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I Should Have Known You were Temptation, You Smiled, Luring Me on and My Heart was Gone!
Everyone thinks of changing the World, but no one thinks of changing oneself. Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use. The measure of a person’s real character is what one would do if one knew one would never be found out. We all have to be consumers. Everyone of us has to eat and drink. We need clothes, a place to live. Basically, we need and make use of a great many things, and that phenomenon we call “consuming.” Where is the psychological problem in that? That is just the way of nature: We have to consumer to live. Granted, but in saying even that much we have already arrived at the point I want to make: There is consuming and consuming. There is a kind of consuming that is compulsive and that arises from greed, a compulsion to eat, buy, own, use more and more. Now you may ask: Is that not normal? After all, do not all of us want to ass to what we have? The problem, if there is one is that we do not have enough money, not that there is anything wrong with the desire to own more and more. I realize very well that many of you feel this way. However, perhaps an example will show that the issue is not as simple as it may look at first glance. My example is one that will be familiar to you, but I hope very few of you are personally affected by it. Consider someone who is suffering from obesity, someone who simply is above average weight. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Obesity can be caused by a glandular malfunction, but more often than not it is simply the result of overeating. The person above average weight has a snack here, a snack there; one has a weakness for sweets; one is always nibbling on something. And if you look more closely, you will see not only that one is constantly eating but that one is driven to eat. One has to eat. One cannot stop eating any more than some smokers can stop smoking. And you know that people who do stop smoking will often start to eat more. They excuse themselves by saying that anyone who quits smoking automatically gains weight. And that is one of the common rationalizations people give for not giving up smoking. Why do we cling to those rationalizations? Because the same need to take something into our mouths, to consume things, finds expression in eating, in smoking, in drinking, or in buying things. Doctors are constantly warning people who eat, drink, and smoke compulsively that they may die prematurely of a heart attack. If those people act on their doctors’ warnings and stop their habits, they often suddenly succumb to attacks of anxiety, insecurity, nervousness, depression. Here we see a remarkable phenomenon: Not eating, not drinking, not smoking can make people afraid. There are people who eat or buy things not to eat or to buy but to quell their feelings of anxiety or depression. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Most of us know from our experience that if we are feeling nervous or depressed we are more prone to go to the refrigerator and find what feels like relief in eating or drinking something for which we have no real appetite. In other words, eating and drinking can actually take over the function of a drug, acting like a tranquilizer. And food and drink are more pleasant because they taste good as well. A depressed person feels something like a vacuum inside one, feels as if one were paralyzed, as if one lacked what it takes to act, as if one could not move properly for lack of something that might set one in motion. If one consumes something, the sense of emptiness, paralysis, and weakness may leave one temporarily, and one may feel: I am someone after all; I have something in me; I am not a nothing. One fills oneself with things to drive out one’s inner emptiness. One is a passive personality who senses that one amounts to very little and who represses those inklings by consuming, by becoming Homo consumens. I have just introduced the concept of the “passive personality,” and you will want to know what I mean by that. What is passivity? What is activity? Let me begin with the modern definitions of passivity and activity, definitions that will be quite familiar to all of you. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Activity is understood to mean any goal-oriented actions that requires energy. It can be either physical or mental work, and it can include sports as well, for we generally think of sports in a utilitarian way, too: Participation in them either promotes health or enhances the prestige of our country or makes us famous or earns us money. It is usually not pleasure in the game itself that moves us to participate in sports but rather some end result. Anyone who exerts oneself is active. We then say one is “busy.” And to be “busy” is to be engaged in “business.” What constitutes passivity in this view? If we produce no visible results, no palpable achievement, then we have been passive. Let me cite an obvious example: Someone sits still looking out into the landscape, just sit there for five minutes, half an hour, maybe even an hour. One does nothing but look. Because one is not taking any pictures but simply immersing oneself in what one’s eyes are perceiving, we might regard one as strange and would not be at all inclined to grace one’s “contemplativeness” with the name of activity. Or consider someone who meditates (though in our Western culture the sight of someone meditating is rare indeed). One is attempting to become aware of oneself, of one’s own feelings, one’s moods, one’s inner state of being. If one meditates regularly and systematically, one may spend hours at it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Anyone who understands nothing of meditation would consider that mediator a passive person. One is not doing anything. Perhaps one’s whole effort is aimed at driving every last thought out of one’s mind, thinking about nothing, and simply being. That may strike you as peculiar. Try it sometime, just for two minutes, and you will see how difficult it is, how something other will keep popping into your hear, how your mind will drift to every last bit of trivia under the Sun, how defenseless you are against those thoughts because we find it nearly intolerable to sit still and turn off our thoughts. For great cultures in India and China and Japan, that kind of meditation is vitally important. Unfortunately that may not be the case with many in the New World, because, ambition-ridden as we are, we think everything we do has to have a purpose, to achieve something, to produce a result. However, if you try to forget about results for once, if you can concentrate and bring enough patience to this exercise, you may find the “idleness” very refreshing indeed. All I have meant to suggest here is that our modern usage labels behavior that produces visible results activity, while passivity appears to be pointless. It is behavior in which we detect no output of energy. That we see activity and passivity that way has to do with the issues of how and what we consumer. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
If we consume the superfluous things our “bad affluence” supplies us with, what appears to be activity on our part is really passive. What kind of creative activity, of “good affluence,” of richness, of resistance can we imagine that would allow us to be more than mere consumers? From Old Testament times and ancient Greece until this century, the good life was widely understood to mean a life of intellectual and moral virtue. The good life is the life of ideal human functioning according to the nature that God Himself gave to us. According to this view, prior to creation had in mind an ideal blueprint of human nature from which God created each and every human being. Happiness (Greek: eudaimonia) was understood as a life of virtue, and the successful person was one who knew how to live life well according to what we are by nature due to the creative design of God. When the Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them the right to pursue happiness, it is referring to virtue and character. So understood, happiness involves suffering, endurance, and patience because these are important means to becoming a good person who lives the good life. Freedom was traditionally understood as the power to do what one ought to do. For example, some people are not free to play the piano or to say no to lust because they have not undergone the training necessary to ingrain the relevant skillful habits. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
Moreover, since community is possible only if people accept as true a shared vision of the good life, it is easy to see why a sense of community and public virtue could be sustained given this understanding of the good life, happiness, and freedom. Traditionally, tolerance of other viewpoints meant that even though I think those viewpoints are dead wrong and will argue against them fervently, nevertheless, I will defend your right to argue your own case. Just as importantly, I will treat you with respect as an image bearer of God, even though your views are abhorrent to me. Finally, while individual rights are important, they do not exhaust the moral life properly conceived. “If someone says ‘I love God,’ and hates his or her brother or sister, one is a liar,” John unapologetically said, “for the other who does not love one’s brother or sister whom one has seen, cannot love God whom one has not seen,” reports 1 John 4.20. We only live as we should when we are in a right relation to God and to other human beings. Accordingly, the infant who is not received in love by the mother and others is wounded for life and may even die. It must bond with its mother or someone in order to take on a self and a life. And rejection, no matter how old one is, is a sword thrust to the soul that has literally killed many. Western culture is, largely unbeknown to itself, a culture of rejection. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
This culture of rejection is one of the irresistible effects of what is called “modernity,” and it deeply affects the concrete forms of Christian institutions take in our tie. It seeps into our souls and is a deadly enemy to spiritual formation in Christ. The power of our persona relations to others is what gives them their incalculable importance for the formation of our spirit and our entire life—for good, or for ill. And of course our body is the focus of these relations, from its DNA to “looks” (how we look or appear, and how we look at and are looked at by others), from touching and working together to talking and praying. However, being with others, our social dimensions, is also inseparable from our inner thoughts, feelings, choices and actions. Their existence and nature are not independent of our social setting. Our very relation to Christ, our Savior, teacher, and friend, is located in the social dimension, along with our place in his body on Earth—his continuing incarnation, the church. Rightly understood, it is true that there is no salvation outside the church—just not this church or that church. The soul is the dimension of the person that interrelates all other dimensions so that they form one life. It is like a meta-dimension or higher-level dimension because its direct field of play consists of the other dimensions (thought, body, and so on), and through them it reaches ever deeper into the person’s vast environment of God and his creation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
It has been said that each soul is a star in the spiritual Universe—or so it was meant to be. And there can be no doubt that this is the biblical view, understanding that “soul” here is a term that refers to the whole person through its most profound dimension. People, put disciplined hedges around your life—especially if you work with women. Refrain from verbal intimacy with women other than your spouse. Do not bare your heart to another woman, nor pour forth your troubles to her. Intimacy is a great need in most people’s lives—and talking about person matters, especially one’s problems, can fill another’s need for intimacy, awakening a desire for more. Many affairs being in just this way. On the practical level, do not touch. Do not treat women with the casual affection you extend to the females in your family. How many tragedies have begun with brotherly or fatherly touches and then sympathetic shoulders. You may even have to run the risk of being wrongly considered distant or cold by some women. Whenever you dine or travel with a woman, make it a threesome. This may be awkward, but it will afford an opportunity to explain your rationale, which, more often than not, will incur respect rather than reproach. Many women business associates will even feel more comfortable dealing with you. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Never flirt—even in jest. Flirtation is intrinsically flattering. You may think you are being cute, but it often arouses unrequited desires in another. This is why many people do not mix business with pleasure. It keeps the business environment civil and safe. Be real about your sexuality. Do not succumb to vain gnostic prattle about your being a Spirit-filled Christian who would never do such a thing! I well remember a man who indignantly thundered that he was beyond such sin. He fell within months! Face the truth—King David fell, and so can you! “Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart,” reports 2 Timothy 2.22. People the heart of our culture oppresses us with its obsessions and pornotopias. Many in the Church has wilted. The statistics tell it all. In order not to become part of those statistics, there has to be some disciplined swear. Are we human enough? Are we beings of God? I pray we are! “I need more than what you offer me. I need more than pleasures of the flesh, and even more than the beauty of the sea, and more than my every wish granted. I need more then money. Because I am afraid of death. I believe nothing, and therefore like many who believe nothing, I must make something, and that something is the meaning which I give to my life. Had my father not died, I would have been a surgeon, and studied the workings of the boy, and made beautiful drawings of my studies as he did,” (Page 357, The Witching Hour by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
We act as if God’s grace only makes up what our good works lack. We believe God’s blessings are at least partially earned by our obedience and our spiritual disciplines. We know we are saved by grace, but we think we must live by our spiritual “sweat.” So who needs grace? All of us, the satin as well as the sinner. The most conscientious, dutiful, hardworking Christian needs God’s grace as much as the most dissolute, hard-living sinner. All of us need the same grace. The sinner does not need more grace than the saint, nor does the immature and undisciplined believer need more than the Godly, zealous missionary. We all need the same amount of grace because the currency of our good works is debased and worthless before God. Neither our merits nor our demerits determine how much grace we need, because grace does not supplement merits or make up for demerits. Grace does not take into account merits or demerits at all. Rather, grace considers all men and women as totally undeserving and unable to do anything to earn the blessing of God. Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to bestow it in the presence of human merit. Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the presence of human demerit. Grace is treating a person without the slightest reference to desert whatsoever, but solely according to the infinite goodness and sovereign purpose of God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Perfect people must have existed in antique times, if the accounts which have descended to us are correct; they may even exit today, but in the course of my World wanderings I could not find them. I found remarkable beings, who were perfect enough in their own line, but the broad mantle of realization did not seem to fit their shoulders. I have resigned myself, however, to the acceptance of the probably that the race of realized sages may be extinct today. Is there any being—no matter how spiritual or how well-meaning one may be—who can safely trusted with absolute power over other beings? It is this, along with other and more important observations, that has given me the courage to reject all spiritual authoritarianism. Some defect or some evil is mixed into each one of us. Imperfection is our natural lot here on Earth. In a well-varied experience of my own species and in fairly wide wanderings through this World, I have never, yet, met a perfectly good, perfectly wise, and perfectly balanced being. That is not to say that I shall never meet such a person. I have faith that some must exist. “And blessed is one that is found faithful unto my name at the last day, for one that is found faithful unto my name at the last day, for one shall be lifted up to dwell in the kingdom prepared for one from the foundation of the World, and behold it is I that hath spoken it. Amen,” reports Ether 4.19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy clemency, to shew us Thine unspeakable mercy; that Thou mayest both set us free from our sins, and rescue us from the punishments which for our sins we deserve; though Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who purifies the hearts of those who confess their sins unto Thee, and absolvest the self-accusing conscience from al bonds of iniquity; give pardon to the guilty, and vouchsafe healing to the wounded, that they may receive remission of all sins, and preserve henceforward in sincere devotion, and sustain no loss of everlasting redemption; through Jesus Christ our Lord. My God, Thou hast helped me to see, that whatever good be in honour and rejoicing, how good is one who gives them, and can withdraw them; that blessedness does not lie so much in receiving good from and in thee, but in holding forth thy glory and virtue; that it is an amazing thing to see Deity in a creature, speaking, acting, filling, shining through it; that nothing is good but thee, that I am near good when I am near thee, that to be like thee is a glorious thing: That is my magnet, my attraction. Thou art all my good in times of peace, my only support in days of trouble, my one sufficiency when life shall end. Help me to see how good thy will is in all, and even when it crosses mine teach me to be pleased with it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Grant me to feel thee in fire, and food and every providence, and to see that thy many gifts and creatures are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me. Thou bottomless fountain of all goof, I give myself to thee out of love, for all I have or own is thine, my goods, family church, self to do with as thou wilt, to honour thyself by me, and by all mine. If it be consistent with thy eternal counsels, the purpose of thy grace, and the great ends of thy glory, then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts; if not, let me resign myself to thy wiser determinations. Although it is true that meeting with inspired beings does arouse some persons for the first time to the need of a higher life, it is also true that deep probing would show to what a large extent previous events or reflections had already mentally led such persons to the verge of this need. The inspired teacher does not create it. One only indicates it. Fate brings one at the right moment into the other person’s life to enable this to be done. And somewhere, sometime, for every being who sincerely seeks there must come a Guide, merely because this personal opening of the gate is part of Nature’s program. Enthusiasm is the electric current that keeps the engine of life going at top speed. Enthusiasm is the very propeller of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
NOW SELLING! Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse. This warm and charming house is a nostalgic tribute to a beloved architectural era. An inviting entry way gracefully leads into the enchanting home, where you are greeted by a spacious great room, dining room, and opens into a well-designed kitchen. The great room is warmed by a fireplace (also has central heating and air). The sumptuous master suit has a soaker tub and a separate shower, duel vanities, and a walk-in closet.
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But I Never Forget Dear Your Sweet Memory—If You Really Love Me be Honest with Me!
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. However, if you must be without one, be without the strategy. Patience is a virtue that carries a lot of wait. Therefore, be bold in what you stand for and careful in what you fall for. The need for superiority in the case of he detached person has certain superiority in the case of the detached person has certain specific features. Abhorring competitive struggle, one does not want to excel realistically through consistent effort. One feels rather that the treasures withing one should be recognized without any effort on one’s part; one hidden greatness should be felt without one’s having to make a move. In one’s dreams, for instance, one may picture stores of treasure hidden away in some remote village which connoisseurs come from far to see. Like all notions of superiority this contains an element of reality. The hidden treasure symbolizes one’s intellectual and emotional life which one guards within the magic circle. Another way one’s sense of superiority express itself is in one’s feeling of one’s own uniqueness. This is a direct outgrowth of one’s wanting to feel separate and distinct from others. One may liken oneself to a tree standing alone on a hilltop, while the trees in the forest below are stunted by those about them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Where the compliant type looks at one’s fellow humans with the silent question, “Will he or she like me?”—and the aggressive type wants to know, “How strong an adversary is he or she?” or “Can one be useful to me?”—the detached person’s first concern is, “Will he or she interfere with me?” Will one want to influence me or will one leave me alone?” The scene in which Peer Gynt meets the buttonmolder is a perfect symbolic representation of the terror the detached person feels at being thrown with others. One’s own room in hell would be all right, but to be tossed into a melting pot, to be molded or adapted to others, is a horrifying thought. One feels oneself akin to a rare Persian rug, unique in its pattern and combination of colors, forever unalterable. One takes extraordinary pride in having kept free of the leveling influences of environment and is determined to keep on doing so. In cherishing one’s unchangeableness one raises the rigidity inherent in all neuroses to the dignity of a sacred principle. Willing and even eager to elaborate one’s own pattern, to give it greater purity and lucidity, one insists that nothing extrinsic be injected. In all its simplicity and inadequacy the Peer Gynt maxim stands: “To thyself be enough.” The emotional life of the detached person does not follow as strict a patter as that of the other types detached. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Individual variations are greater in one’s case, chiefly because in contradistinction to the other two, whose predominant trends are directed toward beneficial goals—affection, intimacy, love in the one; survival, domination, success in the other—one’s goals are negative: one wants not to be involved, not to need anybody, not to allow others to intrude on or influence one. Hence the emotional picture would be dependent on the particular desires that have developed or been allowed to stay alive within this negative framework, and only a limited number of tendencies intrinsic to detachment as such can be formulated. There is a general tendency to suppress all feeling, even to deny its existence. I should like to quote here a passage from an unpublished novel of the poet Anna Maria Armi, because it succinctly expresses not only this tendency but also other typical attitudes of the detached person. The main character, reminiscing about one’s adolescence, says: “I could visualize a strong physical tie (as I had with my father) and a strong spiritual tie (as I had with my heroes), but I could not see where or how feeling came into it; feelings simply did not exist—people lied about that as about so many other things. B. was horrified. ‘But how do you explain sacrifice?’ she said. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
“For a moment I was astounded by the truth in her remark; then I decided that sacrifice was just another of lies, and when it was not a lie it was either a physical or spiritual act. I dreamed at that time of living alone, of never marrying, of becoming strong and peaceful without talking too much, without asking for help. I wanted to work on myself, to be freer and freer, to give up dreams in order to see and live clearly. I thought morals had no meaning; being good or bad made no difference as long as you were absolutely true. The great sin was to look for sympathy or to expect help. Souls seemed to me temples that had to be guarded, and inside them there were always strange ceremonies going on, known only to their priests, their custodians.” The rejection of feeling pertains primarily to feelings toward other people and applies to both love and hate. It is a logical consequence of the need to keep at an emotional distance from others, in that strong love or hate, consciously experienced, would bring one either close to others or into conflict with them. The term, distance machinery, is appropriate here. It does not necessarily follow that feeling will be suppressed in areas outside human relationships and become active in the realm of books, animals, nature, art, food, and so on. However, there is considerable danger in this. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
For a person capable of deep and passionate emotion it may be impossible to suppress only one sector of one’s feelings—and that the most crucial—without going the whole length of suppressing feeling altogether. This is speculative reasoning, but certainly the following is true. Artists of the detached type, who have demonstrated in their creative periods that they can not only feel deeply but also give expression to it, have often gone through periods, usually in adolescence, of either complete emotional numbness or of vigorous denial of all feeling—as in the passage quoted. The creative periods seem to occur when, following some disastrous attempts at close relationships, they have either deliberately or spontaneously adapted their lives to detachment—that is, when they have consciously or unconsciously determined to keep at a distance from others, or have become resigned to a kind of isolated living. The fact that now, at a safe distance from others, they can release and express a host of feelings not directly connected with human relationships permits the interpretation that early denial of all feelings was necessary to the achievement of their detachment. Another reason why the suppression of feeling may go beyond the sphere of human relationships has already been suggested in our discussion of self-sufficiency. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Any desire, interest, or enjoyment that might make the detached person dependent upon others is viewed as treachery from within and may be checked on that account. It is as if every situation had to be carefully tested from the standpoint of a possible loss of freedom before feeling could be allowed full play. Any threat of dependence will cause one to withdraw emotionally. However, when one finds a situation quite safe in this regard one can enjoy it to the full. Profound emotional experience is possible under these conditions. The lurking fear of either becoming too attached to a pleasure or of its infringing upon one’s freedom indirectly will sometimes make one verge on the ascetic. However, it is an asceticism of its own kind—not oriented toward self-denial or self-torture. We might rather call it a self-discipline which—accepting the premises—is not lacking in wisdom. It is of great important to physic balance that there be areas accessible to spontaneous emotional experience. Creative abilities, for instance, may be a kind of salvation. If their expression has been inhibited, and if then through analysis or some other experience it is liberated, the beneficent effect upon the detached person can be so great as to make it look like a miraculous cure. Caution is in order in evaluating such cures. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In the first place it would be a mistake to make any generalization about their occurrence: what may mean salvation foe a detached person will not necessarily have any such meaning for others. And even for one it is not strictly a “cure” in the sense of a radical change in neurotic fundamentals. It merely allows one a more satisfactory and less disturbed way of living. The more the emotions are checked, the more likely it is that emphasis will be placed upon intelligence. The expectation then will be that everything can be solved by sheer power of reasoning, as if mere knowledge of one’s own problems would be sufficient to cure them. Or as if reasoning alone could cure all the troubles of the World! Acceptant of the person by loving individuals as a unique being rather than as an object, the more the individual will come to perceive oneself as a person of value rather than a material object to be used. The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour. In greater matters people show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small matters, as they are. Nearly all people can stand adversity, but if you want to test a person’s character, give one power. The foundations of character are built not by lecture, but by bricks of good example, laid day by day. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
In reviewing one’s own moral career, the stigmatized individual may single out and retrospectively elaborate experiences which serve for one to account for one’s coming to the beliefs and practices that one now has regarding one’s own kind and normals. A life event can thus have a double bearing on moral career, first as immediate objective grounds for an actual turning point, and later (and easier to demonstrate) as a means of accounting for a position currently taken. One experience often selected for this latter purpose is that through which the newly stigmatized individual learns that full-fledged members of the group are quite like ordinary human beings. A physically disabled man provides a statement: “If I had to choose one group of experiences that finally convinced me of the importance of this problem [of self-image] and that I had to fight my own battles of identification, it would be the incidents that made me realize with my heart that people who have physical limitations can be identified with characteristics other than their physical disability. I managed to see that people who have a physical disability could be comely, charming, well-built, masculine, neatly dressed, beautiful, ugly, lovely, stupid, brilliant—just like all other people, and I discovered that I was able to hate or love someone with a physical limitation in spite of one’s disability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
It may be added that in looking back to the occasion of discovering that persons with one’s stigma are human beings like everyone else, the individual may bring to bear a later occasion when one’s pre-stigma friends imputed un-humanness to those one had by then learned to see as full-fledged persons like oneself. Thus, in reviewing one’s experience as a circus worker, a young girl sees first that she had learned her fellow-workers are not freaks, and send that her pre-circus friends fear for her having to travel in a bus along with other members of the troupe. Another turning point—retrospectively if not originally—is the isolating, incapacitating experience, often a period of hospitalization, which comes later to be seen as the time when the individual was able to think through one’s problem, learn about oneself, sort out one’s situation, and arrive at a new understanding of what is important and work seeking in life. It should be added that not only are personal experiences retrospectively identified as turning points, but experiences once removed may be employed in this way. It should be added that not only are personal experiences retrospectively identified as turning points, but experiences once removed may be employed in this way. Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece—by thought, choice, courage, and determination. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
There is nothing ambiguous about “abundance” and “superfluity,” even though there is little difference in their root meanings. “Abundance” comes to us from the Latin word una (wave), which English still retains in its basic meaning in words like “undulate” and “undulant.” Abundance, too, means an “overflowing,” yet it has acquired an altogether beneficial meaning in our language. An abundant land provides us with more than just the basic necessities. It is a land of plenty what the Old Testament describes as “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Or suppose you have been to a party where there was no scarcity of refreshments. You might say, “The wine flowed in abundance,” and you would mean something beneficial by that. There was no shortage of good things, no rationing, no need to worry about overdoing today and going without tomorrow. However, if we want to suggest the negative aspects of an “overflowing,” the word that some to mind is “superfluous.” That word, like “affluent,” goes back to the Latin verb fluere, and a superfluity is therefore a “super-flowing.” Here, however, the overflow is seen in a strictly negative light. It is pointless, wasteful. If you say to someone, “Your presence here is superfluous,” you are really saying, “Why do you not go away?” You are not saying, “How nice that you are here,” which is what you do mean, more of less, if you speak of wine being present in abundance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
So whenever we speak of affluence, we have to ask ourselves whether we mean a beneficial, enlivening abundance or a negative, deadening superfluity. Turning now to “ennui,” we find that its basic meaning is stronger than our current definition of boredom or a feeling of dissatisfaction and weariness. Ennui and the English word “annoy” both derive from the Latin inodiare, “to make loathsome or hateful.” We might ask ourselves now, taking our clues from these words we have just examined, whether superfluity does not lead to boredom, disgust, and hatred. If so, then we should ask ourselves some hard questions about our affluent society. By “we” I mean modern industrial society as it has developed in the United States of America, Canada, and Western Europe. Do we live in affluence? Who in our society lives in affluence, and what kind of affluence is it, an affluence of abundance or an affluence of superfluity? To put the question more simply yet: Is it good affluence or bad affluence? Does affluence necessarily produce ennui? And what would a good, abundant, ebullient kind of affluence look like, and affluence that does not produce ennui? There are two possibilities, two approaches to the psychological study of the human psyche. At the moment academic psychology studies human beings primarily from the standpoint of behaviorism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Behaviorism is limited exclusively to what can be directly seen and observed, to what is visible and what can therefore be measured and weighed, for whatever cannot be directly seen and observed cannot be measures or weighted either, at least not with sufficient precision. Depth psychology, the psychoanalytical method, proceeds differently. It has different goals. It does not limit its study of human actions and behavior solely to what can be seen. It inquires instead into the nature of behavior, into the motives underlying behavior. You can describe, for instance, a person’s smile. That is an action that can be photographed, that can be described in terms of the musculature of the face, and so on. However, you know very well, that there are differences among the smile of a salesgirl in a shop, the smile of someone who is antagonistic toward you but wants to hide one’s antagonism, and the smile of a friend who is happy to see you. You are able to distinguish among hundreds of kinds of smiles that take rise from different psychic states. They are all smiles, but the things they express can be Worlds apart. No machine can measure or even perceive those differences. Only a human being who is not a machine—you, for example—can do that. You observe not only with your mind but also, if I may be allowed such an old-fashioned expression, with your heart. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Your whole being comprehends what transpires before it. You can sense what kind of smile you are seeing. And if you cannot sense things like that, then you will be in for a lot of disappointments in your life. Or take a very different kind of behavior: the way someone eats. All right, so someone eats. However, how does one eat? One person wolfs one’s food down. Another person’s manner at table reveals that one is pedantic and attaches great importance to doing things in an orderly fashion and cleaning up one’s plate. Still another eats without haste, without greediness. One enjoys one’s food. One simply eats and takes pleasure in eating. Or take still another example. Someone bellows and turns red in the face. You conclude one is angry. Surely one is angry. However, then you take a little closer look at one and ask yourself what it is the person is feeling (perhaps you know one fairly well), and suddenly you realize that he or she is afraid. One is frightened, and one’s rage is simply a reaction to one’s own fear. And then you may look even deeper still and realize that this is a human being who feels thoroughly helpless and powerless, someone who is afraid of everything, of life itself. So you have made three observations: that one is angry, that one is afraid, and that one feels a profound sense of helplessness. All three observations are correct. However, they relate to different levels of one’s psychic structure. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The observation that takes on one’s sense of powerlessness is the one that registers most profoundly what is going on inside one. The observation that takes in nothing but rage is the most superficial. In other words, if you react by flying into a rage as well and see nothing but an angry person in the other individual, then you have failed to see one at all. However, if you can look being the façade of the angry person and see the frightened one, the one who feels helpless, then you will approach one differently, and it may happen that one’s anger will subside because one no longer feels threatened. From a psychoanalytical point of view, what interests us is not human behavior viewed from the outside but rather what motivates a person has, what one’s intentions are, whether one is conscious of them or not. We are interested in the quality of one’s behavior. The analyst listens with a third ear. Or, one reads between the lines. One sees not only what is offered one directly but perceives something more in what is offered and observable. One sees into the heart of the personality whose every action is merely an expression, a manifestation, yet one that is always colored by the entire personality. Every last bit of behavior is a gesture originating in one specific human individual and in no other, and that is why there are no two human actions that are identical, any more than there are two identical human beings. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
They may resemble each other; they may be related; but they are never the same. There are no two people who raise a hand in exactly the same way, who walk the same way, who tilt their heads in the same way. That is why you can sometimes recognize a person by one’s gait even though you have not seen one’s face. A gait can be as characteristic for a person as one’s face, sometimes even more so, for it is more difficult to alter a gait than the expression of the face. We can lie with our faces. That is a capability we have that animals do not. It is more difficult to lie with one’s body, though that too can be learned. It is not that some of us become sinful because of an unfortunate childhood environment, while others are blessed with a highly moral upbringing. Rather we are all born sinners with a corrupt nature, a natural inclination to go out own way. As David wrote, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me,” reports Psalm 51.5. Here is an amazing statement from David that he was sinful while still in his mother’s womb, even during the period of pregnancy when as yet he had performed no actions, either good or bad. Because of Adam’s rebellion, we are all born with a sinful perverse nature, an inclination to go our own way. Whether it is the way of the decent individual or the way of the obvious transgressor, it makes no difference. We were all born in a state of rebellion against God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The Bible says we have all sinned, and almost everyone would agree with the statement. Descriptive synonyms for sin—rebellion, despising, defying—and God takes a far more serious view of sin than the being on the street or even most Christians. Sin, in the final analysis, is rebellion against the sovereign Creator, Ruler, and Judge of the Universe. It resists the rightful prerogative of a sovereign Ruler to command obedience from His subjects. It says to an absolutely holy and righteous God that His moral laws, which are a reflection of His own nature, are not worthy of our wholehearted obedience. Sin is not only a series of actions, it is also an attitude that ignores the law of God. However, it is even more than a rebellious attitude. Sin is a state of heart, a condition of our inmost being. It is a state of corruption, of vileness, yes, even of filthiness in God’s sight. This view of sin as corrupt, vileness, and filth is symbolically when Joshua the high priest—the person holding the highest religious office in Israel is shown dressed in filthy clothes, a pictorial representation of both his sins and the sins of the people he represented as high priest. The filthiness of his garments depicts not the guilt of his sin but its pollution. Like Joshua, all of us are, in a spiritual sense, dressed in filthy clothes. We are not justly guilty before God; we are also corrupted in our natures, polluted and vile before Him. We need forgiveness and cleansing. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
For this reason the Bible never speaks of God’s grace as simply making up our deficiencies—as if salvation consists in so much good works (even a variable amount) plus so much of God’s grace. Rather the Bible speaks of “a God who justifies the wicked,” who is found by those who do not seek Him, who reveals Himself to those who do not ask for Him, reports Romans 4.5, 10.20. However, the seeker should resolve to appeal directly by constant aspiration and prayer to one’s own higher self, in the knowledge that it alone can help one if one is to work without a teacher. On the other hand, if one’s soul has decreed that one is to have a guide, God will bring before one the mental image or intuitive thought of the Master. If this happens, one will not need to seek out the Master’s physical person; the inner picture brings results. Cicero wrote nearly two thousand years ago that the ideally perfect person is nowhere to be found at all. Who, except wishful thinkers and pious sentimentalists, can gainsay him? Those who seek absolute perfection, whether in someone else or for themselves, seek what is unattainable in this World. It is not possible to find human perfection. Travel, contact, and experience with them reveal that not one is always infallible, not one failed to commit errors of judgment. We do not just need God’s grace to make up for our deficiencies; we need His grace to provide a remedy for our guilt, a cleansing for out pollution. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
We need God’s grace to provide a satisfaction of His justice, to cancel a debt we cannot pay. It may seem that I am belaboring the point of our guilt and vileness before God. However, we can never rightly understand God’s grace until we understand our plight as those who need His grace. The first and possibly most fundamental characteristic of divine grace is that it presupposes sin and guilt. Grace has meaning only when beings are seen as fallen, unworthy of salvation, and liable to eternal wrath. Grace does not contemplate sinners merely as undeserving but as ill-deserving. It is not simply that we do not deserve hell. The discipline of the mind is, of course, the greatest of challenges. And Scripture regularly presents its discipline as a discipline of the eyes. Humans, if you are a television-watching, fake news consuming couch bacon cheese burger with medium fries and a diet coke and a slice of cherry pie, it is impossible for you to maintain a pure mind. In one week you will watch more murders, adulteries, and perversions than our grandfathers read about in their entire lives. Things are getting so bad that people are even acting out scripts in their daily lives because they have become slaves to sin and inequity. “Can a human scoop fire into one’s lap without one’s clothes being burned?” reports Proverbs 6.27. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
This also means treating all women with dignity—looking at them respectfully. If their dress or demeanor is distracting, look them in the eyes, and nowhere else, and get away as quickly as you can! The mind also encompasses the tongue. “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,” reports Matthew 12.34. “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immortality, or any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving,” reports Ephesians 5.3. There must be no sexual humor, urbane vulgarities, and coarseness, as so many Christians are so prone to do to prove they are not “slow” or “out of it.” The human self requires rootedness in others. This is primarily an ontological matter—a matter of being what we are. It is not just a moral matter, a matter of what ought to be. And the moral aspect of it grows out of the ontological. The most fundamental “other” for the human is, of course, God himself. God is the ultimate social fact for the human being. That is why people in general think more often about God than about any other thing, even pleasures of the flesh and death. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
However, because all are to be rooted in God—and really are, whether they want it or not—our ties to one another cannot be isolated from our shared relationship to God, nor our relationship to him from our ties to one another. Our relations to others cannot be right unless we see those others in their relation to God. Though others God comes to us and we only really find others when we see them in God. When scripture speaks of God’s arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely operative power. Hence, it is plain that nothing false can ever underlie the literal sense of Holy Writ. Appetite is the power of receiving and giving. The appetite that is in all things to receive and to give part of God’s plan. Things receive what is attractive and reject what is repugnant, and the preference of the receiver determines the action of the giver. Giving and receiving, furthermore, are motions the one motion affecting preservation and the other multiplication. Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. O God, beneath Whose eyes every heart trembles, and all consciences are afraid; be merciful to the groanings of all, and heal the wounds of all; that as not one of us is free from fault, so not one may be shut out from pardon; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. He hath confounded mine enemies, unto the causing of them to quake before me,” reports 2 Nephi 4.21-22. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Almighty and merciful God, Who willest not the souls of sinners to perish, but their faults; restrain the anger which we deserve, and pour our upon us the clemency which we entreat, that through Thy mercy we may pass from mourning into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O fountain of all good, destroy in me every lofty thought, break pride to pieces and scatter it to the winds, annihilate each clinging shred of self-righteousness, implant in me true lowliness of spirit, abase me to self-loathing and self-abhorrence, open in me a fount of penitential tears, break me, then bind me up; thus will my heart be a prepared dwelling for my God; then can the Father take up his abode in me, then can the blessed Jesus come with healing in his touch, then can the Holy Spirit descend in sanctifying grace; O Holy Trinity, three Persons and one God, inhabit me, a temple consecrated to thy glory. When thou art present, evil cannot abide; in thy fellowship is fullness of joy, beneath thy smile is peace of conscience, by thy side no fears disturb, no apprehensions banish rest of mind, with thee my heart shall bloom with fragrance; make me meet, through repentance, for thine indwelling. Nothing is too great for thee to do, nothing is too good for thee to give. Infinite is thy might, boundless thy love, limitless thy grace, glorious thy saving name. Let Angels sing for sinners repenting, prodigals restored backsliders reclaimed, Satan’s captives released, blind eyes opened, broken hearts bound up, the despondent cheered, the self-righteous stripped, the formalist driven from a refuge of lies, the ignorant enlightened, and saints built up in their holy faith. I ask great things of a great God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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The Oceans’s Only Got Water, You Never Know Where You Stand!
It may well be absurd to believe that some poor individual has the potential to transcend a psychosis of 20 years’ standing; but if you do not have some such fools in the World, nothing new is discovered. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. If you esteem your own reputation, associate with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company. Various essences of good have thus been found and proposed as bases of ethical system. Thus, to be a mean between two extremes; to be recognized by a special intuitive faculty; to make the agent happy for the moment; to make others are well as another happy in the long run; to add to one’s perfection or dignity; to harm no one; to follow from reason or flow from universal law; to be in accordance with the will of God; to promote the survival of the human species on this planet—are so many tests, each of which has been maintained by somebody to constitute the essence of all good things or action so far as they are good. The goal is to seek an end to the mutilation of the fullness of truth. The course of history is nothing but the story of human’s struggles from generation to generation to find the more and more inclusive order. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Invent some manner of realizing your own ideals which will also satisfy the alien demands—that and that only is the path of peace. Following this path, society has shaken itself into one sort of relative equilibrium after another by a series of social discoveries quite analogous to those of science. Polyandry and polygamy and slavery, private warfare and liberty to kill, judicial torture and arbitrary royal power have slowly succumbed to actually aroused complaints; and though some one’s ideals are unquestionably the worse off for each improvement, yet a vastly greater total number of them find shelter in our civilized society than in the antiquated savage ways. An experiment of the most searching kind has proved that the laws and usages of the land are what yield the maximum of satisfaction to the thinkers take all together. The presumption in cases of conflict must always be in favor of the conventionally recognized good. There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total Universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as out intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the more life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
One knows that one must vote always for the richer Universe, for the good which seems most organizable, most fit to enter into complex combinations, most apt to be a member of a more inclusive whole. However, which particular Universe this is one cannot know for certain in advance; one only knows that is one makes a bad mistake the cries of the wounded will soon inform one of the fact. Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life’s evils, is set free in those who have religious faith. For this reason the strenuous type of character will on the battlefield of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall. However, a feeling itself, and not simply the way it is displayed on face and body, can be experiences as misfitting a situation in a surprising number of ways. For example, the case of a man in his thirties, who was suffering from a paranoid form of schizophrenia. He became ill in his early twenties. He has always presented a strange mixture of intelligence, wrong-headedness, and fantastic idea. He was an ordinary clerk, employed in a consulate. Evidently as a compensation for his very modest existence he was seized with megalomania and believed himself to be the Saviour (the Buffy complex). He suffered from frequent hallucinations and was at times very much disturbed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In quite periods the man was allowed to go unattended in the corridor of the mental facility. One day I came across him there, blinking through the window up at the Sun, and moving his head from side to side in a curious manner. He took me by the arm and said he wanted to show me something. He said I must look at the Sun with eyes half shut, and then I could see the Sun’s phallus. If I moved my head from side to side the Sun-phalls would move too, and that was the origin of the wind. In mythology, the so-called tube, is the origin of the ministering wind. For you will see hanging down from the disc of the Sun something that looks like a tube. And towards the regions westward it is as though there were an infinite east wind. However, if the other wind should prevail towards the regions of the east, you will in like manner see the vision veering in that direction. The Greek word for “tube,” means a wind-instrument, and the combination in Homer means “a thick jet of blood.” So evidently a stream of wind is blowing through the tube out of the Sun. The vision of my patient in 1906, and the Greek text first edited in 1910, should be sufficiently far apart to rule out the possibility of cryptomnesia (an implicit memory phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that a current thought or idea if a product of their own creation when, in fact, they have encountered it previously and then forgotten it) on his side and thought-transference on mine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
However, the obvious parallelism of the two visions cannot be disputed, though one might object that the similarity is purely fortuitous. In that case we should expect the vision to have no connection with analogous idea, nor any inner meaning. Yet, this expectation is not fulfilled, for in certain medieval paintings this tube is actually depicted as a sort of hose-pipe reaching down from Heaven under the robe of Mary. In it the Holy Ghost flies down in the form of a dove to impregnate the Virgin. As we know from the miracle of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost was originally conceived as a mighty rushing wind, “the wind that bloweth where is listeth.” In a Latin text we read: “Animo descenes per orbem solis tribuitur” (They say that the spirit descends through the disc of the Sun). This conception is common to the whole of late classical and medieval philosophy. I cannot, therefore, discover anything fortuitous in these visions, but simply the revival of possibilities of ideas that have always existed, that can be found again in the most diverse minds and in all epochs, and are therefore not to be mistake for inherited ideas. I have purposely gone into the details of this case in order to give you a concrete picture of that deeper psychic activity which I called the collective unconscious. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
We must distinguish three psychic levels: conscious. The personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious consists firstly of all those contents that became unconscious either because they lost their intensity and were forgotten or because consciousness was withdrawn from the (repression), and secondly of contents, some of them sense-impressions, which never had sufficient intensity to reach consciousness but have somehow entered the psyche. The collective unconscious, however, as the ancestral heritage of possibilities of representation, is not individual but common to all people, and perhaps even to all beings, and is the true basis of the individual psyche. Since the collective unconscious is common to all beings, archetypal manifestations can be demonstrated in the normal as well as the insane. Still, I believe there is no determiner which a being cannot get around, under, through, or over in order to pursue goals and values that have challenged one or that one has chosen to fulfill. Human’s potentials for survival, for adaptation, for rehabilitation, for recovery from infirmary, and for growth seems barely to be scratched. Our concepts of human’s limits have proven, century after century, to be too rigid. Humans continually exceed limits that science says are built into their tissue. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Humans have climbed Mount Everest, they orbit the Earth, they have survived death camps and slavery, and human recovery from illnesses deemed fatal. Thus, whenever I encounter a patient who is suffering from confining and crippling effects of childhood privations and trauma and finds challenges in one’s present existence overpowering, rather than despair with one, and pursue all the roots of pathology in one, I immediately begin to wonder how it would be possible to mobilize one’s spirit or one’s capacity to transcend the present circumstances which one has let grind one down. Maybe over the years I have just become more effective at communicating my faith in their potentials to the patients themselves; or maybe I have become more effective at infecting patients with the seeds of faith in themselves. A patient will say, “You seem to have had faith in me, so I looked, and I found faith in myself.” Maybe this is the factor in iatrogenic wellness—the strength of the healer’s faith in the potentials of the sufferer to transcend the limiting conditions of one’s existence. If this is true, it raises a fascinating question: On what factors is one’s faith in the other person’s potential to transcend limiting conditions dependent? I think that question is answerable—I do not quite know how, just now; but I think as a psychologists, we are duty bound to try to figure ways to measure the strength of a person’s conviction that the other person has the capacity to transcend determining circumstances. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
It may be that bad “witches,” or experts at producing iatrogenic illness, are the very ones who have either none of the faith that I am taking about, or the reverse faith. They may be absolutely convinced from their depths that people have no capacity for transcendence. Something is fishy when a person practices a profession and cannot be creative in it, when one continues to practice something the same way year after year. Either the person has been brainwashed, or one’s creative potentials were leached from one as one received one’s training. Let me put it in still another way. A therapist’s task is to promote wellness in another. One was trained for this task, and one begins it with a repertoire of techniques. One has learned to listen; that is very good. One has learned to make reflections of feeling and content. One has learned the art of relevant interpretation. This is one’s “bag of tricks,” the kit of tools one utilizes in hope that they will invite a patient into growing. About 60 percent of a therapist’s patents will accept one’s invitation to wellness, as one presents it. However, what about the 40 percent of the case load that decline? It used to be that when my techniques (invitations) did not work, I would simply repeat them. I would reflect feeling more vigorously and interpret more incisively. Nothing happened. I was being most noncreative. I was showing a kind of character disorder, by persisting in behavior that was not effective. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
By using repetitive methods, I was like the auto science engineer who knew how to do only three things—tighten nuts, turn screw, and connect wires. When someone brought in a car that would not run, one would turn every screw, tighten every nut, and connect every wire. The car still would not work. So one would find some more screws to turn, more nut to tighten, and more wires to connect. At the least, we would want the mechanic to try something else or to return our money. One wants responsible creativity from a practitioner. What is it about our methods of training therapists that seems so marvelously effective in drying up trainees; courage to be resourceful and creative in the arena of their commitment? Consider the ministry. Ministers seek to move people from a hellish existence to Heaven on Earth, to love their brothers and sisters and to end sinning. However, clergymen use few means to embody their commitment and their invitations. Maybe this is a good thing, that they seek to invite people to wholeness and goodness solely through sermons, home visits, pastoral counseling, and hospital visits. However, surely there are more ways than this that could be dreamed up. I will raise this question: Where are the creative potentials in the ministerial profession? What other ways might a minister employ to carry out one’s vocation—since, clearly, one’s present ways have not been very effective at humanizing beings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
We need to examine our training to see how it prevents us from being creative in carrying out our commitments. I think our training expresses a commitment, not to healing, but to loyal membership in a cult or elite. If we were trained for commitment to fostering wellness, then we could not help but become creative, because the knowhow built into us in our training would carry us only to the point of the first therapeutic impasse. Here, at the therapeutic impasse, is where commitment is tested: is the therapist committed to one’s “school’s” techniques—or to the patient’s growth? If to the latter, then one will be creative and inventive; one will display and embody the intentionality. If to the former, one will function like a cracked phonograph record, uttering the same invitation over and over, oblivious to the fact that it has been declined. People choose a mode of being as a response to others’ invitations or threats. They choose schizophrenic, or hysterical, or obsessional, or depressed being—for their parents, their spouse, or their friends. Part o this sick being is phoniness itself and part of the sick being is the organism’s response to a long career of inauthentic being. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work that is worth doing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Consciousness, instead of being the watchman over a dangerous and unpredictable lot of impulses, of which few can be permitted to see the light of day, becomes the comfortable inhabitant of a richly varied society of impulses and feelings and thoughts, which prove to be very satisfactorily self-governed when not fearfully or authoritatively guarded. Involved in the process of become oneself is a profound experience of personal choice. One realizes that one can choose to continue to hide behind a façade, or that one can take the risks involved in being oneself; that one is a free agent who has it within one’s power to destroy another, or oneself, and also the power to enhance oneself and others. Faced with this unobstructed eye of reality of decision, one chooses to move in the direction of being oneself. However, being oneself does not solve problems. It simply opens up a new way of living in which there is more depth and more height in the experience of one’s feelings; more depth and more range. One feels more unique and hence more alone, but one is so much more real that one’s relationships with others lose their artificial quality, become deeper, more satisfying, and draw more of the realness of the other person into the relationship. Another manner of understanding these learnings is that they are belated attempts to match symbols with meanings in the World of feelings, an undertaking long since achieved in cognitive realm. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Intellectually, we match carefully the symbol we select with the meaning which an experience has for us. Thus I say something happened “gradually,” having quickly (and largely unconsciously) reviewed such terms as “slowly, “imperceptibly,” “step-by-step,” and so forth, and rejected them as not carrying the precise shade of meaning of the experience. However, in the realm of feelings, we have never learned to attach symbols to experience with any accuracy of meaning. This something which I feel well up in myself, in the safety of an acceptant relationship—what is it? It is sadness, is it anger, is it regret, is it sorrow for myself, is it anger at lost opportunities—I stumble around trying out a wide range of symbols, until one “fits,” “feels right,” seems really to match the organismic experience. In doing this type of thing the client discovers that one has to learn the language of feeling and emotion as if one were an infant learning to speak; often even worse, one finds one must unlearn a false language before learning the true one. Let us try still one more way of defining this type of learning, this time by describing what it is not. It is a type of learning which cannot be taught. The essence of it is the aspect of self-discovery. With “knowledge” as we are accustomed to think of it, one person can teach it to another, providing each has adequate motivation and ability. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, in the significant learning which takes place in therapy, one person cannot teach another. The teaching would destroy the learning. Thus I might teach a client that it is safe for one to be oneself, that freely to realize one’s feelings is not dangerous and so forth. The more one learned this, the less one would have learned it in the significant, experiential, self-appropriating way. This latter type of learning is true subjectivity, and there can be no valid communication of it, or even about it. The most that one person can do to further it in another, is o create certain conditions which make this type of learning possible. It cannot be compelled. A final way of trying to describe this learning is that the client gradually learns to symbolize a total and unified state, in which the state of the organism, in experience, feeling, and cognition may all be described in one unified way. To make the matter even more vague and unsatisfactory, it seems quite unnecessary that this symbolization should be expressed. It usually does occur, because the client wishes to communicate at least a portion of oneself to the therapist, but it is probably no essential. The only necessary aspect is the inward realization of the total, unified, immediate, at-this-instant, state of the organism which is me. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
For example, to realize fully that at this moment the oneness in me is simply that “I am deeply frightened at the possibility at becoming something different is of the essence of therapy. The client who realizes this will be quite certain to recognize and realize this state of being when it recurs in somewhat similar form. One will also, in all probability, recognize and realize more fully some of the other existential feelings which occur in one. Thus one will be moving toward a state in which one is more truly oneself. One will be, in more unified fashion, that one organismically is, and this seems to be the essence of therapy. Modern American culture is largely secular, most people have little or no understanding of a Christian way of seeing the World, nor is a Christian Worldview an important participant in the way we as a society frame and debate issues in the public square. Three of the major centers of influence in our culture—the university, the media, and the government—are largely devoid of serious religious discussion. In fact, it is not unfair to say that university, media, and governmental leaders are often illiterate about how Christians see the World and why. This is evident, for example, in those rare cases when the major television news media try to feature a Christian perspective on abortion, the state, or anything else. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Usually, Christians watching the program feel misrepresented and misunderstood. More often than not, however, Christian perspectives are simply ignored and not covered at all. If a Martian were watching television before coming to Earth, he or she would get the idea that Americans are irreligious. Secularists tolerate religion as long as it remains a privatized perspective relative to a subgroup in society and as long as Christians do not assert that their views are objectively true and defend them accurately. The church is safe from vicious persecution at the hands of the secularist, as educated people have finished with stake-burning circuses and torture racks. No martyr’s blood is shed in the secular west. So long as the church knows her pace and remains quietly at peace on her modern reservation. Let the babes pray and sing and read their Bibles, continuing steadfastly in their intellectual retardation; the church’s extinction will not become by sword or pillory, but by the quiet death of irrelevance. However, let the church step off the reservation, let her penetrate once more the culture of the day and the face of secularism will change from benign smile to a savage snarl. God may lead one to seek and find another being who shall be His intermediary with one: His representative to one, His image for one. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
A knowledge worth understanding is not less important than a teacher worth seeking. If a seeker believes that one has achieved a certain extent of self-preparation and self-purification, if one is convinced of the desperate need of a master, and if one does not succeed in finding a worthy one, then let one pray for help in the matter. It is not enough to try to follow the counsel given by prophets, mystics, and sages, to look within. It is necessary also to look deep enough and long enough to get really worthwhile results. This applies just as much to the search for help as to the search for truth. Sometimes people under the Christian umbrella simply do not but into the idea of purity. They consider such teaching to be Victorian and puritanical. Victorian is not. Puritanical it gloriously is—for it is supremely Biblical. “It is God’s will that you should be holy; that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control one’s own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong one’s brother or sister or take advantage of one. The Lord will punish beings for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, one who rejects this instruction does not reject humans but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.3-8. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
If you are not convinced enough concerning the Biblical ethic, we must understand that it is based on Leviticus 19.2, where God says, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy”—a command which is given in the context of warnings against sexual deviation. I also want to point out that in 1 Thessalonians we are called to avoid sexual immorality and are three times called to be “holy.” To reject this is to sin against the Holy Spirit—the living presence of God—as the Thessalonians passage makes so clear. The human who carries on an act of impurity is not simply breaking a human code, nor even sinning against the God who at some time in the past gave one the gift of the Spirit. One is sinning against God who is present at that moment, against One who continually gives the Spirit. The impure act is an act of despite against God’s gift at the very moment it is being proffered. This sin is seen in its true light only when it is seen as a preference for impurity rather than a Spirit who is holy. Therefore, for a professed Christian to reject this teaching regarding sexual purity is to reject God, and this may indicate a false faith! Grace is not a matter of God’s making up the difference, but of God’s providing all the cost of salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ. Most people are trying to earn their way to Heaven an, despite earnest effort, some are falling short of bridging the awful chasm of sin separating them from God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The body is the focal point of our presence in the physical and social World. In union with it we come into existence, and we become the person we shall forever be. It is our primary energy source or strength—our personalized power pack—a place where we can even stand in defiance of God, at least for a while. And it is the point through which we are stimulated by the World beyond ourselves and where find and are found by others. Human personal relations cannot be separated from the body; and, on the other hand, the body cannot be understood apart from human relations. It is essentially social. Therefore our bodies are forever a part of our identities as persons. My body came from God through my parents, and they provided a social and spiritual context that, more than anything else, makes me that person I am. Thou Who didst bring home the lost sheep to the fold on Thy shoulders, Who wast appeased by the prayers and confession of the publican, do Thou, O Lord, be favourable also to Thy servants, do Thou graciously attend to their prayers. May Thy mercy, O Lord, we beseech Thee, be beforehand with Thy servants, and all their iniquities be blotted out by Thy seedy pardon; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “And the Lord said unto hum: Write these things and seal them up; and I will show them in mine own due time unto the children of men,” reports Ether 3.27. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
O God Whose will conquers all, there is no comfort in anything apart from enjoying thee and being engaged in thy service; Thou art All in all, and all enjoyments are what to me thou makest them, and no more. I am well pleased with thy will, whatever it is, or should be in all respects, and if thou bidst me decide for myself in any affair, I would choose to refer al to thee, for thou art infinitely wise and cannot do amiss as I am in danger of doing. I rejoice to think that all things are at thy disposal, and it delights me to leave them there. Then prayer turns wholly into praise, and all I can do is to adore and bless thee. What shall I give thee for all thy benefits? I am in a strait betwixt two, knowing not what to do; I long to make some return, but having nothing to offer, and can only rejoice that thou doest all, that none in Heaven or on Earth shares thy honour; I can of myself do nothing to glorify thy blessed name, but I can though grace cheerfully surrender soul and body to thee, I know that thou art the author and finisher of faith, that the whole work of redemption is thine alone, that every good work or thought found in me is the effect of thy power and grace, that thy sole motive in working in me to will and to do is for thy good pleasure. O God, it is amazing that being can talk so much about human’s creaturely power and goodness, when if thou didst not hold back every moment, we should be devils incarnate. This, by bitter experience, thou hast taught me concerning myself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Corned Beef is Lost Without Cabbage, a Husband Should Have a Wife, and You Know that Life is so Peculiar!
We judge ourselves by what we are capable of doing: others judge us by what we have done. If you want to take your mission in life to the nest level, if you are stuck and you do not know how to rise, do not look outside yourself. Look inside. Do not let your fears keep you mired in the crowd. Abolish your fears and raise your commitment level to the point of no return, and I guarantee you that the Champion Within will burst forth to propel you toward victory. The old adage that “you do not really know what something is like until you experience it” holds for the subtle as well as the obvious and overt. You can no longer rely upon anyone to magically save you, only you can ultimately save yourself. It is not so much the kind of experience that matters, but its capacity to absorb, inspire, and enliven. Let your imagination go or throw your judgments aside for a time. See what happens when you trace that thought or feeling out. See if you can envision involving yourself in all those activities you dream about. What would such a scenario feel like in your stomach, chest, and throat? The more deeply one can describe one’s wish or fantasy, the more one can immerse oneself in its possibilities. And if envisioning the entire scenario seems difficult, then think about portions of that scenario. Like if buying a house is frightening to you, then just go tour a model home and see how you feel. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret. Practice being present and aware, especially in problematic situations. See if you can stay with the thoughts and feelings thar come up, even for the briefest moment. Also, sort through what is operating on you in stressful situations—what assumptions you make, how you approach or avoid certain things, and what inner vices you hear. Sometimes it may be helpful to observe how readily you give your power away in certain circumstances; or you may be impressed by your passive aggressive behavior. Virtually anything you perceive from this standpoint can be revelatory. As nonjudgmentally as possible, just watch the flow of your inner experiences, and neither try to categorize nor figure out those experiences. Simply from the time you take for yourself, and the needs, fears, and desires you feel will be unveiled. It may also help to try to make contact with and reflect on your own childhood, and visit the places and things that your children value. This may give you new opportunities to live. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Capitalism as a system in which harmony is created by ruthless competition between all individuals would appear to be a natural order if one could prove that the most complex and remarkable phenomenon, humans, are a product of the ruthless competition among all living beings since the emergence of life. The development of life from monocellular organisms to humans would seem to be the most splendid example of free enterprise, in which the best win through competition and those who are not fit to survive in the progressing economic system are eliminated. Cybernetic capitalism, with its gigantic centralized enterprises and its capacity to provide the workers with amusements and bread, is able to maintain control by psychological manipulation and human engineering. It needs a human who is very malleable and easily influences, rather than one whose instincts are controlled by fear of authority. At one time the ideal—at least for the middle classes—was independence, private initiative, to be “pilot of my airplane.” The contemporary vision, however, is that of unlimited consumption and unlimited control over nature. People are fired by the dream that one day they will completely control nature and thus be like God; why should there by anything in human nature cannot be controlled? #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Unless you have the will to prepare, the will to win is worth nothing. There is a sense of fear and hopelessness that pervades many people because of the ever-increasing dangers and that nothing is done to avert them. Many who have had faith in progress and had hoped for basic changes in human’s fate, instead of carefully analyzing the social process which led to their disillusionment, are taking refuge in the explanation that human’s nature must be responsible for this failure. Potentialities for conflict and suffering are inherent in human affairs, and attempts to completely abolish or mitigate suffering may appear to be a hopeless undertaking, at least a far more complicated one than the social revolutionaries had fancied them to be, partially due to competing addends, different political views and nature. However, the power to hold on in spite of everything, the power to endure—this is the winner’s quality. Persistence is the ability to face defeat again and again without giving up—to push on in the face of great difficulty, knowing that victory can be yours. Persistence mean taking pain to overcome every obstacle, and to do what is necessary to reach your goals. The direct outcome of the anxiety involved in neurotic competitiveness is a fear of failure and a fear of success. The fear of failure is in part an expression of the fear of being humiliated. Any failure becomes a catastrophe. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
A girl who had failed to know something she was expected to know at school not only felt inordinately ashamed, but felt also that the other girls in the class would despise and turn against her altogether. This reaction carries all the more weight since frequently occurrences of failures which factually have no connotation of failure, or are at mist immaterial—such as not getting the highest marks at school, or failing in some part of an examination, or giving a party which is not an extraordinary success, or not having been brilliant in conversation, in brief anything that falls short of excessive expectations. A rebuff of any kind, which, as we have seen, the neurotic reacts to with intense hostility, is likewise felt as a failure and therefore as a humiliation. This fear of the neurotic person may be greatly intensified by one’s apprehension that others will gloat over a failure because they know of one’s relentless ambition. What one dreads more than failure itself is failure after having shown in any way that one is competing, that one does indeed want success and has made efforts to attain it. One feels that a mere failure can be forgiven, might even arouse sympathy rather than hostility, but that once one has shown an interest in success one is surrounded by a horde of persecuting enemies, who lie in wait to crush one at any sign of weakness or failure. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The resulting attitudes vary according to the content of the fear. If the emphasis lies on the fear of failure as such, one will redouble one’s efforts or even become desperate in one’s attempts to avoid failure. Acute anxiety may emerge before crucial tests of one’s strength or ability, such as examinations or public appearances. If, however, the emphasis lies on the fear of others recognizing one’s ambition the resulting picture is exactly the opposite. The anxiety that one feels will make one appear to be disinterested and will lead one to make no efforts of any kind. The contrast in these two pictures is noteworthy, because it shows how two types of fear, which after all are akin, may produce two entirely different sets of characteristics. A person conforming to the first pattern will work frantically for examinations, but one of the second pattern will work very little and will perhaps conspicuously indulge in social activities or hobbies, thus showing to the World one’s lack of interest in the task. Usually the neurotic is not aware of one’s anxiety and is conscious only of its consequences. One may, for example, be unable to concentrate on work. Or one may have hypochondriacal fears, such as a fear of heart trouble from physical exertion, or of a nervous breakdown from mental overwork. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Or one may become exhausted after any exertion—when anxiety is involved in an activity it is likely to be exhausting—and will use this exhaustion to prove that efforts are injurious to one’s health and hence must be avoided. In one’s recoil from making any effort the neurotic may lose oneself in all sorts of diverting activities, from playing solitaire to giving parties, or one may take on an attitude that looks like laziness or indolence. A neurotic woman may dress badly, preferring to give the impression of no caring to dress well than to make the attempt to do so, because she feels the attempt would only expose her to ridicule. A girl who was unusually pretty, but was convinced that she was homely, did not dare to powder her nose in public because she expected people to think, “How ridiculous of that ugly duckling to make an attempt to look attractive!” Thus in general the neurotic will consider it safer not to do the things one wants to do. One’s maxim is: Stay in the corner, be modest, and most of all, do not be conspicuous. As Veblen has emphasized, conspicuousness—consumption—plays an important role in competition. Accordingly a recoil from competition has to put emphasis on the opposite, on the avoidance of conspicuousness. This implies sticking to conventional standards, staying out of the limelight, being no different from others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
If this recoiling trend is a predominant characteristic it results in not taking any risk. Needless to say, such an attitude brings with it a great impoverishment in life and a warping of potentialities. For, unless circumstances are usually favorable, the attainment of happiness or any kind of achievement presupposes taking risks and making efforts. Thus far we have discussed the fear of possible failure. However, this is only one manifestation of the anxiety involved in neurotic competitiveness. The anxiety may also take the form of a fear of success. In many neurotics anxiety concerning the hostility of others is so enormous that they are afraid of success, even if they feel certain of attaining it. The tendency to assume that the spiritual being was perfect in one’s youth and never made a mistake in one’s maturity, is common among one’s followers and passed on by them to the public—with the result that the latter stares at one with great awe as a rare phenomenon but does not dream that it is possible to follow in one’s footsteps to the same achievement. The truth is that one has one’s share of struggles and failures, that one was born with one’s own particular imperfections, and that one had to make the character and expand the consciousness which adored one’s later years. No one is perfectly fulfilled, completely virtuous, totally enlightened, on this physical plane. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The best enlightened beings and saints are so because of their inspiration’s source, which is beyond other being’s. However, the channel is still human, still limited, and still liable to colour what flows through. The body of every enlightened being is still human and shares the same limitations as other human bodies. This is why one suffers from the infirmary and pains to all flesh is heir. We may admire, respect, and pay homage to these beings without falling into the extravagance of regarding them as gods. It is a common error to believe that such a being is free from all limitations whatsoever and that the deliberate performance of miracles is not beyond one. However, the truth is that not only is one not allowed by the nature of circumstances to help but one is also surrounded by barriers in what one is able to do for those whom one does try to help. The belief that the adept can explain everything is a false one. It would be in better harmony with the facts, and mysticism would lose nothing not worth losing by it, if the representation of great mystics as demi-gods and infallible entities ceased. They are human beings and sometimes they make mistakes. No teacher can be all-knowing or all-powerful. Such attributes belong to God, not to humans. Most teachers commit errors and possess frailties. There is too often a tendency to regard one as more than human. It is true that in one sense and in one part of one’s inner being, one is. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
However, this is no reason to lose all balance and lavish adulation indiscriminately upon one. For in a number of ways one is still an ordinary being. Even the greatest of prophets may have one’s lesser moments, one’s lighter moods. Why not look at discoverable realities rather than unrealizable expectation? These beings, however high in development and however worthy of reverence, are still only mortals. They die like us, they get ill and suffer. They do not know everything. They are even fallible. Some hold views which are arguable at least, which have been dictated or influenced by local traditions, custom, or belief rather than by God. The presence of insight does not exempt a self-actualized person from one’s human needs. One continues one’s daily functions as before. It is great to seek out spiritual direction. One should find an authoritative source to instruct one in spiritual truth and to clear up one’s questions. Contrary to common belief, the teacher is not found in the inner psychic life first and then the discovery reflected in the outer physic fact before any real relationship can be established between the two. One must be found unshakably established in the innermost depths of the heart as a presence and in the background of the mind as a picture. There has arisen too much hard and exploitation from the teacher-seeking attitude to some. Firstly, the request for a teacher should arise from a deep, sustained, and urgent sense of needing such help—not merely for the sake of having one. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
And just as thought and feeling are inseparable, so volition is closely intertwined with them. To choose, one must have some object or concept before the mind and some feeling for or against it. There is no choice that does not involve both thought and feeling. On the other hand, what we feel and think is (or can and should be) to a very large degree a matter of choice in competent adult persons, who will be very careful about what they allow their mind to dwell upon or what they allow themselves to feel. This is crucial to the practical methods of spiritual formation. Unfortunately, the fact that feelings and thoughts are largely a matter of choice is not widely understood—especially as it concerns feelings. We speak of feelings as passions, and that is a word that implies passivity. However, we are in fact active in inviting, allowing, and handling our passions. So, what we have before us in our study of spiritual formation is the whole person, and the various basic dimensions of the human self are not separable parts. They are aspects thoroughly intermingled with each other in their natures and in their actions. Especially, on the present point, human life as a whole does not run by will alone. Far from it. Nevertheless, if it is to be organized at all, life must be organized by the will. It can only be pulled together from the inside. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
That is the function of the will or heart: to organize our life as a whole, and, indeed, to organize it around God. And of course, if one’s existence is to be even fairly tolerable to one’s self or those around, life must be organized, and organized well. Every civilization of any type has recognized this. A great part of the disaster of contemporary life is possessed in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it. “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus,” reports Romans 3.22-24. Ryan and Sue, could not afford to buy a house, and they found one for sale by a wealth man, who they owed a lot of money. The man knew their situations, cancelled their debt and gave them the house they desired, completely furnished, with utilities and maintenance paid for life. That is a picture of how God’s grace operates. The currency of our morality and good deeds is worth a lot in God’s eyes. Spiritual discipline means putting oneself back under the Law with a series of Draconian rules which we must try to life up to. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The legalistic heart says, “I will do this thing to gain merit with God.” The disciplined heart says, “I will do this thing because I love God and want to please Him.” There is an infinite difference between the motivation of legalism and discipline! We must train [discipline] ourselves to be Godly! If we confuse legalism and discipline, we do so to our soul’s peril. When we are fixed after God’s heart, it is imperative that we do not become dirty, leering people. Do not let a lustful fixation come over you that you cannot deny. When lust takes control, at this moment God loses all reality. Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God. We will also lose awareness of who we are—our holy call, our frailty, and the certain consequences of sin. This is what lust does! It has done it millions of times. God disappears to lust-glazed eyes. The truth demands some serious questions: Has God faded from view? Did you once see God in bright hues, but now His memory is blurred like an old sepia photograph? So you have an illicit fixation which has become all you can see? It the most real thing in your life your desire? If so, you are in deep trouble. The mind controlled by lust has an infinite capacity for rationalization. Progressive desensitization, relaxation, fixation, and rationalization can set one up for one of the great falls in history—and one’s degeneration. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Some sense activity is directly pleasing and displeasing quite apart from effects that are stored in experience and learned through behavior. The spirits possess something analogous to a sensing power and this power initiates some kinds of movement and governs them. Sensible heart is correctly defined as merely the effect of heat on the terrestrial spirits. Because air expands and contracts with changes of temperature, that air may have sense of heat and cold, a sense so subtle and exquisite as far to exceed the perception of the human touch. I think that the terrestrial spirits have a sense of heat and cold more exquisite still, were it not that it is impeded and deadened by the grossness of the body. All animate things internal motion not attributable to the influence of the external senses is controlled by the sensory power of spirit. The living spirit seems to have a sense of its own. All national things are endowed with powers of sensation. Because a sense is required to initiate any and all kinds of motion, nature is alive with senses. Sense and motion seems always to go together in the animate World, and this doctrine infers that there are senses in sticks and stones, which is why places have energy and vibrations. There are motions in inanimate things. Necessarily, there are many more motions in inanimate bodies than there are senses in animate, on account of the paucity of organs of sense. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Living beings, including animals, experience many kinds and varieties of pain and each involves motion. It is almost certain that there are as many motions in inanimate substances, though they do not enter the senses for want of animal spirit. Those things that are taught metaphorically in one part of Scripture, in other parts are taught more openly. They very hiding of truth in figures is useful for the exercise of thoughtful minds and as a defense against the ridicule of the impious, according to the words “Give not that which is holy to dogs,” reports Matthew 7.6. It is more fitting that divine truths should be expounded under the figure of less noble than of nobler bodies, and this for three reasons. Firstly, because thereby human’s minds are the better preserved from error. For then it is clear that these things are not literal descriptions of divine truths, which might have been open to doubt had they been expressed under the figure of nobler bodies, especially for those who could think of nothing nobler than bodies. Secondly, because this is more befitting the knowledge of God that we have in this life. For what God is nor is clearer to us than what He is. Therefore similitudes drawn from things farthest away from God form within us a truer estimate that God is above whatsoever we may say or thing of Him. Thirdly, because thereby divine truths are the better hidden from the unworthy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Every person has a need for Christ’s forgiveness and power, whether or not that person feels that need. However, anti-intellectualism has drained the church of its boldness in witnessing and speaking out about important issues in the places where ideas are granted. And for those who do have such courage, anti-intellectualism has created a context in which we Christians come off as shallow, defensive, and reactionary, instead of thoughtful, confident, and articulate. One evening a couple came to our home for dinner. During the meal the husband said almost nothing (except “Pass the lobster thermidor!”). Despite repeated attempts to engage him, the conversation took place primarily among the two wives and me. However, as the pumpkin cheesecake was being served, the topic of conversation turned to Victorian mansions, and from that point on we could hardly get a word in edgewise. Why? Victorian mansions were the man’s hobby. He owned two of them, knew how to build one from scratch, and truly was an expert on the subject. He had courage to speak up because he knew what he was talking about; he did not need to be defensive when someone differed with his viewpoint because he was confident about his knowledge. When people learn what they believe and why, they become bold in their witness and attractive in the way they engage others in debate or dialogue. When people take classes on Christian faith they feel more confident they are able to answers questions and are more comfortable talking about it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Being a Christian is no different than caring about Victorian architecture. There is nothing magic about being confident, articulate, and bold in either area. Knowing what you are talking about may be hard work, but it clearly pays off. Anti-intellectualism has not merely impacted the lives of believers within the heart of Christ. It has had has serious repercussion in the culture at large. As anti-intellectualism has softened out impact for Christ, so too has it contributed to the secularization of the culture. If the salt loses its saltiness, the meat will be impacted. In the aftermath of the Scopes trial in 1925, conservative Christianity was largely dismissed as an embarrassment among intellectual and cultural movers and shakers. As a result, we now live in one of the most secular cultures in history. We beseech Thee, O Lord, give a salutary effect to our fasting, that the mortification of our flesh may prove the nourishment of our souls; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who didst spare the Ninevites when they fasted for their sins; we humbly beseech Thee that in this our fast Thou wouldest, of Thine accustomed mercy, vouchsafe to us also Thy forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, if Thou shouldest determine to render to us what we deserve, we must sooner perish than endure our served punishment; we therefore pray Thee mercifully to forgive our wanderings; and that we may be able to be converted to Thy commandments, do Thou go before us with abundant mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Three in one, one in three, God of my salvation, Heavenly Father, blessed Son, eternal Spirit, I adore thee as one Being, one Essence, one God in three distinct Persons for bringing sinners to thy knowledge and to thy kingdom. O Father, thou hast loved me and sent Jesus to redeem me; O Jesus, thou hast loved me and assumed my nature, shed thine own blood to wash away my sins, wrought righteousness to cover my unworthiness; O Holy Spirit, thou hast loved me and entered my heart, implanted there eternal life, revealed to me the glories of Jesus. Three Persons and one God, I bless and praise thee, for loved so unmerited, so unspeakable, so wondrous, so mighty to save the lost and raise them to glory. O Father, I thank thee that in fullness of grace thou hast given me to Jesus, to be his sheep, jewel, portion; O Jesus, I thank thee that in fullness of grace thou hast accepted, espoused, bound me; O Holy Spirit, I thank thee that in fullness of grace thou hast exhibited Jesus as my salvation, implanted faith within me, subdued my stubborn heart, made me one with him forever. O Father, thou art enthroned to hear my prayers, O Jesus, thy hand is outstretched to take my petitions, O Holy Spirit, thou art willing to help my infirmities, to show me my need, to supply words, to pray within me, to strengthen me that I faint not in supplication. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
O Triune God, who commandeth the Universe, thou hast commanded me to ask for those things that concern thy kingdom and my soul. Let me live and pray as one baptized into the threefold Name. “And never have I showed myself unto humans whom I have created, for never have humans believed in me as thou hast. Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image. Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and humans have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh,” reports Ether3.15-16. We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy forgiving love, turn away what we deserve for our sins, nor let our offences prevail before Thee, but let Thy mercy always rise up to overcome them; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O, God, Who sufferest not that offenders should perish without being enabled to be converted and live, we beseech Thee to suspend the vengeance due to our sins, and mercifully grant that no dissembling on our part may increase our punishment, but rather that amendment may avail for our pardon; though Jesus Christ. Be present, O Lord, to our supplications; nor let Thy Merciful clemency be far away from Thy servants. Heal our wounds, forgive our sins, that being served from Thee by no iniquities, we may be able evermore to cleave to Thee our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
MILLS STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA
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There is Always a Moment in Life When the Doors Open and Lets the Future in!
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the Universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capitol of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the World there is no other being exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another being like you. Even your physical form is a wonder! You make become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven, a Reese Witherspoon, an Aaliyah, a Beyonce, an Oprah. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work; we al must work to make this World worthy of its population. The love of one’s country is a natural thing, but why should love stop at the border? We are all leaves of a tree and the tree is humanity. Our youth are the people who are going to carry on what we have started. They are going to move in and take over our church, schools, universities, and corporations. The fate of humanity is in their hands. There is always a moment in life when the doors open and lets the future in. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Humanity needs more models than critics. While generalizations can be misleading, it is safe to safe to say that from the arrival of the Pilgrims to the middle of the nineteenth century, American believers prized the intellectual life for its contributions to the Christian journey. The Puritans were highly educated people (the literacy rate for men in early Massachusetts and Connecticut was between 89 and 95 percent) who founded colleges, taught their children to read and write before the age of sic, and studied art, science, philosophy, and other fields as a way of loving God with the mind. Christians must rely on the Holy Spirit in their intellectual pursuits, but this does not mean they should expend no mental sweat of their own in defending faith. Faith is a power or skill to act in accordance with the nature of the kingdom of God, a trust in what we have reason to believe is true. Understood in this way, we see that faith is built on reason. Before we dedicate ourselves completely to it, we should have good reason for thinking that Christianity is true. We should have solid evidence that our understanding of a biblical passage is correct before we go on to apply it. And so on. For many, religion is identified with subjective feelings, sincere motives, personal piety, and blind faith. When you ask someone how they know God lives, they will tell you God lives in their heart. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Many people can give you concrete proof that God lives because of the things they have learned in the Bible about miracles and divine intervention, and people have set snares and placed traps in their path and even poisoned some, and by the grace of God, individuals can testify that they have overcome these hardship because of God. Therefore, our private experiences are proof that God exists. People might try to tell you that you are cursed because you are experiencing hardships, bullies want to make you hopeless, but you know for a fact that you are blessed and it is by the grace of God that you have been saved and have overcome many trials and tribulations and that is something you can testify to. In our hearts and intellectual life, the Lord must be glorified. In many cases where an individual’s stigmatization is associated with one’s admission to a custodial institution such as a correctional facility, sanatorium, below market rate housing, or an orphanage, much of what one learns about one’s stigma will be transmitted to one during prolonged intimate contact with those in the process of being transformed into one’s fellow-sufferers. As already suggested, when the individual first learns who it is that one must now accept as one’s own, one is likely, at the very least, to feel some ambivalence; for these others will not only be patently stigmatized, and thus not like the normal person one knows oneself to be, but may also have other attributes with which one finds it difficult to associate oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
A girl with a new visual impairment describes her experience in a facility for the blind. “My questions about a guide dog were politely turned aside. Another sighted worker took me in tow to show me around. We visited the Braille library; the classrooms; the clubrooms where the blind members of the music and dramatic groups meet; the recreation hall where on festive occasion the blind dance with the blind; the bowling alleys where the blind play together; the cafeteria, where all the blind gather to eat together; the huge workshops where the blind earn a subsistence income by making mops and brooms, weaving rugs, caning chairs. As we moved from room to room, I could hear the shuffling of feet, the muted voices, the tap-tap-tapping of canes. Here was the safe, segregated World of the sightless—a completely different World, I was assured by the social worker, from the one I had just left. I was expected to join this World. To give up my profession and to earn my living making mops. The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired would be happy to teach me how to make mops. I was to spend the rest of my life making mops with other blind people, eating with other blind people, dancing with other blind people. I became nauseated with fear, as the picture grew in my mind. Never had I come upon such destructive segregation.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Given the ambivalence built into the individual’s attachment to one’s stigmatized category, it is understandable that oscillations may occur in one’s support of, identification with, and participation among one’s own. There will be “affiliation cycles” through which one comes to accept the special opportunities for in-group participation or comes to reject them after having accepting them before. There will be corresponding oscillation in belief about the nature of own group and the nature of normal. For example, adolescence (and the high school peer group) can bring a marked decline in own-group identification and a marked increase in identification with normal. The later phases of the individual’s moral career are to be found in these shifts of participation and belief. The relationship of the stigmatized individual to the informal community and formal organizations of one’s own kind is, then, crucial. This relationship will, for example, mark a great difference between those whose differentness provides them very little of a new “we,” and those, such as marginalized group members as someone who should take pride in one’s infirmary and not seek to get well. In any case, whether the stigmatized group is an established one or not, it is largely in relation to this own-group that it is possible to discuss the natural history and the moral career of the stigmatized individual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Our youth need our presence more than they need our presents. With even the most reluctant individual there is a small part of them that desperately want to learn and be accepted. The strength of the desire is determined by our acceptance and belief in him or her. Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege than the raising of the next generation. Every one needs tenderness for what they are, and respect for what they may become for the greatest natural resource that any nation can have is its people. Therefore, we must learn to foster greater love for each other so that society may grow. The withdrawal of the corporate body of Christ from the public sphere of ideas is mirrored by our understanding of what is required to produce an individual disciple. However, spiritual life of faith, it is our heart, it is how we operate. What is more important for our youth is that they stay pure in college and, perhaps, witness, have a quiet time, and pray regularly. Obviously, these are important because the purpose of college is not just to get a job, but rather, it is to discover vocation, to identify a field of study in and through which one can serve Christ and Lord. And one way to serve God in this way is to learn to think in a Christian manner about our major. A person’s Christianity does not begin at a dorm Bible study, when class is over; it permeates all of one’s life, including how one thinks about the ideas in one’s college major. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Training the mind is an essential responsibility of the home, the church, and the school. Unless evangelicals prod young people to disciplined thinking, they waste—even undermine of Christianity’s most precious resources. However, if faith and reason are polar opposites, and if discipleship is private and sacred but college studies are public and secular, then training the intellect will not be valued as a part of the youth’s mentoring. That is why our discipleship materials often leave Christian young people vulnerable to atheistic college professors with an agenda to mislead the youth. I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. This withdrawal and marginalization of the church has had devastating consequences for our attempt to produce vibrant, confident disciples and to penetrate our culture with a Christian Worldview and the gospel of Christ. These consequences are very evident. We should train business people to develop a Christian understanding of economic theory, capitalism, business ethics, or moral issues in the employer/employee relationship. The mystery of the future and the mystery of the past are untied in the mystery of the present. Our time, the time we have, is the time in which we have “presence.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
However, how can we have “presence”? When we think of it, is not the present moment gone? Is not the present the ever-moving boundary line between past and future? However, a moving boundary is not a place to stand upon. If nothing were given to us expect the “no more” of the past and the “not yet” of the future, we would not have anything. We could not speak of the time that is our time; we would not have “presence.” The mystery is that we have a present; and even more, that we have our future also, because we remember it in the present. In the present our future and our past are ours. However, if we think of the never-ending flux of time, there is no “present.” The riddle of the present is the deepest of all the riddles of time. Again, there is no answer except from that which comprises all time and lies beyond it—the eternal. Whenever we say “now” or “today,” we stop the flux of times for us. We accept the present and do not care that it is gone in the moment we accept it. We live in it and it is renewed for us in every new “present.” This is possible because every moment of time reaches into the eternal. It is the eternal that stops the flux of time for us. It is the eternal “now” which provides for us a temporal “now.” We live so long a “it is still today”—in the words of the letter to the Hebrews. Not everybody, and nobody all the time, is aware of this “eternal now” in the temporal “now.” However, sometimes it breaks powerfully into our consciousness and gives us the certainty of the eternal, of a dimension of time which cuts into time and gives us our time. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
People who are never aware of this dimension lose the possibility of resting in the present. As the letter to the Hebrews describes it, they never enter into the divine rest. They are held by the past and cannot separate themselves from it, or they escape toward the future, unable to rest in the present. They have not entered the eternal rest which stops the flux of time and gives us the blessing of the present. Perhaps this is the most conspicuous characteristic of our period, especially in the New World and particularly in this country. It lacks the courage to accept “presence” because it has lost the dimensions of the eternal. “I am the beginning and the end.” This is said to us who live in the bondage of time, who need a present to stand upon. Each of the modes of time has its peculiar mystery, each of them carries its peculiar anxiety. Each of time drives us to an ultimate question. There is one answer to these questions –the eternal. There is one power that surpasses the all-consuming power of time—the eternal: He Who was and is and is to come, the beginning and the end. He gives us forgiveness for what has passed. He gives us courage for what is to come. He is God and God gives us rest in His eternal Presence. The activity of the senses discloses their chief function: they are reporters. As is true of all motion, sensory action is in response to the stimulus of surrounding things. The reports consist of information from sources external to the organ and they are made available to the mind of beings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Indeed, it is from the sense that all knowledge in nature must be sought, unless humans mean to go mad. Thus the sense, sound, sight, touch, taste, and smell provide for human’s guidance the materials of knowledge and counsel with which the understanding, reason, and imagination must work. Among the reporters, the sense of sight had the chief office in giving information. Volition, or choice, is the exercise of will, the capacity of the person to originate things and events that would not otherwise be or occur. By “originate” where we mean to include two of the things most prized in human life: freedom and creativity. When properly understood, these are really two aspects of the same thing, which is power to do what is good—or evil. The power in question belongs to individuals alone. Nothing makes them originate the good (or evil) they do. It is possible for them to not do it. Or to do it. Although a free action has many conditions, those conditions do not an action make. If it is our act, there must be added to those conditions the inner and always unforced “yes” or “no” by which the person responds to the situation. This response is our unique contribution to reality. It is ours, it is us, as nothing else is. Without the inner “yes” there is no sin, for only that “yes” (or “no”) is just us. The thought of sin is not sin and is not even temptation. Temptation is the thought plus the inclination to sin—possibly manifested by linger overt the thought or seeking it out. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
However, sin itself is when we inwardly say “yes” to the temptation, when we would do the deed, even though we do not actually do it. Similar distinction must be drawn with reference to doing what is good and right. These distinctions with reference to volition or choice will turn out to be very important later in our discussion. Now we need to be very clear on this point: the capacity for volition, and the acts of wiling in which it is exercised, from the spirit in beings. In this narrow and focused sense, the spiritual is not just the nonphysical, but it is the central core of the nonphysical part in beings. In us there is much that is not physical that also is not spirit—that is, not of the will. There is, then, a spirit in beings—a spirit that is one’s spirit. It is this that is the human spirit. And if we are to understand spiritual formation, we must understand what the spirit of the human being is. Spirit is, in general, that which is self-initiating and self-sustaining. Only God is purely spiritual, pure creative will and character. Only God can truly say, “I am that I am,” reports Exodus 3.14. God is, in his fundamental and overall nature, unbodily, personal power. Human beings have only some small element of spirit—unbodily, personal power—right at the center of who they are and who they become. It is, above all, this spirit (or will) that must be reached, cared for, and transformed in spiritual formation. The human will is primarily what must be given a Godly nature and must then proceed to expand its Godly governance over the entire personality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Thus will or spirit is also the heart in the human system: the core of its being. That is why we have the biblical teaching that human good and evil are matters of the heart. It is the heart and spirit that God looks at in relating to humankind, and in allowing us to relate to him. When we are able to free the individual from defensiveness, so that one is open to the wide range of one’s own needs, as well as the wide rage of environmental and social demands, one’s actions may be trusted to be beneficial, forward-moving, constructive. We do no need to ask who will socialize one, for one of one’s own deepest needs is for affiliation and communication with others. As one become more fully oneself, one will become more realistically socialized. We do not need to ask who will control one’s aggressive impulses; for as one becomes more open to all of one’s impulses, one’s need to be liked by others and one’s tendency to give affection will be as strong as one’s impulses to strike out or to seize for oneself. One will be aggressive in situations in which aggression is realistically appropriate, but there will be no runaway need for aggression. One’s total behavior, in these and other areas, as one moves toward being open to all one’s experience, will be more balanced and realistic, behavior which is appropriate to the survival and enhancement of highly social terrestrial beings. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
I have little sympathy with the rather prevalent concept that beings are basically irrational, and that one’s impulses, if not controlled, will lead to destruction of others and self. Human’s behavior is exquisitely rational, moving with subtle and ordered complexity toward the goals of one’s organism is endeavoring to achieve. The tragedy for most of us is that our defenses keep us from being aware of this rationality, so that consciously we are moving in one direction, while organismically we are moving in another. However, in our person who is living the process of the good like, there would be a decreasing number of such barriers, and one would be increasingly a participant in the rationality of one’s organism. The only control of impulses which would exist, or which would prove necessary, is the natural and internal balancing of one need against another, and the discovery of behaviors which follow the vector most closely approximating the satisfaction of all needs. The experience of extreme satisfaction of one need (for aggression, or pleasures of the flesh, and so forth) in such a way as to do violence to the satisfaction of other needs (for companionship, tender relationship, and so forth)—an experience very common in the defensively organized person—would be greatly decreased. One would participate in the vastly complex self-regulatory activities of one’s organism—the psychological as well as physiological thermostatic controls—in such a fashion as to live in increasing satisfaction and harmony in society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
In this process of living the good life, it also involves a wider range, a greater richness, than the constricted living in which most of us find ourselves. To be part of this process means that one is involved in the frequently and frightening satisfying experience of a more sensitive living, with greater range, greater variety, greater richness. It seems to me that clients who have moved significantly in therapy live more intimately with their feelings of pain, but also more vividly with their feelings of ecstasy; that anger is more clearly felt, but so also is love; that fear is an experience they know more deeply, but so is courage. And the reason they can thus live fully in a wider range is that they have this underlying confidence in themselves as trustworthy instruments for encountering life. I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even through the person in this process would experience each one of these feelings at appropriate times. However, the adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one’s potentialities. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Living the good life also involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, one chooses as the good life this process of becoming. Even when we were fill of transgression, because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. It is by grace we have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the Heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Jesus Christ has already paid for every blessing you and I will ever receive from God the Father. God’s salvation for Christ’s sake carries with it all the provisions we need, not only for eternity but for all this life as well. “Train yourself to be Godly. For physical training is of some value, but Godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come,” reports 1 Timothy 4.7-8. Whether or not we have disciplined ourselves will make a huge difference in this life. We are all members of one another, and we are each either elevated or depressed by the inner lives of one another. Some of us affect others like a joyous tide, lifting them upward, but some of us are like undertows to the Body of Christ. Spiritual discipline holds huge promise for this present life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
As for the life to come, spiritual discipline builds the enduring architecture of one’s soul on the foundation of Christ—gold, silver, and precious stones which will survive the fires of judgment and remain a monument to Christ for eternity. Some many minimize the importance of spiritual discipline now, but it is part of living the good life. Godliness has value for all things! The disciplined Christian gives and gets the best of both Worlds—the World now and the World to come. The word discipline may raise the feeling of stultifying constraint in some minds—suggesting a claustrophobic, restricted life. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The obsessive, almost manic discipline of Mike Singletary liberated him to play like a wild man on the football field. Hemingway’s angst over the right word freed him to leave a mark on the English language second only to Shakespeare. The billion sketched of the Renaissance great set Michelangelo free to create the skies of the Sistine Chapel. Churchill’s painstaking preparation freed him to give great impromptu speeches and brilliant ripostes. The disciplined drudgery of the musical greats like Armin van Burren and Ruben de Ronde released their genius. And, brothers and sisters in Christ, spiritual discipline frees us from the gravity of this present age and allows us to soar with the saints and Angels. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
This doctrine of faith is especially based upon statements from authority, inasmuch as its principles are obtained by revelation: thus we ought to believe on the authority of those whom the revelation has been made. Nor does this take away from the dignity of this doctrine, for although the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest, yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest. However, sacred doctrine makes use even of human reason, not, indeed, to prove faith (for thereby the merit of faith would come to an end), but to make clear other things that are put forward in this doctrine. Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity. Hence the Apostles says: “Bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 10.5. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Eternal King of all, that being purified by the sacred fast, we may come with sincere minds to partake of Thy holy things; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that renewing our sacred observations with annual devotion, we may please Thee both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, that our earnest devotion may become fruitful through Thy grace; for then shall our fast be profitable to us, if it is well-pleasing to Thy loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Lord, high and holy, meek and lovely, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine; let me find thy light in my darkness, thy life in my death, thy joy in my sorrow, thy grace in my sin, thy riches in my poverty, thy glory in my valley. “And when he had said these words, behold, the Lord showed himself unto him, and said: Because thou knowest these things ye are redeemed from the fall; therefore ye are brought back into my presence; therefore I show myself unto you. Behold I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the World to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the So. In me shall all humankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and daughters,” reports Ether 3.13-14. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Character is ultimately who we are expressed in action, in how we live, in what we do, and so the children around us know: they absorb and take stock of what they observe, namely us—we adults living and doing things in a certain spirit, getting along with one another in various ways. Our children add up, imitate, file away what they have observed and so very often later fall in line with the particular moral counsel we wittingly or quite unself-consciously have offered them.
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The Illuminate Has a Cosmic Outlook—One thinks and Feel for All Creatures No Less than for Oneself!
If we are to keep our feet on the ground, we must put some responsibility on our shoulders. Cherishing humanity is the mark of a civilized society. The best security blanket the World can have is beings who respect each other. It is important that we unite in the mightiest, the biggest arms race in history, a race to put our arms around the ones we love, around all our family. Let us embrace humanity with the love, courage, hope, respect, education, opportunity, and let the imperatives of our arms race fix our global priorities so that no being in the World shall in effect be denied the right to dream. For the lesson we teach today is not confined to the walls of our homes, once it is implanted in the hearts and the minds of the community, it can change the World. Yesterday you may have been discouraged, but today you see something you did not see before. Maybe this is what yesterdays are for. In the business World, financially troubled companies forced into bankruptcy have two options, popularly knows as Chapter 7 and Chapter 11, after the respective chapters in the federal bankruptcy code. Chapter 11 deals with what we could call a temporary bankruptcy. This option is chosen by a basically healthy company that, given time, can work through its financial problems. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Chapter 7 is for a company that has reached the end of its financial rope. It is not only deeply in debt, it has no future as a viable business. It is forced to liquidate its assets and pay off its creditors, often by as little as ten cents on the dollar. The company is finished. It is all over. The owners or investors lose everything they have put into the business. No one like Chapter 7 bankruptcy. How many of us declare spiritual bankruptcy and what kind? I suspect many of us declare temporary bankruptcy. Having trusted in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, sometimes we lose faith because life seems hard and unfair, and we take sometime to sulk. However, then we are reminded that humans have free will and that Jesus Christ paid our debt of sins and secured for us the gift of eternal life. And that God has been working overtime to protect of from snares in life. There is nothing more we can do to earn our salvation, but behave righteously and follow the golden rule, which is to treat others like we want to be treated. Therefore, we subtly and maybe even unconsciously revert back to a working relationship with God in our Christian lives. We recognize that our best efforts can get us into Heaven, and they earn God’s blessings in our daily lives. After becoming more spirituality enlightened, we do away with obvious sins, and we see some beneficial changes in our lives. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
As a result of our increased faith and righteous behavior, we emerge from bankruptcy and pay our own way in the Christian life. It seems this sacred doctrine of faith is not a science. For every science proceeds from self-evident principles. However, sacred doctrines proceeds from articles of faith which are not self-evident, since their truth is not admitted by all: “For all beings not have faith,” reports 2 Thessalonians 3.2. Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science. And because we have faith, if we lost our faith for good, that would be Chapter 7 bankruptcy, something that it permanent. However, it is not our place to judge others who do not believe in God, we must never force our belief system on to others. Saving faith is begotten, nourished, protected, and strengthened because it is a sacred doctrine. Even when we backslide in our spiritual faith, or we fail to do what we should have done, we have not forfeited all blessings from God for some undetermined period of time. We are legalistic by nature, and we know that if we ask for forgiveness and repent, God will forgive us and add to our faith more virtues such as goodness, knowledge, self-control, and love. And we find the Bible is filled with exhortations to do good works and pursue the disciplines of spiritual growth. There is a time in our lives when we are saved. “For it is by grace you have been saved,” reports Ephesians 2.8. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Sanctification is our growth in Christlikeness. It is a progressive experience covering our entire Christian lives from salvation to glorification. Glorification occurs at the time we depart from this life to be with Christ. (Glorification actually achieves its complete fulfillment at the resurrection, of course, but even now those who are with Christ are described as “the spirits of righteous beings made perfect,” reports Hebrews 12.23.”) That is why sacred doctrine is nobler than a science for it deal with eternal bliss, to which is an ultimate end. All true Christians readily agree that justification is by grace through faith in Christ. And if we stop to think about it, we agree that glorification is also solely by God’s grace. Jesus purchased for us not only forgiveness of sins (justification) but also eternal life (glorification). Our concept of the Christian life is a justification based on grace, Christian life based on grace, and glorification based on grace. That is, the entire Christian life from start to completion is lived on the basis of God’s grace to us through Christ. The Christian’s total debt has been paid by Christ. The law of God and the justice of God have been fully satisfied. The debt of our sins has been marked “Paid in Full!” God is satisfied and so are we. We have peace with God, and we are delivered from a guilt conscience. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
We are brought into God’s Kingdom by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we are motivated to obedience by grace; we are called to serve and enabled to serve by grace; we receive strength to endure trials by grace; and finally, we are glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace. Grace is God’s free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment. It is the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him. Grace stands in direct opposition to any supposed worthiness on our part. To say it another way: Grace and works are mutually exclusive. “And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace,” reports Paul in Romans 11.6. Our relationship with God is based on either works or grace. There is never a works-plus grace relationship with God. Furthermore, grace does not first rescue us from the penalty of our sins, furnish us with some new spiritual abilities, and then leave us on our own to grow in spiritual maturity. “Rather, one who began a good work in you [by His grace] will [also by His grace] carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus,” reports Philippians 1.6. Therefore, after beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to obtain your goal by human effort? #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
A characteristic of the person who is living the process of the good life appears to be an increasing trust in one’s organism as a means of arriving at the most satisfying behavior in each existential situation. Again, let me explain what I mean. In choosing what course of action to take in any situation, many people rely upon guiding principles, upon a code of action laid down by some group or institution, upon the judgment of others (from wide and friends to Emily Post), or upon the way they have behaved in some similar past situation. Yet, as I observe the clients whose experiences in living have taught me so much, I find that increasingly such individuals are able to trust their total organismic reaction to a new situation because they discover to an ever-increasing degree that if they are open to their experience, doing what “feel right” proves to be a competent and trustworthy guide to behavior which is truly satisfying. The person who is fully open to one’s experience would have access to all of the available data in the situation, on which to base one’s behavior; the social demands, one’s own complex and possibly conflicting needs, one’s memories of similar situations, one’s perception of the uniqueness of this situation, and so on. The data would be very complex indeed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
However, one could permit one’s total organism, one’s consciousness participating, to consider each stimulus need, and demand, its relative intensity and importance, and out of this complex weighing and balancing, discover that course of action which would come closest to satisfying all one’s needs in the situation. An analogy which might come close to a description would be to compare this person to a giant electronic computing machine. Since one is open to one’s experience, all of the data from one’s sense impression from one’s memory, from previous learning, from one’s visceral and internal states, is fed into the machine. The machine takes all of these multitudinous pulls and forces which are fed in as data, and quickly computes the course of action which would be the most economical vector of need satisfaction in this existential situation. This is the behavior of our hypothetical person. The defects which in most of us make this process untrustworthy are the inclusion of information which does not belong to this present situation, or the exclusion of information which does. It is as when memories and pervious learnings are fed into the computations as if they were this reality, and not memories and learnings, that erroneous behavioral answers arise. Or when certain threatening experiences are inhibited from awareness, and hence are withheld from the computation or fed into it in distorted form, this too produces error. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
However, our hypothetical person would find one’s organism thoroughly trustworthy, because all of the available data would be used, and it would be present in accurate rather than distorted from. Hence one’s behavior would come as close as possible to satisfying all one’s needs—for enhancement, for affiliation with others, and the like. In this weighing, balancing, and computation, one’s organism would not by any means be infallible. It would always give the best possible answer for the available data, but sometimes data would be missing. Because of the elements of openness to experience, however, any errors, any following of behavior which was not satisfying, would be quickly corrected. The computations, as it were, would always be in process of being corrected, because they would be continually checked in behavior. Perhaps you will not like my analogy of an electronic computing machine. Let me return to the clients I know. As they become more open to all of their experiences, they find it increasingly possible to trust their reactions. If they feel like expressing anger they do so in a safe and constructive manner and find that this comes out satisfactorily, because they are equally alive to all of their other desires for affection, affiliation, and relationship. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
My clients are surprised at their own intuitive skill in finding behavioral solutions to complex and troubling human relationships. It is only afterward that they realize how surprisingly trustworthy their inner reactions have been in bring about satisfactory behavior. It appears that the person who is psychologically free moves in the direction of becoming a more fully functioning person. One is more able to live fully in and with each and all of one’s feelings and reactions. One makes increasing use of all one’s organic equipment to sense, as accurately as possible, the existential situation within and without. One makes use of all of the information one’s nervous system can thus supply, using it in awareness, but recognizing that one’s total organism may be, and often is, wiser than one’s awareness. One is more able to permit one’s total organism to function freely in all its complexity in selecting, from the multitude of possibilities, that behavior which in this moment of time will be most generally and genuinely satisfying. One is able to put more trust in one’s organism in this functioning, not because it is infallible, but because one can be fully open to the consequences of each of his or her actions and correct them if they prove to be less than satisfying. It is human’s own fault, however, if through failure to seek spiritual guidance or understanding, none is vouchsafed to one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Jesus told of, “As, and it shall be given unto you.” When the pupil is ready, the Master appears. This means that such is the wonderful sensitivity of the mind, such is the reality of telepathic power, that when a being’s search for truth has reached a crisis, one will meet the being who or the source which can best resolve that crisis. However, the crisis itself must be filled with uncertainty and doubt, with helplessness and despair before the mysterious forces of God will begin to move toward one’s relief. It should seem to one them most momentous consequence that is shall be brought to a satisfactory end, if life in the future is to have any meaning for one at all. There must be a sense of inner loneliness so acute that the outer loneliness compares as nothing with it. There must be no voice within one’s World which can speak to one’s condition. This critical period must fill one’s mind with exaggeration of its own self-importance to such an extent as to blot out every other value from life. It will be at such an opportune moment, when one’s search for truth will be most intense and the required preparation for meeting its bearer most complete, that the bearer oneself will arise and bring into one’s night the joyful tidings of dawn. The influence of such a being or source at such a period is incalculable. If we recall the rare hours when we encountered the best persons, we there found ourselves. God’s greatest gift is a Teacher. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The seeker knows at last that even if one has not found the truth, one is at least on the way to finding it. One has begun to find harmony with oneself. If the strong yearning for truth be absent, a being may meet a thousand masters of the quest but one will neither recognize them for what they are nor experience any exaltation in their presence. This yearning must indeed be as strong as the hunger of a starving being or the desperation of a traveler lost in the desert. One’s desperate need drives one to go in search of help wherever one can find it. In obedience to this inner urge one should take a path which will lead one to the friendship of the few enlightened beings living in one’s time and bring one to their presence. As a result one is more able to experience all of one’s feelings, and is less afraid of any of one’s feelings; one is one’s own sifter of evidence, and is more open to evidence from all sources; one is completely engaged in the process of being and becoming oneself, and thus discovers that one is soundly and realistically social; one lives more completely in this moment, but learns that this is the soundest living for all time. One is becoming a more fully functioning organism, and because of the awareness of oneself which flows freely in and through one’s experience, one is becoming a more fully functioning person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Any view of what constitutes the good life carries with it many implications, and the view I have presented is no exception. I hope that these implications may be food for thought. One is free—to become oneself or to hide behind a façade; to move forward or to retrogress; to behave in ways which are destructive of self an others, or in ways which are enhancing; quite literally free to live or die, in both the physiological and psychological meaning of those terms. Yet as we enter this field of psychotherapy with objective research methods, we are, like any other scientist, committed to a complete determinism. From this point of view every thought, feeling, and action of the client is determined by what preceded it. There can be no such thing as freedom. The dilemma I am trying to describe is no different than that found in other fields—it is simply brought to sharper focus, and appears more insoluble. This dilemma can be seen in a fresh perspective, however, when we consider it in terms of the definition I have given of the fully functioning person. We could say that in the optimum of therapy the person rightfully experiences the most complete and absolute freedom. One wills or choose to follow the course of action which is the most economical vector in relationship to all the internal and external stimuli, because it is that behavior which will be most deeply satisfying. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
However, this is the same course of action which from another vantage point may be said to be determined by all the factors in the existential situation. Let us contrast this with the picture of the person who is defensively organized. One wills or chooses to follow a given course of action, but finds that one cannot behave in the fashion that one chooses. One is determined by the factors in the existential situation, but these factors include one’s defensiveness, one’s denial or distortion of some of the relevant data. Hence it is certain that one’s behavior will be less than fully satisfying. One’s behavior is determine, but one is not free to make an effective choice. The fully functioning person, on the other hand, not only experiences, but utilizes, the most absolute freedom when one spontaneously, freely, and voluntarily chooses and wills that which is also absolutely determined. I am not so naïve as to suppose that this fully resolves the issue between subjective and objective, between freedom and necessity. Nevertheless it has meaning for me that the more the person is living the good life, the more one will experience a freedom of choice, and the more one’s choices will be effectively implemented in one’s behavior. I believe it will be clear that a person who is involved in the directional process which I have termed “the good life” is a creative person. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Because one who is living the good life is a creative being, with one’s sensitive openness to one’s World, one’s trust of one’s own ability to form new relationships with one’s environment, one will be the type of person from whom creative products and creative living emerge. One would not necessarily be “adjusted” to one’s culture, and one would almost certainly not be a conformist. However, at any time an in any culture one would live constructively, in as much harmony with one’s culture as a balanced satisfaction of needs demanded. In some cultural situations one might in some ways be very unhappy, but one would continue to move toward becoming oneself, and to behave in such a way as to provide the maximum satisfaction of one’s deepest needs. Such a person would, I believe, be recognized by the student of evolution as the type most likely to adapt and survive under changing environmental conditions. One will be able to creatively make sound adjustments to new as well as old conditions. One will be a vanguard of human evolution. When dealing with the World, one holds no self-image of a flattering kind to buttress one’s ego, in which one prefers to remain inconspicuously—unless a particular work of service withdraws one outwardly from this humility. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Those who are deceived too quickly by appearances to take the trouble to try and penetrate them may find one a cold being. However, the truth is that one has feeling, not passion. There is dynamic power within one, but it is always impersonal and always calm. It is never used to gratify personal vanity or egoistic aggression. The self-actualized being knows more secrets than one ever tells, and knows, too, how to keep them well. The self-actualized being hears the answers of Life to the questions of humans where the latter hears nothing. It is impossible to forget the unflattering dignity of such a being, in whom all those littleness which betray mediocrity have been submerged and dissolved forever. Here at last is a being who stand out from the herd become of one’s essential goodness and complete integrity, one’s fine insight and lonely dignity. Faith and a disciplined mental life are not natural enemies. A well-formed mind held a place of honor. And it is believed that the Christian mind could be the best mind. Because the World we live in is full of influences that would shape the way we think—and consequently how we act and live—we need more rigorous discipline to be Christians and thinking people, not less. Love your God with all your mind in its spiritual formation line. Thought brings things before our minds in various ways (including perception and imagination) and enables us to consider them in various respects and trace out their interrelationships with one another. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Thought is that which enables our will (or spirit) to range far beyond the immediate boundaries of our environment and the perceptions of our sense. Though it one consciousness reaches into the depths of the Universe, past, present, and future, by reasoning and scientific thinking, by imagination and art—and also be divine revelation, which comes to us mainly in the form of thought. Feeling inclines us toward or away from things that come before our minds in thought. It involves a tone that is pleasant or painful, along with an attraction or repulsion with respect to existence or possession of what is thought of. How we feel about food, automobiles, relationships, positions, and hundred of other things illustrates this point. Notice that feeling and thought always go together. They are interdependent and are never found apart. There is no feeling without something being before the mind in thought and no thought without some optimistic or pessimistic feeling toward what is contemplated. What we call indifference is never a total absence of feelings, good or bad, but simply an unusually low degree of feeling, usually negative. The connection between thought and feeling is so intimate that the mind is usually treated as consisting of thought and feeling together. I shall do so here. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Of course the mind thus understood—or understood in any way you like—is a quite complicated aspect of the person, with numerous subdivisions built into both thought and feeling. In the ruined soul, the mind becomes a fearful wilderness and a wild intermixture of thought and feeling, manifested in willful stupidities, blatant inconsistencies, and confusions, often to the point of obsession, madness, or possession. This condition of mind is what characterizes our World apart from God. Satan, the prince of this World, hold sway over it. O Glorious, holy, Almighty God, Who being ever pitiful to the manifold wanderings of humankind, didst doubtless for this end guide the Magi, who dwelt in dark superstition, by the light of a star to Thy sacred cradle, that Thou mightiest kindle al beings who were walking in their own errors with the desires of knowing Thee; kindle us also, we pray Thee, with the saving ardour of love for Thee, that we who have already known Thee by The gracious illumination, may be enabled to cleave to Thee forever. Grant, O Almighty God, that we may be able continually to shake off the yoke of Egyptian servitude and sin, and to appear before Thy Majesty in our Heavenly country; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Lord, to Thy faithful people that they may enter on the venerable solemnity of this fast with fitting piety, and go through it with undisturbed devotion; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolpHarris 17 of 18
Grant us, O Lord, to enter on the service of our Christian warfare with holy fasting; that as we are to fight against spiritual powers of wickedness, we may be fortified by the assistance of self-denial; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who by The Word dost marvelously work out the reconciliation of humankind; grant, both be subjected to Thee with all our hearts, and be united to each other in prayer to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who in Thy deep counsel and foresight for humankind, hast appointed holy fasts, where by the hearts of the weak might receive salutary healing; do Thou purify our souls and bodies, O Saviour of body and soul, O loving Bestower of eternal happiness! through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let Thy gracious favour carry us through the fast which we have begun; that as we observe it by bodily discipline, so we may be able to fulfill it with sincerity of mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant to us, O Almighty God, that by the annual exercise of Lenten observances we may advance in knowledge of the mystery of Christ, and follow His mind by conduct worthy of our calling, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the assistance of Thy grace; that being intent, as becomes us, on fasting and prayer, we may be delivered from bodily and spiritual enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Yea, Lord, I know that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not lie,” reports Ether 3.12. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Come to Me and You Will Find Rest in Your Souls–I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End!
We often worry about what we will be tomorrow, but do not take into account that we are somebody today. Life should be a place of learning suffused with excitement, engagement, passion, challenge, creativity, and joy. When we are in the minority, that is when the test of courage comes; when we are in the majority is when the test of acceptance comes. It is our destiny and the destiny of everything in the World that we must come to an end. Very end that we experience in nature and humankind speaks to us with a loud voice: you also will come to an end! It may reveal itself in the farewell to a place where we have lived for a long time, the separation from the fellowship of intimate associates, the death of someone near to us. Or it may become apparent to us in the failure of a work that gave meaning to us, the end of a whole period of life, the approach of old age, or even in the melancholy side of nature visible in autumn. All this tells us: you will also come to an end. Whenever we are shaken by this voice reminding us of our end, we ask anxiously—what does it mean that we have a beginning and an end, that we come from the darkness of the not yet, and rush ahead towards the darkness of the no more? When Augustine asked this question, he began his attempt to answer it with a prayer. And it is right to do so, because praying means elevating oneself to the eternal. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
In fact, there is no other way of judging time than to see it in the light of the eternal. In order to judge something, one must be partly within it, partly out of it. If we were totally within time, we would not be able to elevate ourselves in prayer, meditation and thought, to the eternal. We would be children of time like all other creatures and could not ask the question of the meaning of time. However, as human beings we are aware of the eternal to which we belong and from which we are estranged by the bondage of time. We speak of time in three ways or modes—the past, present, and future. Every child is aware of them, but no wise being has ever penetrated their mystery. We become aware of them when we hear a voice telling us: you also will come to an end. It is the future that awakens us to the mystery of time. Time runs from the beginning to the end, but our awareness of times goes in the opposite direction. It starts with the anxious anticipation of the end. In the light of the future we see the past and present. So let us first consider our going into the future and towards the end that is the last point that we can anticipate in out future. The image of the future produces contrasting feelings in beings. The expectation of the future gives one a feeling of joy. We may even learn to recapture the will to laugh and the art of laughing at will. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
It is a great thing to have a future in which one can actualize one’s possibilities, in which one can experience the abundance of life, in which one can create something new—be it new work, a new way of life, or the regeneration of one’s own being. Courageously one goes ahead towards the new, especially in the earlier part of one’s own life. However, this feeling struggles with other ones: the anxiety about what is hidden in the future, the ambiguity of everything it will bring us, the shortness of its duration that decreases with every year of our life and becomes shorter the nearer we come to the unavoidable end. And finally the end itself, with its impenetrable darkness and the threat that one’s whole existence in time will be judged as a failure. Therefore, it may be a good idea to think before one speaks, and read before one thinks. This may give one something to think about that we did not make up ourselves—a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when one is at the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions. We want to be in the pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in the pursuit of us. The goal is to fully realize the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in our souls. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
How do beings, how do you, react to this image of the future with its hope and threat and inescapable end? Probably most of us react by looking at the immediate future, anticipating it, working for it, hoping for it, being anxious about it, while cutting off from our awareness the future which is farther away, and above all, by cutting off from our consciousness the end, the last moment of our future. Perhaps we could not live without doing so most of our time. However, perhaps we will not be able to die if we always do so. And if one is not able to die, is one really about to live? How do we react if we become aware of the inescapable end contained in our future? Are we able to bear it, to take its anxiety into a courage that faces ultimate darkness? Or are we thrown into utter hopelessness? Do we hope against hope, or do we repress our awareness of the end because we cannot stand it? Repressing the consciousness of our end expresses itself in several ways. Many try to do so by putting the expectation of a long life between now and the end. For them it is decisive that the end be delayed. Even old people who are near the end do this, for they cannot endure the fact that the end will not be delayed much longer. Many people realize this deception and hope for a continuation of this life after death. They expect an endless future in which they may achieve or possess what has been denied them in this life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
This attitude that we will achieve our hearts desires in the after life is a prevalent attitude about the future, and also a very simple one. It denies that there is an end. It refuses to accept that we are creatures, that we come from the eternal ground of time and return to the eternal ground of time and have received a limited span of time as our time. It replaces eternity by endless future. However, endless future is without a final aim; it repeats itself and could well be described as an image of hell. This is not the Christian way of dealing with the end. The Christian message says the eternal stands above past and future. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” The Christian message acknowledges that time runs towards an end, and that we move towards the end of that time which is our time. Many people—but not the Bible—speak loosely of the “hereafter” or the “life after death.” Even in our liturgies eternity is translated by “World without end.” However, the World, by its very nature, is that which comes to an end. If we want to speak in truth without foolish, wishful thinking, we should speak about the eternal that is neither timelessness nor endless time. The mystery of the future is answered in the eternal of which we may speak in images taken from time. However, if we forget that the images are images, we fall into absurdities and self-deceptions. There is no time after time, but there is eternity above time. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Time is like a jigsaw puzzle. Each edge piece of a puzzle interlocks with two others to form the puzzle’s framework and give structure and support to the puzzle as a whole. Each piece has a unique design and cut that ensures just the right place to fit within the puzzle. Each morning, people from the edge pieces that interlock to create a safe environment and give support to one another and the whole. Each morning, they provide just the right place for every individual to fit safely and securely. The community members are strength and stability, and like the edge pieces, they do not stand alone in this responsibility. There are always others to support and assist, ensuring that every person has a place. The spirits temper the movements of bodily parts. Some infectious diseases are chiefly in the spirits, and not so much in the humours. We have complex and contradictory feelings toward the freedom and independence and self-determination of the individuals and countries: we desire these and are proud of the past support we have given to such tendencies, and yet we are often frightened by what they may mean. We tend to value and respect the dignity and worth of each individual, yet when we are frightened, we move away from this direction. Suppose we presented ourselves in some such fashion, openly and transparently, in our foreign relations. We would be attempting to be the nation which we truly are, in all our complexity and even contradictoriness. What would be the result? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
If we, as a country, were more open and transparent in our foreign relations, it seems the results would be similar to the experiences of a client when one is more truly that which he or she is. Let us look at some of the probable outcomes. We would be much more comfortable, because we would have nothing to hide. We could focus on the problem at hand, rather than spending our energies to prove that we are moral or consistent. We could use all of our creative imagination in solving the problem, rather than in defending ourselves. We could openly advance both our selfish interests, and our sympathetic concern for others, and let these conflicting desires find the balance which is acceptable to us as a people. We could freely change and grow in our leadership position, because we would not be bound by rigid concepts of what we have been, must, ought to be. We would find that we were much less feared, because others would be less inclined to suspect what lies behind the façade. We would, by our own openness, tend to bring forth openness and realism on the part of others. We would tend to work out the solutions of World problems on the basis of the real issues involved, rather than in terms of the facades being worn by the negotiating parties. In short what I am suggesting by this fantasied example is that nations and organizations might discover, as have individuals, that it is a richly rewarding experience to be what one deeply is. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
I am suggesting that this view contains the seeds of a philosophical approach to all of life, that it is more than a trend observed in the experience of clients. Feeling rules are what guide emotion work by establishing the sense of entitlement or obligation that governs emotional exchanges. This emotion system works privately, often free of observation. It is a vital aspect of deep private bonds and also affords a way of talking about them. It is a way of describing how—as parents and children, wives and husbands, friends and lovers—we intervene in feelings in order to shape them. What are feeling rules? How do we know they exist? How do they bear on deep acting? We may address these questions by focusing on the pinch between “what I do feel” and “what I should feel,” for at this spot we get our best view of emotional convention. Now, when we take a closer look at the whole person, we find that there are six basic aspects in our lives as individual human beings—six things inseparable from every human life. These together and in interplay make up human nature. Thought (images, concepts, judgments, inferences), feeling (sensation, emotion), choice (will, decision, character), body (action, interaction with the physical World), social context (personal and structural relations to others), and soul (the factor that integrates all of the above to form one life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Simply put, every human being thinks (has a thought life), feels, chooses, interacts with one’s body and its social context, and (more of less) integrates all of the foregoing as parts of one life. These are the essential factors in a human being, and nothing essential to human life falls outside of them. The ideal of the spiritual life in the Christian understanding is one where all of the essential parts of the human self are effectively organized around Go, as they are restored and sustained by him. Spiritual formation in Christ is the process leading to that ideal end, and its result is love of God with all of the hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor as oneself. The human self is then fully integrated under God. The salvation or deliverance of the believer in Christ is essentially holistic or whole-life. David the psalmist, speaking of his own experience but prophetically expressing the understanding of Jesus the Messiah, said, “I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure,” reports Psalm 16.7-9. Note how many aspects of the self are explicitly involved in this passage: the mind, the will, the feeling, the soul, and the body. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
A major part of understanding spiritual formation in the Christian traditions is to follow closely the way the biblical writings repeatedly and emphatically focus on the various essential dimensions of the human being and their role in life as a whole. We will draw from spiritual understanding the incentive to keep on with our quest and the courage to set higher goals. To learn from God in this total-life immersion is ow we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. The outcome is that we increasingly are able to do all things, speaking or acting, as I Christ were doing them. As apprentices of Christ we are not learning how to do some special religious activity, but how to live every moment of our live from the reality of God’s kingdom. I am learning how to live my actual life as Jesus would if He were me. No matter what my profession is, I am in full-time Christian service no less than someone who earns his or her living in a specifically religious role. Jesus stands beside me and teaches me in all I do to live in God’s World. He shows me how, in every circumstance, to reside in His word and thus be a genuine apprentice of His—His disciple indeed. This enables me to find the reality of God’s World everywhere I may be, and thereby to escape from enslavement to sin and evil. We become able to do what we know to be good and right, even when it is humanly impossible. Our lives and words become constant testimony of the reality of God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
When, for example, an architect facing a difficult architectural job, one must know how to integrate it into the kingdom of God as much as someone attempting to win another to Christ or preparing a lesson for a congregation. Until we are clear on this, we will have missed Jesus’ connection between life and God and will automatically exclude most of our everyday lives from the domain of faith and discipleship. Jesus lived most of His life on Earth as a blue-collar worker, someone we might describe today as an independent contractor. In His vocation He practiced everything He later taught about in life in the kingdom. It is important to move away from derogatory language against others, calling them twits, jerks, or idiots, and increasingly mesh with the respect and endearment for persons that naturally flows from God’s way. This in turn transforms all of my dealings with others into tenderness and makes the usual coldness and brutality of human relations, which lays a natural foundation for unspeakable actions, simply unthinkable. Our mind and heart will keep coming back to God’s grace. The grace of God is so inexhaustible and at times overwhelming. “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever more! Amen,” reports 2 Peter 3.18. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Growing in the grace of God allows one to become acquainted with elements of our experience which have in the past been denied to awareness as too threatening, too damaging to the structure of the self. One finds one’s experiencing these feelings fully, completely, in the relationship, so that for the moment one is one’s fear, or one’s anger, or one’s tenderness, or one’s strength. And as one lives these widely varied feelings, in all their degrees of intensity, one discovers that one has experienced oneself, that one is all these feelings. One finds that one’s behavior changing in constructive fashion in accordance with one’s newly experienced self. One approaches the realization that one no longer needs to fear what experience may hold, but can welcome it freely as a part of one’s changing and developing self. However, it seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted, or fulfilled, or actualized. It is not a state of drive-reduction, or tension-reduction, or homeostasis. I believe that all of these terms have been used in ways which imply that if one or several of these states is achieved, then the goal of life have been achieved. Certainly, for many people happiness, or adjustment, are seen as states of being which are synonymous with the good life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Social scientists have frequently spoken of the reduction of tension, or the achievement of homeostasis or equilibrium as if these states constituted the goal of the process of living. So it is with a certain amount of surprise and concern that I realize that my experience supports none of these definitions. If I focus on the experience of those individuals who seem to have evidenced the greatest degree of movement during the spiritual and therapeutic relationship, and who, in the years following this relationship, appear to have made and to be making real progress toward the good life, then it seems to me that they are not adequately described at all by any of these terms which refer to fixed states of being. I believe they would consider themselves insulted if they were described as adjusted, and they would regard it as false if they were described as happy or contented or even actualized. As I have known them I would regard it as most inaccurate to say that all their dive tensions have been reduced, or that they are in a state of homeostasis. So I am forced to ask myself whether there is any way in which I can generalize about their situation, any definition which I can give of the good life which would seem to fit the facts as I have observed them. I find this not at all easy, and what follows is stated very tentatively. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. The direction which constitutes the good life is that which is selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in any direction. This organismically selected direction seems to have certain discernible general qualities which appear to be the same in a wide variety of unique individuals. The good life, from the point of view of my experience, is the process of movement in a direction which the human organism selects when it is inwardly free to move in any direction, and the general qualities of this selected direction appear to have a certain universality. Many people, however, seem to be morally bankrupt—completely devoid of any decent moral qualities. And it is just about the worst thing you can say about a person. A lot of people are also spiritually bankrupt. Spiritual bankruptcy is a most absolute state. It means we have nothing to give to God. Salvation is a gift from God; it is entirely by grace through faith—not by works. People living the good life are righteous and the process seems to involve an increasing openness to the experience. It is the polar opposite of defensiveness. Defensiveness is an organism’s response to experiences which are perceived or anticipated as threatening, as incongruent with the individual’s existing picture of oneself, or of oneself in relationship to the World. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
These threatening experiences are temporarily rendered harmless by being distorted in awareness, or being denied to awareness. I quite literally cannot see, with accuracy, those experiences, feelings, reactions in myself which are significantly at variance with the picture of myself which I already possess. A large part of the process of therapy is the continuing discovery by the client that one is experiencing feelings and attitudes which heretofore one has not been able to be aware of, which one has not been able to own as being a part of oneself. If a person could be fully open to one’s experience, however, every stimulus—whether originating within the organism or in the environment—would be freely relayed through the nervous system without being distorted by any defensive mechanism. There would be no need of the mechanism of subception whereby the organism is forewarned of any experience threatening to the self. On the contrary, whether the stimulus was the impact of a configuration of form, color, or sound in the environment on the sensory nerves, or a memory trace from the past, or visceral sensation of fear or pleasure or disgust, the person would be living it, would have it completely available to awareness. Thus, one aspect of this process which I am naming the good life appears to be a movement away from the pole of defensiveness toward the pole of openness to experience. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The individual living the good life is becoming more able to listen to oneself, to experience what is going on within oneself. One is more open to one’s feelings of fear and discouragement and pain. One is also more open to one’s feelings of courage, and tenderness, and awe. One is free to live one’s feelings subjectively, as they exist in one, and also free to be aware of these feelings. One is more able fully to live the experiences of one’s organism rather than shutting them off. Almighty and everlasting God, Who hast made known the Incarnation of Thy Word by the testimony of a glorious star, which when the wise men be held, they adored Thy Majesty with gifts; grant that the star of Thy righteousness may always appear in our hearts, and our treasure consist in giving thanks to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, the Enlightener of all nations, grant Thy people to enjoy perpetual peace; and pour into our hearts that radiant light which Thou didst shed into the minds of the wise men; thought Jesus Christ Our Lord. “Behold, O Lord, thou hast smitten us because of our iniquity, and hast driven us forth, and for these many years we have been in the wilderness; nevertheless, thou hast been merciful unto us. O Lord, look upon me in pity, and turn away thine anger from this thy people, and suffer not that they shall go forth across this raging deep in darkness; but behold these things which I have molten out of rock,” reports Ether 3.3. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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A Great Soul Contains the Diary of the Human Race and Changes Lives for the Better!
It must have been midnight when I awoke. I do not recall the face of the clock; only the feeling of deep night, and that it was spring and that I wanted walk outside and talk to the Moon and Stars for a while. Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, perhaps we would endure our sadness with greater confidence than our joys, for they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown. People learn to listen to silence. We can hear the infinite number of sounds we never hear at all—the unending crystalline sounds of the cockatiels, a breeze blowing lightly through the golden hay, a thrush singing in the low bushes beyond the meadow. And we suddenly realize that this is something—the World of silence is populated by a myriad of creatures and a myriad of sounds. European existentialists, finally, succinctly characterize presence as dasein, which means, literally, to “be there.” Hell is other people. From the beginning humans have served the appetites of one another in the most varying ways, but these were always reducible to a single theme: the need for fuel for one’s own aggrandizement and immunity. Human use one another to assure their personal victory over death. The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the sacrifice, of the other; through the death of the other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying, of being killed. No wonder people are addicted to war. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When it comes to enemies and strangers, the ego can consign them to the limbo of death without even a second thought. Because they deny that they want control over their environment, others beings, and also deny their wish for immortality, modern beings live in illusion; and it is precisely because of this illusion that humankind cannot get control over social evils like war. This is what makes war irrational: each person has the same hidden problem, and as antagonists obsessively work their cross purposes, the result is truly demonic; the film Queen of the Damned summed this up beautifully. Not only enemies but even friends and loved ones are fair fuel for our own perpetuation. In our unconscious we daily and hourly deport all who stand in our way, all who have offended or injured us, if pressured, would be unwilling to sacrifice someone else in our place. The exception to this is of course the hero. We admire him or her precisely because he or she is willing to give one’s life for others instead of taking theirs for his or hers. Heroism is an unusual reversal of routine values, and it is another thing that makes war so uplifting, as humankind has long known: war is a ritual for the emergence of heroes, and so for the transmutation of common, selfish values. In war beings live their own ennoblement. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
However, what we are reluctant to admit is that the admiration of the hero is a vicarious catharsis of our own fears, fears that are deeply hidden; and this is what plunges us into uncritical hero worship: what the hero does seem so superlative to us. Thus from another point of view we see that it is true that beings are enslaved by their own illusions based on their repressions. The logic of scapegoating, then, is based on terrestrial narcissism and hidden fear. If luck is when the arrow hits the fellow next to you, then scapegoating is pushing the fellow into its path—with special alacrity if one is a stranger to you. A particularly pungent phrasing of the logic of scapegoating one’s own death is as though the sacrifice were to say to God after appraising how nature feeds voraciously of life, “If this is what you want, here, take it!—but leave me alone. If anyone still think that this is merely cleaver phrasing in the minds of alienated intellectuals trying to make private sense out of the evil of their World, let one consult the daily papers. Almost every year there is a recorded sacrifice of human life in remote areas of Chile to appease the Earthquake gods. There have been fifteen recent officially reported cases of human sacrifice in India—one being that of a four-year-old boy sacrificed to appease a Hindu goddess, and another involving a west Indian immigrant couple in England who sacrificed their 16-year-old son, following prayer and meditation, to ward off the death of the mother. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In the narcissism of Earthly bodies, where each is imprisoned fatally in one’s own finite integument, everyone is alien to oneself and subject to the status of scapegoat for one’s own life. The logic of ending the lives of others in order to affirm our own life unlocks much that puzzles us in history, much that with out modern minds we seem unable to comprehend, such as the Roman arena games. If the terminating of a captive affirms the power of your life, how much does the actual massive staging of life-and-death struggles affirm a whole society? The continual grinding sacrifice of animal and human life in the arenas was all of a piece with the repressions of a society that was dedicated to war and that lived in the teeth of death. It was a perfect pastime to work off anxieties and show the ultimate personal control of death: the thumbs up or thumbs down on the gladiators. The more death you saw unfold before your eyes and the more you thrust your thumbs downward, the more you bought off your own life. And why was the crucifixion such a favorite form of execution? Because, I think, it was actually a controlled display of dying; the small seat on the cross held the body up so that dying would be prolonged. The longer people looked at the death of someone else, the more pleasure they could have in sensing the security and good fortune of their own survival. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The whole meaning of a victory celebration is that we experience the power of our lives and the visible decrease of the enemy: it is a sort of staging of the whole meaning of war, the demonstration of the essence of it—which is why the public display, humiliation, and execution of prisoners is so important. They are weak and die: we are strong and live. The Roman arena games were, in this sense, a continued staging of victory even in the absence of war; each civilian experienced the same power that one otherwise had to earn in war. If we are repulsed by the bloodthirstiness of those games, it is because we choose to banish from our consciousness what true excitement is. For beings, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as one survives transfixed with rapture. Today only those such as racing-car drivers and sports parachutists can stage these kinds of dramas in civilian life. It seems that the Nazis really began to dedicated themselves to their large-scale sacrifices of life after 1941 when they were beginning to lose and suspected at some dim level of awareness that they might. They hastened the infamous final solution of the Jewish people toward the closing days of their power, and executed their own political prisoners—like Dietrich Bonhoeffer—literally moments before the end. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Retreating Germans in Russian and Italy were especially apt to kill with no apparent motive, just to leave a heap of bodies. It is obvious they were offering last-minute hostages to death, stubbornly affirming in a blind, organismic way, “I will not die, you will—see?” It seems that they wanted some kind of victory over evil, and when it could not be the Russians, then it would be the Jews and even other Germans; any substitute scapegoat would have to do. In the recent Bengali revolt, the Western Pakistanis often killed anyone they saw, and when they did not see anyone, they would throw grenades into houses; they piled up a toll of over 3 million despised Bengalis. It is obvious that beings kill to cleanse the Earth of one’s the perceive as tainted ones, and that is what victory means and how it commemorates one’s life and power: humans are bloodthirsty to ward off the flow of their own blood. And it seems further, out of the war experiences of recent times, when humans see that they are trapped and excluded from longer Earthly duration, one says, “If I cannot have it, then neither can you.” Other things that we have found to understand have been hatreds and feuds between tribes and families, and continual butchery practiced for what seemed petty, prideful motives of personal honor and revenge. However, the idea of sacrifice as self-preservation explains these very directly. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The characteristic of primitives and of family groups was that they represented a sort of soul pool of immortality-substance. If you depleted this pool by one member, you yourself became more mortal. It is my opinion that this ideology offers a basis for understanding both the bitter hatreds and feuds between North American Indian tribes, and the feuds or vendettas currently practiced in many European countries. Whether it was the theft of women under exogamy, of the murder of male members of the tribe, it was always a matter of avenging serious offenses upon the spiritual economy of the community which, being robbed of one of its symbols of spiritual revenue, sought to cancel or at least avenge the shortages created in the immortality account. This kind of action is natural to primitives especially, who believe in the balance of nature and are careful not to overly deplete the store of life-stuff. Revenge of equals the freeing of life-stuff into the common reservoir from which it can then be reassigned. The primitive notion of life-stuff right up to modern society is a motive for genocidal war and even the everyday secular process of justice: the guilty one is punished in order to return one’s life-stuff to the community. I do not know how much of a burden of explanation we would want to put on the pool of life-stuff in modern, secular society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
For one thing, most people no longer believe in the balance of nature, they think that just curbing greenhouse gases, and electric cars are the solution to everything, but watering the trees in the forest, building more reservoirs, and desalinating water would be more effective. Yet, they are not a balancing economical force. Meaning politicians are pushing electric cars to get people off fossil fuels and make other car producers the big manufactures. Curbing greenhouses gases would help, but by planting trees, and grass is another way to do this. Furthermore, some electricity comes from coal, and many cities are already having problems providing electricity to communities and it is hard to find charging stations. Another issue is, we do not often grant to others the same life quality that we have. However, whether or not we believe in a steady pool of life-stuff, numbers are important to humans: if we buy off our own death with that of others, we want to buy it off at a good price. In wartime, we mourn our dead without undue depression because we are able to celebrate an equal if not greater number of deaths in the ranks of the enemy. This explains the obsessive nature of body counting of the enemy as well as the universal tendency to exaggerate one’s losses and minimize those of one’s own side. When their own lives are at stake is only when people can lie so blatantly and eagerly. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The exaggerations expressed by people whose lives are in danger always seem silly to outsiders to the conflict precisely because their lives are not involved. We now have to believe that all warfare and revolutionary struggle are simply a development of feuding and vendettas, where the basic thing at stake is a dramatization of development of nationalism in our time—the fantastic bitterness between nations, the unquestioned loyalty to one’s own, the consuming wars fought in the nae of the fatherland or the motherland—unless we saw it in this light. Our nation and its allies represent those who qualify for eternal survival; we are the chose people. From the time when the Athenians exterminated the Melians because they would not ally with them in war to the modern extermination of the Africans, they dynamic has been the same: all those who join together under one banner are alike and so qualify for the privilege of immortality; all those who are different and outside that banner are excluded from the blessings of eternity. The vicious sadism of war is not only a testing of God’s favor to our side, it is also a proof that the enemy is mortal: “Look how we kill him.” Cruelty can arise from the aesthetic outrage we sometimes feel in the presence of strange individuals who seem to be making out all right. Have they found some secret passage to eternal life? It cannot be. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If those unusual individuals with the unique fashion and behavior are acceptable, then what about my claim to superiority? Can someone like that be my equal in God’s eyes? Does he, that one, dare hope to live forever too—and perhaps crowd me out? I do not like it. All I know is, if he is right, I am wrong. So different and funny-looking. I think he is trying to fool the gods with his sly ways. Let us show him up. He is not very strong. For start, see what he will do when I out shine him. Sadism naturally absorbs the fear of death because by actively manipulating and hating people keep their organism absorbed in the outside World; this keeps self-reflection and the fear of death in a state of low tension. When people hold the fate of others in their hands, they feel they are masters over life and death. As long as they continue shooting, they think more of killing than of being killed. Or, as a wise gangster one put it in a movie, “When killers stop killing, they get killed.” This is already the essence of a theory of sadism. However, more than that it is the clinical proof of the natural wisdom of tyrannical leaders from the time of the divine kingship up to the present day. In times of peace, without an external enemy, the fear that feeds war tends to find its outlet within the society, in the hatred between classes and races, in the everyday violence of crime, of automobile accidents, and even the self-violence of suicide. War sucks much of this up into one fulcrum and shoots it outward to make an unknown enemy pay for our internal sins. How rotational this irrationality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
To teach is to transform by informing, to develop a zest for lifelong learning, to help pupil become students—mature independent learners, architects of an exciting, challenging future. Teaching at its best is a kind of communion, a meeting and a merging of the minds. The library is not only there as a socially owned and governed institution, a true people’s information service; it is staffed by men and women who maintain high respect for intellectual values. Because they are also the traditional keeps of the books, the librarians have a healthy sense of the hierarchical relationship between data and ideas, facts and knowledge. The enlightened individual is no propagandist, never aggressively intrudes one’s views in conversation nor forces one’s conclusions on others in an argumentative manner. One accepts people as they mentally are. One enters the inner stillness as a learner, as one who is sensitive to the Interior. Word and capable of responding to it. Such response is as far beyond the guidance of the good religious being by a moral conscience as that in turn is beyond the primitive being’s instincts, appetites, and desires. If in some ways one is as human as everyone else, in other ways one is unlike other beings. This is inevitable because one has gone ahead and surpassed one’s fellows. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Insofar as one is aware of other beings and of the objects which surround one, one expresses the Mind which is the Real. And insofar as one may be either lifted at times out of one’s little ego, or endowed with insight which sees beyond that ego, does one express it further still. The intellectual argues where the enlightened beings announces. It is the difference between arguing from theory and announcing from experience. To live in lonely contemplation of the secrets deep down in the heart, to place all ambitions and restless desires on a funeral pyre and burn them up in a heap—these things demand the highest courage possible to a being. Those who would denominate one who has achieved them as a coward, because one does not run with the crowd who fight for pelf and self, make a ghastly mistake. One will bear witness in thought and speech to the joy of this awakened consciousness. If a being deserts blood relation, it is only to take on spiritual ones. If one leaves one’s Earthly house, it is only to enter the monastery, a spiritual one. If one forsakes the society of wife and children, it is only to enjoy that of teacher and students. Thus absolute escape is a mirage and cannot be found. The kind of quality of one’s bounds can be changed and transformed but not really served. The only attainable freedom lies deep within. It is invisible and mental. This is what the enlightened being enjoys. One may be weighted with business responsibilities and surrounded by a family, but in one’s heart nothing holds. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Is there then no real need of a master? The answer is “No!” for some people, but “Yes!” for most people. One is needed to wake up the sleeper by telling one the highest truth from the very first time, and then descend by degrees to the stages while still holding on to the truth. The master serves only by showing a seeking person one’s real self, one’s soul: or holding a mirror up to one. This can be called, also, giving one a glimpse, or, more truthfully, being used by God as a vehicle to do so. One who is working under the guidance of a master is not exempt from making mistakes, but one will make fewer and expose them sooner and correct them quicker than one who is not. I write all this in no sneering nor disparaging manner, but rather as one who understands sympathetically the need of most beginners and many intermediates to find guidance outside themselves for the all-sufficient reason that they cannot find it inside. Indeed it is because I have been a disciple that I myself know why others become one, and can approve of their actions. However, that experience is also why I know the limitations and disservices of a discipleship. To say that no teacher is necessary is to set oneself up as a teacher by that very statement. Self-instruction cannot be as correct and efficacious as instruction by an expert, a specialist, or a fully experienced person who can also communicate adequately as a teacher. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
It is an absolute necessity that whoever seeks to realize the spiritual Truth must seek out a guru. This injunction has hypnotized readers and hearers. We thank our teachers for exemplifying the best of the education profession. Teachers give the students hope and the means to fulfill their aspirations as they guide, nourish, encourage, discipline and love their students. The young and mature minds that teacher mold are our leaders of today and tomorrow. They are making a difference in preparing them for the challenges to come by encouraging them to make a lifelong commitment to learning. The master teacher that lurks within each of us is likelier to burst forth within the intellectual atmosphere that collegiality can create. We need to build up an intimate inner relationship with a being whose compassion is wide enough to understand us and whose power is developed enough to help us. It does not matter that one is in the afterlife. Those who know only a single mode of living, that of the extrovert, or a single mode of thinking, that which is sense-based, need to expose themselves for sufficient time to the influence of a spiritual master before they can begin to become even dimly aware that they have a soul. However, since a fully evolved master is hard to find, something else must act as one’s next best substitute. This must necessarily be an inspired writing produced by such a being. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The truth is that nearly all aspirants need the help of expert human guides and printed books when they are actively seeking the Spirit, and of printed books at least when they are merely beginning to seek. It has long been clear to me that teaching is at once the most difficult and the most honorable of professions. We have all been touched by example, guidance, and motivation of a teacher whose often-reluctant pupil we were. We can recall a moment of insight or truth when caught in the act of learning. None of us may owe larger debts for whatever we may have become, for whatever we may have become, for whatever we may have been able to accomplish, than we owe to teachers in our past lives whose total devotion to young people and their discipline has been their chief reward and the reason we honor teachers. It is not essential to find a teacher in the flesh—one may be in print. A book may become a quite effective teacher and guide. The closest we will ever come to an orderly Universe is a good library. Information is a basic human right and the fundamental foundation for the formation of a republic institution. My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I felt the whole World was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any aisle and smell wisdom. However, the death of a library, any library, suggests that the community has lost its soul. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
In the absence of an enlightened individual’s personal society, one may have recourse to the best substitute—a enlightened being’s printed writings. Inspired texts, portions of scriptures, great being’s writings and sayings offer guidance on the course of action to be followed, the ethical considerations to be heeded, the decisions to be made under certain pressures, crises, or confrontations—decisions whose consequences are often quite grave. Who can price the value of such readings at such times? Spiritual formation is, in practice, the way of rest for the weary and overloaded, of the easy yoke and the light burden of cleaning the inside of the cup of the dish, of the good tree that cannot bear bad fruit. And it is the path along which God’s commandments are found to be not heavy, not burdensome. It is the way of those learning as disciples or apprentices of Jesus to do all things that I have commanded you, within the context of this I have been given say over everything in Heaven and Earth and look, I am with you every minute. However—I emphasize, because it is so important—the primary learning here is not about how to act, just as the primary wrongness or problem in human life is not what we do. Often what human beings do is so horrible that we can be excused, perhaps, for thinking that all that matters is stopping it. However, this is an evasion of the real horror: the heart from which the terrible actions come. In both cases, it is who we are in our thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and choices—in the inner life—that counts. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Profound transformations there is the only thing that can definitely conquer outward evil. It is very hard to keep this straight. Failure to do so is a primary cause of failure to grow spiritually. Love, we hear, is patient and kind. Then we mistakenly try to be loving by acting patiently and kindly—and quickly fail. We should always do the best we can in action, of course; but little progress is to be made in that arena until we advance in love itself—the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others. Until we make significant progress there, our patience and kindness will be shallow and short-lived at best. It is love itself—not loving behavior, or even the wish for intent to love—that has the power to always protect, always true, always hope, put up with anything, and never quit. Merely trying to act lovingly will lead to despair and to the defeat of love. It will make us angry and hopeless. However, taking love itself—God’s kind of love—into the depths of our being though spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first. And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to ourselves and others. Indeed it will be, according to promise, a well of water springing up to eternal life—not an additional burden to carry through life, as acting lovingly surely would be. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The invitation to become healed—psychotherapy begins when a person cannot live one’s life further in the ways one has, and consults with somebody who intends to help one. The fact that a person would arrive at such an impasse should provoke wonder, since all of us are gifted with intelligence that could guide us out of existential cul-de-sac. However, people arrive at this point, and there are those who would be of help. How does the sufferer reach one’s stalemate? I believe one chooses it. I agree with the existentialist thinkers that every person chooses one’s ways of being in the World. However, I would go further and assert that people choose their ways of being for somebody. A being chooses one’s way of being for oneself, or for somebody else. One’s choices, naturally, yield consequences. The way a person has chosen to exist was selected from possible alternative ways. It was selected because it seemed to be a way to fulfill or preserve values. These values include, for example, survival, identity, status, the love of another person, money and so forth. If we look now at some particular being’s present condition, whether one be sick or well, we can ask, “Of what way of being is this condition an outcome? At whose invitation did the fellow choose this way of being and not some other? One’s own? One’s mother’s One’s teacher’s? And we can ask further, “What values were fulfilled, and which sacrificed, when the fellow chose and followed this way?” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Some people are skeptical of a natural spirit and some writers deny its being. However, Christopher Columbus has established it by argument, and believed that it was produced in the liver and feed the nourishing soule, which is seated in every part of the body. The spirit is supplied by the blood. The spirit whilest is shines in brightness and spreads itself though all the Theatre of the body, as the Sun over the Earth, it blesses all parties with joy and loyalty and dyes them with a rosy color; but the contrary when it is retracted, intercepted or extinguished, all things become horrid, wane, and pale, and finally do utterly perish. So wonderful are the powers of the soul. “Suffer not yourself to be led away by any vain or foolish thing; suffer not the devil to lead away your heart again after those wicked harlots. Behold, O my son, how great iniquity ye brought upon the Zoramites; for when they saw your conduct they would not believe my words. And now the Spirit of the Lord doth say unto me: Command thy children to do good, least they lead away the hearts of many people to destruction; therefore I command you, my son, in the fear of God, that ye refrain from your iniquities. That ye turn to the Lord with all your mind, might, and strength; that ye lead away the hearts of no more to do wickedly; but rather return unto them, and acknowledge your faults and that wrong which ye have done,” Alma 39.11-13. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The enlightened does not wish to be regarded as other than one is; not for one the canonization of a saint or the adoration of a god. Insight, and its application to human living, is the final fulfilment for all of us, shall be our natural condition. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the new Birth of Thine Only-begotten Son in the flesh may set free those whom the old bondage detains under the yoke of sin; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord this compensating principle acts as a control and balance. He is not ruled by the reaction, as others are, nor blinded by it to an egoistic judgement. Christ looks out dispassionately upon the course of human life—which includes one’s own life—as if one were not personally involved in it, yet he does whatever ought to be done as if he were. Grant, we beseech Thee, O our God, that Thy family, which has been saved by the Nativity of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, may also quietly repose on Him as a perpetual Redeemer, Who with we shall cling steadyfastly throughout our lives to the writings of our illumined master, returning to him again and again in prayer. His works are the truest of all, pure gold and not alloys. There are also wise beings whose thought goes deep and they understand clearly that our spiritual life is our way to salvation. Their record exists, their sayings and writings also. Their study is worthwhile, their precepts can be put to the test in practical everyday living. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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It is the Work of the Enlightened to Show People What they Cannot See for themselves—their Own Higher Possibilities!
That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend, and a good soul. When I look into my soul, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it. Our neighborhoods represent the best and last frontier in our collaborative efforts to advocate for and improve the lives of our community members. It is within the structure of neighborhoods that our family develops, incorporates values, and even learn the skills necessary for responsible citizenship. If you thoroughly know anything of value, teach it to others. Healthier personalities have the ability to find and maintain relationships of love and friendships in the World. This ability insures that a healthier person will have access to relief from the existential loneliness in which we all live. It will be noted that I used the term “relief.” Loneliness is not a disease of which one can be cured; it is instead an inescapable fact of human existence. Less healthy personalities, cut off as they are from the fount of their real selves, find themselves terrible company. They cannot long tolerate solitude, and they run willy-nilly into busy-work, or superficial companionship with others. They do not, however, truly encounter another person and enter into dialogue with one. Hence, the feeling of loneliness, of not being known and understood, chronically nags at them like a stone in their shoe or a headache. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The healthier personality, because one is less self-concealing and has readier access to one’s own fantasy, feelings, and memories, is less afraid of solitude when this is one’s lot; and when one is with others, one can feel secure enough in one’s own worth that one can let encounter and dialogue happen. During the process of such dialogue, the shell which encapsulates one as a separate, isolated being ruptures; and one’s inner World expands to include the received World of experience of the other. When the dialogue ends, one has experienced oneself in the new dimensions evoked by the other person, and one has learned of the personal World of another—thus one has enlarged and changed. The less healthy personality defends oneself against being so affected and changed in one’s contact with others. One “rubs shells,” or clinks one’s character armor against that of the other person, but does not meet the other. There is no encounter. Just as a healthy personality dares to let oneself be the one he or she is, so does he respect, even cherish and defend, the “suchness,” the idiosyncrasy, of the other person in one’s World. One eschews sneaky efforts to manipulate the feelings, thoughts, and actions of the other; hence one truly experiences the other person as an other, as a source of being, different in some respect from oneself and similar to one in other ways. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The less healthy person dares neither to let oneself be, nor to trust the being when one is not trying to control the being. In one’s transactions, one seeks always to influence the other, if in no other modality than in the way in which one will be seen and experienced by the other. In the extreme instances of unhealthy personality, the individual actually (this can only be stated metaphorically) detaches one’s ego from one’s body and functions as a spectator and manipulator of one’s own depersonalized body as it transacts with the other person. This depersonalized body is then manipulated before the other, in the hope that the other’s experience of and responses toward this counterfeit person can thus be controlled: robots performing before others who are perceived as robots. However, when people make a profession of their stigma, the majority group leaders are obliged to have dealings with representatives of other categories, and so find themselves breaking out of the closed circle of their own kind. Instead of leaning on their crutch, they get to play golf with it, ceasing, in terms of social participation, to be representative of the people they represent. Also, those who professionally present the viewpoint of their category may introduce some systematic bias in the presentation simply because they are sufficiently involved in the problem to write about it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Although any particular stigma category is likely to have professionals who take different lines, and may even support publications which advocate different programs, there is uniform tacit agreement that the situation of the individual with this particular stigma is worth attention. Whether a writer takes a stigma very seriously or makes light of it, one must define it as something worth writing about. This minimal agreement, even when there are no others, helps to consolidate belief in the stigma as a basis for self-conception. Here again representatives are not representative, for representation can hardly come from those who give no attention to their stigma, or who are relatively unlettered. I do not mean to suggest here that professionals provide the stigmatized with the sole public source of reminder as to their situation in life; there are other reminders. Each time someone with a particular stigma makes a spectacle of oneself by breaking a law, winning a prize, or becoming a first of one’s kind, a local community make take gossipy note of this; these events can even make news in the mass media of the wider society. In any case, they who share the noted person’s stigma suddenly become accessible to the normal immediately around and become subject to a slight transfer of credit or discredit to themselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
By being now embraced by the masses, the situation of the stigmatized individual’s situation thus leads them easily into living in a World of publicized heroes and villains of their own stripe, their relation to this World being underlined by immediate associated, both normal and otherwise, who bring them news about how one of their kind has fared. When one considers one set of individuals, from whom the stigmatized person can expect some support, those who share one’s stigma and by virtue of this are defined and define themselves as one’s own kind. The second set are—to borrow a term once used by homosexuals—the “wise,” namely, persons who are not perceived as part of the dominate group but whose special situation some times has made them intimately privy to the secret life of the stigmatized individual and sympathetic with it, and who find themselves accorded a measure of acceptance, a measure of courtesy membership in the clan. Wise persons are the marginal beings before whom the individual with a fault need feel no shame nor exert self-control, knowing that in spite of one’s failing one will be seen as an ordinary other. An example may be cited from the World of a woman of the evening. Although she sneers at respectability, the lady, particularly, the woman of the evening, is supersensitive in polite society, taking refuge in her off hours with Bohemian artists, writers, actors and would-be intellectuals. There she may be accepted as an off-beat personality, without being a curiosity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Before taking the standpoint of those with a particular stigma, the person perceived as normal who is becoming wise may first have to pass through a heart-changing personal experience, of which there are many literary records. And after the sympathetic normal makes oneself available to the stigmatized, one often must wait their validation of one as a courtesy member. The self must not only be offered, it must be accepted. Sometimes, of course, the final step does seem to be initiated by the normal; the following is an example of this. “I do not know whether I can or not, but let me tell of an incident. I was once admitted to a group of African American boys of about my own age with whom I used to fish. When I first began to join them, they would carefully use a term of endearment in my presence. Gradually, as we went fishing more and more often, they began to joke with each other in front of me and call each other the more derogatory term of endearment. The change was in their utilization of the word when joking after the precious inability to use the word at all. One day when we were swimming, a boy shoved me with mock violence and I said to him, ‘Do not give me that (expletive) talk.’ He replied, ‘You bastard,’ with a big grin. From that time on, we could all use the term of endearment but the old categories had totally changed. Never, as long as I live, will I forget the way my stomach felt after I used the term of endearment without any reservation.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Heaven lies within and without us, it is true. But in most cases, only by the intervention of some authentic spiritual genius do we seem able to translate this into actuality for ourselves. Life is teaching us all the time but its voice needs a human being as a more direct medium, its lessons need human speech or writing to gain clearer utterance. If we never tried to seem a little better than we are, how could we improve or train ourselves from the outside inward? And the same impulse to show the World a better or idealized aspect of ourselves finds an organized expression in the various professions and classes, each of which has to some extent a cant or pose, which its members assume unconsciously, for the most part, but which has the effect of a conspiracy to work upon the credulity of the rest of the World. There is a cant not only of theology and of philanthropy, but also of law, medicine, teaching, even of science—perhaps especially of science, just now, since the more a particular kind of merit is recognized and admired, the more it is likely to be assumed to be worthy. Thus, when the individual presents oneself before others, one’s performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of the society, more so, in fact, than does one’s behavior as a whole. To the degree that a performance highlights the common official values of the society in which it occurs, we may look upon it, in the matter of Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown, as a ceremony—as an expressive rejuvenation and reaffirmation of the moral values of the community. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Furthermore, in so far as the expressive bias of performances comes to be accepted as reality, then that which is accepted at the moment as reality will have some of the characteristics of a celebration. To stay in one’s room away from the place where the party is given, or away from where the practitioner attends one’s client, is to stay away from where reality is being performed. The World, in truth, is a wedding. One of the richest sources of data on the presentation of idealized performances is the literature on social mobility. In most societies there seems to be a major or general system of stratification, and in most stratified societies there is an idealization of the higher strata and some aspiration on the part of those in low places to move to higher ones. (One must be careful to appreciate that this involves not merely a desire for a prestigeful place but also a desire for a place close to the sacred center of the common values of the society.) Commonly we find that upward mobility involves the presentation of proper performances and that efforts to move upward and effort to keep from moving downward are expressed in terms of sacrifices made for the maintenance of front. Once the proper sign-equipment has been obtained and familiarity gained in the management of it, then this equipment can be used to embellish and illumine one’s daily performances with a favorable social style. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Perhaps the most important piece of sign-equipment associated with social class consist of the status symbols through which material wealth is expressed. American society is similar to others in this regard but seems to have been singled out as an extreme example of wealth-oriented class structure—perhaps because in America the license to employ symbols of wealth and financial capacity to do so are so widely distributed. Indian society, on the other hand, has sometimes been cited not only as one in which mobility occurs in terms of caste groups, not individuals, but also as one in which performances tend to establish favorable claims regarding non-material values. The caste system, for example, is far from a rigid system in which the position of each component is fixed for all time. Movement has always been possible, and especially so in the middle regions of the hierarchy. A low caste was able, in a generation or two, to rise to a higher position in the hierarchy by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism, by Sanskritizing its ritual and pantheon. In short, it took over, as far as possible, the customs, rites, and beliefs of the Brahmins, and the adoption of the Brahminic way of life by a low caste seems to have been frequent, though theoretically forbidden. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The tendency of the lower castes to imitate the higher has been a powerful factor in the spread of Sanskritic ritual and customs, and in the achievement of a certain amount of cultural uniformity, not only throughout the caste scale but over the entire length and breadth of India. Nature herself is forever silently voicing these majestic truths and if we are unable to receive them from her lips, as we usually are, then we must receive them from a teacher’s lecture. We know that the mere reading of books and journals is not enough, and our essential conviction (as also the acknowledgment of the Old World since time immemorial) is that a personal guide who can instruct and inspire one to travel through the twilit jungle land which lies between ignorance and truth is indispensable. This missing element in many quests is the spiritual guide. One of the greatest helps to convert our timid thoughts and our trembling wishes into deeps is the inspiration received from a superior mind. Most beings find they need a concrete symbol to receiver their devotion and concentrate their aspiration. In short, they find they need a Spiritual Leader, be one historical and of the past, or contemporary and of the present. It is said that wisdom comes with experience. However, the enlightened who offer to impart it, whether in person or in writing, may save us some of the effort and suffering which accompany experience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
In fact, of course, there are many Hindu circles whose members are much concerned with injecting an expression of wealth, luxury, and class status into the performance of their daily round and who think too little of ascetic purity to bother affecting it. Correspondingly, there have always been influential groups in America whose members has felt that some aspect of every performance ought to play down the expression of sheer wealth in order to foster the impression that standards regarding birth, culture, or moral earnestness are the ones that prevail. Every generation has to find its own way through these mysteries and to these truths anew, despite the heavy freight of recorded teachings and revelations which it receives from all the previous ones. This is why new prophets have always been needed to provide the very antiquated clues. Something or someone is needed to draw us from the ego to God. When one finds out that all one’s efforts at self-improvement are movements around a circle, that the ego does not really intend to give itself up in surrender to the soul and therefore only pretends to do so, one realizes that left to oneself one cannot succeed in really changing one’s inner centre of gravity. If one is to free oneself from such a hopeless position, help is needed from some outside source. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
It is not that teachers make a difference—they make the difference for the future. Students need to know that you care before they care what you know. The home environment is a most powerful factor in determining the level of growth achievement of individuals, people’s interest in learning, and the number of years of education the individual will receiver. It accounts for more of the person’s motivation in learning than does the educational curriculum or the quality of instruction in our education. The soul is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the presentation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them. The purposes of human evolution require the presence at all times through human history of some spiritually fulfilled individuals to act as guides or teachers. At no period has the race been left entirely without them, no matter how bleak, how savage, or how materialistic the period has been. While the dream is still continuing, one cannot help taking its scenes and figures as being quite real. However, if someone rings a bell until one awakens from the dreaming state, one will then see that both scenes and figures were mere figments of one’s own imagination. In a sense, the teacher of philosophy acts as this awakener did, except that one directs one’s efforts to the sense-deceived consciousness of everyday life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
It is not enough to set up a spiritual ideal for one to attain. One needs also the psychological help, the emotional and mental re-education which can remove large obstructions to that attainment. No seeker is so wise, so informed, so perfect, or so balanced as not to need the constructive criticism and expert counsel of a true spiritual guide. Such is the World today, with its tensions and greeds, its confusions and wrongs, its ignorance and evil-doing, that if anyone has a store of virtue and an awareness of divinity, people have need of them and hence of one. There is too little of the one and hardly any of the other among us. A being needs comfort and support in these times more than in ordinary times. Where can one best find them? By sitting humbly in intellectual discipleship under those who have been blessed by the higher power with the revelation of its own existence. One can absorb from them a certitude that the World is still ruled by higher laws and its history by higher purposes. “And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet, and which is above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst,” reports Alma 32.42. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Certainly we do not intend to deride any good thing, and we are thankful for whatever truly helps human beings in their desperate life upon the Earth. Nothing else would be compatible with the spirit of Jesus. The constant love of God is extended to every human being who ever lives, sometimes in places and postures that God himself would not prefer, but still with some good effect. However, whether or not a spirituality adequate to human need and producing genuine renovation of the heart can be a matter of mere human abilities is a question of fact. To be mistaken about it will have consequences of the most serious nature. In any case, we may be sure of this: the formation and, later, transformation of the inner life of humans, from which our outer existence flows, is an inescapable human problem. Spiritual formation, without regard to any specifically religious context or tradition, is the process by which the human spirit or will is given a definite form or character. It is a process that happens to everyone. The most despicable as well as the most admirable of persons have had a spiritual formation. Gangsters as well as saints ae the outcome of spiritual formation. Their spirits or hearts have been formed. We each can become a certain kind of person in the depts of our being, gaining a specific type of character. And that is the outcome of a process of spiritual formation as understood in general human terms that apply to everyone, whether they want it or not. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Fortunate of blessed are those who are able to find or are given a path of life that will form their spirit and inner World in a way that is truly strong and good and directed Godward. The shaping and reshaping of the inner life is, accordingly, a problem that has been around as long as humanity itself; and the earliest records of human thought bear eloquent witness to the human struggle to solve it—but with very limited success, one would have to say. True, some points in human history have shown more success in the elevation of the human spirit than others. However, the low points far exceed the high points, and the average is discouragingly low. Societies the World around are currently in desperate straits trying to produce people who are merely capable of coping with their life on Earth in a nondestructive manner. This is as true as of North American and Europe as it is of the rest of the World, though the struggle takes superficially different forms in various areas. In spiritual matters there really is no “Third World.” It is all Third World. When a child of God undertakes a public task or mission one will neither over nor under do one’s work. One will do exactly what is required. The enlightened being expressed self without selfishness, individuality without individualism. One possesses a sense of infinite leisure, a manner devoid of all haste, a willingness to achieve one’s ends little by little. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Although fully deserving it, one is too humble to demand and always too embarrassed when offered nay special reverence. One’s personality is one with one’s teaching: one’s life incarnates, practices, and actualizes it. One is content to let then attribute to others the help they are getting from one. One’s ego needs no gratitude and no recognition and would not know what to do with them if they came. One rejoices in their progress as the chief thing. What one gives one gives freely and asks for no requital. Since one’s life itself is not fixed but moves incessantly, one cannot congeal one’s thought into fixed doctrines that are strict and rigid or one’s character into fixed attitudes. One will put forth whatever wisdom indicates in any situation and to any question, not solely what the past indicates—which is what accumulated knowledge or a lined-up character really does. One’s mind is free, one’s policies always fresh. One is neither orthodox nor unorthodox. Naturally such a fluid standpoint will not find approval from the many who have to wear a partisan or fanatic label. The self-renounced illuminate sits beside the gleaming river of life and dips one’s pitcher like others into those troubled waters of passion or pain. Yet one wears an inscrutable smile which perhaps says: “I see all and know all. If I drink with you, it is to be you. If I remain with you, it is to help you. For paradoxically, I sit also at this river’s source.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
If someone knows what I do not yet know, if one has trodden father on this path, then it is well to learn from one if one will teach me. The instruction and criticism of a qualified living guide are worth having. However, owing to the rarity of such guides, many seekers are unable to find one. One should appreciate the value of finding a master worthy of being followed. The inner demand of the one will attract in time the outer meeting with the other. No maniac can sure oneself. We dare not leave the treatment of humanity’s mania entirely to humanity themselves. The help of sane outsiders is needed. However, it should be given indirectly and unobtrusively. If the more mature, older, and more experience nightingales find it necessary to give lessons in singing to the younger ones, why not the same situation among human beings? It is the greatest irony of human’s existence that in the end one will be saved from one’s meanness and misery not by those who shout the loudest but by the quietest, the most silent of one’s fellows. For the power and knowledge which one will gain from discipleship with them will be what one needs above all else—power over the baseness in oneself and knowledge f the divine World-Idea. “Then my brethren, ye shall reap the reward of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you,” reports Alma 32.43. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
I must say I find the news very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to my library and read a book. The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of the soul is found when we open our hearts to God. O God, Who hast made this most sacred night to shine with the illumination of the True Light; grant, we beseech Thee, that as we have known the mystery of that Light upon Earth, we may also perfectly enjoy it in heaven; through the same as Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Merciful God, that He Who was born to be the Saviour of the World, as He is the Author of our divine birth, so may be Himself the Bestower of our immortality; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, Who hast willed that on the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, should depend the beginning and the completion of all religion; grant us, we beseech Thee, to be reckoned as a portion of Him, on Whom is built the whole salvation of humankind; Who with Thee. We beseech Thee, O Lord, bestow on Thy servants the increase of faith, hope, and charity; that as they glory in the Nativity of Thy Son our Lord, they may, by Thy governance, not feel the adversities of the World; and also that what they desire to celebrate in time, they may enjoy to all eternity; through the same as Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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You Are Here in My Arms, but Where is Your Heart?
If we do not model what we teach, we are teaching something else. Reading helps us grow, head and heart. It gets people ready for school and helps them to do better once they get there. We know that libraries, without education, we cannot have an educated people who will carry on successfully our form of government. Likewise, without a soul that comes from a loving place, people think they are worthless. A caring soul can provide astonishing revelation. A good soul can give a person a chance to feel. If someone believes you think they are worth something, they may start to believe it, too. Good souls put snags in the river of humans passing by, and over the years, they redirect hundreds of lives to God. Those who are frightened away from the Quest by these notes of its dangers are better separated from it. The aspirant who lacks balance is liable to take a misstep at more than one point of one’s path. If an unbalanced dreamer is not brought to actuality and reality by experience, one had better leave the quest alone. This is not to say that one cannot get mystical experiences in plenty, but that they will have little true worth for insight. The uncertainties of the Quest may lead, especially in the neurotic temperament, to a variety of unhappy moods and unhealthy emotions as the years pass by. The student may at such times turn against oneself in morbid masochism, or against the teaching one has been following, or against the personal instructor if one has one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The novice too often lives under the delusion that one is following the Quest when one has yet to find the entrance to it. The importance of right direction is such that if the angel of deflection covers a long period, then area of error stretches a wide distance. A self-protective need of the quester is to find and keep both an apparent and a real sanity. The first is needed in defense against the Word, the second against oneself. Sometimes when people apply theory improperly or are over-practised, one of the harmful results will be a gradual slackening of interest in the common activities of humankind. The unfortunate being develops a blurred and vague character. One becomes increasingly unfit to fulfill social obligations or business duties, and tends to become bred with responsibilities. One treats the fate of others with indifference. One does what is inescapable, but one does it in a casual, detached, and uninterested manner. In short, one becomes unfit for everyday practical life. Keep away from psychic practices and occult explorations. They are filled with dangers and pitfalls. First devote your energies to the foundational work of learning philosophy, improving character, disciplining emotion, and cultivating calmness. Only after this work has been well advanced will it ever be safe for you to consider other taboos endeavors. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
A discrepancy may exist between an individual’s virtual and actual identity. This discrepancy, when known about or apparent, spoils one’s social identity; it has the effect of cutting one off from society and from oneself so that one stands a discredited person facing an unaccepting World. In some case, one may continue through life to find that one is the only one of one’s kind and that the World is against one. In most cases, however, one will find that there are sympathetic others who are ready to adopt one’s standpoint in the World and to share with one the feelings that one is human and essentially normal in spite of appearances and in spite of one’s own self-doubt. The first set of sympathetic others is of course those who share one’s stigma. Knowing from their own experience what it is like to have this particular stigma, some of them can provide the individual with instructions in the tricks of the trade and with a circle of lament to which one can withdraw for moral support and for the comfort of feeling at home, at ease, accepted as a person who really is like any other normal person. The existence of a different value system among these persons is evinced by the communality behavior which occurs when people who are not part of the majority group interact amongst themselves. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Not only when people are with their peer group do they change from unexpressive and confused individuals, as they frequently may appear in larger society, to expressive and understanding persons within their own group, but moreover they express themselves in institutional terms. Among themselves they have a Universe of response. They form and recognize symbols of prestige and disgrace; evaluate relevant situations in terms of their own norms and in their own idiom: and in their interrelations with one another, the mask of accommodative adjustment drops. Among one’s own, an individual can use one’s perceived disadvantage as a basis for organizing life, but one must resign oneself to a half-World to do so. Here on may develop to its fullest one’s endearing tale accounting for one’s possession of this supposed stigma. Once again must a warning be given against the dangers of falling into mere psychism and seeking for phenomena, vision, miracles and other things which are still in the realm of a kind of subtle materialism and are always connected with the personal ego. One may find that the tales of one’s fellow suffers bore one, and that the whole matter of focusing on atrocity tales, on group superiority, on trickster stories, in short, on the problem, is one of the large penalties for having one. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Behind this focus on the problem is, of course, a perspective not so much different from that of the normal as it is specializes in one sector: We all seem to be inclined to identity people with characteristics which are of importance to us, or which we think must be of general importance. If you asked a person who the late Franklin D. Roosevelt was, one would probably answer that Mr. Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the Untied States of America, not that he was a man suffering from polio, and when he asked for an invitation to the Winchester mansion, he was refused. Although many persons, of course, would have mentioned his polio as supplementary information, considering it an interesting fact that a man with a physical disability managed to fight his way to the White House. When they hear his named mentioned, people who are disabled, however, would probably think of Mr. Roosevelt’s polio. The true spiritual experience is higher than that, purer than that, and will leave one absolutely calm, whereas the physical phenomena leaves one excited. Every kind of such phenomena involves thought or emotion, whereas the deepest spiritual experience goes beneath thought and emotion and especially beneath the personal ego. Only then does one come in contact with the Infinite life power which is behind everything and which is the true goal of this Quest. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Those who imagine the Quest to be a spiritual joyride know only a limited phase of it. For along with the joys there are glooms, difficulties, struggles, conflicts, and vacillations. That a proportion of those who are attracted to these subjects are psychopaths, is unfortunately true. They would be far better employed in getting proper treatment for their disordered minds, imaginations, and feelings. Certain studies may easily exaggerate their condition and increase their imbalance. It is the serious duty of every responsible expounder to warn them off this field and to bid them engage in the quest of psychic and bodily healthy before attempting to pursue things they may not understand. We have seen that the driving force behind evil in human affairs stems from human’s paradoxical nature: in the flesh and doomed with it, out of the flesh in the World of symbols and trying to continue on a Heavenly flight. The thing that makes the human the most devastating being that ever stuck one’s neck up into the sky is that one wants a stature and a destiny that is impossible for other beings; one wants an Earth that is not an Earth but a Heaven, and the price for this kind of fantastic ambition is to make the Earth an even more eager graveyard than it naturally is. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Our great wistfulness about the World of primitive beings is that they managed willy-nilly to blunt the terrible potential destructiveness of the drama of heroism and expiation. One did not have the size, the technological means, or the World view for running amok heroically. Heroism was small scale and more easily controlled: each person, as a contributor to the generative ritual, could be a true cosmic hero who added to the powers of creation. Allied to this cosmic heroism was a kind of warfare that always made military people chuckle. Among the Plains Indians it was a kind of athletic contest in which one scored points by touching the enemy; often it was a kind of disorganized, childish, almost hysterical game in which one went into rapture if one brought back a trophy or a single enemy for torture. Anyone was liable to be snatched out of one’s hut at daybreak, and on mountainous islands like those of Polynesia groups lived in continual fear of those just over the ridge or across the lagoon; no one was every safe from capture and sacrificial slaughter. This is hardly the ideal of altruism, and there are very few today who have a romantic image of primitive human’s peaceful nature; one look at the blunt stone sacrificial slave-killing knives of the Northwest Coast Indians is enough to set the record straight. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Since we do not experience the terror of the occasional victims of primitive raids, we can look back nostalgically at the small numbers consumed at random, and compare them with those who died in one on 11 September 2001 in New York, Dresden, or one flash at Hiroshima. Wistfully one can observe the comparatively low toll of life that primitive warfare took. Today, the picture looks something like this: that once humankind got the means for large-scale manipulation of the World, the lust for power began to take devastating tolls. This can be seen strikingly at the rise of the great civilizations based on divine kingship. These new states were structures of domination which absorbed the tribal life around them and built up empires. Masses of beings were forged into obedient tools for really large-scale power operations directed by a powerful, exploitative class. It was at this time that people who were used as slaves were firmly compartmentalized into various special skills which the plied monotonously; they become automaton objects of the tyrannical rulers. We still see this degradation of tribal peoples today, when they hire themselves out for money to work monotonously in the mines. Primitive beings could be transformed, in one small step, from a rich creator of meaning in a society of equals to a mechanical thing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Something was accomplished by this new organization of labor that primitive beings never dreamed of, a tremendous increase in the size of human operations: huge walled cities, colossal monuments, pyramids, irrigation projects, unprecedented wars of booty and plunder. It was a megamachine. The amalgam of kingship with sacred power, human sacrifice, and military organization unleashed a nightmare megamachine on the World—a nightmare that began at Sumer and that still haunts us today, with our recent history of megamachines in Warsaw, Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor, Germany, and Vietnam. This is the colossus of power gone mad, a colossus based on the dehumanization of beings that began, not with the Newtonian materialism, Enlightenment rationalism, or nineteenth-century commercialism, but with the first massive exploitation of beings in the great divine kingship of the ancient World. It was then that beings were thrown out of the mutualities of tribalism into the cauldron of historic alienation. We are still stewing there today because we have not seen that the worship of the demonic megamachine has been our fate, and we have willingly perpetuated it and even aggravated it until it threatens to destroy the very World. This perspective on history attack social evil at its most obvious point. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
From the very beginning the ravages of large-scale warfare were partly a function of the new structure of domination called the state; the state was an instrument of dictatorship that had come into being artificially through the conquest, and with it began humankind’s real woes. The new class society of conquerors and slaves right away had its own internal frictions; what better way to siphon them off than by directing the energies of the masses outward toward an alien enemy? The state had its own built-in wisdom: it solved its ponderous internal problems of social justice by making justice a matter of triumph over an external enemy. This was the start of the large-scale scapegoating that has consumed such mountains of lives down through history and continues to do so today, right up to Vietnam and Bangladesh: what better way forge a nation into unity, to take everyone’s eyes off the frightening state of domestic affairs, than by focusing on a heroic foreign cause? Here is the psychology of this new scapegoating of the state: Hence the sense of joyful release that so often has accompanied the outbreak of war…popular hatred for the ruling classes was cleverly diverted into a happy occasion to mutilate or terminate foreign enemies. In short, the oppressor and the oppressed, instead of fighting it out within the [ancient] city, directed their aggression toward a common goal—and attack on the rival city. Thus, the greater the tensions and the harsher the daily repressions of civilization, the more useful war became as a safety valve. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The new structure of the conquest state forced an increased butchery of war. The invention of the military machine made way necessary, and even desirable. With the advent of the megamachines, power simply got out of hand—or rather, got pressed into service of a few hands—and instead of isolated and random sacrifices on behalf of a fearful tribe, ever larger numbers of people were deliberately and methodically drawn into a dreadful ceremony on behalf of the few. So that the ability to wage war and to impose collective human sacrifice had remained the identifying mark of all sovereign power throughout history. Little does it matter that modern public relations and the appearance of bureaucratic neutrality and efficiency disguise better than ever both the sacrifice and the blatant central power of the state; the chief of the U.S. Selective Service (the public relations euphemism) may sit around and logically explain one’s function and the fairness of the selective process to young high school students, but the bare fact is that they are obliged by the state’s power to offer their lives for its own diversionary ceremony, just as were the ancient Egyptians who were enslaved. If there is anything new in all this, it is that the young are beginning to understand what is really happening. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Why has humankind remained locked into such a demonism of power all through history? It is not simply because enslaved beings have not had the power to throw off their chains; or, simply because being have forgotten how it was in the beginning before the state stepped on their necks. The demonism remains because it was fed by its own irrationality. It is based on a continuation of the anxiety of primitive beings in the face of one’s overwhelming World; the megamachine tries to generate enough power to overcome basic human helplessness. However, now we see the costs of the lie: the users of the megamachine are led into a megalomaniac and paranoid distortion of reality. Once you start an arms race, you are consumed by it. This is the tragic fatality of power, that it leads to a fundamental distortion of the reality of human’s relationship to nature—and so can undermine one’s own well-being. To protect oneself with one’s megamachines, beings are willing to sacrifice almost everything. This is why the megamachine represents the major historical challenge facing western and others around the globe; to see through it and get control of it is the focal problem of human survival in our time. The wise being will not be an adherent of martyristic ideology. One will make no pretense and set up no pose of exaggerated altruism. One will do what needs to be done for one’s own self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
However, at the same time one will also do what needs to be done for others. It is not altruistic folly but altruistic wisdom that one seeks to practise. Hence, one prefers to be a live servant of the good in humankind than a dead martyr to the evil in humankind. One will not swing from the extreme of utter selfishness to the extreme of unbalanced selfishness. One will not ignore one’s own needs or fail to work for one’s own betterment event while one is attending to the needs of others and working for their betterment. One can well serve individual ends alongside one’s service of social ones. One does not dwell in one’s own heart on one’s spiritual usefulness to other people. If ever one were to do so that would only be the ego wallowing in its vanity. And it is precisely because one’s ego has been cast down that one has such usefulness. If others do not care for one’s own road but set their feet on other roads to the soul’s finding, one will feel no disappointment and express no criticism. Rather will one rejoice that they have entered on the quest, even though it be in a different way from one’s. One is too large in mind and heart to wish that it were otherwise. One does not need to ask others for help of any kind for they usually offer it spontaneously and unasked. There is some quality in one which arouses in them the strong desire to serve one. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
One will not seek any public acknowledgement for one’s services. If it does come, one will not be unduly elated; if it does not come, one will not be particularly discontented. When such a being hears from time to time of the far-reaching results of his or her work, the individual feels afresh the need of a great humility. For if it has achieved anything at all, it has not been achieved by any other power than that of Grace—which moves so mysteriously and so silently and so effectively. One’s is a disciplined freedom, without hardness of the rigid moralist or the license of the flabby hedonist. Whatever sin is committed against one, or wrong done to one, one’s forgiveness is available to the sinner immediately and completely. This is not an attitude one has to being oneself to create but ne which is natural and easy. The master is free, totally free, from the greeds and lusts of ordinary beings. In this one is a forerunner of the beings who are to appear later. One need to assume no oracular air, no conceited manner. The simple expression of what one is suffices to impress others of its own accord. In one, perception and volition are fused and not, as in ordinary beings, separated and discordant. That which one sees ought to be done, is accepted and executed by the will. Such a being will spontaneously love the Ideal, practise virtue, and promote the spread of Truth. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Nothing can replace that special relationship that gifted beings develop with others. Popular culture has long celebrated other heroes—the athlete, the adventurer, the statesman—spiritual healers have not been celebrated in the same way. And the soul has rarely been identified as the place where the greatest of human dramas unfold—the drama of igniting the human spirit, ennobling the human heart, and enriching the human experience. The glowing warmth of an enlightened individual’s goodwill is natural, sincere. The practise of goodness is as natural with such a being as the act of breathing. A heart filled with peace and love will be felt through a radiant countenance and poised bearing. One will always show forth a curtesy that comes from the dictates of formality. If the adepts appear to stand aloof, it is not because they feel proudly superior but because they feel humbly incapable of bettering the work being done on humanity by Nature (God) in her long-range evolutionary plan. If they had held illusions of personal grandeur, they could never have become what they are. One makes no pretense of omniscience. He simple and modest outward bearing of an illuminate frequently belies the infinite subtlety of one’s intelligence. Through the presence of his kingdom, Jesus answers the deepest needs of personality for righteousness, provision, and purpose. If we set him aside, we still face the unavoidable questions: What makes our lives go as they do? #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
What could make our lives go as they ought? Inability to find adequate answers leaves us rudderless in the flood of events around us and at the mercy of whatever ideas and forces come to bear upon us. And that, basically, is the human situation. You can see it day by day all around you. However, thoughtful people through the ages have tried to answer these questions, and they have with one accord found, as already stated, that what matters most for how life goes and out to go is what we are on the inside. Things good and bad will happen to us, of course. But what our life amounts to, at least for these who reach full age, is largely, if not entirely, a matter of what we become within. Within is the arena of spiritual formation and, later, transformation. When people pay no heed to the warnings of prophets and the counsel of elders, and are still too ungrown to pick one’s steps correctly, one inevitable loses one’s ways. He awakening of inner forces ought not be attempted without an accompanying attempt to fortify character and guard against weakness. In the case of mentally disturbed or emotionally unbalanced persons, trust in their own ego may easily be misread as trust in God—with correspondingly lamentable results. The danger is that one may get lost in the mazes of one’s own mind. Those who suffer from such psychic maladjustments cannot find trust but only its distortions. They have fallen into a mental quagmire. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Let one not deceive oneself. Few have ever really entered that exquisite awareness and remained there. Others seem to have done so but the fact is that they merely touched its outer most fringe for a few moments and then passed into an egoistic conceited state which has trapped them. Certain psychic experiences may arise, the pattern of which is familiar, having been observed in both the writer’s own experience and numerous other cases. Between the ordinary state of undeveloped humanity and the truly spiritual state attained by highly advanced individuals, there is a psychic region conducive to mediumship and other pitfalls and dangers which have to be crossed. One is indeed fortunate to come through this safely within our thoughts, feelings, intentions—and their deeper sources, whatever those may be. The life we live out in our moments, hours, days, and years wells up from a hidden depth. The illuminate being is at peace within oneself, able to stand emotionally aside from one’s affairs but unable to surrender to transient defeats. One knows when one is defeated; one never knows such a thing as failure. One’s life is a consecrated one. It has an impressive value. There is a timeless flavour about it. That is why one can work quietly not only for the immediate moment but even for results which one knows one will not live to witness. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
What is in our heart matters more than anything else for who we become and what becomes of us. “You are here in my arms,” the old song says, “but where is your heart?” That is what really matters, not just for individual relationships, but also for life as a whole. The flamelike material of the spirits accounts in part for motion that is imperceptible to us. The spirit literally swelled and pushed out the particles of natural things into the shapes and figures we see, to form a particular person, a tree, a flower, a stone. Incline, O Lord Thy merciful ears to our voice, and illuminate the darkness of our hearts by the light of Thy visitations; Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, World without end. Make us, O Lord, to abhor our own evils with our whole heart; that at the Coming of Thy Son our Lord, we may be enabled to receive His good things, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Mercifully hear, O Lord, the prayers of Thy people; that as they rejoice in the Advent of Thine only-begotten Son according to the flesh, so when He cometh a second time in His Majesty, they may receive the reward of eternal life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God? Know ye not that he hath all power, and at his great command the Earth shall be rolled together like a scroll? Therefore, repent ye, and humble yourselves before him, lest he shall come out in justice against you,” reports Mormon 5.23-23. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Home is where the heart is. Like paintings and sculptures, buildings can be beautiful works of art. Welcome to Mills Station at Cresleigh Ranch a selection of stunning, modern, and beautifully crafted homes. Residence 4 is the largest home at Mills Station in the Cresleigh Ranch community, it is 2,692 square feet and has many options, like a built-in quartz table, which connects to the island in the kitchen and other wonderful options to discover. Enjoy a virtual tour with Mrs. Abby Johnson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7YTiF0JjQg&feature=emb_title