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The Soul Exists Beyond Our Personal Circumstances and Conceptions
The soul exists beyond our personal circumstances and conceptions. There is a dimension to human dialogue that is more subtle and often quite difficult to recognize. For if dialogue can grow, it can also deteriorate, slowly and subtly, to the point where an individual can be trapped in a totally impoverished relationship without even being able to recognize what happened or why. The process is very similar to the way the body grows and ages, on a day-to-day basis, without any visible change. The very fact that a person can tolerate deteriorated dialogue and sometimes even encourage it is something that we would often prefer to deny, for reflecting on the implications is not pleasant. In situations where there is an erosion or dissolution, there is only one kind of success: the ability to draw others to us rather than drive them away. Dependency has its own rules of conduct and its own route to mastery. Under the pressure of this necessity, many people change more deeply than ever before in their lives. Since dialogue involves reciprocal sharing with other human beings, its deterioration must also be reciprocal, and each person must share part of the responsibility. An individual can only receive to the extent that one gives, and, in that sense, dialogue is mirror of this personality. Exposing vulnerability is a reflexive process: the more of ourselves we reveal to others, the more of ourselves we reveal to others, the more others tend to reveal of themselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Some people come off with a very authoritarian style of behavior and that can be so hurtful that it will wear out the good will of one’s associates. Understanding the life-threatening nature of the lack of dialogue makes it easier to comprehend the radical, often aggressive manner in which many people flee from situations of deteriorated dialogue. Sometimes individuals who have been married for years suddenly up and leave without warning, to live with another person. However, our personality styles are not as frozen as we might think. When an individual drops their hard façade after he or she finds out that one has pushed one’s situation to the limit and are left with no other means of fending off abandonment, their worst dread. Treating our friends and family and spouses with courtesy and respect will serve as a lifeline and could later strike an individual as a revelation. Our faults tend to get worse before they can get better. If self-centered people do not change as they get older, the result is an increasing sense of vulnerability that transforms the normal losses and changes of aging into insults, outrages, and terrors. Some people may that being with a self-centered person is a lot like being choked to death in their current environment, that their very existence is being threatened. Dialogue had deteriorated below a certain critical threshold, until one of the partners can no longer tolerate the isolation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Through the ravages of dependency, many emerge transformed because they have no other choice. They reach the point where they are both appalled by themselves and afraid that they will be left alone. There are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or the other undesirable affections. One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop—so we drop down, give up, and do not care any longer. Out of this emptiness, we derive a readiness for the arrival of a new self. The exhaustion of the lower and the entrance of the higher emotions are often simultaneous. Some people may not be doing anything else but pour out all their grievances, endlessly repeated. They may not make confessions about their injustices of which they have been a victim, but of the things for which he or she blames oneself. We may feel overwhelmed. As we listen, an immense tenderness may invade our hearts because we see the person who has been going through turmoil visibly transform. Their crabbed features may gradually unbend, lighting up, becoming beautiful. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Conversations are accelerated by conversations, a combination of speaking and being heard, expression and reception. Humility in the conversation is one’s frank acceptance of all experiences, just as love in the relationship is simply the sense of beauty that reveals to the World its body and its soul. Attending a Roman Catholic Mass, people are often struck by the translation of ancient prayers they know well from the antiquated days, when the Mass was sung in Latin. “Lord, only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” We no longer make a distinction between soul and self. It could be tempting to place the idea of care of the soul in the category of self-improvement. However, the soul has an infinite depth of a person and of a society, compromising all the many mysterious aspects that go together to make up our identity. Sometimes when we listen to an individual and say very little, it allows the other person’s presence and tender response that would not have known what it is to be perceived as beautiful. Whether through prayer or a human-to-human exchange, we turn painful discoveries into new growth when our efforts are witnessed and appreciated, rather than expended in isolation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Our souls, the mystery we glimpse when we look deeply into ourselves, is part of a larger soul, the soul of the World. This World and soul affects each individual thing, whether natural or human-made. You have a soul, the trees in the forest have a soul, and even our cars have a soul. Most unsettled by deterioration or an erosion of independence are those who have spent their adulthood shunning close relationships. Maturation mandates contact with others, often in physically intimate ways and with a frequency that permits little concealment. When such people are forced to depend on others for their survival, they are thrust into the very aspect of life that once brought them their greatest hurt and disappointment. By revisiting early sources of pain, we finally allow for their revision. Overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward other people and life can be corrected only be reconsidering the situation n which the faulty interpretation was made. People generally do not attempt this kind of reexamination without some social pressure or without finding that they have no other options. They may be drained financially; often they are cut off from their own children and their social circle; their careers are placed in jeopardy and sometimes ruined; material possessions that they have slaved for years are quickly cast aside. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
People often wake up to reality when they are sick because the central threat is to the individual’s very existence, their humanity. Life is dialogue, and when the idea of being left alone crashes over the individual like a tidal wave, it is a major threat to life, as is readily verified in health statistics. People hate being so weak. When an individual cannot lift a laundry basket without getting chest pain, they realize they need intimate relationships. They want people to bring them pies and kid around with them. A world of needs exists in addition to our own. Many people cannot give credence to the needs and sufferings of others until they have been helpless themselves. Those who are cold and indifferent to the sufferings of others may nevertheless learn that it is in their best interest to be of assistance to others, if only because they realize that someday they may need such help themselves. The shell of some have built around their emotions melts, and their defenses—a wall built of humor, acerbity, and cynicism—falls before a welling of emotion that is a total departure from one’s usual state of mind. Sharpe edges of themselves become porous and weak. People can reach into their soul more easily, and they, in turn, become more compassionate. After enlightenment, people do not set hard borders around their identity; they are suffused with a kind of peacefulness, almost a sense of joy. It may all seem very strange. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
To the modern person who may think of the psyche as a chemical apparatus, the body as a machine, and the manufactured World as a marvel of human brainpower and technology, the idea of the soul might seem strange indeed. The best some forms of psychology can do with our occasional intuitive sensation that all things are alive is to explain the phenomenon as projections, the unconscious endowment of human fantasy onto an inanimate object. After losing both of his parents at a young age, a young man suppressed his own needs in order to devote himself to caring for his younger siblings. He then maintained this self-containment long into his adult life. It was not until he had a vulnerable moment so many years later he allowed other people to take care of himself and see into him. It is quite a different approach for individuals who are used to being strong and independent to allow things themselves to have vitality and personality. In this sense, care of the soul is a step outside the paradigm of modernism, into something entirely different. Our own position changes when we grant the World its soul. Then, as the things of the World present themselves vividly, we watch and listen. We respect them because we are not their creator and controller. They have as much personality and independence as we do. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
After we spend our lives focusing on externals, and regard anything else as idle daydreaming our perspectives change as we mature. When externals are applied to the stretch of life that lays ahead of us when we are aging, in old age, facing serious ailments which we may not recover from, the possibility of dying and the possible World beyond leaves us absolutely nothing. The inner landscape, once it is really discovered and lived in, is aglow. When we discuss concerns that we never have verbalized during our active business careers: feelings of vulnerability and fear, and questions about the value of what we have done with our lives it offers hope. Gradually, we can become dedicated to helping others make the shift from external to internal reverence. The thing that happens when we pray aright is simple. We create an attitude of complete acceptance in our own minds. When we do this, the Law of God, which is all powerful, begins to operate on this acceptance and begins to rearrange all the facts and activities of our lives in such a way that we have accepted will actually transpire in our experience. How wonderful to realize that at last we have located the divine presence at the only place we could recognize it—within ourselves, within everything. And how wonderful it is to know that at least we have reached our goal. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
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
Trust God and Feel Secure in His Loving Care
One feels a threat to the soul in a runaway spirit, but real harm can be done by a fearful hanging on to a soaring spirit and weighing it down too much with a heavy sense of Earthly responsibility. Part of preparing spirit for marriage with soul is to let spirit fly and find its airborne pleasures. As along as we desire to fulfill the will of God and have any hankering after eternity and God, we have to let the spirit find its own level. What does it mean to stand as a witness of God? It means we will not bow down or give in or be persuaded to do anything contrary to God’s will. It means we will speak up when our knees are shaking. It means we will listen and follow their still, small but powerful voice of the Holy Ghost. Everything should flow along with a calm and delightful expectation of wonderful things that are going to happen. When we know him, we can be a witness for God and trust him and feel secure in his loving care. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
There are no new nor easy ways we earn a relationship. It is the antiquated, the tried-and-true-always works ways: scripture study, prayer, and living those things we learn through our study and prayers. As we read the scriptures, we become acquainted with what our Father in Heaven wants for his children and how God continually reaches out to sustain and bless and forgive us. “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord, your God is giving you (Exodus 20.12).” Acceptance of our parents tends to culminate when we mature, when our circumstances are most humbling and our view of ourselves encompasses the full import of our past. For many people, as their physical powers decline, many of their adaptions and concessions are not visible to others. One by one, they exchange their standards of dignity for necessary security, but those who assist them may have no idea of their inner sacrifices the compromises they make entail. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
On the surface, their actions may appear to be foolish or obstinate, especially as we they resist sensible offers of help and hold back as long as they can from each successive loss of autonomy. Much of what seemed unreasonable at the time that we took care of our parents may suddenly make sense when they get closer to the end of their lives. The spirit is so charged with the desire to flee the complexity of the labyrinth of material life that our parents pass away twice: first while they are overcome by their ailment and we know they have a limited amount of time on Earth, and again when the moment comes that they actually pass away into Heaven. During and after this process, we lie in bed alone, and the past rises like a white squall, rocking and socking our ship, over and over, drenching us with memories we cannot handle. As we watch our parent pas away, we recount detailed memories of their last days. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Specific scenes and conversations come back to us with extraordinary vividness, triggered by our own experience of helplessness that there was nothing we can do to prolong their lives. We may recall favors we were too tired to perform, favourite foods we may have enjoyed together, and the kind moments we shared with them. Many have no idea what loneliness really is, until they experience this. Once their power slips, we understand how raw life can get. We realize how deeply even our misdirected efforts must have been appreciated, and what a large difference our small acts of kindness must have made. People who are passing away say they feel like their body could self-destruct at any second and there is nothing they can do about it. They feel helpless, cheated, and terrified, even if they have made peace with life. As hard as it is on the dying parent, it can also be hard on the children who had no idea their parent was silently suffering and near passing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
And when we get sick, we relive the period during which our parents were in the same position, but the difference is we know we will recover and this is probably what helps us heal and inspires us to recover. When one attains an acceptance of one’s own and only life cycle and a new differ lobe of one’s parents, free of the wish that they should have been different, full spiritual health arises. We also realize how our parents must have been yearning to participate in our young lives. Anyone can turn to religion or spiritual practices as a way out of the twists and turns of ordinary living. We feel the confinement, the humdrum of the everyday, and we hope for a way to transcend it all. We want some of that open sky for ourselves, some relief from trials and tribulations on Earth. The vertical movement of the spiritual life is not only freeing, it is also inspiring and, of course, inflating. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
The feeling of superiority it gives seems worth most of the Worldly deprivations required. We might get a glimpse of wondrous sights hidden to ordinary vision, but we will also be changed by good fortune. Faith is a gift of spirit that allows the soul to remain attached to its own unfolding. When faith is soulful, it is always planted in the soil of wonder and questioning. It is not a defensive and anxious holding on to certain objects of belief, because doubt, as its shadow, can be brought into a faith that is fully mature. Imagine a trust in yourself, or in another person, or in life itself, that does not need to be proved and demonstrated, that is able to contain uncertainty. People sometimes put their trust in a spiritual leader and are terribly betrayed if that person then fails to live up to ideals. However, a real trust of faith would be to decide whether to trust someone, knowing that betrayal is inevitable because life and personality are never without shadow. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The vulnerability that faith demands could then be marched by an equal trust in oneself, the feeling that one can survive the pain of betrayal. When we pray for personal guidance, our Father in Heaven knows what it in our heart, but he wants us to tell him of our hopes and dreams and needs. Only when we speak with certainty that, indeed, we do want to be a witness will we know what we are going to about it. We have to let God speak to us and let the sacrament take on deeper meaning. Here these familiar words: “And witness unto thee, God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given them (D&C 20.77).” We can verbalize our faith for a lifetime, but it is incomplete without a response. (The word response, by the way, is related to a Greek word that means “to pout a liberation to God.”) To respond trustingly to the challenges of life and to the stirring of the soul’s waters is to bring faith to completion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Standing as a witness means that we know with certainty that we want to do what is right and to let the consequence follow. To stand means we remain firm and immovable, even when (or especially when) we are the smallest or the youngest or the last one standing. We may be the means for holding up others. We have to be strong! Witnessing is showing by our behavior what we believe, and that can start in our own families. We can be confident and powerful as a witness of God. Do not compromise. We cannot compromise. Pay attention to those around you who give you courage and strength. Everyone is in partnership with life, with love, with God, with truth, and with beauty. To rear a family without some spiritual concept that is adequate, whatever religious form it may take, is going to contrary to the first Law of our being, which is that we are all rooted in the divine spirit, in perfect life. We are all children of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
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
There are Seven Billion People on this Planet and God Cares What I Had for Lunch
God is life, God is power, and this life and this power are available right now. Perspective is the way we see things when we look at them from a certain distance, and it allows us to appreciate their true valuable. Professional psychology has created a catalogue of disorders, known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition (DSM-5), which is used by doctors and insurance companies to help diagnose and standardize problems of emotional life and behavior with precision. For example, there is a category called adjustment disorders. The problem is adjusting to life, while perhaps sane to all outward appearances, may sometimes be detrimental to the soul. It is extremely important that we do not make decisions of eternal value from the perspective of mortality. For decisions that affect eternity, we need to consider the perspective of our Father in Heaven, as his perspective is essential. God’s eternity signifies an everlasting, endless time. God is a Father, King, and Friend mediated with a knowledge that cannot be surpassed by abstract speculation. God’s plan gives us endurance even amid the wreckage of proximate hopes. Hope keeps us anxiously engaged in good causes even when these appear to be losing causes. Not having an eternal perspective, or losing it, can lead us to have an Earthly perspective as our personal standard and to make decision that are not in harmony with the will of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
God is eternal and through the contingency of finite things and as through the holy through the demands of the moral law, are an immediate, purely spiritual experience called mystical. The union of love and will between the Creator and his creations is permanently retained. Perversion, however, may be regarded either as a condition or as a capability. Society is more eager to accept it as a condition than to respect it as a capability. On its path to progress, society gets just so far—and then again prefers birth to merit, social status to personal achievement. The DSM-5 should also include the diagnosis psychological modernism, an uncritical acceptance of the values of the modern World. It includes blind faith in technology, inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to electronic media, and a life-style dictated by advertising. This orientation toward life also tends toward a mechanistic and rationalistic understanding of matters of the heart. In this modernist syndrome, technology becomes the root metaphor for dealing with psychological problems. A modern person comes to therapy and days, “Look, I do not want any long-term analysis. If something is broken, let us fix it. Tell me what I have to do, and I will do it.” The boogey man has long been an indispensable figure in the family for frightening children. Grownups are now terrorized with the threat that the psychiatrist will come get them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Doctors have no imagination in describing diseases. Perhaps that is why their accounts of real illnesses fit imaginary illnesses so well. Such a person is rejecting out of hand the possibility that the source of a problem in a relationship, for example, may be a weak sense of values or failure to come to grips with mortality. The modernist syndrome urges people to buy the latest electronic gear and to be plugged in to news, entertainment, and up-to-the-minute weather reports. It is vitally important not to miss out on anything. There are some people who spend most of their day in front of several television monitors keeping track of events from around the World. These people do not need all of this information professionally, but they feel their lives would be empty if they let any gaps appear in their grasp of the news. A woman who manages a computer firm knows the very latest chemical and mechanical medical treatments, and she can tell you the side effects of whatever pill you are taking; yet in private she feels overwhelmed by her failure to get her life on track and settled. Her sickness is not amenable to the literal medications she knows so well, because her World-weariness is a soul of malady. The difference between mad-doctors and other man-people is roughly the same as that between convex and concave folly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The revenge of mollusk on man, of Shaw on Shakespeare, of the ghetto on God is rapid technological progress, opposition to which qualities one as a reactionary. There seems to be an inverse relationship between information and wisdom. We are overloaded with information about living healthfully, but we have largely lost our sense of the body’s wisdom. We can tune in to news reports and know what is happening in every corner of the World, but we do not seem to have much wisdom in dealing with these World problems. The World demands that we be responsible to it, not to ourselves. We have many demanding academic programs in professional psychology, and states often have rigid requirements for the practice of psychotherapy, and yet there is undoubtedly a severe dearth of wisdom about the mysteries of the soul. Only one is an artist who can see the mysterious in what is ordinary, and can thus transform a solution into a problem. The modernist syndrome also tends to literalize everything it touches. We have a spiritual longing for community and relatedness and for a cosmic vision, but we go after them with literal hardware instead of with sensitivity of the heart. We want to know about peoples from far away places, but we do not want to feel emotionally connected to them. The Lord has given us his standards of worthiness. He has not done it to keep us away from him, but to draw us to him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Philosophy is at the center of every life problem, but it takes soul to reflect on one’s own life with genuine philosophical seriousness. If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. Our many studies of World cultures are soulless, replacing the common bonding of humanity and it shared wisdom with bites of information that have no way of getting into us deeply, nourishing and transforming our sense of ourselves. Soul, of course, has been extracted from the beginning because we conceive education to be about skills and information, not about depth of feeling and imagination We are not concerned with the weeping and wailing of the family. That is why we must look at life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective. The Lord knows what he wants to accomplish with each one of us. He knows the kind of reform he wants to achieve in our lives, and we do not have the right to counsel him. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We have a loving, just, and merciful Heavenly Father, who has prepared a plan for our eternal happiness. How seldom do we realize that there are no obstructions to divine power. The Heavens, even the highest Heavens, cannot contain you. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
As an individual gradually accumulates a storehouse of faith, when the emergency arises, one is able to stand calm and certain, uncaught by the fears of others. God always comes first and that is why our faith is sufficient. Our trust is complete. Our assurance is absolute. Our words are honored by a power great than us—that power which we all have access to, life itself. In life, joy and happiness are important also. For life intended us to be glad. Peace is also important because it rises above the storm of confusion and doubt and uncertainty that so often confronts us. If we listen to peace we will hear it, and it will infiltrate our whole being. We will discover that our words of peace, acting the law of good, will draw upon a power greater than we are and liquidate the confusion. This is the presence of God. Coming to know that divine power and understanding the complexity and the order and the harmony of the human body reinforces our faith in God. Here alone are peace and joy and certainty. Here alone is freedom from fear and doubt. We must learn to turn daily to the one and only supreme source, which is God. To be worthy of the celestial kingdom and the joy that is there, we must keep the commandments! For one who is not able to abide by the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
God Promises He Will Renew Your Strength
In darkness there is to be found a precious brilliance, our essential nature, distilled by depression as perhaps the greatest gift of melancholy. The one and only way to know what fear, anger, joy, or remorse is, is to actually experience those feelings. If we persist in our modern way of treating depression, as an illness to be cured only mechanically and chemically, we may lose the gifts of soul. Our identity is located deeply in the soul, rather than on the surface of personality. Identity is felt as one’s soul finding its weight and measure. Some people who are experiencing depression or sadness related to a situation that they have no way of controlling, and are not suffering from a behavioral problem or a chemical imbalance need to be careful. Recovery from depression can be a lot like recovering from a dangerous and deadly narcotic addiction. People who go into rehabilitation programs, to save their lives, from drug addiction often have to terminate relationships with the people that helped power and fuel their addiction. And after they are released from a rehabilitation program, they are most vulnerable. That is why it is advised that they stay away from their friends and family, who make hang out with people who use drugs. Even if only one or two people in the group use drugs, a recovering addict has to avoid them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
When a person is released from a rehabilitation program, their systems are pure and they may not be able to handle any drugs at all in their system, but may not be aware and could die much easier from an overdose. Correspondingly, people who are suffering from a situation they find intolerable and it has been going on a long time, and there is nothing the individual can do to change their circumstances, they have to do whatever they can to avoid the people who intentionally harassing them and using them as a source pleasure by humiliating them and reminding them of painful aspects of their lives and doing things to hurt that individual to make themselves feel better. People like that are wicked, and beyond help. Recovering from trauma is a lot like recovering from a drug addiction, in that sense. You have to stay away from the group, even if there is only one bad person in the group because depression can lead to suicide, and you have endured so much that you may not know how much more you can take before you end your own life. A sad or depressed mood is just part of the soul’s cycle. The depressed person sometimes thins that the good times are all past, that there is nothing left for the present or the future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but sometimes the problem seems to be permanent. At the clinic, the patient states that he or she feels young and wants to live; and claims that one had no serious intention of killing oneself, but was only singing the lyrics of an operetta. One admits that, in retrospect, one might have been a little careless in showing oneself in a theater loge in the company of. Therefore, it is important to save yourself from this temporary problem, before you do something you may not be able to recovery from. These thoughts and feelings, sad as they are, favor the soul’s desire to be both in time and in eternity. Sometimes we associate depression with literal aging. Having been identified with youth, the soul now takes on important qualities of age that are beneficial and helpful. If age is denied, soul becomes lost in an inappropriate clinging to youth. However, there are also people who are mature, but have not been able to grow and experience adult life as they would like to, and that can also make them sad. It is like one has been promised straight whiskey, but fearing that one is being fed weak tea. Not everyone is clinging to youth, some people are trying to grow beyond their life circumstances. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
It would be wrong to believe that all the foul deeds in this World are caused by corruption, as if baseness operated automatically with the insertion of a coin. There are people who gladly place the misuse of their knowledge and skills at the disposal of the ruling classes, in the expectation that they will be rewarded by positions, titles, medals, and riches. As we age, we get a sense of having lived through something, of being older and wiser. We know that life is suffering, and that knowledge makes a difference. Your life may not matter to others, it may be a joke to them, but that life is precious, it is all you have. One cannot enjoy the bouncy, carefree innocence of youth any longer, and there is a pleasure in a new feeling of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. Our age and maturity is a measure of nobility. Scholars can become easily depressed and have to find ways to counter their dark moods. However, there are also dangers of living without study and speculation, and without reflection on our lives. Some detest psychiatry because it feeds the individual’s hunger for power, and because, like journalism, it carries within itself vast potentialities for its abuse. The psychiatrist, whose capacity for well-considered action and hence one’s talent for corruptibility some consider slight, as essentially feebleminded. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The genius of insanity is thus opposed by the feeblemindedness of psychiatry. This psychiatric stupidity often turns into malice and even a maniacal desire to persecute. However, what is scary to people who do not believe in God is that there is a being, there is something, there is a force vastly more powerful than human beings. Do not allow people to box you in and make you feel that you make never break free of the chain that you are bound by. They do not know what God has planned for your life. If you allow depression to visit, you will feel the change in your body, in your muscles, and on your face—some relief from the burden of youthful enthusiasm and the unbearable lightness of being. Aging brings out the flavors of a personality. The individual emerges over time, the way fruit matures and ripens. Depression, aging, and individuality all go together: the sadness of growing old is part of becoming an individual. Melancholy thoughts carve out an interior space where wisdom can take up residence. As we age, our ideas, formerly light, rambling, and unrelated to each other, become more densely gathered into values and a philosophy, giving our lives substance and firmness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
A journalist is a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time they have, the worse the write. Depression is sometimes described as a condition in which there are no idea—nothing to hang on to. However, maybe we have to broaden our vision and see that feelings of emptiness, the loss of familiar understandings and structures in life, and the vanishing of enthusiasm, even though they seem negative, are elements that can be appropriate and used to give life fresh imagination. We can initiate a new creative series by the definite and deliberate contemplation of our own minds, and out of the new thoughts will some new things, for the law is a reflector only. We shall discover that the very law that bound us will now free us; the power that seemed to stifle us will bring emancipation. The very power which appeared to produce evil will produce the opposite if, as, and when we change our thought patterns. The changing of these thought patterns is more than a thing of the intellect; it is also a thing of feeling, of a deep, inner conviction. We must feel that we are one with the eternal reality, and that our word is spoke in complete reliance on it; therefore it cannot fail. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Sometimes, of course, depression, like any emotion, can go beyond ordinary limits, becoming a completely debilitating illness. However, in extreme cases, too, even in the midst of strong treatments, we can still look at the core of depression and find ways to overcome it. One of the greatest stressors associated with depression is that it will never end, that life will never be joyful and active. This is one of the feelings that is part of the pattern—the sense of being trapped, forever to be held in the remote of a labyrinth of haunts. One may feel constrained, with nowhere to go. This stress seems to decrease when we stop fighting it. We must get control of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Gradually, as we re-form our thoughts they will become subjective; they will sink into that place in mind which is the power within us and which must constitute the meeting place between the absolute cause and the relative effect which it projects. It may take time to do this, but think of the reward, the gift, the outcome. Keeping the goal in mind, refusing to be baffled or defeated, with uplifted thought and calm but definite purpose, we cannot fail. This is a starting point for a more grounded, open-ended kind of knowledge that never closes up in fixed opinions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
The emptiness and dissolution of meaning that are often present in depression show how attached we can become to our ways of understanding and explaining our lives. Often our personal philosophies and our values seem to be all too neatly wrapped, leaving little room for mystery. Depression comes along then and opens up a hole. Depression makes holes in our theories and assumptions, but even this painful process can be honored as a necessary and valuable source of healing. At first, we are prone to treat everything and everyone around us, in an attempt to influence our environment and other people, and to exercise control over things to our own liking. Most of us pass through this phase. As we progress in this science we come to realize that the aim of scientific treatment is not control of people and things. We treat ourselves, our own mind, our own consciousnesses, no matter what the desired end may be, and gradually we learn to include a larger and a more harmonious field of action. We learn that when we get our own consciousness straightened out, things in our external World adjust themselves to meet our new and better inward awareness. The final mystery is oneself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Depression’s devaluation of human life, shows that cold remorse and self-judgment do not have to be seen as clinical syndromes, but as a necessary humility in human life that actually accomplishes something for the soul. We know who we are because we have uncovered the stuff of which we are made. It has been sifted out by depressive thought, reduced, in the chemical sense, to essence. Months or years focused on God and his love and healing power has allowed us to understand that everything bends back upon itself, even time, space, and light. This is divine intuition that teaches that everything which goes out will come back again. “All of you that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for you may, if your minds are firm, forever (Jacob 3.2).” If we deny or cover up anything that is home in the soul, then we cannot be fully present to others. Hiding the dark places results in a loss of soul; speaking for them and from them offers a way toward genuine community and intimacy. Even after you uncover piece after piece of the sacrifices you have made, and feel an intense regret, but discover the real core of your being and the loyalty to the things you love. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
As you reflect on your core the feeling of guilt and depression will be replaced by a stronger individual, who is no longer manipulated. Do not focus on thoughts and experiences the sad feelings and turmoil is waiting in the for you. Especially when the first time around was so painful and apparently unsuccessful. Care of the soul does not mean wallowing in the symptom, but it does mean trying to learn from depression what qualities the soul needs. Allow the Angel of God to carry your soul out of the coldness, isolation, darkness, and emptiness away to its remote places where it is no longer quarreling and where it finds unique insight and enjoys a special vision. Experience teaches us what is best. We learn that God alone is eternal and that loves overcomes hate. We have brought chance into compliance with love, reason, and faith. We have caught the lightning and made it turn the wheels of industry. We have engaged the laws of nature and harnessed their energy to our purposes. Truth will enter into a new Heaven and a new Earth, a different consciousness. When consciousness is changed, experience automatically changes. Now in the thing we do rejoice. When you become weary and feel like quitting, there is a way to have your strength renewed—wait on the Lord. The reward is in the attempt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
God Expects Us to be Especially Mindful of the Bounteous Blessings
It has a very long history, dating back to our origins, has a momentum that shows little indication of slowing down. The word violence comes from the Latin word vis, meaning “life force.” Its very roots suggest that in violence the thrust of life is making itself visible. If that fundamental vitality is not present in the heart, it nevertheless seems to appear distorted by our representations and compromises, our fears and our narcissistic manipulations. There may be talk of honor, but it is mostly just more fuel for the fires of violence and has nothing to do with real honor. God, we can make something out of that! Perhaps humankind will get down on its knees and, fearing for its own sanity, will beg the Creator for more madness! It would be a mistake to approach violence with any simple idea of getting rid of it. Chances are, if we try to eradicate our violence, we will also cut ourselves off from the deep power that sustains creative life. Besides, psychoanalysis teaches, repression never accomplishes what we want. The repressed always returns in monstrous form. The life current of the soul, vis, is like the natural force of planet life, like the grass that grows up through cement and in a relatively short time obliterates grand monuments of culture. This land where confusion between the real and false reigns supreme. A magic enchantment now attaches itself to neurotic symptoms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
How did all this fakery and moral insanity come about? There are plenty of views about what constitutes and causes violence, but nay deep understanding of violence has to include our own capacity for extreme aggression and the dehumanizing of others, especially toward those who offend us. So simple a thing as new food can be threatening, and it is well known that fashions in dress can be statements of either conformity or anarchy. Political groups have identified themselves through their gender, ethnic background, hair colour and style, and citizenship status. Such choices in everyday life have genuine power, and a society concerned about order and smooth functioning may gradually and unconsciously flatten itself out of the apparent good of the whole. If we try taming and boxing in this innate power, it will inevitably find its way into the light. The more intimate we are with our own violent urges and their roots, the less likely we are to be irresponsible with such urges, and the deeper our understanding will be of others’ violence. Repression of the life force is a diagnosis that fits most of the emotional problems, and people have suffered serious injury to their bodies as well as their own souls. When people let their minds be colonized by revengeful or retaliatory or first-strike fantasies, they create enemies and have an undue anticipation of unleashing their aggression. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
People freed from onerous taxes and humiliating restrictions on their property rights, professional choices, and religious practices, could realistically harbour hopes for economic advancement, political participation, and a measure of social acceptance. Countless individuals whose life is in bankruptcy clamor for relief through the court of psychoanalysis, because the public now expects, and indeed demands, help through this channel. We have personally analyzed many psychopathic personalities whose treatment we were unable to bring to proper conclusion because of their impregnable moral insanity. We were sorry to learn, from reports in the newspapers, that many of these people continue to occupy positions of public trust. Humankind has no choice but to learn to resist this sort of bedazzlement. If one were to question how central violence is in contemporary culture, one would find the answer in the frequency with which violence occurs in film, news, and television. These mediums do not just feature plenty of violence, but also conjures violence as acceptable reactions until these fantasies become crystallized in a thing that has the power of lure of a fetish. In this sense people’s arsenals with their mystery and threat are dark carries of what has been ignored in the soul. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Because so many people are walking around with open emotional wounds that have never been resolved, they have refused to associate themselves with the dark forces lurking in their mind, heart, and soul. That rage and violence is them forced into fetishistic form, where they remain, fascinating and lethal. When people to not care for their wounds and souls, the dysfunction is forced to appear in fetish ad in violent behavior. Moreover, it is an integral part of mental diseases. There is nothing neutral about the soul. It is the seat and the source of life. Either we respond to what the soul presents in its fantasies and desires, or people will suffer from neglect of themselves. The power of the soul can hurl a person into ecstasy or into depression. It can be creative or destructive, gentle or aggressive. Power incubates within the soul and then makes it influential move into life as the expression of soul. If there is no soulfulness, then there is no true power, and if there is no power, then there can be no true soul. When the soul’s power is neglected, usurped, or toyed with, then it breaks down into violence and victimization, controller and subject. Whenever one person victimizes another, real power has been lost and replaced by a literalistic drama that is dangerous for both parties. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
People who turn to violence are visibly controlling; what is less obvious are their weakness and feeling of powerlessness. On the other hand, those who habitually play the submissive may be quite unaware of their own more subtle methods of control. This is why issues of power are so difficult to deal with; things are not as they appear to be. Weaklings puff themselves up and try to act strong; tough people hide their vulnerabilities; many fail to look past the surface. People assume that the fabrications of power all around them are genuine, and they all fall prey to them. Fear is never far removed from power and genuine innocence is always to be found in the vicinity of blood-guilt. Guns are dangerous not only because it threatens lives, but also because it concretizes and fetishizes a person’s desire for power, keeping power both in sight and also removed from its soulful presence in our daily lives. However, guns are also a source of protection. Many people turn to violent gun violence because they may feel they have no power or because they want to be famous. If we want to stop school shootings, perhaps we need to look beyond mental help, and help people who are targets of bullies and encourage them to join groups where they know that they are loved and accepted. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Sometimes healthy people seek mental help or are forced into it and the healthy often emerge from the analyst’s office sick. The soul is explosive and powerful. If we do not claim the soul’s power on our own behalf, we become its victims. We suffer our own emotions rather than feel them working for us. We suffer our emotions rather than feel them working for us. We hold our thoughts and passions inward, disconnecting them from life, and then they stir trouble within, making us feel profoundly unsettled or, it seems, turning into illness. We all know what it feels like to hold anger in our hearts, as it builds and transmuted into corrosive resentment and rage. Even unexpressed love creates a pressure that demands release in come kind of expression. Therefore, if violence is the repressed life force showing itself symptomatically, then cure for violence is care of the soul’s power. God teaches us to love our enemies because we do not hurt the people we love, it is a way to keep society civil and save your soul. God always says that vengeance is his and he will get revenge for the wrongs that others have done to you, so it is best to follow the laws of the land so your hands stay clean and the guilty can be punished by the law so they can be taken off the streets where their violence cannot escalate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
People who teach love and virtue, like Socrates and Plato, were condemned by the wicked because of the “unsettling” and “threatening” power of their soul, which was reveled in their personal lives and in their works. They did not carry guns, but they were still considered a problem because there is nothing more powerful than peace, love, harmony, and education, which leads to the true passion and revelation of one’s own soul. My past is your present. What embarrasses me in my dreams, amuses you in your interpretations, but I insist on the privacy of my dreams, and on embarrassing you with your foul waking life. In the presence of deep power, life becomes robust and passionate, signs that the soul is engaged and being given expression. When God is honored in our lives, everything we do becomes more genuine, quickening our lives with intensity, passion, power, and courage. One the scale of our individual lives we reproduce the divine order in its entirety. Our thought is creative, but in our ignorance, we use it destructively, and that is why people suffer the onslaughts of uncontained violence. To learn to think in the right manner is to learn to create that which is good, and which gives compete expression to the self without ever containing anything destructive or negative. The only lasting joy and happiness we will ever find during our mortal experience will come by following the Savior. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
The Lord has blessed us with lands of promise to enjoy during our mortal probation. In the doctrine of progression, we learn that all people were born into the spirit World—prior to taking on Earthly bodies. Our lives did not begin at birth and will not end at death. We are here on Earth to learn and progress for a while; in the process there will be joy and pain. This mortal probation is the period of testing and demonstrating character or abilities. “If people have sought to do wickedly during days of probation, they will be found unclean before judgment (1 Nephi 10.21).” The chief reward of surrendering innocence, so that the soul may be fully expressed, as an increase of power. That is why we must “Continue in the straight and narrow path until end of the day of probation (2 Nephi 33.9).” Therefore, instead of being confused by the situations around us we should be calm, tranquil, and confident that through reforming our word and changing our whole body of thinking, we can as easily change the existing conditions as perpetuate them. The nations of Earth, if they would continue to follow the ways of God, could be a blessing to his children here. We need complete assurance, an inner determination, faith, and confidence to know that we can proceed with definite, deliberate determination and that there can be no question about the result; they will be inevitable. Be better than smart, be thoughtful. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
The Soul is More Mysterious
The soul’s indications are many, but they are usually extremely subtle. In the process of civilization, the far most important thing is the aim of creating unity out of the individual human beings. It is true that the aim of happiness is still there, but it is pushed into the background. It almost seems as if the creation of a great human community would be successful, we should focus on the benefit of the soul. The soul does not necessarily benefit from long, hard work, nor from fairness of any kind. Its effects are achieved more with God than effort. While it is true that science must deal with cause and effect in practical applications, it is also true that in physics the antiquated idea of cause and effect has been eliminated, which means that things do not always work in the way they are supposed to, basing the performance on precedent. Just because an individual has worked a long time and is fair about it, does not mean one will have the benefits of soul one wants. Nor should any individual enter such work innocently, agreeing to work hard, and then expect something for their labour. This consumer logic is based on fairness and reasonableness, and has nothing to do with the way the soul operates and may be the least effective way to seek out the soul’s power. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The soul is more mysterious. The developmental process of the individual can thus be expected to have special features of its own which are not reproduced in the process of human civilization. Just as a planet revolves around a central body as well as rotating on its own axis, so the human individual takes part in the course of development of humankind at the same time as one pursues one’s own path in life. However, to our dull eyes the play of forces in the Heavens seems fixed in a never-changing order; in the field of organic life we can still see how the forces contend with one another, and how the effects of the conflict are continually changing, as though it were the envelope of the soul. Much of the civilization of the future may oppress the life of the individual today. We lose opportunities to know ourselves for our motives and our secrets because people just want to open our boxes and pry into our lives when we may not even to share a cup of coffee with them. Disregard for privacy, increasing technology is at the forerunner of this conflict. Do we need to expose everything that is hidden? Do we need to understand all mysteries? We are used to hearing about the great revelations of science—the discovery of atoms, particles, and DNA—and so quite naturally we think that mysteries are there to be solved. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
People have at all times set the greatest value on ethics, as though they expected that it in particular would produce especially important results. And it does in fact deal with a subject which can easily be recognized as the sorest spot in every civilization. Ethics is thus to be regarded as a therapeutic attempt—as an endeavor to achieve, by means of a command of God to get rid of the greatest hindrance to civilization, namely, the constitutional inclination of human beings to be aggressive towards one another; and for that very reason we are especially interested in what is probably the most recent of the cultural commands of God, the commandment to love one’s neighbor ur as oneself. From the point of view of soul, it is just as important, maybe more important, to check the urgency of curiosity and suspicion, to allow certain things to remain distant and buried, to trust one’s soul mate or mate soul with things that should not be brought to the light of day. Because we know that science cannot get along without dealing with cause and effect any more than a farmer can get along without planting crops if one expects to reap a harvest. If we want an unbroken bond with an individual, we have to respect their privacy so our relationships will be tightened by reverence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The special lesson in the power of soul is learned in the moments of thought when it is decided by someone that their chest would remain closed. The soul, too, does not trouble itself enough about the fact of the mental constitutions of human beings. It issues a command and does not ask whether it is possible for people to obey it. On the contrary, it assumes that a human’s soul is psychologically capable of anything that is required of it, and our soul has unlimited mastery over on beings. One can easily overpower another person and discover his or her secrets, but by preserving their privacy, one maintains one’s power. In general, we keep our power when we protect the power of others. The commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” is the strongest defense against human aggressiveness and an excellent example of the respect God expects of us. You ever heard that Summer bodies are made in the Winter? That means if we want to tone up our bodies, we start before the Summer arrives to achieve our goals. Likewise, we should start preparing for Heaven, while we are on Earth. There is time. We still have the farmer, planting time, and harvest season, but we also have an alternative. There is also a choice and volition introducing a personal factor. Humans have free will. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The fateful question for the human species seems to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction. New causes bring new effects, and every sequence of cause and effect takes place in something which is greater than cause or effect. Freedom is where it is perceived and in such a degree as it is recognized. Such an attitude is scientific and mathematical. The soul practices a different kind of math and logic. It presents images that are not immediately intelligible to the reasoning mind. It insinuates, offers fleeting impressions, persuades more with desire than with reasonableness. In order to reach the soul’s power, one has to be conversant with its style, and watchful. The soul also gives us a vision that nothing is solid, everything is moving, shifting, changing. Even though we view the Universe as a mass of solid facts, God is the supreme cause and has liquid laws, for matter is spirit reduced to its greatest thinness. We focus on the purpose of life because the ultimate objective of our mortal journey has been revealed by our Creator, who said, “If you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which is the greatest of all the gifts of God.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The reward is worth the effort. God’s gift of eternal life is subject to conditions established by him. “Behold, are not the things that God has wrought marvelous in our eyes? And who can comprehend the marvelous works of God? Who shall say that is was not a miracle that by God’s word the Heaven and the Earth should be; and by the power of this word humans were created of the dust of the Earth; and by the power of God’s word have miracles been wrought (Mormon 9.17)?” God allowed us to come to Earth with freedom to choose our own course. In his great love, he did not leave us alone. He provided a guide—a spiritual Global Positioning System (GPS)—to help us achieve successful navigation and tracking in our journey. Spiritual nature is love and truth and beauty. The Bible refers to the spirit moving upon the face of the deep, which means absolute intelligence thinking within itself. This is but another way of saying that the starting point of every creation is the word of God or the word of Universal intelligence. Our excruciating experiences will develop in us an unshakable faith in God. We have a great heritage of love—love of God and love of humankind. It is an inheritance of sobriety, independence, hard work, high moral values, and fellowship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International Institute 