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Release Your Faith in Uncommon Ways and You Will See God do Uncommon things!

February 26, 2020 1:29 am

It is impossible, indeed, to separate works from faith, just as it is impossible to separate heat and light from the fire. There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Nature hath made people so equal, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one person sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between being, and being, is not so considerable, as that one being can thereupon claim to oneself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as one. For as the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to mute the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same sanger with oneself. And as to the faculties of the mind, (setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon general, and infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being not a native faculty, born with us; nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat else,) I find yet a greater equality amongst people, than that of strength. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

For Prudence, is but Experience; which equal time, equally bestowes on all beings, in those things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps makes such equality incredible, is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom, which almost all beings think they have in a greater degree, than the Vulgar; that is, than all beings but themselves, and a few others, whom by Fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the nature of people, that however they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: for they see their own wit at hand, and other people’s at a distance. However, the proveth rather than people are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything, than that every person is contented with one’s share. Also, parents have to teach their kids and make them responsible. One has to tell their children what is expected of them and that there is no way around it. Children must be held responsible for getting an education and learning how to behave. The television is very interesting, but those TV programs will always be there. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

It is far more for children to get an education than to watch TV. And when your child is in junior high school, that is the time to start talking to them about college and letting them explore college campuses and speak with guidance counselors at the college so they will know what is expected of them, and so the child can form a vision of what they want to do after high school. So many children are solely focused on just getting out of high school, and then in the last semester of high school this idea of college and dumped on them and many of them have no idea what to do because they never even considered it. Therefore, it is important to make sure your child knows that they need to have a career vision, something they can do for the rest of their lives to make money to be able to support themselves, and their wife and child. Furthermore, it is important that children learn that if they make a mistake and break something, they need to pay for it. It may require them to get a Summer job, but it is important for them to learn responsibility as youths so they become good adults. The great masters who taught people truth or gave them supreme works of art or lifted their feelings deserve a large gratitude for such benedictions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

It is those who create ways and means for others to follow in the search for spiritual fulfilment, the teachers and awakeners, who deserve our best honours. Such a person is a focal-point for all that is noble. A nature sensitive to the serenity, benevolence, and wisdom radiating from such a being will gladly give its homage to one. It is a grave mistake made by uneducated persons or by proud ones to fail in holding such a being in deep veneration. God keeps a vacant seat for one in the high places, while simple men and women throw unseen roses of appreciation when one enters their orbit. We should listen to the plain statements of such a being as the ancient Greeks listened to the enigmatic utterances of their oracles. Sokrates tried to awaken the Greeks, Jesus tried to awaken Christians. Their failure was followed by consequences to their people which can be traced in history. If the higher power takes the trouble to send a messenger, it is better to tremble, listen, and obey than to sneer, reject, and suffer. The comments made by the self-actualized upon the varied situations in human life are worth far fare more than the commentaries written by pundits on the sacred or philosophic texts. The former are very much in a minority. What one is testifies to THAT WHICH IS. Where lesser humans have to shout their opinions, one’s silence is eloquent and, to the receptive, an initiation in itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

There is no such act as a one-sided self-giving. Karma brings us back our due. One who spends one’s life in the dedicated service of philosophic enlightenment may reject the merely material rewards that this service could bring one, but one cannot reject the beneficent thoughts, the loving remembrances, the sincere veneration which those who have benefited sometimes send one. Such invisible rewards help one to atone more peacefully and less painfully for the strategic errors one has made, the tactical shortcomings one has manifested. Life is an arduous struggle for most people, but much more so for such a one who is always a hated target for the unseen powers of darkness. Do not hesitate to send one your silent humble blessing, therefore, and remember that Nature will not waste it. The enemies you are now struggling against within yourself one has already conquered, but the enemies one is now struggling against are beyond your present experience. One has won the right to sit by a hearth of peace. If one has made the greatest renunciation and does not do so, it is for your sake and for the sake of those others like you. Education is about discovering the special skills and talents of students and guiding their learning according to high standards. Education is also about teaching our children and young people basic Southern values and uncorking that World-renowned American ingenuity that has characterized our country. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Respect for God demands that the face, the hands, and the feet be washed once a day. The wise person indulges oneself not in gossip with women, not even his own wife. Leave the “kitchen table talk” for the women. Men should talk about cars, sports, or the economics. For America to move forward and continue as a World leader, and for all our communities to become prosperous and strong, more individuals need to become involved in improving our schools and colleges. We also need to take time for self-care, reflection, and affirmation. We have a choice. We can allow the stress of the job to crush our ability to be the kind of inspirational leaders we want to be, or we can energetically and enthusiastically demonstrate that we are the absolute climate creators at our school. Our challenge is that every day we need to rekindle the passion and get in touch with the joy in our job. Joy is an essential ingredient if inspirational leadership. Leadership is being visible when things are going awry and invisible when they are working well. From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our Ends. And therefore if any two beings desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their End, (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only,) endeavour to destroy, or subdue one another. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

And from hence it comes to pass, that where an Invader hath no more to fear, than another being’s single power; if one plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient Seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces untied, to dispossess, and deprive one, not only of the fruit (product) of one’s labour, but also of one’s life, or liberty And the Invader again is in the like danger of another. And from this diffidence of another, there is no way for any individual to secure oneself, so reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all people one can, so long, till one see no other power great enough to endanger one: and this is no more than one’s own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed. Also because there be some, that taking pleasure in contemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursue father than their security requires; if others, that otherwise would be glad to be at ease within modest bounds, should not by invasion increase their power, they would not be able, long time, by standing only on their defence, to subsist. And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over people, being necessary to a human’s conservation, it ought to be allowed one. Again, people have no pleasure, (but on the contrary a great deal of grief) in keeping company, where there is no power able to over-awe them all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

For every human looketh that one’s companion should value one, at the same rate one sets upon oneself: And upon all signs of contempt, or undervaluing, naturally endeavours, as far as one dares (which amongst them that have no common power, to keep them in quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other,) to extort a greater value from one’s contemners, by dommage; and from others, by the example. So that in the nature of humans, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory. The first, maketh people invade for Gain, the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation. The first use Violence, to make themselves Masters f other people’s persons, wives, children, cattle, and ultimate driving machines; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflexion in the Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name. Leaderships is a people process. It calls for the application of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow each of us to successfully influence and inspire others towards doing the right things. Leadership deals with effectiveness. On the other hand, management is a coordinating process we carry out to make sure the work functions and tasks get done well and in a timely way. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Over the years, Dr. Freudian analysts have softened their views of the politics of therapy. Along with Gestalt therapists, Jungians, rational emotive therapists, advocates of transactional analysis, and many other new therapies, they now take a middle-of-the-road view. The expert is at times definitely the authority (as in the Gestalt therapist dealing with the person in the “hot seat”), but there is also a recognition of the right of the individual to be responsible for oneself. There has been no attempt to rationalize these contradictions. These therapists take a paternalistic stance, or follow the medical model, believing that at times control is best vested in the therapist, at other times (to be decided by the therapist) control and responsibility are best placed in the client’s, or patient’s hands. One approach which has been very definite in the politics of relationships is behaviourism. Its clear purpose is outlined in Skinner’s famous Walden II. For the good of the person (individually or collectively), an elitist technocracy of behaviourists sets the goals that will make the person happy and productive. It then shapes one’s behaviour by operant conditioning (with out without the “subject’s” knowledge) to achieve those goals. The environmental model, based on learning theory, assumes that behaviour that is in some way rewarded or reinforced tends to be repeated, while nonrewarded or punished behaviour tends not to be repeated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

So most of the behaviour problems we have seen (except those problems having a directly organize root, or perhaps some of the more stubborn psychotic reactions) are viewed, not as unconscious conflicts or illnesses, but as dysfunctional learning: bad habits. Since these problems were learned through conditioning, the behaviour modifiers believe that they can be unlearned, or deconditioned; and more effective or functional behaviour can be relearned, or reconditioned. Whereas analytic approaches sees no value in this. In fact, such past-oriented emphasis is seen as further rewarding the dysfunctional behaviour—giving the person beneficial stokes for their problems. If you want children to stop throwing temper tantrums (which have been reinforced by the attention of parents), do not give them further reinforcement by yelling at them or spanking them. Since those kinds of responses are actually rewards by some quirk of reasoning (“negative strokes are better than no strokes at all”), the answer is to stop responding to—and hence reinforcing—the tantrums. No attention at all is one way of withholding reinforcers. Ignore the behaviour, and after awhile its payoff value to the child is gone. To complete the conditioning process, give the child a lot of optimistic attention and affection for doing those things you want the child to do. This is how operant conditioning techniques work. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

When using operant conditioning, much success has been reported in the treatment of weight management, smoking, and conduct disorder and other similar issues. Not all behaviour problems respond to such treatment, but the results are encouraging. Much use has been made of one of the behaviour modification techniques in working with people who have intellectual disabilities and some psychotic patients in hospitals. It is called the “token economy” program. Patients are trained to do simple tasks by reinforcement of each step of the task with poker chips or other tokens which can be cashed in at the end of the session or the day for candy, gum, juice, and other goodies. Also, these techniques can work with students. If you want them to preform better or tests or increase their attendance, one has to reward the class with something like a pizza party at the end of the semester, but also keep in mind that it will be important to also provide extra guidance for the students so they do not get harassed by others for failing to meet the standards and holding the class back. Another issue is to make sure there is a realistic budget for the party. Most students will problem want about three slices of pizza. Domino’s Pizza always has some kind of deal like the large three topping pizza for $7.99 or the Mix and Match pizza for $5.99 when you order two or more. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The behavioural modifiers believe that tangible rewards used in the early stages of any behaviour change process should later be replaces with praise, hugs, pats on the back, or compliments if that kind of thing is acceptable in your family and community. Secondary reinforcers are substituted for primary reinforcers. Later, inner reinforcers—pride, sense of achievement, realization of goals—can be substituted for the secondary reinforcers. After all, most of us do not spend our lives behaving well in order to win chips or M&Ms! One’s behaviour is, after all, completely determined by environment for the planners so that their completely determined behaviour causes them to operate as such a wise and good elite is a question always deftly avoided. Nevertheless it is assumed that their goals will be constructively social, and the shaping of behaviour will be for the good person as well as society. Yet at times, when applied to the aberrant behaviour, this approach seems a little startling. We would assume that a demerit was clear evidence that the individual had somehow acquired a full-blown social neurosis and needed to be cured, not punished. We would send him or her to a rehabilitation center where one would undergo absolute brainwashing or reeducation until we were quite sure one had become a law-abiding citizen who would not again commit an antisocial act. We would probably have to restructure one’s entire personality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

However, this means that we are completely oblivious to the political implications of what we are doing. Clearly a psychologist who believes brainwashing or reeducating people in detention would be the first to be subsidized and employed by a dictator, who would be very happy to have them “cure” various “demerits” that threatened the state, which could be labeled as, for example, things like race, skin colour, hair texture, profession, medical history, political party, age, number of children, socioeconomic status, and so on. In fairness to behaviorists it should be said that many of them have come to adopt a greatly changed view of the politics of relationships. In the commune Twin Oaks, patterned initially after Walden II, the residents often choose for themselves which behaviors they wish to change, and select the rewards which will be most reinforcing. Clearly this is completely opposed to the politics of the strict behavourist, since it is self-evaluated change. It is not the environment shaping the individual’s behaviour, but the individual choosing to shape the environment for one’s own personal development. Some behavioursists have gone even further. Rather than controlling the individual, they are helping the person learn to achieve one’s own betterment. In its politics this is the reverse of strict behaviourism. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

However, there will come a time in the experience of the apprentice of Jesus where it is appropriate to speak of our being muted to the self. There is no one way this comes to us, I think, and the language here must be handled carefully. It has been the source of much understanding in and harm in the past. However, the fact that it represents is a fundamental, indispensable element in the renovation of the heart, soul, and life. Being muted to self is the condition where the mere fact that I do not get what I want does not surprise or offend me and has no control over me. Faithful servants of God know the secret, and man have left their testimony. They day when some have muted themselves, they report their opinions, preferences, tastes and will; was muted to the World, its approval or censure; muted to the approval or blame even of one’s brethren or friends, and since that point on, individuals will study only to show oneself “approved unto God.” We often speak of those who sleep soundly as “sleeping like a baby.” By that we mean that what is happening around them does not disturb them, that they are unconscious f it and are doing nothing with reference to it. There is an important lesson here, though not a precise parallel. The one who is muted to self will certainly not even notice some things that others would—for example, things such as social slights, verbal put downs and innuendos, or physical discomforts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

However, many other rebuffs to “the dear self,” will be noticed still, often quite clearly. However, if we are muted to self to any significant degree, these rebuffs will not take control of us, not even to the point of disturbing our feelings or peace of mind. We will wear the World like it is a precious gift from God. Does this mean that the person who is muted to self is without feeling? Does Christ commend the famous “apathy” of the Stoic or the Buddhist elimination of desire? Far from it. The issue is not just feeling or desire, but right feeling or desire, or being controlled by feeling and desire. Apprentices of Jesus will be deeply disturbed about many things and will passionately desire many things, but they will be largely indifferent to the fulfillment of their own desires as such. Merely getting their way has no significance for them, does not disturb them. They know that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those are called according to His purpose,” reports Romans 8.28. They do not have to look after things that concern them, but they do not worry about outcomes that merely affect adversely their own desires and feelings. They are free to focus their efforts on the service of God and others and the furthering of good generally, and to be as passionate about such things as may be appropriate to such efforts. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

People who truly understand the grace of God, not just intellectually but in very core of their being, will not abuse grace by living irresponsibly. “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the person whose sin the Lord will never count against one,” reports Romans 4.7-8. When I read, “Blessed is the person whose sin the Lord will never count against one,” I was overcome with joy and gratitude. What a fantastic encouragement that God will never judge me for any of my sins. I know I have as wicked a sinful nature as anyone else, and apart from the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit in my life, I am fully capable of the so-called gross sins of immortality, drunkenness, stealing, and the like. However, those are not the sins that trouble me at this time. Rather, I struggle with what I called “refined” sins: selfishness, pride, impatience, a critical attitude, and a judgmental spirit. Despite my calling those areas “refined” sins, they are nevertheless very real sins. They are sins for which I would not want to give account at the judgment bar of God. They are sins that, apart from the atoning death of Christ for me, would send me to eternal Hell. And, if God operated on the basis of merit instead of grace in this life, they are sins that would forfeit all blessings from Him. In short those “refined” sins are very troublesome. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

So when I read that God will never count against me my selfishness, my pride, my impatience, and so on, I wept for joy. I stopped reading and uttered a prayer of deep, heartful thanksgiving to God for His gracious forgiveness. Then what did I do? I asked God to purge those sinful traits from my character. I asked Him to enable me to become more and more aware of specific instances when I was committing those sins so that I could, by His Spirit, put them to death as Paul tells us to do in Romans 8.13. I was compelled by His love to seek to put away those sins. “Finally, people, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things,” reports Philippians 4.8. The true, the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely, the admirable all defy negative exposition. Each ingredient was, and is, a matter of personal choice—and our choices make all the difference in the World. We all can choose a thought program which will produce a Christian mind. “And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the Kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither can ye if ye have no hope. And if ye have no hope ye must needs be in despair; and despair cometh because of iniquity. And Christ truly said unto our fathers: if ye have faith ye can do all things which are expedient unto me,” reports Moroni 10.21-23. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Lord God Almighty, Christ the King of glory, Who art our true Peace, and Love eternal; enlighten our souls with the brightness of Thy peace, and purify our consciences with the sweetness of Thy love, that we may with peaceful hearts wait for the Author of peace, and in the adversities of this World may ever have Thee for our Guardian and Protector; and so being fenced about by Thy care, may heartily give ourselves to the love of Thy peace. Searcher of Hearts, it is a good day to me when Thou givest me a glimpse of myself; sin is my greatest evil, but Thou art my greatest good; I have causes to loathe myself, and not to seek self-honour, for no one desires to commend one’s own dunghill. My country, family, church fare worse because of my sins, for sinners bring judgment in thinking sins are small or that God is not angry with them. Let me not take other good people as my example, and think I am good because I am like them, for all good people are not so good as thou desirest, are not always consistent, do not always follow holiness, do not feel eternal good in sore affliction. Show me how to know when a thing is evil which I think is right and good, how to know when what is lawful comes from an evil principle, as desire for reputation ow wealthy by usury. “And now I speak unto all the ends of the Earth—that is the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief,” reports Moroni 10.24. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Give me grace to recall my needs, my lack of knowing thy will in Scripture, of wisdom to guide others, of daily repentance, want of which keeps thee at bay, of the spirit of prayer, having words without love, of zeal for thy glory, seeking my own ends, of joy in thee and thy will, of love to others. And let me not lay my pipe too short of the fountain, never touching the eternal spring, never drawing water from above. O God, Who of Thy great love to this World, didst reconcile Earth to Heaven through Thine Only-begotten Son; grant that we who, by the darkness of our sins, are turned aside from brotherly love, may be Thy light shed forth in our souls be filled with Thine own sweetness, and embrace our friends in Thee, and our enemies for Thy sake, in a bound of mutual affection. O God, Who art Peace everlasting, Whose chosen reward is the gift of peace, and Who hast taught us that the peace-makers are Thy children, pour Thy sweet peace into our souls, that everything discordant may utterly vanish, and all that makes for peace be sweet to us forever. Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully grant unto Thy Church, that deadly pleasures may be cast aside, and that it may rather rejoice in the gladness of Thine eternal salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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If we are going to seize the promise of our times and educate our children so they can keep their dreams alive, we must all work together. Not government alone, not individuals alone, but as parents and children, as employers and employees, teachers and students, community leaders and community members, as government and citizens. We must renew our schools so every American child has the opportunity to get the best possible education for the twenty-first century.

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This is My Year to Go to a New Level—This is My Year to See a Supernatural Increase!

February 24, 2020 3:18 am

What the mind attends, the mind considers. What the mind does not consider, the mind dismisses. What the mind continues to consider, the mind believes. What the mind believes, the mind eventually does. The hero is merely a special complex of the ordinary qualities of one’s race. The petty differences impressed upon normal Greek minds by Plato or Aristotle or Zeno, are nothing at all compared with the vast differences between every Green mind and every Egyptian or Chinese mind. We may neglect them in a philosophy of history, just as in calculating the impetus of a locomotive we neglect the extra impetus given by a single piece of better coal. What each being adds is but an infinitesimal fraction compared with what one derives from one’s parents, or indirectly from one’s earlier ancestry. And if what the past gives to the hero is so much bulkier than what the future receives from one, it is what really calls for philosophical treatment. The problem for the sociologist is as to what produces the average person; the extraordinary person and what they produce may by the philosopher be taken for granted, as too trivial variations to merit deep inquiry. A leader has been defined as one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility. Each step on the path to a higher standard of leadership takes courage—courage to commit to absolute values and to the Universal code of conduct to treat others as ourselves. Your courage will serve as a source of inspiration to others and will help those you associate with to achieve a higher standard as well. How useless it is to go to a teacher who has only an intellectual—that is, a talking—knowledge of it, for help is clearly shown by an old story. Once upon a time a certain king developed a desire to obtain divine consciousness. He obtained a scholar as his guide. For two months he received teaching but found that he gained nothing in the actual experience of divinity. He thereupon threatened the scholar with his royal displeasure. The scholar returned home in a sorrowful state of mind. He had done his best and did not know how to satisfy the king. His daughter, who was a girl of high intelligence, saw her father’s distress and made him tell her the case. The next day she appeared at the court and informed the kind that she could throw light on his problem. She then asked him to order his soldiers to bind both herself and himself to separate pillars. This was done. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Then the girl said, “O King, release me out of this bondage.” “What!” answered the kind, “You speak of an impossibility. I myself am in bondage and how can I release you?” The girl laughed and said, “O King, this is the explanation of your problem. My father is a prisoner of this World-illusion. How can he set you free? How can you gain divinity from him?” If anyone who presents a World view really knows that one is talking about, there should be some noticeable vitality in one’s talk. If a teacher empties the purse or wallet of one’s pupils, be sure one is a false one. If one demands servility from them, one is most likely a false one. If one makes no response to someone’s approach yet has the stamp of authenticity, one may not be the particular one with whom that person can find affinity. A weakness among these cultists is that they persist in seeing their leader with a kind of character and a height of consciousness which are not sustained by the facts. One is turned into an unerring superman or even defined as a living god. One’s virtues are either exaggerated or invented, one’s most commonplace words are pondered over as if they were oracles of prophecy or epigrams of wisdom. And if they do not gift one with cosmic omniscience and total prescience, one is gifted with something like it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The consequence is that the expectations of votaries, having been lifted too high, must fall too low when one’s personality is deflated and one’s shortcomings are exposed. Their disappointment inevitably follows. However, since not many spiritual seekers of the kind who kind who join organizations are possessed of the qualities of discrimination and intelligence, the bulk of one’s followers cling to their idol. An honest and sincere leader would be alarmed at such exaggerated worship, and do one’s utmost in self-deprecation to being it to an end. One knows that making a cult of a particular person will divert attention from the proper object of devotion. Truly enough, the details vanish in the bird’s-eye view; but so does the bird’s-eye view vanish in the details. Which is the right point of the view for philosophic vision? Nature gives no reply, for both points of view, being equally real, are equally natural; and no one natural reality per se is any more emphatic than any other. Accentuation, foreground, and background are created solely by the interested attention of the looker-on; and if the small difference between the genius and one’s tribe interests me most, while the large one between that tribe and another tribe interests others, our controversy cannot be ended until a complete philosophy, accounting for all differences impartially, shall justify both. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

There is very little difference between one person and another; but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter. It is not only the size of the difference which concerns the philosopher, but also its place and its kind. An inch is small thing, but we know the proverb about an inch on one’s nose. Experts in inveighing against hero-worship, are thinking exclusively of the size of the inch; I, as a hero-worshipper, attend to its seat and function. Now, there is a striking law over which few people seem to have pondered. It is this: That among all the differences which exist, the only ones that interest us strongly are those we do not take for granted. We are not a bit elated that our friendship should have two hands and the power of speech, and should practice the matter-of-course human virtues; and quite as little are we vexed that our dog goes on all fours and fails to understand our conversation. Expecting no more from the latter companion, and no less from the former, we get what we expect and are satisfied. We never think of communing with the dog by discourse of philosophy, or with the friend by head-scratching or the throwing of crusts to be snapped at. However, if either dog or friend fall above or below the expected standard, they arouse the most lively emotion. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

On our brother’s vices or genius we never weary of descanting; to one’s bipedism or one’s hairless skin we do not consecrate a thought. What he says may transport us; that one is able to speak at all leaves us stone cold. He reason of all this is that one’s virtues and vices and utterances might, compatibly with the current range of variation in our tribe, be just the opposites of what they are, while one’s zoologically human attributes cannot possibly go astray. There is thus a zone of insecurity in human affairs win which all the dramatic interest is possessed; the rest belongs to the dead machinery of the stage. This is the formative zone, the part not yet ingrained into the race’s average, but yet a typical, hereditary, and constant factor of the social community in which it occurs. It is like the soft layer beneath the bark of the tree in which all the year’s growth is going on. Life has abandoned the mighty trunk inside, which stands inert and belongs almost to the inorganic World. Layer after layer of human perfection separates me from the primitive people who pursed humans as game with cries of “meat, meat!” This vast difference ought to rivet my attention far more than the petty one which obtains between two such birds of a feather as one with contrasting ideas and myself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Yet while I never feel proud that the sight of a passer-by awakens in me no cannibalistic waterings of the mouth, I am free to confess that I shall feel very proud if I do not publicly appear inferior to a scholar who disagrees with me in the conduct of this momentous debate. The zone of the individual differences, and of the social “twists” which by common confession they initiate, is the zone of formative processes, the dynamic belt of quivering uncertainty, the line where past and future meet. It is the theatre of all we do not take for granted, the stage of the living drama of life; and however narrow its scope, it is roomy enough to lodge the whole range of human passions. The sphere of the race’s average, on the contrary, no matter how large it may be, is dead and stagnant thing, an achieved possession, from which all insecurity has vanished. Like the trunk of a tree, it has been built up by successive concretions of successive active zones. The moving present in which we live with its problems and passions, its individual rivalries, victories, and defeats, will soon pass over to the majority and leave its small deposit on this static mass, to make room for fresh actors and a newer play. We have seen how the idealized image substitutes for true self-confidence and pride. However, there is yet another way in which it serves as surrogate. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Since the neurotic’s ideals are contradictory they cannot possibly have any obligating power; remaining din and undefined, they can give one no guidance. Here if it were not tat one’s endeavour to be one’s self-created idola gave a kind of meaning to one’s life one would feel wholly without purpose. This becomes particularly apparent in the course of analysis, when the undermining of one’s idealized image gives one for a time the feeling of being quite lost. And it is only then that one recognizes one’s confusion in the matter of ideals and that this begins to strike one as undesirable. Before, the whole subject was beyond one’s understanding and interest, no matter how much lip service one gave it; now for the first time one realizes that ideals have some meaning, and wants to discover what one’s own ideals really are. This kind of experience is evidence, I should say, that the idealized image substitutes for genuine ideals. An understanding of this function has significance for therapy. The analyst may point out to the patient at an earlier period the contradictions in one’s set of values. However, one cannot expect any constructive interest in the subject and hence cannot work on it until the idealized image has become dispensable. To a greater degree than any of the others, one particular function of the image can be held accountable for its rigidity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

If in our private mirror we see ourselves as paragons of virtue or intelligence, even our most blatant faults and limitations will disappear or acquire attractive coloration—just as in a good painting a shabby, decaying wall is no longer a shabby, decaying wall but a beautiful composite of brown and gray and reddish colour values. We can arrive at a deeper understanding of this defensive function if we raise the single question: What does a person regard as one’s faults and shortcomings? It is one of those questions that at first sight does not seem to lead anywhere because one starts to think of infinite possibilities, while at the surface still plastic in their hands, and what whilom feasibility they made impossible—each one of us may best fortify and inspire what creative energy may lie in one’s own soul. Nevertheless there is a fairly concrete answer. What a person regards as one’s faults and shortcomings depends on what one accepts or rejects in oneself. That, however—under similar cultural conditions—is determined by which aspect of the basic conflict predominates. The complaint type, for instance, does not regard one’s fears or one’s helplessness as a taint, whereas the aggressive type looks upon one’s softer feelings as shameful, to be hidden from oneself and others. The complaint type registers one’s hostile aggressions as sinful; the aggressive type looks upon one’s softer feelings as contemptible weakness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Each type, in addition, is driven to reject all that is actually mere pretense on the part of one’s more acceptable self. The complaint type, for instance, has to reject the fact that one is not genuinely loving and generous person; the detached type does not want to see that one’s aloofness is not a matter of one’s own free choice, that one must keep apart because one cannot cope with others, and so on. Both, as a rule, reject sadistic trends. We would this arrive at the conclusion that what is regarded as a shortcoming and rejected is whatever does not fit into he consistent picture created by the predominant attitude toward others. And we could say that the defensive function of the idealized image is to negate the existence of conflicts; that is why it must of necessity remain so immovable. Before I recognized this I often wondered why it is so impossible for a patient to accept oneself as a little less significant, a little less superior. However, looked at this way the answer is clear. One cannot budge an inch because the recognition of certain shortcomings would confront one with one’s conflicts, thus jeopardizing the artificial harmony one has established. We can arrive, therefore, as the absolute correlation between the intensity of he conflicts and the rigidity of the idealized image: an especially elaborate and rigid image permits us to infer especially disruptive conflicts. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Likewise related to the basic conflict is an image with an absolute use of more than merely camouflaging the conflict’s unacceptable parts. It represents a kind of artistic creation in which opposites appear reconciled or in which, at any rate, they no longer appear as conflicts to the individual oneself. A few examples will show how this happens. The predominating aspect of X’s conflict was compliance—a great need for affection and approval, to be taken care of, to be sympathetic, generous, considerate, loving. Second in prominence was detachment, with the usual aversion to joining groups, emphasis on independence, fear of ties, sensitivity to coercion. The detachment constantly clashed with the need for human intimacy and created repeated disturbances in one’s relations with women. Aggressive drives, too, were quite apparent, manifesting themselves in his having to be first in any situation, in dominating others indirectly, occasionally exploiting them, and tolerating no interference. Naturally these tendencies detracted considerably from one’s capacity for love and friendship, and clashed as well with his detachment. Unaware of these drives, one had fabricated an idealized image that was a composite of three figures. One was the greater lover and friend—incredible that any woman could care more for another man; nobody was so kind and good as he. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

He was the greatest leader of his time, a political genius held much in awe. And finally he was the great philosopher, the man of wisdom, one of the few gifted with profound insight into the meaning of life and its ultimate futility. The image was not altogether fantastic. He had ample potentialities in all these directions. However, the potentialities had been raised to the level of accomplished fact, of great and unique achievement. Moreover, the compulsive nature of the drives had been obscured and was replaced by a belief in innate qualities and gifts. Instead of a neurotic need for affection an approval there was a supposed capacity to love; instead of a drive to excel, assumed superior gifts; instead of a need for aloofness, independence and wisdom. Finally and most important, the conflicts were exorcised in the following way. The drives which in real life interfered with one another and prevented one from fulfilling any of one’s potentialities were promoted to the realm of abstract perfection, appearing as several compatible aspects of a rich personality; and the three aspects of the basic conflict which they represented were isolated in the three figures that made up his idealized image. Another example brings into clearer relief the importance of isolating the conflicting elements. In the case of Y the predominate trend was detachment, in a rather extreme form, with all the implications described before. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

One’s tendency to comply was also quite marked, though Y himself shut it out from awareness because it was too incompatible with one’s desire for independence. Strivings to be extremely good occasionally broke forcibly through the shell of repression. A longing for human intimacy was conscious, and clashed continuously with one’s detachment. One could be ruthlessly aggressive only in his imagination: he indulged in fantasies of controlling society, wishing quite frankly to enslave all those who interfered with his life; he professed to believe in a jungle philosophy—the gospel of might makes right, with its ruthless pursuit of self-interest, was the only intelligent and unhypocritical way of living. In one’s actual living, however, he was rather timid; explosions of violence occurred under certain conditions only. His idealized image was the following odd combination. Most of the time he was a hermit living on a mountaintop, having attained to infinite wisdom and serenity. At rare intervals one could turn into a werewolf, entirely devoid of human feelings, bent on feeding. And as if these two incompatible figures were not enough, he was as well the ideal friend and lover. We see here the same denial of neurotic trends, the same self-aggrandizement, the same mistaking of potentialities for realities. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

In this instance, though, no attempt has been made to reconcile the conflicts; the contradictions remain. However—in contrast to real life—they appear pure and undiluted. Because they are isolated they do not interfere with one another. And that seems to be what counts. The conflicts as such have disappeared. One last example of a more unified idealized image: In the factual behaviour of Z aggressive trends strongly predominated, accompanied by sadistic tendencies. He was domineering and inclined to exploit. Driven by a devouring ambition, he pushed ruthlessly ahead. He could plan, organized, fight, and adhered consciously to an unmitigated jungle philosophy. He was also extremely detached; but since his aggressive drives always entangled him with groups of people, he could not maintain his aloofness. He kept strict guard, though, not to get involved in any personal relationship nor to let himself enjoy anything to which people were essential contributors. In this he successfully fairly well, because absolute feelings for others were greatly repressed; desires for human intimacy were mainly channeled along lines of pleasures of the flesh. There was present, however, a distinct tendency to comply, together with a need for approval that interfered to comply, together with a need for approval that interfered with his craving for power. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

And there were underlying puritanical standards, used chiefly as a whip over others—but which of course he could not help applying oneself as well—that clashed headlong with his jungle philosophy. In his idealized image he was the knight in shinning armour, the crusader with wide and unfailing vision, ever pursuing the right. As becomes a wise leader, he was not personally attached to anyone but dispensed a stern though just discipline. He was honest without being hypocritical. Women loved him and he could be a great lover but was not tied to any woman. Here the same goal is achieved as in the other instances: the elements of the basic conflict are blended. The idealized image is thus an attempt at solving the basic conflict, as attempt of at least as great importance as the others I have described. It has the enormous subjective value of serving as a binder, of holding together a divided individual. And although it exists only in the person’s mind, it exerts a decisive influence on one’s relations with others. However, words and plans are not enough. Leaders stand up for their beliefs. They practice what they preach. They show others by their own example that they live by the values that they profess. Leaders know that while their position gives them authority, their behaviour earns them respect. It is consistency between words and actions that build a leader’s credibility. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Do not keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. Leave the beaten track occasionally and drive into the woods. You will be certain to find something you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. Follow up, explore all around it; one discovery will lead to another, and before you know it you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought. “For behold, to one is given by the Spirit of God, that one may teach the word of wisdom; and to another, that one may teach the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; and to another, exceedingly great faith; and to another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; and again, to another, that one may work might miracles; and again, to another, that one may prophesy concerning all things; and again, to another, the beholding of Angels and ministering spirits; and again, to another, all kinds of tongues; and again, to another, the interpretation of languages and of divers kinds of tongues. And all these gifts come by the Spirit of Christ; and they come unto every being severally, according as one will. And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that every good gift cometh of Christ,” reports Moroni 10.9-18. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

O God the Father, Origin of Divinity, Good beyond all that is good, Fair beyond all that is fair, in Whom is calmness, peace, and concord; do Thou make up the dissension which divide us from each other, and bring us back into an unity of love, which may bear some likeness to Thy subline Nature. And as Thou art above all things, makes us one by the unanimity of a good mind, that through the embrace of charity and the bonds of affection we ma be spiritually one, as well in ourselves as in each other, though that peace of Thine which maketh all things peaceful, and through the grace, mercy, and tenderness of Thine only begotten Son. “Imagine God, a God as immense as the Universe with all its millions of stars and planets, its unchartable distances, its inevitable sounds and its silence. Such a God could know all things, all things, the minds and attitudes and fears and regrets of every single living thing, every person. This God could gather a soul, whole and complete and magnificent. He could catch it up in His powerful hands, and carry it Heavenward beyond this World to be forever united with Him,” reports Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift, pages 73-74. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to keep us in perpetual peace, as Thou hast vouchsafed us confidence in Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

O Lord, may I never fail to come to the knowledge of truth, never rest in a system of doctrine, however scriptural, that does not bring or further salvation, or teach me to deny ungodliness and Worldly lusts, or help me to live soberly, righteously, Godly; never rely on my own convictions and resolutions, but be strong in thee and in thy might; never cease to find thy grace sufficient in all my duties, trials, and conflicts; never forget to repair to thee in all my spiritual distresses and outward troubles, in all the dissatisfactions experienced in creature comforts; never fail to retreat to Him who is full of grace and truth, the friend that loveth at all times, who is touched with feelings of my infirmities, and can do exceeding abundantly for me; never confine my religion to extraordinary occasions, but acknowledge thee in all my ways; never limit my devotions to particular seasons but be in thy fear all the day long; never be Godly only on the sabbath or in Thy house, but on every day abroad and at home; never make piety a dress but a habit, not only a habit but a nature, not only a nature but a life. Do good to me by all Thy dispensations, by all means of grace, by worship, prayers, praises, and at last let me enter that World where is no temple, but only Thy glory and the Lamb’s. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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Upon Some Mountain-Top Until I Feel a Glowing Splendour Round About Me Hung!

February 18, 2020 12:54 am

What you do speaks so loudly, they cannot hear what you say. Example is a powerful teacher! If as inspirational leaders we are dedicated to helping others grow through their works, then we must strive to model the values, attitudes and actions that we wish to see in those we lead. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us. Dr. Freud postulates two basic feelings, Lust and Unlust—pleasure and distress—mirror images of each other. This seems to reflect something in our common thinking. Neurophysioogically, however, they belong to very different bodily systems. Although in our culture we think of them as opposites, both systems can contribute simultaneously to our experience, and indeed, often do. Both systems are very complex and wide-branching, so there need be no difficulty in imagining that these experiences, of pleasure and of pain, can also be connected with other experiences, and organized together, just as “black” and “stripes” are organized in purely visual material. Some messages register as “pain”. There is general agreement that there are nerve endings which generate the messages which are ultimately interpreted as pain. These sensory nerve endings are found in the skin, in the sheath surrounding muscles, in the internal organs, and in the membrane surrounding bones. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Just about any kind of manipulation that causes tissue damage will cause pain, and thus most investigator believe that pain receptors are chemically stimulated by substances liberated by damages tissues. The experience of pain is like our experience of “orange” or “bitter” or other information brought in by the senses, in that there are various specialized sensory nerve-endings which can be activated and which in due course produce the experience of “pain”. There are different kinds of pain, with different kinds of nerve-endings concerned with each. There are chemical substances, drugs, which can alter the way messages register because a cell’s receptivity can be affected by chemical substances in the bloodstream—in effect such drugs relieve the perception of pain or change our perception of how unbearable it is. There is also evidence now that the body can itself produce morphine-like substances (a narcotic, psychoactive compound with sleep-inducing properties, which will relieve pain) to regulate the registration of pain—endorphins. Some messages register as “pleasure”. The experience of pleasure seems much more diffuse than the experience of pain, and does not depend on sensory nerve-endings as pain does. On the other hand, distinct areas of the brain are again concerned. Experiments with animals have made it clear that there is an area in the medial forebrain, which can be called a “pleasure-centre”. If stimulated electrically, it produces an effect which the animal seeks to repeat. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Birds were trained to press two levers—one delivered rewarding electrical brain stimulation (ESB), the other one produced food pellets. The animals were allowed to press the levers for only one hour each day, and some of them spent so much time at the bar that delivered ESB that they starved to death. When food and ESB are continuously available, however, birds will alternately eat, press the lever for ESB, and sleep; they will not remain at the lever for ESB to the exclusion of other activities. What excites a pleasure-centre in normal circumstances (that is not because of an electrode implanted in the brain by an experimenter) is not yet clear. However, neural messages must be involved, and that must mean that the experience of pleasure is available to be organized with other experiences, just as a sound is, or a touch or a smell or a pain. There is evidence suggesting that when the pleasure-centre is stimulated, this tends to arouse the biological drives, so that animals who have access to increased pleasure-stimulation also explore more, eat more, drink more, copulate more. Pleasure is thus a general arouser of activity—an anti-depressant! After suffering a tragedy, people who have watched comedy shows like 2 Broke Girls, reported laughing so much that it helped hasten their recovery from the event. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Aggression and fear can also be produced in the laboratory. In one study cats could be induced to attack a target or flee from a cage in response to electrical stimulation of the brain. Various hormone-like chemicals, some linked to pleasures of the flesh, increase or decrease the amount of aggression or fear which might otherwise be produced or experiences by a person. For our purpose we do not need to understand the details. We need only to notice that just as information is available to the nervous systems about where our limbs are or our head, so there is information available about the amount o pain or pain-inhibition, or aggression, or fear, or pleasure, or pleasures of the flesh stimulus, floating in our bloodstream, contracting a muscle, or distending a vessel. In the manifest picture of neuroses guilt feelings seem to play a paramount role. In some neuroses these feelings are expressed openly and abundantly; in others they are more disguised but their presence is suggested by behaviour, attitudes and ways of thinking and reacting. A neurotic person is often inclined to account for one’s sufferings by feeling that one does not deserve any better. This feeling may be quite vague and indefinite, or it may be attached to thoughts or activities which are socially tabooed, such as masturbation, incest wishes, death wishes towards relatives. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Such a person who has manifested deviant thoughts usually tends to feel guilty at the slightest occasion. If someone asks to see one one’s first reaction is to expect recrimination for something one has done. If friends do not come or write for some time one asks oneself whether one has offended them. If anything goes wrong one assumes that it is was one’s fault. Even if others are blatantly in the wrong, have definitely mistreated one, one still manages to blame oneself for it. If there is any collision of interests or any argument one is inclined to assume blindly that the others are right. There is but a fluctuating distinction between these latent guilt feelings, waiting to creep up on any occasion, and what has been interpreted as unconscious guilt feelings, evident in depressive conditions. The latter take the form of self-accusations that are often fantastic or at least grossly exaggerated. Also the neurotic’s everlasting efforts to appear justified in one’s own and in others’ eyes, particularly when the enormous strategical value of such efforts is not clearly recognized, suggest the existence of free-floating guilt feelings which have to be kept in abeyance. The existence of diffuse guilt feelings is suggested further by the neurotic’s haunting fear of being found out or of being disapproved of. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

In one’s discussion with the analyst one may act as if the relationship were that between a criminal and judge, thus making it very difficult for one to be co-operative in the analysis. Every interpretation that is given to the individual one will take as a reproach. If the analyst has shown one, for example, that there is a lurking anxiety behind a certain defensive attitude, one will answer, “I knew that I was a coward.” If the analyst explains that one has not dared to approach people for fear of being rejected, one will take blame on one’s shoulders for having thus, as one interprets it, tried to make life easy for oneself. The compulsive striving for perfection develops to a large extent out of this need to avoid any disapproval. Finally, a neurotic person may feel definitely more at ease, even lost certain of one’s neurotic symptoms, if an adverse event occurs, such as losing a fortune or incurring an accident. Observation of this reaction, and also the fact that sometimes one seems to arrange or provoke adverse happenings, if only inadvertently, may lead to an assumption that the neurotic person has guilt feelings so strong that one develops a need for punishment in order to get rid of them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Thus there seems to be a great deal of evidence not only for the existence of particularly keen guilt feelings in a neurotic person but also for the power they exert on one’s personality. However, in spite of this apparent evidence it must be questioned whether the conscious guilt feelings of the neurotic person are really genuine and whether symptomatic attitudes suggestive of unconscious guilt feelings do not allow another interpretation. There are several factors which give rise to such doubts. Guilt feelings, like inferiority feelings, are not at all unwelcome; the neurotic person is far from eager to get rid of them. In fact one insists on one’s guilt and vigourously resists every attempted to exonerate one. This attitude alone would suffice to indicate that behind one’s insistences on feeling guilty there must, as in inferiority feelings, be a tendency which has an important function. And another factor should be kept in mind. It is painful to feel honestly regretful or ashamed of something, and more painful still to express the feeling to someone else; in fact a neurotic person, even more than others, will refrain from doing so, because of one’s fear of disapproval. What we have called guilt feelings, however, one expresses very readily. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Furthermore, the self-recriminations which are so frequently interpreted as indicating underlying guilt feelings in the neurotic are characterized by distinctly irrational elements. Not only in one’s specific self-accusations, but also in one’s diffuse feelings of not deserving any kindliness, praise, success, one is likely to go to any extreme or irrationality, from gross exaggerations to sheer phantasy. Another factor suggesting that self-recriminations are not necessarily the expression of genuine guilt feelings is the fact that unconsciously the neurotic oneself is not at all convinced of one’s unworthiness. Even when one seems to be submerged in guilt feelings, one may become very resentful if others show a tendency to takes one’s recriminations seriously. A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. Inclined as it itself is to all extremes, a group can only be excited by an excessive stimulus. Anyone who wishes to produce an effect upon it needs no logical adjustment in one’s arguments; one must paint in the most forcible colours, one must exaggerate, and one must repeat the same thing again and again. It respects force and can only be slightly influenced by kindness, which it regards merely as a form of weakness. It wants to be ruled and oppressed, and to fear its masters. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

And, finally, groups have never thirsted after truth. They demand illusions, and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is untrue as by what is true. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two. A group is an obedient herd, which could never live without a master. It has such a thirst for obedience that it submits instinctively to anyone who appoints oneself as its masters. However, for some, these views seems not only heretical but highly dangerous: that the human organism is, at its deepest level, trustworthy; that human’s basic nature is not something to be feared, but to be released in responsible self-expression; that small groups (in therapy or in classrooms) can responsibly and sensitively build constructive interpersonal relationships and choose wise individual and group goals; that all of the foregoing will be achieved if a facilitative person assists by creating a climate of realness, understanding an caring. Yet, if there is no one told control an individual’s innately destructive core, a dangerous psychopath may be produced. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.14-15. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Living by grace instead of by works means you are free from the performance treadmill. It means God has already given you an “A” when you deserve an “F,” He has already given you a full day’s pay even though you may have worked only one hour. It means you do not have to perform certain spiritual disciplines to earn God’s approval. Jesus Christ has already done that for you. You are loved and accepted by God through the merit of Jesus, and you are blessed by God through the merit of Jesus. Nothing you ever do will cause Him to love you any more or any less. He loves your strictly by His grace given to you through Jesus. How does this emphasis on God’s free and sovereign grace make you feel? Does it make you a little nervous? Does it seem a bit scary to hear that nothing you do will ever make God love you any more or bless you any more? Do you think, Well, if you take the pressure off like that and tell me all of my effort will never earn me one blessing, then I am afraid that I will slack off and stop doing the things I need to do to live a disciplined Christian life? The Bible recognizes the possibility that the grace of God can be misunderstood and even abused. It speaks of “Godless people, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality,” reports Jude 4. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Anticipating the question, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (Romans 6.1), it warns us not to use our freedom to indulge the sinful nature (Galatians 6.13). All of these passages recognize the possibility that the Bible’s teaching that grace alone is the basis for God’s blessing can be misconstrued as an excuse for indulgent, slothful living. When a giver and a receiver share an expectation about how much sincerity is owed, gestures can be judged as paying less or more than what is owed. Thus, when the receiver of a favour responds less generously than expected, the giver might openly say, “So that is all the thanks I get?” Or one might respond to the thanks in a cold and resentful manner, which indicated that one is rejecting the thanks and considers the other party still in one’s debt. Alternatively, the giver may offer more, as when ne discounts the very need for a thanks by redefining the gift as a voluntary act of pleasure: “Oh on, there is nothing to thank me for. It was a pleasure to read your manuscript.” The sincerity of such a statement, and perhaps the effort needed to sustain it, is a gift in addition to the gift. It is the gift of not seeing the first gift as something to feel grateful for at all because that is just the kind of nice person the giver is. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

How much in the way of displaying sincerity or of working to feel truly sincere (and working, too, at hiding the effort) seems right to us depends on the depth of the bond in question. In trivial exchanges, when no deep bond exists, less debt is passed back and forth, and the range of qualities, actions, and things that are given and received is reduced. In the case of deeper bonds—as between wife and husband, or between lovers, or between best friends—there are many more ways available to repay a debt; emotion work is only one of them. Most of the time, gratitude comes naturally, thoughtlessly, and without effort. Only when it comes hard do we recognize what has been true all along: that we keep a mental ledger with “owed” and “received” columns for gratitude, love, anger, guilt, and other feelings. Normally, we are unaware of this; indeed, the very idea of consciously keeping such a ledger is repellent. Yet moments of “inappropriate feeling” may often be traced to a latent prior notion of what had been felt all along to be owed or owing. Often, feeling rules are unshared. “Poor communication” and misunderstanding sometimes boils down to conflicting notions about what feelings are owed to another. It is psychologically analogous to disagreeing on the exchange rate of dollars to euros. A husband, for example, may latently feel that he is owed more gratitude for sharing housework then his wife gives him and more gratitude than he gives her for doing the same thing. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

In straight exchange, the focus is on making a gesture toward observing a rule, not on the rule itself. In improvisational exchange, the rule itself is called into question or played with. Consider the following exchange, observed at the San Francisco International Airport. Two airline ticket agents are working behind the counter; one is experiences, the other is new on the job. The new agent is faced with a difficult ticket: it needs to be reissued for a different date and at a lower fare, with the extra money already paid to be credited to an air travel card. His experienced compassion and instructor is gone. He struggles with the ticket for ten minutes while a long line of people wait their turn, shifting position restlessly and staring intently at him. When the experienced agent returns, the novice says, “I was looking for you. You are supposed to be my instructor.” The instructor answers ironically, “Gee, I am really sorry, I feel so bad,” and both laugh together. The experienced agent is not sorry that he was not available to help the novice. His apparently misfitting feeling does not put him in debt, however, because the more general feeling rule—“We should both take this seriously”—is poked fun at. His meaning seems to be this: “Do not take it personally that I did not feel guilty or regretful about my late return. Neither of us really wants to be here because it is an awful job, and you understand how I appreciate that ten-minute break.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Irony is composed of just such playing with perspectives—now mine, now yours, now the company’s. It is the jazz of human exchange. As in improvisational music, in order to play with some perspectives, others have to be fundamentally understood and occasionally acknowledged. This is why humour and irony are often reserved for later stages of an acquaintanceship because they acknowledge a deep bond that can be played with. Sometimes improvisational exchanges themselves become crystallized into custom. A graduate student of mine from the Untied Kingdom once gave me two masks with wildly happy eyes and broad smiles. These masks, he explained, where used by European royalty when confronting their parents on specified occasions; holding the smiling masks over their faces, they were fee to voice their complaints at them. The masks paid the emotional respect due to the King and Queen and left the children free to respectfully say what they feel uneasy about. Empowering leaders bring joy, enthusiasm, and optimism to the World of those they touch, every day. Empowering leaders are proactive, inspiring, and willing to take the initiative. Empowering leaders have the ability to both give and get authority and the responsibility necessary to improve performance on every level. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless one transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. Hence the right of the strongest, which, though to all seeming meant ironically, is really laid down as a fundamental principle. However, are we never to have an explanation of the phrase? Force is a physical power, and I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will—at most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty? Suppose for a moment that this so-called “right” exists. I maintain that the sole result is a mass of inexplicable nonsense. For, if force creates right, the effect changes with the cause: every force that is greater than the first succeeds to its right. As soon as it is possible to disobey with impunity, disobedience is legitimate; and, the strongest being always in the right, the only thing that maters is to act so as to become the strongest. However, what kind of right is that which perishes when force fails? If we must obey perforce, there is no need to obey because we ought; and if we are not forced to obey, we are under no obligation to do so. Clearly, the word “right” adds nothing to force: in this connection, it means absolutely nothing. Obey the powers that be. If this means yield to force, it is a good precept, but superfluous: I can answer for its never being violated. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

All power comes from God, I admit; but so does all sickness: does that mean that we are forbidden to call in the doctor? A brigand surprises me at the edge of a wood: must I not merely surrender my purse on compulsion; but, even if I could withhold it, am I in conscience bound to give it up? For certainly the pistol he holds is also a power. Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers. In that case, my original question recurs. The spirit is never at rest. Bodily changes and movements not manifestly influenced by the external senses—growth, maintenance of body functions, and decay—are explained by the natural powers of the spirit. The material nature of spirit is something like that of a particle, and particles possess powers of giving and receiving, the chief forms of attraction being appetite and consent. All kinds of change, movement, and behaviour must ultimately rely on sense activity or on something analogous to it. The spirit is assigned to sensory function in organic process. In inorganic processes, the lifeless spirit acts as if it has sensory power. In all human behaviour of which people can become conscious, the basic data of experience is undoubtedly supplied by the sense. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

If an individual remains fiercely loyal to another being, their friendship will grow. People make oaths not to harm their friends. Loyalty is indispensable to the survival of friendship. How many once-prosperous friendships have faded because of disloyal talk? I set this down as fact, that is all men knew what each other said of the other, there would not be four friends in the World. You will never know a deep friendship unless there is mutual loyalty and trust. When all the World is plotting against you, a friend will help you find strength in God. A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. A friend’s encouragement means more than everything is going to be okay. One will strengthen your hand in God. This undoubtedly involves instruction, prayer, and mutual worship. God will also offer comfort to the downcast so that one’s joy will be greater than ever and this can all be hastened by the golden touch of an encouraging friend. The elements catalogued in a beautiful friendship are—mutuality, love, commitment, loyalty, and encouragement. Repeated mutual commitment began to mark the friendship of remarkable people. There should also be the apex of commitment with the mutual promise to care for one another’s family, should one be taken—“I will take care of yours, and you take care of mine.” Friend bind their lives and their children’s lives to one another, and this creates unexpected heights of devotion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Male friendship has reached Heaven when men make such promises to each other. I treasure a sacred moment when my old childhood friend, married and with family, met my wife and me on vacation in the Colorado mountains and said, after a late-evening meal, “If anything happens to you, Edward, Sarah and I will look out for Katherine and the children.” It was a sacredness I gladly reciprocated. Some men believe that their friendships are more wonderful than the love of men. Some believe that this is because the marriage is not good and monogamous, and is a testimony of the poverty of one’s relationship with one’s wives, an inevitable result of the sin of multiplying wives. However, there is no hint of sensuality here, but simply a celebration of a deep friendship—one’s mutuality of soul, one’s commitment, one’s loyalty, and one’s encouragement—elements one would never know in any other relationship. This is what deep friendships should be. Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all others. This is certainly what the friendship of David and Jonathan in the Bible does for us. It reveals the beauties that can be ours in a deep male relationship grounded in God and sets the standards for all deep friendships. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Confirm, O Lord, we pray Thee, the hearts of Thy children, and strengthen them with the power of Thy grace; that they may both be devout in prayer to Thee, and sincere in love for each other; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O, God, Who makest all things profitable to them that love Thee, grant to our heart an invincible power of love, that the desires which have been convinced by Thine inspiration may not be changed by any temptation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Most dear and precious above all things is chastity and virtue. I recommend thee unto God, and I trust in Christ that thou wilt be saved; and I pray unto God that he will spare thy life, to witness the return of his people unto him.” reports Moroni 9.9 and 22. Dear God, Thou Creator, upholder, proprietor of all things, I cannot escape from thy presence or control, nor do I desire to do so. My privilege is to be under the agency of omnipotence, righteousness, wisdom, patience, mercy, grace. Thou art love with more than parental affection; I admire thy heart, adore thy wisdom, stand in awe of thy power, abase myself before thy purity. It is the discovery of thy goodness alone that can banish fear, allure me into thy presence, help me to bewail and confess my sins. When I review my past guilt and am conscious of my present unworthiness I tremble to come to thee, I whose foundation is in the dust, I who have condemned thy goodness, defied by power, trampled upon thy love, rendered myself worthy of eternal death. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

However, in my recovery cannot spring from any cause in me, I can destroy but cannot save myself. Yet thou has laid help on One that is mighty, for there is mercy with thee, and exceeding riches in thy kindness through Jesus. May I always feel my need of him. Let thy restored joy be my strength; may it keep me from lusting after the World, bear up heart and mind in loss of comforts, enliven me in the valley of death, work in me the image of the Heavenly, and give me to enjoy the first fruits of spirituality, such as Angels and departed saints know. Give strength, O Lord, to those who seek Thee, and continually pour into their souls the holy desire of seeking Thee; that they who long to see Thy face may no crave the World’s pernicious pleasure. Abba, Father, fulfill the office of Thy Name towards Thy servants; do Thou govern, protect, preserve, sanctify, guide, console them; let them be so enkindled with love for Thee, that they may not be despised by Thee, O most merciful Lord, most tender Father! Just as Jesus was in reality greater than the rabbis whose unquestioned authority dominated the people of Israel, so any being today who reflects in all its purity God’s light, unshadowed by one’s personal opinions, is in reality greater than the impressively robed dignitaries of Church and State. Remember that time is money. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Slaves Lose Everything in their Chains, Even the Desire of Escaping from them!

February 17, 2020 3:17 am

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. Our chief want is discovering God, getting to know our soul, and allowing these divine elements to inspire us be greater than we ever knew was possible. How mysterious a baby is, its personality still largely potential, and how helpless. Yet how powerfully it reaches out to us and touches the heart—for sustenance and for the relief of its distresses, but also for recognition. A baby seems to reach out for validation and confirmation that it is already a person. And we respond. We respond and recognize and validate. Fear, pain, loss, and hate may be part of a baby’s everyday experiences. How can it manage such feelings, helpless as it is? It cannot—that is what the adults are for. The fortunate infant has adults whose care goes beyond managing its appetites and distresses. Such a baby will still be subject to misery and terror—we all are—but it will meet them in a context of love and acceptance. Its pains and rages will be surrounded, contained, and modified by memories of joy and bliss, and by expectations of more happiness to come. Indeed, I shall argue that memories of bliss are converted into expectations of bliss, as also, alas, memories of distress turn into expectations of more grief. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Good memories give a baby a better chance of continuing to feel appealing and acceptable in all circumstances, in sorrow as well as joy, when it is bad as well as when it is good. The infant is helpless. It is the adult who mainly provides the context of its experiences. For a context within which the infant can hold on to its experiences and not be devastated by them when they are bad, the infant needs adults who, consciously or unconsciously, understand how the baby feels. Adults who recognize the depths of their baby’s feelings, good and bad, give solidity to that baby’s experience of its. Such recognition helps consolidate the baby’s integrity and sense of self: its identity. Joyous recognition will encourage a joyous identity. I shall be suggesting that there is a strong connection between the way adults see a child, and behave toward it, and the child’s identity (that is the way the child sees itself and feels about itself), and the basic structures of its personality. The very structures of the personality are determined by early experiences. Differences between adults, differences in the nature of our feelings, and in our need for others, and in our relationships with others, have roots in the different ways in which our minds are structured. If the mind is a structure, what is it a structure of? #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

I shall argue that there is more than one good way of being an integrated person with a unique identity, self-image, and personality-structure. For instance, we often tend, in our culture, to think of ourselves as rather like a computer or a BMW M760Li Ultimate Driving Machine, or a calculate something, or take us somewhere. In this phantasy we may include a driver to keep the motor car moving towards our objective, or we may think of our machine as self-starting and self-motivated but, essentially, we assume that there is a point in being what we are an that we should be organized around that point. However, as far as some of us are concerned, our experience of ourselves may be much more like a landscape, a stormy and volcanic one or a quiet one with hills, hedges, meadows, rivers, roads, and settlements—many varied features in specific relationships with one another, and integrated, but not organized in any obvious purposeful way. Our love and recognition of a child may also lean more to one or other of these models. Is the child a BMW M5 Ultimate Driving Machine to us or a landscape? The child’s experience of itself—its self-image and indeed the very structure of its personality—will be affected accordingly (though not necessarily in ways we intend). In all these processes and influences, words are unimportant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

What happens between adult and infant is no primarily conversational or intellectual apprehensions. If we needed words to appreciate a landscape, how poor we would be! And how hard it is to put our appreciation into words. The non-verbal nature of infant experience is similarly hard to apprehend and put into words. This makes it easy to neglect the non-verbal elements from which our personality is built up. In order to carry conviction when writing of our non-verbal life, I have had to lay some solid foundations. In the fascinating area of neurophysiology, we can find the elements which will eventually combine into the more recognizable psychological structures which we call thoughts, words, feelings, images, symbols, emotions, motives. Each of these is a structure of more basic elements. Infants are essentially disabled because by being born into a World which its neurophysiology cannot cope with. However, the human infant is, relatively speaking, quite sophisticated and complex by the time it experiences itself as separate from others. How are we to think of the human experience? What are its basic units? What is an integrated person? What is it that integrates? How are we to describe the differences between the integrity of a BMW Ultimate Driving Machine and the integrity of a landscape? What does it means to be an individual? When is differentiation mere lack of integration and when is it accurate and useful individuation? #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Once this is clarified, our focus can finally come to rest on recognizable adult experiences, albeit on those adult experiences, albeit on those adult experiences in which the effects of our childhood are very apparent. Whether we are structured more like motor cars or more like landscapes, we are composed of discernibly different parts or aspects. How can these become integrated into a more or less unified composition? And how can we conceptualize the relationships between them which would integrate them in this way? The concept of “networks” brings us very nearly to a complete answer. Networks may be organized with a centre to them, or without a centre, or with more than one centre. So may we. Networks may operate simultaneously at different levels of complexity. Networks of nerve-cells are shown to build up into organizations of great complexity and power. As far as we know, without processes in there are no psychological processes. This suggest that we should, if we can, try to theorize in conformity with what is thought to be characteristic of the human nervous system; this should set some limits to our speculations on how the mind works. To start with, we need to agree some brief definitions of basic words. The nervous system is made up of nerve-cells often called neurons. A nerve-cell has various parts to it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The nerve-cell body contains the nucleus and much else that provides for the life-process of the cell. The axon is the part of the cell which divides and branches into dendrites. “Dendron” is the Greek word for tree, and the dendrites look like tiny branching trees. At the end of each of the twigs is a little knob called the terminal button or synaptic knob. Nerve-cells converse with one another; the dendrites (and sometimes points on the skin of the cell body) receive these neural messages. The axon carries the messages from the nerve-ell to nerve-cell pass across a synapse, which joins the terminal buttons of the transmitting ell to points on the cell body or to the dendrites of the receiving cell. Messages are electrical in nature but they are not carried along the cells in the way a message travels down a telephone wire. They are transmitted by means of complex changes in the skin of the axon, which results in exchanges of carious chemicals constituents of the fluids inside and outside the axon. These exchanges produce alterations in electrical currents, and it is these which excite the cells into transmitting messages down the line. The terminal buttons of the axon have the special function, when a message is passed down the axon, of secreting a chemical—the transmitter substance. There are various transmitter substances, used by different kinds of nerve cells, some excitatory some inhibitory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Transmitter substances are picked up by the receiving cell and produce effects there, either to excite or to inhibit transmission. These effects will play a part in determining whether messages will be sent on further down the line. Neurons can connect with other neurons in long chains or in more sophisticated ways. This allows quite complex experiences to come to be organized, through the simultaneous transmission of separate messages which get combined somewhere along the lone. So Turkish Delight can come to smell, look, feel, and taste delicious (at least to those of us who like it) all at the same time. Interlinked messages produce a sorting or coding or editing of stimuli. To begin with what is perhaps its most elementary function, the idealized image substitutes for realistic self-confidence and realistic pride. A person who eventually becomes neurotic has little chance to build up initial self-confidence because of the crushing experiences one has been subjected to. Such self-confidence as one may have is further weakened in the course of one’s neurotic development because they very conditions indispensable for self-confidence are apt to be destroyed. It is difficult to formulate these conditions briefly. The most important factors are the aliveness and availability of one’s emotional energies, the development of authentic goals of one’s own, and the faculty of being an active instrument in one’s own life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

However, a neurosis develops, just these things are liable to be damaged. Neurotic trends impair self-determination because a person is then driven instead f being oneself the driver. Moreover, the neurotic’s capacity to determine one’s own paths is continually weakened by one’s dependence upon people, whatever form this may have assumed—blind rebellion, blind craving to excel, and a blind need to keep away from others are all forms of dependence. Further, by inhibiting great sectors of emotional energy, one puts them completely out of action. All of these factors make it nearly impossible for one to develop one’s own goals. Last but not least, the basic conflict makes one divided in one’s own house. Being thus deprived of a substantial foundation, the neurotic must inflate one’s feeling of significance and power. That is why a belief in one’s omnipotence is a never-failing component of the idealized image. A second function is closely linked with the first. The neurotic does not feel weak in a vacuum but in a World peopled with enemies ready to cheat, humiliate, enslaved, and defeat one. One must therefore constantly measure and compared oneself with others, not for reasons of vanity or caprice but by bitter necessity. And since at the bottom one feels weak and contemptible—as we shall see later on—one must search for something that will make one feel better, more worthy than others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Whether it takes the form of feeling more saintly or more ruthless, more loving or more cynical, one must in one’s own mind feel superior in some way—regardless of any particular drive to excel. For the most part such a need contains elements of wanting to triumph over others, because no matter what the structure of the neurosis there is always vulnerability and a readiness to feel looked down on and humiliated. The need for vindictive triumph as an antidote to feeling humiliated may be acted upon or may exist mainly in the neurotic’s own mind; it may be conscious or unconscious, but it is one of the driving forces in the neurotic need for superiority and gives it its special colouring. The competitive spirit of this civilization is not only conducive to fostering neuroses in general, through the disturbance in human relationships it creates, but it also specifically feeds this need for pre-eminence. Laboratory experiments have tended mainly to use examples from the visual and cognitive side of human experience (and from the behavioural side or animal experience), yet messages about feelings are also continually coming in, and form an element of many experiences. It is therefore worth looking in a little more detail at the neurophysiology of emotional experience. In some respects, feelings are registered just like sights, sounds, and smells. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

What are commonly called the senses—vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and so on—depend on specialized sensory nerve-cells, often concentrated at one end in an organ like the eye or the ear. The cells become active when something from outside the animal produces the stimulus which activates that particular kind of sensory cell. These cells and their immediately following cells are called “exteroceptors” (extero for outside, captor for receptor). We know more about ourselves and about the World than the exteroceptors convey. There are specialized nerve-cells, related not to external stimuli but to something internal. We know, for instance, whether we are standing on one leg or two, whether our fist is clenched or not. We know this from other specialized nerve-cells called “interceptors” and “proprioceptors”, which give information, not about the World but about such things as the amount of tension in a muscle or the amount of a hormone in the blood. Partly through these, we know how we feel: tense or relaxed, alert or sleepy, joyous or sad, satisfied or uncomfortable. There is of course more to feelings than this, and we will look at it in greater detail at a later time—here we are just looking at the neurophysiological process involved. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

In Jesus’s own ministry he came proclaiming access to the kingdom of God: to God’s present care and supervision, available to all through confidence in oneself. “Repent, for life in the kingdom of the Heavens is now available to you,” was what one said. And his presence, actions, and teachings manifested and explained the kingdom. He made “disciples” by presenting them with the kingdom and introducing them into it by reaching their hearts, changing their vision of reality and their intensions for life. Consider one of his “parables of the kingdom”: “The kingdom of the Heavens is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man fund and concealed it. He was ecstatic. He sol d everything he had and bought the field,” reports Matthew 13.44. Imagine that you discovered gold or oil in a certain property and no one else knew about it. Can you see yourself being sad and feeling deprived for having to gather all your resources and sacrifice them in order to buy that property? Hardly! Now you know what it is like to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus! Some pain is included, no doubt, because the old attachments are still there in our hearts and lives. They never all disappear at once. And we may experience some uncertainty from time to time, especially at the start. However, the progress of spiritual formation will soon take care of that. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The new vision becomes an attachment and takes on an ever greater reality as we progress; and that, in turn, pushes the old attachments toward the exits of our lives—which we then are not sad to see go. Indeed we are happy about it. We come to want to not want what we now want, and to want to not think of what now lives before our mind; and we come to want to be made willing for what we are not now really willing. So the self-denial of Matthew 16.24 and elsewhere in the Gospels is always the surrender of a lesser, dying self for a greater eternal one—the person God intended in creating you. Confidence in this is the occasion of “greatly rejoicing, with joy unspeakable and full of glory,” reports 1 Peter 1.8. Jesus does not deny us personal fulfillment, but shows us the only true way to it. In him we find out life. He would keep us from selling our birthright as creatures in God’s image—a birthright of genuine goodness, sufficiency, and power for which we are fitted by nature—for a mere bowl of soup (Genesis 25.30-31): perhaps a little illicit pleasures of the flesh, money, reputation, power, self-righteousness, and so forth—“the pleasures of sin for a season”—or for the mere promise or possibility of such. The “cross” we must take is laid upon all obsessive partial desires, so that that broad reach agape love can integrate for us a while and eternal life with God and man. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Jesus was not some harsh ascetic who practiced or imposed pain for its own sake. He did not choose death because it was good in itself, but “for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross and despised the shame,” reports Hebrews 12.2. To take him as our master means that we trust his way is right and, as he himself did, always look to the larger good under God. Like him we keep on entrusting ourselves to the One who judges righteously (1 Peter 2.23). This is “losing our life and thereby saving it: in the manner Jesus taught. I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, humans being taken as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided. I enter upon my task without proving the importance of the subject. I shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator, to write on politics. As I was born a citizen of a free State, member of the Sovereign, I feel that, however feeble the influence my voice can have on public affairs, the right of voting on them makes it my duty to study them: and I am happy, when I reflect upon governments, to find my inquiries always furnish me with new reasons for living that of my own country. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Humans are born free; and everywhere one is in chains. One thinks oneself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer. If took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: “As long as people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well; as soon as it can shake off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better; for, regaining its liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for those who took it away.” But the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all others rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on conventions. Before coming to that, I have to prove what I have just asserted. The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the obedience they owed to the fathers, and the father, released from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is then maintained only by convention. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

This common liberty results from the nature of humans. Their first law is to provide for one’s own preservation, one’s first cares are those which one owes to oneself; and, as soon as one reaches years of discretion, one is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving oneself, and consequently becomes one’s own master. The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty for their own advantage. The whole difference is that, in the family, the love of the father one’s children repays him for the care he takes of them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples under hum. Grotius denies that all human power is established in favour of the governed, and quotes slavery as an example. His usual method of reasoning is constantly to establish right fact. It would be possible to employ a more logical method, but none could be more favourable to tyrants. It is then, according to Grotius, doubtful whether the human race belongs to a hundred men, or that hundred men to the human race: and, he seems to incline to the former alternative, which is also the view of Hobbes. On this showing, the human species is divided into so many herds of cattle, each with its ruler, who keeps guard over them for the purpose of devouring them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

As a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, the shepherds of men, for instance, their rulers, as of a nature superior to that of the peoples under them. Thus, Philo tells us, the Emperor Caligula reasoned, concluding equally well either that kings were gods, or that men were beasts. The reasoning of Caligula agrees with that of Hobbes and Grotius. Aristotle, before any of them, had said that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others for dominion. Aristotle was right; but he took the effect for the cause. Nothing can be more certain than that every person born in slavery is born for slavery. Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them: they love their servitude, as the democratic party seems to. For instance, while Governor of California, Gavin Newsom brags about the state of California having a $21 billion surplus of taxpayer money, there is a homeless crisis. In cities, like Oakland, and Los Angeles, parks are now becoming homeless camps. And in cities like Sacramento, while people are having a shortage of affordable housing, Mayor Darrel Steinberg is using hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to whip up unnecessary sports complexes and slapping together a $220 million expansion and renovation on the Convention Center and the Memorial Auditorium. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Remember, the new King’s area cost taxpayers about $300 million and only took about two years to put up. With over half a billion taxpayer dollars being spent on unnecessary entertainment in Sacramento, we should not have an affordable housing crisis, nor one single person sleeping on the street. However, no one will move to impeach democratic leaders for using and abusing taxpayers and their money. I guess it is true. Slaves love their servitude, as the comrades of Ulysses loved their brutish conditions. If then there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves, and their cowardice perpetuated the condition. I have said noting of King Adam, or Emperor Noah, father of the three greatest monarchs who shared out the Universe, like the children of Saturn, whom some scholars have recognised in them. I trust to getting due thanks for my moderation; for, being a direct descendant of one of these princes, perhaps of the eldest branch, how do I know that a verification of titles might not leave me the legitimate king of the human race? In any case, there can be no doubt that Adam was sovereign of the World, as Robinson Crusoe was of his island, as long as he was its only inhabitant; and this empire had the advantage that the monarchs, safe on his throne, had no rebellions, wars, or conspirators to fear. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Merciful Lord, the Comforter and Teacher of Thy faithful people, increase in Thy Church the desires which Thou hast given, and confirm the hearts of those who hope in Thee by enabling them to understand the depth of Thy promises; that all Thine adopted sons may even now behold with the eyes of faith, and patiently wait for, the light which as yet Thou dost not openly manifest; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who hast taught Thy Church to keep all Thy Heavenly commandments by loving Thy Godhead and our neighbour; grant us the spirit of peace and grace, that Thy Universal family may be both devoted to Thee with their whole heart, and united to each other with a pure will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “My beloved son, I write unto you again that ye may know that I am yet alive; but I write somewhat of that which is grievous. Behold, I am labouring with them continually; and when I speak the word of God with sharpness they harden their hearts against it; wherefore, I fear lest the Spirit of the Lord hath ceased striving with them. For so exceedingly do they anger that it seemeth me that they have no fear of death; and they have lost their love, one towards another; and they thirst after blood and revenge continually,” reports Moroni 9.1 and 4-5. O Saviour of Sinners, Thy name is excellent, Thy glory high, Thy compassion unfailing, Thy condescension wonderful, Thy mercy tender. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

I bless thee for the discoveries invitations, promises of the gospel for in them is pardon for rebels, liberty for captives, health for the sick, homes for the homeless, salvation for the lost. I come to thee in thy beloved name of Jesus; re-impress thy image upon my soul; raise me above the smiles and frowns of the World, regarding it as a light thing to be judged by humans; may Thy approbation be my only aim, thy word my one rule. Make me to abhor that which grieves Thy Holy Spirit, to suspect consolations of a Worldly nature, to shun a careless way of life, to reprove evil, to instruct with meekness those who oppose me, to be gentle and patient toward all people, to be not only a professor but an example of the gospel displaying in every relation, office, and condition its excellency, loveliness and advantages. How little have I illustrated my principles and improved my privileges! How seldom I served my generation! How often have I injured and not recommended my redeemer! How few are those blessed through me! In many things I have offended, in all come short of Thy glory; pardon my iniquity, for it is great. “And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labour diligently; for if we should cease to labour, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labour to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the Kingdom of God,” reports Moroni 8.6. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

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Life is but an Empty Dream for the Soul is Dead that Slumbers, and things are Not what they Seem!

February 15, 2020 2:37 am

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. A leader is someone who has the capacity to create a compelling vision that takes people to a new place, and to translate that vision into action. Leaders draw other people to them by enrolling them in their vision. What leaders do is inspire people, empower them. They attract people and opportunities, rather than repelling them. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we will miss it, but that it is too low and we will reach it. The kind of master one should seek is one who will be a loving one—a master who is large hearted enough to receive one, sins, weakness, foolishness, and all. Other things being equal, choose your teacher from among those who are mature and sincere for they have insight and experiences which many people lack; they can give the tranquil counsel which comes from the acceptance of life, the adjustment to its situations, and the waning of physical desires. The teacher is not to be measured only by one’s weaker disciples nor by one’s foolish pupils. A juster measurement must take into reckoning the wiser and stronger ones also. What one has done for most of them has been done in spite of themselves, for the egos have thwarted or twisted one’s influence all too often. Nevertheless it is there and in twenty or thirty years it will still be there, inevitable and inescapable, awaiting the thinning down of the ego’s resistance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

It is a discriminating seeker who responds only to what is wise and true and fine in a teacher, but rejects what is frail or fallible in one. A student is often dismayed, anxious, or upset by the aura of apparent impersonality which surrounds the Teacher. Such reactions are natural but also must be checked—which can be done by learning to smile at oneself and be at peace. Do not look for truth among the unbalanced, the ego-obsessed, the brainless, they hysterical and the unsensitive. Look for it among the modest, the serene, the intuitive, the deep-divers and those who honour God to His uttermost. Many take to an imperfect, half-competent or half-satisfactory teaching because no better one is available. Incompetent instruction is undesirable but it may be helpful in some cases if stopped at the proper point. The student may be certain that if there be competent guidance on this path there is no standing still. Either one must go forward and onward until one reaches the goal, or one must get rid of one’s guide. The politics of the client-centered approach is a conscious renunciation and avoidance by the therapist of all control over, or decision-making for, the client. It is the facilitation of self-ownership by the client. It is the facilitation of self-ownership by the client and the strategies by which this can be achieved; the placing of the locus of decision-making and the responsibility for the effects of these decisions. It is politically centered in the client. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Client-centered therapy has forever changed the politics of psychotherapy by the recording and publishing of transcribed therapeutic interviews. The mysterious, unknowable operations of the therapist are now wide open for all to see. This has let a breath of fresh air and common sense pervade the therapeutic World. The individual is able at least to choose a school of therapy that appears congenial to one. And where, at first, only client-centered interviews are available on tape recordings expert therapists of a variety of orientations. Humanistic psychology has served to demystify the nature of therapy. Both the theory and the practice of therapeutic change should be made public, so that this knowledge can be share in common by both the patient and the therapist. It is not a matter of the therapist following the old authoritarian medical model of keeping the patient in the dark as a patriarch might treat a child…It is a matter of the habituated, unhappy individual regaining self-control and self-maintenance of one’s own wholeness and health. Of course, this is a most unprofessional procedure, for it gives away the authority, the secrecy and the unquestionability of the professional healer and therapist. And it gives these things away to the patient. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

The center of the therapeutic action is not, therefore, considered to be within the therapist’s decisions but within the patient’s decisions. The World-Mind does not fully declare its intentions toward us humans but does give us enough inkling of them through the teachers and prophets of the face. These great souls who have ascended to another plane of being altogether have sent us signals from that distant sphere. It is for us to heed those signals and to understand their meaning. The knowledge of someone far better than oneself shows human possibilities. The longing to become like one provides an individual with an ideal for living. The examples of good beings help us when we compare ourselves with them, and especially our worst with their best. History has honoured those individuals who have gone into the far places of this globe and explored them. It is not time to honour those who have gone deep, not far, within themselves and explored consciousness. A real need of humanity eventually finds its expression in flesh and blood. Just as an oppressive tyranny ultimately produces the rebel who overthrows it, so a growing hunger for spiritual guidance ultimately brings forth those who are to provide it. Those who have lavished their devotion on such an ideal, have lavished it wisely. It is hardly necessary to say that the person-centered view drastically alters the therapist-patient relationship, as previously conceived. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

The therapist becomes the trained healthy professional who helps sooth growing pain and deliverer of change, not its originator. One places the final authority in the hands of the client, whether in small things such as the correctness of a therapist responses, or large decisions like the course of one’s life direction. The locus of evaluation, of decision, rests clearly in the client’s hands. A person-centered approach is based on the premise that the human being is basically a trustworthy organism, capable of evaluating the outer and inner situation, understanding oneself in its context, making constructive choices as to the next steps in life, and acting on those choices. A facilitative person can assist in releasing these capacities when relating as a real person to the other, owning and expressing one’s own feelings; when experiencing a nonpossessive caring and love for the other; and when acceptingly understanding the inner World of the other. When this approach is made to an individual or a group, it is discovered that, over time, the choices made, the directions pursued, the actions take are increasingly constructive personally and tend toward a more realistic social harmony with others. So familiar has this humanistic, person-centered concept become—more familiar in the realm of the intellect than in actual practice—that we sometimes forget what a blow it struck at that views then current. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

It has taken me years to recognize that the violent opposition to a client-centered therapy sprang not only from its newness, and the fact that it came from a psychologist rather than a psychiatrist, but primarily because it struck such an outrageous blow to the therapist’s power. It was in its politics than it was most threatening. Dr. Freud shows his degree of distrust of the basic nature of humans when he says, speaking of the need for super-ego control: “Our mind, that precious instrument by whose means we maintain ourselves alive, is no peacefully self-contained unity. It is rather to be compared with a modern State in which a mob, eager for enjoyment and destruction, has to be held down forcibly by a prudent superior class.” To the end of his days, Dr. Freud still felt that if human’s basic nature were released, nothing but destruction could be expected. The need for control of this beast within humans was a matter of the greatest urgency. “The core of our being, then, is formed by the obscure id…The one and only endeavour of these instincts is toward satisfaction…But an immediate and regardless satisfaction of instinct, such as the id demands, would often enough lead to perilous conflicts with the external World and to extinction…The id obeys the inexorable pleasure principle…and it remains a question of the greatest theoretical importance, and one that has not yet been answered, when and how it is ever possible for the pleasure principle to be overcome.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

The great majority of people have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats them. We have learned from the psychology of the individual whence comes this need of the masses. It is the longing for the father that lives in each of us from one’s childhood days. When one has an astonishing mutuality of soul and the immediacy of one’s love is followed by profound commitment—it allows for another person to make a covenant with someone else because there is an ability to love the other person as oneself. With such subline spiritual theatre—it is a symbolism of a noble soul. The son of a Chief Executive Officer will stand humbly in one’s street clothes, while the merchant’s son dons the prince’s attire. This is because materialism is not always a factor in friendship. Just because one is more affluent does not mean they have to flaunt it or have the best of everything. This type of symbolic divestiture places one’s peer as one’s equal regardless of finances, and also represents a conscious display of vulnerability and real risk. The Shakespearean gesture means, “My life for your life,”—and one means every bit of it. We may wonder if such friendships are really possible for common people who are not spiritual giants. The deepest friendships have in common a desire to make the other person royalty. They work for and rejoice in the other’s elevation and achievements. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

There are no hooks in deep and honest friendships, no desire to manipulate or control, no jealousy or exclusiveness—simply a desire for the best for the other. To love a person means to see one as God intended one to be. Do you have the great fortune to have such a deep friend? What did St. Paul mean when he said all God’s promises are “Yes” in Christ? First of all, Christ in His Messianic mission is the personal fulfillment of all the promises in the Old Testament regarding a Saviour and coming King. In Christ is the yes, the grand consummating affirmative, to all God’s promises. He is the horn of salvation raised up for us by God, “as He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets which have been since the World began,” reports Luke 1.69. In Him all things “which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms” achieve their fulfillment reports Luke 24.44. The covenant promises addressed to Abraham and his seed are realized in His single person as reported in Galatians 3.16. Beyond the actual fulfillment of all the promises made about Him, Christ is also the meritorious basis upon which all of God’s other promises depend. All of God’s promises depend upon Christ alone. This is a notable assertion and one of the main articles of our faith. It depends in turn upon another principle—that it is only in Christ that God the Father is graciously inclined towards us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

His promises are testimonies of His Fatherly goodwill towards us. Thus it follows that they are fulfilled only in Christ. Secondly, we are incapable of possessing God’s promises till we have received the remissions of our sins and that comes to us through Christ. Think just now of what you feel your greatest needs are, both spiritually and temporally. As you bring those needs to God in prayer, which would you rather present to Him as a consideration for meeting those needs: your spiritual disciplines, your obedience, and your sacrifice, imperfect as they are; or the infinite and perfect merit if Jesus? To ask the question is to answer it, is it not? I do not mean to disparage any spiritual discipline, commitment, or sacrifice. These all have their place in the realm of grace. However, they are never to be relied on as a meritorious cause for expecting God’s blessing or answer to prayer. Blessings that at times come to us through our labours and at times without our labours, but never because of our labours; for God always gives them because of His undeserved mercy. If only we will learn to rest our entire cause of the merits of Jesus Christ, instead of our own, we will learn the joy of living by grace and not by sweat. One of the greatest dangers on the process of spiritual formations is that self-denial and death to self will be taken as but one more technique or job for those who wish to save their life (soul). #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

Self-denial will then externalize itself in overt practice of group identity that may seem very sacrificial, but can leave the “mind of the flesh” in full control. We see this, for example, in many who wear what they regard as plain clothing or who abstain from certain foods. A well-known Methodist evangelist of other years, Sam Jones, used to say that a dancing foot and a praying knew do not grow on the same leg. This might prove to be a fairly good empirical generalization. It may be that as a matter of fact few prayerfully bent knees are on legs with a dancing foot at the end. Still, just not dancing would hardly prove that you had abandoned your life to God. Practices of “mortification” can become exercises in more self-righteousness. How often this has happened! This dreary and deadly “self-denial,” which is all too commonly associated with religion, can be avoided only if the primary fact of our inner being is a loving vision of Jesus and His kingdom. This is where correctly counting the cost comes in. Then outward manifestation of self-denial, or the absence thereof, will matter little, as it did for him. The impression gained by most who hear about “counting the cost” of following Jesus is one of how terrible and painful that cost is. However, to count the cost is to take into consideration both the losses and the gain of all possible actions, to see which is most beneficial. This done, Jesus knew, the trails of apprenticeship (discipleship) would appear to be the only reasonable path. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

As has been said, “One is not a fool who gives up what one cannot keep for the sake of what one can never lose.” The cost of non-discipleship would then be seen for what it is—unbearable. That is why one would become able to sustain cheerfully the much smaller “cost of discipleship” to Jesus. By the same reason may a being in the state of nature punish the lesser breaches of that law. It will perhaps be demanded, with death? I answer, each transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so much severity, as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the offender, give one cause to repent, and terrify others from doing the like. Every offence, that can be committed in the state of nature, may in the state of nature be also punished equally, and as far forth as it may, in a commonwealth: for though it would be besides my present purpose, to enter here into the particulars of the law of nature, or its measures of punishment; yet, it is certain there is such a law, and that too, as intelligible and plain to a rational creature, and a studier of that law, as the absolute laws of commonwealths; nay, possibly plainer; as much as reason is easier to be understood, than the fancies and intricate contrivances of humans, following contrary and hidden interests put into words; for so truly are a great part of the municipal laws of countries, which are only so far right, as they are founded on the laws of nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

To this strange doctrine, viz. That in the state of nature everyone has the executive power of the law of nature, I doubt not but it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for people to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make people partial to themselves and their friends: and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others; and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of beings. I easily grant, that civil government is the proper remedy for the insolvencies of the state of nature, which must certainly be great, where men may be judges in their own cases, since it is easy to be imagined, that one who was so unjust as to do one’s brother an injury, will scare be so just as to condemn oneself for it: but I shall desire those who make this objection, to remember, that absolute monarchs are but humans; and if government is to be the remedy of those evils, which necessarily follow from human’s being judges in their own cases, and the state of nature is therefore not to how much better it is than the state of nature, where one being, commanding a multitude, has the liberty to be judge in one’s own case, and may do to all one’s subjects whatever one pleases, without the least liberty to any one to question or controul those who execute one’s pleasure? #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

And in whatsoever one cloth, whether led by reason, mistake or passion, must be submitted to? Much better it is in the state of nature, wherein humans are not bound to submit to the unjust will of another: and if one that judges, judges amiss in one’s own, or any other case, one is answerable for it to the rest of humankind. It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were there any humans in such a state of nature? To which it may suffice as an answer at present, that since all princes and rulers of independent governments all through the World, are in a state of nature, it is plain the World never was, nor ever will be, without numbers of beings in that state. I have named all governors of independent communities, whether they are, or are not, in league with others: for it is not every compact that puts one community, and make one body politic; other promises, and compacts, human may make one with another, and yet still be in the state of nature. The promises and bargains for truck, &c. between the two men in the desert island, mentioned by Garcilasso de la Vega, in his history of Peru; or between a Swiss and an Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them, through they are perfectly in a state of nature, in reference to one another: for truth and keeping of faith belongs to humans, as human, and not as members of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

To those that say, there were never any people in state of nature, I will not only oppose the authority of the judicious Hooker, Eccl, Pol. Lib. i. sect. 10, where he says: “The laws which have been hitherto mentioned, i.e. the laws of nature, do bind humans absolutely, even as they are human, although they have never any settled fellowship, never any solemn agreement amongst themselves what to do, or not to do: but forasmuch as we are not by ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with competent store of things, needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for the dignity of man; therefore to supply those defects and imperfections which are in us, as living single and solely by ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship with others: this was the cause of human’s uniting themselves at first in politic societies.” However, I moreover affirm, that all humans are naturally in that state, and remain so, till by their own consents they make themselves members of some political society; and I doubt not in the sequel of this discourse, to make it very clear. “Pray for them, my son, that repentance may come unto them. But behold, I fear lest the Spirit hath ceased striving with them; and in this part of the land they are also seeking to put down all power and authority which cometh from God; and they are denying the Holy Ghost,” reports Moroni 8.28. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Lord Jesus Christ, Very God and Very Man, Who changest not, but art holy in all Thy works; turn away from us the unbelief of a doubtful mind, and fill our heart with the gifts of Thy grace; that we may believe and know Thee to be Very God, Who by miracles and mighty works are proved to be Saviour of all. We beseech Thee, O Lord, continually to strengthen us by a sincere faith in Thine Incarnation; that the crafty enemy may never be able to overcome us who are established in the love of Thee. Arise, Lord, Who judgest the Earth; and us Thou dwellest in and possesses the faith of all nations, suffer us not to abide in darkness; and grant that we may not lay the foundations of our faith on the sand where the whirlwind may overthrow them, but be established on the rock which is steadfast in Thee. O Heavenly Father, teach me to see that if Christ has pacified thee and satisfied divine justice He can also deliver me from my sins; that Christ does not desire me, now justified, to live in self-confidence in my own strength, but gives me the law of the Spirit of life to enable me to obey thee; that the Spirit and His power are mine by resting on Christ’s death; that the Spirit of life within answers to the law without; that if I sin not I should thank thee for it; that if I sin I should be humbled daily under it; that I should mourn for sin more than other people do, for when I die I shall die because of sin, that makes me mourn. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

When I see how sin strikes at Thee, that makes me mourn; when I see that sin caused Christ’s death, that makes me mourn; that sanctification is the evidence of reconciliation, proving that faith has truly apprehended Christ; Thou has taught me that faith is nothing else than receiving they kindness; that it is an adherence to Christ, a resting on Him, love clinging to Him as a branch to the tree, to seek life and vigour from Him. I thank thee for showing me that vast difference between knowing things by reason, and knowing them by the Spirit of faith. By reason I see a thing is so; by faith I know it as it is. I have seen thee by reason and have not been amazed, I have seen thee as thou art in Thy Son and have been ravished to behold thee. I bless thee that I am thine in my Saviour, Jesus. It is good for us to hold fast by Thee, O Lord; but do Thou so increase in us the desire of good, that the hope which joins us to Thee may not be shaken by any wavering of faith, but may endure in stedfastness of love. May the hope which Thou hast given us, O Lord, be our consolation in our law estate, as it will fill us with glory in the day of our rejoicing. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul. Lives of great people all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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Do I Not Have the Right to do What I Want with My Own Money? Or are You Envious Because I am Generous?

February 13, 2020 1:38 am

An optimist goes to the window every morning and says, “Good morning, God.” The pessimist goes to the window every morning and says, “Good God! Morning!” If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. “And to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.11-12. If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a person, do not bother analyzing one’s ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much one is moved by noble ideas; if you watch one just laugh, you will get better results. If one laughs well, one is a good being. My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all people are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other person. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

A state also of equality, wherein in the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of one’s will, set one above another, and confer on one, by an evident and clear appoint, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. This equality of humans by nature must be built on the foundation of an obligation to mutual love amongst humans, on which one builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence one derives the great maxims of justice and charity. The like natural inducement hath brought people to know that it is no less their duty, to love others than themselves; for seeing those things which are equal, must needs all one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every human’s hands, as any human can wish unto one’s own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the desire, which is undoubtedly in other beings, being of one and the same nature? #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

To have anything offered them repugnant to this desire, must needs in all respects grieve them as much as me; so that if I do harm, I must look to suffer, there being no reason that others should shew greater measure of love to me, than they have by me shewed unto them: my desire therefore to be loved of my equals in nature as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to them-ward fully like the affection; from which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no being is ignorant. However, though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though humans in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of one’s person or possessions, yet one has not liberty to destroy oneself, or so much as nay creature in one’s possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all humankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in one’s life, health, liberty, or possession: for humans being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

All the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the World by his order, not another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Every one, as one is bound to preserve oneself, and not to quit one’s station willfully, so by the like reason, when one’s own preservation comes not in competition, ought one, as much as one can, to preserve the rest of humankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another. And that all humans may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every human’s hands, where every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that laws to such a degree, as may hinder its violations: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern humans in the World be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature may punish another for any evil one has done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Not only does God sovereignly determine how and to what extent He will bless us, He often blesses those who, in our opinion, seem most unworthy. We see this demonstrated rather forcefully in Jesus’s recounting of two Old Testament incidents as recorded in Luke 4.25-27: “I assure you that there were many windows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a window in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” Luke recorded that “all the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.” Why were these Jewish people who heard Jesus so enraged that, as verse 29 tells us, they wanted to kill Him? It was because the widow and Naaman were despised Gentiles. In the opinion of the Jewry, these people were most unworthy. The reaction was, “How could God bless those Gentiles instead of more deserving Jewish people?” The fact is, God did bless those two Gentiles while passing right by His own chose people. Were in the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian more “deserving” than anyone in Israel? Not all. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The Old Testament record of one’s healing indicates that Naaman, by his anger and haughtiness, was very undeserving. God often does bless people who seem to us to be quite unworthy. However, that is what grace is all about, because we are all unworthy. We rejoice in the generosity of God’s grace as it is directed toward us, or toward our family or friends. However, how do we feel wen someone whom we think does not deserve it is blessed by God? Are we envious because of the generosity of God toward that person? Do we feel, as did the workers in the parable, who got paid as much for one hour of work as did those who slaved away in the hot Sun for twelve hours, that we have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day, and yet that other person has been blessed more than we have? The workers who labored all day did not grumble because they received too little pay, but because less deserving workers received the same as they. The “A” students in the modern version of the parable were not outraged because they received only an “A,” but because some obviously undeserving students received the same grade. The reality of the Christian life, though, is that there is no “A” students in God’s Kingdom. Some are more obedient than others, some have labored more and sacrificed more than others, but none of us measures up to an “A.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

None of us wants to get what we actually deserve. We all want God’s grace, but we cannot enjoy God’s grace when there is an attitude of comparing. See the two groups of labourers as they severally wend their way home that evening. As to amount of money in their pockets, they are all equal: but as to amount of content in their spirits there is a great difference. The last go home each with a penny [a denarius] in one’s pocket, and astonished glad gratitude in one’s heart: their reward accordingly is a penny, and more. The first, on the contrary, go home, each with a penny in one’s pocket, and corroding discontent in one’s soul: their reward accordingly is less than a penny. Arnot believed it was in this sense that “the last will be first, and first will be last,” reports Matthew 20.16. That is, the last workers hired ended up “first” because they had a day’s wages plus contentment, whereas the first workers hired ended up “last” because of their discontentment. While that is certainly a helpful observation about life, I understand Jesus’ two statements in Matthew 19.30 and 20.16 somewhat differently than Arnot does. I believe Jesus is asserting the sovereign prerogative of God to dispense His favours as He pleases. I do not think His statement, “So the last will be the first, and the first will be last,” is to be taken in absolute sense as if this would always be the case. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Rather, I think there is often no apparent correlation between what one seemingly “deserves” and what he or she receives. Remember, the whole point of the parable is to respond to Peter’s attitude as expressed in this statement: “The more we do, the more we earn, and the more God owes us.” If we are to succeed in living by grace, we must some to terms with the fact that God is sovereign in dispensing His gracious favours, and He owes us no explanation when His actions do not correspond with out system of merits. Indeed, as Paul said, “How unsearchable His decisions, and how mysterious His methods! For who has ever understood the thoughts of the Lord, or has even been His advisor?” reports Romans 11.33-34. We are left without any grounds for grumbling about the treatment we receive from God. God never becomes obligated to us, so He can always say to us, “Friend, I am not being unfair to you,” reports Matthew 20.13. At the same time God reserves the right to treat each of us differently, bestowing blessings as He sovereignly chooses. In the words of the landowner, God says to us, “Do I not have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” reports Matthew 20.15. Doing what you want—God’s way. What does that mean? It means that they will then for the first time be able to do what they want to do. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Of course they will be able to steal, lie, and murder all they want—which will be none at all. However, they will also be able to be truthful and transparent and helpful and sacrificially loving, with joy—and they will want to be. Their life will be in this way caught up in God’s life. They will want the good and be able to do it, the only true human freedom. The mind set on the spiritual is in that sense “life and peace,” reports Romans 8.6, because it lives from God and, “sowing into the spirit, out of the spirit reaps the eternal kind of life,” reports Galatians 6.8. So—and this is of utmost importance to those who would enter Christian spiritual formation—life as normally understood, where the object is securing myself, promoting myself, indulging myself, is to be set aside. “Can I still think about such things?” you may ask. Yes, you can. However, you increasingly will not. And when you do, as formation in Christlikeness progresses, they simply will not matter. In fact, they will seem ridiculous and uninteresting. Jesus’ words on not being anxious about what will happen to you and his admonitions to consider the flowers and birds, as reported in Luke 12.13-34, will seem obviously sane and right, whereas they previously sounded obviously crazy and wrong, or “out of touch with reality.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

From the perspective of interpersonal politics, this element of the relationship—congruence—gives a maximum space to be—for the client and for the therapist. The therapist is saying, in effect, “Here I am, as I am.” There is no hint of any kind of control over the client’s responses to one’s way of being. To the contrary, finding that the therapist is permitting oneself to be as one is, the client tends to discover that same freedom. The second attitude of importance in creating a climate for change is acceptance, or caring or prizing—unconditional beneficial regard. It means that when the therapist is experiencing an optimistic attitude, acceptant attitude toward whatever the client is at that moment, therapeutic movement r change is more likely. It involves the therapist’s willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on at that moment—confusion, resentment, fear, anger, courage, love, or pride. It is a nonpossessive caring. The therapist prizes the client in a total rather tan a conditional way. This resembles the love the parent sometimes feels toward the infant. Research indicates that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the greater the probability that therapy will be successful. It is not, of course, possible to feel such an unconditional caring all of the time. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

A therapist who is real will often have very different feelings, negative feelings toward the client. Hence it is not to be regarded as a “should,” that the therapist should have an unconditional optimistic regard for the client. It is simply a fact that unless this is a reasonably frequent ingredient in the relationship, constructive client change is less likely. What of the interpersonal politics of such an attitude? It is a powerful factor, but it is in no way manipulative or controlling in the relationship. There is no judgment or evaluation involved. Power over one’s own life is left completely in the hands of the client. It provides a nurturant atmosphere but not a forcing one. Another facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that are being experienced by the client and communicates this understanding to the client. At its best the therapist is so much inside the private World of the other that one can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. When the therapist responds at such a level of level the client’s reaction is of this sort: “Perhaps that is what I have been trying to say. I have not realized it, but yes, that is how I do feel!” This element of the relationship is perhaps the most easily improved through even brief training. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Therapists can learn, quite quickly, to be better, more sensitive listeners, more empathic. It is in part a skill as well as an attitude. To become more genuine or more caring, however, the therapist must change experientially, and this is slower and more complex process. Being empathic involves a choice on the part of the therapist as to what one will pay attention to, namely the inner World of the client as that individual perceives it. Thus it does change the interpersonal politics of the relationship. It in no way, however, exercises control over the client. On the contrary it assists the client in gaining a clearer understanding of, and hence a greater control over, one’s own World and one’s own behaviour. You may well ask why a person seeking help changes for the better when one is involved in a relationship with a therapist that contains these elements. Over the years I have come to see more and more clearly that the process of change in the client is a reciprocal of the attitudes of the therapist. As the client finds the therapist listening acceptingly to one’s feelings, one becomes able to listen acceptingly to oneself—to hear and accept the anger, the fear, the tenderness, the courage that is being experienced. As the client finds that therapist prizing and valuing even the hidden and awful aspects which have been expressed, one experiences a prizing and liking of oneself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

As the therapist is experienced as being real, the client is able to drop facades, to more openly be the experiencing within. Politically, by listening to the feelings within, the client reduces the power others have had in inculcating guilts and fears and inhibitions, and is slowly extending the understanding of, and control over, self. As the client is more acceptant of self, the possibility of being in command of self becomes greater and greater. The client possesses oneself to a degree that has never occurred before. The sense of power is growing. As the client becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, less defensive and more open, one finds at last some of the freedom to grow and change in the directions natural to the human organism. Life is not in one’s hands, to be lived as an individual. If there ever was a “man’s man,” it was Jonathan; and if there ever was a man who felt the need of a friend, I was Jonathan. The Philistines’ domination of Israel in that day was so complete that they allowed no blacksmiths in the land for fear they would make swords and spears for the Israelites. In fact, there were only two swords in the entire nation, those of King Saul and his son Jonathan. All Israel was in a dark storm of depression and despair—all, that is, expect Jonathan. Jonathan saw matters differently. He believed that if God willed it, Israel could be saved, even by a few. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

While others looked down, Jonathan looked up and saw a great and glorious God who could deliver hum anything He saw Fit. Armed with this conviction and his sword, Jonathan and his armour-bearer attacked a Philistine detachment alone. His sallying words say it all: “Come, let us go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few,” reports 1 Samuel 14.6. Assured that God would deliver them into his hand, Jonathan launched a horrifying single-handed attack. It was a mano a mano, hand-to-hand, man-to-man. Blood ran to the dust and white bone gleamed in the Sun as Jonathan sliced and hacked attacker after attacker, until twenty Philistine lay spread over a terrible half-acre. Blood-covered Jonathan was one tough Golden State Warrior! Jonathan’s heroics put some steel into his people, and a rebellion followed—and some good days for Israel. However, with Saul’s subsequent sin and rejection, Israel fell to even darker days than before (chapters 15-17), and Jonathan was more alone than ever. Even his greater heart was affected, as he too trembled before Goliath. There was no one of like mind, he thought—until he encountered David. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Jonathan could not believe his ears as David called out to the giant: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I will strike you down and cut off your head…and the whole World will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.” (17.45-47). Then David ran full-speed at Goliath and nailed him right between the eyes! Blood-smeared David stood holding the great gory head, talking calmly with Jonathan’s father, Saul. At last Jonathan had found someone whose heart was in tune with his—a friend. What followed was the flowering of a deep male friendship, one of the most celebrated friendships in all of literature. As such, it provides the essential elements and wisdom for all genuine friendships. “Little children cannot repent; wherefore, it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them, for they are all alive in him because of his mercy. And one that saith that little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the atonement of one and the power of one’s redemption. Wo unto such, for they are in danger of death, hell, and an endless torment. I speak it boldly; God hath commanded me. Listen unto them and give heed, or they stand against you at the judgment-seat of Christ,” Moroni 8.19-21. #RandolpHarris 15 of 19

And thus, in the state of nature, one being comes by a power over another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when one has got one in one’s hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of one’s own will; but only to retribute to one, so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to one’s transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one being may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares oneself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of humans, for their mutual security; and so one becomes dangerous to humankind, the Simon clasp, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broke by one. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every being upon this score, by the right one hath to preserve humankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on anyone, who hath transgressed that law, as many make one repent the doing of it, and thereby deter one, and by one’s example of others, from doing the like mischief. And in the case, and upon this ground, EVERY PERSON HATH A RIGHT TO PUNISH THE OFFENDER, AND BE EXECUTIONER OF THE LAW OF NATURE. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some people: but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me, by what right any prince or state can put to death, or punish an alien, for any crimes one commits in their country. It is certain their laws, by virtue of any sanction they receive from the promulgated will of the legislative, reach not a stranger: they speak not to one, nor, if they did, is one bound to hearken to them. The legislative authority, by which they are in force over the subjects of that commonwealth, hath no power over one. Those who have the supreme power of making laws in England, France, or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the World, beings without authority: and therefore, if by the law of nature every being hath not a power to punish offenses against it, as one soberly judges the case to require, I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of another country; since, in reference to one, they can have no more power than what every being naturally may have over another. “Remember that The Maker knows all things, all that is past and present, all that has happened and will happen, and what might happen as well. Remember there is no past of future where The Maker is but only the vast present of all things living,” reports Anne Rice, Angel Time, page 132. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a being so far becomes degenerate, and declares oneself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other being receives damages by one’s transgression: in which case one who hath received any damages, has, besides the right of punishment common to one with other people, a particular right to seek reparation from one that has done it: and other person, who finds it just, may also join with one that is injured, and assist one in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm one has suffered. We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy compassion to increase Thy faith in us; because Thou wilt not deny the assistance of Thy loving-kindness to those whom Thou bestowest a stedfast belief in Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant us, O Lord, we pray Thee, to trust in Thee will our heart; seeing that as Thou dost always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so Thou does not forsake those who make their boast of Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Confirm, O Lord, in our minds the mysteries of the true faith, that as we confess Him Who was conceived by the Virgin to be Very God and Man, so by the power of His saving Resurrection we may be enabled to attain eternal joy; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

O Divine Redeemer, great was thy goodness in undertaking my redemption, in consenting to be made sin for me, in conquering all my foes; great was thy strength in enduring the extremities of divine wrath, in taking away the load of my inequities; great was thy love in manifesting thyself alive, in showing thy sacred wounds, that every fear might vanish, and every doubt be removed; great was thy mercy in ascending to Heaven in being crowned and enthroned there to intercede for me, there to succour me in temptation, there to open the eternal book, there to receive me finally to thyself; great was thy wisdom in devising this means of salvation; bathe my soul in rich consolations of thy resurrection life; great was thy grace in commanding me to come hand in hand with thee to the Father, to be knit to Him eternally, to discover in him my rest, to find in him my peace, to behold His glory, to honour Him who is alone worthy; in giving me the Spirit as teacher, guide, power, that I may live repenting of sin, conquer Satan, find victory in life. When thou art absent all sorrows are here, when thou art present all blessings are mine. Be gracious to our prayers, O merciful God, and guard Thy people with loving protection; that they who confess Thine Only-begotten Son as God born in our bodily flesh, may never be corrupted by the deceits of the devil; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Fools makes complaint that the Prophet brings to then this old message of the eternal Deity that wait to light all human heart and brings nothing new or fit for this age and hour. We may make a preamble to our answer with the statement that one indubitabtly gives such scientific and practical turn to one’s teachings as the time demands, but we must admi that one’s first and last words remain ever the same as the first and last words of all the illustrious divine teachers. For what other message can one give? When the soul hungers for a happiness it has hitherto been unable to find in its mudpits of sensuality or in its marketplaces of barter, is one to offer it a stone of some economic doctrine and not the bread of spiritual nourishment? Is one to come to confirm our self-deceptions and our self-govellings and to give the lie to the divine bliss one enjoys in the moment? One’s continual serenity, one’s unemotional manner may draw the admiration of the discerning few, but it will also provoke the exasperation of the undiscerning many.

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It is Not What Paris Gives You; it is What She Does Not Take Away!

February 12, 2020 2:20 am

What the World needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left. It is better to wear out than to rust out. One popular view of human nature stems from a religious perspective. This view of human nature uses the terms good and evil as representations of a religious philosophy. The idea that human nature can be inherently good assumes, essentially, that an individual’s action, based on an instinctual, inherent nature from a God, is appropriate and correct. In contrast, the idea that human nature can be inherently evil entails the belief that an individual’s actions, rooted in instinct and one’s human nature, will be self-serving, inappropriate, and outside the will of God. The idea that one’s inherent actions can be evil is a religious perspective and is rooted in the idea that humankind, apart from the direction of a higher power, acts within its evil nature. As stated in the Bible, in Romans 8.7, the “mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” A libertarian theory of justice is based in the understanding that human nature is inherently neutral and equal. Libertarian justice maintains that individuals should be free of constraint over their life, liberty, and property, all of which are equally essential to a system of justice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

All people are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature. Likewise, a contractarian theory of justice has some notions that human nature is inherently neutral. Contractarian theories hold that the primary principles in society are built upon the common will of the people in constructing a social contract, which promotes humankind’s equality, independence, and freedom. It is a feeling common to all humankind that they cannot bear to see others suffer. Humans are born free; and everywhere one is in chains, and the first law in the nature of humankind is to provide for one’s own preservation, one is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving oneself. Human nature is inherently self-interested. Egalitarianism holds that as human nature acts in its own self-preserving way, regulations are essential in guiding individuals and society. Egalitarianism views justice as common restrictions and investments in order to produce fairness and equity amongst the citizenry. It is the hope that shared responsibility and regulation will yield not only material liberty (as with the libertarians), but will also create psychological and spiritual liberty, because of the shared moral code that the community follows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The soul is produced by God and the self-interested person in nature is that of the brutes and is produced by some power of the body. Some philosophers believe that human nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short and the condition of humans is a condition of war of everyone against everyone. And that may be true about some individuals, but certainly not everyone. This view that human nature is inherently self-interested sets the foundation for a collective will to order and control the selfish behaviour of humans to protect the good of all. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all humans are created equal. This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth. With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” reports President Abraham Lincoln. People should be allowed to have liberty and sovereignty and act in accordance with the rightness of their own nature. Humaneness and humanity are traits inherent in all and guiding all rational beings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

The abilities of humans which are not acquired by study are part of their endowment of good. However, it seems society is growing selfish and cutthroat. Can it be that as time goes on, the minds of humans are being produced to lack Humanity and Justice? If beings lose their sense of good, then they lose it as the mountain lost its trees. It has been hacked away at—day after day—what of its beauty then? Humankind must be granted their freedoms and liberties in order to act appropriately without certain constraints; however, society must be governed by a social contract, where humans may lose their natural liberty but will instead gain their civil liberty. This new sense of liberty, one that is embedded in a strong civility and citizenship, is influenced by Aristotle. The aspect of human nature that is so selfish must be regulated and controlled so as to not destroy humanity. Many people fear the brutish and warning nature of humans and want laws to protect them from disorder. Yet, they do not want absolutism in government as a means to regulate society for its optimal success because no one really knows what that means or if their lives will be consider worthy of the air they breathe. People do not want to be used by the government as soldiers, placeholders and taxpayers, and then disposed of so someone else can take their place. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

The human body is of the World, and if led by the World is corruptible; however, the human soul is of God and is based in the actions of love. When the nature of humanity as flesh and body is in opposition to God, thus humankind must be led by their soul, which is not corruptible. Church is in society to protect and empower individuals into Godly actions of their soul. Many men and women who are walking softly through life—and creating a revolution as they do so. Homemakers, teachers, interfaces between races and cultures, all of which have been drastically changed by persons who trust their own power, do not feel a need to have power over, and who are willing to foster and facilitate the latent strength in the other person are finding success. Power rests not in your mind but in your organism. You may think you are a slow leaner, but you are not. It could be that you are just now starting to realize your political impact. It is partly that a new concept has been in the process of construction in our language. It is not just a new label. It brings together a cluster of meanings into a powerful new concept. Politics, in present-day psychological and social usage, has to do with power and control: with the extent to which persons desire, attempt to obtain, possess, share, or surrender power and control over others and/or themselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Politics has to do with the maneuvers, the strategies and tactics, witting or unwitting, by which such power and control over one’s own life and others’ lives is sought and gained—or shared or relinquished. It has to do with the locus of decision-making power: who makes the decisions which, consciously or unconsciously, regulate or control the thoughts, feelings or behaviour of others or oneself. It has to do with the effects of these decisions and these strategies, whether proceeding from an individual or a group, whether aimed at gaining or relinquishing control upon the person oneself, upon others, and upon the various systems of society and its institutions. In sum it is the process of gaining, using, sharing or relinquishing power, control, decision-making. It is the process of the highly complex interactions and effects of these elements as they exist in relationships between persons, between a person and a group, or between groups. This new construct has had a powerful influence on me. It has caused me to take a fresh look at my professional life work. I have had a role in initiating the person-centered approach. This view developed first in counseling and psychotherapy, where it was known as client-centered, meaning a person seeking help was not treated as a dependent patient but as a responsible client. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Extended to education, client-centered therapy was called student-centered teaching. As it has move into a wide variety of fields, far from its point of origin—intensive groups, marriage, family relationships, administration, underrepresented groups, interracial, intercultural, and even international relationships—it seems best to adopt as broad a term as possible; person-centered. It is the psychological dynamics of this approach that has interested me—how it is seen by and how it affects the individual. I have been interested in observing this approach from a scientific and empirical point of view; what conditions make it possible for a person to change and develop, and what are the specific effects or outcomes of these conditions. However, I have never given careful consideration to the interpersonal politics set in motion by such an approach. Now I begin to see the revolutionary nature of those political forces. I have found myself compelled to reassess and reevaluate all my work. I wish to ask what are the political effects (in the new sense of political) of all that I, and my many colleagues throughout the World, have done and are doing. What is the impact of client-centered point of view on the issues of power and control in individual psychotherapy? We shall explore the politics of various approaches to helping people, whether through one-to-one therapy, or through encounter or other intensive groups. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

We shall confront openly a subject not often discussed: the issue of power and control in the so-called helping professions. This new approach in the politics of therapy differs from the older one in that it has a genuinely different goal. It aims directly toward the greater independence and integration of the individual rather than hoping that such results will accrue if the counselor assists in solving the problem. The individual and not the problem is the focus. The aim is not to solve one particular problem but to assist the individual to grow, so that one can cope with the present problem and with later problems in a better integrated fashion. If one can gain enough integration to handle one problem in more independent, more responsible, less confused, better organized ways, then one will also handle new problems in that manner. If this seems a little vague, it may be made more specific. It relies much more heavily on the individual drive toward growth, health, and adjustment. Therapy is not a matter of doing something to the individual, or of inducing one to do something about oneself. It is instead a matter of freeing one for normal growth and development, of removing obstacles so that one can again move forward. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

I have described various counseling techniques much in use—such as suggestions, advice, persuasion, and interpretation—and have pointed out that these rest on two basic assumptions: that the counselor knows best, and that one can find techniques by which to move one’s client most efficiently to the counselor-chosen goal. I see not that I have dealt a double-edged political blow. I have said that most counselors saw themselves as competent to control the lives of their clients. And I have advanced the view that it was preferable simply to free the client to become an independent, self-directing person. I am making it clear that is they agree with me, it would mean the complete disruption and reversal of their personal control in their counseling relationship. From the perspective of politics, power, and control, person-centered therapy is based on a premise which at first seemed risky and uncertain: a view of humans at their core a trustworthy organism. This base has over the years been strengthened by experience with troubled individuals, psychotic persons, small intensive groups, students in classes, and staff groups. It has become more and more firmly established as a basic stance, though each person must learn it step by step for oneself, to be convinced of its soundness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

I have recently described it as the gradually formed and tested hypothesis that the individual has within oneself vast resources for self-understanding, for altering one’s self-concept, one’s attitudes, and one’s self-directed behaviour—and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided. Is there any basis for this premise other than wishful thinking and the experience of a few people? I believe so. Biologists, neurophysiologists, and other scientists, including psychologists, have evidence that adds up to one conclusion. There is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities. There is a natural tendency toward complete development in a human. The term that has most often been used for this is the actualizing tendency, and it is present in all living organisms. It is the foundation on which the person-centered approach is built. The actualizing tendency can of course be thwarted, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood the potato bin in which we stored our Winter supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small basement window. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout—pale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the Spring. However, these sad, spindly sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the Spring. However, these sad, spindly sprouts would grow two or three feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. They were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become a plant, never mature, never fulfill their real potentiality. However, under the most adverse circumstances they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with women and men on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of these potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet the directional tendency in them is to be trusted. The clue to understanding their behaviour is that they are striving, in the only ways available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

To us the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life’s desperate attempt to become itself. It is this potent tendency which is the underlying bass of client-centered therapy and all that has grown out of it. I t is obvious that even this premise of client-centered therapy, without going further, has enormous political implications. Our educational system, our industrial and military organizations, and many other aspects of our culture take the view that the nature of the individual is such that one cannot be trusted—that one must be guided, instructed, rewarded, punished, and controlled by those who are wiser or higher in status. To be sure, we give lip service to a democratic philosophy in which all power is vested in the people, but this philosophy is honored more in the breach than in the observance. Hence simply describing the fundamental premise of client-centered therapy is to make a challenging political statement. What psychological climate makes possible is the release of the individual’s capacity for understanding and managing one’s life? There are three conditions for this growth-promoting climate, whether it is in the therapist and client relationship or parent and child, leader and group, teacher and students, administrator and staff—in fact, in any situation in which the development of the person is a goal. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Th first has to do with genuineness, realness—congruence. The more the therapist is oneself in the relationship, putting up no professional front or personal façade, the greater is the likelihood that the client will change and grow in a constructive manner. It means that the therapist is openly being the feelings and attitudes that are flowing within at the moment. The term transparent catches the flavor of this element—the therapist makes oneself transparent to the client; the client can see right through what the therapist is in the relationship; the client experiences no holding back on the part of the therapist. As for the therapist, what one is experiencing is available to awareness can be lived in the relationship, and can be communicated if appropriate. Thus there is a close matching, or congruence, between what is being experienced at the gut level, what is present in awareness, and what is expressed to the client. What does this mean in practical terms? It means that when the client is in pain or distress, the therapist is likely to be experiencing warmth or compassion or understanding. However, at other times in the relationship one may be experiencing boredom or anger or even fear of a destructive client. The more the therapist can be aware of—and can become and express these feelings, whether beneficial or negative—the more likely one is to be helpful to the client. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

It is the feelings and attitudes that are helpful when expressed, not opinions or judgments about the other. Thus the therapist cannot know that the client is a boring conversationalist or a demanding pig head or a beautiful person. All these are debatable point. The therapist can only be congruent and helpful in expressing the feelings one owns. To the extent that the therapist experiences, owns, knows, expresses what is going on within—to that extent one is likely to facilitate growth in the client. When Jesus says we must lose our lives if we are to find them, he is teaching, on the negative side, that we must not make ourselves and our survival the ultimate point of reference in our World—must not, in effect, treat ourselves as God should be treated, or treat ourselves as God. Thus Paul shockingly said, “Covetousness is idolatry,” reports Colossians 3.5. Is not that somewhat exaggerated? No. Covetousness is self-idolatry, for it makes my desires paramount. It means I would take what I want if I could. To defeat covetousness we learn to rejoice that others enjoy the benefits they do. To make my desires paramount is what Paul again described as having a flesh mind or mind of the flesh, which is a state of death (Romans 8.6). #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Such a mind “sows to one’s own flesh”—invests only in one’s natural self—and “out of that flesh reaps corruption,” reports Galatians 6.8. “Corruption” or “coming apart: is the natural end of the flesh. “Flesh” can only be preserved by being caught up within the higher life of the kingdom of God and thus of “losing” the life peculiar to it. In other worse, when Jesus says tat those who find their life or soul shall lose it, he is pointing out that those who think they are in control of their life—“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul,” as the poet William Ernest Henley said—will find that they definitely are not in control: they are totally at the mercy of forces beyond them, and even within them. They are on a sure course to disintegration and powerlessness, of lostness both to themselves and to God. They must surrender. By contrast, if they give up the project of being ultimate point of reference in their life—of doing only what they want, of “sowing to the flesh” or to the natural aims and abilities of a human being—there can be hope. If they in that sense lose their life in favour of God’s life, or for the sake of Jesus and what he is doing on Earth—remember the ongoing World revolution he is now conducting—then their soul (life) will be preserved and thus given back to them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

There is still another valuable lesson to be learned from the parable of the generous landowner. God is not only generous, He is also sovereign. That is, God has the right to dispense His blessings as He chooses. Jesus asserts this prerogative of God very clearly with the landowner’s question: Do I not have the right to do what I want with my own money?” reports Matthew 2015. We constantly see believers around us who seem more blessed of God than we are. Some are more gifted in spiritual abilities, others always succeed with little effort, still others seem to have few problems or concerns, and on and on. Probably none of us is exempt from the temptation to envy someone else’s blessings and to secretly grumble at God, or even to charge Him with rank injustice, for giving that person more in some way then He has given us. Yet God in His sovereignty has the right to bless each of us as He chooses. Consider these words from the apostle Paul: But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? reports Romans 9.20-21. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Regardless of how we understand the particular application of Paul’s teaching, we cannot escape the basic principle in the passage: God is sovereign. And He is sovereign in every area of life. God as our Creator has the right to endow each of us at birth with different physical and mental abilities, with different temperament characteristics, and with different natural talents. He also has the right to give each of us different spiritual gifts. Not only does God have the right, it is obvious He exercises it. We are not created equal, nor are we given equal opportunities throughout life. Each of us has his or her own unique set of circumstances; those of some people being much more favourable than others. Since God is under no obligation to any of us, He is free to bless some more than others as He chooses. He has the right to do what he wants with His blessings. “For awful is the wickedness to suppose that God saveth one child because of baptism, and the other must parish because one hath no baptism. Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what humans can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear,” reports Moroni 8.15-16. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

O God, by Whose will all things were made, and by Whose truth they continue in being; we beseech Thee to keep us under Thy shelter, lest we be cast down from our chief happiness by the swellings of pride; grant us ever to ascend into Heaven by the steps of humility; and because Thou art the Fountain of life, from Thee may we drink what by faith we thirst for; in Thy light may we shine with the light of knowledge, and reap the fruit of righteousness in an everlasting exaltation. O God, Who art rich in forgiveness, and for this cause willedst to assume our lowly flesh, that Thou mightiest leave to us an example of humility, and make us steadfast in all manner of sufferings; grant that we may always hold fast the good things which we receive from Thee, and as often as we fall into sins, may be raised up by repentance; through Thy mercy. O God, I bless thee for the happy moment when I first saw thy law fulfilled in Christ, wrath appeased, death destroyed, sin forgiven, my soul saved. Ever since, thou hast been faithful to me; daily have I proved the power of Jesus’ blood, daily have I known the strength of the Spirit, my teacher, director, sanctifier. I want no other rock to build upon than that I have, desire no other hope than that of gospel truth, need no other look than that which gazes on the cross. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Forgive me if I have tried to add anything to the one foundation, if I have unconsciously relied upon my knowledge, experience, deeds, and not seen them as filthy rags, if I have attempted to complete what is perfect in Christ; may my cry be always, Only Jesus! Only Jesus! In him is freedom from condemnation, fullness in his righteousness, eternal vitality in his given life, indissoluble union in fellowship with him; in him I have all that I can hold; enlarge me to take in more. If I backslide, let me like Peter weep bitterly and return to him; give me strength enough to trust in him; if I am weak, may I faint upon his heart of eternal love; if in extremity, let me feel that he can deliver me; if driven to the verge of hope and to the pit of despair, grant me grace to fall into his arms. O God, hear me, do for me more than I ask, think, or dream. “And I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love; wherefore, all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike and partakers of salvation. For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity,” reports Moroni 8.17-18. The World is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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What Would You Trade Your Very Soul for?

February 11, 2020 2:43 am

A good sense of humor helps to overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerate the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable. In giving freedom to those enslaved, we assure freedom to the free—honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve. With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in. Some people work harder, some are stronger, some have more talent and skill, hence things are naturally unequal. People need to work together, to make and gather the fruits of uneven talents, and so society by its nature is a necessary and willing agreement to share unequally among unequals. If inequalities are greater in modern times, well, so are the fruits which most people can enjoy; greater, too, are the differences in skill, and so forth. If we shudder at the thought of total determinism of modern tyranny, we must admit that the conservative case has weight, especially since we today know fairly accurately how historical inequality came about—at least in a theoretical way. And we know that this process started long before the rise of the state: in fact, it was inherent in primitive societies themselves—even in the most eqalitarian ones, in hunting and gathering societies, the simplest known. These societies knew no distinctions of rank, little or no authority of one individual or the other. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Primitive societies had very simple possessions and so there was no real difference in wealth; property was distributed equally. Yet even on this level individual differences were recognized and already formed the germ of social differentiation which would gradually lead to distinctions of rank, accumulated wealth, hereditary privilege, and the eventual rise and entrenchment of the exploitative state. It would seem that the largest factor in inequality among humans discourse. Two crucial factors are worth pointing out here. First, the basic fallacy: that there was a time in early social evolution when people were not influenced by differences in personal qualities. Some are able to maintain this because of a truly fantastic sketch of social evolution, in which one see a person at first as an isolated being, not even living in a family group. Gradually family life evolved, and then tribal life, and it was that time that each one began to look at the others and to want to be looked at oneself, and public esteem had value. This famous idea on the state of nature beings, then, with the epoch of the savage who lives within oneself. It ends when humans came out of this state into that of society; they became sociable beings, always outside oneself, who knew how to live only in the opinion of others. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

And so some believe that human’s downfall does not begin in the original state of humans, but it is the spirit of society alone, and the inequality it engenders, which thus changes and alters all our natural inclinations—that is, our natural solitariness, our natural immunity to the personal qualities of others. The second point of this fantasy is easier to understand because it is based on fact: one saw no accumulation of goods in the primitive societies of one’s time, and so one thought that primitive beings wanted only to live and remain idle and refused to work to build up an accumulation of goods. Accumulated goods in civilized society were a visible burden on those who slaved for them, and they were a direct cause of social injustice; and the primitive state was one of delightful laziness and freedom. However, we know this is the wrong conclusion: rather, hunters and gatherers cannot accumulate a surplus because of the primitive technology and subsistence economy, not because they do not want surplus. They are already eager to accumulate a surplus of wives and to gain special privileges for hunting lands, and so forth. The drive for self-expansion is there, but there are neither opportunities nor the World picture into which to fit it. Or, the state of nature is not idle, it is temperamental, orderly, and compulsive like all other human states. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

However, we have recently learned something from the vast collections of data on primitive beings: that if one was not in bondage to the authority of living persons, one was at the utter mercy of the power of spirits. Because of human’s fear of life and death, the tribe was in hock to the spirit of the dead. Or, if in some tribes humans did not seem to fear death, it was because they had transmuted this fear by immersing themselves in the group ideology, whatever it may have been. Now this lead us to a completely opposite position from what some anthropologists believed in the past, even on the fanciful sketch of social evolution: that is, in the state of nature the solitary individual is already unfree, even before one gets to society; one carries within oneself the bondage that one needs in order to live. We know today that this antiquated idea of the state of nature as an exploratory hypothesis to be able to imagine how life might be in a state of freedom from social coercion. We know too what a powerful critical tool this idea has been, and how it has helped us to highlight the state as a structure of domination from Marx all the way up to Mumford. However, the fact is that humans never were free and cannot be from their own nature as the starting point. Rare individuals may achieve freedom at the end of years of experience and effort; and they can do this best under conditions of advanced civilization. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

As we have seen, if it had the power to do so, each human type seeks to perpetuate itself; it tries to expand and aggrandize itself in the ways open to it. However, on primitive levels the power figures are always suspect precisely because of their dangerous power; hence the constant anxiety about witches and so forth. “Almost no mortal on Earth knows one’s lineage before the so called Dark Ages (500 to 1500 AD), and only the great families can penetrate the deep players of time to extract from them a series of examples that might inspire. But in every family there are bad people, and weak people, and some people who cannot or will not withstand the trials of life, and who fail spectacularly. Their guardian Angels weep; demons beholding them dance for joy,” Pages 62 and 61 of Angel Time by Anne Rice. The early tribal embodiments of magical power were ready scapegoats for the people—not only witches but priest-kings too. No wonder that when kings later got real power to work their will on the helpless masses, they used that power ruthlessly; in this perspective the divine king of the great slave state of the Mediterranean basin is the earlier shaman come of age and of unlimited power. We might say that instead of themselves being scapegoats, they used the entire people as their own sacrificial animals, marching them off to military holocaust at will. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The logic of this kind of turning of the tables is almost inevitable. What each person wants is to be a survivor, to cheat death and to remain standing no matter how many others have fallen around one. In tribal society, if they can be, even at the expense of an occasional power figure who detaches oneself too much from the general level of safe mutuality and symbiosis, the people are the survivors. In the later tyrannical state, it was only natural that the king reverse this procedure—that he prove himself to be the survivor no matter how many of his people died, or even because they died. Seen in this way, history is the saga of working out of one’s problems on others—harmlessly when one has no power (or when the weapon is art), viciously when one has the power and when the weapons are the arsenals of the total state. This saga continues in modern times but in forms which disguise the same: individuals skilled in focusing power, and masses hungry for it and fearful of it. Each society elevates and rewards leaders who are talented at giving the masses heroic victory, expiation for guilt, relief of personal conflicts. It does not matter how these are achieved: magical religious ritual, magical booming stock markets, magical heroic fulfillment of five-year plans, or mana-charged military mega-machines—or all together. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

What counts is to give the people the self-expansion in righteousness that they need. The people who have power can exercise it through many different kinds of social and economic structures, but a universal psychological hunger underpins them all; it is this that locks people and power figure together in a life-and-death contract. This raises questions about the legal foundations of American society, abut what constitutes a threat to national security, and who should make that decision. “The War on Terrorism” has lead to the highest level of surveillance of our citizens. Many issues have been raised about social and economic justice, about the principles for the distribution of wealth, equal access to material goods. The 9.0 Earthquake in Japan in 2011, which led to the disasters at the nuclear power plants, and the Novel Coronavirus, which broke out in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 and has killed more than 900 people and infected about 40,000 globally, Oroville Dam crisis of 2017, and the fire in Paradise, California which destroyed the entire town has led many raising issues about environmental justice, potential life-threatening issues concerning our relationship to the planet and our physical environment. What are the short term and long term consequences of our current practices, and who should make these determinations? How much power should they have? Should all countries have an equal voice? An equal vote? Who should make and enforce these rules? #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

The United States of America is one of the World leaders in disturbing statistics; rates of incarceration, rates of mass murder, serial murder, homicide and violent crimes, rates of divorce, child maltreatment and exploitation of pleasures of the flesh, rates of death by state executions, auto accidents, gun accidents, diabetes, heart problems, and number of people killed by medical interventions. We spend more of our money on defense than all of the rest of the nations of the World combined, and we have more guns overall and more hand guns in particular than anyone else, and yet research since 1956 shows a consistent decline in our sense of security. The Untied States leads the World in rates of mental disorders, mental illness, and chronic diseases, while at the same time seeing educational performance plummet over several decades. Behind each one of these statistics is a justice issue, a question about the fairness of our legal and cultural institutions, a question about how the relative wealth and poverty is distributed. Age-old questions of racial justice, economic justice, and gender justice are still with us today. Questions about justice originate from our religions. Experts estimate that there may have been as many as 2,000-4,000 religions in the past, but almost all of these were primal, tribal, and confined to small areas. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Today we tend to think of religions as the so-called “World Religions,” those local and tribal perspectives which expanded beyond their native tribes and local areas, and in the more recent 6,000 years left some kind of historical record. Western civilization has been greatly influenced by the monotheistic religions of the Abrahamic traditions, those that trace their Worldly history back to the prophet Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Their holy and sacred texts (the Talmud, Bible, and Koran) contain many commentaries about mortality and justice, about how individuals should treat each other, and how rulers should act. These ancient texts have much to say about retribution and revenge, but relatively little to say about the complex social issues of our contemporary everyday life and globalized World. An ideal society should be a peaceful and harmonious social order, where the diverse interests and social classes would do their best to achieve a certain kind of functional interdependence, based upon their respective skills and roles. All institutions and all practices should be based on “Reason,” which means, a studied deliberation of the right thing to do in order to achieve the overarching goal of social harmony. The guardians, or leaders, should be selected, at a very early age, from among the aristocracy, separated from their parents, and trained for many years at the best schools, with the best teachers, before undergoing a lengthy apprenticeship of military and then political leadership. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The guardians should be motivated by the highest ideals, and should not take any pay or compensation for their leadership. The political unit would ideally be the relatively small city-state, much less complex than contemporary nation-states throughout the World. Certain key ideas about human nature, which are asserted by theorist, commonly refer to assertions about what is universal or invariant among all peoples. Some theorists have a very dismal or negative view of human nature. Perhaps British philosopher Thomas Hobbes is the best exemplar of this negative view. Hobbes thought that human beings were very competitive, aggressive, and potentially violent with all of their fellow human beings, and with this reading of human nature he proposed a strong central state to control the potentially aggressive and unruly behaviours of its citizens. The eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau expresses a much different view of human nature, one founded on self-love and thus potential love for others, so he envisioned a more cooperative and less repressive state power to regulate the activities of citizens. So these highly abstract, or philosophical, ideas about human nature are embedded in the theorist’s concepts of the ideal, or just, society. Do human beings even have a nature? It is a loving and cooperative nature or a selfish, aggressive, and potentially violent one? #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Do men and women share the same “human nature”? Do people from different cultures have the same human nature? Do individuals have the same nature through the life cycle, or does one’s nature change from infancy to childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to parenthood to old age? What are the implications of human nature? Does it mean that a society or culture should be founded upon these ideas in such a manner so as to be consistent with them? Or does it mean that human nature is something to be changed by the society? Can all or part of human nature be changed by education? Many philosophers believe that education and political leadership are institutions that can lead all citizens to accept their proper role in a peaceful and harmonious social order. What do we owe other persons in our life, including friends, siblings, spouses, children, other family members, strangers, international visitors, and other community members? How are we to act toward these other individuals, and how should we regard them? Do we have an obligation to accept the values and moral norms of our own family-of-origin, which in some cultures might include killing a family member who challenged the “honor” of the family? Are we obligated to follow our own cultural laws and norms, even when these differ from more universal ideas about human rights? #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Should our behaviour be different in public settings (where people of different values, cultures, sexual preferences, religions, ethnicities come to do their common business) as opposed to private settings or situations? How should men act toward other men, women, and vice versa? How as should we act toward individuals who are members of historically oppressed or stigmatized groups? How should we express or regulate our emotions and the complex personhood with so many diverse and cross-cutting boundaries? These issues may not involve the larger issues of state and legal institutions, but they influence how we will experience our daily lives, and thus how we routinely experience justice or its opposite. What is the best type of government? Is democracy the best? Why? Should citizens have absolute rights which have to be legally protected by the states? If so, what right? What should happen to the state when they fail to protect the rights of the citizens? What are the prerogatives and limitations of government? What should be the laws, and how should these be decided? How should they be protected? How can they be changed? Who should be the leaders, and what should be their qualifications? What should be the appropriate span of the government for the national, state, regional, and local levels? #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Should the state protect the rights of underrepresented groups, or should there be rule by the majority? How much power should be given to regulate authorities? How should the government be involved in the promotion or regulation of private business activities? These re only a few of the many important questions and issues about governance, and we can see many others raised in the run-up to the 202 national elections. How can the origins of human nature be deconstructed in order to make sense of the World we live in? The most common debate around human nature is structured between two principles: first, that human nature is equal and neutral, without moral judgments; and second, that human nature is inherently self-interested. Human nature is a state of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal and each human has the liberty to dispose of one’s person or possessions; however, all of humankind is equal and independent, no one ought to hard life, healthy, liberty or possession because we are all the property of God. Humans have these for innate feelings, the feeling of distress (at the suffering of others) is the first sign of Humanity. This feeling of shame and disgrace is the first sign of Justice. This feeling of deference to others is the first sign of propriety. This sense of right and wrong is just the first sign of wisdom. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

There is a common liberty (which) results from the nature of humans…and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage. For such a thing is nature of human, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: for they see their own wit at hand, and other human’s at a distance. Human nature is a is humankind’s soul whereas the intellect apprehends existence absolutely, and for all time; so that everything that has an intellect naturally desires always to exist. However, natural desire cannot be in vain. Therefore, every intellectual substance is incorruptible. Self-denial is a term used to summarize the entire Christian life. Self-denial must never be confused with self-rejection; nor is it to be thought of as a painful and strenuous act, perhaps repeated from time to time against great internal resistance. It is, rather, an overall, settled condition of life in the kingdom of God, better described as “death to self.” In this and in this alone is possessed the key to the soul’s restoration. Christian spiritual formation rests on this indispensable foundation of death to self and cannot proceed except insofar as that foundation is being firmly laid and sustained. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

However, what is this self-denial or death to self, which goes hand in hard with restoration of the soul and eventually the whole person? At first it sounds like some dreadfully negative thing that aims to annihilate us. And frankly, from the point of view of the ruined soul, self-denial is and will always been every bit as brutal as it seems to most people on first approach. The ruined life about which most people complain so much anyway. “Those who have found their life (soul) shall lose it,” Jesus said, “while those who have lost their life (soul) for my sake shall find it,” reports Matthew 10.39. And again, “Whoever aims to save their life shall lose it, but whoever loses their life for my shake shall find it. For what have you gained by possessing the entire World if in the process you forfeit your life (soul)—lose yourself. What would you trade your very soul for?” reports Matthew 16.25-26, also Mark 8.35-36; Luke 9.24-25. We must always remember, in hearing these words of Jesus about the worth of the soul, that the art of the great teacher is to put things in ways you will remember even if you do not yet understand them. In that way you can keep working on them (and they on you) until you do understand them. Jesus is the master teacher of the human race, and he teaches accordingly. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

As we have, I think, an intuitive sense that he is right about the worth of the soul. A German soldier fighting in the trenches along France’s Marne river in World War I, where one million soldiers died on the Western front in 1914, wrote home: “What is the good of escaping all the bullet and shells if my soul is injured.” Some losses are so great that nothing on Earth can make recompense for them. “And after this manner did the Holy Ghost manifest the word of God unto me; wherefore, my beloved son, I know that it is solemn mockery before God, that ye should baptize little children. Behold I say unto you that this thing shall ye teach—repentance and baptism unto those who are accountable and capable of committing sin; yea, teach parents that they must repent and be baptized, and humble themselves as their little children, and they shall all be saved with their little children. And their little children need no repentance, neither baptism. Behold, baptism is unto repentance to fulfilling the commandments unto the remission of sins. However, little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the World; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a respecter to persons; for how many little children have died without baptism!” reports Moroni 8.9-12. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Thou hast healed our wounds, O Lord, by the wounds of Thine Only-begotten Son. What then shall we do now that we have been bought with so great a price? how shall we serve such a Lord, by Whom liberty is promised and an inheritance is offered to us? Work in us, O Lord, what may please Thee; that we may possess Thee, do Thou possess us. We will not go back from Thee; Thou wilt let us live, and we will call upon Thy Name. My Father, I could never have sought my happiness in thy love, unless thou had’st first loved me. Thy Spirit has encouraged me by grace to seek thee, has made known to me thy reconciliation in Jesus, has taught me to believe it, has helped me to take thee for my God and portion. May he grant me to grow in the knowledge and experience of thy love, and walk in it all the way to glory. Blessed for ever be thy fatherly affection, which chose me to be one of thy children by faith in Jesus: I thank thee for giving me the desire to live as such. In Jesus, my brother, I have my new birth, every restraining power, every renewing grace. It is by thy Spirit I call thee Father, believe in thee, love thee; strengthen me inwardly for every purpose of my Christian life; let the Spirit continually reveal to me my interest in Christ, and open to me the riches of they love in him. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

By thy Spirit may I daily live to thee, rejoice in thy love, find it the same to me as to thy Son, and become rooted and grounded in it as a house on rock; I know but little—increase my knowledge of thy love in Jesus, keep me pressing forward for clearer discoveries of it, so that I may find its eternal fullness; magnify thy love to me according to its greatness, and not according to my deserts or prayers, and whatever increase thou givest, et it draw out greater love to thee. Deliver us from evil, and confirm us in Thy fear and in good works, O Trinity, our God, Who art blessed, and dost live, and govern all things, World without end. O God, Who by the prophet’s voice doest pronounce those blessed that fear Thee; grant us to render an acceptable obedience in Thy fear, and make us hence forth to walk in Thy ways; and let our work under Thy direction be pleasing in Thy sight, and its fruit be sweet in the day of reward. Almighty and everlasting God, Who resistest the proud, and givest grace to the humble; grant, we beseech Thee, that we may not exalt ourselves and provoke Thine indignation, but bow down and receive the gifts of Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of people that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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But Love is Blind, and Lovers Cannot See the Pretty Follies that themselves Commit!

February 8, 2020 1:51 am

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shine a good deed in a naughty World. Some scientists suggest that the tasks for the behavioural sciences is to make humans productive, well-behaved, and so forth, it is obvious that they are making a choice. One might have chosen to make humans submissive, dependent, and gregarious, for example. Yet by this stated objective of some scientists in another being’s capacity to choose, one freedom to select one’s course and to initiate action—these powers do not exist in the scientific picture of humans. Here is, I believe, the deep-seated contradiction, or paradox. Let me spell it out as clearly as I can. Science, to be sure, rests on the assumption that behaviour is caused—that a specified event is followed by a consequent event. Hence all is determined, nothing is free, choice is impossible. However, we must recall that science itself, and each specific scientific endeavour, each change of course in a scientific research, each interpretation of the meaning of a scientific finding and each decision as to how the finding shall be applied, rests upon a personal subjective choice. Thus science in general exists in the same paradoxical situation as do many scientists. A personal subjective choice made by humans that there can be no such thing as a personal subjective choice. I shall make some comments about this continuing paradox at a later point. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

I stressed the fact that each of these choices initiating or furthering the scientific venture, is a value choice. The scientist investigates this rather than that, because one feels the first investigation has more value for one. One chooses one method for one’s study rather than another because one values it more highly. One interprets one’s findings in one way rather than another because one believes the first way is closer to the truth, or more valid—in other words that it is closer to a criterion which one values. Now these value choices are never a part of the scientific venture itself. The value choices connected with a particular scientific enterprise always and necessarily are possessed outside of that enterprise. I wish to make it clear that I am not saying that values cannot be included as a subject of science. It is not true that science deals only with certain classes of facts and that these classes do not include values. It is a bit more complex than that, as a simple illustration or two may make clear. If I value knows of the “three R’s” (reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic) as a goal of education, the methods of science can give me increasingly accurate information as to how this goal may be achieved. If I value problem-solving ability as a goal of education, the scientific method can give me the same kind of help. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Now if I wish to determine whether problem-solving ability is “better” than knowledge of the three R’s, then scientific method can also study those two values, but only—and this is very important—only in term of some other value which I have subjectively chosen. I may value college success. Then I can determine whether problem-solving ability or knowledge of the three R’s is most closely associated with that value. I may value personal integration or vocational success or responsible citizenship. I may value personal integration or vocational success or responsible citizenship. I can determine whether problem-solving ability or knowledge of the three R’s is “better” for achieving any one of these values. However, the value or purpose which gives meaning to a particular scientific endeavour must always be possessed outside of the endeavour. Though our concern in these lectures is largely with applied science what I have been saying seems equally true of so-called pure science. In pure science the usual prior subjective value choice, and science can never say whether it is the best choice, save in the light of some other value. Geneticists in Russian, for example, had to make a subjective choice of whether it was better to pursue truth, or to discover facts which upheld strict and rigid government doctrines. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Which choice is “better”? We could make a scientific investigation of those alternatives, but only in the light of some other subjectively chosen value. If, for example, we value the survival of a culture then we could begin to investigate with the methods of science the question as to whether pursuit of truth or support of governmental dogma is most closely associated with cultural survival. Any scientific endeavour, pure or applied, is carried on in the pursuit of a purpose or value which is subjectively chosen by persons. It is important that this choice be made explicit, since the particular value which is being sought can never be tested or evaluated, confirmed or denied, by the scientific endeavour to which it gives birth and meaning. The initial purpose or value always and necessarily is possessed outside the scope of the scientific effort which it sets in motion. Among other things this means that if we choose some particular goal or series of goals for human beings, and then set out on a large scale to control human behaviour to the end of achieving those goals, we are locked in the rigidity of our initial choice, because such a scientific endeavour can never transcend itself to select new goals. Only subjective human persons can do that. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Thus if we choose as our goal the state of happiness for human beings (a goal deservedly ridiculed by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World), and if we involved all of society in a successful scientific program by which people become happy, we would be locked in a colossal rigidity in which no one would be free to question this goal, because our scientific operations could not transcend themselves to question their guiding purposes. And without labouring this point, I would remark that colossal rigidity, whether in dinosaurs or dictatorships, has a very poor record of evolutionary survival. If, however, a part of our scheme is to set free some “planners” who do not have to be happy, who are not controlled, and who are therefore free to choose other values, his has several meanings. It means that the purpose we have chosen as our goal is not a sufficient and satisfying one for human beings, but must be supplemented. It also means that if it is necessary to set up an elite group which is free, then this shows all too clearly that the great majority are only the slaves—no matter by what high-sounding name we call them—of those who select the goals. Perhaps, however, the thought is that a continuing scientific endeavour will evolve its own goals; that the initial findings will alter the directions, and subsequent findings will alter them still further and that science somehow develops its own purposes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

This seems to be a view implicitly held by many scientists. It is surely a reasonable description, but it overlooks one element in this continuing development, which is that subjective personal choice enters in at every point at which the direction changes. The findings of a science, the results of an experiment, do not and never can tell us what next scientific to pursue. Even in the purest of science, the scientist must decide what the findings mean, and must subjectively choose what next step will be most profitable in the pursuit of one’s purpose. And if we are speaking of the application of scientific knowledge, then it is distressingly clear that the increasing scientific knowledge of the structure of the atom carries with it no necessary choice as to the purpose to which this knowledge will be put. This is a subjective personal choice which must be made by many individuals. Science has its meaning as the objective pursuit of a purpose which has been subjectively chosen by a person or persons. This purpose or value can never be investigated by particular scientific experiment or investigation to which it has given birth and meaning. Consequently, any discussion of the control of human beings by the behavioral sciences must first and most deeply concern itself with the subjectively chosen purposes which such an application of science is intended to implement. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

The neurotic’s fundamental attitudes toward others has acquainted us with two of the major ways in which one attempts to solve one’s conflicts or, more precisely, to dispose of them. One of these consists in repressing certain aspects of the personality and bringing their opposites to the fore; the other is to put such distance between oneself and one’s fellows that the conflicts are set out of operation. Both processes induce a feeling of unity that permits the individual to function, even if at considerable cost to oneself. A further attempt, here to be described, is the creation of an image of what the neurotic believes oneself to be, or of what at the time one feels one can or ought to be. Conscious or unconscious, the image is always in large degree removed from reality, though the influence it exerts on the person’s life is very real indeed. What is more, it is always flattering in character, as illustrated by a cartoon in the New Yorker in which a middle-aged woman, above average weight sees herself in the mirror as Paris Hilton, a slender young girl. The particular features of the image vary and are determined by the structure of the personality: beauty may be held to be outstanding, or power, intelligence, genius, saintliness, honesty, or what you will. Precisely to the extent that the image is unrealistic, it tends to make the person arrogant, in the original meaning of the words; for arrogance, though used synonymously with superciliousness, means to arrogate to oneself qualities that one does not have, or that one potentially but not factually. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

And the more unrealistic the image, the more it makes the person vulnerable and avid for outside affirmation and recognition. We do not need confirmation for qualities of which we are certain, but we will be extremely touchy when false claims are questioned. We can observe this idealized image at its most blatant in the grandiose notions of psychotics; but in principle its characteristics are the same in neurotics. It is less fantastic here, but it may be just as real to them. If we regard the degree of removal from reality as marking the difference between psychoses and neuroses, we may consider the idealized image as a bit of psychosis woven into the texture of neurosis. In all its essentials the idealized image is an unconscious phenomenon. Although one’s self-inflation may be most obvious even to an untrained observer, the neurotic is not aware that one is idealizing oneself. Nor does one know what a bizarre conglomeration of characters is assembled here. One may have a vague sense that one is making high demands upon oneself, but mistaking such perfectionist demands for genuine ideals one in no way questions their validity and is indeed rather proud of them. How can one’s creation affect one’s attitude toward oneself varies with the individual and depends largely on the focus of interest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

If the neurotic’s interest is possessed in convincing oneself that one is one’s idealized image, one develops the belief that one is in fact the mastermind, the exquisite human being, whose very faults are divine. If the focus is on the realistic self which by comparison with the idealized image is highly despicable, self-derogatory criticism is in the foreground. Since the picture of the self that results from such disparagement is just as far removed from reality as is the idealized image, it could appropriately be called the despised image. If, finally, the focus is upon the discrepancy between the idealized image and the actual self, then all one is aware of and all we can observe are one’s incessant attempts to bridge the gap and whip oneself into perfection. In this event one keeps reiterating the word “should” with amazing frequency. One keeps telling us what one should have felt, thought, done. He is at bottom as convinced of one’s inherent perfection as the naively “narcissistic” person, and betrays it be the belief that one could be perfect if only one were more strict with oneself, more controlled, more alert, more circumspect. In contrast to authentic ideals, the idealized image has a static quality. It is not a goal toward whose attainment one strives but a fixed idea which one worships. Ideals have a dynamic quality; they arouse an incentive to approximate them; they are an indispensable and invaluable force for growth and development. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

The idealized image is a decided hindrance to growth because it either denies shortcomings or merely condemns them. Genuine ideals make for humility, the idealized image for arrogance. This phenomenon—however defined—has long been recognized. It is referred to in the philosophic writings of all times. Dr. Freud introduced it into the theory of neurosis, calling it by a variety of names: ego ideal, narcissism, superego. It forms the central thesis of Adler’s psychology, descried there as a striving for superiority. It would lead us to far afield to point out in detail the differences and similarities between these concepts and my own. Briefly, all of these are concerned only with one or another aspect of the idealized image, and fail to see the phenomenon as a whole. Hence despite pertinent comment and argument not only by Dr. Freud and Dr. Adler but by many other writers as well—among them Franz Alexander, Paul Federn, Bernard Glueck, and Ernest Jones—the full significance of the phenomenon and its functions has not been reorganized. What, then, are its functions? Apparently it fulfills vital needs. No matter how the various writers account for it theoretically, they are all agreed on the one point that it constitutes a stronghold of neurosis difficult to shake or even to weaken. Dr. Freud for one regarded a deeply ingrained “narcissistic” attitude as among the most serious obstacles to therapy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

There is instruction—verbal instruction, verbal warning. The word “instruction” literally means “to place before the mind. Often this means to confront and thus is related to the precious topic, discipline. This is precisely where the high priest Eli was such an abysmal domestic failure in raising his sons. First Samuel 3.11-13 reports to us: And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them.” The Greek word for “restrain” in the Septuagint has the same root as “instruction” in Ephesians 6.4. Eli failed to confront his boys. He failed to instruct them about their sin. And because of this, they were destroyed. Clear, forthright instruction is necessary for proper upbringing. Men, if we are to own up to our responsibilities, we must be: Involved in verbally instructing children, regularly reading them in family devotions and prayer, monitoring and being responsible along with our wives for the input that enters their impressionable minds, taking responsibility to help assure that church is a meaningful experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

And above all, to be responsible fathers we must make sure that the open book of our lives—our example—demonstrates the reality of our instruction, for in watching us they will learn the most. The “do’s” of fathering—tenderness, discipline, and instruction—together demand one great thing, as a certain busy doctor came to realize. He would appear at meals, pay allowances, and give advice, often without really listening to the problems of his family before he spoke. One afternoon, as he was preparing an article for a respected journal of medicine, his little son crept into the forbidden sanctuary of his father’s study. “Daddy,” he appealed. Without speaking, the doctor opened his desk drawer and handed the boy a box of candy. A few moments later the boy again said, “Daddy,” and his father absent mindedly handed him a pencil. “Daddy,” the boy persisted. The doctor responded to this with a grunt, indicating he knew the boy was there but did not want to be bothered. “Daddy!” the body called out again. Angered, the busy doctor swung around in his chair and said, “What on Earth is so important that you insist on interrupting me? Can you not see I am busy? I have given you candy and a pencil. Now what do you want?” “Daddy, I want to hang out with you.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

The “do’s” of fatherhood cannot be lived out by proxy. You need to participate in putting your little ones to bed and praying for and with them. You need to be at their plays, speeches, recitals, and sporting events. You need to schedule regular time along with each of your children. You need to take the lead in planning terrific family vacations and in celebrating and cementing family solidarity. Now in mid-life I sometimes wistfully think, “Where did the time go between the two indelible memories of the birth of my daughter and the birth of her son?” To be honest, some of the years were long and hard. I thought we would never get through many of the stresses. However, when these great events are recalled in all their colour, there seems to be no time between them. That is why, whenever I have occasion to hold a baby in my arms, I often encourage the parents to savour every moment and not to rush through the experience—the child will be grown up and gone in no time. The realization that we have only a brief time to raise our children should give us huge motivation to make the most of it and should make Scriptural advice about fathering pulse with importance for us. Men, time is the chrysalis of eternity—there is no other time but the present. I realize we all go through periods in our lives when we have little time for our families—it is part of the natural rhythm of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

However, excessive “busyness” must not be by choice—as it so often is! We must beware of packing our schedules by saying “yes” to things which mean “no” to our families. Now is the time to take time. There is no other! Will you do it? Will I? Men, we must evaluate our fatherhood. What does your heart tell you as you read these questions listed? Are you weak our strong? Do you criticize your children, or build them up? Are you overly strict, or reasonably strict—gradually granting your child greater freedom? Are you impatient and irritable, or patient and self-controlled, when dealing with your children? Are you consistent in your expectations? Have you kept you promises? Do you show favouritism? Are you tender with both your sons and daughters? Do you share in the discipline? Are you spending time with your children, as a family and individually? What awesome power we have! Our children all want the “aura and armament” of their fathers. Men, their hearts are turned to us! And our Lord wants our hearts to be turned to them. We hear this truth memorably stated by the Angel Gabriel when he announced that part of John the Baptist’s mission in making a people ready for the Lord was “to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children,” reports Luke 1.17. Now that Christ has come, this is a perpetual result of His saving work. When a man truly gives his heart to Christ, it is turned toward his children. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Men, submit to Christ—allow Him to turn your hearts to your children. Ask the Holy Spirit for the power to practice the discipline of fatherhood. Sweat for your children’s souls. We actually cannot give God anything that He has not first given to us. David recognized this fact when the leaders of Israel gave so generously for the building of the Temple. In his prayer of praise to God he said, “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. O Lord our God, as for all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you,” reports 1 Chronicles 29.14, 16. David knew he and his people had not given anything to God that was not already His. Even our service to God comes from His hand. As the prophet Isaiah said, “LORD, all that we have accomplished you have done for us,” reports Isaiah 26.12. Paul summed up the whole question of what we have given to God rather conclusively when he said, “And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all humans life and breath and everything else,” reports Acts 17.25. When every breath we breathe is a gift from God there really is noting left to give that has not been first given. Almighty and everlasting God, convert us with our whole souls to Thyself; that as Thou vouchsafest such good gifts to the undeserving, Thou mayest bestow yet greater on the devout; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Almighty and everlasting God, convert our minds, we beseech Thee, to deeds which shall be pleasing in Thy sight; that Thy rebuke may not prove, by our neglect, a greater cause of punishment, but, by our amendment, a Fatherly admonition; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, convert all our hearts unto Thyself, that we, abstaining from thing which offend Thee, may feel Thy mercy, and not Thy wrath; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “And now, my child, I speak onto you concerning that which grieveth me exceedingly; for it grieveth me that there should disputations rise among you. For if you have learned the truth, there have been disputations among you concerning the baptism of your little children. And now, my child, I desire that ye should labour diligently, that this gross error should be removed from among you; for this intent I have written this epistle,” Moroni 8.4-6. O Lord God, the first act of calling is by thy command in thy word, “Come unto me, return unto me”; the second is to let in light, so that I see that I am called particularly, and perceive the sweetness of the command as well as its truth, in regard to thy great love of the sinner, by inviting one to come, though vile, in regard to the end of the command, which is fellowship with thee, in regard to thy promise in the gospel, which is all of grace. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Therefore, Lord, I need not search to see if I am elect, or loved, for if I turn thou wilt come to me; Christ has promised me fellowship if I take him, and the Spirit will pour himself out on me, abolishing sin and punishment, assuring me of strength to persevere. It is thy pleasure to help all that pray for grace, and come to thee for it. When my heart is unsavoury with sin, sorrow, darkness, hell only thy free grace can help me ac with deep abasement under a sense of unworthiness. Let me lament for forgetting daily to come to thee, and cleanse me from the deceit of bringing my heart to a duty because the act pleased me or appealed to reason. Grant that I may be salted with suffering, with every exactment tempered to my soul, every rod excellently filled to my back, to chastise, humble, break me. Let me not overlook the hand that holds the rod, as thou didst not let me forget the rod that fell on Christ, and drew me to him. O Eternal Father, convert our hearts unto Thyself; for nothing needful shall be lacking to those whom Thou shalt enabled to be devoted to Thy worship; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, Almighty God, look not upon the multitude of our wickedness; but draw away our weakness from sin, and guide the wills of Thy servants to what is right; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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House of Beauty—Thy Presence is to Me a Treasure of Unending Peace for Thou Has Drawn Me with Cords of Love!

February 5, 2020 2:41 am

Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there. Knowledge has never been known to enter the head through an open mouth. Sometimes it is better to remain quiet and look like a fool, than to pen one’s mouth and remove all doubt. “What therefore God hath joined together, let not humans put asunder,” reports St. Matthew 19.6. The meeting with a master is a rare opportunity which should not be missed but should be eagerly followed up. It may not recur again during one’s own lifetime or during the master’s lifetime. However, it can be followed up only if the aspirant feels intuitively that there is a “ray of affinity” between them, through which the inner contact can be established. Sometimes disciples attach themselves to a master with whom they have no basic affinity. They have been drawn to one by a partial self-deception about one’s nature or by a partial misconception concerning one’s teaching. After a period has elapsed when the harmony with one or one’s teaching has come to an end, and the usefulness of bot is not sufficient to justify the connection, they usually leave and seek elsewhere for inspiration or help. However, in those cases where, for some improper reason, they fail to do so, one may deliberately provoke an incident or arrange a circumstance which will prompt them to go away. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

It often happens that seekers do not get the true master simply because they would not be attracted to one even when they met one. They naturally are drawn to one whose temperament, character, mentality, and actions are like their own. The unbalanced and the neurotic would be repelled by a sane and equable teacher, the hysterical by a disciplined one, the futile dreamers by an efficient and active one. There is really no choice in the matter—only the illusion of a choice. That which draws one to a particular master is predestination. One may try again and again with someone else. One may not wish to come to this being, but in the end one must come. One’s head may argue itself out of the attraction but one’s heart will push one back into it. It is said that a being will recognize in a moment the master with whom one has true affinity, when meeting one’s person or words. That is true, but the recognition may be so vague or partial or faint that a few years may pass before one will become aware of it, and hence before one takes nay action about it. It would be foolish for anyone to continue to follow a teaching for which one has no liking, or a teacher with whom one has no affinity. However, it would also be foolish to judge either by merely personal and emotional reactions alone. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall,” reports Proverbs 16.18. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

What is present in the surface consciousness as a mild interest may be present in the subconscious as a strong love. But, however long it may take, the disproportion will eventually be righted. When this happens, and as pertains to this particular matter, the being comes to know oneself as one really is. This is why the meeting with an antiquated Master or a new truth may not lead to immediate recognition, may indeed take some years to ripen. A guru who is supposed to be an enlightened being but who awakens no feeling of kinship, awe, peace, reverence, or goodness in the person who approaches one may not be enlightened at all—or may not be the proper affinity for the seeker, who may take this as a signal to look elsewhere. However, it would also be a signal to be patient, wait a little, look deeper, and really get to know what is in this being. Something within seems to recognize the true teacher when one appears. When one understands that the visible present has its root in the invisible past and that discipleship is a relation which reappears in birth after birth, this is not miraculous. However, the philosophic path does not depend only on faith or intuition but also on rational appeal and proved fact. Therefore, some time must elapse before one knows thoroughly that one has found the right path and the right teacher. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

There are some fascinating conditions which produce specified effects in animals. We are not comparing human beings to animals, but these findings may be of interest. Perhaps I have already given ample evidence of the significant and often frightening power of this young field of science. Yet before we turn to the implications of all this, I should like to push the matter one step further by mentioning a few small bits of the very large amount of knowledge which has accumulated in regard to the behaviour of animals. We know how to establish the conditions which will cause young ducklings to develop a lasting devotion to, for example, an old shoe. Hess has carried out studied of the phenomenon of “imprinting,” first investigated in Europe. He has shown that in mallard ducklings, for example, there are a few crucial hours—from the 13^th to the 17^th hour after hatching—when the duckling becomes attached to any object to which it may be exposed. The more effort it exerts in following this object, the more intense will be the attachment. Normally of course this results in an attachment to the mother duck, but the duckling can just as easily form an indelible devotion to any goal object—to a decoy duck, to a human being, or, as I have mentioned, to an old shoe. Is there any similar tendency in the human infant? One cannot help but speculate. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Behavioural sciences are making rapid strides in understanding, prediction, and control of behaviour. In important ways we know how to select individuals who will exhibit certain behaviours; to establish conditions in groups which will lead to various predictable group behaviours; to establish conditions which, in an individual, will lead to specified behavioural results; and in animals our ability to understand, predict and control goes even further, possibly foreshadowing future steps in relation to humans. If your reaction is the same as mine, then you will have found that this picture I have given has its deeply frightening aspects. With all the immaturity of this young science, and its vast ignorance, even its present state of knowledge contains awesome possibilities. Suppose some individual or group had both the knowledge available, and the power to use that knowledge for some purpose. Individuals could be selected who would be leaders and others who would be followers. Persons could be developed, enhanced and facilitated, or they could be weakened and disintegrated. Troublemakers could be discovered and dealt with before they became such. Morale could be improved or lowered. Behaviour could be influenced by appeals to motives of which the individual was unconscious. It could be a nightmare of manipulations. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Admittedly this is wild fantasy, but it is not an impossible fantasy. Perhaps it makes clear the reason why Robert Oppenheimer, one of the most gifted of our natural scientists, looks out from his own domain of physics, and out of the experiences in that field voices a warning. He says that there are some similarities between physics and psychology, and one of these similarities “is the extent to which our progress will create profound problems of decision in the public domain. The physicists have been quite noisy about their contributions in the last decade. The time may well come—as psychology acquires a sound objective corpus of knowledge about human behaviour and feeling—when the powers of control thus made available will pose far graver problems than any the physicists have posed.” Imagine if law enforcement of the media was able to unethically and illegally access your medical record and distort and spread rumors and manipulate you based on their information they have obtained and run experiments on you. Some of you may feel that I have somehow made the problem more serious that it is. You may point out that it is unlikely that Constitutional Law would actually allow abuses like this in society, and that for the most part these studies are important to the behavioural scientist but have little practical impact on our culture. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

I agree with this last point. The behavioural sciences at the present time are at somewhat the same stage as the physical sciences several generations ago. As a rather recent example of what I mean, take the argument which occurred around 1900 as to whether a heavier-than-air machine could fly. The science of aeronautics was not well-developed or precise, so that though there were findings which gave an affirmative answer, other studies could be lined up on the negative side. Most important of all, the public did not believe that this science possessed any validity, or would ever significantly affect the culture. They preferred to use their common sense, which told them that humans could not possibly fly in a contraption which was heavier than air. Contrast the public attitude toward aeronautics at that time with the attitude today. People are now expecting to be driving flying cars soon, have cameras that can fly hundreds of feet into the air and conduct surveillance, and much like launching satellites into space, all of these new technologies were consider an utterly fantastic scheme. However, so deeply had the public come to have faith in the natural sciences that not a voice was raised in disbelief. The only questions the public asked was, “When?” There is every reason to believe that the same sequence of events will occur in connection with the behavioral sciences and perhaps we will be able to cure violence and racism? #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

First the public ignores or views with disbelief; than as it discovers that the findings of a science are more dependable than common sense, it begins to use them; the widespread use of knowledge of a science creates a tremendous demand, so that humans and money and effort are poured into the science; finally the development of the science spirals upward at an ever-increasing rate. It seems highly probable that this sequence will be observed in the behavioural sciences. Consequently even though the findings of these sciences are not widely used today, there is every likelihood that they will be widely used tomorrow. We have in the making then a science of enormous potential importance, an instrumentality whose social power will make atomic energy seem feeble by comparison. And there is no doubt that the questions raised by this development will be questions of vital importance for this and coming generations. How shall we use the power of this new science? What happens to the individual person in this brave new World? Who will hold the power to use this new knowledge? Toward what end or purpose or value will this new type of knowledge be used? Perhaps we will find out very soon. “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee,” reports Numbers 6.24. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Whether an individual’s biographical life line is sustained in the mind of one’s intimates or in the personnel files of an organization, and whether the documentation of one’s personal identity is carried on one’s person or stored in files, one is an entity about which a record can be built up—a copybook has been made ready for one to blot. One is anchored as an object for biography. While the biography has been used by social scientists, especially in the form of a career life history, little attention has been given to the general properties of the of the concept, except in noting that biographies are very subject to retrospective construction. Social role as a concept and as formal element of social organization has been thoroughly examined, but biography has not. The first point to note about biographies is that we assume that an individual can really have only one of them, this being guaranteed by the laws of physics rather than those of society. Anything and everything an individual has done and can actually do is understood to be containable within one’s biography, as the Jekyll-Hyde theme illustrates, even if we have to hire biography specialist, a private detective, to fill in the missing facts and connection the discovered ones for us. No matter how big a scoundrel a person is, no matter how false, secretive, or disjointed one’s existence, or how governed by fits, starts, and reversals, the true facts of one’s activity cannot be contradictory or unconnected with each other. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Note that this embracing singleness of life line is in sharp contrast to the multiplicity of selves one finds in the individual in looking at one from the perspective of social role, where, if role and audience segregation is well managed, one can quite handily sustain different selves and can to a degree claim to be no longer something one was. Given these assumptions about the nature of personal identity, a factor emerges that will be relevant for this report: degree of “informational connectedness.” Given the important social facts about a person, the kind of facts reported in one’s obituary, how close to each other or how distant is a given pair of them as measured by the frequency with which those who know either fact will also know the other? More generally, given the body of important social facts about the individual, in what degree do those who know some know many? Social misrepresentation is to be distinguished from personal misrepresentation; and upper middle-class businessman who takes off for a lost weekend by “dressing down” and going to an inexpensive Summer resort misrepresents himself in the first way; when he registers in a motel as Mr. Smith, he misrepresents himself in the second way. And whether social or personal identity is involved, one can distinguish representation aimed at proving one is what one is not, from representation aimed at proving one is not what one is. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The wives and daughters of the new middle-class in the Victorian era were not typically part of the family’s economic survival. However, women like Sarah Winchester was the head of her household and controlled the family business, which was worth over a billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). To confirm the new gentry, many office workers’ wives cultivated the interests and manners of the gentlewomen of earlier generations. These families had just climbed the slippery slope of social class in one generation. If the woman of the house had to work, the family clearly had not arrived. Instead, the women of the family must cultivate a profound and pure ignorance of how to support themselves. They must learn “not to have head for figures.” They must never do anything that could be remotely interpreted as useful. They must embody high moral standards unsullied by contact with the World and high aesthetic standards to bring beauty and truth to the family. What is the result of confining half the population to their houses with al the necessities of life easily provided for by the new industrial America? The high Victorian parlor. Imagine a woman spending all of her productive years in her parlor and other people’s parlors. She is taught that her role is to bring beauty to the home through the nobility of such eighteenth-century crafts as hand needlework. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

She is forbidden to read serious books or write for fear of taxing her innocent mind. The result would be an explosion of decorative crafts cluttering up every room in the house, especially the parlor. As an example, take the simple art of flower arranging. Soon everything that could be done with natural flowers had been done. Soon thereafter the possibilities of dried flowers were flowers were exhausted. With cloth and wire and glue, silk flowers can be crafted. With dye and chicken feathers, feather flowers are born. With wire springs and thread, flower petals can be formed and joined together. With shells and glue, shell flowers are made. With the hair of dearly departed loved ones, memorial flowers wreaths are fashioned. With gum Arabic or sugar paste or tissue paper or glass beads or foil or mica, flowers can be made and displayed in bouquets under glass domes or in wreaths or as crosses in shadow boxes. Framed flowers fashioned from human hair are somewhat unusual to us but were a perfect combination of sentimental nostalgia, valued handiwork in the age of the machine, and a taste for prettiness that epitomizes the late nineteenth century. Lace, applique embroidery, and quilting—all women’s crafts—soften the factory-made Eastlake sofas that were popular. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

The most popular group of crafts was certainly needlework. Making clothing was far too plebeian and was now accomplished by automatic Singer sewing machines in sweatshops by immigrants. Berlin work was the preferred activity of Victorian ladies. Named for the printed canvasses available from Germany, Berlin work encompassed needlepoint and petit point. It was closely allied to embroidery on prepunched composition board, to regular and counted cross-stitching embroidery, and to crewel work with its wide repertoire of stitches. “Drawn thread work” could be used to make a fancy border on a simple linen guest towel. Crochet produced a coarse lace while knitting produced many booties and blankets. Even more characteristic of late Victorian needlework are the bizarre and curious items favoured by such popular magazines as Godey’s Lady’s Book. Bits of cloth and cardboard were wrapped in thread and sewn together, ornamented with more thread in the form of tassels and pompons, and decorated with glued-on gewgaws to make containers and covers for every imaginable object. Cases and boxes for thread, of course, were needed, for scissors and chalks and eyeglasses and slippers and books and bric-a-brac. If a doily or dainty or antimacassar could support an object or a cozy or cover could surround it or a tidy bow accent it, it was done. No surface was left bare. Every horizontal plane required a cover, every vertical plane a drapery, and every object a receptable—all made of needlework. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

There is a basic difference in the furnishing of parlors in the 1840s, 1860, and 1880s, apart from the proliferation of handiwork and art. In the 1840s, the Greek Revival style favoured an orderly, symmetrical arrangement of furniture. The furniture was arranged against the walls and upholstered in horsehair or scarlet velvet to match. The effect was very formal with the architecture and furniture perfectly coordinated. This kind of parlor was not for chatty family gatherings and could only be maintained by those who were rich enough to keep one room for visitors. Some has parlors with bright, lozenge-paneled walls, pastel demask settees and chairs, Aubusson rugs, and richly decorated ceilings. By the 1850s and ‘60s, there had been superficial change in style and more basic change in the way the room was used. Furniture was now usually fashioned in a machine-made revival of eighteenth-century French Rococo. It might be called Louis XIV, XV, XVI, or even Marie Antoinette. What is important, however, is that the furniture was now arranged in informal conversational groupings. It was still upholstered “en suite,” now most likely in damask, but it was no longer arranged against the wall. Instead, a settee and a few chairs were gathered on the rose-bowered carpet table under the gaslight was used for reading books, then cleared for tea with visitors, then cleared against for evening parlor games. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

It is safe to say that the second most important room in the Victorian home was the dining room, where not only the family gathered, but where social interaction took place among family and visitors. In the family it should be observed as a rule to meet together at all meals of the day around one common table where the same rules of etiquette should be as rigidly observed as the at the table of a stranger. Up to the Elizabethan period, no one room was specifically designed for eating. Meals took place in sitting rooms, kitchens, or hall/entrance ways (which were sizable) in which tables and chairs, or benches, were set up for meals, then removed afterward. Grand mansions, of course, had their banquet halls. It was when a room convenient to the kitchen and pantry evolved, that the dining room, as we know it, came to be. Dining rooms were also public rooms in which the best in furniture and décor was displayed. Typically dining room furniture would be a table, if possible, with extensions (an invention that occurred during the Victorian period), dining chairs, and a sideboard or chiffonier for storing serving pieces and presenting food. During this period, dining rose to its most elegant state. Etiquette books prescribed serving and dinning behaviour down to the smallest detail. Serving pieces and dining utensils had very specific purposes such as pickle casters with pickle tongs, celery dishes, and syllabub-sticks. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Sideboards made of walnut, oak, or mahogany could include features like carved columns and friezes, pediments, and cornices, and were small works of architecture in themselves. Styles ranged from the intricately carved Jacobean and Gothic or Rococo Revival, to the clean lines of a Sheraton or Chippendale piece. Beginning around the 1860s, the sideboard was the most important piece of furniture in the dinning room, equal relevance to the parlor’s center table. Families with sufficient means had built in sideboards. An 1892 Ladies Home Journal article tells what the sideboard is for, “Several people have asked me about the uses of the sideboard. The drawers are for the silver and cutlery, the closets for wine, if they be used, and often for such things as preserved ginger, confectionary, cut sugar, and indeed, any of the many little things that one likes to have in the dining-room yet out of sight. The water picture and other silver and pretty bits of china can be placed on the sideboard. Cracker jar and fruit dish also belong there. At dinner time the dessert dishes are usually arranged upon it.” The dining room table had been a relatively simple piece of furniture up to mid-century, when the extension table became popular. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Drop-leaf and gate-leg tables preceded the extension table, as ways to increase the size of the dining area when needed. Outside the simple country table or one designed by Sheraton or Heppelwhite, the dining room table was an extraordinarily massive piece of furniture with, depending on the exact style, fluted columns, clawed feet, or pedestal bases. Earlier in the century, the lines of the popular Renaissance Revival demanded very tall sideboards and high back chairs, while later, the graceful lines of the Art Nouveau and lower profile Arts and Crafts Movement, presented a more horizontal effect. It was recommended that the chairs around the dining table be of material that was easily cleaned such as cane, or leather, if upholstery was absolutely essential. Wall and floor decorations followed the patterns of other rooms in the house, according to the period. Dining rooms from the 1840s and 1850s had plain painted walls and not much in the way of wall decoration. Then came the deeply shaded walls of crimson, gold, or deep green or blue. Wainscotting or even fully paneled walls added an elegant touch. Lincrusta-Walton, an embossed wallpaper of a composition material that could be easily cleaned, was popular as a dado treatment for adding texture to the wall. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Area rugs were used throughout the century in the dining room. Wood floors were common and sometimes covered over by wall-to-wall carpeting. (Many people who buy Victorian homes today always feel blessed to find the original wood floors under the carpet.) Of course, it could be protected by laying a crumb cloth underneath the table. After 1880, wood parquet floors in a variety of patters provided an option to the pine planks or oak-wood strips of earlier homes. Today, many builders, like Cresleigh Homes, are being kind to the environment and saving trees by using luxury vinyl wood, which looks nice and is extremely durable. The intent, maybe more so in the dining room than parlor, was to create an atmosphere of comfort that was also functional. Above all, good taste must be observed, for it was all too easy to slip from a refined display of china, glass, and sliver, to an ostentatious showiness of excessive material goods. Dinner parities were elaborate, starting with engraved invitations and a menu of the cuisine to be served. There was great discourse on how many tablecloths to use, two or three (removed in stages between courses.) Courses were numerous, starting with soup, followed by fish, then game, or other meat. Vegetables accompanied the meat, then came a salad course. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Finger bowls were used, dessert and a fruit course concluded the meal, and coffee was served, either at the table or in the parlor or library. At this point, if the men were to indulge in smoking and brandies, the genders might separate. “And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—but charity is pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with one,” reports Moroni 7.45-47. O Lord our God, multiply upon us Thy grace, and grant us to follow, by a holy profession, the triumph of those whose glorious conflicts we celebrate; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Almighty God, that we may evermore praise Thee in the commemoration of Thy Saints; for Thou wilt be careful to cherish those whom Thou hast enabled to preserve in honouring Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of the highest Heaven, occupy the throne of my heart, take full possession and reign supreme lay low every rebel lust, let no vile passion resist thy holy war; manifest thy mighty power, and make me thine for ever. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Thou art worthy to be praised with my every breath, loved with my every faculty of soul, served with my every act of life. Thou hast loved me, espoused me, received me, purchased, washed, favoured, clothed, adorned me, when I was worthless, vile, soiled, polluted. I was dead in iniquities, having no eyes to see thee, no ears to hear thee, no taste to relish thy joys, no intelligence to know thee; but thy Spirit has quickened me, has brought me into a new World as a new creature, has given me spiritual perception, has opened to me thy word as light, guide, solace, joy. Thy presence is to me a treasure of unending peace; no provocation can part me from thy sympathy, for thou hast drawn me with cords of love, and dost forgive me daily, hourly. O help me then to walk worthy of thy love, of my hopes, and my vocation. Keep me, for I cannot keep myself; protect me that no evil befall me; let me lay aside every sin admired of many; help me to walk by thy side, lean on thy arm, hold converse with thee, that hence forth I maybe salt of the Earth and a blessing to all. Too long has the word “Master” been bandied on the lips of the people; they talk of “Master” as of a politician—setting up to judge one or they make wild statements about him or letting their imaginations run loose about one. It is not right that the Illuminati should be discussed so lightly and it is far better to let them remain as Illuminati to be thought of in silent hours of prayers and not to be analysed at our tea-tables as we analyse the events of the day. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Randolph Harris II International Institute

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