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Sometimes One Can Mistake Gratitude for Love—Dogs are Hardly an Article of Faith
Love or the lack of it is at the root of everything. Guard your children. Weigh wisdom of intervention if such is even possible. Ponder the question of inevitability. To cease wishing is a contemporary emotional and spiritual wasteland, almost like inhabiting the land of the dead. Another characteristic is satiety; if wishes are thought of only as pushed toward gratification, the end consisting of the satisfying of the need, the reality is that emptiness and vacuity and futility are greatest where all wishes are met. For this means one stops wishing. Without faith we cannot want anymore, we cannot wish. The truth of faith consists in true symbols concerning the ultimate. And the faithful is one human being with the power of thought and the need for conceptual understanding. There is a dimension of meaning expressed in the symbolism of the whish, this is what gives the wish its specifically human quality, and without this meaning, the emotional and spiritual aspects of wanting become dried up. When we have faith, it is a symbol that peace and prosperity are just around the corner and it is only a matter of time until all our need will be met. However, the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful. The difference is obvious and fundamental. However, it is, as the phrase “in principle” indicates, a difference which is not maintained in the actual life of philosophy and of faith. It cannot be maintained, because the philosopher is a human being with an ultimate concern, hidden or open. And the faithful one is a human being with the power of thought and the need for conceptual understanding. This is not only a biological fact. It has consequences for the life of philosophy in the philosopher and or the life of faith in the faithful. An analysis of philosophical systems, essays or fragments of all kinds shows that the direction in which the philosopher asks the question and the preference one gives to special types of answers is determined by cognitive consideration and by a state of ultimate concern. The historically most significant philosophies show not only the greatest power of thought but the most passionate concern about the meaning of the ultimate whose manifestations they describe. The philosophy, in its genuine meaning, is carried on by people in whom passions of an ultimate concern is united with a clear and detached observation of the way ultimate reality manifests itself in the process of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
At most general faith means much the same as trust. Therefore, we are being asked to have faith as knowledge of specific truths revealed by God. Faith is a practical commitment beyond the evidence to one’s belief that God exists. We are to have a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It is this element of ultimate concern behind the philosophical ideas which supplies the truth of faith in them. Our vision of the Universe and our predicament within it unites faith and conceptual work. We may hold that in our sinful state we will inevitably offer a resistance to faith that may be overcome only by God’s grace. It is, however, a further step for individuals of faith to put their revealed knowledge into practice by trusting their lives to God and seeking to obey his will. Humans contain the potentialities of these creative principles, and can choose to make their lives an ascent towards and then a union with the intuitive intelligence. The One is not a being, but infinite being. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Thus Christian and Jewish philosophers who held to a creator God could affirm such a conception that God is infinite, and created the World. God, as the creator of all, is not far from any one of us. Philosophy is not only the mother’s womb out of which science and history have come, it is also an ever-present element in actual scientific and historical work. The frame of reference within which the great physicists have seen and are seeing the Universe of their inquiries is philosophical, even if their actual inquiries verify it. In no case is it a result of their discoveries. It is always a vision of the totality of being which consciously or unconsciously determines the frame of their thought. Because this is so one justified in saying that even in the scientific view of reality an element of faith is effective. Scientific view of reality an element of faith is effective. Scientists rightly try to prevent these elements of faith and philosophical truth from interfering with their actual research. This is possible to a great extent; but even the most protected experiment is not absolutely pure—pure in the sense of the exclusion of interfering factors such as the observer, and as the interest which determines the kind of question asked of nature in an experiment. What we said about the philosopher must also be said about the scientist. Even in one’s scientific work one is a human being, grasped by an ultimate concern, and one asks the question of the Universe as such, the philosophical question. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Intellectual inquiry into the faith is to be understood as faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). To believe is to thin with assent (credere est assensione cogitare). It is an act of the intellect determined not by the reason, but by the will. Faith involves a commitment to believe in a God, to believe God, and to believe in God. What is eternal is unchanging. In the same way the historian is consciously or unconsciously a philosopher. It is quite obvious that every task of the historian beyond finding of the facts is dependent on evaluation of historical factors, especially the nature of mortals, one’s freedom, one’s determination, one’s development out of nature and so forth. It is less obvious but also true that even in the fact of finding historical facts philosophical presuppositions are involved. This is especially true in deciding, out of the infinite number of happenings in every infinitely small moment of time, which facts shall be called historically relevant facts. The historian is further forced to give one’s evaluation of sources and their reliability, a task which is not independent of one’s interpretation of human nature. Finally, in the moment in which a historical work gives implicit or explicit assertions about the meaning of historical events for human existence, the philosophical presuppositions of history are evident. Where there is philosophy there is an expression of an ultimate concern; there is an element of faith, however hidden it may be by the passions of the historian for pure facts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
God does not possess anything superadded to his essence, and his essence includes all his perfections. No one can attain to truth unless one philosophizes in the light of faith. Our faith in eternal salvation shows that we have theological truths that exceed human reason. And if one could attain truths about religious claims without faith, these truths would be incomplete. Higher truths are attained through faith. All these consideration show that, in spite of their essential difference, there is an actual union of philosophical truth and the truth of faith in every philosophy and that this union is significant for the work of the scientist and the historian. This union has been called philosophical faith. The term is misleading, because it seems to confuse the two elements, philosophical truth and the truth of faith. Furthermore, the term seems to indicate that there is one philosophical faith, a philosophia perennis, as it has been termed. However, only philosophical questions are perennial, not the answers. There is a continuous process of interpretation of philosophical elements and elements of faith, not one philosophical faith. Revealed theology is a single speculative science concerned with knowledge of God. Because of its greater certitude and higher dignity of subject matter, it is nobler than any other science. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Philosophical theology, though, can make demonstrations using the articles of faith as its principles. Moreover, it can apologetically refute objections raised against the faith even if no articles of faith are presupposed. There is truth of faith in philosophical truth. And there is philosophical truth in the truth of faith. In order to see the latter point we must confront the conceptual expression of philosophical truth with the symbolical expression of truth of faith. Now, one can say that most philosophical concepts have mythological ancestors and that most mythological symbols have conceptual elements which can and must be developed as soon as the philosophical consciousness has appeared. In the idea of God the concepts of being, life, spirit, unity and diversity are implied. In the symbol of the creation concepts of finitude, anxiety, freedom and time are implied. The symbol of the “fall of Adam” implies a concept of mortal’s essential nature, of one’s conflict with oneself, of one’s estrangement from oneself. Only because every religious symbol has conceptual potentialities is theo-logy possible. There is a philosophy implied in every symbol of faith. However, faith does not determine the movement of the philosophical thought, just as philosophy does not determine the character of one’s ultimate concern. Symbols of faith can open the eyes of the philosopher to qualities of the Universe which otherwise would not have been recognized. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Faith is the starting point, scripture offers the data, and philosophy is a supplement not a competitor. Faith, philosophy, and scripture help make sense of each other. However, faith does not command a definite philosophy, although churches and theological movements have claimed and used Platonic, Aristotelian, Kantian or Humean philosophies. The philosophical implications of the symbols of faith can be developed in many ways, but the truth of faith and the truth of philosophy have no authority over each other. In the past few years, a number of persons in psychiatry and related fields have been pondering and exploring the problems of wishing and willing. We may assume that this confluence of concern must be in answer to a strong need in out time for a new light on these problems. It is not wishing that cases illness but lack of wishing. The problem is to deepen people’s capacity to wish, and one side of our task in therapy is to create the ability to wish. Wish is an optimistic picturing in imagination. It is a transitive verb—to wish involves an act. Wishing is similar to faith because it allows us to see beyond our experience and knowledge and hope that something good may happen, and so we send out more beneficial vibrations into the Universe. Every genuine wish is a creative act. I find support for this in therapy: it is indeed a beneficial step when the patient can feel and state strongly, for example, “I wish to buy a beautiful Cresleigh home and feel safe and secure in my community.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
That wish, in effect, moves the conflict from a submerged, unarticulated plane in which one takes no responsibility but expects God and parent to read his or her wishes by telepathy, to an overt, healthy conflict over what one wants. On the basis of theological myth of creation God exults when mortals come through with a wish of one’s own. The wish in interpersonal relationship requires mutuality. This is a truth shown in its breach in many myths, and brings the person to one’s doom. Peer Gynt in Ibsen’s play runs around the World wishing and acting on his wishes; the only trouble is that is wishes have noting to do with the other person he meets but are entirely egocentric, encased in cask of self, sealed up with a bung of self. In The Sleeping Beauty, by the same token, the young princes who assault the briars in order to rescue and awaken the slumbering girl before the time is ripe, are exemplars of behavior which tries to force the other in love and pleasures of flesh before the other is ready; they exhibit a wishing without mutuality. The young princes are devoted to their own desires and needs without relation to Thou. If wish and will can be seen and experienced in this light of autonomous, imaginative acts of interpersonal mutuality, there is profound truth in St. Augustine’s dictum, “Love and do what you will.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
We cannot be naïve about human nature. We know full well that this wishing is stated in ideal terms. We know that the trouble is precisely that mortals do wish and will against their neighbor, that imagination is not only the source of our capacity to form the creative mutual wish but it is also bounded by the individual’s own limits, convictions, and experience; and, thus, there is always in our wishing an element of doing violence to the others as well as to ourselves, no matter how well analyzed we may be or how much the recipient of grace or how many times we have experienced satori. This is called the willful element, willful here being the insistence of one’s own wish against the reality of the situation. Willfulness is the kind of will motivated by defiance, in which the wish is more against something than for its object. The defiant, willful is correlated with fantasy rather than with imagination, and is the spirit which negates reality, whether it be a person or an aspect of impersonal nature, rather than sees it, forms it, respect it, or takes joy in it. There are two realms of will, the first consisting of an experience of the self in its totality, a relatively spontaneous movement in a certain direction. In this kind of willing, the body moves as a whole, and the experience is characterized by a relaxation and by an imaginative, open quality. This is an experience of freedom which is anterior to all talk about political or psychological freedom; it is a freedom, presupposed by the determinist and anterior to all the discussions of determinism. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
In contrast, the will of the second realm is that in which some obtrusive element enters is that in which some obtrusive element enters, some necessity for a decision of an either/or character, a decision with an element of an against something alone with a for something. If one uses the Freudian terminology, the “will of the Super-Ego” would be included in their realm. We can will to read but not to understand, we can will knowledge but not wisdom, we can will scrupulosity but not mortality. This is illustrated in creative work. In the second realm of will is the conscious, effortful, critical application to creative endeavor, in preparing a speech for meeting or revising one’s manuscript, for example. However, when actually giving the speech, or when hopefully creative inspiration takes over in our writing, we are engrossed with a degree of forgetfulness of self. In this experience, wishing and willing become one. One characteristic of the creative experience is that it makes for a temporary union by transcending the conflict. The temptation is for the second ream to take over the first; we lose our spontaneity, our free flow of activity, and will become effortful, controlled and so forth, Victorian will power. Our error, then, is that will tries to take over the work of imagination. This is very close to a wish. Will is the capacity to organize oneself so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain goal may take place. Wish is the imaginative playing with the possibility of some act or state occurring. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Will and wish may be seen as operating in polarity. Will requires self-consciousness; wish does not. Will implies some possibility of either/or choice; wish does not. Wish gives the warmth, the content, the imagination, the innocence’s play, the freshness, and the richness of the will. Will gives the self-direction, the maturity, to wish. Will protect wish, permits it to continue without wish, will loses its life-blood, its viability, and tends to expire in self-contradiction. If you have only will and no wish, you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan mortal. If you have only wish and no will, you have the driven, unfree, infantile person who, as an adult-remaining-an-infant, may become the robot mortal. Awareness of one’s feelings lays the groundwork for knowing what one want. This point may look very simple at first glance—who does not know what one wants? However, the amazing thing is how few people actually do. If one looks honestly into oneself, does one not find that most of what one thinks one wants is just routines like fresh fish on Friday; or what one wants is what one thinks one should want—like being a success in his or her work; or wants to want—like loving one’s neighbor? One can often see clearly the expression of direct and honest wants in children before they have been taught to falsify their desires. The child exclaims, “I like ice cream, I want a cone,” and there is no confusion about who wants what. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Such directness of desire often comes like a breath of fresh air in a murky land. It may not be best that one has the cone at the time, and it is obviously the parents’ responsibility to say Yes or No if the child is not mature enough to decide. However, let the parents not teach the child to falsify one’s emotions by trying to persuade him or her that he or she does not want the cone! To be aware of one’s feelings and desires does not at all imply expressing them indiscriminately wherever one happens to be. Judgment and decision are part of any mature consciousness of self. However, how is one going to have a basis for judging wat one will or will not do unless one first knows what one wants? For an adolescent to be aware that one wants to drive a brand-new BMW 3 Series, does not mean that one acts on this impulse. However, suppose he never lets his impulses reach the threshold of awareness because they are not socially acceptable? How is he then to know years later, when he buys a care, whether he wants to drive it or not, or whether because thus is then the acceptable and expected act, the routine thing to do? People who voice with alarm the caution that unless desires and emotions are suppressed they will pop out every which way, and everyone, will experience neurotic emotions. As a matter of fact, we know that it is precisely the emotions and desires which have been repressed which later return to drive the person compulsively. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The Victorian gyroscope kind of person had to control his or her emotions rigidly, for, by virtue of having locked them up in jail, one had turned them into lawbreakers. However, the more integrated a person is, the loses compulsive become one’s emotions. In the mature person feelings and wants occur in a configuration. In seeing a dinner as part of a drama on the stage, to give a simple example, one is not consumed with desires for food; one came to see a drama and not to eat. Or wen listening to a concert singer, one is not consumed with pleasures of the flesh even though she may be very attractive; the configuration is set by the fact that one chose in coming to hear music. Of course, as we have indicted, none of us escape conflicts from time to time. However, these are different from being compulsively driven by emotions. Every direct and immediate experience of feeling and wanting is spontaneous and unique. That is to say, the wanting and feeling are uniquely part of that particular situation at the particular time and place. Spontaneity means to be able to respond directly to the total picture—or, as it is technically called, to respond to the figure-ground configuration. Spontaneity is the active “I” becoming part of the figure ground. In a good portrait painting the background is always an integral part of the portrait; so an act of a mature human being is an integral part of the self in relation to the World around it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Spontaneity, thus, is very different from effervescence or egocentricity, or letting out one’s feelings regardless of the environment. Spontaneity, rather is the acting “I” responding to a particular environment at a given moment. The originality and uniqueness which is always part of spontaneous feeling can be understood in this light. For just as there never was exactly that situation before and never will be again, so the feeling one has at that time is new and never to be exactly repeated. It is only neurotic behavior which is rigidly repetitive. God’s great plan of happiness provide a perfect balance between eternal justice and the mercy we can obtain through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It also enables us to be transformed into new creatures in Christ. A loving God reaches out to each of us. We know that through his love and because of his Atonement of his only begotten Son, all humankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances. Eternal relationships are also fundamental to our theology. The family is ordained of God. Under the great plan of our loving Creator, the mission is to achieve the supernal blessing of exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Finally, God’s love is so great that, except for the few who become people of perdition, God has provided a destiny of glory for all his children, including those who have passed away. Our loving Heavenly Father wants us to have joy. “Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested,” reports Kate Atkinson. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Desire’s Perfect Goal Should Not Disenthrall Thy Soul—Here is a Star, there is a Star, Some Lose Their Way!
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. Love would conquer all, of course, but one has to know when it is there first. Glaucus was a fisherman. One day he had drawn his nets to land and had taken a great many fishes of various kinds. So he emptied his nets and proceeded to sort the fishes on the grass. The place where he stood was a beautiful island in the river, a solitary spot, uninhabited, and not used for pasturage of cattle, not visited by anyone but himself. On a sudden, the fishes, which had been laid on the grass, began to revive and move their fins as if they were in the water; and while he looked on astonished, they one and all moved off to the water, plunged in, and swam away. He did not know what to make of this, whether some god had done it, or some secret power in the herbage. “What herb has such a power?” he exclaimed; and gathering some of it, he tasted it. Scarce had the juices of the plant reached his palate when he found himself agitated with a longing desire for the water. Glaucus could no longer restrain himself, but bidding farewell to Earth, he plunged into the stream. The gods of the water received him graciously and admitted hi to the honour of their society. They obtained the consent of Oceanus and Tethys, the sovereign of the sea, that all that was mortal in him should be washed away. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
A hundred rivers poured their waters over Glaucus and then he lost all sense of his former nature and all consciousness. When he recovered, he found himself changed in form and mind. His hair was sea-green, and trailed behind him on the water; his shoulders grew broad, and what had been thighs and legs assumed the form of a fish’s tail. The sea-gods complimented him on the change of his appearance, and Glaucus fancied himself rather a good-looking personage. One day, Glaucus saw a beautiful maiden Scylla, the favourite of the water-nymphs, rambling on the shore, and when she had found a sheltered nook, laving her limbs on the clear water, he fell in live with her. Glaucus showed himself on the surface, spoke to the maiden, saying such things as he thought most likely to win her to stay; for she turned to run immediately on sight of him, and ran till she had gained a cliff overlooking the sea. Here she stopped and turned round to see whether it was a god or s sea animal, and observed with wonder his shape and colour. Glaucus, partly emerging from the water and supporting himself against a rock, said, “Maiden, I am not monster, nor sea animal, but a god; and neither Proteus nor Triton ranks higher than I. Once I was a mortal, and followed the sea for a living; but now I belong wholly to it.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Then he told the story of his metamorphosis, and how he had been promoted to his present dignity, and added, “But what avails all this if it fails to move your heart?” Glaucus was going on in this strain, but the maiden, Scylla, turned and hastened away. Glaucus was in despair, but it occurred to him to consult the enchantress, Circe. Accordingly he repaired to her island. After mutual salutations, Glaucus said, “Goddess, I entreat your pity; you alone can relieve the pain I suffer. The power of the herbs I know as well as any one, for it is to them I owe my change of form. I love Scylla. I am ashamed to tell you how I have sued and promised to her, and how scornfully she has treated me. I beseech you to use your incantations, or potent herbs, if they are more prevailing, not to cure me of my love—for that I do not wish—but to make Scylla share it and yield me a like return.” To which Circe replied, for she was not insensible to the attractions of the sea-green deity, “You had better pursue a willing object; you are worthy to be sought, instead of having to seek in vain. Be not different, know your own worth. I protest to you that even I, goddess though I be, and learned in the virtue of plants and spells, should not know how to refuse you. If Scylla scorns you, scorn her; meet one who is ready to meet you half way, and thus make a due return to both at once.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
However, Glaucus replied, “Sooner shall trees grow at the bottom of the ocean, and seaweed on the top of the mountains, than I will cease to love Scylla, and her alone.” The goddess Circe was indignant, but she could not punish him, neither did she wish to do so, for she liked him too well; so she turned all her wrath against her rival, poor Scylla. She took her plants of poisonous powers and mixed them together, with incantations and charms. Then she passed through the crowd of gamboling beasts, the victims of her art, and proceeded to the coast of Sicily, where Scylla lived. There was a little bay on the shore to which Scylla used to resort, in the heat of the day, to breathe their air of the sea, and to bathe in its waters. Here the goddess poured her poisonous mixture, and muttered over it incantations of mighty power. Scylla came as usual and plunged into the water up to her waist. What was her horror to perceive a brood of serpents and barking monsters surrounding her! At first she could not imagine they were a part of herself, and tried to run from them and to drive them away; but as she ran she carried them with her, and when she tried to touch her limbs, she found her hands touch only the yawning jaws of monsters. Scylla remained rooted to the spot. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Scylla’s temper grew as ugly as her form, and she took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came within her grasp. Thus she destroyed six of the companions of Ulysses, and tried to wreck the ships of Aeneas, till at least she was turned into a rock, and as such still continues to be a terror to mariners. Mistakes are a deliberately wrong choice in the contest between what is clearly good and what is clearly bad is sin. We all want a partner, but some want one to the point of it being a pathology. Many people knowingly or unknowingly force a relationship due to an addiction of love. If one is honest with oneself, and know that one has nothing in common with their focus of their intertest, such as different goals, different lifestyles, and different hobbies, and the person is not attracted to the individual pursing a relationship, this is a clear indication that they do not like you in a romantic way, much like how Scylla was not in the least bit interested in Glaucus. Yet, Glaucus could not take no for an answer and ended up running her like, and the rage she experienced ruined the lives of others. Absolutely imagine if you had people dragging you into things you did not want to be part of, and you will understand why this is not a healthy thing to do. It is never a healthy thing to do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
People who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistake than people who think intelligence is fixed. One major difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how one responds to mistake. When one makes a mistake, the best thing to do is to try to learn from it and figure it out. Conversely, some people who think they cannot gain intelligence will not take the opportunities to learn from their mistakes, and they usually employ defense mechanisms to justify their behaviour so they do not feel guilt or remourse. Defense mechanisms are psychological maneuvers that operate below the surface of one’s awareness (they are unconscious) to protect one from emotional pain or distress. The most familiar one is probably denial. Denial allows one to dismiss a painful reality so that one can go on acting as if a situation or event is not true—because one does not want to admit it is true. Transgression is different from being overtaken in a fault. Both sins and mistakes can hurt us and both require attention. People who try to force relations, often end up feeling insecure, hurt, and betrayed for no reason. Then these individuals start questioning themselves as to why they are never good enough for the person they are interested in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand and hand with reproof. Though it may be hard to admit, there comes a time when one just needs to cut their losses and leave a person alone. The progression of a romantic relationship cannot be formed. It must evolve naturally, over time. Impatient, insecure, or damaged people try to force relationships. Mortal make these kinds of mistakes all the times. However, these things are on an essentially predetermined course. A fool is a person lacking judgment or prudence. The Saviour used the term fool to characterize the lesson in this parable about the rich man who built greater barns to store his abundant fruits and goods and then said to his soul, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” reports Luke 12.19. The distinction between sins and mistakes is important to our actions. We have seen some very bitter finger pointing. All of us make mistakes, and some of us very serious ones. Any thoughtful person feels a kind of failure because one’s sins or moral failure. One does not get clean by rolling in the mire. One does not get clean and whole by brooding unduly over the past, although we can certainly learn from our mistake. There is no strength in weakness; there is no strength in sin; and we do not overcome our mistake and our sins by fighting them directly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
If people dwell upon them too much, they may succumb to their sins. The avoidance of guilt can be addictive, too. Guilt-avoidance has become a drug of choice for many people, because it is so pleasurable, almost intoxicating, to think of oneself as morally pure. Those who are addicted to guilt-avoidance are usually a bit inconsistent. They avoid the guilt themselves, but they do not mind imposing a bit of it—maybe even a lot of it—on others. It can be immensely pleasurable to notice the flaws of others while ignoring your own. However, that is a sin, too. All things considered, we are on a safer ground when we focus on our own sins, not those of others. At least this is how we process theologians see things. We believe that when we harm others, or fail to act in ways that prevent them from being harmed, we violated something deep within the nature of nature. We have violated an Eros toward life’s flourishing that is divine. In sinning against others, we sin against God. It takes courage to stand up. The freedom to be different. The freedom to take guilt and make something beautiful of it. Humans have the freedom to turn guilt into love. Few gifts are more desirable than a clear conscience—a soul at peace with itself. Only God can heal a troubled soul. However, if we want God to forgive us, we must follow the procedure he has given to us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Confession is a necessary requirement for complete forgiveness. It is an indication of true Godly sorrow. It is part of the cleansing process—the starting anew requires a clean page in the diary of our conscience. Confessions should be made to the appropriate person who has been wronged by us and to the Lord also. In addition, the nature of our transgression may be serious enough to require a confession to God in prayer. “Therefore I say unto you, Go; and whoever transgressed against me, him shall you judge according to the sins which he or she has committed; and if he or she confess his or her sins before thee and me, and repents in the sincerity of one’s heart, that person one shall forgive, and I will also forgive that individual,” reports Mosiah 26.29. Remember, it is complete deliverance from the tortures of a guilt-ridden soul that we seek. Repentance is not easy. Godly sorrow brings one to the depth of humility. This is why the gift of forgiveness is so sweet and draws the transgressor so close to the Saviour with a special bond of affection. Full repentance liberates the individual with joy unspeakable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Any type of open and truthful disclosure reduces stress and helps individuals come to terms with their behaviour. It is not coincidental that some of the most powerful people or institutions in may cultures encourage people to confess their transgressions. And there is strong evidence that writing about upsetting experiences or dark secrets can benefit your mental and physical well-being. Similar to religious confessions, expressive writing encouraged individuals to explore their deepest thoughts and feelings about upsetting experiences. For such emotional purges to work, people must be completely honest with themselves. Putting emotional turmoil into words changes how we think about it. Giving concrete form to secret experiences can help categorize them in new ways. Talking or writing about a disturbing event helps us to understand it better. And things we do not understand cause greater anxiety. Once we are able to express our upheavals, we tend to ruminate about them less, freeing us up to focus on others thing. Dozens of studies have also shown that expression is linked to less stress and improved sleep and cardiovascular function. Also, better sleep is associated with enhanced immune function and better general health—which correlates with better mental health, too. Confession can help people get through difficult times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
You Left Me a Heavenly Sweet Legacy of Love–Meet Me on Top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day
I have really hope you have found happiness, and if ever in need of something, like someone to love you, do not hesitate to call me. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears, but our intellect…must itself lack all those things which of its nature it understands. Since then it naturally understands all sensible and bodily things, it must be lacking in every bodily nature; just as the sense of sight, being able to know colour, lacks all colour. If sight itself had any particular colour, this colour would prevent it from seeing others colours, just as the tongue of a feverish person, being coated with bitter moisture, cannot taste anything sweet. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which not everything should be said. Maybe there is something divine in the bliss we feel. Love aims at transcending human existence, at connecting it with the eternal and infinite, and thereby at achieving the only aspect of immortality that is open to us as human beings. Because many people want both height and depth, spirituality strengthens and develops love and transforms it into a desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, others, and the Universe. When our eyes fall upon the beauty of the Earth, our soul is able to remember true love and reverences as it enjoys the expression of the divine—of temperance, justice, and knowledge of the absolute. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
The human being is a spiritual being at the core. We are the soul and have an existence beyond the physical. Our personality has, in fact, many sub-personalities or different, often conflicting, aspects. Some of these aspects can be very troublesome and sabotage our efforts at success and happiness. Magically, if we can observe some aspect of ourselves with detachment, then we can change that aspect or somewhat control it. The idea of aspects of personality and observing them is now part of our daily language (largely do the work of Psychosynthesis). We regularly hear people say, “There is a part of me that wants marry Walter, but the other part of me is says Sam Baldwin is my destiny.” Psychosynthesis work sets up a dialogue with the different aspects of self to try to find a way of balance and integration of these, often, conflicting, parts. People tend to be dominated by love, will, and intelligent activity. Love deals with matters of the heart, compassion, emotion, and sensitivity. The will is one’s drive, need to achieve, power to remove and overcome come obstacles. Intelligent activity is the capacity to actively plan, organize, construct mental schemes and models of things. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Psychosynthesis tries to identify the basic type and then attempt to bring in balance if necessary. For example, the love type may need to develop the will to be less vulnerable and more effective. The will type may need to develop emotional sensibility so as to learn to love and be loved. In the 1993 film, Sleepless in Seattle is a classic fairy tale which involves a love struck, beautiful, enchanted princess Anne Reed, and sleepless, pragmatic, handsome prince Sam Baldwin. After the death of his wife, Sam moved to Seattle with his son and is convinced he will never find love again, and he just focuses on his work in architecture and never sleeps. His son, Jonah calls a talk-radio program hosted by a psychiatrist and Johan tells the World how concerned he is about his dad, and then the father gets on the phone and talks about what love means to him. The World falls madly in love with him, and many women want to meet him, but he is not interested. Anne Reed hears the call, and although she is already engaged, she feels he is her destiny. Anne bases he love life on the 1957 film An Affair to Remember. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Psychosynthesis would have helped Anne balance her need for love, and would have helped Sam develop a less will driven and emotional aspect of his personality, which is a form of conscious balance and choice. It lets people know where they are lacking balance in their lives, and as you see it is not always a chemical imbalance, but a lack of development or personal understanding. However, fate brings the lovers together in hopes they can balance each other out. There are usually three levels of satisfaction: Happiness, joy, and bliss. Happiness is the goal for most people’s lives it is the arrangement of life events to bring about the desired end. Problem, it can be fleeting and may not last for long. Joy is the constant states of soul, and is the surest sign of the presence of the soul. Bliss is the condition of the spirit beyond all material limitations. The intellect here serves as a bridge. Because of the refinement of the matter composing it, the intellect is well adapted as a medium of consciousness—it is like a translucent substance through which the soul can shine. However, it is only in conjunction with a soul that the intellect and the whole psychophysical organism can have experiences. The soul can gain release through discriminatory knowledge (viveka), that is, by realizing the essential distinction between itself and nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Contemplative techniques induce a stilling and purification of the mind in which the essential nature of the soul is reflected clearly. Thereby the soul learns to recognize the repression of the sublime, which tend to lead to unhappy and neurotic states that are the result of failure to understand and admit the spiritual aspects in ourselves and others. We cannot base on life on films like Sleepless in Seattle because taking such a risk could turn out to be more like Sleeping with the Enemy. Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1991 film in which a character called Laura Burney lives in a beautiful home by the beach on Cape Cod with her husband, Martin, a charming, handsome and wealthy investment counselor. In reality, Martin is not charming at all. He is volatile and charged with energy. Martin is extremely obsessive and has control issues. Martin is also physically and emotionally abusive toward his wife, Laura, throughout their marriage. He makes her keep the house crystal clean, makes her pretend to be happy, tells her what she is allowed to wear, selects the music she can listen to, and even controls her social activities. Therefore, we need to teach our kids that life is not all about finding love, but more about finding a career that allows one to support oneself and becoming aware of the external World, since mental and physical entities evolve on a parallel and mutually adapted lines; thus, it opens the way to a correspondence theory of perception. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
According to the theory of perception, external happenings imprint themselves via the sense and the sensus communis, or mind organ (manas), on the intellect. These images are then illuminated by the soul. The mind is, so to say, a screen containing pictures of the outer World, and the soul lights these up. However, the soul itself cannot be illuminated and this perceived introspectively; therefore, its existence is known only by inference (or by a special state of consciousness). This is why religion and talk therapy have become some popular. Doctors realize a lot of people do not have chemical imbalances, but they are experiencing situations and conditions that they are not equipped to handle and need guidance of someone who can help them recognize there is nothing wrong with them, but they may be in a situation that is not conductive to their development. By medicating people who do not have chemical imbalances, we could be doing more damage than good because we are using a drug to control them and forcing them to adapt to situations, which may be unsafe. Conversely, some people do need medication because there is something wrong with their brain. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
While we are on the subject of mental health, there was this interesting study about a mental who was schizophrenic, he was a witness to a crime, and was arrested. He mother did not want him on medication because she believed it was dangerous for him. He was being assaulted in jail because he was not normal. The investigators forced him to take a shot of an antipsychotic that would last a month so he could clear his head up enough to see lucid and testify. After taking the medication, he hanged himself because he suffered from depression, as his friends, the voices in his head were gone, and he was lonely. Therefore, not everyone needs therapy and not everyone needs medication. As a society, we just have to understand there are different types of people and not everyone is typical and we cannot force them to adhere to our standards. Of course, we can never understand what life is like for some people, who have mental or physical impairments, or who have been sheltered and do not understand the World, because we have never been in their shoes. So, it is not our job to sit back and judge people who have learned to adapt as best to life as they can. Sometimes people are living unimaginable lives. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you,” reports Matthew 7.1-2. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
A layperson’s most natural way of defending belief in induction is that it has worked in the past. Concealed in this reply, of course, is the assumption that what has already worked will continue to do so. However, there is a lack of clarity about what counts as success in using the rule. Our society has much neglected the need for the development of the capacity for expression of love and beauty. Love is a basic soul quality. When unfolded, it enables the person to love and accept the people they encounter and find the good in all people. We have to identify our infinity of living Worlds in endless pace with the infinity of God. Knowledge therefore must begin not with sense experience but with a rational search for units of divine life. The atoms of the physical World are carried in the ether, which is the universal medium of the divine life and power. The conquest of the self, in which the intellect achieves mastery over the passions of humans and drives out the beast is were all the traditional virtues of moderation and self-control have place, and at this level we appear to have the choice between good and evil. However, when we use this freedom as reason dictates, we become aware that we are simply following the urge of our nature toward union with the divine; and the rational person burns with the heroic fury of an intellectual love of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
The mind senses the presence of God in the whole of his creation. Beauty is everywhere. We live in the beauty, but in reality everything is beautiful. We place immense trust in the analogical power of reason as a means of empathy with the universal of life of things. In mathematical reasoning, we possess the standard for God’s own knowledge, and whatever we can prove mathematically we know as surely and as perfectly as God does. Thus in the genuinely scientific investigation of nature we possess a revelation equal in authority, though not in importance, to the revelation concerning human’s moral duties and destiny that is contained in the Holy Scripture. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise person who built his or her house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. However, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish person who built his or her house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with great crash,” reports Matthew 7.24- 27. That is why God wants us to apply his ways in our lives now. What we can take with us for all eternity is our love and concern with one another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Our Degree of Gratitude is a Means of Love for God
Think of our physical sustenance. It is truly Heaven sent. We are at home here on Earth. So many people who come here seem lost and emotionally or spiritually homeless. They keep moving, but they never really live anywhere. To get to Heaven, we need to focus less on saving our own soul and more time loving all souls. Loyalty is a reward for remembered generosity. Community, friendship, and generosity are three aspects of life that we may squander until we fully admit to our dependence on one another. Throughout history we find certain schools of thought, such as the Renaissance Platonists and the Romantic poets, that have focused on the soul. It is interesting to note that these soul-minded writers have emphasized certain common themes. Relatedness, particularity, imagination, mortality, and pleasure are among them; another is beauty. In a World where soul is neglected, beauty is placed last on its list of priorities. There are moments in life when our true dependence on one another breaks through. Loyalty is the attribute we most value in our relatives and celebrate in our friends. If we conducted the middle of our lives with an eye to the end of our lives, we would choose a place to live and we would stay. Residing near others with whom we establish a history of reciprocity is the best hope for our future stability, whether we manage to live near blood relations or choose to develop family-like bonds with others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
No amount of self-reliance can match the confidence derived from years of faithfulness and accumulated gratitude. The assumption that beauty is an accessory, and dispensable, show that some may not understand the importance of giving the soul what it needs. The soul is nurtured by beauty. Many people like to keep close contact with good people they have known since their youth. Some of our friends have been part of the landscape of our lives as far back as we can remember. Having someone to talk to at the end of the day does people a World of good, even just for a few minutes. They know someone is thinking of them, and they can say a thing or two about how their day was. Most people look forward to a short conversation at the end of the day. This is food to the body and pleasing to the soul. If we have lack of beauty in our lives, we will probably suffer familiar disturbances in the soul—depression, paranoia, meaninglessness, and addiction. The soul craves beauty and, in its absence, suffers beauty neurosis. Beauty neurosis is a hyperactive lifestyle that confuses intense activity for the ability to engage with the World. It is not the threat of death, illness, hardship, or poverty that crushes the human spirit; it is the fear of being alone and unloved in the Universe. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
The process that drives creativity has been so mysterious to us throughout human history. The problem with our modern networks is that they become useless once physical frailty catapults our mobility back into the nineteenth century. When our face-to-face contact is cut off, we may as well be three thousand miles away. Prior to reaching our time of frailty, we are wise to survey our lives for pockets of loyalty worth preserving. Starting over is strenuous at any age, but especially when we are emotionally vulnerable or physically fragile. Divine inspiration and reciprocation keeps relationships alive. Bonds with friends and neighbors may mean more than blood oaths, especially if a recent history of giving and receiving animates thee other relationship. Such discoveries contradict what we prefer to believe about the strength of family bonds and our ability to overcome the effects of geographical separation. Scattering across the country causes family members to become strangers to each other, no matter how often they write or call. Verbal contact is not the same as meshing the routines of daily life: going shopping together, exchanging help back and forth, and witnessing each other’s victories and sorrows first-hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Our bonds remain strongest when they are sustained by both proximity and mutual need. Beauty assists the soul in its own peculiar ways of being. For the soul, it is important to be taken out of the rush of practical life for the contemplation of timeless and eternal realities. Beauty is arresting. You may find yourself driving along a highway when you suddenly pass a vista that catches your breath. You stop the car, get out for just a few minutes, and behold the grandeur of nature. This is the arresting power of beauty and giving in to that sudden longing of the soul is a way of giving it what it needs. Discussion of beauty can sometimes sound ethereal and philosophical, but from the soul viewpoint, beauty is a necessary part of ordinary life. If only passing a store window and stopping for a second to notice a beautiful ring or amazing car, every day we will find moments when the soul glimpses an occasion for beauty. We know that the objective person, place, and condition are all effects following the causation, which is the mind. And we know that thought is the instrument of mind. The arrow of desire and attachment stops us in our tracks—we are taken by the beauty and feel its pleasure. The point of the momentary seizure is simply to feel the soul with its preferred diet—a sight that invites contemplation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
From this viewpoint, the word does not have to reach any objective place; it merely describes the place. Identifying itself in mind with the place, it is instantly at that place. For the soul, then, beauty is not defined as pleasantness of form but rather as the quality in things that invites absorption and contemplation. Beauty is something that unlimited gives scope to the imagination; beauty is a source of imagination, and it never dries up. A thing so attractive and absorbing may seize the soul in a special sense. Some of the ancients has reported that the truth is that whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. It will help us to have a complete conviction that our word will always reach the desired condition; it will never fail to objectify where it should, when it should, and in the right way. Nothing but the absolute faith in the Law of Cause and Effect can give us this confidence. If we are going to care for the soul, and if we know that the soul is nurtured by beauty, then we will have to understand beauty more deeply and give it more prominent place in life. It is self-evident that all things come from the invisible, are projected by it, and remain with it. Religion has always understood the value of beauty, as we can see in churches and temples, which are never built for purely practical considerations, but always for the imagination. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
A tall steeple or a rose window are not designed to allow additional seating or better light for reading. They speak to the soul’s need for beauty, for love of the building itself as well as its use, for a special opportunity for sacred imagination. Our thought is an activity of this invisible causation, and when we say, “This word shall manifest in this place,” we may be and we must be certain that it will do so. How much better it would be if all could be more aware of God’s providence and love and express that gratitude to him. Could we not learn from our churches and Victorian homes and temples, to give attention and funding to this same need in our modern homes, our commercial buildings, our highways, and our schools? An appreciation for beauty is simply an openness to the power of things to stir the soul. If we can be affected by beauty, then soul is alive and well in us, because the soul’s great talent is for being affected. The word passion means basically to be affected, and passion is the essential energy of the soul. Let us give thanks to God, for he does work righteousness forever. Our degree of gratitude is a means of love for him. God is the Father of our spirits. He has glorified, perfected body of flesh and bone. We have lived with him in Heaven before we were born. And when he created us physically, we were created in the image of God each with a personal body. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
It is Me Against the World–You Have Been Sentenced to a Life of Pain and Suffering!
We must learn to get our own broadcasting station in order. We must tune our own receiving sets. It may take time and effort, but the goal we seek is worth the journey, and the prize that is offered is worthy of our effort. Heaven is lost only because we lack the idea of harmony; it was destined from the foundation of the World that right should finally win and that love should concur all. We all are spiritual and mental broadcasting stations. There is a silent force flowing from us in every direction at all times. How necessary it is that we assume the role of announcer and the broadcaster. How necessary that we write our own program and deliver it ourselves. It is a law, a vibration which reproduces the word of God, the intonation, the inflections are broadcasted. As we pursue the building of this sure foundation, I am fearful that some of us may have lost sight of our divine responsibility to nurture each other in this process. We cannot force love and respect and admiration. We cannot force faith and testimony of truth. Even though we cannot force those things that matter most, there are ways we can help one another. That is, we can prepare hearts to obtain a deep and abiding testimony that God is the Savior of the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
If things have soul, then they can also suffer and become neurotic: such is the nature of the soul. Care of the soul therefore entails looking out for things, noticing where and how they are suffering, seeing their neuroses, and nursing them back to health. We do not usually concern ourselves with the state of things and tolerate much more ugliness and neglect in the things of our society than we should endure. We do not seem to realize how much our own pain reflect the ailments of our things. There is no separation between out soul and the World soul. If the World is neurotic, we will share in that disorder. If we are depressed, it may be because we are living or working in a depressed building. People impeded by either illness or frailty often feel demeaned by the World around them. Rejections come at them from all directions, from random strangers to providers of medical care. To many, the disabled serve as constant visible reminders to the able-bodies that the society they live in is shot through with inequality and suffering, and that they live in a counterfeit paradise. As God tunes the great musical instruments of creation, on the strings of this great World guitar are angels, humans, and things. We all vibrate sympathetically like different octaves of the same time, our human hearts pulsing in the same rhythms as those of the material and spiritual. World#RandolphHarris 2 of 13
We participate in the fate and condition of our objects, just as they participate in ours. Dignity is a solitary attribute. Other people can detract from it, but we have to replenish it on our own. In situations of physical incapacity, self-possession is maintained by literal holding onto oneself in spite of every possible infringement. A man disabled in a car accident claimed that he learned that it was considered bad form for him to behave like a normal person in certain situations. When someone is frightened or in pain, speaking up is not easy. Tasks are given priority over feelings, productivity over kindness. Is the cancer that afflicts our human bodies essentially the same as the cancer we see corroding our cities? Is our personal health and the health of the World one and the same? Many people tend to think that the World is their enemy, that it is full of poisons that attack us, seeding us with illness and death. “It’s just me against the World. Nothin’ to lose. Witnessin’ killings, leavin’ dead bodies in abandoned buildings. More bodies being buried, I’m losing my homes in a hurry, they are relocating to the cemetery. Got me worried stressin’, my vision is blurred. The question is will I live? No one in the World loves me. I’m headed from danger, don’t trust strangers,” reports Tupac Shakur in Me Against the World. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Although the late Tupac Shakur was a young man, many senior citizens and children can relate to him. My friend’s son was afraid to go to school today because of all of the mass shootings he has been hearing about on television news. And the elderly fear leaving their houses. A sixty-six-year-old woman with degenerative arthritis decided to give up leaving her house because on the street she feels like a crippled old lady, a nothing because of how people look away from her. And how the drivers behave, constantly almost running her over with their cars like it is some kind of funny joke to see fright in someone’s eyes as a 2,000 -5,000-pound piece of metal comes close to striking them with a force that could end their lives. Some of them even yell curses. And the lady made up her mind that she is safe and secure in her house. She has plenty to read and a lot to think about. She goes on to say, “If I really want to see what is going on out there, I can look out my windas (windows).” If the World soul and our own souls are one, then as we neglect and abuse the things of the World, we are at the same time abusing ourselves. If we are to attempt to develop a sound practice of ecology, we need to tend to our inner pollutions at the same time, and if we are to attempt to clean up our personal lives through therapy or some other method, we will bed at the same time to tend to the neuroses of the World and to the suffer of people and things. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Medical contempt hurts as much as any illness. Amidst pressures to hurry, patients who slow things down are regarded as obstacles. Those who cannot hear or see well or may have issues with mobility, or who ask that information be repeated, or who need to discuss their problems thoroughly are especially dreaded by hurried staff in many medical facilities. When it comes to human life, people need good quality treatment. We only get one body and if serious conditions are overlooked or not treated that person could lose their precious life or suffer an irreversible condition that may impair the quality of their life all because an analysis has a vice, or malicious intentions. No one wants to be held captive and helpless. Care of the soul requires that we have listen and see the World’s suffering. In many American cities, streets and open spaces are littered with abandoned refuse—old tires, appliances, furniture, paper, feces, urine and garbage. Houses are boarded up, windows are smashed, wood is rotting, weeds have grown wild, grass is brown, and trees are dying. We behold such a scene and think, the solution is to solve the problem of poverty. However, why not feel for the things and people themselves. We see things and people in a suffering condition—sick, broken, and dying. This disease before us is our failure in relation to the World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
What is it in us that can allow people and the things of the World to become so distressed and to show so many symptoms without a nursing response from us? What are we doing when we treat people and things so badly? After some people have endure hardships and see how much more life they have to live and what can possibly go wrong, they want to let go to avoid feeling decades more of unnecessary pain. After a serious surgery and a “questionable hemorrhage, which was going to causing him to lose so much blood that he was going to die, this is how one young man responded. “Please, please, get these doctors to listen to me. They are going to transfuse blood into me any minute, blood that I do not want. I do not care where I am bleeding. Why doesn’t anyone listen? I am ready to die. I have had a good life. Now I just want to lie here, in peace. Please, can you make them understand? They keep coming in here and patting me on the arm and telling me it will be all right, but they do not cancel the transfusions. Maybe they will listen to you, a nice young lady, if you tell them for me.” When someone is frightened or in pain, speaking up to this extent is not easy. If a physician talks quickly and uses obscure language, the person is doubly silenced. People whose physical powers are constricted cannot live by American values, which presume that one is able-bodied and independent. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Those who are not self-sufficient cannot control the outcomes of ordinary tasks, let alone their larger undertakings. They dare not invest their self-esteem solely in what they are able to accomplish, and they cannot afford to live for a future that may be more difficult than their present or past. Veronika Decide to Die is a movie about a young lady (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in the midst of a struggle. She felt powerless, and had to learn a way to react to all the negative messages around her in order to survive. Proving that she was still strong, capable, and attractive was a message she tried to give to a negative World a dozen times a day. Veronika felt she was stuck in a soul sucking financial job, and she was tired of evolving. She has no personal life and was morbidly depressed. Veronika had expected life to be like a strong whiskey, but felt she was being force fed a weak tea. One day, she took a hand full of pills to end her life, but she woke up in a mental hospital and now had a heart condition. Her botched suicide attempt caused an aneurysm in her heart, and she only had a week left to live. Older people who have retained their good health and full physical capacities often find themselves similarly estranged. By virtue of age, most no longer go along with our culture’s preference for the future over the past, and retirement may have hurtled them into days more focused on being than doing. Watching their peers cope with physical problems, they may regard their self-sufficiency as a perishable privilege. It addition to these pressures, everywhere they look aging itself is scorned. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Deflecting disdain on so many levels at once takes considerable stamina. Instead, many people, older and young, absorb the contempt and begin to despise themselves for no longer being capable to fulfill American values. They shrink themselves down to the size of these degrading expectations, taking on an outer demeanor which constrains their self-expression but which is regarded by others as more acceptable for their age, gender, race, culture or status. Older or disabled people who insist on remaining themselves face an exhausting divergence between who they know themselves to be and how others treat them. They feel drained each time strangers respond to them as if they are discounted or worthless members of society. These individuals are regarded as something alien, a foreign species. While our leaders fight for the rights of illegal immigrants and provide them with lawyers and financial assistance. Destructive reactions, such as the tendency to equate old age or disability with mental deficiency, are surprisingly common, and many people have no place to turn. A well-intention young senator, who is an advocate for illegal immigrants, gave a group of older people a tour around the Senate Chamber. He treated them a little like schoolchildren; explaining the legislative process in words of one syllable and shouting, as if they could not speak any English. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Finally, turning to one of the group, the Senator asked, “And what used you to be?” The old man fixed an evil eye on him and replied, “I still am.” Self-preservation can sometimes be accomplished in a sentence. Usually, however, the struggle is more protracted and the feelings that are aroused cannot be handled so succinctly. Repeatedly treated as simple-minded, many people begin to question their intelligence and competence. So little regard reaches older and disabled people from the outside World that their inner stores of confidence may slowly become depleted. Far more is involved than what occurs at the given moment of an encounter when elderly or disabled individuals meet the able-bodied every day. It is a history of learned inferiority. Aged and disabled people must constantly find ways to override other people’s inability to see them. Labels often prevent us from seeing beauty. Much like the trashed-out areas of our cities, the billboards, the thoughtless destruction of buildings that have memory and a long past, and the construction of cheap housing and commercial buildings—these and countless other soulless ways of dealing with things and people indicate anger, a rage at the World itself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
When our citizens spray-paint a trolley or subway or a bridge or a sidewalk, or the side of a historical building, clearly they are not just angry at society. They are raging at the things of the Word, we have to find some insight into this anger, because at a certain level those people who are desecrating our public places are doing a job for us. We are implicated in their acting out. Why does our culture seem so angry at things and people? Why do we take out our frustrations upon the very things that could potentially make our World into a satisfying and comforting home? One answer is may be that when we are cut off from soul and its sensitivity to get great spans of time and even timeless elements, we long painfully for an ideal future and for immortality. Things have a different lifespan than humans; they can outlast many generations. Historical buildings remind us of a past we were not part of. Those past times represent our desire for immortality. If our life efforts are directed toward making a new World, toward growth and constant improvement, then the past will be the enemy, a reminder of death. Concentration on growth and change erodes appreciation for the eternal realities, those parts of the self that transcend the limits ignorance. However, the soul loves the past and does not merely learn from history, it thrives on the stories and vestiges of what has been. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Our history, like many elder and disabled people, youth, and other vulnerable groups, hold fiercely to our remaining capacities. For society, and each and every person, there is a limit to the amount of surrender we are able to countenance without losing ourselves. Acts of self-assertion do not have to be monumental to be vitalizing. One of the powers of soul, is a vision of life that embraces past, presence, and future in a way that transcends ordinary awareness. A soul of sensibility awakens an appreciation for old ways and ancient wisdom, for buildings that hold in their architecture and design the tastes and style of another era. Soul loves the past and does not merely learn from history, it feeds on the stories and vestiges of what was. We are also so angry at things and people that we feel no longer serves us. Abusing things and people is no way to have power over anything, it is actually a way of displaying that you are helpless and weak. Many of the rusting objects and rotting builds decorated with graffiti that pollute our city streets are outmoded or no longer functioning tools. If we define a thing or people only in terms of their function, when they no longer function the way we would like, or refuse to, we have no feeling for them. We discard them without a proper burial. And yet, old things and people who have been through tremendous struggles eventually reveal that they hold a great deal of soul. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Our history and people and bits of evidence of past times seem literally to glow with soul. Do not be afraid to talk to God, as he is the oldest soul maker in the World. Always remember that God speaks a certain kind of language and there is nothing negative in it. We believe in prayerful, affirmative life above anything else. We believe in actually talking to God and then letting God answer. God is unquestionably transcendent. He is wholly other than the World he made. God is the pure and unsullied Mind of the Universe, transcending virtue, transcending knowledge, transcending the good itself. God is the World’s prime mover. God is beyond thought and being. God is an independently existing entity. God will always respond to us. We shall always receive the comfort and consolation we need, the inward sense of security and well-being that everyone must have to be happy and whole. Let us find a new wavelength for our mental instruments, and as surely as we do this we shall begin to broadcast on this wavelength. We shall discover that we are not only helping ourselves, but we are helping everyone around us. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
First of all, we must be sure that we are right inside, and then learn to trust ourselves because we have faith in God. Let us tune our mental instruments to success and happiness, to the idea of physical wholeness, and above everything else to the comforting thought that there is a love in the Universe which by its very presence dissolves all hate; there is a faith that neutralizes all fear; there is a confidence that brushes aside every doubt. God never deserts us, and we shall never have to convince God to be Good. All we have to do is reverse our whole mental and spiritual outlook on life and then the miracle will take place, because what goes out must return. We live in an intense reality. Somewhere along our journey in the mortal World, we must find a faith greater than all our doubts and fears and uncertainties. Somewhere along the line we must find a love greater than all animosity. And we must find a peace beyond our confusion. This is the pathway that we are all seeking, whether or not we know it, and we are being guided by a loving intelligence which evermore seeks to being us peace and comfort, cheer and good-will, happiness and success, healthy and abundance. And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
We Are All Children of God
We all have life events that, when we recall them years later, acquire new and important meaning. The words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart. I remember my father stretched out by the fireplace, reading the scriptures and other good books, and I would stretch out by his side. I would remember the quotes of the scriptures and from Shakespeare that he and I would memorize. “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. Let never day nor night unhallowed pass, but still remember what the Lord hath done,” says William Shakespeare. Faith comes not only from the spiritual life and from high revelations, it also comes as an emanation from the depths, a starkly personal reality from the most sacred place. In the midst of everyday struggle, we hope for enlightenment and some kind of release. In our prayer, we hope for a fulfilling ordinary life. A mystical wedding, a divine union. For the marriage to take place, each has to learn to appreciate the other and to be affected by the other—spirit’s lofty aims tempered by the soul’s limitations, soul’s unconsciousness stirred by ideas and imagination. The movement toward this union is something to be attempted, worked, and traveled. That is the very idea of soul-making. Soul-making is a journey that takes time, effort, skill, knowledge, intuition, and courage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
As we reflect on this process, it is helpful to know that all work with soul is process—alchemy, pilgrimage, and adventure—so that we do not expect instant success or even any kind of finality. All goals and all endings are heuristic, important in their being imagined, but never literally fulfilled. In spiritual literature the path to God or to perfection is often depicted as an ascent. It may be done in stages, but the goal is apparent, the direction fixed, and the way direct. Images of the soul’s path, as we have seen, are quite different. Textures, places, and personalities are important on the soul path, which feels more like an initiation into multiplicity of life than a single-minded focus upon enlightenment. As the soul makes its unsteady way, delayed by obstacles and distracted by all kinds of charms, aimlessness is not overcome. This is the goal of the soul path—to feel existence; not to overcome life’s struggles and anxieties, but to know first hand, to exist fully in context. We can proceed with the assurance that God will never leave us alone. God never gives us a responsibility without offering divine assistance. May we in our divine role as parents, and in partnership with God, become the prime gospel teachers and examples for our children. How we love you and pray constantly for the genius to help you. Your lives are filled with difficult decisions and with dreams and hopes and longings to find that which will bring you peace and happiness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
All people are born with a predetermined desire to life, to come to self-fulfillment through love and accomplishment, and to live creatively. A healthy happy baby is the joy of any parent. We are told from birth, and prenatally, the infant should be surrounded by an atmosphere of love and attention. Whether it is a baby boy or a baby girl, the fun and happiness of having a little one cannot be matched with anything else. Babies bring a lot of love and laughter into your life, together with a sense of purpose and meaning. There is an unexplainable happiness that can never be equaled by anything in the World. Of course, the infant does not reason these things out; it merely feels them. This feeling is born with the infant; it is put there by nature. However, this experience also comes with a responsibility which some may find overwhelming. The infant born into a home where it is unwanted feels an unconscious repulsion, a place void of spirit and dominated by utter hopelessness; everything in its life becomes conditioned by this feeling. Often such infants shrink from the very touch of the hand. This is why many hospitals now place the babe beside the mother where she may reach and cuddle it, which allows the baby and mother to discover a new brand of spirituality, and an uncovered profound peace. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The whole atmosphere of the home should be one of wanting and needing and loving the infant. Otherwise the emotional reaction of the infant is that it is not wanted, needed, or loved. The baby has an emotional craving for finding a love object, and this is early conditioning which is a great influence throughout life, because these are the first impressions the infant receives. This law of our emotional being. The infant should be welcomed at the time of birth as though it were a gift from Heaven, a gift of God, an offering of love to humanity, the greatest treasure on Earth, and the hope for the future. The infant should be held not only by its mother, but also in its father’s arms. There is no danger of spoiling the child through love. Quite the reverse. The future life of the infant may be wounded without love. Therefore, it is better to have no children than to have those who are unwanted and unloved. Parents assume a tremendous obligation when they permit themselves to have children. From the earliest point of conception there should be preparation in the patents’ minds, an atmosphere of thinking, feeling, and longing for the new birth. There should be definite, daily prayers centered around the idea that the child is conceived in love and welcomes with joy. Such prayer will relieve tensions and assist nature in making the birth normal, natural, and easy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
There must be no confusion nor stress. Everything should flow along with a calm and delightful expectation of wonderful things that are going to happen. The mother should feel that she is carrying a divine treasure, the highest gift of life. She should daily sense that the formation of this pearl into a perfect being, and always with a great tenderness in her heart and mind. The father should have the same mental attitude, for he is a part of the mental and emotional family life and without him the child could not be born. Some part of the father enters into this birth since he is an instrument of nature in its accomplishment. The child must feel itself to be a part of the family life. That means we cannot harshly reject out children as if they were of no importance. The counsel of children should be sought by parents, that they may feel a community of interest and spirit, for they are working out the family life together. They all are now some part of it. When another child is born, the older one or ones should feel that they too are playing an important part in the birth. The new babe has not come to take their place in the affections of the parents, but rather that they all may enjoy it together. This is of vital importance. Too often this process is reversed and the older ones feel something is taking their place. With this inward feeling comes the unconscious sense of antagonism toward the newcomer. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
We need to remind ourselves about the value of our heritage so we do not underestimate its worth. All of this, too, must be take up in quiet prayer, in spiritual unification of the family life. If these two fundamental needs are fulfilled the child will be conditioned early in life to meet anything that may come up in its experience. This is why people who speak with authority on the subject maintain that these early formative years are of vital importance. To show how this is, there are cases on record in which an unconscious resentment of the wife to the husband centers in the child, babes have been known to suffer with continual diarrhea when this unconscious treatment exists. It is known too that in early life children often have attacks of asthma in order to gain the notice, affection, and care of the parents. This is why we must introduce the idea of spiritual values, the deep inward feeling that the family is a household of God, a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth in which the parents are seeking to play the role of Heavenly Father. Everyone is in a partnership with life, with love, with God, with truth, with beauty. We are all rooted in the divine spirit, in perfect life. We are all children of God. If we walk in his paths with the guidance of his commandments, God will not forsake us. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
God is Looking for People Who Have Faith that is Demonstrated
No one lives without accumulating stories. Many things in life offer useful guidance toward finding spiritual values in the World. The spirituality of a place might be marked with a well or drawing on the ground, or a monument, like a castle or mansion. When we place markers on historical battlefields or on houses where our ancestors were born, or where significant historical figures lives, we are performing a genuine spiritual act. We are honoring the special spirit that is attached to a particular place. Family is also a source and focus of spirituality. In many traditions a home shrine and special photographs honor family members. Rites of family gatherings, visits, storytelling, photographs albums, keepsakes, and even tapes of elderly relatives recording their recollections can be spiritual acts that nourish the soul. “The final state of the soul is to dwell with God or be cast out (1 Nephi 15.35).” The opportunity to voice memories to a person who both cares and understands is the most satisfying kind of completion. Story-telling is therefore far more valuable than it may seem. Realizing that such stories allow us to make an ending and find worth in the past elevates remembering and listening to their actual stature. We widen our solitudes by esteeming our memories and making use of them, instead of guarding them in a secret chess, disregarding them, or keeping them to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Action and speech are indeed the two activities whose end result will always be a story with enough coherence to be told. The most important and challenging way to honor our ancestors is to fulfill our personal and potential life’s purpose here on Earth. It can take a lifetime to know our parents in their full humanness. As we get older, our respect for our parents’ achievements increases, as does our sympathy for their disappointments and letdowns. The more our own lives twist in unexpected and humbling directions, the more we realize that our parents had been similarly buffeted. We become our parents’ retrospective peers, seeing more of them as we attain each decade. To be fully understood, vulnerability has to be lived rather than merely witnessed. It is not easy to imagine that one’s own body, which is so fresh and often so full of pleasant feelings could slow down, become tired, and may not be as agile as it once was. One cannot imagine it and, in the end, one does not want to. Many of the realizations that rush upon us as we mature are simply not attainable earlier in life. When our parents need our help prior to passing into Heaven, the period after they pass away, and the time of life when we ourselves are weak and near passing, changes our perspective on life and what we scrutinize. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Indeed, it is this period of the relationship that is perhaps the most difficult and, at the same time, the most significant. However, knowing that there is a God who strongly protects against intrusion and violation might help nurture that spirit in our own lives and honor it in others. We may discover that there are ways to be spiritual that do not counter the soul’s needs for body, individuality, imagination, and exploration. Eventually, we might find that all emotions, all human activities, and all spheres of life have deep roots in the mysteries of the soul, and therefore are holy. As children, the chief illusion we project upon our parents are that they know what they are doing and that they have control over what happens. It does not occur to us that what appears to be inflexibility may actually be a cover for confusion, or what comes out of anger may stem from stress, or what seems to be neglect and a lack of concern may be the consequence of depression. If we allow them to account for themselves and to acknowledge the extent to which their actions stemmed from their own weaknesses, all of this can make sense later. The more hurtfully our parents treated us as children, the more crucial it is for us to try to ascertain the wounds of their upbringing. Otherwise, their weaknesses become holes into which we pointlessly pour or resentment. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Everyone of their failures has a story behind it, a history which has been carried forward and re-expressed rising out of a collective need for stronger union between the human and the divine. Exploring the implications of the soul allows us to learn our parents’ history and to see them as people, rather than to react blindly against them and risk replicating their hurts in our own lives. Turing the furor of our reactions into a reasonable quest for understanding is made easier when we are granted full access to our parents’ histories. Formal teachings, rites, and stories of religions provide an inexhaustible source of reflection on the mysteries of the soul. While listening to our mother or father, we might find ourselves standing in the powerful, streaming currents of time and fate. This may represent the stream of events and persons in which the individual finds one’s place. No one lives without making mistakes and incurring regrets, yet we all hope to be worthy of regard in the end. We learn from these formal sources how to understand and deal with the soul in special circumstances, and also how to understand similar images when they appear in dreams. We all hope that our parents survive into extended old age. Many cultures maintain that we each have a unique destiny to fulfill. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
It is nice to have many generations in families being alive at the same time, leading to new opportunities for reworking and repairing relations between parents and children. This will also further the collective growth and maturation in the spirit realms. We are all children of parents, yet the ability to picture our parents as children can easily elude us. Like nothing else, such glimpses across generations permits us to comprehend those who shaped us and ultimately ourselves. We must find our soul’s purpose as an ethical and loving person. The ancestors are seen as allies in this process of remembering and a reservoir of power and backing to help us embody our potential in this lifetime. Conversely, when we have lost touch with a sense of greater purpose, if we are fortunate, the ancestors may bring about life changes aimed to guide us into greater contact with our soul’s longing and increased awareness of the agreements made before our birth. This may be an inspiring metaphor of the willingness to step courageously into the river of existence, instead of finding ways to remain safe, dry, and unaffected. The notion of reciprocity, of being helped and then helping in return, appeals to our basic requirement for balance and order. When children watch their parents take time out of their bust lives to help their parents, they learn that devotion can persist. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Children should realize that if they regret the longevity of their parents, they will actually be regretting their own future longevity. As we get to know our parents better, we have new opportunities for correcting old misconceptions. One young man was shocked by something his father did. His father never let anyone near his checkbook. However, he got a really bad trimmer in his hand, but still insisted on paying all his bills himself. One day, out of the blue, he called his son up and asked him to come over to help him write out checks. The son could not believe it. He was incredibly nervous when he sat down next to him to do it. Although he handles million-dollar budgets for his company, his hand also started to shake because he was so honored to help his father with his precious checkbook, as it was a bonding experience. In a way, the father was allowing his son to participate in the ritual of becoming the man of the house. His father’s trust was sweeter to this son than his achievement in the corporate World. Also, the father had the opportunity to see how important he was in his son’s life, despite his son’s having garnered every external success. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Extending leniency to our parents gives us hope that someone will do the same for us when we reach this position of physical need and spiritual reckoning. Even fumbled efforts at helpfulness and reconciliation are significant reckoning. Even fumbled efforts at helpfulness and reconciliation are significant for the hope that they instill and the example they set. People feel blessed to have their parents live so long and that hope is the essence of the commandment to honor our parents, making the prospect of living a long life less frightening. Whatever helps us to become more ethical, on even kilt, and open-hearted is one of the most powerful and sincere offerings we can make to our ancestors. An individual must take time every day to remind oneself that we are also spirits, that we are one with God, and to try to being about a deep realization that there is a power greater than oneself sustaining us; a wise counselor guiding us; a generous provider who is ready and willing to meet the needs of everyday life. We do not deny either the body or the mind, but we do affirm the spirit as the supreme presence and the superior principle of all life. We do come from this thing that we call life, or God, and we are fundamentally spiritual beings even while in the flesh. Therefore, in order to be whole, we must establish a right relationship within this trinity of our being, which is thought, feeling and action. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Obligations Curtail Our Freedom to Waste Ourselves
People who are kind, generous, and compassionate give others a striking affirmation of the intrinsic worth and importance of human beings. After being reduced to bodily terms, we are never the same. For the rest of our lives, we are unable to forget how much it is possible t be in need of others. We approach our relationships differently from then on, emphasizing those bonds which seem likely to withstand the tests of time and strain, and putting less effort into bonds of convenience. The nature of our aspirations changes along with the style of our relationships. We start asking different things of life. Considering how common impairments are, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, it becomes clear that each has our own special demons and divine figures, our own other-World landscapes and struggles. As a result of these changes, people suffering from detriment or restriction can often tell in a glance whether someone they meet has every had the experience of being helpless. They notice that a gap separates them from those who continue to be beguiled by good health. They watch as friends and relatives go on living from day to day as if they are invincible, dwelling inside a privileged deception. People suffering from ailments are not star athlete’s, who can take a hit and keep on ticking, and sometimes unnecessary psychological stress can make their condition worse, as it can amplify the pain they are experiencing or cause other conditions to flare up. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Healthy people often find themselves distracted by the crude exterior of affliction, bypassing much of the complexity going on beneath the surface. Knowing what to say and do in the presence of a person who is incapacitated requires an awareness of what it is like to have time on one’s hands and to be at the mercy of others, but also knowledge of the range of emotions that arise in reaction to helplessness itself. A man spent several weeks confined to his bed. He was seriously ill and was unable to get out of bed, or move at all, even if it was only to go from laying on one side to laying on the other side. It was in that state of extreme helplessness that he saw how much a person can be in need of others. He was in need not only of his doctors, nurses, and medical staff, but also of God and spiritual help. Not only for medical care, but for comforting words or gestures. The problem of impairment raises two fundamental questions…Why me? (the questions of bafflement), and What can be done? (The question of order and control). We oppose the lessons of helplessness, hardening ourselves against the indignities and rejecting the forced revisions of our priorities. We hope only for recovery and for a return to self-sufficiency. Anything less invokes bitterness. We want to see more clearly and hear more sharply the themes that are special to us. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The important thing is to realize that, although life seems to be a matter of literal causes and effects, in fact we are living our deep stories, often unconsciously. We are condemned to live out what we cannot imagine. People suffering from an aliment or disability first blame the condition. One says, “If only I was not elderly or disabled or pregnant, life for be better for me.” Then they blame other people, saying, “Life would be better if people did not treat me like I football player.” Then, we finally realize it is what we put out there is what determines how our life is and how people treat us. We make our life good—it does not just happen. There are countless pitfalls on the way our of misery. Focusing relentlessly on what has been lost, comparing oneself to others, aspiring for things that are out of reach, and placing blame on others are only some of the most common snares. Each personal variation is uniquely painful. Soul work involves an effort toward increasing awareness of these situations that form the foundations of our lives, for if we become familiar with the characters and themes that are central to our conditions, we can be free from their compulsions and the blindness that comes upon us when we are caught up in them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
When culture and language fail to acknowledge the difficulty of receiving, the dependent person is left doubly burdened, in disliking the help that cannot be repaid and in feeling guilty about the dislike. People know that when someone visits them, that they are simply being visited. They know that one is in receipt of a charitable act and that there is no true relationship. One knows they have nothing in common with the individuals coming to see them, they know all too well. We have often heard people who are elderly or disabled say, “Look at my life—all I do is eat and sleep. What kind of life is this?” They equate their lack of productivity activity with worthlessness. Some people take their mind off of their pain by thinking about what does work right. The most important thing to do is to keep the spirit supple. When we return to our central thought that the prayer of faith shall save the sick and God shall rise the individual up, we must remember that the prayer of faith is definite—it is faith in something and about something. This type of prayer is not generalized, but specific. It is conscious and definite. The prayer of faith is a prayer which expresses faith about some particular thing. What is included is a specific want, or definite need. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
If one was praying for a home, one would not be asking for an automobile. If one were praying that his or her neighbor be healed, one would not be asking for money with which to take a trip. In order to enjoy the soulfulness of mythic life, we need a deep inner faith that allows us to know and visit our own deep strata where meaning and values truly are formed. Ritual is an action that speaks to the mind and heart, but it may not make sense in a literal context. In church, people do not eat bread in order to feed their bodies, but to nourish their souls. It is a higher symbolic act. If we could grasp this simple idea, that some actions may not have an effect on actual life, but speak instead to the soul, and if we could let go of the dominant role of function in so many things we do, then we might give more to the soul every day. Frail people try to conceal their needs as much as they can and they like to keep their conditions private. Social workers have been admitted to many apartments where it is more like people are living in private cells, concealing the evidence of their incapacities and averting their eyes from each others’ problems. Usually their presence is only accepted because something had necessitated their help. It was discovered in one such instance that a client had been sitting in the dark for weeks. The light bulbs had burned out in the ceiling fixtures, and he had no floor or table lamps. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Rather than ask one of his neighbors to help, he had been reading by daylight and going to bed when it became too dark to see. His back was hurting and he could barely move without experiencing a great deal of pain, as if his spine was going to snap. Therefore, keep in mind, the one who gives help is more powerful than the one who receives it. Knowing what to do for a person suffering from an impairment and what to cease doing begins with understanding what life is like from that person’s perspective. Without this comprehension, there is a tendency to worry about the wrong things and to give assistance in the wrong ways. Learning all that we can about being dependent allows us to fall short of the ideal to the right extent. Sometimes fear can strike a disabled or elderly person like a malignancy, sapping every and power and attention from their daily lives. They are afraid of the process of their ailment, they are afraid of increasing loss of control, they are afraid of the outcome, and they are afraid of dying. They fear how their families and friends see them, how they feel about them and how their condition affects their lives. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
However, what can be even more difficult is when people do not know or cannot see that you are disabled or have a diminished capacity and they force you to work, harass you, physically attack you, use you for money, and threaten you because they know they can get away with it. For young people who are physically disabled, it is like experiencing one’s old age prematurely. They are locked into a parallel isolation, shamed by feelings they do not dare confess. These individuals are frightened because they are young and still have a lot of life to live and are deteriorating much sooner than they are supposed to. They do not have a professor of whatever to understand them and how they feel, and their economy of friends tends to shrink. People do not know how to behave toward them, and it is easy to lose heart for coping. Sometimes they have no spirit for anything, like their heart finally dropped out of them. Theses youngster even get bullied and attacked by people who are much older than them, but have not yet experienced what it is like to have fractured vertebrae in their spine, or whatever. However, they have courage. Courage that comes for their belief in God. The Word courage comes from the Latin cor for heart. We give ourselves fresh heart by pulling our attention away from what has been lost. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
It is not that fear and disheartenment can be willed away, but we have to turn our focus in a direction most favorable to their alleviation. The consciousness that heals is definite and deliberate; it is a specializing of the Universal Law. In this law we may have absolute and implicit confidence, but we must also remember that the law can do for us only what it does through us. Its energy and creativeness must be interpreted through our belief and imagination. This is but another way of saying that if we want the principle of electricity to light our living room we must provide a fixture which makes it possible for the electricity to become a light. When we pray in faith we receive what things we pray for. If we believe that we shall receive them, we shall receive them. There is a specific, definite thing we are to receive, but we are to receive it as we believe. For many, relief and happiness can come by understanding the relationship between peace of conscience and peace of mind and by living the principles upon which both of these blessings are founded. God wants each of his children to enjoy the transcendent blessing of peace of conscience. A tranquil conscience invites freedom from anguish, sorrow, guilt, shame, and self-condemnation. It provides a foundation for happiness. It is a condition of immense worth, yet there are few on Earth that enjoy it most often because the principles upon which peace of conscience is founded are either not adequately understood or followed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8 
If a Photograph or a Diamond Ring is All You Have, it Means the World to You!
Not everyone can find the middle of a circle, but only a person who has the proper knowledge. Similarly, anyone can get angry—that is easy—or can give away money or spend it; but to do all this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right way is no longer something easy that anyone can do. It is for this reason that good conduct is rare, praiseworthy, and noble. This kind of spirituality, so ordinary and close to home, is especially nourishing to the soul. Without this caring incorporated of the sacred into life, the World can become so far removed from the human situation as to be irrelevant. An appreciation for vernacular spirituality is important because without it our idealization of the holy, making it precious and too far removed from life, can actually obstruct a genuine sensitivity to what is sacred. The word mercy has fallen out of common usage in our language. It derives from the antiquated French merci, which means compassion and forbearance toward someone in one’s power. In Latin, merces signifies pay or reward, and the root merc refers to aspects of commerce. The words merchant and mercenary at first seem antithetical to mercy, and one wonders at their common root, but when we have to give help or depend on others for help, we understand why the concept of exchange underlies both usages. Mercy is based entirely on exchange. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Giving help eventually embitters us, unless we are compensated at least by appreciation; accepting help degrades us, unless we are convinced that our helpers are getting something in return. As much as we might prefer to reject this stark accounting, we discover in living through situations of dependence that good will is not enough. There is a delicate balance at the heart of mercy, showing how reciprocation replenishes both the spirit if the helper and the person who is helped. Maturing in age is one of the ways the soul nudges itself into attention to the spiritual aspect of life. The body’s changes teach us about fate, time, nature, mortality, and character. Aging forces us to decide what is important in life. However, those who depend on others for daily survival often feel their very existence is an imposition. Some people engage in a relentless pressure to please—to prove themselves worth of the burdens they impose. Many people who suffer from ailments suppress complaints and avoid asserting themselves, believing that they owe every possible accommodation to those who help them survive. Taking care of a person does not have to entail having power over major aspects of his or her life, but frailty seems to invite invasion. My father used to tell me stories about how care givers would steal my great grandmother’s jewelry, money, wedding and engagement rings, pictures of her family and even her wedding pictures. “You cannot imagine how helpless I feel,” she would tell him.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
So long as we still possess it, the power to carry out simple intentions is one of the many unnoticed pleasures of life. When we lose it, we see what it means to do the most ordinary things our own way. People cut off from inner thoughts and feelings, caught up in pain and suffering and loss cannot get very far when they try to understand themselves consciously. Some people make rebellious bids for control that they then keep secret from their helpers. One woman had a fall down the basement stairs and her daughter was so upset. She hired a woman to come in and do her laundry once a week, so she would never have to go down there. However, the senior citizen still when down there. He daughter did not know, and she is very careful about it. She feels like it is her house, her basement, her washing machine and her life. Submission does not come easily to people who have spent decades running their own lives. Going down those steps made that woman’s basement her own again, just as choosing to violate her daughter’s restrictions made her life her own again. Seizing freedom can be as unreasonable as it is gratifying. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
People who have had restriction places on their lives by ailments, injuries, or from aging often feel the need to do something to regain their independence as a means of reminding themselves that they are still able to exert influence over their own domain or their own body. Many people with physical limitations feel their social environment is gradually diminished until all that remains of their power resources is the humble capacity to comply. They feel that they may be required to give up their legal rights and are required to comply or approve in exchange for the room and board they can afford or for the retirement and medical benefits. The managers of their buildings often disrespect them and the analysis often harass them and no one seems to care. The seniors and disabled feel if they complain about the abusive treatment, they will lose their housing, be physically attacked, or their medical and financial benefits will be discontinued, which would mean they would not be able to afford their medication or living expenses and be left on the streets to die. Psychological symptoms, too, often manifest themselves in weight gain or loss, in allergies to various foods, or in idiosyncratic eating habits. And they become more and more isolated emotionally. When people who have disempowered relatives and they become depressed, they mistake this despondency for an accusation that they are not doing a good job. Hoping for appreciation, they instead get quietly hostile acquiescence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Once families acknowledge the presence and important of power in situations of power in situations of dependency, they tend to have little difficulty taking stock of its distribution and beginning to remedy imbalances on either side. The belief that we do not have the ability to heal arises out of the mistaken idea that our power does the healing, or that the intellect does the healing. All that the will and the intellect could do is to behold or watch the process. The mind fixes its gaze steadfastly upon the principle and then declares that this principle is operative in human affairs, and particularly in the affairs of the one being treated. There is but one healer. This is the spirit of truth. There is but one life principle. This is God in us. There is but one final law. This is the law of good. There is but one ultimate impulsion. This impulsion is love. That which really does the healing can never fluctuate, can never change in its nature. It is not more one day and less the next. It is at this moment absolutely all thee is and it is ever available. We must forever rid ourselves of the idea that it is the personal person who does the healing. We must know that it is not us, but the Father that dwells in us, he does the works. Principle operated irrespective of personal opinion, and when through acquiescence we agree that it is operating, then it must operate. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Sure, an elderly person might not like how you just put water in the sink, swish it around with some suds and call it clean; he or she used to scrub it first with cleanser and then rinse it with disinfectant. Someone might not like how you haphazardly ruin their checkbook by just dashing off the bills, not bothering to mark down the dates, check numbers, who it was to, all that stuff. Especially sometimes when someone does not even mark down the amount of the check. Therefore, it is important to find small, but specific concessions to help meet the preferences of the elderly and disabled, which will yield large satisfactions. There is no formula for this process, but it helps to build an edifice of faith that the Lord will help make crooked paths straight. One must not only know that God is all there is, but one must know that God exists right where the need is—not in the form of the need but in the form of an answer to the need. And I can tell when, when all you have is pictures of your family, who you have never met, they mean the World to you, as well as gold and diamond trinkets. People like connections to their heritage. Grandparents get great joy of seeing pictures of their grandbabies. And child love to have pictures of their ancestors. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Great Gift of Life is to be Accepted—You Are Just Fine, Honey Bunch!
Pleasure, knowledge, aesthetic experience, beauty, truth, virtue, harmony, love, friendship, justice, freedom, self-expression are all valuable pictures drawn by our imagination and considered a valuable part of superior wisdom. Life must be lived constructively, in unity and love and sympathy. Everyone is born to be creative and to live to the fullest and to enjoy life, be happy and glad and whole. We do not believe that God is a failure. God never makes any mistakes. It is said that the average person draws on only about 10 percent of one’s real capacity; the other 90 percent is supposedly submerged and unused. If that is true, we can multiply our talents many times. Keep in mind that when one sees a true in full bloom, one has to remember that the roots through which the tree draws its life are entirely invisible from the unassisted eye, but the tree is, in fact, connected to a system that supplies it with nourishment that allows it to grow. And, unless the tree drew on this invisible source it would never flourish. Our roots are in the mind of God. Our individuality, everything that we are and do, is an effect of our invisible forces—forces which continually draw on the infinite. Indeed, people’s charms should not go to waste, may this never be a dire consequence for the mortal World. You are just fine, honey bunch. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
However, in our lack of understanding, we limit the flow of the divine power into our lives. It is important to take the limits off God and have faith that God has the power to do anything in our lives. He is the God of miracles and blessings. Do not let someone make you think that your mind is limited. They have no idea what other processes that are going on in your brain because your mind is connected to God. If we are certain that our lives are constructive, and if our whole desire is to live in such a way as to harm no one but to bless all, then we should place no limit on the possibility of our future. Our ambition for success and perfection in work drives us on, while worries about failure keep us tied to the soul in the work. When ideas of perfection dive downward into the lower region of the soul, out of that gesture of incarnation comes human achievement. We may feel crushed by failure, but our lofty aims may need some adjustments if they are to play a creative role in human life. Life is embedded in the soul. Right here is where our faith in the power greater than we are must be brought into play. For we as individuals are rooted in this power. We must come to believe that God dwells within us, and that same creative spirit that is back of all things flows through us. In ordinary life, creativity means making something for the soul out of every experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Sometimes we can shape an experience into something of value, thought to be good or desired. At other times, simply holding experience in memory and in reflection allows it to incubate and reveal some of its imagination. Creativity may assume many different forms, it can generate its own style of awareness and its own brand of insight, which allow more important elements of culture and personality to emerge with some fundamental psychological insights and desires. Creativity finds it soul when we embrace that if we fail, this does not define is. We just have to use it as a moment of reflect and see how we can improve. God has a need of us or he would not have put us here. God has divine wishes to express through us or we would have no existence. An ethically sensitive person is more subject than others to doubt, crisis, and remorse: satisfied conscience is more readily found in those who have a narrow awareness and ready formulas. However, an ethically sensitivity person may exemplify the perfection of individual morality, in which are combined a feeling for each individual act and a care for all possible results. God will give us ideas, that the spirit within us will suddenly give to us in a competed form. Creative work can be exciting, inspiring, and Godlike. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
As we do our daily work, make our homes and marries, raise our children, and fabricate a culture, we are all being creative. Entering our fate with generous attentiveness and care, we enjoy a soulful kind of creativity that may have the brilliance of the work of great artists. The ultimate work, then, is an engagement with the soul, responding to the demands of fate and tending the details of life as it presents itself. The satisfactions of our work can be deep and long lasting, undone neither by failures nor by flashes of success. The soul has need for vernacular life—its relationship to local places and cultures. It has a preference for details and particulars, intimacy and involvement, attachment and connections. The soul feeds on whatever life grows n its immediate environment. To the soul, the ordinary is sacred and the everyday is the primary source of religion. We are people and we can short-circuit the divine energy that ought to be flowing through us. We short-circuit it when we deny that it is there. And the reason we deny it is because we do not see this energy, and therefore we do not believe in it. The soul needs spirituality. Let us, every one, resolve within ourselves to arise to a new sense of responsibility, a new shouldering of obligation to assist our Father in Heaven in his glorious work of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of his sons and daughters throughout the Earth. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
In the modern World, we tend to separate psychology from religion. We like to think that emotional problems have to do with the family, childhood, and trauma—with personal life not with spirituality. We do not diagnose a mental issue as a loss of religious sensibility or a lack of spiritual awareness. Yet it is obvious that the soul, seat of the deepest emotions, can benefit greatly from the gifts of a vivid spiritual life and can suffer when it is deprived of them. If we believe that the Heavenly Father is within us, and if we believe that all things are possible to God, then we should no longer deny that God knows what to do with his own creation, and we should include ourselves in that creation. The family is the ideal place for teaching. It is also a laboratory for learning. Family home evening can bring spiritual growth to each member. The soul needs an articulated Worldview, a carefully worked out scheme of values, and a sense of relatedness to the whole. The soul needs to believe in immortality and the spirit of the family, arising from traditions and values that have been part of the family for generations. We should learn to have a better opinion of ourselves because we live due to the fact that we are drawing on the invisible source of all life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
We wish to draw on these invisible forces of God, to let our roots run deep into that life which already is perfect and complete, and we want to live happily and without fear. For fear short-circuits this divine energy, while confusion and uncertainty cause it to produce bondage instead of freedom. If we want to change this, let us start by accepting ourselves for better. God always does and can and will provide for us. And having clearing all doubt from our consciousness we must learn to affirm that all the power and all the presence and all the life that there is, is for us and with us and in us. “May the Lord answers you when you are in distress. God answers one from his holy Heaven with the saving power of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and in horses, but we must trust in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20.1 and 6-7).” The higher forces of life always work constructively. When we use them constructively, there seems to be no limit to their possibility. However, the moment we begin to use them destructively, they appear to block themselves. We cannot expect to use the power of good for evil purposes, nor could we expect through hate to generate love. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International 