There is nothing more likely to succeed with an audience than a good history of witchcraft, or somethings so marvelous, as to do violence to common sense, before we give it our faith. A high degree of refinement does not seem to subdue our wicked propensities so much after all; and were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the World to remain unchanged. Scientific laws are always practically inexact. By this notion, it is wished that we point out that a scientific law is never exactly confirmed by the evidence for it but rather is confirmed within the limits of experimental error. A law is accepted on the basis of experimental evidence even if that experimental evidence does not exactly coincide with what, on the basis of deductions from the law, one might expect to be confirming evidence. This is so simply because all measurement of evidence in modern scientific practice involves taking into account errors of measurement, and such errors of measurement must be factored out before a definite conclusion is reach as to the relevance of the evidence. 

It is a long known anatomical fact that there is an original predisposition to bisexuality, that in the course of development this changes to monosexuality, leaving only slight remnants of the stunted sex. A spokesman for the masculine inverts stated the bisexual theory in its crudest form in the following words: “It is a female brain in a male body.” However, we do not know the characteristics of a female brain. The substitution of the anatomical for the psychological is as frivolous as it is unjustified. It is more likely that the bisexual predisposition supplies the individual with male and female brain centers just as somatic sexual organs. These centers develop first towards puberty mostly under the influence of the independent sex glands. We can, however, say that same over, we do not even know whether we can assume for the sexual function separate brain locations (centers) in the same way as for the speech function. Bisexual predisposition may also be presumed for the inversion, though we do not know what it consists beyond the anatomical formations; and, secondly, that we are dealing with disturbances which are experienced by the sexual instinct during its development.  

 Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, when a man will but give it fair play, and discover it when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistake. In every man there exist male and female elements. In the determination of sex, as far as heterosexual persons are concerned, some are disproportionately more strongly developed than others. There is a firm belief that in every woman there are male, and in every man, there are female germs and qualities. In Mandarin Chinese, the term “women” means “we” because men are from the womb of a lady. However, the first man, Adam, was created by God. Then God duplicated Adam, and removed his penis (rib) and that cause the lady to become more softer and develop characteristics that are feminine such as breast, hips and things because she was softer than a man. Uninformed individuals, who are not willing to accept their sexuality succumbs to the charms of the emanating from the manly qualities of body and mind; he feels himself like a woman and seeks a man.  

Good heads and good heart generally go together, but they are not inseparable companions. Among the Greeks, where the most virile men were found, it is quite obvious that it was not the masculine character of the boy, which kindled the love of man, but it was his physical resemblance to woman as well as his feminine psychic qualities, such as shyness, demureness and the need of instruction and help. As soon as the boy himself becomes a man, he ceases to be a sexual object for men and in turn becomes a lover of boys. The sexual object in this case as in many others is therefore not of the same sex, but a union of both sex characteristics, a compromise between the impulses striving for the man and for the woman, but firmly conditioned by the masculinity of body (the genitals). Although psychoanalysis has not yet given us a full explanation for the origin of the inversion, it has revealed the psychic mechanism of its genesis and has essentially enriched the problems in question.

In al the cases examined we have ascertained that the later inverts go through in their childhood a phase of very intense but shortlived fixation on the woman (usually on the mother) and after overcoming it, they identify themselves with the woman and take themselves as the sexual object; that is, proceeding on a narcissistic basis, they look for young men resembling themselves in persons who they wish to love as their mother has loved them. We have, moreover, frequently found that alleged inverts are by no means indifferent to the charms of women, but the excitation evoked by the women is always transferred to a male object. They this repeat through life the mechanism which gave origin to their inversion. Their obsessive striving for the man proves to be determined by their restless flight from the woman. Psychoanalytic research very strongly opposes the attempt to separate homosexuals from other person as a group of special nature. By also studying sexual excitations different than those manifestly overt, it discovers that all men are capable of homosexual object selection and actually accomplish this in the unconscious.  

The bisexual men are attracted to women because of a chemical attraction, but they like other men, usually boys because they are innocent and need guidance, and it is considered a problem. The determination as to the definite sexual behavior does not occur until after puberty (13-25 years old) and is the result of a series of as yet not observable factors, some of which are constitutional, while some are of an accidental nature. The behavior is altogether controlled by an archaic constitution and by primitive psychic mechanisms. The importance of the narcissistic object selection and the clinging to their erotic significance of the anal zone seem to be their most essential characteristics. We found the sexual rejection or the early sexual intimidation and the existence of both parents plays an important role in the child’s life. The disappearance of a strong father in childhood not infrequently favors inversion. However, there is also a certain degree of independence is unmistakable also in this relation.  

The term Homosexuality should be replaced by better one which is Homoerotic because it is a number of different condition that are grouped together and have quite variable significance both from organic as well as psychical point of view because the one symptom of inversion is present. There are but four very marked differences at least between two types of subject-homoerotics, who feel and act like women, and the object-homoerotic who is masculine throughout and only has (mistakenly) exchanged a female object against one of the same sex. We have obtained an insight which can become of greater significance to us than the solution of the above problem. Our attention is called to the fact that we have assumed a too closer connection between the sexual instinct and the sexual object. The sexual instinct is probably entirely independent of its object and is not originated by the stimuli proceeding from the object. And some people are attracted to youth who are not legal because they an impulsive urge (uncontrollable at the time) and are using them as a substitute because they cannot secure the proper object.   

Still, it throws some light on the nature of the sexual instinct, that should permit such great variations and depreciations of its object, something which hunger, adhering more energetically to its object, would allow only in the most extreme cases. The same may be said of sexual relations with animals—a thing not all rare among unindustrial civilizations—where the sexual attraction goes beyond the limits of the species. For esthetic reasons one would gladly attribute this and other excessive aberrations of the sexual instinct to the insane, but this would not accord with the facts. Experience teaches that among the later no disturbances of the sexual instinct can be found other than those observed among the sane, or among whole races and classes. Thus, we find with gruesome frequency sexual abuse of children by community leaders, trusted people in the community, teachers, and servants merely because they have the best opportunity for it. The insane present the aforesaid aberration only in a somewhat intensified form; or what is of special significance is the fact that the aberration becomes exclusive and takes the pace of the normal sexual gratification.   

This is very remarkable relation of sexual variations ranging from the normal to the insane gives material for reflection. It seems to me that the fact to be explained would show that the impulses of the sexual life belong to those which even normally are most poorly controlled by the higher psychic activities. One who is in any way psychically abnormal, bet in in social or ethical conditions, it, according to experience, regularly so in one’s sexual life. However, many are abnormal in their sexual life who in every other respect correspond to the average; they have kept abreast of the human cultural development, but their sexuality remained as their weak point. As the general result of these discussion we come to see that, under numerous conditions and in a surprising number of individuals, the nature and value of the sexual object steps into the background. There is something else in the sexual instinct which is the essential and constant element. The most pronounced difference between the love life of antiquity and our lies in the fact that the ancients placed the emphasis on the instinct itself, while we put it on its object. 

 The ancients extolled the instinct and were ready to ennoble through it even an inferior object, while we disparage the activity of the instinct as such and only countenance it on account of the merits of the object. The union of the genitals in the characteristic act of copulation is taken as the normal sexual aim. It serves to diminish the sexual tension and to quench temporarily the sexual hot sheets motel desire (gratification analogous to satisfaction of hunger). Yet, even the most normal sexual act, certain addenda are distinguishable, the development of which may lead to aberrations described as perversions. Thus, certain intermediary relations to the sexual object connected with copulation, such as touching and looking, are recognized as preliminaries to the sexual aim. These activities are on the one hand pleasurable as such, and on the other hand, they enhance the excitement which persists until the definite sexual aim is attained.  

One special form of contact, which consists of mutual approximation of mucous membranes of the lips in the kiss, has received a sexual value among the civilized nations, though the parts of the body do not belong to the sexual apparatus and merely form the entrance to the digestive tract. These addenda, therefore, supply the factors which allow us to bring the perversions into relation to the normal sexual life, and are available also for classification. The perversions represent either an anatomical transgressions of the bodily regions destined for sexual union, or a lingering at the intermediary relations to the sexual object which should normally be rapidly passed, on the way to the definite sexual aim. The fascination with breast, and large breast in particular, for all kinds of reasons, goes back to infancy, a charge of excitation that we eventually eroticize because they provide so much pleasure and nourishment to babies, or reminds them of the warm heartbeat the felt when their mother held them close to her chest. The increased pull towards breasts starts usually in the teen years. Homosexual men also like big breast because they remind them of a booty.   

Overestimation of the sexual object is the psychic estimation in which the sexual object shares as a goal of the sexual instinct is only in the rarest cases limited to the genitals; generally it embraces the whole body and tends to include all sensation emanating from the sexual object. The same overestimation extends to the psychic sphere and manifests itself as a logical blinding (diminished judgment) concerning the psychic attainments and perfections of the sexual object, and in a credulous yielding to the judgments emanating from the latter. The absolute faith inspired by love thus becomes an important, if not the primordial source of authority. The nature of hypnosis is to be found in the unconscious fixation of the libido on the person of the hypnotizer (by means of the masochistic component of the sexual instinct. This character is connected to the parent complex. It this sexual overvaluation, which is so incompatible with the restriction of the sexual aim to the union of the genitals only, and which raises other parts of the body to sexual aims.  

At the same time it is to be observed that sexual overestimation is not developed by all of the mechanisms of object choice, and that we will later learn of another and more direct explanation of the sex role of other bodily parts. The factor of excitement hunger explains the spreading of the sexual interests to other parts of the body than the genitals does not seem to me to deserve this significance. The different paths along which the libido moves, behave one to another from the beginning like communicating pipes, and one must therefore take into account the phenomenon of collateral streaming. The significance of the factor of sexual overestimation can be best studied in the male, in whom alone the sexual life is accessible to investigation, whereas in the women it is veiled in impenetrable darkness, partly on account of the conventional reticence and insincerity of women. In typical cases, the wife permits this sexual-overvaluation of the male to pass by but almost always makes up for it in the child born to her.  

Humans are driven by the laws of nature, which make them believe automatically in the possibility of experience. Knowledge of nature, to many, requires tearing down the insurmountable barrier fixed between a priori (being without examination or analysis) and empirical knowledge by means of one’s distinction between sensibility as receptivity and understanding spontaneity. It is also not unusual to support the working person’s longing for a decent living account to the law of humanity. We have been given directions to attend to faith, and fear, and self-restraint. There are two angels with an individual—one of righteousness and the other of iniquity. The angel of righteousness is gentle and modest, meek and peaceful. When, therefore, he ascends into your heart, forthwith he talks to you of righteousness, purity, chastity, contentment, and of every righteous deed and glorious virtue.  When all of these ascend into your heart, know that the angel of righteousness is with you. These are deeds of the angel of righteousness. Trust him, then, and his works.  

Look now at the works of the angel of iniquity. First, he is wrathful, and bitter, and foolish, and his works are evil, and ruin the servants of God. When, then, he ascends into your heart, now him by his works. When anger comes upon you, or harshness, know that he is in you; and you will know this to be the case also, when you are attacked by a longing after many transactions, and the richest delicacies, and drunken revels, and divers luxuries, and things improper, and by hankering after women, and by overreaching, and pride, and blustering, and by whatever is like to these. When these ascend into your heart, know that the angel of iniquity is in you. Now that you know his works, depart from him, and in no respect trust him, because his deeds are evil, and unprofitable to the servants of God. And once you fall victim to the ancient illusion, it will be hard to escape his deadly embrace, and you will flee into the arms of danger, dropping conditions essential to salvation.  

These, then, are the actions of both angels. Understand then, and trust the angel of righteousness; but depart from the angel of iniquity, because his instruction is very bad in every deed. If the angel of inequity is in your heart, you will think you must sin. On the other hand, be a man or woman ever so bad, yet, if the works of the angel of righteousness—sensibility and intelligibility—are in his or her heart, he or she must do something good. You see, therefore, that it is good to follow the angel of righteousness, but bid farewell to the angel of iniquity. This commandment exhibits the deeds of faith, that you must trust the works of the angel of righteousness, and doing them you may live to God. However, believe the works of the angel of iniquity are hard. If you refuse to do them, you will live to God. Morals have a basic science, jurisprudence, because the idea of justice is the constitutional law of this science. If there were no a priori law of justice, the sort of systematic knowledge of the law that the Romans assigned to iurisprudentia would not be possible.

 

 

 

How often is the term “savages” incorrectly applied! None really deserving of it were ever yet discovered by voyagers or by travelers. They have discovered heathens and barbarians, whom horrible cruelties they have exasperated into savages. I might be mistaken thinking that I am sitting in front of a blazing fire, but I could not be mistaken about it seeming true to me. I cannot be mistaken about the idea itself. Usually with pains, sensations, images, and other so-called objects of inner sense being included, it would be absurd to say, “I believe I am in pain, but perhaps I am not,” just as it usually is absurd to say, “I said it seemed so-and-so to me, but I was not sure whether it really did”—absurd, that is, unless the experience itself is indeterminate or borderline. Accordingly, sense statements (presumed to be sincere) are sometimes said to be incorrigible on the ground that one who makes such a statement cannot possibly be mistaken about his or her experience even though one may deceive others. My mother always taught me that it is ridiculous to constantly acknowledge the physical pain that you are feeling and that it could make it worse because one focuses on it more and that we should focus on things that generate happiness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

Focusing on physical pain is a lot like focusing on a relationship that has ended, you will feel the pain more because you are thinking about it. However, you notice when a relationship ends, and even when you are experiencing extreme emotional pain, when your friends come around smiling and happy and playing music you like and wanting to take you out to have fun that it distracts you from your pain and you feel better about yourself. Just because you are distracted and enjoying life does not mean that the break up did not happen and that you are not hurting emotionally, it just means you are trying to heal and move beyond the pain. Actualization requires principle and material force. The idea seems to be that self-nourishment is the characteristic sign which we identify the presence of life, and that soul explains the presence of those features. The soul is substance in the sense of form or essence of a living thing. So, the soul is the actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive and we must also feel our soul with things that make us feel good and it will keep the body and emotions strong and alive. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

A living thing’s soul is its capacity to engage in activities that are characteristic of living things of its natural kind and conducive to their well-being and survival.  Anything the nourishes itself experiences growth, movement and rest, perception, and intellect and the soul is what is causally responsible for the animate behavior (the life activities) of a living thing. The Great Ultimate involves both principle and material force. Principle is necessary to explain the reality and universality of things. It is incorporeal, one, eternal, and unchanging, uniform, constituting the essence of things; it is always for, and it is the reason for creation. Material force is necessary to explain physical form, individuality, and the transformation of thins. It is physical, many, transitory and changeable, unequally present in things; it constitutes their physical substance and involves both good and evil. It is the agent of creation. These are nested in the sense that anything that has a higher degree of soul also has all of the lower degrees. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

The principle of duality is not accepted by everyone. Physicalist do not thing that mental states are brain states—or heart states—or bodily processes at all. Natural objects are given a form regardless of our perception. Reality that is of images, produced by us and dependent on our will, fantasy, and creative processes are impressionism. People use their knowledge about the World and depict reality as it is conceived at a given time. There is no one system of mathematics, but there are many mutually exclusive systems. Various geometries coincide. With accepted proofs not always establishing all the given causes or factors including bias being considered. When we build analysis based on logic, we can accept, reject, or accept the negations of some extralogical existence axioms of infinity, and the assumption of the existence of transfinite cardinal numbers. Logic itself should not decide any existence problem. Conflicting views are presented in long speeches, with few interruptions. Sometimes the clash of opinions leads to insult and denunciations when personal abuse is involved when views are examined on fear of death, on pain, on distress of mind, and on other matters. Nonetheless, dreams and goals and visions ensure preservation; they portray the virtuous soul enjoying a more perfect existence on Earth and in Heaven in the region above the moon. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

 Happiness is to be found in living according to nature, which is revealed to us through experience; there is no absolute good or evil, as we may deduce from the multiplicity of customs and laws. Knowledge is acquired through our sense and has only relative validity. Only the truths of mathematics and reason are universal. Religious beliefs, however, do not spring from reason; it is reason also reason that should guide an individual in regulating their lives, establishing society and laws, and achieving happiness. Toleration and love of others is important, we were all saved by God’s love. Therefore, one who is both body and soul, is free and immortal, and one’s behavior should be governed by reason and by conscience. People should worship God and abide by the golden rule to treat others with the same courtesy and respect that you would like to be shown.  Truth has to be found in the individual soul. It is absolutely and undeniably certain that something has existed from all eternity.  There is something now, and since something cannot come from nothing, there must always have been something. There has existed from eternity someone, unchangeable and independent being.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

That unchangeable and independent being, which has existed from eternity without any external cause of its existence, must be self-existent, that is necessarily existent. The only true idea of a self-existent being is the idea of being of a being whose non-existent being is an express contradiction. The self-existent being is infinite, omnipresent, intelligent, free, omnipotent, wise, good, and just. The fitness of certain kinds of behavior between persons is as manifest, as that the properties which flow from the essences of different mathematical figures have different congruities or incongruities between them. These fitting relations between person are the eternal law of righteousness. With respect to our fellow creatures this law is: so deal with every person as in like circumstances we could reasonably expect one should deal with us, and that in general we endeavor, by an universal benevolence to promote the welfare and happiness of all humans. The eternal law of righteousness is also spoken of as the Law of Nature and the right reason of things. The right reason to account for someone’s obligation to follow the law of righteousness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

 Right reason distinguishes humans from beast and enables us to see that there is a natural and necessary difference between right and wrong and between just and unjust. It follows that a vicious person is someone whose reason has been either clouded by education or bad habits or overborne by selfish desires. Reason is the faculty that discerns the fitness of actions and impels our obligation. However, at the same time the role of reason in speculative matters and the role of reason in morality are not wholly similar. In mathematics, for example, as soon as one understands the terms and conditions of their compatibility, one immediately assents to those propositions in which the terms are properly combined. However, morality is a matter of both reason and will, and despite a person’s knowledge of the right reason of things one might nonetheless withhold one’s will from conforming to it. In founding morality on the fitness and unfitness in the relation of thins, God must discover the fitness and conform his will to it just as any other moral agent must. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

Whenever our right becomes the guiding factor of our lives, it dulls our spiritual insight. The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. God answers prayers in the best way—not just sometimes but every time. God has chosen to order things as they are because this order makes for the best of all possible Worlds. Gravity is an act of will on the part of God, an instance of pre-established harmony. God is the primary cause of motion, and the quantity of motion in the Universe is constant. The planets are moved by vortices in the ethereal substance. Once our Lord was glorified in His ascension, the Holy Spirit came into the World, and He has been here ever since. We have to receive the revealed truth that God is here. The attitude of receiving and welcoming the Holy Spirit into our lives is to be the continual attitude of believers. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive reviving life from our ascended Lord. If truth and justice, and the better principles of our nature, cannot exist unless enforced by the statute-book, how are we to account for the social condition of the Typees? #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

 The good law will come with a better civilization; but before society can be civilized it has to be de-barbarized. If anything is a mystery to you and is coming between you and God, never look for the explanation in your mind, but look for it in your spirit, your true inner nature—that is where the problem is. Once your inner spiritual nature is willing to submit to the life of Jesus, your understanding will be perfectly clear, and you will come to the place where there is no distance between the Father and you, His child, because the Lord has made you one. After passing a few weeks in this valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. What is the sign of a friend? Is it that one tells you one’s secret sorrows? No, it is that one tells you one’s secret joys. Many people will confide their secret sorrows to you, but the final mark of intimacy is when they share their secret joys with you. Have we ever let God tell us any of His joys? Or are we continually telling God our secrets, leaving him no time to talk to us? The total being of our life inside and out is to be absolutely obsessed by the presence of God. God’s will alone is sufficient reason to account for things being where they are.  #RandolphHarris 9 of 9

 The Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House in America is a source of many old ghostly tales. Frequent ghost sightings inside the mansion and on the estate’s grounds have turned it into a well – known haunted house. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

 

Our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities. Choices may or may not involve mental acts and fundamentally are overt actions for which certain sorts of explanations in terms of purposes can be given. Choices, unlike beliefs, are neither true nor false. We rate choices by calling them good or bad, wise or foolish, and correct or incorrect when “correct” and “incorrect” mean that a choice is suitable or unsuitable for the attainment of some end, but we never rate choices by calling them true or false. Human beings can be sinful and some men and women are persistently self-centered and their highest moral achievements can be quickly corrupted by selfishness. Yet, although we thus fail, exhibiting a chronic moral weakness and poverty, our failure is not inevitable; we are ourselves, at least some part responsible for it. The fall of man is a myth that man was originally created perfect but fell by his own fault into our present state, in which he was divided both in himself and from his fellows and God. God’s free forgiveness, offered by Christ, all humans are released from guilt of their moral failure (justification) and are drawn into a real of grace in which they are gradually re-created in character (sanctification). #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

The past is such a curious creature, to look in its face, a transport may reward us, or a disgrace. Now I gaze at your eyes and you are so quiet that there is only hope for the future. I complain you do not cherish our connection while you claim I am too sentimental. Times goes by slowly, but your eyes are in my heart forever: they are as pure as crystal, as light as the moon, as deep as abyss and as white as the snow. My beloved, let us bury the sweet whisper of the past years in our deep hearts and turn them into beautiful memory. No matter how far away I am from you and how many years before we meet again, I am always missing and blessing you in my heart. Heaven is eternal, spontaneous, nameless, and indescribable, at once the beginning of all things and the way in which they pursue their course. It is nonbeing, not in the sense of nothingness, but in the sense of not being any particular thing. It is absolute and mystical. When it is possessed by an individual thing, it becomes the thing’s character or virtue. Because of one’s innate ability to do good, one necessarily extends the innate knowledge into action. Knowledge and action are really identical; one is the beginning and the other completion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

A named etched in a plaque may not pass into posterity, nor may the one carved in a slate in eternity, but the name of our God impressed in the recesses of our hearts will stay there forever. It is you who open the window of my thoughts. It is you who melt the frost in the bottom of my heart. This poem of love, passion, and imagination is as deep as the blue sky. Can these bright stars be your eyes? Your eyes are stars to me, in the vast ocean of life, navigating me to the dawn. The most beautiful face in the World is yours, the warmest chest in the World belongs to you, the strongest arms in the World are your, the purest heart is the World you possess. The ideal life of the individual, the ideal order of society, and the ideal type of government are all based on Heaven and guided by it. As the way of life Heaven denotes simplicity, spontaneity, tranquility, gentleness, and most important of all, nonaction, or, rather, letting Nature take its own course. We will find spiritual freedom and peace, a place will we show love to all. Universal love benefits Heaven, spiritual beings, and all living beings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

And on Earth one should show special affection to one’s own parents. Otherwise there would be no difference between other people’s parents and one’s own, family relationships would collapse. The only way one can get to know the truth of God is to stop trying to find out and by being born again. If one obeys God in the first thing He shows you, the He instantly opens up the next truth to you. God will never real more truth about Himself to you until you have obeyed what you already know. Our Lord took on Himself the sin of the World though identification with us, not through sympathy for us. God deliberately took on and endurance the cumulative sin of the human race. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God. The will of Heaven is that human beings should practice humanity and righteousness, be economical, and practice universal love, and it is our duty to obey the will of Heaven. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

Erroneous thoughts and erroneous attachments are similar to clouds hiding the Sun. When they are removed the original nature will be revealed and great wisdom obtained. The way to discover the original nature is calmness and wisdom. Calmness does not means not being carried away by thought in the process of daily life and being free from characters while in the midst of contemplation and experiencing life. When the mind is unperturbed by selfishness or deliberate effort and is left to take its own course, it will reveal its pure nature, and enlightenment will come suddenly. This World is good, focus on the original goodness of nature that takes place in the midst of daily affairs, and keep your mind focused on self-realization. The nature and destiny of human beings and things will be correct in their differentiated state if they all follow the same universal principle. As new things appear, new principles are realized and in the production and reproduction in the Universe the process of daily renewal never ceases. When principle is endowed in humans it becomes their nature. Human’s nature is originally good because we were created by a benevolent and loving God who is the source of all goodness.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

 Evil arises when feelings are aroused and we deviate from the laws of God. However, through moral cultivation selfish desires can be eliminated and the principle of Nature realized. Our Lord’s temptations and ours are in different realms until we are born again and become His brothers. The temptations of Jesus Christ are not those of us mere human, but the temptations of God as Man. Through regeneration, the Son of God is formed in us, and in our physical life He has the same setting the He had on Earth. Only the Spirit of God can detect temptation of the Devil. Many of us turn back from going on with Jesus Christ from the very moment we have an experience of what He can do. Watch when God changes your circumstances to see whether you are going on with Jesus Christ or siding the negative forces, the flesh, and the Devil. The mind is originally good and endowed with the innate knowledge of the good and the innate ability to do good. The mind fills the whole Universe. A simple, easy, and direct method of recovering one’s originally good nature consists in having a firm purpose, stabling the nobler parts of one’s nature.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

The daily renewal and incessant change is a reality of endless transformation of closing and opening, which constitutes a process of unceasing production and reproduction. Every day we have a chance to be better people and make healthy changes in our lives, which will result in many beneficial manifestations that are in various aspects of the mine, will, and consciousness. Christ suffered in his own person the punishment that was justly due to humankind. However, God’s forgiveness does not need to be purchased by Christ’s death, but this brings home to the human heart both human’s need for divine forgiveness and the reality of that forgiveness. God has acted toward humans in three distinguishable ways—in creation and providence, in redemption, and inner guidance and sanctification. People are freely accepted by God’s gracious love, which one only has to receive in faith. Individuals have only to accept the fact that although unacceptable even to oneself, one is accepted by God. What separates the enlightened person from the ignorant? Is civilization a thing distinct, or it is an advanced stage of barbarism?  #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

 

We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people. It is truly wonderful how easily Society can console itself for the worst of its problems and difficulties with a bit of a clap-trap (contrived but foolish talk). The father of lies is the Devil—mischief and the Devil are never far apart. The good or evil we confer on others very often recoils on ourselves. The distinction between good and evil arises when human nature is aroused and manifested in feelings and actions and when these feelings and actions abide by or deviate from the mean. The chief task of moral and spiritual cultivation is to calm one’s nature through absolute impartiality and the identification of internal and external life. To achieve this end, one must advocate sincerity and seriousness. It was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom that the wisest of us all should outwit ourselves. Principle is a fundamental idea or general rule that is self-evident and self-sufficient, extending everywhere and governing all things. It is laid before our eyes. It cannot be augmented or diminished. It is a universal truth, universal order, universal law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Most important of all, principle is the universal spiritual capacity of creation. It is dynamic and vital. Human beings and all things form one body because all of them share this principle. It is identical with mind and with the nature of man and things. Since principle is the natural ability of creation and since life-giving is good, principle is the source of goodness. To be good is to obey principle. Thus, principle is both natural and moral and both general and specific. It has meaning as an abstract reality, but more so are the moral law of humans. We must learn to maintain a strong degree of character in our lives, even to the level that has been revealed in our vision of Christ. The lasting characteristic of a spiritual being is the ability to understand correctly the meaning of the Lord Jesus Christ in his life, and the ability to explain the purpose of God to others. Readiness for God means that we are prepared to do the smallest things or the largest thing—it makes no difference. Material force is the physical aspect of principle.  Impulsiveness needs to be trained into intuition through discipline. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

Every moment of time solicits to be employed in the important business of love. Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. In the process of creation each operation is new, for material force is perpetually generated by Origination. (Origination is comparable to creation, except that it is natural and self-caused and is not an act of being.) The intellectual approach of understanding principle is balanced by the moral, for whereas the pursuit of learning depends on the extension of knowledge, self-cultivation requires seriousness. Humans are a complex chemical compound whose behavior is strictly subject to the law of causality, who in every action seeks one’s own pleasure, and whose character is determined by the features of the environment within which one is obliged to act. Radical reconstruction of the social environment is needed to create happy and productive individuals. Human beings are organs and instruments of a universal spirit and under certain conditions, a nationality (narodnost) may become an individual person. On the other hand, human beings as rational creatures and bearer of the Absolute is an end in oneself and must not be treated as a mere instrument. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

Not society, but individuals, think, feel, and desire; the monstrous notion that society is a higher organism, an all-devouring Moloch, whose function is to make humankind happy by putting it in chains is false. However, there are encroachments by the social and political spheres on the private and personal realm; the individual life is the foundation-stone of the entire social edifice—as a single spiritual substance, possessed of reason and free will, and hence of a moral worth and dignity that demand respect. The dialectical movement of both thought and being are a passage from initial unity to final multiplicity, through two intermediary stages of relation and combination. The superior being is one who is wise, humane, and courageous, who is motivated by righteousness instead of profit, and who loves other people. A person is good by nature, but only by nature people are alike, but through practice they have become far apart. All children know how to love their parents and a person seeing a child about to fall into a well will instinctively try to save him because human nature is originally good.  #RandophHarris 4 of 7

Remember principle: no expediency, no compromise. The four main principles of humanity are altruism, righteousness, propriety,  and wisdom—and the innate knowledge of the good and the innate ability to do good. Evil is due not to one’s nature but to bad environment, lack of education, and casting oneself away. The superior person is one who develops one’s mind to the utmost and nourishes one’s nature. The nature of some is essentially evil. They seek for gain and are envious. Because conflict and strife inevitably follow, rules of propriety and righteousness have been formulated to control evil and to train humans to be good because propriety and righteousness has to be taught to some as their native nature has been corrupted and they abuse people and do drugs because they to recognize humanity and righteousness originated with Heaven. It is the will of Heaven that people should practice humanity and righteousness, be economical, and practice universal love, and it is human’s duty to obey the will of Heaven. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

The harmonious development of the individual in society is through the investigation of things, the extension of knowledge, the sincerity of the will, the rectification of the mind, the cultivation of the personal life, the regulation of the family, national order, and World peace. The goal is a harmonious World in which people and society are well developed and adjusted. The virtues, such as kindness, benevolence, and affection are the way in which we can get a life that has no lust, no self-interest, and is not sensitive to the ridicule of others. Humanity is the moral character, which enables humans to attain true fellowship. The moral character is developed in oneself and in one’s relations with others. A person wishing to establish one’s own character, also established the character of others. This is the two aspects of conscientiousness and altruism. By this time a clear distinction between what is good, correct, or proper and what is evil, incorrect, or improper has be made. God wants the innate sense of correctness fully exercised through the precision of and distinctions made in law, rules of propriety, and music. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

The Spirit of God witnesses to the redemption of our Lord and nothing else. The Spirit witnesses only to His own nature and to the work of redemption, never to our own reason. If we are trying to make God witness to out reason, it is no wonder that we are in darkness and uncertainty. Throw it all overboard, trust in God, and God will give you the witness of the Spirit. We have to correct errors in our hearts (moral errors). Centrality in the individual is the state of equilibrium in one’s mind before the feelings are aroused, and harmony is the state after they are aroused. In society centrality and harmony together mean complete concord in human relations. Ultimately, through the moral principle, Heaven and Earth will attain their proper order and all things will flourish in a harmonious universal operation. When the individual behaves correctly and society operates in the right manner, the way of God is aid to prevail. The way of God is the moral law, and moral order. It is the way of Heaven. Heaven is the Supreme Reality. Love levels all distinction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

 The Winchester Mystery House

Why would a ghost haunt anywhere? If there is an afterlife, it must be more interesting then here. However, this is not a science with clear-cut rules. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Real love can only arise where there is either a void in the heart, occasioned by the falsehood or indifference of a once favorite object, or where love before has never been admitted. The crime of loving is, when that love leads us to the injury of others. God is essentially rational. To be a good Christian is to share in God’s rationality, as distinct from blindly obeying an omnipotent will. God, being rational, will ordain what is good, but what he ordains is good in its own nature, not because he ordains it. To go against Reason is to go against God; it is the self-same thing, to do that which the Reason of the case doth require; and that which God Himself doth appoint: Reason is the Divine Governor of Human’s Life; it is the very Voice of God. Reason hath too much given to it. It is not the least evil attendant upon the frequent exhibition of this last dread punishment, of Death, that it hardens the minds of those who deal it out, and makes them, though they be amiable people in other respects, indifferent to, or unconscious of, their great responsibility.  

The relationship between God and morality is a doctrine as a binding creed. Some cry out against sin even as the mother cries out against her child in her lap, when she calleth it slut and naught girl, and then falls to hugging and kissing it. Whispering and change of thoughts proves that sin is in the World. How can we argue about God’s power in the other stars from the laws which he has given for our rule in this one? As poisonous adders luck beneath the cover of the most delightful shrubberies, so falsity and deceit are concealed under alluring language.  Some are drawn by love, others are driven by terrors, to their Divine refuge. There is no genuine and proper effect of religion where the mind of the human is not composed, sedate, and calm. The distrust of enthusiasm can scarcely be more succinctly formulated. Platonists stand for the idea of a single church to which everybody can belong to who was neither an atheist nor a papist; this church is conceived as a broad Christian society within which humans can seek salvation in their own way rather than as a sect with an inflexible creed.  

Christianity, in the eyes of the Platonists, is a way of life; rituals and creeds can be assistance to godliness but nothing more. The nickname latitudinarian which their enemies fastened upon them is an admirable description of their religious attitude. Some believe that there is a distinction between reason and faith; and that religion is a matter of faith, not of reason. What has not reason in it, or for it is human’s superstition: it is not religion of God’s making. Nevertheless, both reason and faith are intertwined for they are both made morality dependent upon the will, even if in one case it was the will of the sovereign and in the other the will of God. And furthermore, experience and knowledge also are involved with both faith and reason. By carrying mechanical explanation too far—into the realm of the living as distinct from the inanimate—some threaten they spiritual interpretation of the Universe. The belief in witchcraft, which has been revived and strengthened in the twenty first century, leads several to believe that to deny witches and apparitions will lead straight to atheism.   

At times, many people display a degree of credulity which is somewhat startling even by seventeenth-century standards. Careful reasoning, exact argumentation, and liberality of spirit are joined with uncritical speculation, unscholarly interpretation, and fanciful legends to a degree which bewilders and confuses the modern reader. These characteristics are interesting and important though many of their ideas are, difficult and often very tedious. To ignore these ideas, however, is to run the risk of misunderstanding and grossly oversimplifying the history of British speculative ideas and moral attitudes, which are too often take to be wholly dominated by empiricist and utilitarian concepts. Undoubtedly, too, for all the vagaries, the general effect is to increase human’s confidence in rationality and their willingness to tolerate beliefs with which they disagreed. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individual natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. The Savior has set us free from sin, but this is the freedom that comes from being set free from myself by the Son. We tend to rely on our own energy instead of being energized by the power that comes from identification with Christ.  

In movies and television shows, the specificity of the language that is used in rehearsal extents to the actors’ offstage speech. Their talk is riddled with the expressions from films and that sometimes if you are confusing your emotional experiences with your judgments, your work becomes vague. If you ask an actor, “How did that feel?” they will immediately say: “It felt good” or “That felt bad.” Both of those are judgements. So, we never say, “How did that feel?” at the end of a scene, because it invites them to go to the judgment part of their brain. Instead, when Ryan Phillippe directs a production he asks, “Did you notice any specific feelings that came up for you doing that scene?” That way they learn to name emotional experiences: “I felt angry when he said that.” “I felt scared when he looked at me and my heart started to hurt.” Becoming embodied helps actors realize that they have many different emotions. The more they notice, the more curious they get. They have to learn to speak so that can be heard. Their final performance means facing the community. Actors step out into the World, and experience another level of vulnerability, danger, or safety, and they find out how much they can trust themselves. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6

Gradually the eagerness to succeed, to show that they can do it, takes over. There comes a point when an actor sense their intrinsic value of the experience of their jobs and as members in the community. Therapy and acting are intuition at work. They are different forms of research, where one strives to step outside of one’s own personal experience, even outside of their own bodies to test the objective validity of assumptions. What makes therapy effective is deep, subjective resonance and that deep sense of truth and veracity that lives in the body. Actors are able to combine the rigor of scientific methods, religion, and research with the power of embodied intuition to make their performances seem more real than your daily lives. We are on the verge of becoming a trauma-conscious society. Almost every day one of my colleagues published another report on how trauma disrupts the workings of mind, brain, and body. When it comes to healing ourselves, it is beneficial to be cautious. We become aware of all the guilt-mongers in our life and their deleterious influences. The true test of a saint’s life is not successfulness but faithfulness on the human level of life. We tend to set up success in Christian work as our purpose, but our purpose should be to display the glory of God.  

The Winchester Mystery House

Some houses do not want to be sold, and these types of homes have plans for their “guests.” https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience and a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience, but remember that endurance must suppose pain. Conscience (conscientia), as a subjective mode of revelation, is closely related to the sense of divinity. Conscience too, is part of the native endowment of all humans, written upon the heart of all. It is sort of knowledge whose object is God’s will; or, equivalently, the difference between good and evil, the law of God, or the law of nature. Inward law written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the [Decalogue]. Decalogue is the Ten Commandments, the list of ethical principles in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:4-21 in the Holy Bible. It is a basic set of rules carrying binding authority. The Decalogue requires perfect love of God and of our neighbor. Of all liars and false accusers, a sick conscience is the most inventive and indefatigable. However, no evil is insupportable (unable to be endured; intolerable), but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. 

The subjective awareness of divinity and of its will can be supplemented by reflecting on the structure of the external World and the pattern of history. [God has] not only sowed in human’s minds that seed of religion of which we have spoken but revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole work-human-ship of the Universe. As a consequence, humans cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see God. The Universe is a large book, a mirror, and a theater for the display of God’s attributes—preeminently for the display of his goodness to us but also of his glory, wisdom, power, and justice. God can be known through his works, but not by speculation concerning his essence. It is by nourishing God’s sense of divinity and his conscience, with the contemplation of God’s works, that humans can in principle arrive at a knowledge of God. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly, we feel his presence when his works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where his Worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest his infinitude, his omnipotence, his omnipresence. 

When you would conceive of the great Being truly and fully, you must be able to realize the duration of eternity, obliterate the little periods of time and chronology, which require a starting and resting-place in our human minds—soar out of the reach of the sickly atmospheres which surround these little planets, and stand straight in the broad and fathomless light of God’s own atmosphere. Nothing, but vast wisdom and unlimited power should dare to sweep off humans in multitudes; for it is only the one that can know the necessity of the judgment; and what is there, short of the other, that can replace the creatures of the Lord? Human folly is not needed to fill up the great design of God. There is no stature, no beauty, no proportions, nor any colours in which humans themselves can well be fashioned, that is not already done to their hands. Humans only reap the harvest they have sown in the World. Even in this life, God is just. Long may it remain in this mixed World a point not easy of decision, which is the more beautiful of the Almighty’s goodness—the delicate fingers that are formed for sensitiveness and sympathy of touch, and made to minister to pain and grief, or the rough hard hand, that the heart teaches, guides, and softens in a moment 

Sin is a resistance to God’s demands. Thus, sin is not primarily ignorance about God; although such ignorance, or blindness will always be a consequence. Sin is an active willful opposition to God, as a positive refusal to acknowledge his demands of worship and obedience and as a deliberate alienation from him. Its prime characteristic is perversity, and its root is ordinarily pride and self-love.  A person who does not know God because he or she refuses to worship and obey him can still know or believe a variety of propositions about God that happen to be true. I hold with Christ that afflictions are not sent by God in wrath as penalties for sin. Human’s natural ability to know God is the greatest genius. Certainly, I do not deny that one can read competent and apt statements about here and there in the philosophers. However, knowing or believing competent and apt proposition about is not sufficient for knowing God; human’s proud refusal to worship and obey God led them to resist acknowledging the truth about God. Sin, although primarily a matter of the will, infects human’s reason as well. 

Perversity leads to blindness and distortion, and these people infected by sin always show a giddy imagination. Their seeing does not direct them to the truth, much less enable them to attaint it. Thus, human’s willful alienation from God is not merely that one does not know God, but also that one’s views about God are not so incomplete and distorted that nothing at all can be built on them. People who do not know God are always infuriated and ignorant because the effects of sin are far more pervasive then have been indicated. Not only does sin disrupt human’s relation to God; it thereby spreads corruption throughout the whole of human, animal, and plant life. Of course, sin does not impair the human’s natural faculties as such, not immediately, anyway. Reason and will are humanities chief faculties, and human beings in sin may be as intelligent and as capable of making decisions as the individual who knows God. The corruption is to be found, rather, in the use we make of our native capacities. The greatest spirits, when overwhelmed by their afflictions, are subject to the greatest dejections. 

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil. If we are to state accurately what sin does to human’s use of their native talents, we must distinguish between human’s supernatural gifts, their abilities concerning Heavenly things, and their natural gifts, and their abilities concerning Earthly things. The supernatural gifts comprise human’s ability to know God, to worship him properly, and to obey him inwardly as well as outwardly. However, we have been stripped of these gifts. The natural gifts pertain to matters of the present life, such as government, household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts. Concerning these, our abilities have certainly not been destroyed. Not only are ancient law, medicine, and natural philosophy worthy of the highest admiration, but humans, even in their estrangement from God, retains some sense of the laws that must be obeyed if human society is to be preserved. Humans, through natural instinct, are supposed to foster and preserve society.  

Consequently, we observe that there exist in all human’s minds Universal impressions of a certain civic fair dealing and order…And this is ample proof in the arrangement of this life no human is without the light of reason. However, although the human’s abilities concerning Earthly things have not been destroyed, they have been profoundly corrupted. Both reason and will have been gravely wounded; the mind is both weak and plunged into deep darkness. And depravity of the will is all too well known. If human’s natural gifts are to be restored, their sin must be overcome; they must come to know God. We have already seen that for this purpose human’s conscience, their sense of divinity, and their awareness of God’s revelation in the objective World are all inadequate. How can you remove God from a World he created, and expect people to behave? Because they are not God’s people. They worship meaningless paper, and will burn the flesh and spill blood for paper, because that is their deity. However, God’s people know, no matter what people put you through, all this pain and suffering is better than burning in Hell for eternity. 

Thus, if human life is to be renewed, it is necessary that God should choose some special means. This he in did by revealing himself with special clarity to the World, culminating in the life and words of the Holy Bible. When God leads people to respond to this revelation with faith, then humans again knows God. Indeed, faith, consisting as it does in clear knowledge about God coupled with proper worship and true obedience, is a certain sort of knowledge of God—that sort which focuses on Christ as interpreted in the Scriptures. Thus, there is never a contrast between faith in God and knowledge of God; rather, given human’s prior perversity, faith is the only kind of knowledge of God availed to humans. Also, faith is never understood in scholastic fashion as an assent to divinely revealed propositions. Rather, the object of faith is God as revealed in Christ. The death side—in the process of sanctification, the Spirit of God will strip me down until there is nothing left but myself, and that is the place of death. Lord, show me what sanctification means for me. He will show me. It means being made one with Jesus. Sanctification is not something Jesus puts in me—it is Himself in me!