Have always the idea of pleasing before you, and you cannot fail to please. Who strives to please the World will be deservedly rewarded. It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco, California USA. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next World. However, flatter not yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the blessings set before you, makes your choice, and be content. Pity from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is a sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts: it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them.  

If you were sensible of your own good, you would not wish quite the sphere in which you have been brought up. Observe that great, mean, brown bird in the zoological gardens, which sits so tame on its perch, and droops and slouches like a drowsy duck. That is the great and soaring eagle Who would believe it, to look at him? Yet all he wants is to be out in his right place instead of his wrong. He is not himself in man’s cages, belonging to God’s sky. Fellow mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people—amongst whom your life is passed—that is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire—for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. 

All primitive periods, in all countries, are distinguished by the passions for gaming and drinking, and by such a degree of invention as will enable men to gratify both. The fact illustrates the necessity of the race for mental exercise, and for the excitement of the nervous system. The art of reading the inner human nature by the outer aspects is of immeasurable interest and boundless practical value, and the man who can practice it skillfully and apply it sagaciously is on the high road to fortune. Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity. Why sacrifice the living to the dead, the present to the past? The past is a fruitless dream, the present only is living and demands all things. There are times when, the elements being in unusual commotion, those who are bent on daring enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts, whether of good or evil, feel a mysterious sympathy with the tumult of nature, and are roused into corresponding violence.   

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and a heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another, each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subjects. It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. People of high intellectual endowments do not require similar ones in those they love. They are just the persons to appreciate the wholesome gush of natural feeling, the honest affection, the simple joy, the fullness of contentment with what they love.   

 A person who is not trying to maneuver you into any state is willing to be with you as you are. When you love someone, the strategies involved in manipulating reality to conform to the expectations and enhance the being of a self at the center to drop away. This psychology understands trauma and the reactive tendencies that construct a self in relation to trauma as a belief system grounded in images and memories, and not the fullness of what is. The process proceeds according to the timing and pacing of the individual who understands they are seeking healing, and this will grant you the most useful art of all, the art of life. Everything in nature presses and urges the other; and a new life originates from every passing.   

To realize the human condition is to become anything more than a well-clothed animal, one has to act as if there were a moral order behind the thunder, and yet one must make this choice, if one makes it, knowing that it will never necessarily be vindicated—not at any rate, by the light of this World. In such a World, we see many with a remorseless logic, when people say that it is okay to terminate someone because of their sexuality. We must seek the meaning of our human fate not in what becomes of us but in what we become. Death is miscellaneous and commonplace; it is life whose quality may be noble and distinctive. Suffering we recoil from, but it is a greater thing to suffer than to lack the feelings and the virtues that make it possible to suffer. When we come crying hither, we bring with us the badge of our mortal misery; but it is also the badge of the vulnerabilities that give us access to whatever grandeur we achieve. This presence is nonjudging, spacious, compassionate, and loving. It pervades everywhere, containing and seeing all things. Love is always present and welcomes everything. Sensation, emotion, thought, conflict, sorrow, and joy all arise, unfold, and have their resolution in Awareness.  Awareness has no stake in anything being other than it is or anyone being other than they are. This welcoming attribute of awareness enables people to find their psychological freedom and to eventually realize their official freedom when their separate ego-identity entirely dissolves.

The essential quality of awareness is the capacity to hold an environment of healing—a place where you can unfold your deepest experiences of conflict, pain, and trauma, working through projection and transference and uncovering solutions appropriate to each life circumstance. When people recognize their underlying nature as spacious nonjudging, compassionate, and loving presence, causeless equality emerges. The perfume that arises from this profound insight lingers even as residues of separation remain. With repeated insight, these residues become transparently permeable to the underlying fragrance of awareness. Our true nature is always present, even when it is unrecognized. Once glimpsed, however, it leaves behind an unmistakable scent that stimulates the individual’s longing to return from conflict and suffering to the presence that is perfect as it is. As psychological insight and integration unfold, some individuals become available for healing beyond their former self, when they thought that they were alone and isolated, and become a more peaceful and loving person because they recognize the territory that they are navigating, whether it is personal psychology or personal awareness and health-giving occurs. As people stop trying to change, and just listen to their subtle body sensations, emotions, beliefs, and mental images, their defenses against being authentic melt away, and they enter into truly being with what is. As defenses dissolve and integrative insights spontaneously appear we are subject only to what we hold in mind. The body will respond to what we believe consciously or unconsciously because the energy field of the mind is more powerful than that of the body. 

Our proneness to accept negative beliefs depends on how much negativity we are holding in the first place. A healthy mind, for instance, will refuse to accept negative thoughts and simply reject them as untrue for oneself. There is a refusal to buy into commonly held negative ideas. We know how easy it is to sell self-condemnation to a guilt-ridden person or fear of some disease to a fearful person. The idea that everybody is crazy will be subscribed to by a person who has sufficient guilt, fear, and naiveté regarding the laws of consciousness. Because of unconscious guilt, a person unconsciously feels that they “deserve” to be crazy. The mind of a person who is weak or guilty of doing bad things will manifest a mental health issue because they believe it to be true and are unable to control their mind and correct behavior which may be deviant. However, the person who has let go of the underlying negative energies of guilt and fear does not have a fearful mind and does not look at everyone else as stupid nor crazy, they just see them as people having an experience, and if they do not like that experience, they stay away from them. Thought is powerful because it has a high rate of vibration. A thought is actually a thing; it has an energy pattern. The more energy we give it; the more power it has to manifest itself physically. We must let go of everything, drop every fear from our minds, drop all confusion from our thought, and enter into the inner secret communion with that great reality, which is our Universal Self—God—in whom we live and move and have our being. We are conscious that this Divine Presence overshadows and indwells. The Universe is eternal and perfect, and we all are loved and perfect as we are.

Willingness is a necessary component of awareness. People often arrive to therapy with negative expectations and considerable resistance. However, throughout the period they hung in despite defensiveness, uncertainty, and the demand for change. Many people left feeling less demoralized, more confident, and with specific steps to implement a denomination-wide strategy. From isolated, reactive, independent activity a more related, rational, collaborate understanding emerged. Again, however, I warn you not to assume that all problems were solved, and all people satisfied. Yet, more was accomplished than anyone imagined possible. The issue in the systems approach as much as in the individual approach is seldom the maximum distance covered and usually a minimum change in direction. As in sailing the Albatross in a White Squall, at first the change seems so minute as to be insignificant. Over time, those few degrees of difference stretch into significant directional consequences.  Even though we are constantly reacting to immediate and emergency situations, we take time to think through and plan strategically long-range responses to human pain. Adrenaline is one of the hormones that are critical to help us fight back or flee in the face of danger. Increased adrenaline was responsible for our participants’ dramatic rise in heart rate and blood pressure while listening to their trauma narrative. Under normal conditions people react to threat with a temporary increase in their stress hormones. As soon as the threat is over, the hormones dissipate, and the body returns to normal. The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders. They may also contribute to many long-term health issues, depending on which body system is most vulnerable in a particular individual.  

We now know that there is another possible response to threat, which our scans are not yet capable of measuring. Some people simply go into denial: Their bodies register the threat, but their conscious minds go on as if nothing has happened. However, even though the mind may learn to ignore the messages from the emotional brain, the alarm signals do not stop. The emotional brain keeps working, and stress hormones keep sending signals to the muscles to tense for action or immobilize in collapse. The physical effects on the organs go on unabated until they demand notice when they are expressed as illness. Medications, drugs, and alcohol can also temporarily dull or obliterate unbearable sensations and feelings. However, the body continues to keep the score. Too much sand, not enough maids and mops—that was our presenting problem. By re-viewing and re-visioning what we see and what we do, we can transform an overwhelming take into a more manageable endeavor. It would be illusory and utopian to act with the belief that through one’s involvement all will work out well for everyone. The task of humanizing society is ongoing. No particular task matters officially; every particular task has a place in the swirling constellations of history. No one can do everything. Each one is called to do something. It is not incumbent upon us to finish the task, but neither are we free to desist. We can focus on the neurochemical and physiological disruptions that were so evident and make a case that some people are suffering from a biochemical imbalance that is reactive whenever they are reminded of a death or massacre like the one that happen in Orlando, Florida USA, on 12 June 2016, when a gunman shot 103 people, killing at least 50. We might then search for a drug or a combination of drugs that would damp down the reaction or, in best case, restore the survivors’ chemical equilibrium. Based on the results of our scans, some have begun investigating drugs that might make people less responsive to the effects of elevated adrenaline.  

We can also make a strong case that the survivors of the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida USA are hypersensitized to their memories of the recent past and that the best treatment would be some form of desensitization. After repeatedly rehearsing the details of the trauma they witnessed at the nightclub with a therapist, the survivors’ biological responses might become muted, so that they can realize and remember that that was then and this is now, rather than reliving the experience over and over. However, sometimes the experience of trauma gets in the way of being able to talk about the distressing feelings so they can be resolved. No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality. I am continually impressed by how difficult it is for people who have gone through the unspeakable to convey the essence of their experience. It so much easier for them to talk about what has been done to them—to tell a story of victimization and revenge—than to notice, feel, and put into words the reality of their internal experience. The dread of these horrible experiences persists and could be triggered by multiple aspects of daily experience. They have not integrated their experience into the ongoing stream of their life. They continue to be there, but do not know how to be here—fully alive in the present. In responding to human pain, we risk what is known for what is yet to be known. We give up safety for searching. We lose life for the sake of life. If we are to respond, then we risk that risk. To me, risking risk means trusting God! In that trust I respond…keep yourself free to pursue activities that really matter to you, such as creative pursuits, platonic friendships, playtime with pets or the children in your life, open yourself up to spiritual practice, travel, and safe adventure. Give your time generously to family and other relevant communities in your life. Take some time to observe, reflect, and consider whether people are bringing good into your life. And most importantly, love yourself. 

Technology seems to be the official enemy of soul. When we speak of technology today we automatically think of electronic technology, so to pit technology against soul is the same as setting up the opposition of soul and electricity; they seem to have nothing to do with each other. So, we are faced with a large task, the mission first of seeing how this opposition arises and what it entails, and then seeing how it might be possible to recover an element of soul in technology.  #Techne refers to making of doing, and logos to know. Thus, technology concerns the kind of knowing involved in doing, and belongs to every act of making. The potter and the artist, for instance, employ technology; they know what they are doing, and without the sense of technology any consideration of art is pure romanticism. With electronic technology, however, a difficulty arises, for here doing is ahead of knowing due to the fact that, as we shall see, we really do not know the nature of electricity but nevertheless go ahead and use it for the development of a technical World.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

Because we do not truly know the nature of nuclear energy, a similar difficulty arises with its use, much like with the use of electricity. We do not know what forces are at play, but we go ahead and make use of them anyway. Now, the immediate response may be that our most sophisticated knowledge lies in these two realms of electricity and nuclear physics. However, this “knowledge” is all theoretical and involves application of views of reality that function contrary to the way we actually experience the World. Technology is to improve the human situation. Technology constitutes not just an addition or supplement to the World, but an entirely new reordering of the World by being forgetful of the actual World and imposing on it an alien form. Remember Narcissus? He is an adolescent, pride-filled individual loved by Echo, the nymph who through certain circumstances has been brought to a condition in which she can only repeat the last words of each sentence she hears—that is the extent of her voice. Thus, if Echo hears someone say, “I love you,” she could only repeat, “love you.”  #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

Well, Narcissus will have nothing to do with Echo and she wastes away; only her voice remains. We can already see the suitability of the relation of Narcissus and Echo, for any statement Narcissus might make about the World is echoed back as a Narcissistic command from the World—“I Love you” comes back as “Love you.” Narcissus, we hear in the story, comes to a clear pool and therein sees an image, which he does not know to be himself, and he falls in love with this image of himself, which we can also take as a further manifestation of Echo.  While Narcissus seeks to slake his thirst another thirst springs up, and while he drinks he is smitten by the sight of the beautiful form he sees. He loves an unsubstantial hope and thinks that substance which is only his shadow. As a result, Narcissus wastes away in longing for the unsubstantial shadow; a flower is left, its yellow center girt with white petals. This myth corresponds as a story about technology, through which we fall in love with a shadowy replica or imitation of ourselves, exteriorized and echoing through the World.  #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

The exteriorized self lacks the substantiality of body, though it offers the shadowy hope of complete satisfaction. Technology then concerns the extension of ourselves into the World without the knowledge that this is happening. For example, with mechanical technology, parts of the body are extended into the World. The wheel is both an extension and an acceleration of walking. We, however, are unable to cope with the acceleration—it disturbs the senses. This disturbance is handled by anesthetizing the body, we begin to lose the immediate sense of the body.  With electronic technology the brain is exteriorized into the World, resulting in the autoamputation of thinking, and we enter the age of information which comes to imitate thought. And along with the imitation, or double of thought, comes the hope that this dummy thought will produce complete satisfaction. We can begin to see through electronic technology when we are able to feel that its naïve hope resembles to a very large extent the same experience as the longing for past; that is to say, the technological imagination touches upon the same psychic domain as nostalgia; they both involve fantasies of infantilism.  #RRandolphHarris 4 of 5

The memory of being unconscious, fully immersed in the World, and completely taken care of is the same as the hope for a future World in which technology will provide these same benefits. That is to say, technology, when enacted without conscious knowledge of what is involved, is not progress but regression. As social media replaces the human connection, more and more people become very ignorant and spy of people and think they know them when they do not. Finding the soul of technology requires that this confusion be clarified, this false hope abandoned, in order to diminish an inflated view of what technology is about and to locate its own limited domain. Every man may, by examining his own mind, guess what passes in the minds of others. When you feel that your own gaiety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your companions not to be sincere. The selfishness of a man’s nature soars triumphant above all other considerations, in a time of war; and life becomes as small a subject of consideration as any one of its circumstances. Have you ever seen I am picking up the missing for you in a night spring breezing in the yard full of moonlight, I miss you very much. Time can change a lot of things except for my memory of you never change. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

This is what y’all been waiting for, I guess so. This what they been waiting a long time for. Yes, he could not read into that farewell all that his heart craved to find there; he could even draw from it courage not to accuse himself for having failed to reach the height of his opportunity. He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart; since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed him had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. However, at least he had loved him—had been willing to stake his future on his faith in him—and if the moment had been rated to pass from them before they could seize it, he saw now that, for both, it had been saved whole out of the ruin of their lives. It was this moment of love, he knelt by the bed and bent over the body, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.  

All mental illness is not caused by chemical imbalance. Take for example a celebrity who people are allowed to extort, harass, and physical assault for decades without being stopped. He may display signs of a mental illness due to the attacks, but under normal conditions could be the picture of mental health. There is no medication you can take to make people obey the law, stop assaulting you and give your money back. Yet, the people who have been allowed to attack you face no repercussion. They are not punished for their dangerous and illegal behavior, no one talks about how it is deviant to make fun of people you know are suffering, injured or in need of help. They are not arrested, nor sent for mental evaluations. Nonetheless, for so many people to be doing all of this acting and clowning, you know they did something wrong and are trying desperately to set you off, and make it look like you are mentally ill to justify their behavior.  

Unless these critics are trying to say that you are superhuman and controlling them and causing them to react because you are alive and should not be. Well, that would be indicative of a mental illness on their behavior and a violation of God’s law, granting humans free will. In other words, they are rejecting God and telling you that they are primal animals and savage beast, unable to control their emotions, and actions and therefore are not human. The drug revolution started out with so much promise and may in the end have done as much harm as good. The theory that mental illness is caused primarily by chemical imbalances in the brain can be corrected by specific drugs has become broadly accepted, by the media and the public as well as by the medical professions. Face it, people who are stuck whimpering and focusing daily on talking about defecation, and or that play with feces display traits of mental illness or howler monkeys and belong in a zoo or the bush in Africa.  

In many places, drugs have displaced therapy and enabled patients to suppress their problems without addressing the underlying issues. Antidepressants can make all the difference in the World in helping with day-to-day functioning, and if it comes to a choice between taking a sleeping pill and drinking yourself into a stupor every night to get a few hours of sleep, it is uncertain which method is preferable. I do not like either because I fear taking a sleeping pill, like Lily in The House of Mirth, and never walking up again. We also hear stories about people going into a trance like state and operating heavy machinery and falling asleep, or having a psychotic episode and not really being aware of what they are doing or saying. Also, pills are not good for your liver, nor is liquor, and a person could drink themselves do death. So many people simply tough it out, but for some, medications can bring lifesaving relief. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) can be very helpful in making traumatized people less enslaved by their emotions, but they should only be considered adjuncts in their overall treatment.  

Also, when it comes to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I think that is a term, which can only be applied to veterans and law enforcement officers, because normal people are not in daily situations where they are hunted, shot at stabbed, dealing with explosive devices, seeing people killed, killing people, protecting more nor hearing violent and sad stories. The average person might be misdiagnosed with PTSD, but may only have a type of panic disorder or an extreme mood disorder. After conducting numerous studies of medications for PTSD, I have come to realize that psychiatric medications have a serious downside, as they may deflect attention from dealing with the underlying issues. The brain disease model takes control over people’s fate out of their own hands and puts doctors and insurance companies in charge of fixing their problems. And some people are just lazy and want a free taxpayer check and do not want to get better. 

If a regular person has a mental condition and is taking medications to improve this condition and working, after seven years, they should have adapted enough to be able to obtain gainful employment. These people party, they drink, they do drugs like rockstars, but even after decades are unable to work, so they must suffer from some extreme brain injury, which inhibits them from functioning normally. Some people are taking out loans to pay for medical care and being their own doctors to fix themselves because due to their physical conditions, there is nothing the doctor can do to help them. Some are born with birth defects or have physical conditions, which take time to heal. Over the past three decades psychiatric medications have become a mainstay in our culture, with dubious consequences. If these drugs were truly effective as we are told to believe, depression should be a minor issue by now. Instead, even as antidepressant use continues to increase, it has not made a dent in hospital admissions or those collecting government benefits for depression.  

In fact, the number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past twenty years, and one in ten Americans now take antidepressants. The new generation of antipsychotics, such as Abilify, Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel (Sarah Pills), are the top-selling drugs in the United States of America. In 2012 alone, the public spent in $1,526,228,000.00 ($1.5 Billion) on Abilify, more than on any other medication. Number three was Cymbalta, an antidepressant that sold well over a billion dollars’ worth of tablets, even though it has never been shown to be superior to older antidepressants like Prozac, for which much cheaper generics available. Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, spends more on antipsychotic medications, up from $1.65 million in 1999. Many people are wondering why are these people not getting better? Many people are not getting better because they do not want to. They want to collect Social Security from the government and stay home and be lazy.  

If these people are suspected frauds, then why do we still pay them, why has the system for disability not been overhauled? Because it is no longer acceptable to test medications and treatments on animals. So many of these people that are collecting these Social Security checks for a mental disorder are being used as case studies to see how well medications work and then doctors and analysts use the information to publish books on mental disorders and medications. After all, nothing is free and the government is not stupid. The number of people under the age of twenty receiving Medicaid-funded prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs tripled between 1999 and 2008. On 4 November 2013, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in criminal and civil fines to settle accusations that it had improperly promoted the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to older adults, children, and people with development disabilities. And doctors are also not being held accountable for prescribing them. Strong minds perceive that justice is the highest of the moral attributes; mercy is only the favorite of weak ones. Behold, all who are incensed against you shall be put to shame and confounded; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and perish. Panda, Panda.   

Keep yourself to yourself. Not quite in a god temper? Take a little time—count five-and twenty. Our souls are not our own. We convey a property in them to those with whom we associate; but to what extent can never be known, until we feel the tug, the agony, or our abortive effort to resume an exclusive sway over ourselves. A man of few words speaks few in vain. Frequently do we labor to secure the things that debase us into slaves, and overwhelm us with calamity. Weak men, who, meddling with things too high for them, do suddenly fall into distractions; which distractions do not only unman men, but they run upon desperate ventures to obtain they know not what. Is it meet to think that a little child should handle Goliath as David did? Or that there should be the strength of an ex in a wren? There is something almost pathetic in the humbleness of a young man’s strength before the object of his first true love. It is the abasement of the real before the ideal; but if the ideal fails, the real takes vengeance of the man for having trodden it under. The strength of a king is the love and friendship of his people. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything impossibly beautiful, strength has much to do with magic. It requires much personal strength, standing alone against the well-armed batteries of all one’s friends. We can see strength and not simply weakness. That means we emphasize the active quality of the left hemisphere, but in a way quite different from the exaggerated over intellectualization and overachievement drive that have so characterized it in the past. We work with the intentionality that is basic to every person. To cope enhances one’s ability to survive.

There are dormant and hidden assets in every person and within each situation, needing only some kiss of awareness to be awakened and made know. I am not strong enough to put the whole World right, however, even in our weaknesses, we are still strong. Even Caesar’s fortune at one time was but a grand presentiment. We know what masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. The World is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities. We can see people in process and not simply as finished products. Each experienced event both constitutes the effect of a configuration from the past and acts as a cause for further configuration in the future. Development and change are more fundamental than stasis and completion. Expectancy, the investing in and waiting upon that which lies ahead, influences the meaning and the management of every present. We have been imbued with “the breath of life” and thereby cannot be active in “our” World. Even in our arrivals, we are still on our way. What power is able to hold in chains a mind ardent and determined? What power can cause that man to die, whose whole soul commands him to continue to live? In battles there ought to be a doubtful fight and desperate end; in pleading a difficult entrance and a diffused determination; in love a life without hope and a death without fear. When provoked, the gentlest spirits are the most determined. It is natural for people, when they set their hearts upon anything, to think everybody must see with their eyes. When the journey lieth forward, it is unwise to look back. We can see places of caring and not merely individual needing care. The setting in which people interact are alive. They influence what does and does not happen. They predispose what can and cannot happen in those circumstances. Healing arises from within the system of interaction. 

Joy has come to live with me. How can I be sad? Happy people tend to have an elevated level of status in the community because they display a picture of mental health. Also, when you are able to brush off negative energy, or not let it ruin your day, even if you have a stern personality, it elevates your status in the social environment. Those who like to hurt others and bully, even if they do not realize it are annoying and looked down upon. After a traumatic event, many individuals experience distress and symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This distress may be highest when dealing with memories, thoughts, feelings, and situations that are related to the trauma. Exposure therapy is a type of treatment that helps one decrease distress about their trauma. This treatment works by helping one approach trauma related thoughts, feelings, and situations that one has been trying to avoid due to the distress that they case. Repeated exposure to these thoughts, feelings, and situations helps reduce the power they have to cause distress.  

It has been proven that strong emotions can block pain. And that is why sometimes when people are weak and not feeling well, if you upset them, the rage in their bodies will overcome the pain and suddenly they become strong. This also suggests that for many traumatized people, reexposure to stress might provide a similar relief from anxiety. It is kind of like exposure therapy, people may try to hurt you over and over by exposing you to painful memories, like reminding you of a death of a loved one, or making fun of your energies, but after they do it so much you build up a resistance to the stimuli and overcome it, so they lose their control over you. It is the body’s natural way of protecting itself. Kind of like when people insult you frequently or act strange around you, eventually you build up a resistance and ignore it because the body takes sudden and drastic measure to solve an intractable problem.

In order to benefit from prolonged exposure, it is helpful to learn about the common reactions to PTSD. Education allows you to learn more about your symptoms and understand the goals of treatment. It really helps a person to understand why they feel nervous or uneasy, and learn not to run from problems when there is no real threat. Also, one must learn to control their breathing, often times when we become upset we have breathing problems, but must take deep breathes in, through our nose, hold them for a few seconds and release them through our mouth, until are muscles are relaxed. Also, real World practice is helpful. Practice approaching situations that are safe, but which you have been avoiding because they are related to the trauma. An example might be someone who avoids driving because they were in a bad accident. It is suggested to drive when there is less traffic on the road, until you become comfortable again.   

In the same way, people wonder why some are celibate. Some do this to protect their bodies, others become they are a sexual trauma survivor and they may avoid getting close to others. So they may start off by just being in close proximity to others, and until they meet someone they vibe with and feel that they can trust. Sometimes talking about trauma over and over with a therapist is called imaginal exposure. Imaginal exposure will usually help one gets more control of their thoughts and feelings of the trauma. Over time, an individual will learn that they do not have to be afraid of their memories. It may be hard at first and it might seem unusual to think about stressful things on purpose. The ideal is to help one make sense of what happened and have fewer negative thoughts about. For instance, people may make fun of you for getting injured and losing a lot of blood and make jokes about you have a period, when it was actually from a traumatic injure. The more you hear it, the more you let go, and you make even make jokes about it to remove the stigma and let them know they are not bothering you. It also shows them how ignorant they are.   

The amygdala is a cluster of brain cells that determines whether a sound, image, or body sensation is perceived as a threat. The higher one’s serotonin levels are, the less likely you are to feel fear, which will make you less likely to become aggressive or frozen in response to potential threats. So if you are suffering from trauma, it is important to do healthy things that please you like smelling the roses, getting exercise, or listening to soft music. This will stimulate the serotonin levels in your brain, naturally, and make you feel more at ease without medication. And that is why some people find walks in the park so pleasant. The social environment interacts with brain chemistry and just being around other people and making eye contact with them has been proven to increase serotonin levels. However, when people are manipulated into a lower position in the dominance hierarchy, it makes their serotonin levels drop. In contrast, chemically enhancing serotonin levels has been shown to elevate the rank of former subordinates.  I am at peace and rest in the knowledge of love and the divine.  

Human beings tend to not like things to be complicated. We want the answers, the reason, the formula for making things work. That is true mostly when we are feeling mentally meticulous (sometimes we really need to digest the material and think about it) and also when the search for answers is dangerous or painful—when we might have to “go through hostile territory” to get answers. So, I tend to look for simplification. I try to find a common denominator, a theory reduced to a concise paragraph, statement, or better yet, to s simple phrase. And since my favourite subject is myself, I try to simplify my own behavior, as well. Men and women are endowed with every gradation of courage, from the calm energy of reflection, which is rendered still more effective by physical firmness, to the headlong precipitation of reckless spirit; from the resolution that grows more imposing and more respectable, as there is a greater occasion for its exercise, to the fearful and ill-directed energies of despair. Mind and matter glide swift into the vortex of immensity. People have a tendency to stereotype or categorize people. There is no man whose imagination does not sometimes predominate over his own reason, who can regulate his attention wholly by his will and whose ideas will come and go at his command. My imagination was a tarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures with which I did my best to people. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations. If the majority—however that is defined—do things in a certain way, then what they are doing is right, and what the others do is not. Behavior defined this way is called a statistical norm. If we all agree that fifty-one percent, or two-thirds, or ninety percent represents the majority, then the behavior of that percentage becomes the norm.  

 Perhaps the biggest and most benighted fools have been the best hell-makers. Whereas the best of our Heavens is but a poor perfunctory conception, for all that the highest and cleverest among us have done their very utmost to decorate and embellish it, and make life there seem worth living. So impossible it is to imagine or invent beyond the sphere of our experience. Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration: –reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat’s wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire. We cannot just accept the majority’s opinions of behavior as defining what is right, moral, good, or normal. The nature of men is always the same; it is their habits that separate them. Much of the Sacramento media acts like wild animals and they lie like it is their native language. Perhaps the problem is simply that people in different places do things differently, and that my “different” behavior might be acceptable in another culture or land. This is the cultural relativity position, which assumes that there are no absolute rules. Even today, when the laws forbid it, it is “normal” for reporters to hack personal email, stalk, and slander private citizens. However, still disapprove of or even feels horrified at the idea. So, there is something to be said for relativity. There are cultural patterns in each society and social class that appear strange to people outside of the group. However, this does not tell us if there are any cross-cultural (universal) patterns of “normal” or “abnormal” behavior.  

Hazing, or an initiation, rite, is defined as any humiliating or dangerous activity expected of you to join a group, regardless of your willingness to participate. Almost 2 million high school students, 48 percent of all students who join school groups, are hazed. Of these 2 million students, more than 800,000 were hazed when they joined their sports team, almost 560,000 were hazed by a peer group or gang, almost 300,000 were hazed when they joined a music, art, or theatre group, and almost 250,000 students were hazed when they joined a church group, and 80 percent of college athletes had experienced some form of hazing. Hazing purposely subjects prospective group members to a series of activities, often ludicrous and sometimes dangerous, designed to test the limits of physical exertion, psychological strain, and social embarrassment. The list of silly, stupid, or dangerous, illegal, and even lethal activities actually required by some groups as a rite of passage into groups is long. Examples include holding someone unexpectedly, while someone else hits them in the back of the head as hard as they can; taking students to the river at night and holding them by their arms and legs and you swing them and threaten to drop them in the river; abandoning students on mountaintops or in remote areas in bitter cold conditions without suitable clothing; repeatedly punching the stomach and kidneys of students who forget their parts of ritual incantations; incarcerating initiates in a locked storage closet for two days with only salty foods, no liquids; forcing initiates to abuse alcohol or illegal drugs. So as you see, what some communities deem as normal would be seen as insane and illegal by others. For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.