Home » Pets (Page 12)

Category Archives: Pets

The Spirit of Liberty is the Spirit Which is Not too Sure that it is Right and Seeks to Understand Minds

May 27, 2020 11:28 pm

The great want which humankind labours under at this present moment is sleep. The World should recline its vast head on the first convenient pillow and take an age-long nap. Which is a more effective learning strategy: reward or punishment? This question is still undecided. At present, evidence for each side is about equal. The following guidelines, however, can be applied in teaching situations, especially those involving young children. In general, rewarding desired behaviours is more effective than punishing undesired behaviours—you can still catch more files with honey than with vinegar. If punishment is necessary, it is most effective if used immediately after the undesired response. For instance, if a child must be punished, it is best done right after the child has acted incorrectly. If one parents says to the child, “Just wait until your father (or mother) gets home—then, you will get it,” the child learns to fear the arrival of the punisher and, in the process, often forgets the offense for which he or she is being punished. If punishment must be used, the reason for the punishment should be explained. “I am only doing this for your own good,” or “This hurts me more than it does you,” is less likely to teach a child a specific behaviour than saying, “I am not letting you go to the movies because you socked your little brother. This hurts him and makes him cry, and I do not want you to do it again.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

If it is possible, combine reward and punishment. If necessary, punish the undesired behaviour, but also be sure to reward the desired behaviour. For example, do not just spank a child for playing in the street; also praise and reward the child for playing in the yard instead. Punish the undesired behaviour, not the behaver. For instance, communicate to a child that you feel his or her behaviour is “bad”—not that you think the child is bad. Most punishment do not work on very young children. Under about one year of age, children do not understand that some behaviours are acceptable and some are not and why this is so. They may think they are being punished just for being there, and more often than not they begin to associate the punisher with punishment. When you feel emotionally charged, especially if you are filled with rage, never, never, never punish a child. Adults often forget their own strength. Children are fragile and easily hurt. The only thing a child learns through abuse is hatred and fear. There is a great distinction between negative reinforcement and abusive punishment. In many cases, punishment only suppresses or limits the undesired behaviour; it does not really extinguish it. The self-actualized open to all qualified and eager seekers the mysteries and treasures of one’s own inner experience, that they may profit by one’s past struggles and present success. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

The self-actualized brings revelations to meet our gropings, inspirations to meet our doubts. One becomes, for those docile enough to receive them, a bearer of grace and a vessel of truth, a bestower of comfort and a dispenser of confidence. Prophets and the self-actualized, teachers and saints receive the urge to share their knowledge and experience with others. Whence does this urge derive? Both lower and higher, personal and nonpersonal sources are possible. However, if from the highest, then we may say that God sends His messages to humankind through these channels. The self-actualized who starts a movement or puts one’s thoughts out, acts as a lighthouse which guides many a fumblings but aspiring soul. If one does not accept disciples individually it is because one serve humans otherwise. Those who try to get such acceptance and find themselves rebuffed may consider one selfish, cold, remote. However, they will be greatly mistaken. One can serve humankind—not each person separately but in groups or masses—and one may do this by lecturing, by writing or simply by directing one’s prayer in the appropriate way. For a writer’s books spread not only one’s ideas but also something of oneself. One can put thought on a high level but the way in which one does this depends upon one’s circumstances. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

The self-actualized can put thought on a high level personally as a private teacher, impersonally as a public lecturer or writer, or anonymously as a proficient contemplative. All these people who have attained Reality inevitably leave a record for others or for posterity, but not necessarily with their name attached. Has anyone of the self-actualized ever vanished without leaving behind a trace of Power, knowledge, goodness, and inspiration? Even if not in words or deeds, something is left in the unseen atmosphere. They are not usually members of any sect, but circumstances or necessity may sometimes render it desirable that they be such. The self-actualized may or may not descend into the arena of action but if not one will still find ways and means to inspire, guide, or ennoble the actions of other people. One does this by teaching them and travelling among the, or by sitting still and meditating alone, or by disseminating writings among them. Even when one is unheard publicly one can help by the concentrated mind’s great power. One does what one can to introduce here and there into the consciousness of others, through whatever means one possesses, the seeds of higher ideas. These seeds may not grow and certainly may not fructify for many years, but that is not one’s affair. One knows that the vitality in these seeds and depth of mental ground in which they have been sown will inevitably lead to some result. It is enough. One has sown seed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

One does not have to wait for roots to form, stems to grow, fruits to appear. One’s work is done. In this momentous period the true self-actualized has special work to do in trying to protect the human race from its own folly. One way is intercessory prayer which may help to mitigate the effects of the World crisis. This requires solitude. It is an impersonal contemplation and must not be disturbed by those who break into it, either to unload their personal problems or to offer personal service which in the end has the same result. Yes, some of us are genuinely aware of the soul’s existence and intimately know its freedom and blessedness. Modesty has hitherto imposed silence upon us about the fact, although compassion induced us to break it on occasions. However, we mystics must now stand on our own dignity. It is time that the World, brough to its inevitable and by us expected materialistic dead-end, should realize at last that we are not talking out of our hats but out of a real and impeccable experience. It would be an unpardonable treachery to our duty in the final and terrible World-crisis of this materialistic age if, out of false modesty or fear of intimidation by a cynical society, we who daily feel and commune with the divine presence, who realize its tremendous importance for humanity’s present condition and future life, fail to testify to its existence and reality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

If today we venture to speak more freely and frequently, our ideas may drop into a few hospitable minds and sublimely penetrate their consciousness. It is not the self-actualizer’s function to tackle the Worldly problems which governments usually deal with: the social, political, economic, and technical ones. One’s particular work is concerned with, first, one’s ordinary duty of professional service through whatever skill one possesses to earn one’s livelihood, and second, making truth available. The mere existence of one who succeeds in identifying oneself with God benefits every sensitive person who meets one, even for a minute or two. Further, it inspires spiritual seekers who never get the chance to meet one but who hear favourably about one and respectfully receive what they hear. Finally, posterity benefits from the records left about one. Each teacher—if one is divinely commissioned—leaves a deposit of truth after he or she dies. The Master who leaves a record of one’s own climb, or a testimony to the goal’s existence, or a path pioneered for those who would follow, or an instructed disciple here and there, leaves something of oneself. Even where help may not directly and outwardly be given when difficult circumstances press on a human, it may yet be indirectly and inwardly given to one’s mind, which has to deal with, or endure, them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

One can awaken some persons to this divine presence within themselves, but not all. One may do this mysteriously by some unknown process, or one may do it deliberately and with the display of one’s technique. The abstract does not appeal to the masses, because it gives them nothing. However, an embodied human can be seen, heard, and touched, to that extent can be understood, to that extent one gives them something; one can be followed, admired, feared, reverenced, or worshipped. Secure as one is in one’s own peace of mind, it is inevitable that the more sensitive among those who meet one feel it too. However, those who come with hostility, personal or intellectual, will be avoided if possible or find their time cut to the shortest if not. Such a person has a catalytic action on the minds and even on the lives of those who come into sympathetic contact with one. Just by being oneself one makes the philosophic virtues real to others. One does not need to be conscious of a clearly defined mission before one sets about doing something for the enlightenment of others. There is always some means open to one, some little thing one can do to make this knowledge available or to set an example of right living. It is one’s duty to communicate what one feels there, what one finds there, to those who are excluded from it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

If at times, and with sympathetic auditors, one’s duty becomes one’s joy, at other times and with insensitive auditors it becomes one’s cross. Jesus exemplified this in His own history. The illuminate practices a wiser philanthropy than those who are presented as models of this virtue. One has no wish to take charge of anyone’s life or undertake the management of anyone’s affairs. One is not allowed by the code of ethics corresponding to one’s knowledge to make other people’s decisions for them. Hence one can say neither yes nor no to such highly personal questions. However, one can point out the consequences which are likely to follow in each case. Basically, people are just like children. They need attention. Sometimes people are really nervous when meeting people or dealing with new situations. And some of the troublemakers really just want your attention. The people-as-child analogy can be extended to cover sibling rivalry: You cannot play cards with just one person because the other people will get jealous. Think of unruly people just as you would think of a child and that will widen tolerance of them. If their needs are like those of a child, those needs are supposed to come first. The worker’s right to anger is correspondingly reduced; as an adult one must work to inhibit and suppress anger at children. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Should the analogy to children fail to induce the necessary deep acting, surface-acting strategies for handling “irate” can be brought into play. People are urged to “work” the customers name in, as in “Yes, Mr. Camdenski,” it is true construction of your new home is talking a little longer than expected.” This reminds the individual that he is not anonymous, that there is at least some pretension to a personal relation and that some emotion management is owed. Again, workers are told to use terms of empathy. Whatever happens, you are supposed to say, I know just how you feel. Lost your light fixture? I know just how you feel? Late for a walk though? I know just how you feel. Did not get that lot you were counting on? I know just how you feel. Employees reports that such expressions of empathy are useful in convincing people that they have misplaced the blame and misaimed their anger. Remember, to treat people like they are guests in your living room, and guests are to be made comfortable and their emotional outburst are expected to be met by support. Never get super angry with a customer, they are the source of revenue. Supervisors never speak officially of an obnoxious or outrageous customer, only of an uncontrolled customer. The term suggests that a fact has somehow attached itself to this customer—not that the customer has lost control or even had any control to lose. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Again, the common phrase “mishandled customer” suggests a bungle somewhere up the line, by someone destined to remain lost in the web of workers that stretched from curbside to architecture. By linguistically avoiding any attribution of blame, the idea of a right to be angry at the customer is smuggled out of discourse. Linguistically speaking, the customer never does anything wrong, so he or she cannot be blamed or made the object of anger. One time, a man was waiting for a special ordered light fixture, and one of the other home buyers sagged it and had it installed in her house. The builder responded by saying politely, “I notice this man’s light fixture was installed in your house.” The dirty deed was done, but, the implication was, by no one in particular. Such implicit reframing dulls a sense of cause of effect. It separates object from verb and verb from subject. The home buyer does not feel accused, and the builder does not feel as if he or she is accusing. Emotion work has been accomplished, but it has hidden its tracks with words. Company language is aimed not only at diffusing anger, but at minimizing fear. As in the case when a refrigerator was specially ordered and delivered to the wrong address. This was labeled an incident. The term incident calms the nerves. How could we be terrified at an incident? #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

Thus, the words that workers use and do not use help them avoid emotions inappropriate to a living room full of guest. Dealing with difficult people is part of the job. It makes us angry sometimes. And anger is part of stress. So that is why I would like to talk to you about being angry. I am not saying you should do this [work on your anger] for your corporation. I am not saying you should do it for the home buyers. I am saying do it for yourselves. The only question to be seriously discussed is “How do you rid yourself of anger?” From my experience in supervisory work I know that the problem of hopelessness is often not clearly envisaged by the analyst and hence not properly dealt with. Some of my colleagues have been so overwhelmed by the individual’s hopelessness—which they recognized but did not see as a problem—that they became hopeless themselves. This attitude is of course fatal to an analysis, for no matter how good the technique or how brave the effort, the individual senses that the analyst has really given him or her up. The same holds true outside the analytical situation. Nobody can be a constructively helpful friends or mate who does not believe in the possibility of the companion’s fulfilling one’s own potentialities. Sometimes colleagues have made the opposite mistake of not taking the individual’s hopelessness seriously enough. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

They felt the individual needed encouragement and gave it—which is commendable, but quite insufficient. When this happens, the individual, even if one appreciates the analyst’s good intentions, is quite justified in being annoyed with one, since deep down one knows that one’s hopelessness is not just a mood that can be dissipated by well-meant encouragement. In order to take the bull by the horns and tackle the problem directly, it is necessary first to recognize from indirect indications like the ones cited above that the individual feels hopeless and the extent to which one feels so. Then it must be understood that one’s hopelessness is fully warranted by one’s entanglements. The analyst must realize and explicitly convey to the individual that one’s situation is hopeless only so long as the status quo persists and is regarded as unchangeable. In simplified form, the whole problem is illustrated by a scene from Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard. The family, faced with bankruptcy, are in despair at the thought of leaving their estate with its beloved cherry orchard. A man of affairs offers the sound suggestion that they build modest homes for rent on a part of the estate. With their hidebound views, they cannot countenance such a project, and since there is no other solution they remain without hope. They ask helplessly, as if they had not heard the suggestion, whether nobody can advise or help them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

If their mentor were a good analyst he would say: “Of course the situation is difficult. However, what makes it hopes is your own attitude toward it. If you would consider changing your claims on life there would be no need to feel hopeless.” The belief that the individual can really change, which means essentially that one can really resolve one’s conflicts, is the factor that determines whether or not the therapist dare to tackle the problem and whether one can do it with a reasonable chance of success. It is here that my differences with Dr. Freud come into clear relief. Dr. Freud’s psychology and the philosophy underlying it are essentially pessimistic. This is patent in his outlook on the future of humankind as well as in his attitude toward therapy. And on the basis of his theoretical premises, he cannot be anything but pessimistic. Humans are driven by instincts which at best are only to be modified by “sublimation.” His instinctual drives for satisfaction are inevitably frustrated by society. His “ego” is helplessly tossed about between instinctual drives and the “superego,” which itself can only be modified. The superego is primarily forbidding and destructive. True ideals do not exist. The wish for personal fulfillment is narcissistic. Humans are by nature destructive and a death instinct compels them either to destroy others or to suffer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

All these theories leave little room for an optimistic attitude toward change and limit the value of the potentially splendid therapy Dr. Freud originated. In contrast, I believe that compulsive trends in neuroses are not instinctual but spring from disturbed human relationships; that they can be changed when these improve and that conflicts of such origin can really be resolved. This does not mean that therapy based on the principles I advocate has no limitations. Much work remains to be done before we can clearly determine these limitations. However, it does mean that we have well-founded reasons for believing in the possibility of radical change. Why, then, is it so important to recognize and tackle an individual’s hopelessness? In the first place, this approach is of value in dealing with special problems like depression and suicidal tendencies. We can, it is true, lift an individual depression by merely uncovering the particular conflicts in which the person is caught at the time, without touching upon one’s general hopelessness. However, if we want to prevent recurring depressions it has to be tackled because it is the deeper source from which the depressions emanate. Nor can insidious chronic depression be coped with unless one goes to this original source. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

The same hold true for suicidal conditions. We know that such factors as acute despair, defiance, and vindictiveness lead to suicidal impulses; but it is often too late to prevent suicide after the impulse has become manifest. By paying minute attention to the less dramatic signs of hopelessness and by taking up the problem with the patient at the proper time, it is probable that many suicides could be averted. It is not that collective talk determines the mood of the workers. Rather, the reverse is true: the needed mood determines the nature of the worker’s talk. To keep the collective mood stripped of any painful feelings, serious talk of death, divorce, politics, religion, and news is usually avoided. People want to forget about COVID-19 and feel safe in the modest castles, which they imagine to be in a storybook fairytale. On the other hand, when there is time for it, mutual morale raising is common. As one said: “When one sales agent is depressed, thinking, ‘I am ugly, what am I doing as a sales representative?’ other sales representatives, even without quite knowing what they are doing, try to cheer her up. They straighten her collar for her, to get her up and smiling again. I have done it too, and needed it done.” Once established, team solidarity can have two effect. It can improve morale and thus improve service. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

However, team solidarity can also become the basis for sharing grudges against the homebuyers or the corporation. Perhaps it is the second possibility that manager meant to avoid wen in Recurrent Training they offered examples of “bad” social emotion management. One teacher cautioned her students: “When you are angry with a homebuyer, do not head for the galley to blow off steam with another sales representative.” In the galley, the second sales representative, instead of calming the angry worker down, may further rile him or her up; one may become an accomplice to the aggrieved worker. Then, as the instructor put it, “There will be two of you hot to trot.” The message is, when you angry, go to a trusted therapist who will calm you down. Consider calling him or her for a phone appoint so not to drive while angry. Even if you are not suicidal, but cannot afford a therapist, a suicide hotline may be worth trying out. Support for anger or a sense of grievance—regardless of what inspires it—is bad for service and bad for the corporation. Thus, the informal ways in which workers check on the legitimacy of a grievance or look for support in blowing off steam become points of entry for company suggestions. Corporations sometimes have Ghost-Buyers who occasionally Ghost-Buy a house, and there may be senior representative on the crew, the base supervisor, and the plainclothes company supervisors who occasionally monitor employee behaviour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

One homebuyer was asked to fill out a company-elicited passenger opinion poll and fill out a questionnaire, and the results were presented by letter to the workers. As one male sales representative, seven years with the corporation describes it: We get told how we are doing twice a year when we are sent homebuyer evaluations. They show how the builder is competing. Oh, the homebuyers are asked to rank sales representatives: “genuinely concerned, made me feel welcome. Spoke to me more than required. Wide awake, energetic, eager to help. Seemed sincere when talking to the potential homebuyers and confirmed homebuyers. Helped established a relaxed community atmosphere. Enjoying their jobs. Treated homebuyers as individuals.” We see how this builder is doing in the competition. We are supposed to really get into it. Supervision is thus more indirect than direct. It relies on the sales representative’s sense of what homebuyers will communicate to management, who will, in turn, communicate to workers. Supervisors do more than oversee workers. Even when people are paid to be nice at all times, and when their efforts succeed, it is a remarkable accomplishment. This is possible because of emotion work, feeling rules, and social exchange. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

A profit motive is slipped in under acts of emotion management, under the rules that govern them, under the gift exchange. Who benefits now, and who pays? The lesson in deep acting—acting “as if the office is your home” and “as if this unruly homebuyer has a traumatic past”—are themselves a new development in deskilling. The mind of the emotion worker, the source of the ideas about what mental moves are needed to settle down an irate, has moved upstairs in the hierarchy so that the worker is restricted to implementing standard procedures. Of more general significance is the fact that the individual’s hopelessness constitutes a hindrance to the cure of any severe neurosis. We have to deal with a counterplay of meticulous and forward-moving forces, with resistance and incentive. Resistance is a collective term for all the forces within the individual that operate to maintain the status quo. One’s incentive, on the other hand, is produced by the constructive energy that urges one on toward inner freedom. This is the motive power with which we work and without which we could do nothing. It is the force that helps that individual overcome resistance. It makes one’s associations productive, there by giving the analyst a chance for better understanding. It gives one the inner strength to endure the inevitable pain of maturing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

It makes one willing to take the risk of abandoning attitudes that have given one a feeling of safety and to make the leap into the unknown of new attitudes toward oneself and others. The analyst cannot drag the individual through this process; the individual oneself must want to go. It is this invaluable force that is paralyzed by a condition of hopelessness. And in failing to recognize and tackle it the analyst deprives oneself of one’s best ally in the battle against the individual’s neurosis. The individual’s hopelessness is not a problem that can be solved by any single interpretation. There is already a substantial gain if, instead of being engulfed by a feeling of doom that one regards as unalterable, the individual begins to recognize it as a problem that may eventually be solved. This step liberates one sufficiently to go ahead. There will, of course, be ups and downs. One may feel optimistic, even overoptimistic, if one acquires some helpful insight, only to succumb to one’s hopelessness again as soon as one approaches a more upsetting one. Each time the matter must be tackled anew. However, the hold it has on the individual will relax as one realizes that one can really change. One’s incentive will grow accordingly. It may be limited, at the beginning of the analysis, to a mere wish to get rid of one’s most disturbing symptoms. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

However, the incentive gains strength as the individual becomes increasingly aware of one’s shackles, and as one gets a taste of how it feels to be free. When we shall apprehend the meaning of life, we may discover that it provides its pre-self-actualized in such prodigies. The highest service one can render is in silent contemplation, which inspires so many aspiring souls to a higher life. This is the truth. If one is sensitive, reflective, and penetrative, the mere fact that these prophets, these light-bringers and way-showers have exited at all is enough to change a human’s life. Even if one does no more than open the human mind to its higher possibilities, one does enough. Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost—humans must pray and gain knowledge for themselves from the Holy Ghost. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, behold, my beloved brethren, I suppose that ye ponder somewhat in your hearts concerning that which ye should do after ye have entered in by the way. However, behold, why do ye ponder these things in your hearts? Do ye not remember that I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of Angels? And now, how could ye speak with the tongue of Angels save it were by the Holy Ghost? Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the word of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark. For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do. Behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and there will be no more doctrine given until after he shall manifest himself unto you in the flesh. And when he shall manifest himself unto you in the flesh, the things which he shall say unto you shall ye observe to do. And now I, Nephi, cannot say more; the Spirit stoppeth mine utterance, and I am left to mourn because of the unbelief, and the wickedness, and the ignorance, and the stiffneckedness of humans; for they will not search knowledge, when it is given unto them in plainness, even as plain as word can be. And now, my beloved brethren, I perceive that ye ponder still in your hearts; and it grieveth me that I must speak concerning this thing. For if ye would hearken unto the Spirit which teacheth a human to pray, ye would know that ye must pray; for the evil spirit teacheth not a human to pray, but teacheth one that one must not pray. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“However, behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform anything unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul,” reports 2 Nephi 32.1-9. Please send forth, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the Holy Spirit, to make these present offerings Thy Sacrament unto us, and purify our hearts for its reception. Privileges—O Lord God, please teach e to know that grace precedes, accompanies, and follows my salvation, that it sustains the redeemed soul, that not one link of its chain can ever break. From Calvary’s cross wave upon wave of grace reaches me, deals with my sin, washes me clean, renews my heart, strengthens my will, draws out my affection, kindles a flame in my soul, rules throughout my inner human, consecrates my every thought, word, work, teaches me Thy immeasurable love. How great are my privileges in Christ Jesus! Without him I stand far off, a stranger, an outcast; in him I draw near and touch his kingly sceptre. Without him I dare not lift up my guilt eyes; in him I gaze upon my Father-God and friend. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Without him I hide my lips in trembling shame; in him I open my mouth in petition and praise. Without him all is wrath and consuming fire; in him is all love, and the repose of my soul. Without him is gaping hell below me, and eternal anguish; in him its gates are barred to me by his precious blood. Without him darkness spreads its horrors in front; in him an eternity of glory is my boundless horizon. Without him all within me is terror and dismay, in him every accusation is charmed into joy and peace. Without him all things external call for my condemnation; in him they minister to my comfort, and are to be enjoyed with thanksgiving. Praise be to thee for grace, and for the unspeakable gift of Jesus. Although by the revelation of grace in this life we cannot know of God “what He is,” and thus are united to Him as to one unknown; still we know Him more fully according as many and more excellent of His effects are demonstrated to us, and according as we attribute to Him some things known by divine revelation, to which natural reason cannot reach, as, for instance, that God is Thee and One. For the images either received from sense in the natural order, or divinely formed in the imagination, we have so much more excellent intellectual knowledge, the stronger the intelligible light is in humans; and thus through revelation given by the images a fuller knowledge is received by the infusion of the divine light. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Cresleigh Homes

Luxury Apartments in the Heart of Folsom, CA | 230 Units, Walking Distance from Intel | Now Leasing! Apply Online Today.

Anyone up for a game? 🙌 Get some fresh air in @HUBApts spacious courtyard with a game of bocce ball or two. 🤩

If you make the move before May 31st, they will take $1000 off move-in costs, waive application fees, and offer $199 deposits on approved credit. Check out their virtual tours at the link in our bio!https://www.hub-folsomapts.com/

Humans were Born Free, and Everywhere Humans are in Chains!

May 20, 2020 12:41 am

When people are regarded superficially their differences are accentuated. However, as we understand each other, differences fade and the oneness of humans emerges—the same needs, the same fears, the same struggles, the same desires. Here comes everybody! Education stands firmly as the cornerstone of our great nation. A commitment to education is a commitment to our children and their future. Our children are our most precious resource and we, as citizens and communities, must never forget that the skills and knowledge we provide our children with today will become the foundation of tomorrow. We must make certain that the opportunity for a quality education is available for all children. The dedication and tireless efforts put forth by our educators to enhance the learning process is essential to the growth and prosperity of our communities and our nation. If you lecture upon morality, or political economy, official bodies will be found to make this request to the Government: That henceforth science be taught not only with sole reference to free exchange (to liberty, property, and justice), as has been the case up to the present time, but also, and especially, with reference to the facts of legislation (contrary to liberty, property, and justice) that regulate French industry. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

That, in public lecterns salaried by the treasury, the professor abstain rigorously from endangering the slightest degree the respect duet to the laws now in force. So that is a law exists that sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or plunder, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned—for how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect that it inspires? Still further, mortality and political economy must be taught in connection with this law—that is, under the supposition that it must be just, only because it is law. Another effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is that it gives to human passions and to political struggles, and, in general, to politics, properly so called, an exaggerated importance. I could prove this assertion in a thousand ways. However, I shall confine myself, by way of an illustration, to bringing it to bear upon a subject which has of late occupied everybody’s mind: universal suffrage. Whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the school of Rousseau, which professes to be very far advanced, but which I consider 20 centuries behind, universal suffrage (taking the word in its strictest sense) is not one of those scared strict and rigid doctrines with respect to which examination and doubt are crimes. Serious objections may be made to it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

In the first place, the word universal conceals a gross sophism. There are, in France, 67,000,000 inhabitants. To make the right of suffrage universal, 67,000,000 electors should be reckoned. The most extended system reckons only 18,000,000. Approximately 74 percent, then, are excluded. Upon what principle is this exclusion founded? Upon the principle of incapacity. Universal suffrage, then, means: universal suffrage of those who are capable. In point of fact, who are the capable? Are age, gender, and judicial condemnation the only conditions to which incapacity is to be attached? On taking a nearer view of the subject, we may soon perceive the reason why the right of suffrage depends upon the presumption of incapacity; the most extended system differing from the most restricted in the conditions on which this incapacity depends, and which constitutes not a difference in principle, but in degree. This motive is, that the elector does not stipulate for oneself, but for everybody. If, as the republicans of the Greek and Roman tone pretend, the right of suffrage had fallen to the lot of every one at one’s birth, it would be an injustice to adults to prevent women and children from voting. Why were women in the past, and minors currently prevented from voting? Because they are presumed to be incapable. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

And why is incapacity a reason for exclusion from voting? Because the elector does not reap alone the responsibility of one’s vote; because every vote engages and affects the community at large; because the community has a right to demand some assurances, as regards the acts upon which its well-being and its existence depend. I know what might he said in answer to this. I know what might be objected. However, this is not the place to settle a controversy of this kind. What I wish to observe is that, that this same controversy (in common with the greater part of political questions) that agitates, excites, and unsettles the nations, would lose almost all its importance if the law had always been what it ought to be. In fact, if law were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and all properties to be respected—if it were merely the organization of individual right and individual defense—if it were the obstacle, the check, the chastisement opposed to all oppression, to all plunder—is it likely that we should dispute much, as citizens, on the subject of the greater or lesser universality of suffrage? Is it likely that it would compromise that greatest of advantages, the public peace? Is it likely that the excluded classes would not quietly wait for their turn? Is it likely that the enfranchised classes would be very jealous of their privileges? And is it not clear, that the interest of all being one and the same, some would act without much inconvenience to others? #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

However, if the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the ship owners, or artist and comedians; then certainly, in this case, there is no class which may not try, and with reason, to place its hand upon the law, that would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility, and that would overturn society rather than not obtain it. Even beggars and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an incontestable title to it. They will say: “We never buy wine, tobacco, or salt, without paying the tax, and a part of this tax is given by law in perquisites and gratuities to humans who are rich than we are. Others make use of the law to create an artificial rise in the price of bread, land, meat, dairy, fuel, water, iron, or cloth. Since everybody traffic in law for one’s own profit, we should like to do the same. We should like to make it produce the right to assistance, which is the less affluent human’s plunder. To effect this, we ought to be electors and legislators, that we may organize, on a large scale, alms for our own class, as you have organized, on a large scale, protection for yours. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

“Do not tell us that you will take cause upon yourselves, and throw to us $1,400,000 francs to keep us quiet, like giving us a bone to pick. We have other claims, and, at any rate, we wish to stipulate for ourselves, as other classes have stipulated for themselves!” How is this argument to be answered? Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend oneself against plunder, or to organize it for one’s own profit. The political question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing; in a word, there will be fighting around the door of the Legislative Palace. The struggle will be no less furious within it. To be convinced of this, it is hardly necessary to look at what passes in the Chambers in France and England; it is enough to know how the question stands. With this understanding, let us examine the value, the origin, and the tendency of this popular aspiration, which pretends to realize the general good by general plunder. The Socialists say, since the law organizes justice, why should it not organize labour, instruction, and religion? Why? Because it could not organize labour, instruction, and religion, without disorganizing justice. For remember, that law is force, and that consequently the domain of the law cannot properly extend beyond the domain of force. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing upon one but a mere negation. They only oblige one to abstain from doing harm. They violate neither one’s personality, one’s liberty, nor one’s property. They only guard the personality, the liberty, the property of others. They hold themselves on the defensive; they defend the equal right of all. They fulfill a mission whose harmlessness is evident, whose utility is palpable, and whose legitimacy is not to be disputed. This is so true that, as a friend of mine once remarked to me, to say that the aim of the law is to cause justice to reign, is to use an expression that is not rigorously exact. It ought to be said, the aim of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is not justice that has an existence of its own, it is injustice. The results from the absence of the other. However, when the law, through the medium of its necessary agent—force—imposes a form of labour, a method or a subject of instruction, a creed, or a worship, it is no longer negative; it acts positively upon humans. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own will, the initiative of the legislator for their own initiative. They have no nee to consult, to compare, or to foresee; the law does all that for them. The intellect is for them a useless encumbrance; they cease to be humans; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

Try to imagine a form of labour imposed by force, that is not a violation of liberty; a transmission of wealth imposed by force, that is not a violation of property. If you cannot succeed in reconciling this, you are bound to conclude that the law cannot organize labour and industry without organizing injustice. When, from the seclusion of one’s office, a politician takes a view of society, one is struck with the spectacle of inequality that presents itself. One mourns over the sufferings that are the lot of so many of our brethren, sufferings whose aspect is rendered yet more sorrowful by the contrast of luxury and wealth. One ought, perhaps, to task oneself whether such a social state has not been caused by the plunder of ancient times, exercised in the way of conquests; and by plunder of more recent times, effected though the medium of the laws? One ought to ask oneself whether, granting the aspiration of all humans to well-being and improvement, the reign of justice would not suffice to realize the greatest activity of progress, and the greatest amount of equality compatible with that individual responsibility that God has awarded as a just retribution of virtue and vice? One never gives this thought. One’s mind turns towards combinations, arrangements, legal or factitious organization. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

One seeks the remedy in perpetuating and exaggerating what has produced the evil. For, justice apart, which we have seen is only a negation, is there any one of these legal arrangements that does not contain the principle of plunder? You say, “There are people who have no money,” and you apply to the law. However, the law is not a self-supplied fountain, whence every stream may obtain supplies independently of society. Nothing can enter the public treasury, in favour of one citizen or one class, but what other citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it. If everyone draws from it only the equivalent of what one has contributed to it, your law, it is true, is no plunder, but it does nothing for people who want money—it does not promote equality. It can only be an instrument of plunder. Examine, in the light, the protection of tariffs, subsidies, right to profit, right to labour, right to assistance, free public education, progressive taxation, gratuitousness of credit, social workshops, and you will always find at the bottom legal plunder, organized injustice. You say, “There are people who want knowledge,” and you apply to the law. However, the law is not a torch that sheds light that originates within itself. It extends over a society where there are people who have knowledge, and others who have not; citizens who want to learn, and other who are disposed to teach. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

The law can only do one of two things; either allow a free operation to this kind of transaction, id est, let this kind of want satisfy itself freely; or else preempt the will of the people in the matter, and take from some of them sufficient to pay professors commissioned to instruct others for free. However, in this second case, there cannot fail to be a violation of liberty and property—legal plunder. You say, “Here are people who are wanting in mortality or religion,” and you apply to the law; but law is force, and need I say how far it is a violent and absurd enterprise to introduce force in these matters? As the result of its systems and of its efforts, it would seem that socialism, notwithstanding all its self-compliancy, can scarcely help perceiving the monster of legal plunder. However, what does it do? It disguises it cleverly from others, and even from itself, under the seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organization, association. And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we only ask it for justice, it alleges that we reject fraternity, solidarity, organization, and association; and they brand us with the name of individualists. We can assure them that what we repudiate is not natural organization, but forced organization. It is not free association, but the forms of association that they would impose upon us. It is not spontaneous fraternity, but legal fraternity. It is not providential solidarity, but artificial solidarity, which is only an unjust displacement of responsibility. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

In any encounter of humans with humans, power is active, the power of the personal radiation, expressed in language and gestures, in the glance of the eye and the sound of the voice, in face and figure and movement, expressed in what one is personally and what one represents socially. Every encounter, whether friendly or hostile, whether benevolent or indifferent, is in some way, unconsciously or consciously, a struggle of power with power. In this struggle decisions are made continuously about the relative power of being, actualized in all those who are involved in the struggle. Creative justice does not deny these encounters and the conflicts implicit in them. For this is the price which must be paid for the creativity of life. Such struggles start in the life of an individual in the moment of one’s conception and go on up to the moment of one’s last breath. They permeate one’s relations to everything and everybody one encounters. Justice is the form in which these struggles lead to ever-changing decision about the power of being in each of the struggling beings. The impression given by this picture, the truth of which can hardly be denied, is the complete dependence of justice in personal encounters on the power of relation between person and person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

However, this impression is false because it does not take into consideration that every being which enters the struggle of power with power has already a definite power of being. It is a plant and not a stone, a beast and not a tree, a man and not a dog, a female and not a male. These and innumerable other qualities are given before the struggle in the personal encounter starts and they are the basis for the intrinsic claim for justice, which every being has. However, this claim has a large margin of indefiniteness, rooted in the dynamic side of every power of a being. And it is this undefined element in the power of a being about which new decision are always me. This of course is also the source of all injustice. If the new decision destroy the essential claim of a being, they are unjust. It is not unjust that in the struggle between power and power one of the beings involved shows a superior power of being. The manifestation of this fact is not unjust but creative. However, injustice occurs if in this struggle the superior power uses its power for the reduction or destruction of the inferior power. This can happen in all forms of personal encounters. Most frequent are those forms in which the personal encounter occurs within the frame of an institutional structure and the preservation and growth of the institution gives the pretext for unjust compulsion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

There is unjust psychological compulsion in family relations, in educational relations and in all other authority relations. It often happens that parents who look at a young child with an especially severe or angry expression become responsible for a life-long abnormal anxiety of the child. It feels rejected and loses any self-assurance concerning the power and justice of its own being. Its just claims are repressed or transformed into unjust ones, exempli gratia unconscious destructiveness against itself or against others. This, on the other hand, gives the parents a feeling of being resisted or avoided by the child. Their intrinsic claim as parents is not fulfilled either. Authority can, besides its external compulsory power, exercise a psychological compulsion which conflicts with the justice of person-to-person encounters. Here the large problem arises as to whether there is a type of authority which is, by its very nature, unjust, and another one which is by its very nature just. This seems to be the case: there is “authority in principle” and there is “authority in fact.” Authority in principle means that a person has authority by the place one occupies and that one is beyond criticism because of the place. So—to give the most famous example—the Pope as Pope is ultimate authority for every Catholic believer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

Thus, the Bible as Bible is ultimate authority for every orthodox Protestant. Thus, the dictator as dictator is ultimate authority in a totalitarian system. Thus, parents are authority for infants and try to remain in this place for ever. So teacher become authorities for pupils without trying to liberate the pupils from their authority. All this “authority in principle” is unjust authority. It disregards the intrinsic claim of group, or, as it is called if it has a manifest center, a social organism. An organism is the more developed and has a greater power of being, the more different elements are united around an acting center. Therefore, humans produce the richest, most universal and most powerful social organisms. However, the individuals who constitute this organism are each independent centers for themselves, and so they can resist the unity of the social organism to which they belong. And there the limits of the analogy between biological and social organism becomes visible. In a biological organism the parts are nothing without the whole to which they belong. This is not the case in social organisms. They destiny of an individual who is separated from the group to which one belongs may be miserable but the separation is not necessarily fatal. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

The fate of a limb which is cut off from the living organism to which it belongs is in decay. In this sense no human group is an organism in the biological sense. Neither is the family the cell of a quasi-biological organism, nor is the nation something like a biological organism. This statement is politically significant. Those who like to speak of social organisms do it usually with a reactionary tendency. They want to keep dissenting groups in conformity and they use for this purpose biological metaphors in a literal sense. Prussian conservatism and Roman Catholic family glorification agree at this point. However, the individual person is not a limb of a body; one is an ultimate, independent reality, with both personal and social functions. The individual human is a social being, but the society does not create the individual. They are interdependent. Another moral problem is the inability to take a definite stand and the undependability that goes with it. The neurotic rarely takes a stand in accordance with the objective merits of a person, idea, or cause but rather on the basis of one’s own emotional needs. Since these, however, are contradictory, one position can easily be exchanged for another. Hence many neurotics are readily swayed—unconsciously bribed, as it were—by the lure of greater affection, greater prestige, recognition, power, or “freedom.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

This applies to all their personal relationships, whether individual or as part of a group. They often cannot commit themselves to a feeling or opinion about another person. Some unsubstantiated gossip may alter their opinion. Some disappointment or sight, or what is felt as such, may be reason enough to drop a “very good friend.” Some difficulty encountered may turn their enthusiasm into listlessness. They may change their religious, political, or scientific views because of some personal attachment or resentment. They may take a stand in a private conversation but give way under the slightest pressure by some authority or group—often without knowing why they changed their opinion or even that they have do so at all. A neurotic may unconsciously avoid obvious wavering by not making up one’s mind in the first place, but “sitting on the fence,” leaving every alternative open. One may rationalize such an attitude by pointing to the actual intricacies of the situation, or one may be determined by a compulsive “fairness.” Unquestionably a genuine striving to be fair is valuable. It is true also that a conscientious wish to be fair makes it harder to take a definite stand in many situations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

However, fairness can be a compulsory part of the idealized image, and its function then is to make taking a stand unnecessary, while at the same time allowing the person to feel “anointed” for being above prejudiced struggle. In this case there is a tendency to be indiscriminate in believing that two viewpoints are really not so contradictory, or that in a dispute between two persons there is right on both sides. It is a pseudo objectivity which prevents a person from recognizing the essential issues in any matter. Earlier I mentioned our various list of “do’s and do not’s.” We have looked at some typical “do not’s”: do not go to the beach, do not play pool, do not eat peanut butter. If this list seems humorous to you, you are wondering how anyone could have such unusual notions, consider that your own list could look just as foolish to someone else. However, foolish or not is not the issues. The issue is that God has not appointed any of us to be the Thought Police or other believer. However, what about the “do’s.” By the “do’s” I am thinking particularly of activities I call spiritual disciplines: having regular private devotions, studying the Bible, memorizing Scripture, meeting with a group Bible study, or faithfully attending a weekly prayer meeting. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

Spiritual disciplines are provided for our good, not for our bondage. “Spiritual disciplines were made for human, not humans for spiritual disciplines,” reports Mark 2.27. We can become just as legalistic about our “do’s” as we can about the “do nots.” In fact, newer believers coming into our fellowship from totally unchristian backgrounds usually do not have many cultural “do nots.” However, the spiritual disciplines are fertile ground for legalistic thinking. They can easily become a performance measurement by which we gauge whether to expect God’s blessing or not. If I have been doing pretty well, having a regular quiet time, studying my Bible, and so on, then I am hopeful about God’s blessing. However, if I have not been doing so well—have not “been faithful” as we say—then, I might as well go back to bed. We get more legalistic about spiritual disciplines with others. We try subtly (or maybe not so subtle) coercion by communicating ever so slightly that a person who is not practicing the same disciplines we are is not “committed.” Or we do not allow a person into our “in” group if he or she is not doing what we do. Again we think God should lead everyone else in spiritual growth as He does us. I do not think we should actively promote spiritual disciplines. They are absolutely necessary for growth in our Christian lives. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

And since ours is a largely undisciplined age, many believers are losing out on the benefits of those disciplines that could help them grow to maturity in Christ. However, we should promote them as benefits, not as duties. Perhaps we should stop talking about being “faithful” to have a quiet time with God each day, as if we were doing something to earn a reward. It would be better to talk about the privilege of spending time with the God of the Universe and the importance for our own sake of being consistent in the practice. If we are involved in a one-to-one discipling relationship, we must remember Paul’s attitude when he wrote, “Not that we Lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm,” reports 2 Corinthians 1.24. In a one-to-one discipling relationship, we are there to serve, not to Lord it over the other person. We should encourage the use of spiritual disciplines and do all we can to help the person succeed in them, but we should never require them as a condition of acceptance—either by God or by us. We must remember that the methods of spiritual disciplines are a means to the end, not the ends themselves. We need to teach grace before commitment, because, as we saw, grace understood and embrace will always lead to commitment. However, commitment required will always lead to legalism. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

Christ will minister to the Nephites—Nephi foresees the destruction of his people—they will speak from the dust—the Gentiles will build up false churches and secret combinations—the Lord forbids humans to practice priestcrafts. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And after Christ shall have risen from the dead he shall show himself unto you, my children, and my beloved brethren; and the words which he shall speak unto you shall be the law which ye shall do. For behold, I say unto you that I have beheld that many generations shall pass away, and there shall be great wards and contentions among my people. And after the Messiah shall come there shall be signs given unto my people of his birth, and also of his death and resurrection; and great and terrible shall that say be unto the wicked, for they shall perish; and they perish because they cast out the prophets, and the saints, and stone them, and slay them; wherefore the cry of the blood of the saints shall ascend up to God from the ground against them. Wherefore, all those who are proud, and that do wickedly, the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, for they shall be as stubble. And they that kill the prophets, and the saints, the depths of the Earth shall swallow them up, saith the Lord of Hosts; and mountains shall cover them, and whirlwinds shall carry them away, and buildings shall fall upon them and crush them to pieces and grind them to powder. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

“And they shall be visited with thunderings, and listenings, and Earthquakes, and all manner of destructions, for the fire of the anger of the Lord shall be kindled against them, and they shall be as stubble, and the day that cometh shall consume them, saith the Lord of Hosts. O the pain, and the anguish of my soul for the loss of the slain of my people! For I, Nephi, have seen it, and it well nigh consumeth me before the presence of the Lord; but I must cry unto my God: They ways are just. However, behold, the righteous that hearken unto the words of the prophets, and destroy them not, but look forward unto Christ with steadfastness for the signs which are given, notwithstanding all persecution—behold, they are they which shall not perish. However, the Son of Righteousness shall appear unto them; and he shall heal them, and they shall have peace with him, until three generations shall have passed away, and many of the fourth generation shall have passed away in righteousness. And when thee things have passed away a speedy destruction cometh unto my people; for, notwithstanding the pains of my soul, I have seen it; wherefore, I know that it shall come to pass; and they sell themselves for naught; for, the reward of their pride and their foolishness they shall reap destruction; for because they yield unto the devil and choose works of darkness rather than light, therefore they must go down to hell. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

“For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with a human. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with a human then cometh speedy destruction, and this grieveth my soul. And as I spake concerning the convincing of the Jews, that Jesus is the very Christ, it must needs be that the Gentiles be convinced also that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God. And that he manifesteth himself unto all those who believe in him, by the power of the Holy Ghost; yea, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, working mighty miracles the children of humans according to their faith. However, behold, I prophesy unto you concerning the last days; concerning the days when the Lord God shall bring these things forth unto the children of humans. After my seed and the seed of my brethren shall have dwindled in unbelief, and shall have been smitten by the Gentiles; yea, after the Lord God shall have camped against them round about, and shall have laid siege against them with a mount, and raised forts against them; and after they shall have been brought down low in the dust, even that they are not, yet the words of the righteous shall be written, and the prayer of the faithful shall be heard, and all those who have dwindled in unbelief shall not be forgotten,” reports 2 Nephi 26.1-15. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

We beseech Thee, O Lord, please let the earnest desire of Thine obedient people move Thy pity, and let their faithful supplication obtain Thy mercy; that what they cannot claim by merits they may receive by the abundance of Thy pardon; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Great God, in public and private, in sanctuary and home, may my life be steeped in prayer, filled with the spirit of grace and supplication, each prayer perfumed with the incense of atoning blood. Please help me, please defend me, until from praying ground I pass to the realm of unceasing praise. Urged by my need, invited by Thy promises, called by Thy Spirit, I enter Thy presence, worshipping Thee with Godly fear, awed by Thy majesty, greatness, glory, but encourage by Thy love. I am all poverty as well as all guilt, having nothing of my own with which to repay Thee, but I bring Jesus to Thee in the arms of faith, pleading his righteousness to offset my iniquities, rejoicing that he will weigh down the scales for me, and satisfy Thy justice. I bless Thee that great sin draws out great grace, that, although the least sin deserves infinite punishment because done against an infinite God, yet there is mercy for me, for where guilty is most terrible, there Thy mercy in Christ is most free and deep. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

Please bless me by revealing to me more of his saving merits, by causing Thy goodness to pass before me, by speaking peace to my contrite heart; strengthen me to give Thee no rest until Christ shall reign supreme within me, in every thought, word, and deed, in a faith that purifies the heart, overcomes the World, works by love, fastens me to Thee, and ever clings to the cross. O God of Heavenly powers, Who givest more than we ask or deserve; please grant, we beseech Thee, that what we cannot have by reliance on our own deserts may be granted to us by Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. May Thy perpetual gifts, O Lord, be confirmed to Thy faithful servants, that in receiving them they may seek Thee, and in seeking Thee may endlessly receive them; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless, O Lord, Thy family in Heavenly places, and fill them with Thy spiritual gifts; grant them love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, hope, faith, chastity; that being replenished with all Thy gifts, they may attain their desires of coming safe unto Thee; through our Lord. Take away from us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, all our iniquities, and the spirit of pride and arrogance, which Thou resistest, and fill us with the spirit of fear, and give us a contrite and humbled heart, which Thou dost not despise,–that we may be enabled with pure minds to enter into the Holy of Holies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

Cresleigh Homes

Dinner is served. 🤩 #BrightonStation Residence 4 has a beautiful formal dining room accessible through the butler’s pantry (in the back left) or through the main hallway, creating connectivity and flow. 🙌 https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-4/

#CresleighRanch
#CresleighHomes

Well, if I Called the Wrong Number, Why Did You Answer the Phone?

May 12, 2020 12:36 am

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The aim of education should be to convert the mind into a living fountain and not a reservoir. That which is filled by merely pumping in, will be emptied by pumping out. A social condition is commonly the result of circumstances, sometimes of laws, oftener still of these two causes united; but wherever it exists, it may justly be considered as the source of almost all the laws, the usages, and the ideas, which regulate the conduct of nations: whatever it does not produce, it modifies. It is, therefore, necessary, if we would become acquainted with the legislation and the manners of a nation, to begin by the study of its social condition. The striking characteristic of the social condition the Anglo-Americans is its essential democracy. The first Emigrants of New England.—Their Equality.—Aristocratic Laws introduced in the South.—Period of the Revolution.—Change in the Law of Descent.—Effects produced by this Change.—Democracy carried to its utmost Limits in the new States of the West.—Equality of Education. Many important observations suggest themselves upon the social condition of the Anglo-Americans; but there is one which takes precedence of all the rest. The social condition of the Americas is eminently democratic; this was its character at the foundation of the colonies, and is still more strongly marked at the present day. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Great equality existed among the emigrants who settled on the shores of New England The germe of aristocracy was never planted in that part of the Union. The only influence which obtained there was that of intellect; the people were used to reverence certain names as the emblems of knowledge and virtue. Some of their fellow-citizens acquired a power over the rest which might truly have been called aristocratic, if it had been capable of invariable transmission from father to son. This was the state of things to the east of the Hudson: to the southwest of that river, and in the direction of the Floridas, the case was different. In most of the states situated to the southwest of the Hudson some great English proprietors had settled, who had imported with them aristocratic principles and the English law of descent. I have explained the reasons why it was impossible ever to establish a powerful aristocracy in America; these reasons existed with less force to the south west of the Hudson. In the south, one man, assisted by enslaved people, could cultivate a great extent of country: it was therefore common to see rich landed proprietors. However, their influence was not altogether aristocratic as that term is understood in Europe, since they possessed no privileges; and the cultivation of their estates being carried on by slaves, they had no tenants depending on them, and consequently no patronage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Still, the great proprietors south of the Hunsdon constituted a superior class, having ides and tastes of its own, and forming the center of political action. This kind of aristocracy sympathized with the body of the people, whose passions and interests it easily embraced; but it was too weak and too short-lived to excite either love or hatred for itself. This was the class which headed the insurrection in the south, and furnished the best leaders of the American revolution. At the period of which we are now speaking, society was shaken to its center: the people, in whose name the struggled had taken place, conceived the desire of exercising the authority which it had acquired; its democratic tendencies were awakened; and having thrown off the yoke of the mother-country, it aspired to independence of every kind. The influence of individuals gradually ceased to be felt, and custom and law untied together to produce the same result. However, the law of descent was the last step to equality. I am surprised that ancient and modern jurists have attributed to this law a greater influence on human affairs. I understand by the law of descent all the laws whose principal object it is to regulate the distribution of property after the death of its owner. The law of entail is of this number: it certainly prevents the owner from disposing of one’s possession before one’s death; but this is solely with a view of preserving them entire for the heir. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

It is true that these laws belong to civil affairs: but they ought nevertheless to be placed at the head of all political institutions; for, while political laws are only the symbol of a nation’s condition, they exercise an incredible influence upon its social state. They have, moreover, a sure and uniform manner of operating upon society, affecting, as it were, generations yet unborn. Through their means humans acquire a kind of preternatural power over the future lot of their fellow-creatures. When the legislator has once regulated the law of inheritance, one may rest from one’s labour. The machine once put in motion will go on for ages, and advance, as if self-guided, toward a given point. When framed in a particular manner, this law unites, draws together, and advance, as if self-guided, toward a given point. When framed in a particular manner, this law unites, draws together, and vests property and power in a few hands: its tendency is clearly aristocratic. On opposite principles its action is still more rapid; it divides, distributes, and disperses both property and power. Alarmed by the rapidity of its progress, those who despair of arresting its motion endeavour to obstruct by difficulties and impediments; they vainly seek to counteract its effect by contrary efforts; but it gradually reduces or destroys every obstacle, until by its incessant activity the bulwarks of the influence of wealth are grounded down to the fine and shifting sand which is the basis of democracy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

When the law of inheritance permits, still more when it decrees, the equal division of a father’s property among all his children, its effects are of two kinds: it is important to distinguish them from each other, although they tend to the same end. In virtue of law of partible inheritance, the death of every proprietor brings about a kind of revolution in property: not only do one’s possessions change hands, but their very nature is altered; since they are parceled into shares, which become smaller and smaller at each division. This is the direct, and, as it were, they physical effect of the law. It follows, then, that in countries where equality of inheritance is established by law, property, and especially landed property, must have a tendency to perpetual diminution. The effects, however, of such legislation would only be perceptible after a lapse of time, if the law was abandoned to its own working; for supposing a family to consist of two children (and in a country peopled as France is, the average number is not above three), these children, sharing among them the fortune of both parents, would not be poorer than their father or mother. However, the law of equal division exercises its influence not merely upon the property itself, but it affects the minds of the heirs, and brings their passion into play. These indirect consequences tend powerfully to the destruction of large fortunes, and especially of large domains. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Among the nations whose law of descent is founded upon the right of primogeniture, landed estates often pass from generation to generation without undergoing division. The consequence of which is, that family feeling is to a certain degree incorporated with the estate. The family represents the estate, the estate the family; whose name, together with its origin, its glory, its power, and its virtues, is thus perpetuated in an imperishable memorial of the past, and sure pledge of the future. When the equal partition of property is established by law, the intimate connexion is destroyed between the family feeling and the preservation of the paternal estate; the property ceases to represent the family; for, as it must inevitably be divided after one or two generations, it has evidently a constant tendency to diminish, and must in the end be completely dispersed. The sons of the great landed proprietor, if they are few in number, of it fortune befriend them, may indeed entertain the hope of being as wealthy as their father, but not that of possessing the same property as he did; their riches must necessarily be composed of elements different from his. Now, from the moment when you divest the land-owner of that interest in the preservation of his estate which he derives from association, from tradition, and from family pride, you may be certain that sooner or later he will dispose of it; for there is a strong pecuniary interest in favour of selling, as floating capital produces higher interest than real property, and is more readily available to gratify the passions of the moment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Great landed estates which have once been divided, never come together again; for the small proprietor draws from his land a better revenue in proportion, than the large owner does from his; and of course he sells it at a higher rate. (I do not mean to say that the small proprietor cultivates his land better, but he cultivates I with more ardour and care; so that he makes up by his labour for his want of skill.) The calculations of gain, therefore, which decided the rich man to sell his domain, will still more powerfully influence him against buying small estates to unite them into a large one. What is called family pride is often founded upon an illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself, as it were, in his great-grandchildren. Where the esprit de famille ceases to act, individual selfishness comes into play. When the idea of family becomes vague, indeterminate, and uncertain, a man thinks of his present convenience; he provides for the establishment of the succeeding generation, and no more. Either a man gives up the idea of perpetuating his family, or at any rate he seeks to accomplish it by other means than that of a landed estate. Thus not only does the law of partible inheritance render it difficult for families to preserve their ancestral domains entire, but it deprives them of the inclination to attempt it, and compels them in some measure to co-operate with the law in their own extinction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The law of equal distribution proceeds by two methods: by acting upon things, it acts upon persons; by influencing persons, it affects things. By these means the law succeeds in striking at the root of landed property, and dispersing rapidly both families and fortunes. (Land being the most stable kind of property, we find, from time to time, rich individuals who are disposed to make great sacrifices in order to obtain it, and who willingly forfeit a considerable part of their income to make sure of the rest. However, these are accidental cases. The preference for landed property is no longer found habitually in any class but among the poor. The small land-owner, who has less information, less imagination, and fewer passion, than the great one, is generally occupied with the desire of increasing his estate; and it often happens that by inheritance, by marriage, or by the chances of trade, he is gradually furnished with the means. Thus, to balance the tendency which leads men to divide their estates, there exists another, which incites them to add to them. This tendency, which is sufficient to prevent estates from being divided ad infinitum, is not strong enough to create great territo rial possessions, certainly not to keep them up in the same family.) Most certainly it is not for us, Frenchmen of the nineteenth century, who daily behold the political and social changes which the law of partition is bringing to pass, to question its influence. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

It is perpetually conspicuous in our country, overthrowing the walls of our dwellings and removing the landmarks of our fields. However, although it has produced great effects in France, must still remains for it to do. Our recollections, opinions, and habits, present powerful obstacles to progress. In the Untied States of America it has nearly completed its work of destruction, and there we can best study its results. The English laws concerning the transmission of property were abolished in almost all the states at the time of the revolution. The law of entail was so modified as not to interrupt the free circulation of the property. The first having passed away, estates began to be parceled out; and the change became more and more rapid with the progress of time. At this moment, after a lapse of little more than sixty years, the aspect of society is totally altered; the families of the great landed proprietors are almost all commingled with the general mass. In the state of New York, which formerly contained many of these, there are but two who still keep their heads above the stream; and they must shortly disappear. The sons of these opulent citizens have become merchants, lawyers, or physicians. Most of them have lapsed into obscurity. The last trace of hereditary tanks and distinctions is destroyed—the law of partition has reduced all to one level. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

I do not mean that there is any deficiency of wealthy individuals in the United States of America; I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. However, wealth circulates with inconceivable rapidity, and experience shows that it is rare to find two succeeding generations in the full enjoyment of it. This picture, which may perhaps be thought overcharged, still gives a very imperfect idea of what is taking place in the new states of the west and southwest. At the end of the last century a few bold adventurers began to penetrate into the valleys of the Mississippi, and the mass of the population very soon began to move in that direction: communities unheard of till then were seen to emerge from their wilds: states, whose names were not in existence a few years before, claimed their place in the American Union; and in the western settlements we may behold democracy arrived at its utmost extreme. In these states, founded off hand, and as it were by chance, the inhabitants are but of yesterday. Scarcely known to one another, the nearest neighbours are unaware of each other’s history. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

In this part of the American continent, therefore, the population has not experienced the influence of great names and great wealthy, not even that of natural aristocracy of knowledge and virtue. None are there to wield that respectable power which men willingly grant to the remembrance of a life spent in doing good before their eyes. The new states of the west are already inhabited; but society has no existence among them. It is not only the fortunes of men which are equal in America; even their acquirements partake in some degree of the same uniformity. I do not believe there is a country in the World where, in proportion to the population, there are so few uninstructed, and at the same time so few learned individuals. Primary instruction is within the reach of everybody; superior instruction is scarcely to be obtained by any. This is not surprising; it is in fact the necessary consequence of what we have advanced above. Almost all the Americans are in easy circumstances, and can therefore obtain the first elements of human knowledge. In America there are comparatively few who are rich enough to live without a profession. Every profession requires an apprenticeship, which limits the time of instruction to the early years of life. At fifteen they enter upon their calling, and thus their education ends at the age wen ours begins. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Whatever is done afterward, is with a view to some special and lucrative object; a science is taken up as a matter of business, and the only branch of it which is attended to is such as admits of an immediate practical application. What is meant by the remark, that “at fifteen they enter upon a career, and thus their education is very often finished at the epoch when ours commences,” is not clearly perceived. Our professional men enter upon their course of preparation for their respective professions, wholly between eighteen and twenty-one years of age. Apprentices to trades are bound out, ordinarily, at fourteen, but what general education they receive is after that period. Previously, they have acquired the mere elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. However, it is supposed there is nothing peculiar to America, in the age at which apprenticeship commences. In England, they commence at the same age, and it is believed that the same thing occurs throughout Europe. It is feared that the author has not expressed himself with his usual clearness and precision. In American most of the rich men were formerly poor: most of those who now enjoy leisure were absorbed in business during their youth; the consequences of which is, that when they might have had a taste for study they had no time for it, and when the time is at their disposal they have no longer the inclination. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

There is no class, then, in America in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure, and by which the labours of the intellect are held in honour. Accordingly there is an equal want of the desire and the power of application to these objects. A middling standard is fixed in America for human knowledge. All approach as near to it as they can; some as they rise, others as they descend. Of course, an immense multitude of persons are to be found who entertain the same number of ideas on religion, history, science, political economy, legislation, and government. The gifts of intellect proceed directly from God, and man cannot prevent their unequal distribution. However, in consequence of the state of things which we have here represented, it happens, that although the capacities of men are widely different, as the Creator has doubtless intended they should be, they are submitted to the same method of treatment. In American the aristocratic element has always been feeble from its birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at any rate so completely disabled that we can scarcely assign to it any degree of influence in the course of affairs. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The democratic principle, no the contrary, has gained so much strength by time, by events, and by legislation, as to have become no only predominant but all-powerful. There is no family or corporate authority, and it is rare to find even the influence of individual character enjoy any durability. American, then, exhibits in her social state a most extraordinary phenomenon. Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the World, or, in any age of which history has preserved the remembrance. The political consequences of such a social condition as this are easily deducible. It is impossible to believe that equality will not eventually find its way into the political World as it does everywhere else. To conceive of men remaining forever unequal upon one single point, yet equal on all others, is impossible; they must come in the end to be equal upon all. Now I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political World: Every citizen must be put in possession of one’s rights, or rights must be granted to no one. For nations which have arrived at the same stage of social existence as the Anglo-Americans, it is therefore very difficult to discover a medium between the sovereignty of all and the absolute power of one person: and it would be vain to deny that social condition which I have been describing is equally liable to each of these consequences. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

There is, in fact, manly and lawful passion for equality, which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honoured. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. Not that those nations whose social conditions is democratic naturally despise liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. However, liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty, and if they miss their aim, resign themselves to their disappointment; but noting can satisfy them excent equality, and rather than lose it they resolve to perish. On the other hand, in a sate where the citizens are nearly on an equality, it becomes difficult for them to preserve their independence against the aggressions of power. No one among them being strong enough to engage singly in the struggle with advantage, nothing but a general combination can protect their liberty: and such a union is not always to be found. From the same social position, then, nations may derive one or the other two great political results; these results are extremely different from each other, but they may both proceed from the same cause. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

The Angelo-Americans, are the first who, having been exposed to this formidable alternative, have been happy enough to escape the dominion of absolute power. They have been allowed by their circumstances, their origin, their intelligence, and especially by their moral feeling, to establish and maintain the sovereignty of the people. Isaiah speaks messianically—the people in darkness will see a great light—unto us as a child is born—he will be the Prince of Peace and will reign on David’s throne—compare Isaiah 9. About 559-545 Before Christ. “Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict by the way of the Red Sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, and increased the joy—they joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast broke the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of government and peace there is no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will Perform this. The Lord sent his word unto Jacob and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart: the bricks are fallen down, but we will build when hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. Therefore the Lord shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together; the Syrians before and the Philistine behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of Hosts. Therefore will the Lord cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush in one day. The ancient, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

“Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows; for every one of them is a hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. For wickedness burneth as the fire; it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forests, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke. Through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire; no person shall spare one’s brother. And one shall snatch on the right hand and be hungry; and one shall eat on the left hand and they shall not be satisfied; they shall eat every person the flesh of one’s own arm—Manasseth, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh; they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still,” 2 Nephi 19.1-21. O Life-Giving Master, and Bestower of good things, Who hast given unto people the blessed Hope of everlasting life, our Lord Jesus Christ; grant us to perform this Divine service unto Thee in holiness, that we may enjoy the blessedness to come; and being evermore guarded by Thy power, and guided into the light of truth, may continually render unto Thee all glory and thanksgiving. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Gracious God, my heart praises Thee for the wonder of Thy love in Jesus; He is Heaven’s darling, but is for me the incarnate, despised, rejected, crucified sin-bearer; in him Thy grace has almost out-graced itself, in him Thy love to rebels has reached its height; O to love Thee with a love like this! My heart is locked, let Thy love be the master key to pen it; O Father, I adore Thee for Thy great love in the gift of Jesus, O Jesus, I bless Thee for resigning Thy life for me, O Holy Spirit, I thank Thee for revealing to me this mystery; Great God, let Thy Son see in me the travail of His soul! Please bring me away from my false trusts to rest in Him, and Him only. Let me no be so callous to his merit as not to love him, so indifferent to His blood as not to desire cleansing. Lord Jesus, Master, Redeemer, Saviour, come and take entire possession of me; this is Thy right by purchase. In the arms of love enfold and subdue my willful spirit. Take, sanctify, use my every faculty. I am not ashamed of my hope, nor has my confidence led me into confusion. I trusted in Thee regarding my innumerable sins, and Thou hast cast them behind my back. When evils encompassed me, I trusted in Thee, and Thou broughtest me out into a wealthy place. I trusted in Thee in an hour of distress, and Thou didst not fail me, though faith trembled. O God of the eternal choice, O God of the restored possession purchased on the tree, O God of the effectual call, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, I adore Thy Glory, honour, majesty, power, dominion forever. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

Find everything you need to keep your furry friend feeling their best at @HUBApts! 🐶 Our pet-friendly facilities include a dog park and pet wash area to keep your dog fit and squeaky clean! ✨Explore a (long!) list of other amenities on HUB’s website. Link in bio. 👉 https://www.hub-folsomapts.com/

#CresleighHomes

Respect for God Demands that the Face, the Hands and the Feet be Washed One a Day!

May 9, 2020 12:53 am

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. However, let us speak about the colonized. I see clearly what colonization has destroyed: the wonderful Native American civilizations—neither Deterding nor Royal Dutch nor Standard Oil will ever console me for the Aztecs and the Incas. I see clearly the civilizations, condemned to perish at a future date, into which it has introduced a principle of ruin: the South Sea islands, Nigeria, Nyasaland. I see less clearly the contributions it has made. Security? Culture? The rule of law? In the meantime, I look around and wherever there are colonizers and colonized face to face, I see force, brutality, cruelty, sadism, conflict, and in a parody of education, the hasty manufacture of a few thousand subordinate functionaries, “boys,” artisans, office clerks, and interpreters necessary for the smooth operation of business. I spoke of contact. Between colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labour, intimidation, pressure, the police, taxation, theft, assault by physical force, compulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

With colonization, there is no human contact, but relations of domination and submission which turn the colonizing being into a classroom monitor, an army sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous person into an instrument of production. My turn to state an equation: colonization = “thingification.” I hear the storm. They talk to me about progress, about “achievements,” diseases cured, improved standards of living. I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out. They throw facts at my head, statistics, mileages of roads, canals, and railroad tracks. I am talking about throughs of people sacrificed to the Congo-Ocean. I am talking about those who, as I write this, are digging the habour of Abidjan by hand. I am talking about millions of people torn from their gods, their land, their habits, their life—from life, from the dance, from wisdom. I am talking about millions of people in whom fear has been cunningly instilled, who have taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkeys. They dazzle me with the tonnage of cotton or cocoa that has been exported, the acreage that has been planted with olive trees or grapevines. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

I am talking about natural economics that have been disrupted—harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigenous population—about food crops destroyed, malnutrition permanently introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward the benefit of the metropolitan countries, about the looting of products, the looting of raw materials. They pride themselves on abuses eliminated. I too talk about abuses, but what I say is that on the old ones–very real—they superimposed others—very detestable. They talk to me about local tyrants brought to reason; but I note that in general the old tyrants get on very well with the new ones, and that there has been established between them, to the detriment of the people, a circuit of mutual services and complicity. They talk to me about civilization, I talk about proletarianization and mystification. For my very part, I make a systematic defense of the non-European civilizations. Every day that passes, every denial of justice, every beating by the police, every demand of the workers that is drowned in blood, every death from COVID-19, every scandal that is hushed up, every punitive expedition, every police van, every gendarme and every militiaman, brings home to us the value of our old societies. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

They were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few. They were societies that were not only ante-capitalist, as has been said, but also anti-capitalist. They were demonstrative societies, always. They were cooperative societies, fraternal societies. I make a systematic defense of the societies destroyed by imperialism. They were the fact, they did not pretend to be the idea; despite their faults, they were neither to be hated nor condemned. They were content to be. In them, neither the word failure not the word avatar had any meaning. They kept hope intact. Whereas those are the only words that can, in all honesty, be applied to the European enterprises outside Europe. My only consolation is that periods of colonization pass, that nations sleep only for a time, and the peoples remain. For my part, I search in vain for the place where I could have expressed such views: where I ever underestimated the importance of Europe in the history of human thought; where I ever preached a return to any kind; where I ever claimed that there could be a return. The truth is that I have said something very different: to wit that the great historical tragedy of Africa has been not so much that it was too late in making contact with the rest of the World, as the manner in which that contact was brought about. Europe began to propagate at a time when it had fallen into the hands of the most unscrupulous financiers and captains of industry. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

It was our misfortune to encounter that particular Industrialization on our path, and Industrialization is responsible before the human community for the highest heap of corpses in history. In another connection, in judging colonization, I have added that Europe has gotten on very well indeed with all the local feudal lords who agreed to serve, woven a villainous complicity with them, rendered their tyranny more effective and more efficient, and that it has actually tended to prolong artificially the survival of local past in their most pernicious aspects. I have said—and this is something very different—that colonialist Europe has grafted modern abuse onto ancient injustice, hateful racism onto old inequality. That if I am attacked on the grounds of intent, I maintain that colonialist Europe is dishonest in trying to justify its colonizing activity a posteriori by the obvious material progress that has been achieved in certain fields under the colonial regime—since sudden change is always possible, in history as elsewhere; since no one knows at what stage of material development these same countries would have been if Europe had not intervened; since the technical outfitting of Africa and Asia, their administrative reorganization, in a word, their “Europeanization,” was (as is proved by the example of Japan) in no way tied to the European occupation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

This is because Europeanization of the non-European continents could have been accomplished otherwise than under the heel of European occupation. Since the Europeanization of the non-European continents could have been accomplished otherwise than under the heel of Europe; since this movement of Europeanization was in progress; since it was even slowed down; since in any case it was distorted by the European take over. The proof is that at present it is the indigenous peoples of Africa and Asia who are demanding schools, and colonialist Europe which refuses them; that it is the African who is asking for ports and roads, and colonialist Europe which is insufficiently on this score; that it is the colonized person who wants to move forward, and the colonizer who holds things back. Another fear born of the protective structure is a fear of exposure. Its sources lies in the many pretenses that go into the development and maintenance of the structure itself. These will be described in connection with the impairment of moral integrity brought about by unresolved conflicts. For our present purpose we need only point out that a neurotic person wants to appear, both to oneself and others, different from what one really is—more harmonious, more rational more generous, or powerful, or ruthless. It would be hard to say whether one is more afraid of being exposed to oneself or to others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Consciously, it is others one is most concerned about, and the more one externalizes one’s fear the more anxious one is that others should not find one out. If only others can be kept in the dark, one may say in that case that what one thinks of oneself does not matter; one’s own discovery of one’s failings can take in one’s stride. That is not so, but it is the way one feels consciously and indicates the degree to which externalization is present. Fear of being exposed may either appear as a nebulous feeling that one is a bluff or may be attached to some particular quality only remotely associated with what one is really bothered about. A person may be afraid that one is not as intelligent, as competent, as well educated, as attractive as one is believed to be, so shifting the fear to qualities that do not reflect on one’s character. Thus a patient recalled that in his early adolescence he was haunted by the fear that his being at the head of his class was due entirely to bluffing. Each time he changed schools he was sure that this time he would be found out, and the fear persisted even when again he captured the top rank. His feeling puzzled him, but he was unable to put his finger on the cause of it. He could not gain an insight into his problem because he was on the wrong track: his fear of exposure did not at all concern his intelligence but had merely been shifted to that sphere. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

In reality it concerned his unconscious pretense of being a good fellow who did not care about grades, whereas the fact was that he was obsessed by a destructive need to triumph over others. This illustration leads to a pertinent generalization. Fear of being a bluff is always related to some objective factor, but it is usually not the one the person oneself thinks it is. Symptomatically, its outstanding expression is blushing or a fear of blushing. Since it is an unconscious pretense that the patient fears will be disclosed, the analyst will make a serious mistake if, noting the patient’s fear of being found out, he searches for some experience that he thinks the latter is ashamed of and is hiding. However, the patient may not be holding back anything of the ort. What happens then is that one becomes more and more fearful that there must be something particularly bad in one which one is unconsciously loath to reveal. Such a situation is conductive to self-condemnatry scrutiny but not to constructive work. One will perhaps go into further detail about episodes of pleasures of the flesh or destructive impulses. However, the fear of exposure will remain so long as the analyst fails to recognize that the patient is caught in a conflict and that one oneself is working on only one aspect of it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Fear of exposure can be provoked by any situation which—to the neurotic—means being out to a test. This would include starting a new job, making new friends, entering a new school, examinations, social gatherings, or any kind of performance that might make one conscious even if it is no more than taking part in a discussion. Frequently what is consciously conceived as a fear of failure actually has to do with exposure, and hence is not allayed by success. The person will merely feel that one “got by” this time, but what about the next? And if one should fail, one will only be the more convinced that he has always been a bluff and that this time one was caught. One consequence of such a feeling is shyness, particularly in any new situation. Another is wariness in the face of being liked or appreciated. The person will think, consciously or unconsciously: “They like me now, but if they really knew me, they would feel otherwise.” Naturally this fear plays a role in analysis, whose explicit purpose is to “find out.” Every new fear requires a new set of defenses. Those erected against fear of exposure fall into opposite categories and hinge on the whole character structure. On the other hand, there is a tendency to avoid test situations of any kind; and if they cannot be avoided, to be reserved, self-controlled, and wear an impenetrable mask. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

On the other than, there is an unconscious attempt to become so perfect a bluff that exposure need not be feared. The latter attitude is not defensive alone: magnificent bluffing is also used by individuals of the aggressive type who live vicariously, as a means of impressing those whom they wish to exploit; any attempt to question them, then, will be met by a wily counterattack. I refer here to openly sadistic persons. We shall see later how this trait fits in with the entire structure. We shall understand the fear of exposure when we have answered two questions: What is a person afraid to disclose? and, What is it that one fears in case one should be exposed? The first we have already answered. In other to answer the second we must deal with still another fear emanating from the protective structure, the fear of disregard, humiliation, and ridicule. While the ricketiness of the structure is responsible for the fear of disturbed equilibrium, and the unconscious fraudulence involved breeds fear of exposure, the fear of humiliation comes from an injured self-esteem. We have touched on this matter in other connections. Both the creation of an idealized image and the process of externalization are attempts at repairing damaged self-respect, but as we have seen, both only injure it still further. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

If we take a bird’s eye view of what happens to self-esteem in the course of a neurotic development, we come upon two pairs of seesaw processes. While the level of realistic self-esteem falls, up comes an unrealistic pride-pride in being so good, so aggressive, so unique, so omnipotent or omniscient. On the other seesaw we find a dwarfing of the neurotic’s actual self counterweighted by the raising of others to the stature of giants. Through the eclipse of large areas of the self by repression and inhibition as well as by idealization and externalization, the individual loses sight of oneself; one feels, if one does not actually become, like a shadow without weight or substance. And meanwhile one’s need of others and one’s fear of them make them not only more formidable to one but more necessary. Hence one’s center of gravity comes to rest more in others than in oneself and one concedes to them prerogatives that are rightly one’s own. Its effect is to give their evaluation of oneself undue important, while one’s own self-evaluation loses significance. This lends to the opinion of others an overwhelming power. The above sets of process taken together account for the neurotic’s extreme vulnerability to disregard, humiliation and ridicule. And these processes are so much a part of every neurosis that hypersensitivity in this respect is most common. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

If we are cognizant of the manifold sources of the fear of disregard we can see that to remove or even diminish it is no simple task. It can recede only to the extent that the entire neurosis recedes. In general, the consequence of this fear is to set the neurotic apart from others and make one hostile to them. However, more important is its power to clip the wings of those afflicted with it so any strong degree. They do not dare to expect anything of others or to set high goals for themselves. They do not dare to approach people who seem superior to them in any way; they do not dare to express an opinion even though they may have a real contribution to make; they do not dare to exercise creative abilities even when they have them; they do not dare to make themselves attractive, to try to impress, to seek a better position, and so on and so on. When tempted to reach out in any of these directions the ghastly prospect of ridicule holds them back and they take refuge in reserve and dignity. More imperceptible than the fears we have described in one that may be regarded as a condensation of all of them as well as of other fears that arise in a neurotic development. This is the fear of changing anything in oneself. Patients react to the idea of changing by adopting either of two extreme attitudes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

The two attitudes range from they either leave the whole subject nebulous, feeling that a change will occur by some sort of miracle at some hazy future time, or they attempt to change too rapidly, with too little understanding. In the first instance they harbour a mental reservation that catching a glimpse of a problem or admitting a frailty should be enough; the idea that in order to fulfill themselves they must actually change their attitudes and drives comes as a shock to them and makes them uneasy. They cannot help seeing the validity of the proposition, but unconsciously they reject it all the same. The reverse position amounts to an unconscious pretense of changing. It is in part wishful thinking, growing out of the patient’s intolerance of any imperfection in oneself; but it is also determined by one’s unconscious feeling of omnipotence—the mere wish to have a difficulty disappear should be enough to dispel it. Behind the fear of changing are qualms about changing for the worse—that is, losing one’s idealized image, turning into the rejected self, becoming like everybody else, or being left by analysis an empty shell; terror of the unknown, of having to relinquish safety devices and satisfactions hitherto gained, particularly those of chasing after phantoms that promise solution; and finally a fear of being unable to change—a fear that will be better understood when we come to discuss the neurotic’s hopelessness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

All these fears spring from unresolved conflicts. However, because we must expose ourselves to them if we want eventually to find integration, they also stand as a hindrance to our facing ourselves. They are the purgatory, as it were, through which we must wander before we can attain salvation. The faith of both the New and the Old Testament is selective, subtracting people from the kingdom of this World and adding them to that of Heaven. It leaves people in the World but takes care to make one not of the World where one lives as a stranger and pilgrim inhabiting no permanent city. It united one to the holy community of the World. In this Church there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female, but only if one has abandoned a World where Jews and Gentiles are foes, and male and female try to dominate each other. Faith implies separation: a person from one’s brother, a daughter from her mother. However, we also focus on a different type of faith. A faith where instead of erecting the holy community out of the World, it sees the whole World as already being the holy community. Nobody escapes it. All, even unawares, belong to it. Is this still the Christian faith? Ephraim and Syria wage war against Judah—Christ will be born of a virgin—Compare Isaiah 7. About 559-545 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

“And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David, saying: Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. Then said the Lord unto Isaiah: Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field: and say unto him: Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying: Let us go up against Judah and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, yea, the son of Tabeal. Thus saith the Lord God: It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus, Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken that it be not a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If ye will not believe surely ye shall not be established. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

“Moreover, the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying: Ask thee a sigh of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depths, or in the heights above. But Ahaz said: I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said: Hear ye now, O house of David; is it a small thing for you to weary people, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign—Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and to choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kinds. The Lord shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah, the king of Assyria. And it shall come to pass in that day that they Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the holes of the rock, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes. In the same day shall the Lord have with a razor that is hired, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet; and it shall also consume the beard. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

“And it shall come to pass in that day, a man shall nourish a young cow and two sheep; and it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk they shall give he shall eat butter; for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land. And it shall come to pass in that day, every place shall be, where there were a thousand wines at a thousand silverlings, which shall be for briers and thorns. With arrows and with bows shall people come thither, because all the land shall become briers and thorns. And all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns; but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and the treading of lesser cattle,” reports 2 Nephi 17.1-25. Almighty Lord our God, direct our steps into the way of peace, and strengthen out hearts to obey They commands: may the Day-spring visit us from on high, and give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death; that they may adore Thee for Thy sweetness, Who are the blessed Lord God of Israel. Father of Jesus, dawn returns but without thy light within no outward light can profit; give me the saving lamp of thy Spirit that I may see thee, the God of my salvation, the delight of my soul, rejoicing over me in love. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

I commend my heart to Thy watchful care, for I know its treachery and power; guard its every portal from the wily enemy, give me quick discernment of His deadly arts, help me to recognize His bold disguise as an Angel of light, and bid Him begone. May my words and works allure others to the highest walks of faith and love! May loiterers be quickened to greater diligence by my example! May Worldlings be won to delight in acquaintance with thee! May the timid and irresolute be warned of coming doom by my zeal for Jesus! Cause me to be a mirror of Thy grace, to show others the joy of Thy service, may my lips be well-tuned cymbals sounding Thy praise, let a halo of Heavenly-mindedness sparkle around me and a lamp of kindness Sunbeam my path. Teach me the happy art of attending to things temporal with a mind intent on things eternal. Send me forth to have compassion on the ignorant and miserable. Help me to walk as Jesus walked, my only Saviour and perfect model, His mind my inward guest, His meekness my covering garb. Let my happy place be amongst the poor in spirit, my delight the gentle ranks of the meek. Let me always esteem others better than myself, and find in true humility an heirdom to two Worlds. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

Cresleigh Homes

Welcome to #BrightonStation! In today’s blog post we want to reacquaint you all with our community at #CresleighRanch. Pictured here is Home Site 78, a Residence 4 home that is available for move in! 🏡 Read more about it on today’s post. Link in bio. 👉 https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/home-site-78/

#CresleighHomes

The Greatest thing in the World is to Know How to be Self-Sufficient!

April 30, 2020 11:26 pm

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there by any kindness I can show or any good things I can do to follow human beings, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. People do not live by bread alone. They need buttering up once in awhile. We all need it. The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. Too often we underestimate the power of respect, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. Hegemony, which is the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group, in any political context is indeed fragile. It requires renewal and modification through the assertion and reassertion of power. It is crucial to the concept that hegemony is not a “given” and permanent state of affairs, but it has to be actively won and secured; it can also be lost. Ideological work is the winning and securing of hegemony over time. Ideology is composed of text that are not closed, and counter-tendencies regularly appear in the seams and cracks of dominant forms. Mediated communications ranging from popular television shows to rap and rock music, even graffiti scrawled over surfaces of public spaces, all inscribe messages that challenge central political positions and cultural assumptions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Counterhegemony, which is defined as the way people develop ideas and discourses to challenge dominant assumptions, beliefs and established patterns of behaviour, and is employed to explain some of the criticism of, and mobilization against, globalization, is the intellection foundation for much of the anti-globalization movement. These tendencies are not solely inherent in texts. They are formulated in processes of communication—in the interpretations, social circulation, and uses of media content. As with the American soldiers’ use of military gas masks as inhaling devices to heighten the effect of marijuana smoke, or the homeless’s transformation of supermarket shopping carts into personal storage vehicles, ideological resistance and appropriation frequently involved reinventing institutional messages for purposes that differ greatly from their creators’ intentions. Expressions of the dominant ideology are sometimes reformulated to assert alternative, often completely resistant or contradictory messages. Furthermore, resistance to hegemony is not initiated solely by media consumers. Texts themselves are implicated. Ideology can never be stated purely and simply. Ways of thinking are always reflexive and embedded in a complex, sometimes contradictory, ideological regress. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Audience interpretations and uses of media imagery also eat away at hegemony. When dominant ideology is weaker than social resistance, hegemony fails. Gay subcultures, feminist organizations, environmental groups, radical political parties, music-based formations such as punks, B-boys, Rastafarians, hairography (which Britney Spears and Beyonce are both very famous for), metal heads all use media and their social networks to endorse counter-hegemonic values and lifestyles. Indeed, we have only just begun to examine the complex relationship between ideological representations and social action. The thought of the burden that the self-actualized has taken on oneself may seem dreadful, but one has one’s consolations even thought they are intangible. One has found unbroken peace and ultimate truth. One does not ask for more, not even the ecstatic bliss which delights the mystic, but which is necessarily intermittent. One knows that the whole creation is moving onwards to self-discovery which means it is moving onwards to find the same things one has found. The process is low and painful, but it will surely be successful. The self-actualized has conquered separativeness in one’s mind and realized the spirit of God in oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The logical consequences are tremendous. It follows that there is no liberation from the round of spiritual births and rebirths for the self-actualized; one has to go through it like the others. Of course, one does this with full understanding whereas they are plunged in darkness. However, if one identifies oneself with the spirit of God, then, one cannot desert but must go on to the end, working for the liberation of others in turn. This is one’s crucifixion, that being able to save others one is unable to save oneself. “And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, ‘And he (or she) was numbered with the transgressors.’” Why? Because compassion rules one, not the ego. Nobody is likely to want such a goal (until, indeed one is almost ready for it) so it is usually kept secret or symbolized. Again: “For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” What is the self-actualized reaction to the cosmos? It is very different from that of the unenlightened who have never asked the question, “What am I?” The self-actualized had no sense of conflict, no inner division. One has expanded one’s notion of self until it has embraced the Universe and therefore rightly one may say “the Universe is the Spirit of God.” This means that one has expanded the understanding of one’s minds. Less enlightened individuals only say “the Universe is an idea.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

All these sufferers come to one in their need and expect so much from one, but one must expect and ask nothing from them; one is to be content with this one-way transaction. If one wishes anything in return—even an acknowledgment of service rendered, much less a payment in any mental, emotional, or physical form—the ego has reared its head and the service is impure. If one helps them, it is out of natural good will to all humans. The self-actualized approaches them with compassion balanced by comprehension. No mother asks why she should help her child or concern herself with the well-being of her husband (or domestic partner). She identifies herself with them and takes it for granted that their interests are her own. Similarly, the illuminate takes it for granted that the interest are her or his own. Similarly, the illuminate takes it for granted that the interest of all humankind are one’s own and others are one’s family. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. It is part of nature. No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy. “There will be no more delay! But in the days when the seventh Angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets,” reports Revelations 10.7. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Situations involving persons, change in the behaviour of the persons, and the effects of different qualities of interpersonal relationships exist in almost every human undertaking. As client begin to realize how imprisoning their usual choices and responses have been and how capable they are of transcending them, they develop new ways of standing in the World and new conceptions of who they will become. They develop a sense of aha, or resonance, within themselves that clearly apprises them of their predicaments. They may say things like, “I never realized how deeply these feelings affected me and how strongly I want to experience them again in my life,” or “Now I see how so much of my life had been wasted on shame—and it is time I broke the cycle.” The ingredient that gives these realizations substance is intentionality, which precedes that which is traditionally referred to as insight. While insight is conceptual and schematic, intentionality is spontaneous and bodily and comprises one’s total orientation to the World at that time. Another precondition for insight is what is referred to as inner vision—which is a vital sense of one’s own powers in directing one’s own life. Inner vision is not to be capture in words. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Those who equate a verbal account of the inner sight with the inward vision itself make the familiar semantic error of mistaking the map for the territory. What can be said about an inner sight is always less tan the sight itself and is always relatively impotent in brining about true life changes, especially when compared with the power of one’s own liberating inward realization. It is the inward realization, them the intentionality, that give experiences meaning. The chief question, of course, is, How do we as therapists, help clients to consolidate these meanings—what tools or inspirations can we provide? The answer is, No tools or inspirations are needed other than those they have already gleaned form our being present with them and from their discovering (internalizing) the ability to be present with themselves. Yet it is of vital importance that we reinforce these developments, especially toward the close of treatment. For example, I often invite clients to explore their specific values toward the end of therapy—which values they hold dear and how they plan on implementing those values. I also find it helpful to reflect back to clients, not merely what they say, but what I hear them intending: “You seem to be excited about getting out there and doing what you felt you could not do all those years. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

“I feel exuberance when you speak about marrying your fiancée, a sense that you are deeply ready to be involved; “I sense that you no longer need to be the flashiest guy on the block, tat you can now enjoy quiet moments at home;” “I do not get the sense of you walking on eggshells anymore—you no longer downplay your power;” or “You are not going to let physical disabilities disable you mentally—this is the message that you have declared to me today.” It is important that people know that if they cannot get outer freedom, they can get inner freedom, of mind and heart. No Worldly advantage can tempt the self-actualized into desertion of one’s sacred task of serving humanity, nor can any egoism lead one into betrayal of those who trust one. The goodwill which one shows to all people is devoid of any self-seeking motive, is a natural expression of the love which one finds in the innermost chambers of one’s soul. The World play is but an illusion of the mind, but the integral vision of the self-actualized enables one to act one’s part perfectly in they very heart of the World’s tumult. The knowledge that all action is ultimately illusory does not prevent one being dynamically active Supreme calm and silence reigns in one’s center, but one’s harmony with Nature is such that one joins the World-movement spontaneously. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

One does not fall into the error of a certain kind of ascetic who assumes a callous indifference to the sufferings of others as part of one’s plan to render oneself invulnerable. Such a person is truly a Christ-like one, inasmuch as one seeks to open the door of the kingdom of Heaven for others as well as oneself. One may or may not know in advance that one’s efforts will avail little, but if the Power bids one say what must be said, one will accept the result calmly. When there is no feeling of separateness from others, there can be no resultant feeling of doing good when helping them. What is the basis for such holistic reorientations? Perhaps it can be described as follows: The freer that people feel to experience themselves, the less panic they harbour; the less panic, the less urgency they feel to rearrange and hence dysfunctionally distort themselves. To the degree that people can draw upon this strength, the more fully they can subsist. Intuition may also be expressed in this way: human’s unconditional concern is the subjective response to the Protestant call to protest. An analysis of religion, of literature, of philosophy, of culture, of love, would reveal that people experience an unconditional concern. Whatever they believe or disbelieve, they touch a realm of in their self-awareness which escapes doubt or belief. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

If justification is an act of God, human’s unconditional concern is the acceptance by humans of their justification even in the midst of questionings and doubts. For questions belong to the intellect, but this concern lies beyond the intellect, in what we call the depths of reason. We are saved neither by merit nor by belief, but by the Unconditional. This term point to that element in every religious experience which makes it religious. It characterizes that which is our ultimate and consequently unconditional concern, whether we call if “God” or “Being as such” or “the Good as such,” or “The True as such,” or whether we give it any other name. Unconditional is a quality which we experience in encountering reality, for instance, in the unconditional character of the voice of conscience, the logical as well as the moral. This description of the Unconditional as a quality, and not a being, brings us to an important fact: “Nobody can have the ultimate, nothing conditioned can possess the Unconditional. This undercuts every attempt to identify the Unconditional directly. The Unconditional is not a God; it is not a being. It is, rather, some quality of the self which we have an indirect experience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Were the Unconditional only a quality of the self, it would be ours, yours and mine, but as we, you and I, are conditioned and, as such, unable to possess the Unconditional, the fact that we experience total commitment, ultimate devotion, unconditional concern points to a complementary aspect of existence: that the Unconditional is both in us and beyond us. Grace is not a possession; it is only received through faith. Likewise, human’s unconditional concerns, in as far as they are truly unconditional, reach both the rock bottom of self and a transcendental element which dominates the self. Two Worlds touch at this point. Jesus Christ praises the less affluent in so far as they live in two Worlds, the present World and the World to come. And he threatens the arrogant affluent in so far as they live in one World alone. This makes for the unchanging greatness of the Psalms. For what the Psalmist expresses is that the Presence of the center of all life within the center of one’s life implies both a radical attack on one’s existence, and the ultimate meaning of one’s existence. We are known in a depth of darkness through which we ourselves do not even dare to look. And at the same time, we are seen in a height of a fullness which surpasses our highest vision. Nothing matters; yet everything is supremely important if it has an unconditioned means, an unconditioned depth, an unconditioned reality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Unconditional concern implies this infinite tension between the conditions of our existence and the commitment to an unconditional element; it entails daring and risk. This is faith: Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The principle of justification by faith alone contains more than strikes the eye. As understood, it means faith in Christ as the Saviour. The Greater Catechism reads: “I believe that Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has been made my Lord, that through his blood he has liberated me from my sins, from the Devil, from death and from all misfortune.” Faith cannot be pinned down to one set of beliefs or identified with one emotional experience. These distortions of faith are corrected by the Protestant principle that nothing condition may vehicle the Unconditional. Rather, faith underlies every belief and every emotion: it is the total commitment f humans to ultimacy, the total surrender of one who accepts this claim [of ultimacy], the concern about our existence in its ultimate whence and wither. Should one ask, “What is the Ultimate?,” an answer may be sought in he fact that people have devised a multitude of faiths; they have identified the Ultimate with this God or that; they have worshipped symbols of the ultimate. Through perhaps mutually exclusive, all these tend to the same point: total commitment. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Jacob explains that the Jews will crucify their God—they will be scattered until they begin to believe in Him—American will be a land of liberty where no king will rule—reconcile yourselves to God and fain salvation through His grace. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, I Jacob, speak unto you again, my beloved brethren, concerning this righteous branch of which I have spoken. For behold, the promises which we have obtained are promises unto us according to the flesh; wherefore, as it has been shown unto me that many of our children shall perish in the flesh because of unbelief nevertheless, God will be merciful unto many; and our children shall be restored, that they may come to that which will give them the true knowledge of their Redeemer. Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must need be expedient that Christ—for in the last night the Angel spake unto me that this should be his name—should come among the Jews, among those who are the more wicked part of the World; and they shall crucify him—for it behooveth our God, and there is none other nation on Earth that would crucify their God. For should the mighty miracles be wrought among other nations they would repent, and know that he be their God. However, because of priestcrafts and iniquities, they at Jerusalem will stiffen their neck against him, that he be crucified. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

“Wherefore, because of their iniquities, destructions, famines, pestilences, and bloodshed shall come upon them; and they who shall not be destroyed shall be scattered among all nation. However, behold, this saith the Lord God: When the day cometh that they shall believe in me, that I am Christ, then have I covenanted with their fathers that they shall be restored in the flesh, upon the Earth, unto the lands of their inheritance. And it shall come to pass that they shall be gathered in from the isles of the sea, and from the four parts of the Earth; and the nations of the Gentiles shall be great in the eyes of me, saith God, in carrying them forth to the lands of their inheritance. Yea, the kings of the Gentiles shall be nursing fathers unto them, and their queens shall become nursing mothers; wherefore, the promises of the Lord are great unto the Gentiles, for he hath spoken it, and who can dispute? However, behold, this land, said God, shall be a land of thine inheritance and Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land. And this land shall be a land of thine inheritance and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land. And this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land, who shall rise up unto the Gentiles. And I will fortify this land against all other nations. And one that frighteth against Zion shall perish, saith God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

“For one that raiseth up a kind against me shall perish, for I, the Lord, the king of Heaven, will be their king, and I will be a light unto them forever, that hear my words. Wherefore, this cause, that my covenants may be fulfilled which I have made unto the children of humans, that I will do unto them while they are in the flesh, I must needs destroy the secrets works of darkness, and of murders, and of abominations. Wherefore, one that frighteth against Zion, both Jew and Gentile, both bound and free, both male and female, shall perish; for they are they who are the whore of all the Earth; for they who are not for me are against me, saith our God. For I will fulfill my promises which I have made unto the children of humans, that I will do unto them while they are in the flesh—wherefore, my beloved brethren, thus saith our God: I will afflict thy seed by the hand of the Gentiles; nevertheless, I will soften the hearts of the Gentiles, that they shall be like unto a father to them; wherefore, the Gentiles shall be blessed and numbered among the house of Israel. Wherefore, I will consecrate this land unto thy seed, and them who shall be numbered among thy seed, forever, for the land of their inheritance; for it is a choice land, saith God unto me, above all other lands, wherefore I will have all humans that well thereon that they shall worship me, saith God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

“And now, my beloved brethren, seeing that our merciful God has given us so great knowledge concerning these things, let us remember him, and lay aside our sins, and not hang down our heads, for we are not cast off; nevertheless, we have been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea. However, great are the promises of the Lord unto them who are upon the isles of the sea; wherefore as it says isles, there must needs be more than this, and they are inhabited also by our brethren. For behold, the Lord God has led away from time to time from the house of Israel, according to his will and pleasure. And now behold, the Lord remembereth all them who have been broken off, wherefore he remembereth us also. Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

“Wherefore, may God raise you from death by the power of the resurrection, and also from everlasting death by the power of the atonement, that ye may be received into the eternal kingdom of God, that ye may praise hm through grace divine. Amen,” 2 Nephi 1-25. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest, that I go to, than I have ever known. I question not but Your Honors d to the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft and witches, and would not be guilty of innocent blood for the World. But, by my own innocency, I know you are the wrong way. O God Most High, Most Glorious, the thought of thine infinite serenity cheers me, for I am toiling and moiling, troubled and distressed, but thou art forever at perfect peace. Thy designs cause Thee no fear or care of unfulfillment, they stand fast as the eternal hills. Thy power knows no bound, Thy goodness no suit. Thou bringest order out of confusion, and my defeats are Thy victories: The Lord God omnipotent reigneth. I come to Thee as a sinner with cares and sorrows, to leave every concern entirely to Thee, every sin calling for Christ’s precious blood; revive deep spirituality in my heart; le me live near to the great Shepherd, hear his voice, know its tones, follow its calls. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Keep me from deception by causing me to abide in the truth, from harm by helping me to walk in the power of the Spirit. Give me intenser faith in the eternal verities, burning into me by experience the things I know; let me never be ashamed of the truth of the gospel, that I may bear its reproach, vindicate it, see Jesus Christ as its essence, know in it the power of the Spirit. Lord, help me, for I am often lukewarm and chill; unbelief mars my confidence, sin makes me forget Thee. Let the weeds that grow in my soul be cut at their roots; grant me to know that I truly live only when I live to Thee, that all else is trifling. Thy presence alone can make me holy, devout, strong and happy. Abide in me, gracious God. We beseech Thee, O Lord, give strength to the weary, assistance to the sufferers, comfort to the sad, help to those in tribulation. That it may please Thee to look upon and to relieve the miseries of the poor and of captives: We beseech Thee, hear us. How great is Thy mercy, O Lord, in succouring the captives, sparing the wretched, forgiving the sinners, supporting travelers, relieving the oppressed, hearing prayers, giving to the destitute what they need, converting barbarous nation to the calling upon Thy Name! Be pleased, O loving and merciful God, to hear us when we implore that mercy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Essential to our effective petitionary prayer is a prayer list. I say this first because of my own repeated experiences. For example, I may be praying for my mother, and as I pray for her I see our old family homes at 3609 Victor Avenue. In front is parked my dad’s Arctisblau arctic metallic blue 1990 BMW 750iL. It had front and rear spoilers, tinted windows, and custom wheels. Suddenly I am a kid again, wearing my black leather jacket, sitting in the passenger seat, and heading down Shore Line Drive to Alameda Beach. I can smell the ocean and cocoa butter. So much for my “prayers for Mother!” This is why I need a prayer list. To be sure, even using a list, my mind still wanders. However, when it does, I always have my list to bring me back. And when I am especially prone to distraction I can place my index finger on her name and pray with my eyes wide open—moving from name to name in this way. Every Christian person should have a prayer list which listen among other things, the names of one’s family and, if married, spouse and children. Moreover, the list ought to be detailed, featuring personal items under the names of those closet to one. I have found that small “Post-its” placed under headings help keep my list updated. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

My daily prayer list carries the following headings, each with several details under it: Family, staff, secretaries, and custodians, ill, grieving, important events, present problems, ministries, weekly worship, never believers, missions list. In addition to my daily list, I have four other lists which I try to go through once a week. List 1 has: Ongoing ill, personal requests from others, evangelism, spiritual warfare. List 2 has: World, USA, personal life, needed personal qualities. List 3 has: Christian leaders, pastors, upcoming ministries and vision. List for has: Government leaders (federal, state, and local), the fire department and others. Quite frankly, I could not get on at all without a prayer list, not only because it tames my wandering mine, but also because it insures that I will not neglect things that are important. O God, Who are the Author of love, and the Lover of pure peace and affection, heal the diseases of all Chrisitans who are sik, and let all who are terrified by fears, afflicted by poverty, harassed by tribulation, worn down by illness, given over to punishments, and all prisoners, and wayfarers, be set free by Thine indulgent tenderness, raised up by amendment life, and cherished by Thy daily compassion. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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. And currently, Home Site 84 is Move In Ready and has up to a $35,000 incentive! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/move-in-ready-home-site-84/

Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District

Gorgeous two-story home located in the growing Cresleigh Ranch community! This sleek and modern home is an entertainer’s dream! The California Room directly off the Great Room offers an indoor/outdoor living experience while the extended kitchen island is perfect for large gatherings or busy households. A contemporary kitchen with stained recessed cabinetry, quartz counters, and single basin sink!

There is a bedroom on the first floor, located off the entry, with its own bathroom making it ideal for a guest suite or multi-generational living. The formal dining room provides ample space for entertaining and has convenient access to the kitchen via Butler’s Pantry. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters and opens onto the spacious great room. Upstairs you’ll find the master retreat, two bedrooms, and the loft perfect for a game room or TV lounge. The master retreat is spacious and inviting with a large bedroom and spa like bathroom featuring a free-standing soaking tub, walk-in shower, dual vanities, and two walk-in closets. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/home-site-78/

A big, open entryway to embrace you every time you walk in the door. 🤩 Every #BrightonStation home gives you plenty of room to roam!

Lot 84 is ready for immediate move-in! A Residence 1 floor plan, it’s designed with an open layout, plenty of natural light, and a fully landscaped backyard! We are now offering a $30,000 incentive to move in, with up to $5,000 extra when using a preferred lender! 🙌 Check out our website to learn more! Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/home-site-78/

#CresleighRanch
#CresleighHomes

This Nation, Under God, Shall Have a New Birth of Freedom and Shall Not Perish from the Earth!

April 30, 2020 1:38 am

The dream begins, most of the time, with believing in yourself, by loving yourself, pushing yourself, and allowing God to lead you on to the next level, sometimes enlightening you along the way with truth. God posses in penetrating insight into His children’s needs. We have already seen that external stimuli are not necessary for central processes to be active. As networks of assemblies and phase-cycles are activated and continue their process in semi-independence of further incoming information, we get something like “looking ahead.” The pattern of impulses formed within the structure of connexions will function as an apparatus of orientation by representing both the actual state of the environment and the changes to be expected by that environment. Here we are back to the process of “expectancy.” Our expectations of what will happen are already on the map. Either a similar sequence of events has happened in the past and for that reason may be expected again in the future; or higher-order processes have formed an image of what can happen, on the basis of whatever information is available about what has happened in the past. Thus behavior now is guided and directed by an expectation, just concept t (for “triangle”) could direct and guide the eye to look for angles. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The representation or model of the environment will thus constantly tend to run ahead of the actual situation. This representation of the possible results following from the existing position will of course be constantly checked and corrected by the newly arriving sensory signals which record actual developments in the environment. The representations of the external environment which will guide behaviour will thus be not only representations of the actually existing environment, but also representations of the changes to be expected in that environment. We must therefore conceive of the model as constantly trying out possible developments and determining action in the light of the consequences which, from the representations of such actions, would appear to follow from it. On the map are good places, and paths to good places—goals, we might say, and steps to those goals. The model is the active part of the map which shows at any moment where we are in relation to the good places on our maps (and in relation to painful places as well). The map enables us to look ahead to some extent, that is to have expectations of what can happen next. What can happen next may lead to good places eventually or to painful places. Expectations can turn into preferred or dreaded outcomes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The image on the map which already has good feelings attached to it may be kept in mind by the processes of reverberation. It is thereby likely to steer the organism to respond selectively to further information, according to the messages congruity with a good path. The parts of the map associated with good feelings, which hold our preferences, can thus act as gyroscopes, bringing the organism back on course towards good things when it has deviated. Part of the map associated with bad feelings may of course operate in a similar way. The data on fight and flight as defense reactions makes the instinctive theory of aggression appear in a peculiar light. The impulse to flee plays—neurophysiologically and behaviourally—the same if not a larger role in animal behaviour than the impulse to fight. Neurophysiologically, both impulses are integrated in the same way; there is no basis for saying that aggression is more “natural” than flight. Why, then, do instinctivists talk about the intensity of the innate impulses of aggression, rather than about the innate impulse for flight? #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

If one were to translate the reasoning of the instinctivist regarding the impulse for fight to that of flight one would arrive at the this kind of statement: “Humans are drive by an innate impulse to flee; one may try to control this impulse by one’s reason, yet this control will prove to be relatively inefficient, even though some means can be found that may serve to curb the power of the ‘flight instinct.’” Considering the emphasis that has been given to innate human aggression as one of the gravest problems of social life, from religious positions down to the scientific work, a theory centered around human’s “uncontrollable flight instinct” may sound funny, but it is neurophysiologically as sound as that of “uncontrolled aggression.” In fact, from a biological standpoint it would seem that flight serves self-reservation better than fight. To political or military leaders it may, in fact, not sound funny, but rather sensible. They know from experience that human’s nature does not seem to incline toward heroism and that many measures have to be taken to motivate humans to fight and to prevent them from running away in order to save one’s life. The student of history may rise the question whether the instinct for flight has not proven to be at least as powerful a factor as that for fight. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

One may come to the conclusion that history has been determined not so much by instinctive aggression as by the attempt to suppress human’s “flight instinct.” One may speculate that a large part of human’s social arrangements and ideological efforts have been devoted to this aim. Humans had to be threatened with death to instill in them a feeling of awe for the superior wisdom of their leaders, to make them believe in the value of honour. One tried to terrorize one with the fear of being called a coward or a traitor, or one simply got him or her drunk with liquor or wit the hope of booty and women. Historical analysis might show that the repression of the flight impulse and the apparent dominance of the fight impulse is largely due to the cultural rather than to biological factors. These speculations are only intended to point to the ethological bias in favour of the concept of Homo aggressivus; the fundamental facts remains, that the brain of animals and humans has built-in neuronal mechanisms which mobilize aggressive behaviour (or flight) in response to threats to the survival of the individual or the species, and that this type of aggression is biologically adaptive and serves life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

In our own Anglo-American culture there seems to be two common-sense models according to which we formulate our conceptions of behaviour: the real, sincere, or honest performance; and the false one that thorough fabricators assemble us, whether meant to be taken unseriously, as in the work of stage actors, or seriously, as in the work of confidence people. We tend to see real performances as something not purposely put together at all, being unintentional product of the individual’s unselfish conscious response to the facts in one’s situation. And contrived performances we tend to see as something painstakingly pasted together, one false item on another, since there is no reality to which the items of behaviour could be a direct response. It will be necessary to see now that these dichotomous conceptions are by way of being the ideology of honest performers, providing strength to the show they put on, but a poor analysis of it. First, let it be said that there are many individuals who sincerely believe that the definition of the situation they habitually project is the real reality. In this report I do not mean to question their proportion in the population but rather the structural relation of their sincerity to the performances they offer. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

If a performance is to come off, the witnesses by and large must be able to believe that the performers are sincere. This is the structural place of sincerity in the drama of events. Performers may be sincere—or be insincere but sincerely convinced of their own sincerity—but this kind of affection for one’s part is not necessary for its convincing performances. There are not many French cooks who are really Russian spies, and perhaps there are not many women who want to play the part of wife to one man and mistress to another but these duplicities do occur, often being sustained successfully for long periods of time. This suggests that while persons usually are what they appear to be, such appearances could still have been managed. There is, then, a statistical relation between appearances and reality, not an intrinsic or necessary one. In fact, given the unanticipated threats that play upon a performance, and given the need (later to be discussed) to maintain solidarity with one’s fellow performers and some distance from the witnesses, we find that a rigid incapacity to depart from one’s inward view of reality may at times endanger one’s performance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Some performances are carried off successfully with complete dishonesty, other with complete honesty; but for performances in general neither of these extremes is essential and neither, perhaps, is dramaturgically advisable. The implication here is that an honest, sincere, serious performance is less firmly connected with the solid World than one might assume. And this implication will be strengthened if we look again at the distance usually placed between quite honest performances and quite contrived ones. In this connection take, for example, the remarkable phenomenon of stage acting. It does take deep skill, long training, and psychological capacity to become a good stage actor. However, this fact should not blind us to another one: that almost anyone can quickly learn a script well enough to give a charitable audience some sense of realness in what is being contrived before them. And it seems this is so because ordinary social intercourse is itself put together as a scene is put together, by the exchange of dramatically inflated actions, counteractions, and terminating replies. Scripts even in the hands of unpracticed players can come to life because life itself is a dramatically enacted thing. All the World is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it is not are not easy to specify. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

The recent use of “psychodrama” as a therapeutic technique illustrates a further point in this regard. In these psychiatrically staged scenes patients not only act out parts with some effectiveness, but employ no script in doing so. Their own past is available to them in a form which allows them to stage a recapitulation of it. Apparently a part once played honestly and in earnest leave the performer in a position to contrive a showing of it later. Further, the parts that significant others play to one to switch from being the person that one was to being the persons that others were for one. This capacity to switch enacted roles when obliged to do so could have been predicted; everyone apparently can do it. For in learning to perform our parts in real life we guide our own productions by not too consciously maintaining an incipient familiarity with the routine of those to whom we will address ourselves. And when we come to be able properly to manage a real routine we are able to do this in part because of “anticipatory socialization,” having already been schooled in the reality that is just coming to be real for us. When the individual does move into a new position in society and obtains a new part to perform, one is not likely to be told in full detail how to conduct oneself, nor will the facts of one’s new situation press sufficiently to one from the start to determine one’s conduct without one’s further giving thought to it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Ordinarily one will be given only a few cues, hints, and stage directions, and it will be assumed that one already has in one’s repertoire a large number of bits and pieces of performances that will be required in the new setting. The individual will already have a fair idea of what modesty, deference, or righteous indignation looks like, and can make a pass at playing these bits when necessary. One may even be able to play out the part of hypnotic subject or commit a “compulsive” crime on the basis of models for these activities that one is already familiar with. A theatrical performance or a staged confidence game requires a thorough scripting of the spoken content of the routine; but the vast part involving “expression given off” is often determined by meager stage directions. It is expected that the performer of illusions will already know a good deal about how to manage one’s voice, one’s face, and one’s body, although one—as well as any person who directs one—may find it difficult indeed to provide a detailed verbal statement of this kind of knowledge. And in this, of course, we approach the situation of the straightforward person in the street. Socialization may not so much involve a learning of the many specific details of a single concrete part—often there could not be enough time or energy for this. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

What does seem to be required of the individual is that one learn enough pieces of expression to be able to “fill in” and manage, more or less, any part that one is likely to be given. The legitimate performances of everyday life are not “acted” or “put on” in the sense that the performer knows in advance just what one is going to do, and does this solely because of the effect it is likely to have. The expressions it is felt one is giving off will be especially “inaccessible” to one. However, as in the case of less legitimate performers, the incapacity of the ordinary individual to formulate in advance the movements of one’s eyes and body does not mean that one will not express oneself through these devices in a way that is dramatized and pre-formed in one’s repertoire of actions. In short, we all act better than we know how. When the individual’s stigma is established in one during one’s stay in an institution, and when the institutions retains a discrediting hold upon one for a period after one’s release, one may expect a special cycle of passing. For example, in one mental hospital it was found that patients re-entering the community often planned to pass in some degree. Patients who were forced to rely on the rehabilitation officer, the social service worker, or the employment agencies for a job, often discussed among their fellows the contingencies they faced and the standard strategy for dealing with them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

For the first job, official entrée would necessitate the employer knowing about their stigma, and perhaps the personnel officer, but always the lower levels of the organization and workmates could be kept in some ignorance. As suggested, it was felt that this could involve a certain amount of insecurity because it would not be known for sure who “knew” and who did not, and how long-lasting would be the ignorance of those who did not know. Patients expressed the feeling that after staying in a placement job of this kind for six months, long enough to save some money and get loose from hospital agencies, they would quit work and, on the basis of the six-month work record, get a job someplace else, this time trusting that everyone at work could be kept ignorant of the stay in a mental hospital. Another strategy of those who pass is to present sights of their stigmatized failing as signs of another attribute, one that is less significantly a stigma. People with mental impairments, for example, apparently sometimes try to pass as mental patients, the latter being the lesser of the two social evils. “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard,” reports Acts 4.19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Similarly, a hard of hearing person may intentionally style his or her conduct to give others the impression that he or she is a daydreamer, an absent-minded person, an indifferent, easily bored person—even someone who is feeling faint, or snores and therefore is unable to answer quiet question since one is obviously asleep. These character traits account for failure to hear without the imputation of deafness. The self-actualized has no wish to put one’s ego forward, makes no pretensions to spiritual superiority, yet one’s wishes to awaken others to the idea that enlightenment is possible, is worth seeking, and is accompanied by unparalleled felicity. It is possible for a person to realize one’s high aspiration. However, will one then find that all is bliss? How could that be when first one would become much more sensitive to the Word’s miseries and sorrows and, second, much more aware that everything that is, including oneself, is merely a passing show—just like a dream of the night which vanishes in the morning? Will there not be a touch of melancholy in these two aspects of one’s awareness? The acceptance will be there, for one will be just as much aware of the Real which does not pass, but this acceptance will itself be touched with a kind of resignation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Is this what the religio-mystics mean when they so often admonish others to resign themselves to God’s will? There is a type of legalism I want to address: the observance of humanmade rules. Paul’s call to stand firm in our freedom in Christ and not let ourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery is just as valid today with our rules as it was in the Galatians’ day with the Mosaic law. I previously noted that King John was forced to sign the Magna Charta. However, God gave us our spiritual Magna Charta. Though Paul, He called us to be free: “You, my brothers, were called to be free.” In fact, God does not just call us to freedom, He actually exhorts us to stand firm in our freedom—to resist all efforts to abridge or destroy it. Despite God’s call to be free and His earnest admonition to resist all efforts to curtail it, there is very little emphasis in Christian circles today on the importance of Christian freedom. Just the opposite seems to be true. Instead of promoting freedom, we stress our rules of conformity. Instead of preaching living by grace, we preach living by performance. Instead of encouraging new believers to be conformed to Christ, we subtly insist that they be conformed to our particular style of Christian culture. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

We do not intend to do this and would earnestly deny we are. Yet that is the bottom-line effect of most of our emphases in Christian circles today. For example, many people would react negatively to my quoting only part of Galatians 5.12, “You, my brothers, were called to be free.” Despite the fact that this statement is a complete sentence, they would say, “But that is not all of the verse. Go on to quote the remainder: ‘But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.’” (We seem to forget that verse divisions were not inspired.) The person who reacts that way has made my point. We are much more concerned about someone abusing one’s freedom than we are about one’s guarding it. We are more afraid of indulging the sinful nature than we are of falling into legalism. Yet legalism does indulge the sinful nature because it fosters self-righteousness and religious pride. It also diverts us from the real issues of the Christian life be focusing on external and sometimes trivial rules. “But wo unto the rich who are rich as to the things of the World. For because they are rich they despise the poor, and they persecute the meek, and their hearts are upon their treasures; wherefore, their treasure is their god. And behold, their treasure shall perish with them. And wo unto the deaf that will not hear; for they shall perish. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

“Wo unto the blind that will not see; for they shall perish also. Wo unto the uncircumcised of heart, for a knowledge of their iniquities shall smite them at the last day. Wo unto the lair, for one shall be thrust down to hell. Wo unto the murderer who deliberately killeth, for one shall die. Wo unto them who commit whoredoms, for they shall be thrust down to hell. Yea, who unto those that worship idols, for the devil of all devils delighteth in the. And, in fine, who unto all those who die in their sins; for they shall return to God, and behold his face and remain in their sins. O, my beloved brethren, remember the awfulness in transgressing against that Holy God, and also the awfulness of yielding to the enticings of that cunning one. Remember, to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually-minded its life eternal. O, my beloved brethren, give ear to my words. Remember the greatness of the Holy One of Israel. Do not say that I have spoken hard things against you; for if ye do, ye will revile against the truth; for I have spoken the words of your Marker. I know that the words of truth are hard against all uncleanness; but the righteous fear them not for they love the truth and are not shaken. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

“O then, my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One. Remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for humans is narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before one, and the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and one employeth no servant there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for one cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name. And whoso knocketh to him will he open; and the wise, and the learned, and they are rich who are puffed up because of their learning, and their wisdom, and their riches—yea, they are they who despiseth; and save they shall cast these things away, and consider themselves fools before God, and come down in the depths of humility, he will not open unto them. However, the things of the wise and the prudent shall be hid from them forever—yea, that happiness which is prepared for the saints. O, my beloved brethren, remember my words. Behold, I take off my garments, and I shake them before you; I pray the God of my salvation that he view me with his all-searching eye; wherefore, ye shall know at the last day, when all people shall be judged of their works, that the God of Israel did witness that I shook your iniquities from my soul, and that I stand with brightness before him, and am rid of your blood. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“O, my beloved brethren, turn away from your sins; shake off the chains of him that would bind you fast; come unto that God who is the rock of your salvation. Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgment, that ye may not shrink with awful fear; that ye may not remember your awful guilt in perfectness, and be constrained to exclaim: Holy, holy are thy judgement, O Lord God Almighty—but I know my guilt; I transgressed thy law, and my transgressions are mine; and the devil hath obtained me, that I am a prey to his awful misery. However, behold, my brethren, is it expedient that I should awake you to an awful reality of these things? Would I harrow up your souls if your minds were pure? Would I be plain unto your according to the plainness of the truth if ye were freed from sin? Behold, if ye were holy I would speak unto you of holiness; but as ye are not holy, and ye look upon me as a teacher, it must needs be expedient that I teach you the consequences of sin. Behold, my soul abhorreth sin, and my heart delighteth in righteousness; and I will praise he holy name of my God. Come, my brethren, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and one that hath no money, come buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labour for that which cannot satisfy. Hearken diligently unto me, and remember the words which I have spoken; and come unto the Holy One of Israel, and feast upon that which perisheth not, neither can be corrupted, and let your soul delight in fatness. Behold, my beloved brethren, remember the words of your God; pray unto him continually by day, and give thanks unto his holy name by night. Let your hearts rejoice. And behold how great the covenants of the Lord, and how great his condescension unto the children of humans; and because of his greatness, and his grace and mercy, he has promised unto us that our seed shall not utterly be destroyed, according to the flesh, but that he would preserve them; and in future generations they shall become a righteous branch unto the house of Israel. And now, my brethren, I would speak unto you more; but on the morrow I will declare unto you the remainder of my words. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 9.30-54. Depart, O Christian soul, out of this World, in the Name of God the Father Almighty, Who created thee; in the Name of Jesus Christ His Son, who suffered for thee; in the Name of this Holy Ghost, Who has been poured into thee; may thy place be this say in peace, and thy habitation in the Heavenly Jerusalem. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

My God, I feel it is Heaven to please Thee, and to be what thou wouldst have me be. O that I were holy, pure as Christ is pure, perfect as Thy Spirit is perfect! These, I feel, are the best commands in Thy Book, and shall I break them? Must I make them? Am I under such a necessity as long as I live here? Woe, woe is me that I am a sinner, that I grieve this blessed God, who is infinite in goodness and grace! O, if he would punish me for my sins, it would not wound my heart so deep to offend him; but though I sin continually, He continually repeats his kindness to me. At times I feel I could bear any sufferings, but how can I dishonour this glorious God? What shall I do to glorify and worship this best of beings? O that I could consecrate my soul and body to His service, without restraint, forever! O that I could give myself up to him, so as never more to attempt to be my own! Or have any will or affections that are not perfectly conformed to His will and His love! However, alas, I cannot live and not sin. O may Angels glorify Him incessantly, and if possible, prostrate themselves lower before the blessed King of Heaven! I long to bear a part with them in ceaseless praise; but when I have done all I can to eternity I shall not be able to offer more than a small fraction of the homage that the glorious God deserves. Give me a heart full of divine, Heavenly love. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

Find your dream home with Cresleigh! 😍 We have multiple homes available at various stages from Move-In Ready and Quick Close to pre-construction, allowing for maximum customization and flexibility. 🏠 Explore customizable floor plans, virtual tours, and more on our website. Link in bio! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-4/virtual-tour/

Unto every Chrisitan souls that is afflicted, or plunged into distress, grant Thou mercy, grant relief, grant refreshment. Despise not, O Lord, we beseech Thee, those who cry out in their afflictions, but mercifully relieve their pain with speedy assistance; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

#CresleighHomes

Let Us Live then and be Glad while Young Life is Before Us!

April 21, 2020 12:59 am

Enjoy your own company. Learn to welcome solitude and work on your own inner being—your character. Solitude allows you opportunity to think deep thoughts. To think about where you have been. To think about where you are going. To think about why you feel so strongly about certain issues. To think about how different your values are from those other people you know. To think about wat all people have in common. To question yourself about why you cling to bad habits. To praise yourself for your strengths. To challenge yourself to follow your dreams. Reflection and solitude feed the soul. Again, all you have to do is pause to rest. Nature herself, when we let her, will take care of everything else. It is our impatience that spoils things. Perhaps we can come a little closer to the nature of memory by looking at it in the company of its traditional associates, common sense and imagination. The internal senses, as the are called, are distinguished from the external senses. They are three in number: common sense, memory, and imagination. The common sense was the faculty that unified the data of the external or special senses. Each sense did what is “proper” to it, the eye seeing, the ear hearing, and the like. What was “common” to disparate sensations was organized into a whole by the common sense. The result was a shape or figure of an object. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Common sense also gave meaning to successive affective aspects of experiences, such as pleasure and pain, and oragnised experience into things to be pursued and things to be avoided. To some philosophers, notably Avicenna, the evaluation of sensory experience was distinctive enough to furnish evidence of a separate power, the estimative faculty. The common sense moreover, supplied the dimensions of consciousness or awareness of experience. No sense was aware of its own activity, but the common sense identified the work of each sense. Hence, one “knew” that one as subject was undergoing or “receiving” the experience. In brief, common sense was the receiver, organizer, and evaluator of stimuli from the special senses. In the vocabulary of Schoolmen, its products were the “common sensibles,” as St. Thomas Aquinas said, or in modern parlance, perceptions. Its work dealt with the realities of concrete, everyday experience. In the system of communication among things mental and sensory, the common sense passed along its products to the memory for storage. The basic material of memory, then, was held to be a first-level classification of experience—possibly one could say, first-level abstraction—that in character was much closer to the World of the senses than to the life of the intellect. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The imagination as an internal sense was the sole faculty having the power to handle images in the absence of the stimulation that originally gave rise to them. A person might look at London Bridge and go on about one’s business. Later one’s visions of it were the work of the imaginative faculty, imagination. It also made images of its own and in this, its creative role, it was often called fancy. In its reproductive capacity, say imagining London Bridge in the absence of the object, was the imagination responsible for recall or was the memory? Some theorizers, Descartes for example, held that common sense acted like a seal and impressed shapes on the imagination, which retained them, at least for a time. If imagination remembered the shapes of things and recalled them, did memory in its proper role have nothing to do with images? Believers in Galen would quote him: “that part of the soul which imagineth, whatsoever the same may be, seemeth to be the selfe that also remembereth.” Followers of Aristotle maintained that sense images go directly to the imagination which transmits them to the memory. There they are kept until wanted, whereupon the imagination returns and scans the record, behaving much like a person who writes something, lays it aside, and returns to read. In this account, some of the stuff of memory included images. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

As the retentive faculty, memory also stored the products of the understanding and reason. These products were much more abstract than those of common sense and imagination, ranging from the less abstract forms only slightly removed from the sensory levels of experience to the highest abstractions humans were aware of when they thought in terms mathematical, philosophical, and theological. It seems clear, then that, memory is the recorder, the storehouse, the treasury, of a human’s entire experience. However, it is not clear whether memory is held to be solely, or even primarily, responsible for recall and recollection. Especially in recovering and reinstituting a particular image from the past, one’s imagination seemed to be chiefly involved in the effort and to be doing much of the remembering. In the seventeenth century keen analysts of human nature were less ready then Schoolmen to draw neat borderlines among the psychological functions. When we assert that the senses respond to individuals only, that individuals pass entire into the memory, that individuals are impressions and images, we are implying that the end product of sensory activity is an image of a particular object—the sensory counterpart of a particular tree, a musical note, a spoken word. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Sense experience involves selection and rejection among stimuli emanating from objects—and that is all. The forms and shapes of things are part of the data presented to the senses. The sense do not interpret their own movements. Whatever the object of sensation, the object produces, in so far as it can, a likeness and image of itself, in imitation of incorporeal and spiritual nature. However, the immaterial copy of a material object was not merely that of a particular shape; upon it was impressed the species of the object as well. So what went into the memory whole was the shapes and species of things. The memory records the species of things, as a good register, ready when called for by the imagination and reason. Among human’s faculties we find no place for a common sense. We never use the term, nor do we allude to it. We never speak of common sensibles. Do we attribute any of the functions to this faculty to memory? As we have remarked, we give to memory the task of evaluating sense experience, because secondary objects—sense images—please or displease but in memory. Possibly this is another way of saying that the affective and emotional aspects of experience are stored in memory and that in the storehouse through some process of association they become guides to decision and conduct. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

We seem to have found no spot for an estimative faculty. This power, responsible for evaluating sense-bound or practical experience as distinct from intellectual or contemplative activity, sometimes has another name, the cogitative faculty. The French Academie, for example, takes note of those who recognize a knowing soule. All beings who possess this power are not sensitive creatures merely, but show a certain virtue and vigour, as of cogitation, of knowledge and memorie, that they may have skill to preserve their life, and know how to guide and govern themselves according to their natural inclination. A cogitative power so understood must not be confused with Bacon’s vis cogitiva, a power of thought fundamental to the functioning of all of human’s faculties. The passage in which Bacon announces that thinking goes on whenever humans exercise any of their faculties is important to us here in two ways. First, the distinction drawn among the mental faculties are broad ones in which Bacon is thinking in terms of genus and species. The genus of mental life is vis cogitiva; the species can be considered as memory, imagination, reason and the will and affections. On this basis, the faculties share in an activity that is substantial, not merely formal. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The faculties can be designated in part by noting their most general manifestations. Indeed, in the passage under scrutiny, reason is taken broadly enough to include understanding, as it does when Bacon, classifying all knowledge in sweeping terms, relates philosophy to reason. Second, in employing broad language Bacon assigns to memory the functions of remembering and recollecting. It is evident that to him memory was something more than a repository of experience. In the human being, memory referred to a kind of thinking, possible only because experience of all sorts and from all sources of stimulation could be both retained and recalled. The material of memory came from other kinds of thinking. At the higher levels of organized behaviour, the materials were products of understanding, reason, and will; at the lower levels of behaviour they were the experiences of the special sense, the affections, and the appetite. Among the qualities of affective states as they relate to memory were the pleasant and unpleasant. These became the guides to future action; they gave meaning to expectation. In the middle of things, as it were, was imagination. This faculty not only created images of its own and revived sense images but translated abstract thought into objects of sense. These, too, were engraved in memory, and on demand of the other faculties they were summoned up again. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

In recognizing an art of memory and placing it among the intellectual arts, Bacon was doubtless well aware that reasoning must presuppose memory. Reason typically isolates items of experience, analyzes them, and combines them into statements and patterns of which the classic examples are deduction, induction, and analogy. Such intellectual activity is reducible to separate, sequential operations. Each must be held in mind until the full pattern is completed. So memory is involved in reasoning. It is no merely evident in each insane of reasoning, but it also provides a storehouse of materials upon which the intellect can draw whenever it wishes. On these matters Edward Reynolds, a near contemporary of Bacon’s, is more explicit. Memory “preserveth” each separate act of the understanding “until a through [sic] concoction be wrought; so proportionably is the Faculty of Memory given to Reason, as a meanes to consolidate and enrich it.” In retaining experience, memory remembers not only the species of things brought to it by the senses, but it functions as “Consors & co-operatrix Rationis…a joynt-worker in the operations of Reason; which the Latins call Reminiscentia, or Recordatio; including some acts of the Understanding: Which is a reviewing, or (as we speake) a calling to minde of former objects, by discourse, or rationall searching for them.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

The dependence of intellectual life upon memory led Aristotle, so Reynoldes reminded his readers, to regard remembrance as the remote ground of all the arts. Hobbes also linked memory to the retention of sense experience and to the “cause” and “coherence” of thoughts or conceptions. Sense always had “some memory adhering to it.” Certain sequences or coherences of thought, called reminiscence, experience, and expectation, were the chief manifestation of memory. It is somewhat surprising to find that Bacon has nothing to say about the physiological basis of memory. Another near contemporary of Bacon’s Sir Kenelm Digby, tried to explain remembrance by postulating vibratory, undulatory behaviour of atom-like particles in a “liquid vaporous” substance. The movements were analogous to those of musical sounds. Similar and simultaneous movements reinforced each other. A particular movement long at rest was revived by a similar undulatory motion. However, Bacon’s interest in the phenomena of recall, the art of memory, and the general nature of the faculty did not lead him int physiological speculations. In sum, Bacon regarded memory as a human’s power of recording and recalling their experience. It received and stored images from the external senses and it organized the affective accompaniments of sensory life in ways that made them meaningful guides to action. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

In common with human’s other faculties memory at work appeared to be thinking; hence, remembering was memory at work appeared to be thinking; hence, remembering was memory thinking. Memory kept the records of human’s analytical, critical, and imaginative thinking which in its symbolic and imageful garb was peculiarly the work of understanding, reason, and imagination. It not only kept the intellectual record; it was essential to its making. If they were to reason at all, humans had to remember. In reflecting on memory and its relationship to other faculties, one becomes aware of two striking, possibly unique, features. The explanation of human’s behaviour is being managed without recourse to as many “entities” and divisions of the soul as was the usual practice. The soul customarily had at least three parts or levels of being: vegetative, sensible, and rational. This vocabulary was abandoned by Bacon. The sensible soul was usually divided into two parts: the external or special senses, and the internal senses. Human’s internal sensory powers had numbered as many as seven, although common practice in the seventeenth century reduced the number to three: common sense, memory, and imagination. Bacon eliminated the common sense. As a result—or perhaps the cause—of the reduction in the number of human’s parts, a second important feature becomes evident. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Human’s sensory functions are closely associated with their intellectual functions, and vice versa. Bacon found that the faculties overlapped in their operations and that it was impossible to fix precise boundaries. The operations were often mutually dependent and the communication direct. Yet a rational act or a memorative act could be recognized as such, and hence was subject to study and improvement, without knowing exactly where reason began and memory left off. The operations of the faculties were very different, yet they closely linked and so near neighboured that they could be discerned separately: the understanding cannot work without the memory being present, representing unto the same the figures and fantasies agreeable thereunto, it behooved that the understanding part busy itself in beholding the phantasms, and that the understanding part busy itself in beholding the phantasms, and that the memory cannot do it, if the imagination do not accompany the same we shall easily understand, that all the powers are united in every several ventricle [of the brain], and that the understanding is not solely in the one, nor the memory solely in the other, nor the imagination in the third..but that this union of powers is accustomably made in human’s body [as is the union of the four natural abilities: digestive, retentive, attractive, and expulsive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

As we first turned away from God in our thoughts, so it is in our thoughts that the first movements toward the renovation of the heart occurs. Thoughts are the place where we can and must begin to change. There the light of God first begins to move upon us through the word of Christ, and there the divine Spirit begins to direct our will to more and more thoughts that can provide the basis for choosing to realign ourselves with God and his way. The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon. We are not totally free in this respect. However, we do have great freedom here, and even though “dead in trespasses and sins,” we still have the ability and responsibility to try to retain God in our knowledge—if only in an inadequate and halting manner. And those who do so will surely makes progress toward him; for if we truly do seek God as best we can, he, who always knows what is really in our hearts, will certainly make himself known to us. It is because of this fact that we always remain responsible before God, even though we are spiritually dead. By “thoughts” we mean all of the ways in which we are conscious of things. That includes our memories, perceptions, and beliefs, as well as what we would ordinarily refer to when we say “I thought of you yesterday,” or “I was just thinking of our meeting tomorrow.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Now clearly, our thoughts are one of the most basic sources of our life. They determine the orientation of everything we do and evoke the feelings that frame our World and motivate our actions. Interestingly, you cannot evoke thoughts by feeling a certain way, but you can evoke and to some degree control feelings a certain way, but you can evoke and to some degree control feelings by directing your thoughts. Our power over thoughts is of great and indispensable assistance in directing and controlling our feelings, which themselves are not directly under the guidance of our will. We cannot just choose our feelings. Our ability to think and represent things to ourselves also enables us to bring vast ranges of reality—and non-reality—before us. This is not always done in a way that is adequate to what we think about or in a way that is even correct. It is actually a part of the greatness of thought that it is not limited to accuracy or even reality. It can consider—bring before our mind—what is not the case but could be, or what ought to be though it is not, as well as what never should be. Our essential nature as active and creative beings depends upon our ability to envision what is not the case as well as what is. Our ability to plan for the future must constantly run ahead of reality. And this we do in thought. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

A will that runs ahead depends, of course, upon our abilities to think; and what we think, imagine, believe, or guess sets boundaries to what we can will or choose, and therefore to what we can create. As our senses present a landscape for our body and its actions, so our thoughts present the “lifescape” for our will and our life as a whole. Within that “thought lifescape” (including our perceptions) we make the decisions that determine what we will do and who we will become. The realm of thought involves four main factors. These are ideas, images, information, and our ability to think, but the two most powerful ones are ideas and images. “And now, my sons, I speak unto you thee things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the Heavens and the Earth, and all things that are in them are, both things to act and thing to be acted upon. And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of human, after he created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto humans that they should act for oneself. Wherefore, humans could not act for oneself save it should be that one was enticed by the one or the other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

“And I, Lehi, according to the thing which I have read, must needs suppose that an Angel of God, according to that which is written, had fallen from Heaven; wherefore, he became a devil, having sought that which was evil before God. And because he had fallen from Heaven, and had become miserable forever, he sought also the misery of all humankind. Wherefore, he said unto Eve, yea, even that old serpent, who is the devil, who is the father of all lies, wherefore he said: Partake of the forbidden fruit, and ye shall not die, but ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. And after Adam and Eve had partaken of the forbidden fruit they were driven out of the garden of Eden, to till the Earth. And they have brought forth children; yea, even the family of all the Earth. And the days of the children of human were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of humans. For he gave commandment that all humans must repent; for he showed unto all humans that there were lost, because of the transgression of their parents. And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remined in the garden of Eden. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

“And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. And they would have no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin. However behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. Adam fell that humans might be; and people could raise their beautiful children true to their heritage; and humans are, that they might have joy. And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that one may redeem the children of humans from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given. Wherefore, humans are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto people. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all people, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for one seeketh that all humans might be miserable like unto oneself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

“And now, my sons, I would that ye should look to the great Mediator, and hearken unto his great commandments; and be faithful unto his words, and choose eternal life, according to the will of his Holy Spirit; and not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate, to bring you down to hades, that he may reign over you in his own kingdom. I have spoken these few words unto you all, my sons, in the last days of my mortal probation on Earth; and I have chosen the good part, according to the words of the prophet. And I have none other object save it be the everlasting welfare of your souls. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 3.14-30. If the machine were used deliberately to vanquish human inequality, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process—by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute—the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over the past one hundred and fifty years. However, by lack of understanding some people remain sane. They simply swallow everything, and what they swallow does them no harm, because it leaves no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Lord Jesus, Great High Priest, Thou hast opened a new living way by which a fallen creature can approach Thee with acceptance. Help me to contemplate the dignity of Thy Person, the perfectness of Thy sacrifice, the effectiveness of Thy intercession. O What blessedness accompanies devotion, when under all the trials that weary me, the care the corrode me, the fears that disturb me, the infirmities that oppress me, I can come to Thee in my need and feel peace beyond understanding! The grace that restores is necessary to preserve, lead, guard, supply, help. And here Thy saints encourage my hope; they were once poor and are now rich, bound and are now free, tried and now are victorious. Every new duty calls for more face than I now possess, but not more than is found in Thee, the divine Treasury in whom all fullness dwells. To Thee I repair for grace upon grace, until every void made by sin be replenished and I am filled with all Thy fullness. May my desires be enlarged and my hopes emboldened, that I may honour Thee by my entire dependency and the greatness of my expectation. Do Thou by with me, and prepare me for all the smiles of prosperity, the frowns of adversity, the losses of substance, the death of friends, the days of darkness, the changes of life, and the last great change of all. May I find Thy grace sufficient for all my needs. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

I divine all teachers into two classes: titular gurus and real gurus. The former are quite common, the gap between their doctrines and their behaviour being noticeable, whereas the latter are rare indeed for they have achieved a conquest over the ego which reveals itself in their conduct and reflects itself in their lives. The demand for inspired teachers is always insistent but the supply is wholly insufficient. Unless the teacher is an inspired one one will be of little help to the would-be mystic. By inspired, we mean either in communion with one’s higher self or fully united with it. Almighty and everlasting God, Wo succourest those that labour under perils and afflictions, we humbly beseech Thy Majesty, that may please Thee to send Thy holy Angel to uphold with Thy comfort Thy servants, who in this house are suffering distress and affliction; that they may both receive Thy present assistance, and attain eternal healing; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Please visit Thy servants, O Lord, as Thou wast pleased to visit Peter’s mother-in-law and the centurion’s servants. Restore them, O Lord, to their former health; that they may be enabled to say in the courts of Thine house, “The Lord hath chastened and corrected me, but He hath not given me over unto death, He Who is the Saviour of the World.” Grant this, O Lord, Who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, God, throughout all ages. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

Need some fresh air? Live @HUBApts and enjoy immediate access to a private balcony or patio space. 🙌
Receive $1,000 off move-in costs when you move in by April 30th! 😍 Check out virtual tours at the link in bio. https://www.hub-folsomapts.com/

I am humbled by my realization of the sacredness of the time we are given and stunned by our irreverence for the time we have. Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savour you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the Earth, or burry my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want, more than all the World, your return. #CresleighHomes

Do Not Cry for Me, there is a Crystal River of Celestial Light and All of One’s Inventions are True!

March 25, 2020 1:05 am

Live each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point. So climb slowly, enjoying each passing moment; and then the view from the summit will serve a more rewarding climax for your journey. Time is not the enemy. It is not an obstacle or an unfair restraint. Time is a working condition. It is a tool. Time is a resource much like money. Time can be counted, budgeted, spent, and even squandered, but it cannot be invested to earn interest. Time cannot grow. It can only shrink. Time plays no favourites. Everyone gets the same amount to start with. What one does with it is up to each individual. Leaders do not have more time than anyone else. They just make better use of their time on and off the job. Time management is simply making choices. Better choices mean better time use. You must constantly guard against the trap of falling into a routine of remaining busy with unimportant chores that will provide you with an excuse to avoid meaningful challenges or opportunities that could change your life for the better. Now all good people come to the assistance of the party. Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death, in that tremendous day when the Heavens and the Earth shall be shaken, when Thou shalt come to judge the World by fire. That day is a day of wrath, of calamity and misery, a great day and very bitter. What shall I, most wretched, say or do, when I have no good thing to bring before the awful Judge? Now, O Christ, we appeal to Thee—we pray Thee, pity us: Thou Who camest to redeem the lost, condemn not Thou the redeemed. Lehi’s sons return to Jerusalem and invite Ishmael and his household to join them in their journey—Laman and others rebel—Nephi exhorts his brethren to have faith in the Lord—they bind him with cords and plan his destruction—he is freed by the power of faith—his brethren ask forgiveness—Lehi and his company offer sacrifice and burnt offerings. About 600-592 Before Christ (BC). “And now I would that ye might know, that after my father, Lehi, had made an end of prophesying concerning his seed, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto hum again, saying that it was not meet for him, Lehi, that he should take his family into the wilderness alone; but that his sons should take daughters to wife, that they might raise up seed unto the Lord in the land of promise. And it came to pass that the Lord commanded him that I, Nephi, and my brethren, should again return unto the land of Jerusalem, and bring down Ishmael and his family into the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

“And it came to pass that we went up to the house of Ishmael, and we did gain favour in the sight of Ismael, insomuch that we did speak unto him the words of the Lord. And it came to pass that the Lord did soften the heart of Ishmael, and also his household, insomuch that they took their journey with us down into the wilderness to the tent of our father. And it came to pass that as we journeyed in the wilderness, behold Laman and Lemuel, and two of the daughters of Ishmael, and the two sons of Ishmael and their families, did rebel against us; yea, against me, Nephi, and Sam, and their father, Ishmael, and his wife, and his three other daughters. And it came to pass in the which rebellion, they were desirous to return unto the Jerusalem. And now I, Nephi, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, therefore I spake unto them, saying, yea, even unto Laman and unto Lemuel: Behold ye are mine elder brethren, and how is it that ye are so hard in your hearts, and so blind in your minds, that ye have need that I, your younger brother, should speak unto you, yea, and set an example or you? How is it that ye have not hearkened unto the word of the Lord? How it is that ye have forgotten that ye have seen an Angel of the Lord? Yea, and how is it that ye have forgotten what great things the Lord hath done for us, in delivering us out of the hands of Laban, also that we should obtain the record? #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

“Yea, and how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of humans, if it so be that they exercise faith in him? Wherefore, let us be faithful to Him. And if it so be that we are faithful to him, we shall obtain the land of promise; and ye shall know at some future period that the word of the Lord shall be fulfilled concerning the destruction of Jerusalem; for all things which the Lord hath spoken concerning the destruction of Jerusalem must be fulfilled. For behold, the Spirit of the Lord ceaseth soon to strive with them; for behold, they have rejected the prophets, and Jeremiah have they cast into prison. And they have driven him out of the land. Now behold, I say unto you that if ye will return unto Jerusalem ye shall also perish with them. And now, if ye have choice, go up to the land, and remember the words which I speak unto you, that if ye go ye will also perish; for thus the Spirit of the Lord constraineth me that I should speak, 1 Nephi 7.1-15. Heavenly Father, save me entirely from sin. I know I am righteous through the righteousness of another, but I pant and pine for likeness to Thyself; I am Thy child and should bear Thy image; enable me to recognize my death unto sin; when it tempts me may I ne deaf unto its voice. Deliver me from the invasion as well as the dominion of sin. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Grant me to talk as Christ walked, to live in the newness of his life, the life of love, the life of faith, the life of holiness. I abhor my body of death, its indolence, envy, meanness, pride. Forgive, and kill these vices, have mercy on my unbelief, on my corrupt and wandering heart. When Thy blessings come I begin to idolize them, and set my affection on some beloved object—children, friends, wealth, honour; cleanse this spiritual adultery and give me chastity; close my heart to all but Thee. Sin is my greatest curse; let Thy victory be apparent to my consciousness, and displayed in my life. Help me to be always devoted, confident, obedient, resigned, childlike in my trust of Thee, to love Thee with soul, body, mind, strength, to love my fellow-human as I love myself, to be saved from unregenerate temper, hard thoughts, slanderous words, meanness, unkind manners, to master my tongue and keep the door of my lips. Fill me with grace daily, that my life be a fountain of sweet water. Many will speculate on the teacher’s motives. That they could be pure and selfless, seeking only to bring people close to awareness of God and to the knowledge of the higher laws, only a few will perceive. To the others one will be like a person like themselves, actuated by selfish motives. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

We are getting more done in less time, but where are the rich relationships, the inner peace, the balance, the confidence that we are doing what matters most and doing it well? It is who is in your life that matters, not what is in your life. Those who reject a noble message and sneer at its messenger, who pronounce one to be a false prophet, a deceiver of humans, thereby pronounce their own selves to be falsely led and self-deceived. No one can see one’s reflection in running water but only in still water. Only that which is itself still can still the seeks of stillness. The streamlining that has just been mentioned, the judgment of the sources by reference to the theological norm, has to be effected and pronounced by the theologian oneself. It implies that one has experience of both, that one partakes not only of a knowledge of the Bible, of Church history and of the history of religion and culture, but also of the New Being. One must be unconditionally concerned. Experience is the medium through which the sources “speak” to us, through which we can receive them. It is not a source, for it can bring nothing new; yet it has a productive power. In this position I fail to see a perfect consistency, however. Yet, experience receives and does not produce. Its productive power is restricted to the transformation of what is given to it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

However, this transformation is not intended. The act of reception intends to receive and only to receive. If transformation is intended, the reception becomes a falsification. Nevertheless, the influence of the medium, the experience of the theologian, should not be so small that the result is a repetition instead of a transformation, and it should not be so large that the result is a new production instead of a transformation. If this means that there is always a transformation when the Christian messages is received, even in spite of the receiver’s intentions, there is no difficulty. If it means that such an unintentional transformation is needed by the messages or for a more adequate presentation of it, I am not sure how it can avoid being a new protection. A mere transformation—unintentional—would respect the source’s relation to the New Being in the Christ where as a new production would warp it. Revelation as such is ended; the revelatory process still goes on. It is called development. Yet this is not all, for the New Being itself is mediated through the theologian’s experience. The norm grows within the medium of experience. It is at the same time the criterion of any experience. The norm judges the medium in which it grows; it judges the weak, interrupted, distorted character of all religious experience, although it is only through this feeble medium that a norm can come into existence at all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Collective as well as individual experiences are the mediums through which the message is received, coloured and interpreted. Reception and colouration refer us to the sources; interpretation to their judgment by the norm. However, this judgement is existential, mediated by the theologian’s experience. In what measure does this mediating experience transform it? In itself the New Being in the Christ is never grasped by any theologian; it rather grasps one. Yet the theologian judges in the name of the New Being. Luther pronounced that the Epistle of St. James was insufficiently relevant to the New Being. How did he know? Theology involves risk. The greatest danger that threatens theologians is to make their personal experience of the New being in Christ the theological norm. Then theology is self-condemned, for it is no longer the New Being as such which judges the sources of theology and which is shown as the unconditional concern of humans. Personal experience is always conditioned; its substitution for the Unconditional would be a form of idolatry. And history shows that the Protestant protest has not always been at work against their fairly common tendency of Protestant theology. Justification by faith ensures God’s victory in human’s error, but it would bulwark no theologian against an eventual misinterpretation of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Our central problem will precisely be to discover the understanding of the mystery of Christ and tradition. The New Being in Jesus as the Christ places us in the power of the Living God. Our being is rooted in the abysmal ground of being which classical theology calls the Father. It is created through the meaningful and form-giving Logos. It is unified in the dynamic unity of depth and form which is the Spirit. Because the doctrine of revelation is based on a Trinitarian interpretation of the divine life and its self-manifestation, the theology of the unconditional concern is developed according to the threefold existential scheme of being, existence, and life. At each stage a creaturely reality existentially experienced calls for, and is answered by, ultimate Being, ultimate Existence, and ultimate Life. Classical nomenclature calls these Father, Word, and Spirit. When we use these, it is intended so that we can discover the Trinitarian life. Yet this is not the final answer to the question that I have posed concerning the experiential medium of this theological norm. If a theologian interprets one’s experience of the New Being as a participation in the life of God, in the ultimate Life, the intentionality of one’s theology is valid. However, one’s intention may not be fulfilled through one’s theological system. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

In particular, there comes a point where theology has to be either religions or spiritual. Some would never truth their own thinking on the ground that they have been grasped by the life of God: how could my consciousness of this be a valid norm? One trust one’s thinking because one is at one with the collective Christian experience as witnessed to in the life of the Church as a whole. Some religions transcend its meditation by the theologian in communion with the Whole. The New Being in Jesus as the Christ must be interpreted in the totality of Christian experience, not that of all Christians of all times. Since Christianity is qualitative rather than quantitative, nothing less than a structural Whole can express it. In this sense, theology has to choose between the Church as the realm of New Being and the Church as an empirical, temporary and fallible witness to the gospel of the New Being in the Christ. Still, we run the risk of being dependent on the experience of the New Being in the Christ rather than on the experience of the whole of redeemed humankind. Belief in Christ and the acceptance of salvation are described as “acts of faith.” The Christ is the objective reality or Person that we reach in the subjective experience of faith. Faith is assessed as a Christian experience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

A final trait of the sadistic character I want to mention is servility. The sadist wants to control the weak, but there is too little vitality in one to be able to live without submitting to someone stronger than oneself. Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsfuhrer of the Schutzstaffel, and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of the Holocaust. Heinrich Himmler idolized Adolph Hitler, who was a German politician and leader of Nazi Party, and rose to power as the chancellor of Germany in 1933. If the sadist does not subordinate oneself to another person, the one may choose history, the past, the powers of nature whatever it is that is stronger than one is. However, the rule that always holds true is: I must submit, I must subordinate myself to a higher power, whatever that power may be. However, those who are weaker than I am I will dominate. That is the system the bureaucratic sadist and the cold sadist in general live by. The type I have been describing here is tellingly reflected in a characterization of Himmler that Carl J. Burckhardt wrote when he was a League of Nations commissioner in Danzig. “He creates an eerie impression with his quintessential subordination, his narrow-minded conscientiousness, his inhuman methodination, and the automaton-like quality of his behaviour.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

That is a description par excellence of a cold sadist. Now you might ask: If he had not been put in this situation, if there had never been a thing as National Socialism, might not Himmler have turned out quite differently? We can make an educated guess and say that he probably would have become a model Christian, a good citizen and a loving man. And I would have no trouble at all imagining that at his funeral his immediate superior and his minister would have said of him: “He was a great father who loved his children and devoted all of his energies to his work and to the organization he served.” And that is indeed the kind of man Himmler was. We have to realize that even a sadistic man has somewhere in hum the need to prove to himself that he is a human being, that he is capable of friendliness. If here to defend himself, Himmler might say, “Do not be the vain fool. This is what happened! Do you think I pluck it from your mind, the disasters that twisted my soul and made me what I am? I show you whom I am, I make up nothing. I have such agony in me that imagination means nothing; it is overwhelmed by a fate that ought to teach you fear and compassion. Give me back my violin,” (page 207 of Violin by Anne Rice). Sometimes when we are young and before the horror of silence comes down on us, we are wrapped away from all the World so that we have to create something in a vacuum that may seem monstrous to others. If a person cannot demonstrate to himself that in some dimension of his being he is human, then one is on the verge of madness, for what one experiences at that point is an isolation from the rest of humankind that hardly anyone can bear. And it is a fact substantiated by the reports we have that many members of the units that carried out the execution of political prisoners, Jews, Russians, and others went mad, committed suicide, or suffered from a number of psychic disorders. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

A commander of one of these units even wrote that the troops had to be shown that the methods used to destroy the Jews, that is, shooting and gassing, were humane and militarily correct. Otherwise, the people’s psychic equilibrium would be disturbed. I think it is correct to say that there are many Himmlers, many sadists, who do not become openly sadistic simply because they are not given the opportunity to do so. However, by the same token I think it would be false to say that there is a Himmler inside every one of us that we all have sadistic tendencies that will come to the fore given the right circumstances. That is the very point I want to drive home ere. There are sadistic character structures and nonsadistic ones. Some people, the ones with sadistic characters, if the conditions will all them, they will become openly sadistic. Others will not become sadists, no matter what the circumstances, simply because they have a different character. It is therefore important to understand this point and to learn to detect which people are sadistic, no matter what the circumstances, simply because they have a different character. It is therefore important to understand this point and to earn to detect which people are sadistic and which are not. We cannot let ourselves be deceived by the fact that a person is very found of children and animals and has done this or that good deed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Only if we perceive a person’s character can we see what truly lies behind one’s consciousness, what it really is that motivates one’s overall behaviour. We need to know which are the basic elements of one’s character and which are the ore superficial, compensatory ones. If we understood more about character and were not so easily influenced by a person’s outward behaviour, I think it would be a great gain for us all. It would also be a great gain for us not only in our personal lives but also in our political ones. If we could tell in advance whether the people who are so eager to guide our political fates are sadists or not, we might be able to forestall many a catastrophe. “And it came to pass that when I, Nephi, had spoken these words unto my brethren, they were angry with me. And it came to pass that they did lay their hands upon me, for behold, they were exceedingly worthy, and they did bind me with cords, for they sought to take away my life, that they might leave me in the wilderness to be devoured by wild beasts. However, it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, according to my faith which is in thee, wilt thou deliver me from the hands of my brethren; yea, even give me strength that I may bust these bands with which I am bound. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

“And it came to pass that when I had said these words, behold, the bands were loosed from off my hands and feet, and I stood before my brethren, and I spake unto the again. And it came to pass that they were angry with me again, and sought to lay hands upon me; but behold, one of the daughters of Ishmael, yes, and also her mother, and one of the sons of Ishmael, did plead with my brethren, insomuch that they did soften their hearts; and they did cease striving to take away my life. And it came to pass that they were sorrowful, because of their wickedness, insomuch that they did bow down before me, and did plead with me that I would forgive them of the thing that they had done against me. And it came to pass that I did frankly forgive them all that they had done, and I did exhort them that they would pray unto the Lord their God for forgiveness. And it came to pass that they did so. And after they had done praying unto the Lord we did again travel on our journey towards the tent of our father. And it came to pass that we did come down unto the tent of our father. And after I and my brethren and all the house of Ishmael had come down unto the tent of my father, they did give thanks unto the Lord their God; and they did offer sacrifice and burnt offerings unto him,” reports 1 Nephi 7.16-22. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Sanctification in us begins as an instantaneous act of the Holy Spirit and is carried forward by His continued action in our lives. This instantaneous act is described in a number of ways in Scripture. It is called the “renewal by the Holy Spirit,” as reported in Titus 3.5, making us alive with Christ when we are dead in transgressions and sins, which is referenced in Ephesians 2.1-5. It results in the new creation Paul referred to in 2 Corinthians 5.17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, one is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” One of the best descriptions of this initial act of God in sanctification is found in Ezekiel 36.26-27 where God makes this gracious promise: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” Note the changes God brings about in our inner being when He saves us. He gives us a new heart and puts a new spirit within us—a spirit that loves righteousness and hates sin. He puts His own Spirit within us and moves us to follow His decrees and keep His law; that is, God gives us a growing desire to obey Him. We no longer have an aversion to the commands of God, even though we may not always obey them. Instead of being irksome to us, they have now become aggregable to us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Now, an intention is brought to completion only by a decision to fulfill or carry through with the intention. We commonly find people who say they intend (or intended) to do certain things that they do (or did) not do. To be fair, external circumstances may sometimes have prevented them from carrying out the actions. And habits deeply rooted in our bodies and life contexts can, for a while, thwart even sincere intention. However, if something like that is not the case, we know that they never actually decided to do what they say they intended to do, and that they therefore did not really intend to do it. They therefore lack the power and order that intention brings into life processes. Such may have wished that what they supposedly intended would happen, and perhaps they even wanted to do it (or for it to be done); but they did not decide to do it, and their intention—which well may have begun to develop—aborted and never really formed. Procrastination is a common and well-known way in which intention is aborted, but there are many other ways. And, on the other hand, the profession or statement of intention is a primary way of negotiation one’s way through life regardless of whether or not the intention professed is really there. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Promises and agreements involved the profession of intentions, and such a profession is often enough to get us what we want in our social context. However, very often in human affairs is a profession empty, even in vows to God. That is why Scripture deals with swearing and vain (empty) use of God’s name at such lengths. If the genuine intention is there, the deed reliably follows. However, if it is not there, the deed will most likely not be there either. Now, the robust intention, with its inseparable decision, can only be formed and sustained upon the basis of a forceful vision. The elements of VIM (Vision, Intention, and Mission) are mutually reinforcing. Those whose word is their bond, or are as good as gold, are people with vision of integrity. They see themselves standing in life and before God as one who does not say one thing and think another. They mean what they say. This is greatly valuing before God, who abominates “swearing falsely” and honor those “who stand by their oath even when it harms them,” as reported in Psalm 15.4. Similarly, it is the vision of life in God’s kingdom and its goodness that provides an adequate basis for the steadfast intention to obey Christ. In that time of terror and of dread, that time full of sadness, have pity, O Lord, on those who confess Thy Passion. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Have Thou a care of those who put their trust in Thy love for humans, and do Thou forgive their sins. “Oh, merciless question. You have my violin. Be still, watch. Or give me the instrument now. Have you not seen enough to know that it is mine, that it belongs to me, that I brought it over the divine and into this realm with my very life’s blood, and you hold it, so that I cannot get it loose; the gods are mad, if they exist, that let such a thing happen. The God in Heaven is a monster. Learn from what you see,” love Him, fear Him, Obey Him, but whatever you do, make the best out of this material World while it last! (page 204 of Violin by Anne Rice.” Let Thy tenderness be stirred up for those who invoke Thy holy Name; nor let Thy grace fail us. Rebuke not the ministers of Thy kingdom for their filthy raiment. Let not the light of our lamps be put out. Let not Thy justice be against us. Show the assistance of Thy grace against our wickedness. Pour out the flood of Thy pity on our ungodliness, and wash away our sins, and efface in us whatever is hateful. Give us true and uncorrupt faith, a pure and tranquil life, high and holy gifts, freedom from severe temptations, a departure with due preparation, a god end, richest blessings, lasting delights, inheritance with Saints, and confidence when we stand before Thine awful throne, because Thou art merciful and rich in bounty. To many blasé and Worldly people, the teacher will be classed with ambitious charlatans at worst or regarded as self-hypnotized at best. However, even to those who do not question one’s sincerity, the goal one points to them must seem so utterly absurd and distant from the commonly accepted goals and the path to it so oddly eccentric that few persons are likely to be attacked to them. When the impact of one’s physical presence is absent, the power of one’s spiritual presence may become plainly evident. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

Have you had your eye on #HUBApts for a while? Now’s the time to make your move! 🎉 Going on now, HUB is offering $1,000 off move-in costs if you move in by April 30th! Check out their website for more info and virtual tours. https://sites.google.com/fpimgt.com/hubvirtualtours/homeThings which matter most must never be done at the mercy of things which matter most. Hard work is often the easy work you did not do at the proper time. Many things which cannot be overcome when they stand together yield themselves up when taken little by little.
#CresleighHomes

I am in Earnest—I Will Not Equivocate—I Will Not Excuse—I Will Not Retreat a Single Inch—And I Will Be Heard!

March 24, 2020 12:55 am

One who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide one through the maze of the most busy life. However, where no plain is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign. Learn to value your time alone—when you value something you are keener to protect it. Inside of each one of us is a place where we live all alone and that is where one renews one’s springs that never dry up. We hardly have a compete catalogue of culturally codified heroics, but it is a god representation of the ideologies that have taken such a toll of life; in many examples of masses of human lives there have been piled up order of the cultural transcendence to be achieved. And there is noting “perverse” about it because it represents the expression of the fullest expansive life of the heroic being. We can talk for a century about what causes human aggression; we can try to find the spring in animal instincts, or we can try to find them in bottled-up hatreds due to frustration or in some kind of miscarried experiences of early years, of poor child handling and training. All these would be true, but still trivial because people kill out of joy, in the experience of expansive transcendence over evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

This poses an immense problem for social theory, a problem that we have utterly failed to be clear about. If people end the lives of others out of a heroic joy, in what direction do we program for improvements in human nature? If humans work evil out of the impulse to righteousness and goodness, what are we going to improve? If people are aggressive in order to expand life, if aggression in the service of life is human’s highest creative act, what kind of child-rearing programs are we going to promote? If we were to be logical, these childhood programs would have to be something that eliminates joy and heroic self-expansion in order to be effective for peace. And how could we ever get controlled child-rearing programs without the most oppressive social regulations? The cataloguing of maddening dilemmas such as these are, for utopian thought, could probably be continued to fill a whole book let me ass mere a few more. We know that to be human is to be neurotic in some ways and to some degree; there is no way to become an adult without serious twisting of one’s perceptions of the World. Even more, it is not the especially twisted people who are most dangerous: coprophiliacs are harmless, people who physically force others into pleasures of the flesh do not do the damage to life that idealistic leaders do. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

Also, leaders are a function of the “normal” urges of masses to some large extent; this means that even psychically disabled leaders are an expression of the widespread urge to heroic transcendence. Dr. Strangelove was surely a psychic cripple, but he was not an evil genius who moved everyone around him to his will; he was simply one cleaver computer in a vast idealistic program to guarantee the survival of the “free World.” Today we are living the grotesque spectacle of the poisoning of the Earth by the nineteenth-century hero system of unrestrained material production. This is perhaps the greatest and most pervasive evil to have emerged in all of history, and it may even eventually defeat all of humankind. Still there are no “twisted” people whom we can hold responsible for this. I know all this is more or less obvious, but it puts our discussion on the proper plane; it teaches us one great lesson—a pill that for modern humans may be the bitterest of all to swallow—namely, that we seem to be unable to approach the problem of human evil from the side of psychology. Dr. Freud, who gave us the ideal of the psychological liberation of humans, also gave us many glimpses of its limitations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

I am not referring here to Dr. Freud’s cynicism about what people may accomplish because of the perversity of their natures, but rather his admission that there is no dependable line between normal and abnormal in affairs of the human World. In the mist characteristic human activity—love—we see the most distorted reality. Talking about the distortions of transference-love, Dr. Freud says: “It is to a high degree lacking in regard for reality, is less sensible, less concerned about consequences, more blind in its estimation of the person loved, then we are willing to admit of normal love.” And then he is forced to take most of this back, honest thinker that he is, by concluding that: “We should not forget, however, that it is precisely these departures from the morn that make up the essential element in the condition of being in love.” In other words, transference is the only ideality that humans have. It was no news to Dr. Freud that the ability to love and to believe is a matter of susceptibility to illusion. He prided himself on being a stoical scientist who had transcended the props of illusion, yet he retained his faith in science—in psychoanalysis—as his particular hero system. This is the same as saying that all hero systems are based on illusion except one’s own, which is somehow in a special, privileged place, as if given in nature herself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

Rank got right at the heart of Dr. Freud’s dilemma: “Just as he himself could so easily confess his agnosticism while he had created for himself a private religion, it seems that, even in his intellectual and rational achievements, he still has to express and assert his irrational needs by at least fighting for and about his rational ideas.” This it perfect. It means that Dr. Freud, too, was not exempt from the need to fit himself into a scheme of cosmic heroism, an immortality ideology that had to be taken on faith. This is why Rank saw the need to go “beyond psychology:” it cannot by itself substitute for a hero system unless it is—as it was for Dr. Freud—the hero system that guaranteed him immortality. This is the meaning of Rank’s critique of psychology as “self-deception.” It cannot contain the immortality urge characteristic of life. It is just another ideology, which is gradually trying to supplant religious and moral ideology, but is only partially qualified to do this, because it is a preponderantly negative and disintegrating ideology. In other words, all that psychology has really accomplished is to make the inner life the subject matter of sciences, and in ding this it dissipated the idea of the soul. However, it was the soul which once linked human’s inner life to a transcendent scheme of cosmic heroism. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Now the individual is stuck with oneself and with an inner life that one can only analyze away as a product of social conditioning. Psychological introspection took cosmic heroics and made them self-reflective and isolated. At best it gives the person a new self-acceptance—but this is not what humans want or need: one cannot generate a self-created hero system unless one is mad. Only pure narcissistic megalomania can banish guilt. It was on the point of guilt, as Rank saw, that Dr. Freud’s system of heroism fell down. He admonishes Dr. Freud with the didactic mocking of one who possesses a clearly superior conceptualization: “It is with his therapeutic attempt to remove the guilt by tracing it back ‘causally’ to the individual’s childhood that Dr. Freud steps in. How presumptuous, and at the same time, naïve, is this idea of simply removing human guilt by explaining it casually as ‘neurotic!’” Exactly. Guilt is a reflection of the problem of acting in the Universe; only partly is it connected to the accidents of one’s birth and early experience. Guilt, as the existentialists put it, is the guilt of being itself. It reflects the self-conscious animal’s bafflement at having emerged from nature, at sticking out too much without know what for, at not being able to securely place oneself in an eternal meaning system. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

How presumptuous of psychology to claim to be able to handle a problem of these dimensions. It all culminates once again in a recognition of the magnitude of the problem of cosmic heroism. All neurosis is vanity. Neurosis, in other words, reflects the incapacity of the individual to heroically transcend oneself; when one tried in one way or another, it is plainly vain. We are back again to a famous fruit of Rank’s work too, one insight that neurosis “is at the bottom always only incapacity for illusion.” However, we are back to it with a vengeance and with the broadest possible contemporary understanding. Transference represents not only the necessary and inevitable, but the most creative distortion of reality. Reality for humans is something one must imagine, search out in the eyes of one’s fellows, with their gleam of passionate dedication. This is also what Karl Jung intimates about the vitality of transference when he calls it “kinship libido.” This means that people join together their individual pulsations in a gamble toward something transcendent. Life imagines its own significance and strains to justify its beliefs. It is as though the life force itself needed illusion in other to further itself. Logically, then, the ideal creativity for humans would strain toward the grandest illusion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

One of the greatest difficulties for people lays in dealing with their negative feelings. We are voluntarily submitting ourselves to emotions of which we cannot really approve of, and we sometimes write down fantasies which often strike us as nonsense, and towards which we have strong resistances. For as long as we do not understand their meaning, such fantasies are a diabolical mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. It costs some of us a great deal to undergo them, but we have been challenged by fate. Only by extreme effort are we finally able to escape from the labyrinth. In order to grasp the fantasies which are stirring in us “underground,” we may know that we have to let ourselves plummet down into them, as it is. We could not only feel a violent resistance to this, but a distinct fear. For many are afraid of losing command of oneself and becoming a prey to the fantasies—and as a psychiatrist I realized only too well what that meant. After prolonged hesitation, however, I saw that there was no other way out. We have to take the chance, have to try to gain power over them; for if we do not, they run the risk of gaining power over us. A cogent motive for making the attempt is the conviction that I could not expect of my patients something I did not dare to do myself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

The excuse that a helper stood at their side would not pass muster, for I was well aware that the so-called helper—that is, myself—could not help them unless he knew their fantasy material from his own direct experience, and that at present all he possessed were a few theoretical prejudices of dubious value. This idea—that I was committing myself to a dangerous enterprise not for myself alone, but also for the sake of my patients—helped me over several critical phases. Now I would like to cite the example of a sadist who did much worse things than just control others: Heinrich Himmler. I am going to read you a short letter that he wrote to a high-ranking SS officer, Count Adalbert Kottulinsky. “Dear Kottulinsky, You have been very ill with a serious heart ailment. In the interests of your health, I am hereby ordering you to stop smoking completely for the nest two years. After these two years are up you may submit to me a physician’s report on the state of your health. On the basis of that report I will decide whether you may resume smoking or not. Heil Hitler!” That is not only exerting control over another person but humiliating him as well. Himmler treats this adult like a stupid schoolboy. He writes in a way deliberately designed to humiliate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Himmler assumes control over Kottulinsky. He does not even let the doctor do the controlling and make the decision on whether Kottulinsky may or may not smoke again. Himmler arrogates this decision to himself. Another trait of the bureaucrat as sadist is that one treats people like things. They become objects. One does not relate them as human beings. Another characteristic is that only helpless individuals waken one’s sadistic interest, not ones who can defend themselves. Also, many sadists are people who themselves suffered abuse, still talk about it like it is still happening, and want to inflict that pain onto others, which is why some are still talking about historic events as if they are current. A sadist up against a superior is usually cowardly, but someone who is helpless or can be made helpless—a child, a sick person, or, in certain political circumstances, a political opponent—those are the people who incite the sadist. One does not feel pity, as any normal person does, nor does one share the normal person’s revulsion at the very idea of hitting someone who is defenseless. On the contrary, helplessness is the quality that stimulates the sadist, because it puts the possibility of absolute control within one’s reach. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

Another trait of the sadist in bureaucrat’s clothes is an excessive preoccupation with order. Order is everything. Order is the only sure thing in life, the only thing over which we can exert complete control. People with an excessive need for order are usually people who are afraid of life, because life is not orderly. It brings surprises; spontaneity is crucial to it. The only thing we can be sure of is death, but what life brings is always something new. The sadistic individual, though, who cannot relate to others and who sees everyone and everything in life as mere objects, that kind of person hates anything living, because it poses a threat to one. However, one love order. It was therefore characteristic for Himmler to keep a diary—for ten years starting with his fourteenth year—filled with the most banal of entries. He notes how many rolls he ate, whether his train arrived on time or not. Every last little thing he did had to be recorded. Even as a young man he kept records of his correspondence in which he noted every letter he wrote or received. That is order. And we should add that it is the orderliness of a certain type, the orderliness of the old-fashioned bureaucrat for whom life means nothing but order and rules mean everything. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

It is interesting to note in this context that when Eichmann was asked in Jerusalem whether he felt any guilt—he was interrogated by a very humane psychiatrist, and he apparently felt he could speak quite freely—he said yes, he did have some guilt feelings. And when asked what it was he felt guilty about, he replied; For having played hooky from school twice when he was a boy. That was not very clever of him as a defendant in the situation he was in. If he had wanted to be clever he could have said he felt guilty because he had ended the life of so many people. However, he was perfectly honest, and it was quite natural for him to think of an indigence when he had broken the rules. For the bureaucrat, there is only one sin, and that is to violate the established order, to break the established rules. It would seem that the soul is human. For it is written in 2 Corinthians 4.16, “Though our outward person is corrupted, yet the inward person is renewed day by day.” However, that which is within humans is the soul. Therefore the soul is the inward person. Further, the human soul is a substance. However, it is not a universal substance. Therefore it is a particular substance. Therefore it is a “hypostasis” or a person; and it can only be a human person. Therefore the soul is a human; for a human person is a man. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

However, when we reflect deeper, it is clear to see that humans are not a mere soul, nor a mere body; but both soul and body. First, that human is a soul; though this particular human, Sokrates, for instance, is not a soul, but composed of soul and body. I say this, forasmuch as some held that the form alone belongs to the species; while matter is part of the individual, and not the species. This cannot be true; for to the nature of the species belongs what the definition signifies; and in natural things the definition does not signify the form only, but the form and the mater. Hence in natural things the matter is part of the species; not indeed, signate matter, which is the principle of individuality; but the common matter. For as it belongs to the notion of this particular human to be composed of this soul, of this flesh, and of these bones; so it belongs to the notion of humans to be composed of soul, flesh, and bones; for whatever belongs in common to the substance of all the individuals contained under a given species, must belong to the substance of the species. It may also be understood in this sense, that this soul is the man; and this could be held if it were supposed that the operation of the sensitive soul were proper to it, apart from the body; because in that case all the operations which are attributed to man would belong to the soul only; and whatever performs the operations proper to a thing, is that thing; wherefore that which performs the operations of a human is a human. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

However, we have shown that sensation is not the operation of the soul only. Since, then, sensation is an operation of man, but not proper to him, it is clear that man is not a soul only, but something composed of a soul and body. Plato, through supposing that sensation was proper to the soul, could maintain humans to be a soul making use of the body. A thing seems to be chiefly what is principal in it; thus what the governor of a states does, the state is said to do. In this way sometimes what is principal in man is said to be man; sometimes, indeed, the intellectual part which, in accordance with truth, is called “inward” man; and sometimes the sensitive part with the body is called man in the opinion of those who observation does not go beyond these senses. And this is called the “outward” man. Not every particular substance is a hypostasis or a person, but that which has the complete nature of its species. Hence a hand, or a foot, is not called hypostasis, or a person; nor, likewise, is the soul alone so called, since it is part of the human species. O God of love and peace, Who for the salvation of humankind did endure to be hanged on a Cross, and did pour forth Thy Blood for our redemption; favourably and benignantly receive my prayers, and bestow on my Thy mercy; that when Thou shalt command me to depart from the body, the enemy may have no power over me, but the Angel of peace may place me among Thy Saints and elect, where light abides and life reigns, World without end. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Nephi writes of the things of God—Nephi’s purpose is to persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham and be saved. About 600-592 Before Christ (BC). “And now I, Nephi, do not give the genealogy of my fathers in this part of my record; neither at any time shall I give it after upon these plates which I am writing; for it is given in the record which has been kept by my father; wherefore, I do not write it in this work. For it sufficeth me to say that we are descendants of Joseph. And it mattereth not to me that I am particular to give a full account of all the things of my father, for they cannot be written upon these plates, for I desire the room that I may write of the things of God. For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade people to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved. Wherefore, the thing which are pleasing unto the World I do not write, but the things which are pleasing unto God and unto those who are not of the World. Wherefore, I shall give commandment unto my seed, that they shall not occupy these plates with things which are not of worthy unto the children of humans,” reports 1 Nephi 6.1-6. The height of devotion is reached when reverence and contemplation produce passionate worship, which in turn breaks forth in thanksgiving and praise in word and song. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

I had vehement longings of soul after God and Christ, and after more holiness, wherewith my heart seemed to be full, and ready to break. I spent most of my time in thinking of divine things, year after year; often walking alone in the woods, and solitary places, for deep prayers, soliloquy, and prayer, and converse with God; and it was always my manner, at such times, to sing forth my contemplations. Prayer seemed to be natural to me, as the breath by which the inward burnings of my heart vents. Bach’s music is universally regarded as Christian mediation transposed into musical form. The hymns and spiritual songs of the Church are the richest sources of poetic praise set to music, with words by the likes of Bernard of Clairvaux, Paul Gerhardt, Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, George Herbert, and Jon Donne. “A palace to every song you have ever heard and been unable to endure without tear? The marble shines in the Sun. Such richness as this cannot be made by human hands. This is the temple of Heaven,” (page 58 of Violin by Anne Rice). Lord, I love You, and I thank You for this World. Lord, glorify Your name through me. May the mind of Christ my Saviour live in me from day to day, by His love and power controlling all I do and say. We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, and long to feast upon Thee still, we bring of Thee, the Fountainhead, and thirst our souls from Thee to fill. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

“Mozart was always my happy guardian, the Little Genius, I called him, Master of His Choir of Angels, that is Mozart; but Beethoven is the Master of my Dark Heart, the captain of my broken life and all my failures. This is relentless music. This person is not going to give up. Onward, upward, forward, it does not matter now—woods, trees, it does not matter. All that matters is that you walk…and when there comes just a little bit of happiness again—the sweet exultant happiness of the plateau—it is caught up this time in the advancing steps. Because there is no stopping. Magnificent assurances the Beethoven tried to make, it seemed, to all of us, that everything would someday be understood and this life was worth. It even seemed all right for the Little Genius, Mozart perhaps, the bright safe glow of Angels chattering and laughing and doing back flips in celestial light. Death is not death as I once thought, when fear was trampled underfoot. Broken hearts do best forever beating upon the wintry windowpane. It struck me—a great formless thought, unable to take shape in this atmosphere of slow lovely embracing music—that that was the power of the violin, that it sounded human in a way that we humans could not! It spoke for us in a way that we ourselves could not. Ah, yes, and that is what all the pondering and poetry has always been about. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

“It seemed the rain and this music would kill me. I would die quiet without a protest. But I only dreamed, sliding down down into a fullblown illusion as if it had been waiting for me. For surely I was dreaming. I had to be. But I was here, imprisoned in this, as if transported body and soul into it, and something in me sang, do not let it be a dream. I thought again very specifically of him, the ghost, refurbishing in my imagination his slender tall figure and the violin which he had held, and trying as best as my unmusical mind could do to recall the melodies he had played. A ghost, a ghost, you have seen a ghost I thought. The crows was magnetized by him; they were so totally in his thrall that I went unnoticed. I only want you, you of all people, you who worship these names as if they were household saints—Mozart, Beethoven—I want you to know I knew them! These higher notes were to thin and pure, so bright yet sad. I lifted the violin, and brought the bow down in a searing cry over the E string, the high string, the metal sting, maybe all song is a form of crying out, and organized scream; a violin as it reached for a magic pitch is as sharp as a siren,” (Pages: 6, 7, 11, 25, 51, 55, 56, 75, 113, 122, 151, 155 of Violin by Anne Rice). So holiness or sanctification is more than just our standing before God in Christ. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

It is an actual conformity within us to the likeness of Christ begun at the time of our salvation and completed when we are made perfect in His presence. This process of gradually conforming us to the likeness of Christ begins at the very moment of our salvation when they Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us and to actually give us a new life in Christ. We call this gradual process progressive sanctification, or growing in holiness, because it truly is a growth process. The holiness we have in Christ is purely objective, outside of ourselves. It is the perfect holiness of Christ imputed to us because of our union with Him, and it affects our standing before God. God is pleased with us because He is pleased with Christ. Progressive sanctification is subjective or experiential and is the work of the Holy Spirit within us imparting to us the life and power of Christ, enabling us to respond in obedience to Him. Bot aspects of sanctification, however, are gifts of God’s grace. We do not deserve our holy standing before God, and we do not deserve the Spirit’s sanctifying work in our lives. Both come to us by His grace because of the merit of Christ. Progressive sanctification begins in us with an instantaneous act of God at the time of salvation. God always gives justification and this initial imparting of sanctification at the same time. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Th author of Hebrews described this truth in this way: “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” Then he added, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more,” reports Hebrews 10.16-17. God promises to put his laws in our hearts and write them on our minds. That is sanctification in principle or, as I like to express it, sanctification begun. Then he promises to remember our sins no more. That is justification. Note that sanctification and justification are both gifts from God and expressions of His grace. Though they are each distinct aspects of salvation, they can never be separated. God never grants justification without also giving sanctification at the same time. I think of justification and sanctification as being like the jacket and pants of a suit. They always come together. A friend once wanted to give me a suit. He took me to a clothing store, and I walked out with a jacket and matching pants—a complete suit. Neither the jacket nor the pants alone would have been sufficient. I needed both to have the suit that my friend wanted to give me. Sometimes we think of salvation as more like a sports coat and a pair of slacks. We think God gives us the sports coat of justification by His grace, but we must “buy” the slacks of sanctification by our own efforts. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

However, salvation is like a suit. It always comes with the jacket of justification and the pants of sanctification. God never gives one without the other because both are necessary to have the complete suit of salvation. The personal traits of the spiritual guide may repel the seeker. Yet if no one else is available who has the same knowledge, it is the seeker’s duty to repress one’s repulsions and enter into the relationship of a pupil. If one does not, then one pays a heavy price for one’s surrender to personal emotion and sensual superficiality. If walking in secret, a master would not necessarily be recognized as such, not even by those who are looking for one and have real all the books about one. That a person wearing quite ordinary clothes whose face was clean shaven, whose hair was quite average length, could be an adept is much less likely to be thought by most persons, then one who was theatrical-looking and conspicuously dressed. In the Worldly life a successful person usually seeks to give others the impression of one’s success but in the spiritual life an unassuming person may be a great master. The aspirant is not ordinarily in a position to judge what illumination really is, and who is a full illuminate being. One can only form theories about the one and use one’s imagination about the other. We feel and know that we are all eternal. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. Thou art worthy, Thou art worthy, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, glory, and honour, glory and honour and power; for Thou hast created, hast all things created, Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are created: for Thou art worthy, O Lord. I love you, Lord and I lift my voice to worship you, oh my soul rejoice. Take joy, my king in what you hear may it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear. Oh Lord, I am a shell full of dust, but animated with an invisible rational soul and made anew by an unseen power of grace; yet I am no rare object of valuable price, but one that has nothing and is nothing, although chosen of Thee from eternity, given to Christ, and born again; I am deeply convinced of the evil and misery of a sinful state, of the vanity of creatures, but also of the sufficiency of Christ. When Thou would guide me I control myself. When Thou would be sovereign I rule myself. When Thou would take care of me I suffice myself. When I should depend on Thy providings I supply myself, when I should submit to Thy providence I follow my will, when I should study, love, honour, trust Thee, I serve myself; I fault and correct Ty laws to suit myself; instead of the I look to a human’s approbation, and am by nature an idolater. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Lord, it is my chief design to bring my heart back to thee. Convince me that I cannot be my own God, or make myself happy, nor my own Christ to restore my joy, nor my own Spirit to teach, guide, rule me. Help me to see that grace does this by providential affliction, for when my credit is good Thou does cast me lower, when riches are my idol Thou does turn it into bitterness. Take away my roving eye, curious ear, greedy appetite, lustful heart; show me that none of these things can heal a wounded conscience, or support a tottering frame, or uphold a departing spirit. Then take me to the cross and leave me there. God’s ultimate goal for us, however, is that we truly be conformed to the likeness of His Son in our person as well as in our standing. This goal is expressed in Romans 8.29: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the first born among many brothers.” All though the New Testament we see this ultimate end in view as the writers speak of salvation. For example, Paul said that Jesus “gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good,” reports Titus 2.14. Jesus did not die just to save us from the penalty of sin, nor even just to make us holy in our standing before God. He died to purify for Himself a people eager to obey Him, a people eager to be transformed into His likeness. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Cresleigh Homes

We are still working hard to build your dream home at #PlumasRanch! While our sales centers may be closed to drop-in visitors, we are still available to answer any questions via phone, email, and/or video conference. Head to our website to find contact info for each community. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
#CresleighHomes

I Might Have Been a Gold-Fish in a Glass Bowl for All the Privacy I Got!

March 18, 2020 1:11 am

Silences regulate the flow of listening and talking. They are to conversation what zeroes are to mathematics—crucial nothings without which communication cannot work. It would seem that the human soul is not something subsistent. For that which subsists is said to be “this particular thing.” Now “this particular thing” is said not of the soul, but of what which is composed of soul and body. Therefore the soul is not something subsistent. Further, everything subsistent operates. However, the soul does not operate; for, as the Philosopher says, to say that the soul feels or understands is like saying that the soul weaves or builds. Therefore the soul is not subsistent. Further, if the soul were subsistent, it would have some operation apart from the body. However, it has no operation apart from the body, not even that of understanding: for the act of understanding does not take place without a phantasm, which cannot exist apart from the body. Therefore the human soul is not something subsistent. On the contrary, who understands that the nature of the soul is that of a substance and not that of a body, will see that those who maintain the corporeal nature of the soul, are led astray through associating with the soul those things without which they are unable to think of any nature—Id est imaginary pictures of corporeal things. Therefore the nature of the human intellect is not only incorporeal, but it is also a substance, that is, something subsistent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

I answer that, It must necessarily be allowed that the principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul, is a principle both incorporeal and subsistent. For it is clear that by means of the intellect humans can have knowledge of all corporeal things. Now whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else. Thus we observe that a sick person’s tongue being vitiated by a feverish and bitter humour, is insensible to anything sweet, and everything seems bitter to it. Therefore, if the intellectual principle contained the nature of a body it would be unable to know all bodies. Now every body has its own determinate nature. Therefore it is impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body. It is likewise impossible for it to understand by means of a bodily organ; since the determinate nature or that organ would impede knowledge of all bodies; as when a certain determinate color is not only in the pupil of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase seems to be of that same colour. Therefore the intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation per se apart from the body. Now only that which subsists can have an operation per se. For nothing can operate but what is actual: for which reason we do not say that heat imparts, but that what is hot gives heat. We must conclude, therefore, that the human soul, which is called the intellect or the mind, is something incorporeal and subsistent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

“This particular thing” can be take in two senses. Firstly, for anything subsistent; secondly, for that which subsists, and is complete in a specific nature. The former sense excludes the inherence of an accident or of a material form; the latter excludes also the imperfection of the part, so that a hand can be called “this particular thing” in the first sense, but not in the second. Therefore, as the human soul is part of a human nature, it can indeed be called “this particular thing,” in the first sense, as being something subsistent; but not in the second, for in this sense, what is composed of body and soul is said to be “this particular thing.” Aristotle wrote those words as expressing not his own opinion, but the opinion of those who said that to understand is to be moved, as is clear from the context. Or we may reply that to operate per se belongs to what exists per se. However, for a thing to exist per se, it suffices sometimes that it be not inherent, as an accident or a material form; even though it be part of something. Nevertheless, that is rightly said to subsist per se, which is neither inherent in the above sense, nor part of anything else. In this sense, the eye or the hand cannot be said to subsist per se; nor can it for that reason be said to operate per se. Hence the operation of the parts is through each part attributed to the whole. For we say that people see with the eye, and feel with the hand, and no in the same sense as when we say that what is hot gives heat by its heat; for heat, strictly speaking does not give heat. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

We may therefore say that the soul understands, as the eye sees; but it is more correct to say that humans understand through the soul. The body is necessary for the action of the intellect, not as its origin of action, but on the part of the object; for the phantasm is to the intellect what colour is to the sight. Neither does such a dependence on the body prove the intellect to be non-subsistent; otherwise it would follow that an animal is non-subsistent, since it requires external objects of the sense in order to perform its act of perception. Memory, first of all, the power of recording and storing whatever it receives. It receives he product of the senses, the understanding and reason, and the imagination. The memory is explicit to the relationship to the senses. The external senses respond to objects external to their organs; thus a sensory impression is made. Each response is to an individual object and each impression is an individual one. The sense, which is the door of the intellect, is affected by individuals only. Such impressions are images of objects. We shall call them sense images, to distinguish them from the work of the imagination. As pictures and shapes, they are secondary objects. Pictures and shapes are bot secondary objects, and please or displease but in memory. Sense images are stored in the memory, for the images of those individuals—that is, the impressions they make on the sense—fix themselves in the memory, and pass into it the first instance entire as it were, just as they come. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Memory also collects the affective aspects of experience; indeed, if we follow this hint, memory may contribute from its larger and deep storehouse a scale of qualities marked by the pleasant at one end and unpleasant at the other. Memory received and preserved the work of the intellect and the imagination, as well as the work of the sense. We, however, almost ignore this function of memory, for we assume what our contemporaries do, namely, that unless the human mechanism could retain intellectual experience could not function in ways that were distinctly human. We must recognize memory among four intellectual arts. The other three are invention, disposition, and transmission or communication. Memory preserves their work. With the principles and rules of an art as our anchoring point, we focus more about improving the memory than we do about its operations. Our help for retention and recall recognize the difficulty of remembering abstract conceptions. The visual device of “Emblem,” for example, helps memory to cope with “intellectual conceptions.” Undoubtedly memory appears to be a kind of experience; indeed to us it is the record of experience. The relationship between human’s experience and their recording of it seems to be our justification for trying together memory and history. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The subject matter of history is properly concerned with individuals, which are circumscribed by place and time. Such material related to the memory. When the mind rehearses what is retained in the memory, it is thinking historically because it is dealing with experience. I consider history and experience to be the sane thing. History is concerned, also, with things that have happened rather than with things that are happening or may happen. This fact helps to set off history from prophecy. Accordingly, if experience per se always implies a time reference to the past, memory includes all experience with the record of the past stamped upon it. The Divine Presence is spiritual. It penetrates the inner most parts of our own spirits. Our entire inner life, our thoughts and desires, our feelings and imaginations, are known to God. The final way of escape, the most intimate of all places, is held by God. That fact is the hardest of all to accept. The human resistance against such relentless observation can scarcely be broken. Every psychiatrist and confessor is familiar with the tremendous force of resistance in each personality against even trifling self-revelations. Nobody wants to be known, even when one realizes that one’s health and salvation depend upon such a knowledge. We do not even wish to be known by ourselves. We try to hide the depth of our souls from our own eyes. We refuse to be our own witness. How then can we stand the mirror in which nothing can be hidden? #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Is the Ugliest Man right? The Ugliest Man is a symbol of the ugliness in each one of us, and the symbol of our will to hide at least something from God and from ourselves. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The World was roomy. But then the World got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me? School is shorted, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts? We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man (human) the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the short from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we cannot have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

“People want to be happy, is that not right? Have you not heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, are they not? Do we not keep them from moving, do we not give them fun? That is all we live for, is it not? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these,” (Pages 51, 53, 55, and 56 of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury). The Ugliest Man seems to be right, when we consider the support he receives from saints, theologians, and reformers. Martin Luther was as strongly grasped as the psalmist by the penetrating Presence of God. He stated that in every creature God is deeper, more internal, and more present than the creature is to himself, and that God embraces all things, is within all things. However, this most intimate Presence of God created the same feeling in Luther that it did in Nietzsche. He desired that God not be God. “I did not love God. I hated the just God…and was indignant towards Him, if not in wicked revolt, at least in silent blasphemy.” Following St. Bernard, the great master of religious self-observation, he continued, “We cannot love God, and therefore we cannot will Him to exist. We cannot want Him to be most wise…and most powerful.” When he recognized this hatred for God within himself, Luther was terribly shocked. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Luther was not able to escape as shrewdly as his theological masters, who recommended that he not think constantly of the searching Presence of God, and thus avoid the blasphemy of hating God. Luther knew that with the psalmist that no escape is possible. “Thou art behind and before me, and on every side of me, laying Thy Hand upon me.” God stands on each side of us, before and behind us. There is no way out. The pious man of the Old Testament, the mystical saint of the Middle Ages, the reformer of the Christian Church, and the prophet of atheism are all untied through that tremendous human experience: humans cannot stand the God Who is really God. Humans try to escape God, and hates Him, because they cannot escape Him. The protest against God, the will that there be no God, and the flight to atheism are all genuine elements of profound religion. And only on the basis of these elements has religion meaning and power. “All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the Sun. You come away lost, (page 59 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury). Christian theology and religious instruction speak of the Divine Omnipresence, which is the doctrine that God is everywhere, and of the Divine Omniscience, which is the doctrine that God knows everything. It is difficult to avoid such concepts in religious thought and education. However, they are at least as dangerous as they are useful. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

These doctrines make us picture God as a thing with superhuman qualities, omnipresent like an electric power field, and omniscient like a superhuman brain. Such concepts as “Divine Omnipresence” and “Divine Omniscience” transform an overwhelming religious experience into an abstract, philosophical statement, which can be accepted and rejected, defined, redefined, and replaced. In making God an object besides other objects, the existence and nature of which are matters of argument, theology supports the escape to atheism. It encourages those who are interested in denying the threatening Witness of their existence. The first step to atheism is always a theology which drags God down to the level of doubtful things. “Is it because we are having so much fun at home we have forgotten the World? Is it because we are so rich and the rest of the World is so poor and we just do not care if they are? I have heard rumors; the World is starving, but we are well fed. Is that why we are hated so much? I have heard the rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I do not, that is sure. Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!” (page 70 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury). The game of the atheist is then very easy. For one is perfectly justified in destroying such a phantom and all its ghostly qualities. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

And because the theoretical atheist is just in one’s destruction, the practical atheist (all of us) are willing to use their argument to support our own attempt to flee God. Let us therefore forget these concepts, as concepts, and try to find their genuine meaning within our own experience. We all know that we cannot separate ourselves at any time from the World to which we belong. There is no ultimate privacy or final isolation. We are always held and comprehended by something that is greater than we are, that has a claim upon us, and that demands response from us. The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to friends, to humankind, to the Universe, and to the Ground of all being, the aim of our life. Nothing can be hidden ultimately. It is always reflected in the mirror in which nothing can be concealed. Does anybody really believe that one’s most secret thoughts and desires are not manifest in the whole of being, or that the events within the darkness of one’s subconscious or in the isolation of one’s consciousness do not produce eternal repercussions? Does anybody really believe that one can escape from the responsibility for what one has done and thought in secret? “Guy’s surprise tonight is to read you one sample to show how mixed up things were, so none of us will ever have to bother our little old heads about that junk again, is that not right, darling?” (page 95 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury). #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Omniscience means that our mystery is manifest. Omnipresence means that our privacy is public. The centre of our whole being is involved in the centre of all being; and the centre of all being rests in the centre of our being. I do not believe that any serious person can deny that experience, no matter how one may express it. And if one has had the experience, one has also met something within one that makes one desire to escape the consequences of it. For humans are not equal to their own experience; one attempts to forget it; and one knows that one cannot forget it. “But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it is up to you now to know with which ear you will listen,” (Page 104 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury). Is there a release from that tension? It is possible to overcome the hatred for God and the will that there be no God, that there be no humans? Is there a way to triumph over our shame before the perpetual Witness and over the despair which is the burden of our inescapable responsibility? Nietzsche offers a solution which shows the utter impossibility of atheism. The Ugliest Man, the terminator of God, subjects himself to Zarathustra, because Zarathustra has recognized him, and looked into his depth with divine understanding. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

The terminator of God finds God in humans. One has not succeeded in terminating God at all. God has returned in Zarathustra, and in the new period of history which Zarathustra announces. God is always revived in something or somebody; He cannot be murdered. The story of every atheism is the same. Probably the worst drawback is the ensuing alienation from the self. We cannot suppress or eliminate essential parts of ourselves without becoming estranged from ourselves. It is one of those changes gradually produced by neurotic process that despite their fundamental nature come about unobserved. The person simply becomes oblivious to what one really feels, likes, rejects, believes—in short, to what one really is. Without knowing it one may life the life of one’s image. Of course it is not possible to behave so without being inextricably caught in a web of paths and alleys of dusty tracks that link back together, and are loaded with unconscious pretense and rationalization, which makes for precarious living. The person loses interest in life because it is not one who lives it; one cannot make decision because one does not know what one really wants; if difficulties mount, one may be pervaded by a sense of unreality—an accentuated expression of one’s permanent condition of being unreal to oneself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

To understand such a state, we must realize that a veil of unreality shrouding the inner World is bound to extended to be extended to the outer. A patient recently epitomized the whole situation by saying: “If it were not reality, I would be quite all right.” Finally, although the idealized image is created to remove the basic conflict and in a limited way succeeds in doing so, it generates at the same time a new rift in the personality almost more dangerous than the original one. Roughly speaking, a person builds up an idealized image of oneself because one cannot tolerate oneself as one actually is. The image apparently counteracts this calamity; but having placed oneself on a pedestal, one can tolerate one’s real self still less and starts to rage against it, to despise oneself and to chafe under the yoke of one’s own unattainable demands upon oneself. One wavers then between self-adoration and self-contempt, between one’s idealized image and one’s despised image, with no solid middle ground to fall back on. While understanding that confession should happen spontaneously, our discipline of devotion ought to involve systematic confession as well. First, we must confess what we are, the ontological reality that we are truly sinners. Romans 3.9-20 is the text I have found most helpful on this point, for it repeatedly affirms that we are sinners—that, in fact, our entire being is tainted with evil. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

It is most important that we regularly make this confession that we are sinners because, as regenerate people who are making some progress in spiritual growth, it is sinfully natural to falsely suppose we are rising above our condition—a delusion which testifies to our very depravity. Second, we must confess our specific sins. I would suggest making a list of our sins, for the act of writing them out helps materialize this personal reality for us. We must lay before God what is in us, not what ought to be within us. This done, we should confess each sin by its ugly name, and then thank God for His forgiveness through the blood of His Son. The importance of confession for the devotional life cannot be overstated. “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened,” reports Psalm 66.18; cf. Proverbs 28.13. Unconfessed sin makes the Heavens seem like brass. However, confession not only opens the Heavens, it also enhances out intimacy with God. Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart to a dear friend. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subjects of conversation; they do not weigh their words, because there is nothing to be kept back. Neither do they seek for something to say; they talk out of the abundance of their heart—without consideration, just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

The vision that underlies spiritual transformation into Christlikeness is, then, the vision of life now and forever in the range of God’s effective will—that is, partaking of divine nature (2 Peter 1.4; 1 John 3.1-2) through a birth “from above” and participating by our actions in what God is doing now in our lifetime on Earth. Thus, “whatever we do, speaking or acting, doing all on behalf of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father,” reports Colossians 3.17. In everything we are permitted to do His work. What we are aiming for in his vision is to live fully in the kingdom of God and as fully as possible now and here, not just hereafter. This is a vision of life that cannot come to us naturally, though the human soul-depths automatically cry out for something like it; and from time to time our deepest thinkers, visionaries, and artists capture aspects of it. It is a vision that has to be given to humanity by God Himself, in a revelation suited to our condition. We cannot clearly see it on our own. And that revelation has been given through His covenant people on Earth with the fullest flowering of the covenant people being Jesus Himself. Jesus was prepared for through centuries of rich and productive—though often painful—experience and thought among the people; through him people have fulfilled their God-given responsibility and blessing of being a light to all the peoples of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Through God, indeed, all the nations of the Earth are and continue to be blessed and will be even more blessed in the future. “It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption,” reports 1 Corinthians 1.30. In other words, it is God Himself who chose us to be in Christ. However, the truth I want to call attention to in the passage is that Christ Jesus has become our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. That Christ is our righteousness is an accepted and well-understood truth and the basis for our justification. However, Christ is also our holiness. This fact is not as well understood. All Christians look to Christ alone for their justification, but not nearly as many also look to Him for their perfect holiness before God. The blessed truth, though, is that all believers are sanctified in Christ, even as we are justified in Christ. In ourselves, apart from Christ, we are both guilty and filthy. We are guilty of breaking God’s law, and we are filthy in God’s sight because of the vie, polluting effects of sin. We need both forgiveness from our guilt and cleansing from our filth. Through justification we are forgiven and are declared righteous in the courtroom of God’s justice. Through the perfect holiness we have in Christ, our moral filth is removed, and we become fit to enter the very presence of an infinitely holy God and enjoy fellowship with Him. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Let us face the fact, acknowledging human’s limitations, and cease bluffing ourselves or permitting ourselves to be bluffed by the self-styled Masters is the only way to our salvation. “And it came to pass that Laman was angry with me, and also with my father; and also was Lemuel, for he hearkened unto the words of Laman. Wherefore Laman and Lemuel did speak many hard words unto us, their younger brothers, and they did smite us even with a rod. And it came to pass as they smote us with a rob, behold, an Angel of the Lord came and stood before them, and he spake unto them, saying: Why do ye smite your younger brother with a rod? Know ye not that the Lord hath chosen him to be a ruler over you, and this because of your iniquities? Behold ye shall go up to Jerusalem again, and the Lord will deliver Laban into your hands. And after the Angel had spoken to unto us, he departed. And after the Angel had departed, Laman and Lemuel again began to murmur, saying: How is it possible that the Lord will deliver Laban into our hands? Behold, he is a mighty man, and he can command fifty, yea, even he can slay fifty; then why not us?” reports 1 Nephi 3.28-31. O God, Who hast willed that the gate of mercy should stand open to the faithful; look on us, and have mercy upon us; that we who by Thy grace are following the path of Thy will, may never turn aside from the ways of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Merciful Lord, pardon all my sins of this day, week, year, all the sins of my life, sins of early, middle, and advanced years, of omission and commission, of morose, peevish and angry tempers, of lip, life and walk, of hard-heartedness, unbelief, presumption, pride, of unfaithfulness to the souls of humans, of want of bold decision in the cause of Christ, of deficiency in outspoken seal for His glory, of brining dishonor upon Thy great name, of deception, injustice, untruthfulness in my dealings with others, of impurity in thought, word and deed, of covetousness, which is idolatry, of substance unduly hoarded, improvidently squandered, not consecrated to the glory of thee, the great giver; sins in private and in the family, in study and recreation, in the busy haunts of humans, in the study of Thy word and in the neglect of it, in prayer irreverently offered and coldly withheld, in time misspent, in yielding to Satan’s wiles, in opening my heart to his temptations, in being unwatchful when I know Him nigh in quenching the Holy Spirit; sins against light and knowledge, against conscience and the restraints of Thy Spirit, against the law of eternal love. Pardon all my sins, known and unknown, felt and unfelt, confessed and not confessed, remembered or forgotten. Good Lord, hear; and hearing, forgive. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch | Residence 3

BrightonStation Residence 3 is gorgeous, spacious, and your next home! This home has three different elevations and is 2,757 square feet. 😉 We especially love the open floor plan allowing for easy entertaining. 🙌 What’s your favorite feature? Comment below!

Sales offices are open by appointment only, but model homes are available for viewing. Head to our website to find contact info for each community. Link in bio! https://youtu.be/yQTnZ0oO2OE

#CresleighRanch
#CresleighHomes

Randolph Harris II International

Category Archives: Pets

Do Not Cry for Me, there is a Crystal River of Celestial Light and All of One’s Inventions are True!

I am in Earnest—I Will Not Equivocate—I Will Not Excuse—I Will Not Retreat a Single Inch—And I Will Be Heard!

I Might Have Been a Gold-Fish in a Glass Bowl for All the Privacy I Got!

Cresleigh Homes

Post navigation