrates taught that character was somehow dependent on intelligence: the better quality of the one was a consequence of the better quality of the other. Therefore, cultivate clear intelligence, he said. Long after, Spinoza repeated this advice. The subjects of Dr. Maslow’s study depended on their own potentialities and latent resources, rather than on others, for their continued growth. Their sense of self and their stability can be described, Dr. Maslow said, as “self-contained.” This independence of the physical and social environment accounted for their serenity in the face of deprivations, frustrations, and set-backs that might drive others to the brink of death by suicide. They did not depend on others’ love and respect for their own development. Their ability to get to such a point of independence, however, was largely made possible because they had received in the past love and respect from others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
The need of coping with life forces us to develop intelligence or else to go on suffering the consequences of being stupid! Even the world-picture of a higher condition available to those who will work and sacrifice for it is not without value. It shows a model to use and emulate, a standard to seek and form oneself by. Self-actualized people are accepting of the real nature of themselves and others. Dr. Maslow said that just as, “one does not complain about water because it is wet, or about rocks because they are hard,” a self-actualized person does not complain about human nature in himself or in others.” Healthy people do not feel guilty, shame, sadness, anxiety, or defensiveness about things that are part of their nature as humans. They do not say to themselves, “I am so ashamed that I am so short,” or “I would not want to be seen with her; she is not very attractive.” Healthy people do not feel guilty about improvable shortcomings, such as laziness, jealousy, prejudice, and hurting others. What makes healthy people feel bad are the discrepancies between what is and what might be, not in the inherent nature of things or persons, but in the conditions or situations that might be changed or improved. In truth, we cannot change ourselves. We can find ourselves and develop what we find. That is what actualization is—becoming our real selves. That is easy today, but how does it happen? How do we know who we really are? What is a self, anyway? #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
It is not enough to mean well, it is not enough to believe one is doing right, it is not enough to be earnest, sincere, innocent of evil motives. It is just as essential to possess a balanced mentality, sound reasoning capacity, and unbiased attitude. The Spanish Inquisitors were sometimes saints, Mr. Hitler was an ascetic. Many who have brought misery upon mankind were men of excellent private character: the defects of these people were mental rather than moral, and led them to bad thinking and worse judgment. The moral of this is plain: If not more so than others, intelligence must be cultivated as fully. The role of reason in the human psyche is to keep its balance. You may have not thought of it, but the concept of self can vary from person to person. Some of us think of self primarily in terms of the physical: size and shape, color of skin, hair, and eyes, our attractiveness or unattractiveness; in terms of sensations: hungry or full, in pain or in pleasure, well or sick, tried or energetic; in terms of feelings: bored or interested, happy or sad, angry or loving. Others think of self primarily in terms of work or primary occupation: a professor, a firefighter, a truck driver, a parent, a counselor. And still others think of self conceptually: good or bad, kind or cruel, smart or stupid, friendly or surly, accepted or misunderstood. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
We can see ourselves as if in a vacuum—alone with no connection to our environment and others; as an outlines totally defined by a background of our environment and others; or as a being who is partially defined by our environment and others and partially defining our environment and others. However, consciousness of one’s self is always a unique act—I can never know exactly how you see yourself and you can never know exactly how I relate to myself. This is the inner sanctum where each man must stand alone, and where we must find the strength to stand as individuals and, through our own affirmation and choice, learn to love each other. Developing a strong sense of self is a prerequisite to actualization, and it requires a leap of faith. You do not have to prove your self-worth; you may assume it. As an acorn does not have to prove it has the potential to become a tree before it can grow, a human does not have to prove his or her own unique self-hood to realize it. A way to begin to discover your unique self is to keep a daily journal, or a diary entitled, “This is Me.” Each day, write a description of yourself, a one-line entry, or several pages. Be sure to describe yourself in terms of your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, actions, and experiences alone and with others. You may be surprised at how much you discover about yourself and how the horizons of yourself begin to widen. (However, in the day of people trying to get famous and trying to set others up, you may want to put your journal or diary in a locked safe or locked box.) #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
There has always been in all of humanity a sprinkling of those who are described in the scriptures as the blind, the halt, the lame, the deaf, the withered, the dumb, the important folk. We refer to them as having learning or communication disorders, as the hearing or visually impaired, as those with motor or orthopedic limitations. We speak of intellectual or emotional impairment, of intellectual disabilities, and mental illness. Some suffer from a combination of these, and all of them cannot function without some help. Unlike the acorn, which can become only a tree, the range of what you are is far less limited. As a person, a unique individual, you have freedom, choice, and responsibility. As a manipulator, you abdicate all three. The education of man is worth no more than what he is worth inside himself. If he is evil within, he will be aided by a developed intellect to do more harm to others than he would have been able to do without it. If the good is within, he will have more capacity through education to do good to others. A thorough master and understanding of the Hidden Teaching—even if it be intellectual only—will help to refine, educate, and to some extent, even to dissolve the ego, if the knowledge thus obtained is applied. Truth is a dynamic, not a narcotic. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
The primary mission of the Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs is to save lobes and protect property and the environment through prevention, education, suppression, and rescue activities. Some of the actual activities may vary from one fire department to another depending on the locations of the department and what other community organizations are present, but the primary mission of the fire department remains the same. “The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to proving the highest level of public safety service to our community. We protect lives and property through fire suppression, emergency medical and transportation services, disaster service, fire prevention, and public education. Our members will Prevent Harm, Survive and Be Professional!” The culture of the Sacramento Fire Department can be defined as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize the institution. Stress is a fact of life, whenever you are and whatever you are doing. You cannot avoid stress, but you can learn to manage it so it does not manage you. Changes in our lives—such as going to college, getting married, changing jobs, or illness—are frequent sources of stress. Keep in mind that changes that cause stress can also benefit you. Moving away from home to attend college, for example, creates personal-development opportunities—new challenges, friends, and living arrangements. That is why it is important to know yourself and carefully consider the causes of stress. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Learning to take time, and although you cannot avoid stress, the good news is that you can minimize the harmful effects of stress, such as depression or hypertension. They key is to develop an awareness of how you interpret, and react to, circumstances. This awareness will help you develop coping techniques for managing stress. For example, as a captain of the Sacramento Fire Department, managing stress will requires techniques that include an awareness of yourself and your firefighters and EMTs. As you will see, the stress you encounter as a student differs in intensity from what you may experience in the fire department, particularly while on duty, fighting a fire, or provided superior medical care. The principles and techniques you use to manage stress are similar, however, as reported by this lieutenant: “I have learned a lot about how I deal with fatigue and stress from the job. I have found that finding a little time for myself each day or even each week allows me to regenerate and focus. Having a sense of humor and not taking things so personally have also helped reduce my stress levels. Keeping a notebook with me at all times and writing tasks, missions, or even just things to do has helped me keep my mind at ease, rather than thinking that I have forgotten to do something. Maintaining communication with my family and friends, and family in the Sacramento Fire Department, whether through e-mail or phone conversation, also keeps me grounded. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“A school fire was probably the most traumatic experience I ever had as a firefighter. It was my day off from the newspaper. I was with Squad X, and we were a third-alarm squad on that fire. They jumped it from two to five alarms. As we went in, we could see the column of smoke, and we could see the ambulances and the police vehicles coming away from the fire with the injured. When we got in, we were ordered to the roof of this U-shaped building. We had to go up an aerial ladder, and in order to get the ladder we had to run through a crowd of parents, who were running back and forth across the street looking for their children. So we went up to the roof, started opening it up, then we got a three-inch line up there and we were throwing water across a courtyard. We didn’t know at that point what had happened. All this jumping had taken place on the other side of the building. By that time a whole wing of the second floor was fully involved in fire. Fire was coming through the roof. Then they ordered all squad companies to the front of the building. When we came down, a priest came up to us and said that there were seventy-fire children inside the building. At that point, I decided I had to go to work as a reporter. They had plenty of firemen on the scene, but I was the only reporter. So I took off my helmet and went to work as a reporter. At it turned out, ninety-three children and two nuns were killed in that fire. I was very busy while all of it was going on, but a few days later it got to me. I had seen many horrible things in the past, but never anything quite as horrible as this, because anything that affects children hits you harder. It was a few days later that I really got shook up about what had happened and what I had seen. But when you’re young, you’re resilient, and you get over it. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“Years later, I woke up one night with a real sweaty nightmare about that fire. I dreamed about a woman I had seen for maybe three second. I had run past her to get the ladder to go up to the roof. If I saw her today, I would still know her. She had long curly black hair, high heels on, a pink blouse, white slacks, and she had a look on her face—a look of absolute anguish, looking for her child. I hadn’t thought about it at all, and here, ten years later, I wake up in cold sweat dreaming about this woman. And I couldn’t understand why. So I got up and went into my kids’ bedroom to see how they were, and then I realized what it was. My eldest son had just turned eight years old. That was the age—eight, nine, ten—of the children who were killed in that fire. I guess it was, subconsciously, always in my mind. When my own child reached that age, I was so appreciative of having my child that I must have empathized with that woman years later. As a parent I had much more feeling about that fire than I had when I was single. What is interesting about it is the way things stick in your mind, the psychological impact of what you are seeing without knowing it. Today they have counseling for emergency service people, which we didn’t have in those days. Everybody was supposed to be an alpha male. The truth is that us alpha males were bothered by what we saw and what we had to do at times. Today we have counseling, and we understand that what firefighters and EMTs do and see has a tremendous impact on them. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“Recently, the City of Sacramento Fire Department, where I am on the board, responded to a terrible accident, in which three young people were killed. We immediately gave that shift the advantage of having some counseling if they needed it. As it turned out, most of them wanted it. So we realize the toll that all of this takes on our people. I think it’s very healthy to do that type of thing. I don’t think the people at the newspaper, where I work, give much of a thought to my firefighting activity. Most people look on it as a rather strange thing for a person to be doing, but I got used to that years ago. Since it’s not something they would want to do, they wonder why anybody would want to do it. They don’t know the great experiences that we as firefighters have, the things we share with each other, and the satisfaction that comes from doing it. To me, being a firefighter is an enrichment of my life. I’ve never had much enjoyment from watching a fire. It would be a pretty frustrating thing. If I’m in another city and they have a fire, I’ll go an observe and try to learn their way of doing things. But there really isn’t a lot of satisfaction simply watching a fire.” It has always seemed to me that the one great theme around which Shakespeare hung all his writing was, in his torn words: “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Certainly, right thinking is even more important than right action. For if two men both perform the same deed rightly but one does so on false reasons and the other on true ones, the first is always liable to slip later into wrong action but not the second. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
If you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Recuse Fever–They Do Not Need to be Loved by Everyone
All knowledge is beneficial to man in varying degrees. The knowledge of his own soul, being the highest degree of human knowledge, offers the greatest degree of benefit to man. Unless a man exercises his reason—and that at its subtlest pitch—how is he going to wake up from this dream of spinning planets which he sleeps by the mesmeric power of some unseen and unknow Sage? The Light of Christ influences people for good and prepares them to receive the Holy Ghost. One manifestation of the Light of Christ is what we call a conscience. The Light of Christ proceeds forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space. It is the light which is in all things, which gives life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed. This power is an influence for good in the lives of all people. In the scriptures, the Light of Christ is sometimes called the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of God, the Spirt of Christ, or the Light of life. The Light of Christ should not be confused with the Holy Ghost. It is not a personage, as the Holy Ghost is. Its influence leads people to find the true gospel, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. By forming clearer ideas of the Overself’s activity, man can better cooperate with it, and more effectually remove the obstacles which obstruct that activity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Conscience if a manifestation of the Light of Christ, enabling us to judge good from evil. The light of Christ is the divine energy, power, or influence that proceeds from God through Jesus Christ and gives life and light to all things. Man did not first know through his eyes or hands that electricity exists but only through his powers of reason. We know in our best moments that we are merely recipients of power, goodness, and understanding. What the higher self is trying to do in us may be obstructed through ignorance or assisted by knowledge. Intellect is most useful as a servant but most tyrannical as a master. It may hinder progress or accelerate it. Hence, although the philosopher thinks as keenly as any other man, he does not allow his whole self to be submerged in the thinking process. When man refuses to use his intelligence in settling his affairs it is only because he has not sufficiently developed his intelligence to be able to use in this way. However, philosophically speaking, he is blinded by the ego and so seeks satisfaction rather than truth. Such a one does not know that truth brings satisfaction in its train. The magnificent spectacle of the Universe does have a meaning but it is only discoverable when we put such prejudices aside and accept the deliverances of analytic reason concentrated in its impeccable and searching quest. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
As we study from the best books, we protect ourselves against the menacing jaws of those that seek to gnaw at our spiritual roots. As man’s conception of the truth becomes clearer, his aspiration to realize it in his life becomes stronger. This is so and must be so. It is wise to be intellectually familiar with the various ways of approach to the Overself, for this expands one’s outlook and enlarges one’s tolerance; but one should also know what is the correct way for oneself. The intelligence which man possesses will not merely enable him to distinguish between truth and falsity in the consideration of external things, but will finally fulfil itself in enabling him to distinguish between the truth and falsity about his own internal being. That is to say, it will lead him to the knowledge of his own true self, his Overself. Many of the opinions which have found lodgment in his head are not there through impartial investigation or intelligent enquiry but through theaccidents of prejudice, bias, or heredity. We live in a day in which misfortune about our beliefs abounds. In times such as these, a failure to protect and deepen our spiritual roots is an invitation to have then gnawed on by an invitation by those who seek to destroy our faith in Christ and our belief in His restored Church. In Book of Mormon times, it was Zeezrom who sought to destroy the faith of the believers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
His actions and words were a snare of the adversary, which he laid to catch the people, that he might bring them into subjection unto him, that he might encircle them about with chains. Those same snares exist today, and unless we are spiritually vigilant and build a secure foundation on our Redeemer, we may find ourselves bound with Satan’s chains and being led carefully down the forbidden paths spoken of in the Book of Mormon. “And after they had tasted of the fruit, they were ashamed, because of those that were scoffing at them; and they fell away into forbidden paths and were lost,” reports 1 Nephi 8.28. The intelligence which man possess will not merely enable him to distinguish between truth and falsity in the consideration of external things, but will finally fulfil itself in enabling him to distinguish between the truth and falsity about his own internal being. That is to say, it will lead him to the knowledge of his own true self, his Overself. The increase in Sabbath day observance is but one example of members spiritually fortifying themselves by heeding prophetic invitations. Further strengthening is evidences in the increase in temple and family history work as families gather their ancestors through temple ordinances. Our spiritual roots go deeper as sincere personal and family prayer become bastions of our faith and we repent daily, seek the companionship of the Holy Ghost, and learn of our Savior and His attributes and strive to become like Him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
In all intellectual and scholastic studies, there is a secondary result which, whether recognized or not, is their most valuable one when judged from an evolutionary standpoint. It is the power of concentrated attention. Even if the student fails to master his subject or to solve his problem, nevertheless to the extent that he sincerely and diligently tries, this power is necessarily drawn upon, used, and developed. Both the mental effort needed to attend to the subject or problem and the desire to wrest the meaning of it, benefit the student even when his studies fail in their specific object. From the one he progresses a step forward toward greater ability to concentrate. From the other he gets a stimulus to his aspiration for truth. One day, both will be applied to the spiritual quest. He lifts himself above the herd, and becomes a student of philosophy, who sees who most people come to rest or even go to sleep in mere opinion. They have not enquired further whether it be truth—perhaps because they lack either the intellectual competence to do so or the preliminary knowledge of comparative opinion which shows up its contradictoriness, perhaps because they begin to find truth displeasing to their biased temperament and disagreeable to their prejudiced mind, perhaps because they are overawed by the massive impressiveness of tradition, authority, and established institutional teaching, or finally perhaps because the truth might prove disturbing to their personal position. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
When clever, able, experienced, and idealistic men tell you, for example, that a particular doctrine negates all that Christ stood for, and when other men, equally clever able experienced and idealistic, tell you that it fulfills Christ’s ideals, then you have a clear illustration of the truth that some people are able to hold on to their present views only by shutting their eyes and stopping their ears to other ones. The intellectual study of these truths is not without great values. It prepares him for their eventual realization, nourishes his soul, strengthens his higher will, and encourages his finer hopes. Moreover, holy reverence is born of itself as he meditates on the picture of universal intelligence which thus unfolds before his gave. When it is said that all is opinion, it must further be said that all views of God exist in the minds of men as their opinions, too. The value of such opinions is only what these men give to it. For a view which is beyond the mental capacity of an unevolved person is of little value to him, whereas it may be life-saving to an evolved truth-seeker. If the critical sense were lacking, how could a man perceive the insufficiency of earthly aims, the transitoriness of earthly life, and the unsatisfactoriness of earthly happiness? And without such perfection why should he turn away to seek spiritual satisfactions? #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Every man who has enough capacity to reflect upon his life-experience, has also to acknowledge that some power superior to himself—let him call it chance or God, fate or spirit—exists. “And know ye that ye shall be judges of this people, according to the judgement which I shall give unto you, which shall be just. Therefore, what manner of men ought yet to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am,” reports 3 Nephi 27.27. Our Savior Jesus Christ, is the Light of the World, and He beckons us to follow Him. We must look to Him at all times and especially so if there are dark and stormy nights when the tempest of doubt and uncertainty, like rolling fog, creeps in. Should the pointed fingers “from the other side of the river of water, [where] a great and spacious building [stands]” (1 Nephi 8.26) appear to be directed at you in the attitude of mocking, demeaning, and beckoning, I ask that you immediately turn away so that you are not persuaded by cunning and devious means to separate yourself from truth and its blessings. However, this alone will not be enough in this day when perverse things are being spoken, written, and portrayed. Elder Robert D. Hales taught us, “Unless you are fully engaged in living the gospel—living it with all of your heart, heart, might, mind and strength—you cannot generate enough spiritual light to push back the darkness.” Surely, our desire to follow Christ, who is the Light of the World, means we must act on His teaching. We are spiritually strengthened, fortified, and protected as we act on the word of God. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
It is the philosopher’s business to reject falsehood and therefore he refuses to swallow misleading statements merely because they have been well-baited on the surface with the sugar of true ones. So much that we esteem as solid fact is quite often nothing more than merely imagination. Enquiry is necessary. The same intellect whose activity deters most men from discovering God’s presence within themselves can be used to discover this presence. Something like this was noticed by Francis Bacon in England, and he put his idea into one of his essays. Time and thought, experience and experiment, study and practice initiation and instruction are all needed to teach a man how to distinguish between the final truth and its countless counterfeits. With growing enlightenment and increasing confidence, he becomes more expert. The intensity with which a view is held tells us something about its holder, nothing about the truth of that view. When they must form an opinion, come to a decision, make a judgment, or choose between alternatives, men consult past experience, listen to authority, obey tradition, or yield to the strongest elements in their own personal character. The imagination creates its own idols which it worships as the true God. Therefore, reason must be called in to cast them down. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Disillusionment about pseudo- or half-truths often precedes discovery of the real or full truth. Too many simple persons, whether Easten or Occidentals, do not seem able to distinguish between mere mythology and authentic history. The development of a discriminating faculty is as necessary in religion as in the marketplace. If the mind has been trained to reject a falsehood, be it born from within self or received from others, it will be better able to let the Truth shine unhindered in itself. The first value of correct teaching is that it purges the seeker of many errors in understanding. This purgation in its turn saves him from committing many errors in conduct. Here is its practical value. The second value is that its light instantly exposes imposture, charlatanry, exploitation, or evil in other teachings and in their exponents. There are true as well as false opinions, adequate as well as groundless beliefs. We may freely hold opinions and beliefs, provided they are supported by sufficient evidence. The greater the light in our lives, the fewer the shadows. However, even in an abundance of light, we are exposed to people and comments that misrepresent our beliefs and try our faith. “The trying of [our] faith worketh patience,” reports James 1.3. With this insight, Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, “A patient disciple…will not be surprised nor undone when the Church is misrepresented.” Besore enlightenment can be received into consciousness, a measure of sharpness to discern the real from its appearance, as well as of detachment, must be acquired. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
In a way, the term actualization (to make or become real) is another chapter in the history of the human endeavor to define what constitutes a good life, what it is to have a life well-lived. A great body of writings, from antiquity to the present, documents the human impulse to know what makes life good, meaningful, and, therefore, worthwhile. In the Christian Bible, we find Christ telling us, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly,” reports John 10.10. Indeed, the Christian Bible is rich with commentary about what makes a worthwhile life. Classical drama and the Greek philosophers addressed the nature of humankind in terms of meaning and potential. The great literature of the Renaissance included many work of this nature, such as The Courtier by Castiglione, The Governor by Sir Thomas Elyot, and Utopia by Sir Thomas More. The common threads in all of these writings are what enriches an individual life (intrapersonal), how an individual contributes to the common good (interpersonal) and what is the human place in eternity (spiritual and conceptual). Dr. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in a sense, is a part of this tradition, but his studies and writings emphasize the darker side of the human being. His concern is with what makes a human life “bad.” He studied the human as being diseased, and his revolutionary concept has influenced nearly every aspect of our culture and has confined much of psychology to a medical model. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Reacting against the Freudian emphasis on disease and returning to the larger tradition as described above, Dr. Abraham Maslow studied healthy humans and discovered the concept of “self-actualization.” Whereas many psychologists, following Dr. Freud’s medical model, believed that we could understand psychological health by first understanding psychological illness, Dr. Maslow suggested the alternative viewpoint. He taught that we can understand psychological health by studying the lives of people who have achieved a high degree of interpersonal satisfaction and self-fulfillment, the healthy champions. It is largely from his research that we draw our understanding of these people. The persons he studied included acquaintances, friends, and such public and historical figures as President Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Dr. Einstein, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Schweitzer, G.W. Carver, and Henry David Thoreau. Although these individuals cannot be described as perfect by any standard (no human is), their lives and the qualities that informed them, as discovered and defined by Dr. Maslow, provided valuable guidelines to us. In general, he said: By definition, self-actualizing people are gratified in all their basic needs…They have a feeling of belongingness and rootedness, they are satisfied in their loved needs, have friends and feel loved and loveworthy, they have status and place in life and respect from other people, and they have a reasonable feeling of worth and self-respect. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
His study discloses the fact that self-actualizing persons whose basic needs are satisfied have additional motivations of an even higher nature. Some are conceptual: they delight in bringing about justice, they try to set things right, to clean up bad situations; they manage somehow simultaneously to love the world as it is and to try to improve it; in all cases [studied] it was as if they could see both good and evil realistically. Some higher motivations are interpersonal: they do not need loved by everyone; they like to reward and praise promise, talent, virtue; [they have] great pleasure in their children and in helping them grow into good adults. Some are intrapersonal: they love doing things well, “doing a good job”; they enjoy taking on responsibilities (that they can handle well); and certainly, do not fear or evade their responsibilities. Even though a mere 1 percent of the population, by Dr. Maslow’s reckoning, is fully self-actualized, knowing of real people with these qualities furnishes the rest of us with models for emulation. Such models are necessary precursors to change because they help us to form the “idea” of a new, manipulation-freer life. Unless we can concretely envision ourselves, “being real,” we are stuck with our old masks and deceptions. We learn to discriminate in practical affairs and among material things as to what they seem to be and what they really are. However, the faculty can be applied on a much higher level of existence and a more abstract one, depending on the cultural or personal quality of a man. Its highest application is to separate the Truth about God, the Universe, and oneself from its appearances and their Realities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Being real has a great deal to do with appreciating our own uniqueness, as Martin Buber expresses it in his book The Way of Man: Every person born into this World represents something new, something that never existed before something original and unique. “It is the duty of every person…to know and consider that he is unique in the World in his particular character and that there has never been anyone life him in the World.” Every man’s foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved. Dr. Maslow’s “healthy champions,” seem to understand their singularity in the World, as described by Mr. Buber, but they also have many common characteristics. In the film Maslow and Self-Actualization and in his books, he describes some of their common traits. With contradictions eliminated or reconciled, with errors corrected and new fertile concepts introduced, and with his ideas ranged in an orderly pattern, he can attain some intellectual clarity. Not only was there some fact as well as some exaggeration in Anatole France’s assertion—sceptic and cynic though he usually was—that “all is Opinion!” but it could be restated as “All is secondhand opinion!” They wittingly or unwittingly impose their own opinions, theories, beliefs, and concepts upon the object perceived or the happenings experienced. The result may come near to, or be far from, the truth, depending on their advancement, but it is unlikely to be the whole truth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
We have a puritanical attitude toward physical contact in the United States of America and northern Europe. Touching, embracing, and holding hands all appear to be restricted to relationships between parents and young children or between married men and women. In Latin countries, such as France or Italy, and in Asiatic and African countries, it is more common to see men holding hands as they walk down the street or embracing upon greeting one another. Physical contact is given more meanings there than as a prelude to arousal of pleasures of the flesh or an expression of parental concern, as has been the case in our culture. We appear to observe strong taboos relating to touching, yet touching and massage are direct ways to awaken a dormant sense of embodiment. Dr. Jourard conducted a study of touching among college students, their parents, and their friends. Several hundred students were asked to show, on a questionnaire, the areas of their bodies on which touches had been exchanged with their mothers, fathers, closet same-gender friend, and close friend of the opposite gender. The data indicated that not a great deal of touching went on between these students and their parents and their same-gendered friends. With the opposite-gender friend, considerably more touching was exchanged, presumably an expression of affection and erotic caressing. However, the data showed that many of the students tested did not have a lover and were virtually “out of touch” with the people in their lives. These findings suggest that many Americans may be starved for sensual physical contact without being aware of what they are missing. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
The experience of total body massage (not just back rub) slowly and sensuously conducted can produce extreme relaxation, and a softening of the these “muscular armor” from which many people suffer. Esalen Institute. The growth center at Big Sur, California, pioneered in introducing such massage to larger public. Bernard Gunther’s books Sense Relaxation and What to Do Till the Messiah Comes are readable accounts of ways to relax another person through massage, and to heighten one’s capacity to sense the world through touch as well as taste and smell. Physical contact is coming gradually to be incorporated into the helping repertoires of psychotherapists, in both the psychiatric and psychological professions, in recognition of the fact that problems of a psychological nature occur to an embodied person, and hence have somatic concomitants that can be treated directly. Locate the neurogenetic centers where the future action is happening. There you will find Evolutionary Agents—the Out-Castes. Counter-Evolutionary Agents consistently make the mistake of focusing on today’s bureaucrat-power-holders, who are already outdated by the predom species. In slow moving pre-technological eras, this was a passable strategy. Evolutionary Agents always focus on the predom species—the stages to come. Mr. Aristotle hung out with teenage Alexander of Macedon, not the reigning Philip. Locate the Western Frontier centers and exchange signals with the youthful elite who are always visible in frontal-lobe regions. #RandolphHarris 15 of25
In every terrestrial society there are pupal training centers to which the most successful gene pools send their most intelligent larvals. The future of each gene pool is blueprinted in the minds of its superior adolescents. Teenage brains are the hatcheries of future-realities. In Eastern countries, you will find university students docile and insectoid obedient. Guess what this hive devotion predicts for the future of China. In the midbrain Sematic countries, you will find university students violently nationalistic and fanatically patriotic. In French elite academies, you will find serious technocrats. Mon Dieu imagine what that means for the future of France. Tant Pis. At the frontal lobe, Sun Belt Universities, you will find the young of the predom species obsessed with disciplined self-actualized hedonic freedom. Sign up for the college lecture circuit on the Western Front. There you will learn what is going to happen. And perhaps, maybe, you can influence this hatching future a tiny, tiny bit. We speak of colors as loud, harsh, soft, or mellow without even noticing that we do this, and of people as being cold, or warm, or bright, or dull, or sweet, or sour or crusty. It is not at all confusing to the senses to be “mixed up” in this way unless I get mixed up about it. Our categories, in any case, are not as clearly defined as we link to think them. In the garden the other day, a young woman sniffed and asked, “What smells like beer?” It was the roses. Perhaps, not all roses smell like beer, but these roses did—I had written “do” but changed it, as I do not know even if the roses on this bush always smell the same. I have not noticed. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
That taste and smell are related is something that we are taught, but we can notice for ourselves that other senses are related too. “I smell purple” is not a ridiculous statement but opens me to possibilities which I have been ignoring. It is no “sillier” than “I feel blue.” When I was suffering an infirmary, I noticed that pains “have” color, shape, movement, temperature and voice. It seems to me that the ability to notice may be more a matter of our noticing than of individual differences. If I “forget my pain” (as I am told to do), I cannot notice it. And so with dreams. And with the experiencing of something much greater than myself in me. Whatever I dismiss, I cannot explore. Like the doctor in New Jersey who was furious when penicillin was discovered because his bacteria cultures were killed by molds too, and he kept throwing them out instead of studying them as Alexander Fleming did. What else are we not noticing that would be helpful to us? Therefore, Americans, remember, it is important to not only be loyal in what you do and say, but you must prove it by doing conscientious, good, and honest work in the service of the MAGA movement. It goes without saying that the well-qualified members of the Party are not regular Republicans, they are elite, patriotic, God-loving Americas and are preferred to non-members of the party who are equally well-qualified, but nobody is hired on the basis of their membership in the Party alone. The determined manner in which the new business manager stands for these principles and gradually carries them out in spite of all resistance proves to be a great advantage to the movement. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Training to become a fire fighter with the Sacramento Fire Department is challenging. The art and science of extinguishing fires is much more complex than most people imagine. The Sacramento Fire Department and their EMTs are challenged—both physically and mentally—during this course. They must keep their body in excellent condition so that they can complete their assignments; they must also remain mentally alter to cope with the various conditions they will encounter. Fire fighter and EMT training expands their understanding of recuse and fire suppression—that is, the various activities involved in recovery and in controlling and extinguishing fires. When you join the Sacramento Fire Department, you join a profession with a long and noble history of protecting and serving the community. By the time you complete the course with the Sacramento Fire Department, you will be well equipped to continue a more than centuries-old tradition of preserving lives and property threatened by fires. The Sacramento Fire Department and their EMTs have an understanding of the many duties and responsibilities of the fire service and emergency medical system, and they have a feeling of personal satisfaction about their accomplishments. However, for the Sacramento Fire Department and their EMTs complete physical fitness is not just about exercise, but also includes good nutrition and a sensible diet. They maintain a healthy body weight and body fat percentage through sound diet and exercise to ensure the best health, fitness, and physical performance. All of these things are relevant to maintaining military readiness and achieving peak performance. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Knowing the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Guidelines and understanding the Food Pyramid to determine your daily requirements of carbohydrates, proteins, and fat will help you make healthy food choices and improve your physical fitness. In addition, USDA has an interactive website to help you track your diet. Visit: www.myplate.gov, where you can personalize your diet by age, gender, and general fitness level. A health diet has the right kinds of foods in the right amounts. The Food Pyramid, now replaced by the Food Plate, was preferred because it represented many things. The pyramid shape is an ancient shape and is universally regocnized as a symbol of stability and strength. Its broad base supports a narrow peak, representing a solid foundation with the ability to rise towards the heavens. This ancient architectural form has inspired awe and reverence in various cultures throughout history. In the Sacramento Fire Department, they envision a person walking up the pyramid as a need for physical daily activity and different individuals’ different nutrition needs. The different width of the food ground bands indicates the need for proportion—how much should choose from each group. The six color bands symbolize the food you need daily from each group for good health. The six color brans symbolize the food the Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs need daily from each group for good health. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Orange (grains): USDA recommends you eat at least three ounces of whole-grain bread, cereal, crackers, rice, or pasta every day. Half your grains should be whole. To make sure you are eating whole grains, look for the word “whole” before the grain on the list of ingredients. Green (vegetables): You should vary vegetable servings, eating more dark green vegetables, orange vegetables, and dried beans and peas. Red (fruits): Eat a variety of fresh, frozen, canned, or dried fruit, but go easy on fruit juices, which may contain empty calories in the form of added sugars and sweeteners. (R.W. Knudsen Family makes some healthy juices, one of my favorite is Just Cranberry, you can pick it up at Walmart, along with some other healthy options.) Yellow (oils and fats): Most of your fats should come from fish, nuts, and vegetable oils. Limit your consumption of solid fats like butter, stick margarine, shortening, and lard. Although Crisco fried chicken is a classic Southern Delight, not just because of the nostalgia, but because of the warmth, rich flavor, texture, and tradition of this crispy and golden delicacy, when possible, consume foods with omega fish oils, which help maintain your cardiovascular health. Blue (milk, an important source of calcium): Now, I know some of you love to drink Half and Half because it is rich and creamy, choose low-fat or fat-free milk. If you do not or cannot drink milk, choose lactose-free products or other sources of calcium, such as hard cheese (cheddar mozzarella, Swiss, or parmesan), cottage cheese, and low-fat or fat-free yogurt (including frozen yogurt). Purple (meat, beans, and eggs): You may notice that this band, like the yellow band for oils, is thinner than the others. This visually reminds you to “Go lean on protein.” Choose low-fat or lean meats and poultry that are baked, broiled, or grilled rather than friend. Vary your choices, including more sustainably sourced fish, beans, peas, nuts, and seeds (however, if you have digestive issues, avoid all seeds). If meat typically covers most of your plate, take another look at the classic Food Pyramid. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Substance to avoid for proper health and fitness—to reflect a mature decision and to set a good example for their unit, the Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs have a diet that mirrors a wise lifestyle choice that helps them live a longer, more productive life. The Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs avoid substances that detract from their physical performance or harm their health (drugs, tobacco, alcohol, etcetera). Many people in our society have traditionally believed that alcohol—wine, beer, or hard liquor—relaxes you, increases your self-confidence, and alters your perception of stress or fatigue. It is true that for most people, light consumption of alcoholic beverages can be a pleasant social diversion. However, habitual, heavy drinking or binge drinking can cause severe dehydration, decreased performance, dependence, and harm to your metabolism. If they even choose to drink at all, the Sacramento Fire Department expects their firefighters and EMTs to exercise their judgment and drink responsibly, which includes obeying all laws regarding drinking and the legal drinking age. And never drink to “quench your thirst” before, during, or after a workout. (I know some fitness models encourage people to have a shot of Vodka before workouts, but that could be life threatening.) Cigarettes, cigars, marijuana, crack cocaine, cocaine, vaping, MDMA all could be laced with heroin and/fentanyl and could be deadly. Not only that, but they contain a whole gamut of cancer-causing chemicals that provide no beneficial health effects, and vaping can lead to irreversible lung damage. Some maintain that the “buzz” from tobacco leads to improved performance and reaction times, but no medical evidence supports this position. If you do not smoke at all, in the interest of good physical fitness, it is best. If you do smoke, however, limits your intake and avoid smoking before, during, and after workouts. Smoking increases your heart rate and blood pressure. (And do not normalize smoking marijuana, it is dangerous and children may adopt the habit, and remember, it is still federally illegal and known to cause excessive weight gain. Just because everyone is having premarital does not mean it is not against the Law of Chastity and not a sin in the eyes of God.) #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Furthermore, controlled substances are those strictly regulated by the government and may require medical prescriptions. You should use such substances only under medical supervision. Other drugs such as amphetamines, narcotics, steroids, and other so-called “performance enhancing drugs” are illegal and banned by the Sacramento Fire Department. These drugs change performance by increasing central nervous system arousal. They increase your heart rate and blood pressure and they may cause dizziness, nauseas, irritability, insomnia—even death. No one in the Sacramento Fire Department or who is interested in good physical fitness consumes these substances; they can only detract from your performance in both the short and long term. They Sacramento Fire Department forbids their use. Keep in mind, health and fitness are integral parts of the Sacramento Fire Department’s life. They are critical for readiness and important to the well-being of the individual Fire Fighter and EMT. Although not a cure-all, a properly planned fitness program yields many physical and mental benefits. Effective physical training can improve your body composition (decrease body fat and increase lean body weight), ability to work, mental alertness, self-confidence, and general well-being. Exercise also decreased metabolic and mental health risks, such as high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke, anxiety, depression, and much more. With assistance from your Sacramento Fire Department instructors, you are able to apply the Sacramento Fire Department’s general fitness principles to create a self-directed physical training program that meets your needs and fulfills your personal and personal goals. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“In one month, we have fifty people apply for jobs with the Sacramento Fire Department, but where was a hard core of only ten or fifteen men who were in it for the firefighter. I’ve noticed this is typical, the same ten or fifteen guys you can count on. These are the ones who will take the courses, show up for the drills, and whenever they are available, they will never miss a fire. They can have a 100-degree Fahrenheit fever, and if that alarm goes off, they are going to drag out of bed and get to the fire. Your bond as a firefighter or EMT is always with that hard-core group who are the active firefighters and medical team. Fire Fighters and EMTs with the Sacramento Fire Department have great pride in his company, whether he is full-time, part-time, or training. Outsiders can’t understand that. On Squad X in Sacramento we always felt we were the best, we could meet any challenge. We called ourselves gladiators. We thought we were invincible. The same thing was true on other companies that I have been on. We thought that we could meet whatever we had to face, and we always did—a great feeling of accomplishment. People say it’s an unusual job. It’s not a job at all. A great part of my life would be empty if it were not for the Sacramento Fire Department. Firefighting is a way of life. You will be in a rotten fire situation—filthy dirty, cold, coated with ice—it’s been a long hard night, and yet you feel sorry for the people who have not had that experience. Among firefighters and EMTs, you feel good about each other and about yourself. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Outsiders can’t understand the feeling you get when a bell rings and you know you’re gonna go. The tension you feel when a box comes in, when you’re not due on the box, but you’re due on the second. Waiting to see if they’re going to pull the second alarm or not. Everybody gets up and goes to the bathroom, because you don’t know if you’re going to get another chance. Then all of the sudden there is a feeling of exhilaration when the bell starts ringing, they’ve pulled the second alarm and you’re going. You’re going to be challenged. The feeling you get when you’re on your ways and you look up and see that column of smoke or that glow, and you know you’re going to have a working fire. It isn’t that you want something bad to happen to someone else, that’s not it at all. It’s the feeling of all, the strangest feeling, is the one that you have when you’re on your way there, and they tell you on the radio that people are trapped. I call it “rescue fever,” and it comes over the whole company. It’s a shot of adrenaline. You do things you didn’t believe were physically possible. The idea that somebody is trapped in there, and you’re going to have to get them. I’ve always admired what firefighters have been able to do. Sometimes it’s also a bit frightening, because it has led people do try to do more than they should have and get themselves into extremely dangerous situations. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“The feeling you get when you are in, and the entire building is involved, and you know that it’s going to a second or third alarm. There is just your one engine there, you’re laying out that one line, and you know that help has been called for but hasn’t gotten there yet. There is that state of suspended animation—you’re throwing water from that one two-and-a-half-inch line, and it doesn’t mean a thing in that volume of fire. Then you start hearing the sirens coming from the other apparatus. You have this confidence that the system is going to work. It may take ten, twenty, thirty companies to do it, but in the end you’re going to get the job done. One of the greatest satisfactions of all is when you’re in the trenches, where you have a big fire, and there you are, one company, the five or six of you are right at the point where that fire has to be stopped. There are maybe a hundred guys out there and twenty or thirty pieces of apparatus, you just know when it’s your company that has gotten into the right position and you’re the ones who made the stop on the fire. When I was in high school, I played football Oakland Coliseum, and I get the same thrill fighting fires. It’s totally overwhelming. Adrenaline flowing superstrength. Everything. It’s the excitement I’m in it for. I like to work on the older guys when they say we’re not being paid enough. Although it is true, we love our careers. You get many fires in Sacramento. We’re becoming the arson capital of the World.” #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Join OKO Designs on May 25th for a fun and hands-on 3-hour stained glass workshop at The Winchester Mystery House. You will learn how to select, cut, grind, and copper foil glass, then solder your pieces together into a beautiful Daisy ornament. Perfect for beginners! ✨
All materials are included—and best of all, you will take your finished creation home the same day! 🌼
Very limited seating – get tickets now
Please note: All participants are required to sign a waiver and watch a safety video prior to the workshop—both are included in your booking confirmation email. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company. Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs – not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/
BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/
Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers
Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html
The City of Oakland is an equal-opportunity employer that values workforce diversity, inclusion, and equity. Oakland has a long history of activism around issues of justice and equity. Both oppression and this resistance to oppression have shaped the city’s historical roots and the lives of its residents to this day. As public servants in one of the most diverse cities in the nation, we strive to develop employees who understand the harm and impacts of systemic inequity to create lasting, meaningful outcomes for everyone. Oakland strives to establish an environment that embraces the richness of culture, community, and individualism of employees.
Experiencing the Unpredictability of Life
Risk and contingency surround us, as though our every act were a stone dropped in a pond. The number of potential risks and potential outcomes are beyond our knowing. Humans feel powerless. Many people feel like, “Since I cannot control everything that will determine what happens to me, I have no control at all.” Experiencing the unpredictability of life, some people give up and enact their feelings of having no possibility of affecting what happens to one. These people make themselves totally an object. Those with power and authority, on the other hand, sometimes victimize other people, capitalizing on their powerlessness. Parents who are oppressed by the dread of powerlessness often need to make their children excessively dependent upon them and to defeat the child’s efforts to gain independence. Usually, the parent is someone with power and authority and the child is the subordinate, and we see the use of the, “If you eat your potatoes, then you may watch television.” “If you do your homework, then you may use the car.” Naturally, the child soon learns the technique, too: “If I mow the lawn, then how much money do I get?” “If Jim’s father lets him use the car every weekend, then why will you not?” #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The truly power and authority manipulator might simply roar: “Do as I say and no questions.” We see it in business: “I own 51 percent of the stock, and they will work on Saturday s because I want them to.” Even in education the founder of a certain college used to say: “I do not care what color the buildings are, so long as they are blue.” It has been discovered that schizophrenics are intensely afraid of close interpersonal relationships and so they try to avoid them. People play games to regulate their emotions and thereby avoid intimacy. One of our basic fears is the fear of involvement. In effect, then, a manipulator is a person who ritualistically relates to people in an effort to avoid intimacy or involvement. Furthermore, each of us learns certain illogical assumptions about living. One of them is the dire necessity to ne approved by everyone. Those who lack power and authority, but are manipulators are persons who refuse to be truthful and honest with others and instead try to please everyone because they foolishly believe that they must gain everyone’s approval. People manipulate because they are afraid. For instance, Muffy sat of a bar stool night after night, drinking whiskey sours. One evening a rather rough character sat down beside her. He frightened her, but she did not run away. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Eventually, she married him in order to take care of him so that he could write better novels. When he was drunk, he beat her physically and when he was sober, he humiliated her verbally, but still she did not run away. The group members were at first sorry for her and horrified at her husband’s behavior, but as moths elapsed, their attitude changed. “How about getting up off your tuffet and doing something about it?” they would say. “You seem real happy when you have a sad story to tell us, so you are really playing a hard game of ‘Ain’t It Awful.’” One day, Dr. Q asked Muffy what her favorite fairy tale was. “I do not have one,” she replied. “But I have a favorite nursery rhyme, ‘Little Miss Muffet.’” “So that is why you sit on your tuffet.” “Yes, I was sitting on one when he met me.” “So, why does he not frighten you away?” “Because when I was little, my mother told me if I ever ran away from home, I would get into worse trouble than I was in already.” “Well, what about the original tuffet?” someone asked. “Oh, you mean the potty? Well, they certainly made me sit there, and they frightened me with their threats, but I was too scared to get up and run away.” Thus, her script was like Miss Muffett’s, only she was allowed to run away, and did not know where she could run to. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Meanwhile, instead of whey, she drank whiskey. The group gave her permission to get up off her tuffet, throw away her whey, and strike out for herself. Previously, she had always looked sour, but now she began to smile. What her husband knew was that after you said Hello to Miss Muffet, you said Boo! and she was supposed to run away. Most girls did, but Muffy did not. If you say Boo! to miss Muffet and she does not run away, the only thing to do is say Boo! again, and that is what he did. In fact, one way or another, that was about all he ever said to her, expect maybe Pooh! Clinical Analysis: Little Miss Muffet sits on a tuffet feeling curdy and waiting for a spider, which is all she can hope for. When he comes, he tries to frighten her, but she decides that he is the most beautiful spider in the world and stays with him. He continues to frighten her periodically and she refuses to run away. However, when he says that she frightens him, that really scares her. She looks around for another spider, but cannot find one as beautiful as her own, so she sticks with him as long as she can help him spin. Clinical Diagnosis: Character disorder. Nursery Rhyme: Little Miss Muffet. Roles: Rescuer, Victim. Switches: Victim (of circumstances) to Rescuer (of men) to Victim (of men). Parental Precept: “Do not give up.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Parental Pattern: “Here is how to endure it—drink.” Parental Injunction: “Do not leave, you will get into worse trouble.” Position: “I am O.K.—if I help him produce.” Decision: “If I cannot produce, I will find someone who can.” Sweatshirt: Front—“I Can Handle It.” Back—“Kick Me.” Games: “Kick Me,” “Is It Not Awful.” Antithesis: Stop sitting on your tuffet and stop drinking. Permission: To strike out on her own. Classification: Little Miss Muffet is a nonwinner’s script. She is not ever going to get ahead, but at least she has a spider to sit down beside her. It is a Goal-Structured Can Script with the slogan: “You can help him produce.” It is based on an “Until” plan, “Sit by yourself until you meet a spider prince, then you can start living.” The time between Hello and Good Night is structured with quarrels and drinking and loving and work. One of the way in which people louse themselves up is by looking outside instead of in. Sometimes people think they are doing well because they are freer than their friends. They keep an eye on the distance between them, and as long as there is this same distance, they think that they are doing all right. However, many do not notice that their friends are narrowing down, and that when the distance between them remained the same, the individual was also narrowing down as much as their friends are. Their “superiority” is an illusion. There is absolutely no growth being made. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Some settle for a notion of “maturity” which is an end. They do not notice any of this until they get so pinched, unfree and unhappy (in spite of many happinesses) that they have become desperate. Then, one realizes that what one should have don’t was to keep track of oneself—one’s own direction. Reactions of anxiety often escape attention because the customary defenses against anxiety are set going instantaneously. Shoulds have a coercive power. A person may function fairly well as long as he lives in accordance with his inner dictates. However, if he is caught between two contradictory shoulds, he may be thrown out of gear. For instance, one many felt that he should be the ideal physician and give all his time to his patients. However, he should also be the ideal husband and give his wife as much time as she needed to be happy. When realizing he could not do both to the full, mild anxiety ensured. It remained mild because he immediately tried to solve the Gordian knot by cutting it with a sword: by determining to settle down in the country. This implied his whole professional future. The dilemma was finally solved satisfactorily by analyzing it. However, it shows that amount of despair that can be generated by conflicting inner dictates. One woman almost went to pieces because she could not combine being an ideal mother with being an ideal wife, the latter meaning to her being all enduring toward an alcoholic husband. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If not indeed impossible, naturally such contradictory should render it difficult to make a rational decision between them because the opposite demands are equally coercive. One patient had sleepless nights because he could not decide whether he should go with his wife on a short vacation or stay in his office and work. Should be measure up to his wife’ expectations or to the alleged expectations of his employer? The question as to what he wanted most did not enter his mind at all. And, on the basis of the should, the matter simply could not be decided. A person is never aware either of the full impact of the inner tyranny or of its nature. However, there are great individual differences in the attitudes toward this tyranny and the ways of experiencing it. They range between the opposite poles of compliance and rebellion. While elements of such different attitudes operate in each individual, usually one or the other prevails. To anticipate later distinctions, the attitudes toward and ways of experiencing inner dictates are primarily determined by the greatest appeal life holds for the individual mastery, love, or freedom. The belief that the unaided reason of man can solve all his problems is merely an expression of reason’s own arrogance. Unless it co-operates with mystical insight, its best solutions of ultimate questions will either be fictitious ones or contradictory ones. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
At the end of all this work what does he get? Does he touch reality? The answer is no. He simply gets one thought instead of another, replaces an old thought by a new one. There is here a danger that the replacement may be the exact opposite of the thought which it replaces—as if he were substituting a correct concept for an erroneous one. However, this still does not bring him into reality, the knowledge of which is Truth. There is indeed only one way out of this impasse and that is to recognize that the plane of thoughts and concepts is not the plane which holds the real but must be transcended. This realization is a kind of crisis which enables him to admit that they way of the intellect is in the end a circular way leading from one thought to another and that it must be transcended. However, the thinking has led to one useful result, though it is indeed a negative result: it has told him what reality is not, and the use of thought has enabled him to destroy the belief that thought is the way to the goal. It is much like the metaphor about the use of one thorn to remove another which had got stuck in the finger. And so, this point reached, it is but one step further to perceive that the consciousness which holds all thoughts is what he is really seeking and not those projections from it which appear as concepts, ideas, and thoughts. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
There, in this consciousness, he can come to peace: the peace of the silent Mind, the transcendental Mind. Once he has become steeped deeply in this realization, he perceives with full clarity that it is not the movement from one set of beliefs or one set of ideas to a new one which is going to complete his search but the redirection of attention to THAT which is behind all thoughts—the reorientation of concentration to THAT which is in the gap between two thoughts. If this is done with perseverance and sustained with patience, Truth dawns upon him either slowly or swiftly and then stays with him forever and cannot be broken by any form of materialism in thinking, of dualism in belief, or personality cult in practice. He looks henceforth only to the infinitude of Being which is within him, within the cosmos, and has always been so. If indeed in meditation the World disappears, he does not need to go so far as the Advaitans and assert that there is no world! If in wide activity it reappears, he knows it is still a phenomenon, an appearance made by mind, issuing forth from mind, and the Ultimate Mind was there and is there now. Whatever form thoughts and concepts may take, he knows them for what they are and does not let go of That which is their ultimate origin. This is real knowledge, for it is practice, it is life and not a concept. No single human faculty is alone adequate to the search for truth. All must be used, including intuition, and finally crowned by a new one—insight. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Once blindness, crippling, or debilitating disease have afflicted a person, it is natural that the person’s life will be thrown into chaos. Plans for the future will have been disrupted. It becomes a physical impossibility for the person to exploit former sources of satisfaction. If personal security and self-esteem have been dependent upon certain kinds of activity that are now precluded, then his or her life will seem empty and futile indeed. When a heart ailment makes it necessary to give up active sports, an athlete may become very depressed. Someone whose self-esteem is predicated primarily on physical beauty will see little point in living, following an accident that leaves that person with unsightly scars. The reactions of depression and self-pity are inevitable when handicap occurs. What we are interested in here is the person’s reactions to the emotional responses. The most common unhealthy reason is resignation. Resignation to handicap means giving up, or “digging in” for a life devoid of satisfaction. When resignation occurs, and last for more than some period of time, say six months to a year, the resigner may be deriving some kind of enjoyment from the affliction and the power it affords. The person may make claims on intact people, in accordance with the idea, “Since the world has handed me such a dirty deal, I am entitled to a lot of support and consideration from others.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Many physically disabled persons, however, have provided our culture with superb examples of the healthy personality through the courageous manner in which they have been able to integrate their tough physical problems into a fully functioning philosophy of life. A man began to have “epileptic” seizures some years ago. They were intense, grand-mal convulsions, such that he frequently broke his hands as he thrashed about during the period of unconsciousness. Over a period of years, the medications to control the seizures elevated his blood pressure and damaged his kidneys. It appeared he was going to die from kidney failure or from circulatory failure. Two psychologist undertook to train this man, through correspondence, to recognize his “auras” and to engage in actions that might forestall his seizures. The frequency of his loses of consciousness with convulsions was dramatically reduced, as was his need for sedating, anticonvulsant medications. Their hypothesis was that once the man had his first seizure, and showed the characteristic “spikes” on his EEG tracing, he became the subject of a hypnotic, brainwashing onslaught of suggestion, as if his doctors were saying, “Why, you lost consciousness and never had a seizure. You are a sufferer from epilepsy. Never mind, there is no shame connected with this. Julius Caesar was an epileptic, Shakespeare and Jesus probably were, and of course Dostoyevsky was. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
“But you are lucky. Advances in medical science have made it possible for us to control seizures with some power drugs. Trust us and put yourself in our hands. Of course, you may feel sleepy, and your gums may get puffy, but if you are careful to take your medicine regularly, you can live a normal life.” It is difficult to resist such a powerfully seductive invitation to view oneself as helpless, with no power to prevent the loss of consciousness and the seizure; in short, to become dependent upon drugs, to become passive in order to let outside agencies control bodily happenings. There is reason to subject that many people deemed “epileptic” are leading drugged lives, rather than being helped to find ways of mobilizing their strength and wits in order to stay conscious and nonconvulsing. It seems that the ability to notice may be more a matter of our noticing than of individual differences. If I “forget my pain” (as I am told to do) I cannot notice it. And so with dreams. And with the experiencing of something much greater than oneself in one. Whatever an individual dismisses, one cannot explore. Like the doctor in New Jersey who was furious when penicillin was discovered because his bacteria cultures were killed by molds too, and he kept throwing them out instead of studying them as Alexander Fleming did. What else are we not noticing that would be helpful to us? #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The planet is evolving harmoniously. The dom-species Me-generation grown-up is at present relaxed and reasonably secure. The presence of an enormous growing population of pre-dom future-oriented humans make it possible to look realistically at the futures that can be fabricated by this explosive gene colony. This is a most fast-moving, volatile time in the evolution of Life on Earth. Every attempt must be made to give terrestrials future-maps that will allow them to anticipate what is to come—with enthusiasm and intelligence. Saint-Just, the contemporary of Sade, finally arrives at the justification of crime, though he starts from very different principles. Saint-Just is, of course, that anti-Sade. If Sade’s formula were “Open the prisons or prove your virtue,” then Saint-Just’s would be: “Prove your virtue or go to prison.” Both, however, justify terrorism—the libertine justifies individual terrorism, the high priest of virtue State terrorism. Absolute good and absolute evil, if the necessary logic is applied, both demand the same degree of passion. Of course, there is a certain ambiguity in the case of Saint-Just. The letter which he wrote to Vilain d’Aubigny in 1792 has something really insane about it. It is a profession of faith by persecuted persecutor which ends with a hysterical avowal: “If Brutus does not kill others, he will kill himself.” A personality so obstinately serious, so voluntarily cold, logical, and imperturbable, leads one to imagine every kind of aberration and disorder. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Saint-Just invented the kind of seriousness which makes the history of the last two centuries so tedious and depressing. “He who makes jokes as the head of a government,” he said, “has a tendency to tyranny.” An astonishing maxim, above all if one thinks of the penalty for the mere accusation of tyranny, one which, in any case, prepared the way for the pedant Caesars. Saint-Just sets the example; even his tone is definitive. That cascade of peremptory affirmatives, that axiomatic and sententious style, portrays him better than the most faithful painting. His sentences drone on; his definitions follow one another with the coldness and precision of commandments. “Principles without redress.” It is the style of the guillotine. Such pertinacity in logic, however, implies a profound passion. Here, as elsewhere, we again find the passion for unity. Every rebellion implies some kind of unity. The rebellion of 1789 demands the unity of the whole country. Saint-Just dreams of an ideal city where manners and customs, in final agreement with the law, will proclaim the innocence of man and the identity of his nature with reason. And if factions arise to interrupt this dream, passion will exaggerate its logic. No one will dare to imagine that, since factions exist, the principles are perhaps wrong. Factions will be condemned as criminal because principles remain intangible. “It is time that everyone retuned to morality and the aristocracy to the Terror.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, the aristocratic factions are not the only ones to be reckoned with; there are the republicans, too, and anyone else who criticizes the actions of the legislature and of the Convention. They, too, are guilty, since they threaten. Saint-Just, then, proclaims the major principle of the twenty-first century tyrannies. “A patriot is he who supports the Republic in general; whoever opposes it in detail is a traitor.” Whoever criticizes it is a traitor, whoever fails to give open support is a suspect. When neither reason nor the free expression of individual opinion succeeds in systematically establishing unity, it must be decided to suppress all alien elements. Thus, the guillotine becomes a logician whose function is refutation. “A rogue who has been condemned to death by the tribunal says he wants to resist oppression simply because he wants to resist the scaffold!” Saint=Just’s indignation is hard to understand in that, until his time, the scaffold was precisely nothing else but one of the most obvious symbols of oppression. However, at the heart of this logical delirium, at the logical conclusion of this morality of virtue, the scaffold represents freedom. It assures rational unity, and harmony in the ideal city. It purifies (the word is apt) the Republic and eliminates malpractices that arise to contradict the general will and universal reason. “They question my right to the title of philanthropist,” Marat exclaims, in quite a different style. “Ah, what injustice! Who cannot see that I want to cut off a few heads to save a great number?” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
A few—a faction? Naturally—and all historic actions are performed at this price. However, Marat, making his final calculations, claimed that two hundred and seventy-three thousand heads. However, he compromised the therapeutic aspect of the operation by screaming during the massacre: “Brand them with hot irons, cut off their thumbs, tear out their tongues.” This philanthropist wrote day and night, in the most monotonous vocabulary imaginable, of the necessity of killing in order to create. He wrote again, by candlelight deep down in his cellar, during the September nights whole his henchmen were installing spectators’ benches in prison courtyards—men on the right, women on the left—to display them, as a gracious example of philanthropy, the spectacle of the aristocrats having their heads cut off. Men who have daily experience of a divine presence will not waste their time arguing whether or not a divine power exists. The absence of a universal consensus amongst philosophers certainly does indicate the inability of intellect to arrive at indisputable truth. However, the only alternative which could be proposed—that of an integral development of all sides of our nature—is superior, yet still not enough. For the other sides—that is, feeling, mystical intuition, and mystical experience—will also suffer from the same deficiencies. There is the same possibility of endless contradiction here. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
One arrives, therefore, at the conclusion that a new faculty is really needed wherewith to ascertain ultimate Truth, one which, if it is attained, will function in precisely the same manner in all persons. Such a faculty can be given the name of “insight.” The purity of this insight must necessarily be a consequence of the purity of the entire character and mentality of the individual who has it. This applies not only in the moral realm, but also in the intellectual and emotional realms of his being. For the very tendencies of the intellect which brough him to his spiritual standpoint must also be discarded. Only by this ruthless self-pruning can he respond quite impersonally to reality and not falsify it. It is, presumably, the same as the divinization of the human mind. The gulf between intellectual revelation and personal realization is greater than that between thought and action. The depth of insight is not to be measured by the length of intellect. Thought bedims consciousness instead of expressing it, coffins the universal Mind into the narrow ego. Man began to think when he began to forget his Overself. However, the forces of evolution will so work that one day he will learn to remember his divinity and yet use his intellect at will without losing this remembrance. The cultivation of intelligence is one of the supreme duties of man. Fact-fed thinking—hard, deep, rational, and thorough—is what converts vague surmise into unbreakable certainty, blind belief or tormenting doubt into irrefutable knowledge, and native error into new truth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
In the past few years, the fire service has seen a veritable explosion in new equipment designed uniquely for improved safety. Although with equipment, the Sacramento Fire Department implements fitness to keep their team safe. Before beginning a new experience program, firefighters are given a checkup by a physician. A doctor can advise a firefighter to avoid or participate in activities based on their current health and history. It is also important to stay within your limit. If you are injured while exercising, remember to P-R-I-C-E your recovery. Protect the injured area from further injury. You can wrap it lightly in an elastic bandage or wear a padded brace. Do not tightly or heavily tape up an injury, as good circulation is important to healing. Rest the injured area. Use a sling, a cane, brace, or crutch as necessary to take your weight and decrease activity off the affected body part. Keep the joint or muscle as inactive as possible. Ice can be applied to the affected area for 5 to fifteen minutes. Wrap several handfuls of crushed ice in a towel and hold it on and around the injured area. Many people instinctively try to soak an injury in warm water, and while this increases blood flow to the injury, it does not ease the inflammation and swelling. Compression is also important. Wrap an elastic bandage around the ice to compress the injured area lightly—but not enough to cut off circulation to the injured area. After the cold compress, wrap the affected area lightly in an elastic bandage or use a flexible brace. So not wrap any injury too tightly, as this will cut off good circulation to the injury. Elevation is also key. Rise the affected area slightly to reduce swelling and inflammation. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
In addition to P-R-I-C-E, you can talk to your doctor about using anti-inflammatory medication as needed, such as aspirin, acetaminophen, or Ibuprofen. You should check to see if you have allergies to these drugs before use. Under no circumstances should you take them while drinking alcohol. The safety and well-being of firefighters are enhanced when they improve their overall health. “I am a journalist and a firefighter. Sometimes it’s difficult to separate the two. Many of the things I learned growing up in the firehouse were tremendous assets when I became a journalist. The ability to respond quickly to an emergency situations. Journalism deals with a lot of emergency situations. I was heavily influenced by the officers I knew and served under. I learned many things as a fireman that have stood me in good stead as a journalist. People think of journalism as an intellectual occupation and firefighting as physical. Both are oversimplifications. Good firefighters also have to have an intellect, and for journalist who lead the type of life I have led, a lot of physical stamina comes into the thing. I suppose the fact that in some respects the two are so different is one of the blessings of having a dual life. When I do journalism, it is total immersion in journalism; when I am with the Sacramento Fire Department, it is total immersion in the fire department. I prefer the fire department. Another equally important part of my life is my family.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
To help save lives and keep the community safe, if you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Step into the shadows of the Northern California’s most legendary estate, The Winchester Mystery House, for a Halfway-to-Halloween Flashlight Tour. Available for a limited time only on April 19, April 26, May 3 and May 10. With only a flashlight to guide you, explore the mansion’s twisting corridors and uncover its chilling mysteries.
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Make Halfway to Halloween a Bay Area tradition—because the spirits never rest, and neither should the celebrations. Get your tickets early before they are gone! www.winchestermysteryhouse.com
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How Many of Us Know How to Love Ourselves?
We are now living in the Me-generation, hive—indulgence. All the realities we shall ever know are created by the conversation between DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) and CNS (Central Nervous System). The DNA blueprint of evolution, past and future, can be deciphered as we tap into the DNA-CNS channel. The higher the human neurogenetic caste, the more mobile the individual. Neural Caste is determined by voluntary mobility. The freer you are to “come and go,” the higher your intelligence. Metamorphosis to a higher stage involves movement to a new ecological niche. This process of movement involves wrenching “good-bytes” to those who shared the former niche—and the earlier stage of development. It is necessary that you make linkages at each stage of reality. Indeed, you must master each neural circuit before you can advance. The twenty-four neurogenic stages are motels up the highway of evolution—centers and pathways up through the global brain. At certain fuel-rest stops we form crew-linkages to lift us up to the next stage. The flight plan of evolution is a series of reality jumps where we cooperate with those in our present reality to help us ascend to the next. Logical thinking about a proposed course can never be equal to intuitive guidance about it. For the first is limited by the ego’s capacity and experience whereas the second transcends them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
The intellect cannot know itself; it must have an object; but that which is behind it does know it. That Overself is the only entity which can know itself, which fuses subject and object into one. The domesticated adult marriage is such a reality jump. It should be clear now that very different mating procedures operate at different stages of neurodevelopment. The retiring elder marriage is a state controlled. Barbarian teenager marriage is a feudal arrangement. Group=minded preadolescent marriage is priest-caste managed. Parrot-brained mimic marriage is bull-harem. Imagine two lusty, romantic barbarians from the domesticated adult gene pools meet at the High School Prom and decide to make the big jump up to parental reality. They form a two-person flight crew. The marriage ceremony is a metamorphic-migration Cape Canaveral ritual. The bride and groom blast up together—in a Ultimate Driving Machine with a flare of chrome wheels on their migration rocket—headed for a new plan-it called Matrimonial Fusion. After passing the Moon of Honey they eventually arrive, sometimes joltingly, in the New World where they discover that the metamorphosis has produced unexpected forms. As curious teenagers, they shared the same desire for pleasures of the flesh. As responsible parents, they discover that they are a very different species. The shy youth has become an aggressive, selfish father-type barking orders to his astonished mate. And the flamboyant, carefree, go-go teenage girl has become a serious, mature worrier. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Although the intellect in us cannot grasp the Real, cannot do more than think about what it is in relation to itself, there is something else in us which can successfully do so. This is insight which, unfortunately, few have cultivated although all have it. It can only be translated into thinkable languages by a process which elaborates this instantaneous and simple experience into a lengthy and complicated metaphysic. It is only through such insight that a man may attain enduring wisdom, not through intellect. Changes of view are inevitable so long as he has not attained insight, which is marked by its sureness of itself, thus contrasting with the intellect’s doubts, hesitations, and waverings. Only after reason matures to its fullest extent can we look to the dawning of a perfect intuition, or “insight” as I prefer to call it. The World’s great religions teach us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves, but here, unfortunately, we run into an operational slang. How many of us know how to love ourselves? Most are not even aware that we cannot love our neighbour until we love ourselves. We seem to assume that the more perfect we appear, the more flawless, the more we will be loved. Actually, the reverse is more apt to be true. The more willing we are to admit our weaknesses as human beings, the more loveable we are. Nevertheless, love is an achievement not easy to attain, thus the alternative that the manipulator has is a desperate one: that of complete power over the other person, the power that makes others do what we want, feel what we want, and think what we want, and that transforms others into things, our things. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Some men and women are governed by a code of behaviour for pleasures of the flesh that can best be described as “permissive.” They share several basic convictions. One is the pleasures of the flesh, like verbal intercourse, should in no way be limited by the fact that a couple are married or live together. Second, all relationships involving pleasures of the flesh must be acknowledged; the secrecy and deception commonly associated with infidelity are unacceptable. Third, pleasure with intimate passions is to be taken whenever, wherever, and however it is found—as part of a game in which any number can play. Colloquially, these individuals tend to be swingers with their pleasures of the flesh. It the Internet, blogs, vlogs, newspapers, books, pod casts, and magazines are to be believed swingers can be found in every major city in the United States of America and in a great many suburban communities as well. This may be true; there is no reliable statistical information to prove or disprove the contention. Some swingers get started going outside of their marriage by having a friend make a film of them involved with pleasures of the flesh. It is tastefully done—more along abstract lines, something like the film called Geography of the Body. Anyway, that is how some people introduce someone else into the room, and from there on it is usually a matter of evolution—getting involved in the arts and having the sketches shown publicly and so forth. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
From there, swinging becomes something that can be discussed with other people, people the couple thinks this could never be mentioned to, and who turn out to be thinking the same things. And having done it, slept with others, a married couple sort of realizes how unimportant it is. Pleasures of the flesh outside of the marriage becomes trivial. However, the difficult part is how to introduce other people into their loves in a full meaningful way. Having people is only one small start because you have people over, or you go out with them, and you have pleasures of the flesh with them, but what about loading the dishwasher and having children and the 99.99 percent of other things you do in your life? Even though what many married couples want to do next is somehow live with other people in a meaningful way, most couples have not been able to achieve that status yet. They are not interested in living in a commune, but they do want to try to develop some type of social structure where they spend a lot more time with other people, sharing in all functions. Critics wonder: About swinging, what makes it important? The turn-on? The give and take of just basic human exchange? The fun of being close to other people? There is probably some of that, but in the process several couples lie to themselves a little, too. They sometimes swing with other people casually, just to indulge. The couples are able eliminate the erosive aspect of the extramarital relationship by not being involved in it that often. It is kind of like going out and playing bridge once a month. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
It is also possible to get into ten couples swinging; some people have had that that experience, and say that everything went right. All of their emotions went well, and nobody got hassled. Of course, there is some kind of selection to make sure that it all goes well. It is not always difficult to make to make these types of connections. Some people have couples that they have swung with a few times, and with whom they also have some emotional ties though the intellectual things is just not very much there. And their talent for finding other people is just incredible, and they provide about half the party—people they have never seen before, but who are beautiful people, and they find about four couples themselves; all in all, the selection turns out to be impressive. This is what some refer to as “Sliving.” However, there is a difference between swinging with people with whom you have developed a relationship and swinging for fun on a spontaneous basis with a very large group of people you do not know and cannot get terribly close to because there is not very much time. Besides, there is too much stimulation in a large group. It is not erosive of your closer relationships, and to do it with a large group can be just a grand amount of fun. Fun expresses it for these types of people, rather than saying there is nothing happening there. It is like going to a picnic. However, who wants to go to a picnic all of their lives? The notion of it is to do something unique. Some couples are looking for something unique because it has to do with their own ego needs, and their own strengths and weaknesses, with wanting to do something special or to be with other people. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
People want to try swinging to find out what this strange new thing is. They find that it is not really something they have to do, but on the other hand, it is fun for them. Also, in the beginning of it, they find that it is a stimulating thought and a stimulating thing to act on; and brining more people into both of their lives which involves intimate passions eliminates the conflicts of jealousy and the insecurities of each member of the couple going outside of their marriage separately. They are doing something together that is enhancing their own relationship with pleasures of the flesh. We are living today in a very permissive society. Having abandoned the ancient Christian morality, many people claim to accept a new morality, which in reality is to live contrary to the laws of chastity as proclaimed by God. We are living in a day when a sexual revolution has been proclaimed and given birth to serial killers like Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper was known as a “Ripper,” for more reasons than one, and I am sure your imagination can further elaborate on that colloquial term. Enticements to illicit behaviour are found everywhere. Day by day, a flood of them is growing worse in novels, magazines, movies, TV, Internet, and advertising. Even people throughout the Church and, generally speaking, throughout the World have now abandoned the anciently cherished Hebraic-Christian moral standard of chastity. Frequently married people commit adultery and single people indulge their passions in acts of fornication. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
The results of fornication have been disastrous–unhappiness, murder, violence, disease, viruses, the loss of love, breaking up of homes and destroying of family life, increase in the number of divorces, shame, loss of spirituality, apostasy, and eventually loss of eternal salvation for “wickedness never was happiness,” reports Alma 41.10. Several religious leaders have ceased teaching that sin exists because if they do not make you feel bad for sinner, you are more likely to donate to the church. What we need are the Christian ministers who stir their audiences with sermons on chastity; who proclaim condemnations of adultery and of all manners of immoral acts. However, those of us in the Church still hear the voice of God as it thundered down from Mount Sinai, commanding, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” reports Exodus 20.14. For over three thousand years, this commandment has reverberated throughout the Hebrew and Christian World. It has been the guideline by which millions of people have patterned their lives. Having an understanding of the plan of salvation and a thorough knowledge of the seriousness of the gross sins of adultery and murder which he had committed, King David, in anguish cried out unto the Lord, “thou wilt not leave my should in hell,” reports Psalms 16.10. God, the Eternal Father, through Jesus Christ, has revealed to mankind a gospel plan of salvation. Its purpose is to give all who will accept and obey it peace and happiness in this World and eventually life in the presence of God in celestial glory. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The greatest of all laws in this gospel plan pertains to marriage for life and eternity. Thus, it pertains to the family eternal. The sweetest joys and greatest blessings that can be gained in morality and in the life to come are attained through family life lived in accordance with the gospel plan. Thus, a basic law in marriage is the law of chastity. Men and women cannot defile the fountain of life and reap a fullness of joy. Happiness and purity of heart and mind go hand in hand. The more we get a feeling for the nature of the should, the more clearly do we see that the difference between them and real moral standards or ideals is not a quantitative but a qualitative one. It was one of Dr. Freud’s gravest errors to regard the inner dictates (some of the features of which he had seen and described as superego), as constituting morality in general. To begin with, their connection with moral questions is not too close. True enough, the commands for moral perfection do assume a prominent place among the should, for the simple reason that moral questions are important in all our lives. However, we cannot separate these particular should from others, just as insistent, which are plainly determined by unconscious arrogance, such as “I should be able to get of out a Sunday-afternoon traffic jam,” or “I should be able to paint without labourious training and working.” We must also remember that many demands conspicuously lack even a moral pretense, among them, “I should be able to get away with anything,” “I should always get the better of others,” and “I should always be able to get back at others.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Only by focusing on the totality of the picture are we able to get the proper perspective on the demands for moral perfection. Like the other shoulds, they are permeated by the spirit of arrogance and aim at enhancing the neurotic’s glory and at making him godlike. They are, in this sense, the neurotic counterfeit of normal moral strivings. When one adds to all this the unconscious dishonesty necessarily involved in making blemishes disappear, one recognizes them as an immoral rather than a moral phenomenon. It is necessary to be clear about these differences for the sake of the patient’s eventual reorientation from a make-believe World into the development of genuine ideals. There is one further quality of the should that distinguishes them from genuine standards. That is their coercive character. Ideals, too, have an obligating power over our lives. For instance, if among them is the belief in fulfilling responsibilities which we ourselves recognize as such, we try our best to do so even though it may be difficult. To fulfill them is what we ourselves ultimately want, or what we deem right. The wish, the judgment, the decision is ours. And because we are thus at one with ourselves, efforts of this kind give us freedom and strength. In obeying the should, on the other hand, there is just about as much freedom as there is in a “voluntary” contribution or ovation within a dictatorship. In both instances, if we do not measure up to expectations, there are quick retributions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
In the case of the inner dictates, this means violent emotional reactions to nonfulfillment—reactions which traverse the whole range of anxiety, despair, self-condemnation, and self-destructive impulses. To the outsider, they appear entirely out of proportion to the provocation. However, they are entirely in proportion to what it means to the individual. For instance, Jack’s father was a war hero who got killed in battle when Jack was a little boy, and his mother died soon after. He was raised by his Uncle Homer who was a poor sport, a boaster, and not above cheating. He taught jack all sorts of athletic and competitive games. However, if Jack won, Homer would fly into a rage and say: “You think your (expletive) don’t stink?” If Jack lost, his uncle would laugh at him in a contemptuous, friendly way. So after a while, Jack began to lose on purpose. The more he lost, the happier and more friendly his uncle became. Jack wanted to be a photographer, but his uncle said that was for sissies, and told him he should be an athletic hero instead. So, Jack became a professional baseball player. What Homer really wanted was for Jack to try to be an athletic hero and fail. With his uncle for a friend, it was not surprising that just as Jack was on his way up into the big leagues, he sprained his arm and had to retire from the dame. As he said later, it was hard to explain how an experienced player life himself could get such a bad sprain in spring training, when everybody was taking it easy so as not to get injured before the beginning of the season. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Jack then became a salesman. He always started off very well, and got bigger and bigger orders until he became a favourite of the boss. At that point, he felt a compulsion to goof off. He would sleep late and neglect his paperwork, so that his deliveries were late. He was such a good salesman that he did not even have to go out and sell, the customers would call him; but he would forget to put in their orders. As a result of all this, he had to have long, helpful dinners with the boss to discuss his problems in a personal way. After each dinner, he would perk up a little, but after a while, things would start to slide again. Sooner or later, there would be a final dinner during which he would be fired in a friendly way. Then he would look for another job and start the whole cycle over. One difficulty was that he felt salesmen always had to lie and cheat a little, and that bothered him. As a result of his treatment, Jack broke loose from his uncle and decided to go back to school and become a social worker. Thesis: Sisphus works very hard to get things right to the brink of success. At that point he gives up, stops working, and loses everything he has gained. Then he has to start over from the bottom, and repeats the cycle. Clinical Diagnosis: Depressive reaction. Myth: Sisyphus. Role: Deserted Child, Persecutor, Rescuer. Switches: Hero (success) to Victim (failure) to Rescuer. Parental Precept: “Be a tough hero, not a sissy.” Parental Pattern: “Cheat a little.” Parental Injunction: “Do not succeed.” Childhood Slogan: “I am the son of a hero.” Position: “I am not-O.K. because I am really a sissy.” “They are O.K. because they are successful.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Decision: “I have got to be a hero.” Script: “Do not make it.” Sweatshirt: Front—“I’m A Super-Salesman.” Back—“But Do Not Buy Anything From Me.” Games: “There I Go Again,” “Schlemiel.” Trading Stamps: Depression and guilts. Final Payoff: Impotence and suicide. Epitaphs: “He Tried Hard.” “I did not make it.” Antithesis: Stop listening to your uncle. Permission: To go back to school and be a social worker for deserted children. Classification: Sisyphus is a loser’s script, since every time he gets near the top, he rolls all the way down again. It is a Goal-Structured Cannot Script, with the slogan: “Without me, you cannot make it.” It is based on an “Over and Over” plan, “Try as often as you want to.” The time between Hello and Good-by is structured with a game of “There I Go Again.” Therefore, do not be an ammunition wagon. Be a rifle! Also, keep in mind, any connection between grades and learning is illusion. There is not only what I “learn” for exams and forget, but also what I do not learn and get good grades anyway. You can look at the present state of man with joy for the possibilities or with sadness for the actuality. You can choose. However, neither of those choices make sense to some people because they can choose one or the other—and slip from one to the other unless one holds oneself to one’s choice. This makes each unreal to most, a fiction. However, with the acceptance of both realities, they become one: your actuality softens and dissolves into the stream of your potentiality and this flowing is you. Where were you? You no longer remember. Where are you? What does it matter? It is already gone. Where are you going? You do not know but you like it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
Persons have become “disabled” by accident or by disease. They may lose a limb, their sight, or their strength. Whatever the impairment, the persons’ capacity to come to terms with their environment has not been eliminated completely. A blind person can still be sensitive to all the properties of the physical environment save those meditated by vision. When a person suffers some affliction that results in a disability, there may be, quite naturally, some rather devastating emotional reactions. These include a sense of hopelessness, anxiety about the future, and loss in self-esteem. Once the fact of disability has been accepted by the individual, however, the healthy thing to do is to make an assessment of the residual capacities of the body and the person’s goals in life. If the person’s goals remain fixed, then he or she must experiment to find new ways of reaching those goals. Thus, a professional dancer, following the amputation of a leg, may wish to continue in the profession. The dancer will be obliged to acquire an artificial leg and practice until he or she once again can move with skill and grace. It is probably easier for persons to retain their goals and seek new ways of achieving them than to change their goals. It is common for disabled persons to feel hopeless and sorry for themselves, but with resolve, courage, and encouragement, they can find new ways to engage in active life. The most helpful people in rehabilitation work are those who have themselves been disabled and have found the strength to overcome passive dependency and self-pity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Even if it takes a long time before this goal is realized, a man will ultimately create an understanding among members that leaves do doubt about the duty and ability of a leader, and this will allow only those who are truly called-forth and chosen to become leaders. He must make sure that all members cooperate, or he must establish cooperation by choosing men who can work together and by establishing general guiding principles. The religion of reason quite naturally establishes the Republic of law and order. The general will is expressed in laws codified by its representatives. “The people make the revolution, the legislator makes the Republic.” Immortal, impassive” institutions, “sheltered from the temerity of man,” will govern in their turn the lives of all men by universal accord and without possibility of contradiction since by obeying the laws all will only be obeying themselves. “Outside the law,” says Saint-Just, “everything is sterile and dead.” It is the formal and legalistic Republic of the Romans. We know the passion of Saint-Just and his contemporaries for ancient Rome. The decadent young man who, in Reims, spent hours in a room painted black and decorated with white teardrops, with the shutters closed, dreamed of the Spartan Republic. The author of Organt, a long and licentious poem, was absolutely convinced of the necessity for frugality and virtue. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
In the institutions that he invented, Saint-Just refused to allow children to eat meat until the age of sixteen, and he dreamed of a nation that was both vegetarian and revolutionary. “The World has been empty since the Romans,” he exclaimed. However, heroic times were at hand. Cato, Brutus, Scaevola, had become possible once more. The rhetoric of the Latin moralist flourished once again. Vice, virtue, corruption, were terms that constantly recurred in the oratory of the times, and even more in the speeches of Saint-Just, of which they were the perpetual burden. The reason for this is simple. This perfect edifice, as Montesquieu had already seen, could not exist without virtue. The French Revolution, by claiming to build history on the principle of absolute purity, inaugurate modern times simultaneously with the era of formality. What, in fact, is virtue? For the bourgeois philosopher of the period it is conformity with nature and, in politics, conformity with the law, which expresses the general will. “Morality,” says Saint-Just, “is stronger than tyrants.” It has, in fact, just killed Louis XVI. Every form of disobedience to law therefore comes, not from an imperfection in the law, which is presumed to be impossible, but from a lack of virtue in the refractory citizen. That is why the Republic not only is an assembly, as Saint-Just forcibly says, but is also virtue itself. Every form of moral corruption is at the same time political corruption, and vice versa. A principle of infinite repression, derived from this very doctrine, is then established. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Undoubtedly Saint-Just was sincere in his desire for a universal idyl. He really dreamed of a republic of ascetics, of humanity reconciled and dedicated to the chaste pursuits of the age of innocence, under the watchful eye of those wise old men whom he decked out in advance with a tricolour scarf and a white plume. We also know that, at the beginning of the Revolution, Saint-Just declared himself, at the same time as Robespierre, against the death penalty. He only demanded that murderers should be dressed in black for the rest of their lives. He wanted to establish a form of justice which did not attempt “to find the culprit guilty, but to find him weak”—and admirable ambition. He also dreamed of a republic of forgiveness which would recognize that though the fruits of crime are bitter, its roots are nevertheless tender. One of his outbursts, at least, came from the heart and is not easily forgotten: “it is a frightful thing to torment the people.” Yes indeed, it is a frightful thing. However, a man can realize this and yet submit to principles that imply, in the final analysis, the torment of the people. Morality, when it is formal, devours. To paraphrase Saint-Just, no one is virtuous innocently. From the moment that laws fail to make harmony reign, or when the unity which should be created by adherence to principles is destroyed, who is to blame? Factions. Who composes the factions? Those who deny by their very actions the necessity of unity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Factions divide the sovereign; therefore, they are blasphemous and criminal. They, and they alone, must be combated. However, what if there are many factions? All shall be fought to the death. Saint-Just exclaims: “Either the virtues or the Terror.” Freedom must be guaranteed, and the draft constitution presented to the Convention, already mentions the death penalty. Absolute virtue is impossible, and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine. Montesquieu had already denounced this logic as one of the causes of the decadence of socieities, saying that the abuse of power is greatest when laws do not anticipate it. The pure law of Saint-Just did not take into account the truth, which is as old as history itself, that law, in its essence, is bound to be transgressed. We need a fulltime, paid party official to manage our business affairs. This has been difficult for us with a democratic majority. However, we now have, in Republican President, Donald Trump, the infinite value of our first business manager, who has a strong business knowledge, and has brought order and integrity into the departments of the Party. This establishes a method of operation that is unequaled and certainly cannot be surpassed by any of the movement’s subdivisions. As frequently happens in life, success often causes envy and ill-will. The same has been expected in this case and it is tolerated with patience. The Republican Party’s greatest goal was achieved when they appointed the sub-committee Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is poking its nose expertly into the work of others and controlling everything to achieve maximum efficiency of taxpayers’ resources. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
It is also important to make sure the Sacramento Fire Department is receiving all of the required resources. At the personal level, a firefighter injury can have a damaging effect on the involved families. Stress permeates the injured firefighter’s family life. Many of the Sacramento Fire Department’s firefighters know of a peer who has resigned, been divorced, or otherwise suffered following a comrade’s injury. Firefighters who have survived an incident in which another firefighter was killed are considered at risk of experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental health disorder that can develop in those who have experienced a terrifying ordeal that involved physical harm or threat of harm. Alarmingly, the rate of firefighter suicides are increasing, likely dye to the repeated exposure to trauma, line of duty deaths (LODDS), and job stress. The responsibility of an Incident safety Officer (ISO) is to make sure “everyone goes home.” The ISO is a member of the command staff and is responsible for the following: Monitoring incident conditions and activities, evaluating hazards and unsafe conditions, developing measures that promote safe incident handling, intervening when an immediate or potential threat exists, communicating urgent and advisory safety messages that help prevent injuries or deaths. Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type (FITT) is a fitness training program you Sacramento Fire Fighters and EMTs undertakes to help combat injuries. FITT is just one method of developing a proper long-term physical fitness regime, fitness experts agrees that these factors are needed to have effective, sage daily workout programs. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Frequency is the number of workouts the Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs perform each week. A basic guideline is three to five cardiovascular workouts, two to three strength workouts, two to five calisthenics workouts, and three to six flexibility workouts weekly. Intensity is how hard you work out. You can measure intensity by something called RPE (Rating of Perceived Exertion), which is a psychological scale and reflects how hard the workout feels to you. The most commonly used indicator of your workout intensity is your heart rate. Ideally, you should stay within a productive heart-rate zone. You can use your age to find your Target Heart Rate (THR). Finding Your THR: Your maximum heart rate (MHR) is approximately 220 minus your age, your lowest target heart rate is equal to MHR X .60, your highest target heart rate is equal to MHR X .85. Your THR zone is between the lowest and highest THR calculated above. As you begin your exercise routine, your heart rate should be on the lower end of your THR zone. Exercising above the zone increases your risk of injury and reduces your ability to perform optimally. Exercise in moderation. Never exercise a particular muscle group hard (at a high intensity for a long time) two days in a row. You should always follow a hard workout with a light day or a day off. For the best development, more is not always better. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
Time. Like intensity, the time you spend exercising depends on the type of exercise you are doing. At least 20 to 30 minutes continuous minutes of intense exercise will improve cardiorespiratory endurance. For muscular endurance and strength, exercise time equals the number of repetitious you do. For the average person, eight to 12 repetitions with enough resistance to cause muscle failure will improve both muscular endurance and strength. As you progress, you will make better strength gains by doing two or three sets of each resistance exercise. Use flexibility exercises or stretches for varying times, depending on the objective of the session. While warming-up before a run, for example, hold each stretch for 10 to 15 seconds. To improve flexibility, stretch during your cool-down as well, holding each stretch for 30 to 60 seconds. If flexibility improvement is your goal, devote at least one session per week to developing that component. Type refers to the kind of exercise you perform. When choosing the type, consider the principle of specificity. Some people overemphasize cross training and you should avoid this pitfall. For example, to improve your level of CR fitness (the major fitness component in the two-mile run), the Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs do CR type types of exercises. The basic rule is that to improve performance, you must practice the particular exercise, activity, or skill you want to improve. For example, to be good at push-ups, you must do push-ups. No other exercise will improve push-up performance effectively. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“In the Sacramento Fire Department, we work in the darkness of smoke. There’s a special point in a firefight when I wonder if I’m going to be able to put the fire out. That was my darkness in the process of growing in this profession. I was a very physical firefighter. I always did things that required a certain amount of strength. I was an athlete when I was going to school, I lifted weights, that sort of thing, and that was part of the process, the physical part of it. It still is. I am still attracted to that part of it. That you put fires out with firefighters, with strength. Then we started to develop the state-of-the-art envelop of firemen, protect them, communicate with them, and write procedures. But you still dress firefighters up in those suits and you send then out, and you gotta kick butt or the fire kicks butt, and I think that’s the part of it that’s challenging. That is the part that a lot of us are attracted to. There is a certain fascination with that darkness. You don’t move away from it, you move toward it, and that’s why firefighting is dangerous, and I think it always will be. There is that special moment where it’s you against whatever is behind that darkness—it’s where life and death come together—and that is an interesting place for a human being. I reflect on it a little differently now that I manage people who do that. I don’t think you ever really understand it, but you expand your ability to deal with it as, say, a battalion chief. You look at the whole system, but it always comes down to the fact that we operate on the task level, it’s just that simple. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
You still dress those firefighters up, and there they go. You do all the things to help them. You can belt them in and put them inside a cab, and you can communicate with them, and you can give them books to read, and videos to watch. Then you face the enemy, and you face the darkness. People don’t understand firefighter, because they do very special, esoteric things, and they do them in a special way. Firefighting becomes a subculture, and we firefighters with the Sacramento Fire Department tend to hang around with one another, for the darkness is hard to explain to an outsider. Its like trying to describe what ice cream tastes like—it’s cold, and it’s sweet, and it’s vanilla, and it’s different eating it. It’s hard to describe. I don’t think people really have to understand the details of what you do. They relate to you in a different way, in knowing that you are going to help them and that you are going to come quick. The response I usually get from the general public is that you came quickly and you were skillful and cared. That’s what I want. You can’t get any netter. Basically, my life is all fire department. I ski, and swim, all activity-related. You gotta keep doing and thinking and using your hands. There are no two situations alike in firefighting. Always, you go out there, and it won’t be the same thing. That’s what I like about it.” The belief that the unaided reason of man can solve all his problems is merely an expression of reason’s own arrogance. Unless it co-operates with mystical insight, its best solutions of ultimate questions will either be fictitious ones or contradictory ones. Men who have daily experience of a divine presence will not waste their time arguing whether or not a divine power exists. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
To help save lives and keep the community safe, if you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
The Winchester Mystery House
Step into the shadows of the Northern California’s most legendary estate, The Winchester Mystery House, for a Halfway-to-Halloween Flashlight Tour. Available for a limited time only on April 19, April 26, May 3 and May 10. With only a flashlight to guide you, explore the mansion’s twisting corridors and uncover its chilling mysteries.
Once inside, enjoy the freedom to roam the path at your own pace—giving you the chance to linger in each room to uncover its secrets. This includes venturing into areas that are off-limits on the Mansion Tour, offering access to more spaces where guests and mediums have reported paranormal activity. Outside the mansion, immerse yourself in ghostly décor, capture hauntingly beautiful photos, and indulge in themed cocktails and treats inspired by the Halloween season.
Make Halfway to Halloween a Bay Area tradition—because the spirits never rest, and neither should the celebrations. Get your tickets early before they are gone!
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The Period of Monsters Has Come to an End
Humans are continuously behaving within ever changing internal and external environments that contain critical antecedent, co-occurring, and consequating events. Completely understanding the complex interactions that occur among multiple behaviours within these continuously changing contexts can be considered the ultimate goal of behaviour assessment. An assessor cannot, however, conduct continuous observations of all relevant modes and dimensions of behaviour across all relevant contexts. Manipulative behaviour is part of a borderline syndrome. The verb “manipulate” is defined as “to influence or manage shrewdly or deviously,” as in “to manage or control artfully or by shrewd use of influence, often in an unfair or fraudulent way.” Both definitions suggest that the manipulating individual intends to influence another person by indirect, insidious, or devious means. Indeed, when they are trying to influence someone, borderline individuals are typically direct, forceful, and, if anything, unartful. It is surely the case that borderline individuals do influence others. Often, the most influential behaviour is parasuicide or the threat of impending suicide; at other times, the behaviours that have the most influence are communications of intense pain and agony, or current crises that the individuals cannot solve themselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Such behaviours and communications, of course, are not by themselves evidence of manipulation. Otherwise, if we respond to their communications of distress, we would say have to say that people in pain or crises are “manipulating” us. The central question is whether or not borderline individuals purposely use these behaviours or communications to influence others artfully, shrewdly, and fraudulently. Such an interpretation is rarely in accord with borderline individuals’ own self-perceptions of their intent. Since behavioural intent can only be measured by self-report, to maintain that the intent is present in spite of the individuals’ denial would require us either to view borderline individuals as chronic liars or to construct a notion of unconscious behavioural intent. My own experience in working with suicidal behaviour as “manipulative” is a major source of their feelings of invalidation and of being misunderstood. From their own point of view, suicidal behaviour is a reflection of serious and at times frantic suicide ideation and ambivalence over whether to continue life or not. Although the patients’ communication of extreme ideas or enactments of extreme behaviours may be accompanied by the desire to be helped or rescued by the persons they are communicating with, this does not necessarily mean that they are acting in this manner in order to get help. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
These individuals’ numerous suicidal behaviours and suicide threats, extreme reactions to criticism and rejection, and frequent inability to articulate which of a number of factors are directly influencing their own behaviour do at times makes other people feel manipulated. However, inferring behavioural intent from one or more of the effects of the behaviour—in this case, making others feel manipulated—is simply an error in logic. The fact that a haviour is influenced by its effects on the environment (“operant behaviour,” in behavioural terms) says little if anything about an individual’s intent with respect to that behaviour. Function does not prove intention. For example, a person may quite predictably threaten suicide whenever criticized. However, the fact of the correlation in no way implies that the person is trying or intending to change the criticizer’s behaviour with threats, or is even are of the correlation. Thus, the behaviour is not manipulative in any standard use of the term. To say then that the “manipulation is unconscious is a tautology based on clinical inference. Both the pejorative nature of such inferences and the low reliability of clinical inferences in general make such a practice unwarranted in most cases. However, it is also important to remember that manipulative behaviour may be “appropriate” and normal for persons who are dealing with a hostile system. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Many humans have eternal conflict between self-support and environmental support. There is a good deal of this conflict in employer-employee relationships. Often an employee, even when given the authority to make decisions and to take action, cannot do so. Unable to trust his or her own ability to know general company policy and to adapt it to changing situations, the employee defers decisions to higher-ups or to so-called authorities. Such an employee refuses to depend on self-support, but must look to authorities—environmental support. On the other hand, many employers refuse to trust the individual abilities of their employees. A salesman, for example, may be treated like a machine, whose sole function is to perform within the limited framework of the employer’s sales manual. This “sales machine,” robbed of personality, treats the customer in the same depersonalized manner. Not trusting oneself for support, a manipulator tends to believe that salvation lies in the hands of others. Yet, not trusting others completely, he or she manipulates the other in an effort to have the support. The manipulator rides the coattail of the other person and then attempts to steer him or her. Refusing to drive himself or herself, the manipulator drives the driver. #RnadolphHarris 4 of 22
The operative word here is distrust. We do not trust the natural organismic balance each of us has, which would allow us to live our lives simply and feelingly. Married couples often form a complex manipulative partnership to cope with their distrust of self-sufficiency and of others. For example, a husband with a penchant for withdrawing and avoiding uses his wife, who has an inclination for blaming and attacking, as his “mouthpiece.” It is the perfect solution for the husband, who feels he is insufficient to confront others about his needs. He lets his wife convey his demands to others. Such an arrangement is a safe haven for a withdrawing and avoiding husband. His wife is on the front line, and if his demand elicits a negative or hostile response from the other, she gets the heat. And, of course, he can resort to blaming and attacking her when his manipulation has failed. It was her fault. Erich Fromm has suggested a second cause for manipulation. He reasons that the ultimate relationship between two humans is that of love and that love is knowing a human being as he or she is and loving his or her ultimate essence. We believe that this desire to love and be loved is a wonderfully healthy, innately human experience, but our manipulative inclinations to be lovable and to make lovable are sabotaging elements. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
If loving is knowing a human being as he or she is, we fear that we are not very lovable as we truly are, and the other person is not very lovable as he or she truly is. So, we begin masking and costuming ourselves in an effort to make ourselves lovable, and we begin our attempts to change and mold others to meet our expectations of what is lovable in them. Those of you who have had extramarital relationships, have any of you ever had to cope with feelings of regret, remorse or guilt because of your extramarital affairs? When you tell lies to your husband or wife about your involvements, do you feel you are protecting him or her? Or the marriage? At first, many people feel that they would never do anything to jeopardize their marriage, the believe that they would never tell a lie, and do not even think that they. However, you have to be somewhat optimistic that life is basically going to work out. In other words, you do not start an affair with the idea of being discovered. Sure, there is this fear that it might result in injury. If their spouse did find out, some people do not believe that the individual would leave, but that it would be worse—he or she would stay and try to find some other ways to get back at them. Still, the desire to have more relationships with other people is stronger than their fear of being found out. The thought of spending forty—three years married to one lovely person and never knowing anybody else is just something that some people do not honestly envision when they take their wedding vows. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
In our society, it is common that when you get to know somebody at great depth that the most natural thing in the World is to go to bed with him or her. The truth of the matter is many people have affairs with the people that they work with because that is where they relate to others. Whether it becomes an act involving pleasures of the flesh or not is almost immaterial. So, the idea that someday it may come out, which most people would sincerely regret, is outweighed by other considerations, probably selfish ones. Yet, being around people that you want to know well—people that are very talented, very cosmopolitan does not necessarily involve being intimate with them, too. Relationships are a way of expressing yourself at the time and in the place and under the circumstances. Certainly, pleasures of the flesh are, after all, a means or form of communication, handled in different ways depending on one’s maturity and one’s security. It may be a form of sport or a form of expression or a form of barter. Two forms for infidelity come through quite clearly. One is a desire to settle a score with their partner, to square accounts—a way of getting back at their partners for what they see as injustice or inadequacy. At the same time, it could also be a way to express culturally stereotyped attitudes. Pleasures of the flesh, of course, are only one area in which a sense of “arrested development of self” is experienced by a man or a woman after they have been married for a while. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
People become aware that they have not had a chance to try their wings and they belatedly feel the urge to discover how far and how well they can fly. This awareness becomes focused on pleasures of the flesh, chiefly because society has made it such a charged aspect of life. It is certainly reasonable for someone to wish to catch up with himself, to experience the feelings that he—or she—feels are legitimately his and which he feels capable of achieving. However, this search for identity is a much wider problem than can be encompassed by pleasures of the flesh alone. It is just that when pleasures of the flesh are not good, when pleasures of the flesh deprivation or distress with pleasures of the flesh of any kind is occurring, it tends to dominate the individual’s feelings. Under those circumstances, many people see pleasures of the flesh as the only really important thing in their lives—they feel deprived, even cheated, of one of life’s great satisfactions. Consequently, they often become overly dramatic, indulging themselves in emotional baths, losing perspective on the totality of their lives. It is this preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh-for-the-sake-of-pleasures of the flesh that makes so much extramarital pleasures of the flesh ultimately self-defeating become in time it is the totality of an individual’s life that determines whether pleasures of the flesh will continue to be a fulfilling experience or will become a demoralizing one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It would be just as reasonable, and more logical, for a man or a woman who lack a sense of self-esteem and who feels cheated of satisfaction with pleasures of the flesh to begin the search for greater happiness by undertaking achievements in other aspects of their lives—whether in a career or by cooperating in some community project or by turning to education for the achievement of new skills and greater knowledge. Out of such efforts, a sense of self materializes that may very well lead either to the improvement of existing emotional relationships or to the begging of new ones that promise more enduring satisfaction—including pleasure with pleasures of the flesh. Infidelity is a very chancy and unreliable means to use in searching for one’s identity a very chancy and unreliable means to use in searching for one’s identity, in exploring one’s deepest feelings and beliefs and responses may be, but also communicating them to someone else. This is true for many reasons, including the fact that a man and a woman who are involved in an affair generally have different investments in their relationship, and these affairs are most often conducted under less than encouraging conditions. In addition, social attitudes—including those internalized by the man and woman—make it certain that in a good number of cases, the individuals will have to cope with feelings of guilt, one way or another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Either the guilt will intrude on their ability to accomplish their goals—to discover dimensions of their own personality—or it will require them to deny that the feelings exist, and in doing so, to sweep other feelings under the rug along with the discomfort of guilt. Undeniably, even so little a thing as a few kind words, and certainly a sense of companionship or—even more importantly—the first achievement of “excitement,” carries wit it a significant strengthening of motivation for change and may nurture self-esteem to a point where a man or woman have that much more confidence in their ability to develop more rewarding patterns of behaviour. However, it is very difficult to depend on a single happening, or a series of happenings, to sustain the energy, interest, courage, and zest required by a “lost” individual who is trying to develop in the important ways that he or she feels are necessary if life is to have more meaning. If they are to become real and lasting achievements, real and lasting achievement of goals which require a significant change of emotions, attitudes and habitual conduct must be carried out across a broad spectrum of one’s life. It is true that when one partner finds satisfaction in extramarital relationships, this may turn a potentially destructive relationship into a cautious friendship, at best, or supportive “acquaintanceship,” and in that sense it is better than open material warfare with all its attendant bitterness and destructiveness. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
However, this is not marriage in the sense of two human beings with full regard for each other, sharing the wish to negotiate differences between them and developing mutual pleasures to the fullest extent possible. Making do in marriage is not fulfillment through marriage. Even, if infidelity represents the first step in a positive direction—toward making do instead of making war—its is still a long distance away from the goal of becoming committed: true to oneself and loyal and vulnerable to one’s partner. A minority of the population is afflicted with the vast majority of illnesses that come to the attention of physicians. Defective heredity or a weak constitution only partly explains this high incidence of recurrent illness. We must look as well into the ways of life of these people with a talent for sickening. Studies of the frequently ill show they share many traits. Among other things, it is found that they may simply not take care of themselves; that is, they do not eat, sleep, or exercise sensibly. Another, less obvious, factor in frequent illness is stress. Many people encounter more stress in everyday life than is objectively necessary. They find everyday interpersonal relationships lacking in satisfaction, and, indeed, positively stressing. Demanding roles are a source of such stress. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
If persons must present themselves to others as something that they are not—if they are obliged to seem friendly when they are unfriendly, or if they are obliged to hide their real feelings and wants from others—then every moment spent in the presence of others is stressing. It is as if they are traveling incognito, with their true identity hidden. They feel that if they are “found out” by others, terrible harm will be fall them. Consequently, they trust no one and keep their guard up. Other people by their very existence then function as stressors, adding to the stress of daily life. Another factor in frequent illness is an overdeveloped sense of duty. Persons who feel obliged by their consciences to keep working at unsatisfactory jobs or to stay involved in unrewarding relationships are actively creating the conditions for their own illness. Periods of being sick may thus function as periods of respite from a dispiriting way of life. If they could change their work or their ways of relating even slightly, they would become ill less often. A brief vacation from work of family is usually less expensive than a stay of equal length at a hospital—and the vacation may forestall the illness. The will-power machinery is switched on in certain types as soon as they become aware of foibles. They resolve, and try, to keep a budget, to mix with people, to be more assertive or more lenient. If they showed an equal interests in understanding the implications and sources of their troubles, this would be fine. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Unfortunately, this interest is sadly lacking. The very first step, which is to see the whole extent of the particular disturbance, would go against their grain. It would indeed be the exact opposite to their frantic drive to make the disturbance disappear. Also, since they feel they should be strong enough to conquer it by conscious control, the process of careful disentangling would be an admission of weakness and defeat. These artificial efforts are bound, of course, to abate sooner or later; then, at best, the difficulty is a little more under control. All that is sure is that it has been driven underground and that it continues to operate in a more disguised form. The analyst, naturally, should not encourage such efforts but should analyze them. Most neurotic disturbances resist even the most strenuous efforts at control. Conscious efforts simply do not avail against a depression, against consuming daydreams. One would think that this would be clear to any person who had gained some psychological understanding during analysis. However, again, the clarity of thinking does not penetrate to the “I should be able to master it.” The result is that he suffers more intensely under depressions, etcetera, because, in addition to its being painful anyhow, it becomes a visible sign of his lack of omnipotence. Sometimes the analyst can catch this process at the beginning and nip it in the bud. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Thus, a patient who had revealed the extent of her daydreaming, while exposing in detail how subtly it pervaded most of her activities, came to realize its harmfulness—at least to the extent of understanding how it sapped her energies. The next time she was somewhat guilty and apologetic because the daydreams persisted. Knowing her demands on herself, I injected my belief that it would be neither possible nor even wise to stop them artificially, because we could be sure that they fulfilled as yet important functions in her life—which we would have to come to understand gradually. She felt very much relieved and now told me that she had decided to stop the daydreams. However, since she had not been able to, she felt I would be disgusted with her. Her own expectation of herself had been projected to me. Many reactions of despondence, irritability, or fear occurring during analysis are less a response to the patient’s having discovered a disturbing problem in himself (as the analyst tends to assume) than to his feeling impotence to remove it tight away. Thus, the inner dictates, while somewhat more radical than the other ways to maintain the idealized image, like the others do not aim at real change but at immediate and absolute perfection. They aim at making the imperfection disappear, or making it appear as if the particular perfection were attained. If, as in the past example, this becomes especially clear the inner demands are externalized. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Then what a person actually is, and even what he suffers, becomes irrelevant. Only what is visible to others creates intense worries: a shaking of the hand, a blush, an awkwardness in social situations. The shoulds, therefore, lack the moral seriousness of genuine ideals. People in their grip are not striving, for instance, toward approximating a greater degree of honesty but are driven to attain the absolute in honesty—which is always just around the corner, or is attained in imagination. They can achieve at best a behaviouristic perfection, such as Pearl Buck has described in the character of Madame Wu in the Pavilion of Women. Here is the portrait of a woman who always seems to do, feel, think the right thing. The superficial appearance of such people is, needless to say, most deceptive. They themselves are bewildered when, seemingly out of a blue sky, they develop a street phobia or functional heart trouble. How is that possible, they ask. They have always managed life perfectly, have been the leaders in their class, the organizers, the model marriage partners or parents. Eventually, a situation which they cannot manage in their usual way is bound to occur. And, having no other way to deal with it, their equilibrium is disturbed. The analyst, when getting acquainted with them and the enormous tensions under which they operate, rather marvels that they have kept going as long as they have without gross disturbances. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The contribution of intellect is indispensable. However, it is night enough. It leaves a most important part of the psyche—the intuition—still untouched. The danger of slipping into this overstress on intellectual activity and not retaining the healthy balance between it and intuitional activity, is large and real. The intellect has so dominated the modern man that his approach to these questions is first made through it. Yet, the intellect cannot provide the answers to them. They come, and can only come, through the intuition. When a difficult and important decision has to be made, the mind can impartially take in both the pros and cons, can circle all around the facts, yet in the end return baffled to where it started. Reason exerts itself in vain and only exhausts itself in such a process. The next step is to try outside advice, authority, or, if one can, intuition. The intellect may be convinced and confess to the truth but the faculty which actually recognizes it is the intuition. It is the latter’s light failing upon, and passing through, the intellect which really certifies an idea to be true. Semantic analysis and reasoned reflection help to uncover the lesser errors, the little illusions. The intellect cannot go beyond its own limitations, however; a higher faculty, insight, is needed to uncover the larger errors, the major illusions. The intellectual knowledge of the Truth is merely its shadow and not the Truth itself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The Truth is a higher state of awareness which leads you out of a little personal and physically materialistic everyday life into a new World of being—the World of your higher self which transcends these things. It is a real experience and not a mere speculation. It beings with it the peace which passeth understanding of which Saint Paul spoke, frees you from anxieties, fears, and all other negative ideas. It reveals to you that God, in the sense of a Universal Intelligence and Universal Power, is actually the basis of all existence. A religion that executes its obsolete sovereign must now establish the power of its new sovereign; it closes the churches, and this leads to an endeavour to build a temple. The blood of the gods, which for a second bespatters the confessors of Louis XVI, announces a new baptism. Joseph de Maistre qualified the Revolution as satanic. We can see why and in what sense. Michelet, however, was closer to the truth when he called it a purgatory. An era blindly embarks down this tunnel on an attempt to discover a new illumination, a new happiness, and the face of the real God. However, what will this new god be? Let us ask Saint-Just once more. The year 1789 does not yet affirm the divinity of man, but the divinity of the people, to the degree in which the will of the people coincides with the will of nature and of reason. If the general will is freely expressed, it can only be the universal expression of reason. If the people are free, they are infallible. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Once the King is dead, and the chains of the old despotism thrown off, the people are going to express what, at all times and in all places, is, has been, and will be the truth. They are the oracle that must be consulted to know what the eternal order of the World demands. Voc populi, vox naturae. Eternal principles govern our conduct: Truth, Justice, finally Reason. There we have the new God. The Supreme Being, whom cohorts of young girls come to adore at the Feast of Reason, is only the ancient god disembodied, peremptorily deprived of any connection with the Earth, and launched like a balloon into a Heaven empty of all transcendent principles. Deprived of all his representatives, of any intercessor, the god of the lawyers and philosophers only has the value of a demonstration. He is not very strong, in fact, and we can see why Rousseau, who preached tolerance, thought that atheists should be condemned to death. To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well. However, that will only come later. In 1793, the new faith is still intact, and it will suffice, to take Saint-Just’s word, to govern according to the dictates of reason. The art of ruling, according to him, has produced only monsters because, before his time, no one wished to govern according to nature. The period of monsters has come to an end with the termination of the period of violence. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“The human heart advances from nature to violence, from violence to morality. Morality is, therefore, only nature finally restored after centuries of alienation. Man only has to be given law, “in accord with nature and with his heart,” and he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt. Universal suffrage, the foundation of the new laws, must inevitably lead to a universal morality. “Our aim is to create an order of things which establishes a universal tendency toward good.” Spiritual self-realization is the main thing. Study of the teachings concerning cosmical evolution and the psychical evolution of man are but intellectual accessories—things we may or may not take on our journey, as we like. That part of man which reasons and speculates—mortal mind—is not the part which can discover and verify the existence of God. We are not necessarily helped or hindered on the divine path by taking up the lore of science or by becoming versed in the ways of sophistry. Once we live out our spiritual life in the heart, the rest sinks to second place. What the Overself really is defines adequate statement. For reason falters and fails before its mysterious Void. It dares not claim a capacity beyond what it actually possesses. Thus, the mystery of the World is the mystery of a soluble riddle hidden within an insoluble enigma. Nevertheless, we need not despair. For even if metaphysics is unable to explore this mysterious territory, it is at least able to point out its location. That is a definite gain. However, what is not all. What reason cannot do can yet be done by the faculty which towers transcendently above it—insight. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Safety officers, in one form or another, have been present in the American work force for a long time. Some of the first safety officers came out of the fire service. As safety officers, the Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs make it a priority to stay in shape. Practicing the basic exercise principles is crucial for you to develop an effective fitness-training program. The principles of exercise apply to everyone at all levels of physical training, from the Olympic champion to the weekend golfer. They apply especially to fitness training for military personnel because having standard fitness principles across the organization saves time, energy, resources—and prevents injury. If you recall the P-R-O-V-R-B-S acronym, you can easily remember the basic principles of exercise: Progression—The intensity and duration of exercise must gradually increase to improve your fitness level. A good guideline for improvement is a 10 percent gain at specified intervals. Regularity—To achieve affective training, you should schedule workouts in each of the first four fitness components at least three times a week. Regularity is also key in resting, sleeping, and following a good diet. Overload—The workload of each exercise session must exceed the normal demands placed on your body to bring about a training effect. You have often heard this expressed as “No pain, no gain.” A fitness training, such as your instructor in the Sacramento Fire Department, can help you learn to tell the difference between pain that results from an optimum level of overload and pain that indicates potential injury. Variety—Changing activities reduces the boredom and increases your motivation to progress. Recovery—You should follow a hard day of training for a given component of fitness by an easier training or rest day for that component. This helps your body recover. Another way to promote recovery is to alternate the muscle groups you exercise every other day, especially when training for strength and muscle endurance. Balance—To be effective, a fitness program should address all the fitness components, since overemphasizing any one of them may detract from the others. Specificity—You gear training toward specific goals. For example, if their training emphasizes running drills and techniques, members of the Sacramento Fire Department become better runners. Although swimming is great exercise, it will not improve a two-mile-run time as much as a coordinated running program does. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The Sacramento Fire Department has been using safety officers for over a century. The most common injuries for all fire service activities are strains, sprains, and muscle pain, followed by cuts, lacerations, and bruises. Considering only fireground injuries (and those that are consider moderate to severe) strains and sprains are still the most common injury type, followed by thermal burns. Generally speaking, the community image of a member of the Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs are ones of a protector or hero. Likewise, the firefighting profession is often included on my “most dangerous” top 10 lists. Historically, firefighters and EMTs have worn these images with a certain pride or swagger. More recently, the image fails to realistically depict the effect that a firefighter injury or death has on the humans involved. “Here at the Sacramento Fire Department seldom, we seldom curse when talking about the job, because the profession brings out the best in people. We have those noble ideals, and noble ideals are hard to envision when you are in the gutter. We have a purpose in life, and when we start talking about that, I think we watch our language. When we start talking about other things, then maybe we revert to more normal levels of tough talk. We love risk taking as firefighters. That attracts a lot of us. We are a nation of risk takers, who do not believe in absolute safety. Perhaps it’s in our genes from those Europeans who chose to leave an old, established life and embark on a new one at great risk. It shows up in the entrepreneurial spirit we see in our country today. I think firefighters mature on the job and realize that the reality is different from the image. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
To help save lives and keep the community safe, if you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Never has there been a building so talked about. You will find The Winchester Mystery House in what was once the countryside known as “Winchester Valley,” where it has left past guests feeling a little spooked passing through certain rooms. It is well known for its reputation of being the world’s most haunted location. Do you fear the dark? Does the idea of the supernatural scare you? Do you sometimes anticipate the worst that can happen to you? Do you shiver when you read about victims of violent crime and think “that could have been me?” Does life seem insane? When you walk through the twisting hallways of The Winchester Mansion, are you apprehensive about what might be around the next corner? While standing at the door-to-nowhere, have you ever worried that life may have no meaning? Are you anxious that the next day might be your last? Do your days sometimes seem irremediably gloomy? Are you afraid of dying? We have examined your case thoroughly and think you will find the antidote for your condition at The Winchester Mystery House. A daily dose of horror is just the tonic you need. If fortifies the spirit with bracing jolts of terror. It inoculates the soul against fears that hound us all. It quickens the reflexes against life’s inhospitable surprises and tempers the imagination with thoughts unthinkable. Here you will find madmen in a variety of shapes and sizes who will help make things seem more rational. Feeling a bit self-absorbed? There is nothing like a tale of Mrs. Winchester’s hauntings to give you the right perspective.
The Winchester Estate dates back to the late 19th century, and it has a history that is packed full of legends and stories of spirits. The guided post-sunset walk takes visitors through the history of the mansion, while also offering a chance to spot some of the more well-known Winchester ghosts. There are stories of a little girl playing in the hallways and tugging at bedcovers at night and a woman in white who crosses the courtyard and passes through the walls. Lightening in colours no one can name sear across the infinite and multihued sky in jagged shards the size of which no one can conceive. Alien winds scream their impossible being in warring cacophony of notes no one can ever believe at volumes none can bear. And when the winds pick up on the fourth floor of the mansion, they make an eerie whining noise. It sounds as if everything around you is screaming. Right before a quick scratching sound, then something flares. A small spot of light glides like a firefly toward you. Another flare, then a dull yellow flow. A thin man has been said to step into the light. “Found some others out there,” is all he says before disappearing before your very eyes, and then everything is absolute darkness. Outside, the winds are said to kick up; it screams across the night. Well, maybe it is the wind. We all know the story of The Winchester Mansion.
The carpenters, who worked day and night for 36 years to build the mansion, that was once nine stories high, containing as many as 600 rooms. They knew the area was dense in spiritual energy. The hallways often possessed a great river of shadows. As these men felt a moan rising from a core of solid fear, they were so afraid that they would stand frozen for the space of one deep, shuddering breath. It was believed even the objects they could see were enemies, because they were keeping secrets. They knew, but were not telling. The cold quiet of The Winchester Mansion was a familiar song. Often, Mrs. Winchester’s guests would crough down, huddling against the floor, until help arrived. The mansion is situated over the crossing of two Ley Lines. In these areas, the veneer between the physical and spirit realms is thinner and much more permeable. This permeability and natural energy allow entities to manifest much more readily than in a normal location. Any thought or action in these areas, whether positive or negative has a much stronger and more focused effect. In the case of The Winchester Mansion decades of compounded suffering, negativity and strong emotional experiences have left a marked effect on the atmosphere in and around the mansion.
Some tour guides have heard chanting coming from outside the mansion and have heard their names being called. Others have reported seeing a woman hovering in the mansion. Many who have seen Mrs. Winchester claimed that she was “supernaturally beautiful, her skin glistens, and there’s a kind of light in her eyes that you can’t look away from.” Although her journals are sometimes vague, Mrs. Winchester experienced bizarre poltergeist activity during construction. She mentions to a friend the incredible amount of poltergeist activity that occurred during the time spent building the front of the mansion. One night, when darkness fell, the mansion was filled with eerie music like nothing Mrs. Winchester had ever heard before. Creatures from her maddest nightmares filled into the Grand Ball Room in some kind of funeral procession. She watched from the hallway, terrified of being seen yet unable to turn away. The very last thing she saw was her maid at the end of the procession, following the creatures off into the darkness. Later that night, Mrs. Winchester watched the shadows of leaves on the wall and drifted into a peaceful, safe, sleep, happy that the nuisance of her waking hours was gone. The very next day, on September 5, 1922, construction efforts were suddenly stopped when the ladders several carpenters were working from were pushed away from the wall, forcing them to jump several stories. Moments later, it was discovered that Mrs. Winchester had passed away in her sleep.
Mr. Hasen, one of Mrs. Winchester’s foremen, had written about his tools getting moved to the far corners of the room when his back was turned. Mr. Hansen was left staring in disbelief at a kaleidoscope World of shifting, flickering lights, a surfaceless void with an unimaginably distant vanishing point near which huge amorphous shapes twisted and withered in a constant fury of becoming. He had seen a hint that the matter that made up the forms of this World which everyone accepted as solid and separate was in fact all one and that only probability kept everything as it was and kept our reality apart from a multiverse of others. A solitary bead of sweat formed high on his brow and trailed a meandering pattern down his cheek and through the stubble that lay below. Although the sky was clear, the moon was but a crescent; its weak glow lit only a corner of the night ceiling. Through the darkness, beyond the curtain of trees. The mansion’s cry intruded upon his thoughts. Its shrillness disturbing him from his rapture. lost in a spell of Llanada Villa, Mr. Hansen walked slowly through the mansion. Climbing the stairs, he heard a hoarse voice whisper, “And what do you dream?” He had a moment to think, to realize, that he had never felt this way before, then the emanations flooded him, carrying him away on waves of darkness. He gave in weakly to the sensations that swept over him. As the mansion cried out again, its cry pierced the night, resounding like the cry of a thousand lost souls. That night, he went to his cold bed and dreamt of men with furlined capes and armor who became fearsome beast and tore through lines of their enemies.
Although they were paid three times the going rate, provided with medical care, subsidized groceries, and lived in Victorian cottages that were once on the estate, carpenters employed by Mrs. Winchester frequently suddenly left and did not come back, never giving a reason to their departure. However, it is suspected that the vast distances in the mansion had something to so with it. These carpenters would sometimes come to work to unfamiliar walls. After working for three hours with panic on his back, every minute having seemed like an hour, one man said, “I had been through a Hell of distance and time, indeed–and the Hell is still with me.” Wandering to the window and parting the drapes, he found it to be very late. He still felt disoriented, adrift, and threatened, but he sensed that he could he was free. With his pounding heart, he walked out into the dark mansion. There were no other carpenters present, and few caretakers. Others might be afraid of ghost, but the panic had taken care of that. If you already felt menaced for no reason, then the real dangers held no terror for you. He walked for many miles, past more rooms, libraries, and long closed rooms. Then he noticed a young woman walking on the other side of the mansion. Without thinking twice, he crossed over and joined her. They stopped, and he poured out his heart, his nameless fear. She held his hands. They agreed to meet again. However, he was left once more alone on a large room, wondering if it had been real. So he cut over to the hallway and started back. The mansion rest of the mansion was deserted, too, his steps echoing hollowly on the mahogany floor. It was dark, and only the light from the windows was visible. He could hear more than see. The panic had gotten stronger again, and he needed to return to the security, if marginal, of his home.
Gradually, he became aware of a man walking about a hundred feet behind. He himself stopped and pretended to look out the window. He wanted the man to pass him. However, the man stopped when he reached him, then went down some steps to the third floor. The man smiled, opened a bag, and offered him some Brandy. He went down and accepted. When he woke up, he was lying on his stomach, which felt warm and wet. There was no pain. However, when he tried to get up, he found that he could not. So, he crawled up the steps into the ballroom on the 4th floor. The crawling went all right, at first. However, then he became weaker. And he grew conscious of the thin red trail he was leaving behind him. The panic, suddenly and forever, was gone. It had indeed been replaced, expunged, by the reality. All that was left was a certain sadness. The mansion that has survived such a long history, is a marvel to see in person. Today, it stands four stories high, and has an estimated 160 rooms, of which 110 are open for tour. There has been some restoration over the years and ongoing maintenance. Come inside the mansion to see the priceless architecture and learn of its history. The guided tours are exquisitely led by a well prepared and enthusiastic team, who make sure that you and all guests are entertained by the great stories. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After tour, there will be time enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. Even if you do not believe ghost stories, you might still get goosebumps passing through the most infamous basement. Enjoy panoramic views and discover quirky features such as secret staircases, doors that open to nowhere, stairs to the ceiling, hidden trapdoors, and other unusual features.
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company. Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs – not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/
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I Should be Able to Melt the Heart of a Criminal
Although, many people think life is hard, we are less alone when we realize we are not alone. Of course, life it hard, it is supposed to be because life is a test. However, our Saviour always understands. Life being is part of the Heavenly Father’s plan. The trials we face do not mean that the plan is failing. They are part of the plan meant to help us seek God. We become more like Him when we endure patiently. Sometimes, amid our struggles and thoughts of our shortcomings, we forget the point of life’s trials: to turn us to Christ and to our Heavenly Father. “Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the Earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down His life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise,” reports 2 Nephi 2.8. The Saviour knows our struggles in detail. He knows you great potential to grow in faith, hope, and charity. Heaven can give us strength and wisdom beyond our own. No matter tribulation and no matter delays in promised blessings, we can be of good cheer; for Christ has overcome the World, and we are with Him. If the Saviour was standing here today, He would express His endless love for you, His complete confidence in you. He would tell you that you, “do all things through him who strengthens me,” reports Philippians 4.13. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Life is sometimes hard because of manipulators. We believe that the modern manipulator has developed from our “scientific” emphases as well as from our marketplace orientation, which sees humans as things to know about, to influence, and to manipulate. Witness the presidential campaigns or any manor election to see how the electorate is analyzed and fed images designed to influence their votes based on opinion polls. The candidates are frequently advised not to reveal too much of their true selves, but to display themselves as metaphors of whatever the current poll indicates will satisfy public opinion—a televised visit to a family farm, a picture of the candidate hugging an elderly person at a retirement community. Wearing a hard hat. A military helmet. A baseball cap. A thing. Things can be dissected or manipulated without damage to their natures, but a human being is not a thing. People cannot be dissected without being destroyed; they cannot be manipulated without being harmed. Yet, the very objective of the marketplace is to achieve this “thingness” in people! In the marketplace, people are no longer persons but customers. To the sales manager, they are prospects; to the tailor they are suits; to the bond salesman they are bank accounts. Even at hair salons, where a rather intimate service is performed, the customer is a tipper. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
All of this tends to depersonalize us and deprive us of our individuality, and we resent it. We all want particularity, but that is not what we have when we are hooked into our commercial World, where the quality of individuality is destroyed. When the con artists of the selling games cajole us with stock phrases, meaning not a bit of it, we resent it and them. We are all in the same boat. We all have the manipulative potentials we have come to resent in others. We have at our disposals a variety of manipulative actions and intentions. Sometimes we are “avoiding and withdrawing.” Sometimes “blaming and attacking.” Sometimes “pleasing and placating.” We seem different to different people and different manipulations to others. This is the reason that we cannot judge someone by another’s opinion. Too often, another’s opinion of someone is based on having seen only certain sides of that person. There is often a lot of manipulation that takes place in marriages. A man name Jason admitted to committing adultery. However, unlike many other adulterers he knows, he never has really cared for the people he has affairs with. He mostly lusts after other women, as long as he is able to like them. Jason admits that there must be more than a physical attraction for the affair to last more than once or twice, and he has never had a so-called “one-night stand.” Sometimes people are unwilling to have an affair with other people because they do not find them as attractive as their spouse. At other times, people just want to have an affair because they are in a foreign land and think it is stimulating or romantic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
When a person discloses that they are having an affair, it is not always about being honest and getting rid of guilt. It could be a manipulative way of trying to get their spouse to leave them. While having an affair, some people are as determined as they can be—they want out of their marriage. Getting out of a marriage does not mean that one is looking to remarry someone else, but having someone to go through a divorce with helps. Especially when children are involved, a divorce is a really very, very heavy thing. When having serial affairs, people do realize that they will never experience commitment nor peace, but they still do it. It is because they love the ballet. For a moment, one is into oneself, and all of their being is expressed. Pleasures of the flesh can also be another reason why people have affairs. Sometimes the same love style gets boring because one loses motivation and knows what to expect, and this may be the initial reason they start going elsewhere. Stimulating creativity in the bedroom is not always a possibility for everyone because there is not enough room in the house. In the act of consoling one another, some people even have affairs with their siblings as a way of releasing frustrations. Others have affairs with their adult kids. With cases of incest, from the research conducted, these people do not feel guilty about having affairs with family members. The only concerns they have are “creating a line of bleeders or idiots.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Genetic distortion is a great taboo against incest. The less traumatic kinds of incest involve, first, brother and sister; and second, father and daughter. By far the most traumatic type of incest is mother-son. The last type may be the least frequent of all, as far as overt expression of pleasures of the flesh is concerned. However, a domineering, smothering type of mother is responsible for what can with some fairness be described as a psychosocial incest relationship. Males can be crippled in this situation without ever having been to bed with their mothers. As adults, they suffer from sexual dysfunction, particularly primary or secondary impotence. In terms of explicit sexual expression of incest, it is important to distinguish between single incidents and continuing relationships. These two references during the symposium to incest were of single incidents and these are either readily forgotten or relegated to the past with a minimum od distress. On the other hand, incestuous relationships that have been maintained for long periods of time and that have not been psychosocially released when physical activity is terminate, cause the greatest difficulty in later life. One other factor ought to be mentioned here. When infidelity has been absorbed into a pattern of life and when the individual has the freedom to act in accordance with private needs, it is not at all unusual to have an incestuous opportunity utilized in response to the impulse of the moment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The instance given of the man with his sister, seeking solace and support in terms of his own personal insecurities and his fears of his wedding night, is quite understandable and probably not particularly traumatic for either brother or sister. Incest may seem like a far cry from where we are today in America. However, it is akin to, “Love is love.” Incest has become more prevalent in entertainment. Incest is explicitly condemned in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Leviticus 18.6 sates, “None of you shall approach any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord.” In 1 Corinthias, Paul rebukes the church, saying, “It is actually reported that there is sexual immprtality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for man has his father’s wife” (Leviticus 18.8). Life is difficult for everyone. Therefore, take the trials of life and turn to Jesus Christ. He believes in us. He will strengthen us and lift our burdens. You can overcome the spiritually and emotionally exhausting plagues of the World. Despite the distractions and distortions that swirl around us, you can find true rest—meaning relief and peace—even amid your most vexing problems. Even if it is not what we wanted, to endure faithfully, it is essential to accept God’s will. What is Jesus has wavered in His commitment to do His Father’s will? His Atonement would not have become accomplished. The dead would not be resurrected. The blessings of immortality and eternal life would not be. However, Jesus did endure. He paid for all our sins and suffering and paid the price for our return to our Father. Because He endured with faith, each of us can enjoy the blessings of eternal life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Expect no favourable opinion of spiritual truth from a man who looks at life through the medium of the senses alone, whose reason is enslaved by them, and whose intuition is effaced by them. To depend on feeling as a guide to truth is to depend on a truncated method which is inadequate to the task. The only complete basis for our enquiry is feeling plus reason, the only results which possess unquestionable validity are those achieved by feeling plus reason. The power of intuition alone can enable us to discriminate between the real and the unreal and it alone can eliminate all doubts by eliminating contradictions. There is no reason why itself should not be appeased. This intellectual power is not to be allowed to crush the Heaven-born intuitional sense by its sheer wight but is to be fused with it. The intellect can present opinions—some very plausible and logical, others very weighty and fact-supported. However, only the intuition can penetrate those layers after layer of spiritual experience which reveal the truth about man’s link with God. If the intellect’s workings are not warmed by the heart’s movements, it can only approach the reflected images of truth, not truth of itself. The disputations which follow the activity of intellect melt away in the harmonies which follow the upwelling of intuition. The sin of the intellectual is when he allows intellect to block intuitive feeling, to serve only the animal body or to disregard the testimony of all those who, since early antiquity, have solved the problem of being and experienced the mind at its best level. Such men may have the finest brains, the greatest erudition, but themselves remain uncorrupted by these possession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The intellect is not competent to establish the existence of God, which only a higher faculty can know and consequently make any valid assertions about. However, neither is it competent to disprove the existence of God since it can disprove only those finite matters which it can deal with: God, being, infinite, is outside its reach in every way. The intellect cannot be used to ascertain the ultimate truth without becoming involved at the end in inexplicable contradictions. Some of them are: There is an ego—there is no ego. The World is real—the World is unreal. Any idea or statement about fundamental being, whether of man or cosmos, can be countered by its opposite. If not accompanied by the balancing cultivation of the intuition, the simple education of the intellect, whether as a hoarding of information or a training in reasoning, becomes mere vanity. What we need is a third point of view which shall fall into neither of these two extremes of emotional credulity or rational scepticism, whilst reconciling what is sound in both. This exists in the intuitive point of view. There is always a risk that in taking a too intellectual view of the Universe and in practising a too methodical system of yoga, the aspirant may get caught in the machinery of both intellect and method. If he is unable to extricate himself then, whatever benefit he derives from both will always be on the lower plane. The transcendental insight which he seeks will then be as elusive as ever. If he seeks guidance concerning the correct course to pursue, he can better get it from the still center of his being than from the restless chopping of his intellect. It is better to be intelligent when he is searching among ideas and doctrines than to be credulous—otherwise he may mistake human absurdity for divine mystery—but he can be so only if intuitive feeling is at work along with the reasoned thinking. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
His own mind acts as a medium which interprets each experience, event, object. Hence it colours necessarily if unwittingly or even reshapes what is received by consciousness. And in the case of the Real, the end results for him is a paradox. He cannot know It without transcending himself. He cannot transcend himself without rising above the knower-and-known duality. Where intuitive feeling will guide him aright to his best decisions, calculating intellect will not infrequently step in with doubts or fears and rob him of them. The contribution of intellect is indispensable. However, it is not enough. It leaves a most important part of the psyche—the intuition—still untouched. Let us consider some demands: I should always be understanding, sympathetic, and helpful. I should be able to melt the heart of a criminal. Again, this is not entirely fantastic. Rare people, such as the priest in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, have achieved this spiritual power. I had a patient to whom the figure of the priest was an important symbol. She felt she should be like him. However, she did not, at this juncture, have any of the attitudes or qualities which enabled the priest to act as he did toward the criminal. She could act charitably at times because she felt that she should be charitable, but she did not feel charitable. As a matter of fact, she did not feel much of anything for anybody. She was constantly afraid least some body take advantage of her. Whenever she could not find an article, she thought it had been stolen. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Without being aware of it, her neurosis had made her egocentric and bent on her own advantage—all of which was covered up by a layer of compulsive humility and goodness. Was she at that time willing to see these difficulties in herself, and to work at them? Of course not. Here, too, it was a question of a blind issuing of orders which could lead only to self-deception or unfair self-criticism. In trying to account for the amazing blindness of the shoulds, we again have to leave many loose ends. This much, however, is understandable from their origin in the search for glory and their function to make oneself over into one’s idealized self: the premise on which they operate is that nothing should be, or is, impossible for oneself. If that is so, then logically, existing conditions need not be examined. This trend is most apparent in the application of demands directed toward the past. Concerning the neurotic’s childhood, it is not only important to elucidate the influences which set his neurosis going, but also to recognize his present attitudes toward the adversities of the past. These are determined less by the good or the bad done to him than by his present needs. If he has developed, for instance, a general need to be all sweetness and light, he will spread a golden haze over his childhood. If he has forced his feelings into a straight jacket, he may feel that he does love his parents because he should love them. If he generally refuses to assume responsibility for his life, he may put all the blame for all his difficulties on his parents. The vindictiveness accompanying this latter attitude, in turn, may be out in the open or repressed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
He may finally go to the opposite extreme, and seemingly assume an absurd amount of responsibility for himself. In this case, he may have become aware of the full impact of intimidating and cramping early influences. His conscious attitude is quite objective and plausible. He may point out, for instance, that his parents could not help behaving the way they did. The patient sometimes wonders himself why he does not feel any resentment. One of the reasons for the absence of conscious resentment is a retrospective should that interests us here. Though he is aware that what has been perpetrated on him was quite sufficient to crush anybody else, he should have come out of it unscathed. He should have had the inner strength and fortitude not to let these factors affect him. So, since they did, it proved that he was no good from the beginning. In other words, he is realistic up to a point; he would say: “Sure, that was a cesspool of hypocrisy and cruelty.” However, then, his vision becomes blurred: “Although I was helplessly exposed to this atmosphere, I should have come out of it like a lily out of a swamp.” If he could assume a matter-of-fact responsibility for his life instead of such a spurious one, he would think differently. He would admit that the early influences could not fail to mold him in an unfavourable way. And he would see that, no matter what the origin of his difficulties, they do disturb his present and future life. For this reason, he had better muster his energies to outgrown them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Instead, he leaves the whole matter at the completely fantastic and futile level of his demand that he should not have bene affected. It is a sign of progress when the same patient at a later period reverses his position and rather gives himself credit for not having been entirely crushed by the early circumstances. The attitude toward childhood is not the only area in which the retrospective should operate with this deceptive counterfeit of responsibility, and the same resultant futility. One person will maintain that he should have helped his friend by voicing a frank criticism; another that he should have brought up his children without their becoming neurotic. Naturally, we all regret having failed in this or that regard. However, we can examine why we failed, and learn from it. We must also recognize that in view of the neurotic difficulties existing at the time of the “failures,” we may actually have done the best we could at that time. However, for the neurotic, to have done his best is not good enough. In some miraculous way, he should have done better. Similarly, the realization of any present shortcoming is unbearable for anybody harassed by dictatorial should. Whatever the difficulty, it must be removed quickly. How this removal is effected varies. The more a person lives in imagination, the more likely it is that he will simply spirit away the difficulty. Thus, a patent who discovered in herself a colossal drive for being the power behind the throne, and who saw how this drive had operated in her life, was convinced by the next day that this drive was now entirely a matter of the past. She should not be power ridden; so she was not. After such “improvements” occurred frequently, we realized that the drive for actual control and influence was but one expression of the magic power she possessed in her imagination. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Personality refers to the characteristics ways in which an individual experiences and acts in life situations. Action affects not only the external environment, but also the health of the body. A Physical-Health-Promoting Personality. The meaningful question to ask is “What regimen, what ways of behaving in the World will promote health?” The most obvious answer to this question relates to such matters as diet, rest, and sensible exercise. People who have been adequality educated in general hygiene will follow a diet that maintains health, energy, and weight; they will care for their teeth; they will sleep enough to restore their energy; and they will exercise enough to keep fit. A more subtle factor in the production and maintenance of physical health is morale, or “spirit.” Increasing evidence indicates that when persons find their loves challenging and satisfying, their bodies work better and they resist infectious illness better. Meaningful work, enjoyable leisure, love and friendship are inexpensive healthy insurance. When I was sick and spent so much time noticing what was going on in me, in both my body and mind (could I be without either one?), and tried to write about it, I struggled much too hard before I have up. Intent on my goal, I was trying to force it, instead of considering whether this goal was possible. At last, it was forced on me that the only way I could do it would be to write each aspect on a separate transparent sheet, lay all the sheets on tip of each other and hold them against the light so people could look through them. Then all they would see was muddle. And before the first sheet had been written, something in it and all the others would have changed. To have any fixed ideas about myself is nonsense: I can only notice what is going on in me now. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Saint-Just gives an impassioned speech in which he calls for the death of Louis XVI. He believes the king to stand in the way of the French Revolution and enlightenment ideas. The only purpose of Saint-Just’s speech is, once and for all, to block every egress for the King except the one leading to the scaffold. If, in fact, the premises of The Social Contract are accepted, this is logically inevitable. At last, after Saint-Just, “kings will flee to the desert, and nature will resume her rights.” If passed judgment on Louis XVI or if it pronounced a security measure, it was quite pointless of the Convention to vote a reservation and say that it did not intend to create a precedent. In doing so, it refused to face the consequences of its own principles and tried to camouflage, with shocking hypocrisy, its real purpose, which was to found a new form of absolutism. Jacques Roux, at least was speaking the truth of the times when he called the King Louis the Last, thus indicating that the real revolution, which had already been accomplished on the economic level, was then taking place on the philosophic plane and that it implied a twilight of the gods. Theocracy was attacked in principle in 1789 and killed in its incarnation in 1793. Brissot was right in saying: “The most solid monument to our revolution is philosophy.” On January 21, with the murder of the King-priest, was consummated what has significantly been called the passion of Luuis XVI. It is certainly a crying scandal that the public assassination of a weak but goodhearted man has significantly been called the passion of Louis XVI. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is certainly a crying scandal that the public assassination of a weak but goodhearted man has been presented as a great moment in French history. That scaffold marked no climax—far from it. However, the fact remains that, by its consequences, the condemnation of the King is at the crux of our contemporary history. It symbolizes the secularization of our history and the disincarnation of the Christian God. Up to now, God played a part in history through the medium of the kings. However, His representative in history has been killed, for there is no longer a king. Therefore, there is nothing but a semblance of God, relegated to the Heaven of principles. The revolutionaries may well refer to the Gospel, but in fact they dealt a terrible blow to Christianity, from which it has not yet recovered. It really seems as if the execution of the King, followed, as we know, by hysterical scenes of suicide and madness, took place in complete awareness of what was being done. Louis XVU seems, sometimes, to have doubted his divine right, though he systematically rejected any projected legislation which threatened his faith. However, from the moment that he suspected or knew his fate, he seemed to identify himself as his language betrayed, with his divine mission, so that his language betrayed, with his divine mission, so that there would be no possible doubt that the attempt on his person was aimed at the King-Christ, the incarnation of the divinity, and not at the craven flesh of a mere man. His bedside book in the Temple was the Imitation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The calmness and perfection that this man of rather average sensibility displayed during his last moments, his indifference to everything of this World, and, finally, his brief display of weakness on the solitary scaffold, so far removed from the people whose ears he had wanted to reach, while the terrible rolling of the drum drowned his voice, give us the right to imagine that it was not Capet who died, but Louis appointed by divine right, and that with him, in a certain manner, died temporal Christianity. To emphasize this sacred bond, his confessor sustained him, in his moment of weakness, by remining him of his “resemblance” to the God of Sorrows. And Louis XVI recovers himself and speaks in the language of this God: “I shall drink,” he says, “the cup to the last dregs.” Then he commits himself, trembling, into the ignoble hands of the executioner. This holds an important lesson for our future. The importance of the individual will no longer lie in the state’s domain of political power. I see them as important ethnic and cultural centers. Evolution is speeding up. The 21st Century evolution has accelerated with a rapidity that is almost impossible for us to understand. For three billion years, the intelligence of life forms on this planet grew with almost invisible acceleration. It took more than two billion years to slowly evolve the muscular technologies that propelled animals a few miles per hour and which produced the muscular force of an elephant. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Then, with the mechanical revolution, the curve rockers upward. The horizontal axis of is time indexed in billions of years. The vertical/energy axis can be calibrated in terms of number of inventions, energy produced and consumed mobility in terms of speed and altitude, expansions of perception—microscopic or telescopic. Whatever energy index we chart, the climb rate shot up almost vertically after 1946. The human species is riding an energy-intelligence boom that has dramatically changed our conceptions of evolution. Darwinian theories be blind natural selection are now seen as primitive chauvinism of 19th Century British imperialism. Next, consider the Genetic Highway. Here, the horizontal axis scopes the neurographic time zones—from primitive, prehistoric Africa to current California. The vertical axis is calibrated in the DNA time. The dom-species in Africa is hunter-gatherer. The Africans are thus two million years behind California—the Western Front. It is interesting to observe that Africa lacks the more civilized gene-colonies and that Europe and Russia and China lack the mammalian-primitive gene-colonies. Europe is left brain. African is right brain. The genetic wave, that in less than a century hurtled North Americans through three stages of evolution, was gleefully surfed by several Evolutionary Agents. One of the most successful was Henry Ford. In one generation, Agent Ford took a species of domesticated primates from behind horse drawn plows and poppled them into mechanical ground-vehicles constructed of steel, glass, and rubber—thus multiplying their intelligence. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Mr. Ford put his countrymen and countrywomen into the driver’s seat! He offered the driver’s seat—Throne of Self-Actualization—to the average working hum-ants of his gene pool. It came equipped with several self-actualizing technologies permitting neurological choice and stimulating Intelligence Increase. The steering wheel allowed individuals to select their own directional course, and to change it at will. The accelerator allowed individuals to select their speed—an Einsteinian concept, indeed. Brakes added another dimension to self-control. Gear shifts. Transmission. Self-starters. Fluid power. Dynaflow. Overdrive. Convertibles. We see the birth of a new language of self-determination. Succsing generations demanded for their bodies and their brains exactly those power-freedom—mobility characteristics that were built into our cars. As the greatest stroke of genetic public relations, Mr. Ford called his invention the automobile! This word means self-mover. Evolutionary Agents all over the galaxy smiled knowingly when the term automobile flashed out through the Van Allen Belt. Free-wheeling Americans called it the self-mover! Old World Europeans, of course, did not catch on. It was called horseless carriage in England. Coche in Spain. Carro in Mexico. Voiture in France. Meccina in Italy. The genetic implications of auto-mobile were endless. Average people could move their bodies or their brains where they wanted to go. Now that cars are starting to drive all by themselves, I guess we will go back to calling them automobiles and self-movers. The evolution of intelligence is a function of velocity and mobility. Henry Ford and his fellow agents rocketed the Genetic Intelligence Quotient of the species. When the technological primates climbed into the driver’s seat, they were soon off to the moon—carrying their automobile bodies and their automobile brains. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
A critical part of public safety is putting knowledge to work. Skill development is an active learning process (learning by doing), and the student’s intimate involvement in the learning experience dramatically increases retention. Have you ever noticed during sports competition that the individual or team that tries first often loses? Your ability to cope with challenges of fighting fires depends greatly on your level of physical fitness. Physical fitness not only determines how well you perform in fighting fires, but also enhances your quality of life, improves your productivity, and brings about beneficial physical and mental changes. Your physical fitness benefits both the Sacramento Fire Department and you. The Sacramento Fire Department needs physically fit firefighters, and when you are fit, you are more likely to lead an enjoyable, productive life. As a member of the Sacramento Fire Department, how important is your level of physical fitness? How does your fitness affect your unit’s readiness? You are probably tired of hearing how important it is to be in great shape as a firefighter, but it is a basic truth. You do not have to be the best at everything, but you definitely need to be one of the most physically fit firefighters in your house. Morales improves when your firefighters are constantly trying to beat you in a run or weight lifting competition. When it comes to fighting fires, physical fitness is crucial. If you allow your firefighters to deploy in poor condition, you have failed them. Being physically fit out here will help the Sacramento Fire Department to bear some of the rigors of the job: less sleep, very random and increasingly changing rest patterns, extreme heat, heavy weights, to name a few. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Staying in shape while employed as a firefighter can be a tough task, because you often lack the time or facilities to exercise. However, solid cardiovascular fitness will make a significant different in higher elevations, and upper body and leg strength may prevent exhaustion from heavy gear in hot conditions. Your physical fitness in your ability to perform physical work, training, and other activities throughout your daily work schedule. Physical fitness is multidimensional, and—based on your goals—some will be more valuable than others. Five key components define your physical fitness: Cardiorespiratory (CR) endurance—how efficiently your body delivers oxygen and nutrients for muscular activity and transports waste from the cells. Muscular strength—the greats amount of force your muscle or muscle group can exert in a single effort. Muscular endurance—the ability of your muscle or muscle group to perform repeated movements for extended periods. Flexibility—the ability to move your joint (elbow or knee, for example) or any group of joints through their entire normal range of motion. Body composition—the amount of body fat you have un comparison with your total body mass. Improving the first three of these components will improve your body composition by decreasing your body fat. Excessive body fat detracts from other fitness measures, reduces your physical and mental performance, detracts from your appearance, and increases overall health risks. One measurement of body fate is as a percentage of total weight. Body fat standards for males ages 17-20 is 20 percent, females ages 17-20 30 percent, makes 21-27 22 percent, females 21-27 32 percent, males 28-39 24 percent, females 28-39 34 percent, males 40+ 26 percent, females 40+ 36 percent. Besides your physical fitness, you should also work to improve your motor fitness. Motor fitness—speed, agility, muscle power, eye-hand coordination, and eye-foot coordination—directly affects a firefighter’s performance. Appropriate training will improve these elements up to each firefighter’s individual potential. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Public safety is extremely important to the Sacramento Fire Department. It plays a major role when dealing with the community and even their families. “I have two years more to go in medical school, and right now I’m geared toward emergency medicine. I like the immediacy of it, the life-and-deathness of it and being able to make a big different quickly. A lot of medical people frown on emergency medicine because they say there is no patient follow-up, you’re not following your patient through. But for a lot of people who come through that door in life-and-death situations, you could be the most important medical person in their lives. You are the whole medical profession to them. It’s very important to me to get back into the fire service. I have to bee in a field of medicine that will allow me to do that. I sent fourteen applications to medical schools. Medical schools cut 85 percent of the applicants without seeing them. Even if you get interviewed, your chance is 25 percent or less. You wait around, and you go to the mailbox every morning. Rejection, rejection, an interview. I went to an interview at Dartmouth, which really where I wasted to go. I sat down with this gentleman in his office, and he didn’t like me from the word go. This was a medical doctor, and he was looking at my records for the first time. He said, ‘I see you are some kind of Renaissance man,’ as if that where a derogatory thing. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“‘I don’t think I can let a person like you into this medical school,’ he said. ‘When you make a commitment to medicine, you have to drop everything and go after that. I see that you worked as a fireman and as a paramedic all through your entire time at college.’ I tried to explain to him that the way I was raised, I learned that you have to have a commitment to your fellow man. I said that when I was in college, sometimes I was the only EMT or paramedic in the village, and that for a couple of people I made a big difference. He had the arrogance to say, ‘Come on, how many lives did you really save?’ The man had no idea of what I was all about. I got the rejection letter two weeks later. I’m in Sanford University School of Medicine. My roommate’s father is a fire marshal with twenty-two years’ experience in the Sacramento Fire Department. I remember going over to their house, and he started questioning me. ‘You come up on a house and there is nobody inside. There is fire showing in the front windows. What do you do?’ I said, ‘You go in, you get behind the fire, and you push it out the windows.’ He said, ‘Oh.’ I’m afraid I’m going to have to explain my professional life as an emergency medical man to a whole lot of people.” There is an old saying that reminds us that if we do not study and understand history, we are bound to make the same mistakes as those that have occurred in the past. It is also true that we should identify what works so we can expand and continue proven, high-quality practices. Often progress comes from trying out new, unproven ideas. We applaud all the courageous and imaginative administrators who tried and failed, but kept trying, learning from their failures, and finally succeeding. These are the unsung heroes of our time—the visionaries, risk takers, and true leaders. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
If you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Never has there been a building so talked about. You will find The Winchester Mystery House in what was once the countryside known as “Winchester Valley,” where it has left past guests feeling a little spooked passing through certain rooms. It is well known for its reputation of being the world’s most haunted location. Do you fear the dark? Does the idea of the supernatural scare you? Do you sometimes anticipate the worst that can happen to you? Do you shiver when you read about victims of violent crime and think “that could have been me?” Does life seem insane? When you walk through the twisting hallways of The Winchester Mansion, are you apprehensive about what might be around the next corner? While standing at the door-to-nowhere, have you ever worried that life may have no meaning? Are you anxious that the next day might be your last? Do your days sometimes seem irremediably gloomy? Are you afraid of dying? We have examined your case thoroughly and think you will find the antidote for your condition at The Winchester Mystery House. A daily dose of horror is just the tonic you need. If fortifies the spirit with bracing jolts of terror. It inoculates the soul against fears that hound us all. It quickens the reflexes against life’s inhospitable surprises and tempers the imagination with thoughts unthinkable. Here you will find madmen in a variety of shapes and sizes who will help make things seem more rational. Feeling a bit self-absorbed? There is nothing like a tale of Mrs. Winchester’s hauntings to give you the right perspective.
The Winchester Estate dates back to the late 19th century, and it has a history that is packed full of legends and stories of spirits. The guided post-sunset walk takes visitors through the history of the mansion, while also offering a chance to spot some of the more well-known Winchester ghosts. There are stories of a little girl playing in the hallways and tugging at bedcovers at night and a woman in white who crosses the courtyard and passes through the walls. Lightening in colours no one can name sear across the infinite and multihued sky in jagged shards the size of which no one can conceive. Alien winds scream their impossible being in warring cacophony of notes no one can ever believe at volumes none can bear. And when the winds pick up on the fourth floor of the mansion, they make an eerie whining noise. It sounds as if everything around you is screaming. Right before a quick scratching sound, then something flares. A small spot of light glides like a firefly toward you. Another flare, then a dull yellow flow. A thin man has been said to step into the light. “Found some others out there,” is all he says before disappearing before your very eyes, and then everything is absolute darkness. Outside, the winds are said to kick up; it screams across the night. Well, maybe it is the wind. We all know the story of The Winchester Mansion.
The carpenters, who worked day and night for 36 years to build the mansion, that was once nine stories high, containing as many as 600 rooms. They knew the area was dense in spiritual energy. The hallways often possessed a great river of shadows. As these men felt a moan rising from a core of solid fear, they were so afraid that they would stand frozen for the space of one deep, shuddering breath. It was believed even the objects they could see were enemies, because they were keeping secrets. They knew, but were not telling. The cold quiet of The Winchester Mansion was a familiar song. Often, Mrs. Winchester’s guests would crough down, huddling against the floor, until help arrived. The mansion is situated over the crossing of two Ley Lines. In these areas, the veneer between the physical and spirit realms is thinner and much more permeable. This permeability and natural energy allow entities to manifest much more readily than in a normal location. Any thought or action in these areas, whether positive or negative has a much stronger and more focused effect. In the case of The Winchester Mansion decades of compounded suffering, negativity and strong emotional experiences have left a marked effect on the atmosphere in and around the mansion.
Some tour guides have heard chanting coming from outside the mansion and have heard their names being called. Others have reported seeing a woman hovering in the mansion. Many who have seen Mrs. Winchester claimed that she was “supernaturally beautiful, her skin glistens, and there’s a kind of light in her eyes that you can’t look away from.” Although her journals are sometimes vague, Mrs. Winchester experienced bizarre poltergeist activity during construction. She mentions to a friend the incredible amount of poltergeist activity that occurred during the time spent building the front of the mansion. One night, when darkness fell, the mansion was filled with eerie music like nothing Mrs. Winchester had ever heard before. Creatures from her maddest nightmares filled into the Grand Ball Room in some kind of funeral procession. She watched from the hallway, terrified of being seen yet unable to turn away. The very last thing she saw was her maid at the end of the procession, following the creatures off into the darkness. Later that night, Mrs. Winchester watched the shadows of leaves on the wall and drifted into a peaceful, safe, sleep, happy that the nuisance of her waking hours was gone. The very next day, on September 5, 1922, construction efforts were suddenly stopped when the ladders several carpenters were working from were pushed away from the wall, forcing them to jump several stories. Moments later, it was discovered that Mrs. Winchester had passed away in her sleep.
Mr. Hasen, one of Mrs. Winchester’s foremen, had written about his tools getting moved to the far corners of the room when his back was turned. Mr. Hansen was left staring in disbelief at a kaleidoscope World of shifting, flickering lights, a surfaceless void with an unimaginably distant vanishing point near which huge amorphous shapes twisted and withered in a constant fury of becoming. He had seen a hint that the matter that made up the forms of this World which everyone accepted as solid and separate was in fact all one and that only probability kept everything as it was and kept our reality apart from a multiverse of others. A solitary bead of sweat formed high on his brow and trailed a meandering pattern down his cheek and through the stubble that lay below. Although the sky was clear, the moon was but a crescent; its weak glow lit only a corner of the night ceiling. Through the darkness, beyond the curtain of trees. The mansion’s cry intruded upon his thoughts. Its shrillness disturbing him from his rapture. lost in a spell of Llanada Villa, Mr. Hansen walked slowly through the mansion. Climbing the stairs, he heard a hoarse voice whisper, “And what do you dream?” He had a moment to think, to realize, that he had never felt this way before, then the emanations flooded him, carrying him away on waves of darkness. He gave in weakly to the sensations that swept over him. As the mansion cried out again, its cry pierced the night, resounding like the cry of a thousand lost souls. That night, he went to his cold bed and dreamt of men with furlined capes and armor who became fearsome beast and tore through lines of their enemies.
Although they were paid three times the going rate, provided with medical care, subsidized groceries, and lived in Victorian cottages that were once on the estate, carpenters employed by Mrs. Winchester frequently suddenly left and did not come back, never giving a reason to their departure. However, it is suspected that the vast distances in the mansion had something to so with it. These carpenters would sometimes come to work to unfamiliar walls. After working for three hours with panic on his back, every minute having seemed like an hour, one man said, “I had been through a Hell of distance and time, indeed–and the Hell is still with me.” Wandering to the window and parting the drapes, he found it to be very late. He still felt disoriented, adrift, and threatened, but he sensed that he could he was free. With his pounding heart, he walked out into the dark mansion. There were no other carpenters present, and few caretakers. Others might be afraid of ghost, but the panic had taken care of that. If you already felt menaced for no reason, then the real dangers held no terror for you. He walked for many miles, past more rooms, libraries, and long closed rooms. Then he noticed a young woman walking on the other side of the mansion. Without thinking twice, he crossed over and joined her. They stopped, and he poured out his heart, his nameless fear. She held his hands. They agreed to meet again. However, he was left once more alone on a large room, wondering if it had been real. So he cut over to the hallway and started back. The mansion rest of the mansion was deserted, too, his steps echoing hollowly on the mahogany floor. It was dark, and only the light from the windows was visible. He could hear more than see. The panic had gotten stronger again, and he needed to return to the security, if marginal, of his home.
Gradually, he became aware of a man walking about a hundred feet behind. He himself stopped and pretended to look out the window. He wanted the man to pass him. However, the man stopped when he reached him, then went down some steps to the third floor. The man smiled, opened a bag, and offered him some Brandy. He went down and accepted. When he woke up, he was lying on his stomach, which felt warm and wet. There was no pain. However, when he tried to get up, he found that he could not. So, he crawled up the steps into the ballroom on the 4th floor. The crawling went all right, at first. However, then he became weaker. And he grew conscious of the thin red trail he was leaving behind him. The panic, suddenly and forever, was gone. It had indeed been replaced, expunged, by the reality. All that was left was a certain sadness. The mansion that has survived such a long history, is a marvel to see in person. Today, it stands four stories high, and has an estimated 160 rooms, of which 110 are open for tour. There has been some restoration over the years and ongoing maintenance. Come inside the mansion to see the priceless architecture and learn of its history. The guided tours are exquisitely led by a well prepared and enthusiastic team, who make sure that you and all guests are entertained by the great stories. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After tour, there will be time enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. Even if you do not believe ghost stories, you might still get goosebumps passing through the most infamous basement. Enjoy panoramic views and discover quirky features such as secret staircases, doors that open to nowhere, stairs to the ceiling, hidden trapdoors, and other unusual features.
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company. Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs – not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/
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Randolph Harris II International 