It is important to learn to control your Earthly body because you may think you are saved, and on Judgment Day find yourself roasting in Hades with the Morning Star. Society and culture play a significant role in individual human development. The main task of humans in life is to give birth to oneself, to become what one potentially is. The most important product of one’s effort is one’s own personality. Many dreams tend to hide their rue meaning and express it in forms which are not dissimilar to a political writer in a dictatorship, who expresses one’s thought between the lines or speaks about an event in classical Greece while really referring to contemporary event. This, the dream is never an open communication but is to be compared to a coded writing which has o be deciphered in order to be understandable. The coding has to be done in such a way that even the dreamer feels safe when one expresses ideas in one’s dream which do not fit into the thought patterns of the society in which one lives. The censorship has more of a social character then assumed, but at the moment this is of no importance. What matters is that the dream must be decoded. However, this insight in its simple and strict and uncompromising formulation often leads to erroneous results. Not every dream needs to be decoded and the degree of coding differs very much from dream to dream. Whether and to what extent coding is necessary depends on the sanctions which society puts against those who think unthinkable thoughts in their sleep and it also depends on such individual factors as how submissive and frightened a person is, and hence to what degree one feels in need of coding a thought which can be dangerous. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

When I say dangerous, I do not refer particularly to external sanctions of society against those who have dangerous thoughts. Indeed that happens too, and is not invalidated by the objection that after all our sleep thoughts—that is, our dreams—are secret and nobody knows about them. If it is important to avoid dangerous thoughts, one must not even think them in one’s dreams because they must remain deeply repressed. By dangerous thoughts, I mean thoughts which a person would be punished or might suffer in one’s daily life for having, if they were known. There are such thoughts, as we all know, and people have a good sense of what they had better not say and hence had better not think if they do not want to suffer disadvantages. However, I am speaking here mainly of thoughts which are dangerous not because they say something specific which would be sanctioned, but because they move out of the frame of reference of common sense. They are thoughts which are not shared by anybody else or by more than a very small group and hence they put a person in the position of feeling isolated, alone, out of contact. It is this very experience which contains the nucleus of insanity which occurs when a person has cut off completely any connection with others. However, we must go a little further than this. It is not an accident that simple-minded people, however spiritual, should blend the ideas of God and Heaven and the blue sky. It is a fact, not a fiction, that light and life-giving heat do come down from the sky to the Earth. The analogy of the sky’s role to begetting and of the Earth’s role to bearing is sound as far as it goes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The huge dome of the sky is of all things sensuously perceived the most like infinity. And when God made space and Worlds that move in space, and clothed our World with air, and gave us such eyes and such imaginations as those we have, He knew what the sky would mean to us. And since nothing in His work is accidental, if He knew, He intended it. We cannot be certain that this was not indeed one of the chief purposes for which Nature was created; still less that it was not one of the chief reasons why the withdrawal was allowed to affect human senses as a movement upwards. (A disappearance into the Earth would beget a wholly different religion.) The ancients in letting the spiritual symbolism of the sky flow straight into their minds without stopping to discover by analysis that it was a symbol, were not entirely mistaken. In one way were perhaps less mistaken than we. For we have falling into an opposite difficulty. Let us confess that probably every Christian now alive finds a difficulty in reconciling the two things one has been told about “Heaven”—that it is, on the one hand, a life in Christ, a vision of God in this life, the body seems almost irrelevance. And if we try to conceive our eternal life as one in a body (any kind of body) we tend to find that some vague dream of Platonic paradises and gardens of the Hesperides has substituted itself for that mystical approach which we feel (and I think rightly) to be more important. However, if that discrepancy were final then it would follow—which is absurd—that God was originally mistaken when He introduced our spirits into the Natural order at all. We must conclude that the discrepancy itself is precisely one of the disorders which the New Creation comes to heal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The fact that the body, and locality and locomotion time, now feel irrelevant to the highest reaches of the spiritual life is (like the fact that we can think of our bodies as “coarse”) a symptom. Spirit and Nature have quarrelled us; that is our disease. Nothing we can yet do enables us to imagine its complete healing. Some glimpses and faint hints we have: in the Sacraments, in the use made of sensuous imagery by the great poets, in the best instances of love, in our experiences of the Earth’s beauty. However, the full healing is utterly beyond our present conceptions. Mystics have got as far in contemplation of God as the point at which the sense are banished: the further point, at which they will be put back again, has (to the best of my knowledge) been reached by no one. The destiny of redeemed human is not less but more unimaginable than mysticism would lead us to suppose—because it is full of semi-imaginables which we cannot a present admit without destroying the essential character. One point must be touched on because, though I kept silence, it would none the less be present in most readers’ minds. The letter and spirit of scripture, and of all Christianity, forbid us to suppose that life in the New Creation will be an existence of pleasures of the flesh; and this reduces our imagination to the withering alternative either bodies which are hardly recognizable as human bodies at all or else of a perpetual fast. As regards the fast, I think our present outlook might be like that of a person being told that pleasures of the flesh were the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you get paid at the same time. On receiving the answer “No,” he might regard absence of money as the chief characteristic of pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures do not bother about money is that they have something better to think of. The young man knows money: he does not know the absolute thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the life of pleasures of the flesh; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other things which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it. Hence where fulness awaits us we anticipate fasting. In denying that life of pleasures of the flesh, as we now understand it, makes any part of the final beatitude, it is not of course necessary to suppose that the distinction of genders will disappear. What is no longer needed for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendour. Passionate intimacy is the instrument both of chastity, virginity, and conjugal virtue; neither men nor women will be asked to throw away weapons they have used victoriously. It is the beaten and the fugitives who throw away their swords. The conquerors sheathe theirs and retain them. As it stands here on Earth, the Law of Chastity states we are to have pleasures of the flesh only with our spouse to whom we are legally married. No one, male or female, is to have pleasures of the flesh before marriage. After marriage, pleasures of the flesh are permitted only with our spouse. “Thou shalt not commit adultery; and one that committeth adultery, and repenteth not, shall be cast out,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 42.24. I am well aware that this last paragraph may seem to many readers unfortunate and to some comic. However, that very comedy, as I must repeatedly insist, is the symptom of our estrangement, as spirits, from Nature and our estrangement, as terrestrial beings, from Spirit. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

The whole conception of the New Creation involves the belief that this estrangement will be healed. A curious consequence will follow. The archaic type of thought which could not clearly distinguish spiritual “Heaven” from the sky, is from our point of view a confused type of thought. However, it also resembles and anticipates a type of thought which will one day be true. That archaic sort of thinking will become simply the correct sort when Nature and Spirit are fully harmonized—when Spirit rides Nature so perfectly that the two together make rather a Centaur than a mounted knight. I do not mean necessarily that the blending of Heaven and sky, in particular, will turn out to be specially true, but that that kind of blending will accurately mirror the reality which will then exist. There will be no room to get the finest razor-blade of thought in between the Spirit and Nature. Every state of affairs in the New Nature will be the perfect expression of a spiritual state and every spiritual state the perfect informing of, and blood upon, a state of affairs; one with it as the perfume with a flower or the “spirit” of great poetry with its form. There is thus in the history of human thought, as elsewhere, a pattern of death and rebirth. The old, richly imaginative thought which still survives in Plato has to submit to the deathlike, but indispensable, process of logical analysis: nature and spirit, matter and mind, fact and myth, the literal and the metaphorical, have to be more and more sharply separated, till at las purely mathematical Universe and a purely subjective mind confront one another across an unbridgeable chasm. However, this descent also, if thought itself is to survive, there must be re-ascent and the Christian conception provides for it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Those who attain the glorious resurrection will see the dry bones clothed again with flesh, the fact and the myth remarried, the literal and the metaphorical rushing together. With this awakening one begins to relate one’s own purpose in life to the universal purpose. Like the falling of a bandage from the eyes of a blindfolded man, there will come plainly into one’s understanding the recognition of one’s past misdeeds, foolhardiness, and failings—all of them the consequence of one’s ignorant clinging to the ego. This is the vision which may come to one before one begins to purify oneself. A vivid, intense, and self-critical revelation of how “sinful” one has been may preceded, accompany, or follow the glimpse. It may shake one to one’s core. However, it cannot be said that one feels one has betrayed one’s best and higher being any more than it can be said a child has betrayed the adult it has not yet grown into. One understands this at the same time and so forgives oneself. That glorious glimpse wherein the All becomes bathed in the light of meaning, when the reality behind comes through and leaves one enriched: it is as if a web of illusion spun around the mind falls away. From that time one will look out on the World with clearer eyes. In the mystical happening of the Glimpse, the human gets the intuition that this is what one belongs to; here one can find rest. In the sunlit tranquility of such moments, one recognizes one’s true stature. In short, one possesses a kind of double entity, harbouring at times within one’s breast a life and consciousness that seem higher than what was originally and still is normally one’s own. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

In this moment of illumination one is able to look into the image of one’s own self, to see what is best and highest in it and accept that as one’s goal and ideal henceforth. One will know only that one stands in the presence of authority and love, truth and power, wisdom and beauty. The experience tells one vividly, luminously, and memorably that there is an existence beyond the physical one and a consciousness beyond the personal one. Another reason why glimpses are given to humans is to show one—as in a magic mirror—that there is such a thing as the Overself. These brief enlightenments give us clues to both the true way and the true goal. They point within. As the picture of the True comes forth, it obliterates the picture of the False which held one so long. The glimpse gives one an untrammelled consciousness of this freer and higher self. Disjointed fragments of comprehension may be picked up now and then, when the World-scene is lightened up by some grace. The passing from hope to certainty comes with the glimpse. As the glimpse lengthens, it draws the human to look into oneself. It is showing one what one is deep down—a vivid and personal demonstration! From that time life is susceptible of a higher interpretation, and its situations of a psychological meaning. The mind is irradiated with the light of a new understanding. The heart is lifted up into the joy of a new experience. What one now knows, one knows outside all doubting, immovably and unshakeably. One is now sure that there is a higher power behind this World. When this felicitous glimpse comes to a human it beings one certitude. One knows now that God IS and where He is. The glimpse not only throws a fresh impersonal light on all the episodes of one’s personal history that went before, but also on those which are happening now. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

One who penetrates to this inner citadel discovers what Saint Augustine called “the eternal truth of the soul.” The glimpse confirms existing religious faith and so strengthens it. At such times one feels the World mystery, for now that one knows so much esoteric truth one knows so little of THATT which is behind it all. The rapture of finding truth comes because it is truth. The revelation wells up slowly, quietly, deeply; it is unflatering and continues so long as one does not interrupt or interfere with it by one’s own thoughts. It is really one’s own innermost guide and guru, one’s higher self. It is in such moments of enlightenment that one comes to see that all these evils may be there, but they will do. “Seeing the point” which solves the problem of existence, suddenly getting the glimpse of what all this means, and nothing how it was here all the time staring one in the face, may cause a human to break out abruptly into laughter at oneself. One knows from this experience that one is incipient with a love that the World does not ordinarily know, with a goodness that it seldom sees in action, and with an understanding that lights up dark places in the course of life. Each glimpse is a precious gift to be treasured. However, we must also remember that it not only comes, but it also goes. This remembrance should make us treat its aftermath very carefully, very delicately, and very watchfully. The remark so often made that “Heaven is a state of mind” bears witness to the wintry and deathlike phase of this process in which we are now living. The implication is that if Heaven is a state of mind—or, more correctly, of the spirit—then it must be only a state of the spirit, or at least that anything else, if added to that state of spirit, would be irrelevant. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

That is what every great religion except Christianity would say. However, Christian teaching by saying that God made the World and called it good teaches that Nature or environment cannot be simply irrelevant to spiritual beatitude in general, however far in one particular Nature, during the days of her bondage, they may have drawn apart. By teaching the resurrection of the body it teaches that Heaven is not merely a state of the spirit butt a state of the body as well: and therefore a state of Nature as a whole. Christ, it is true, told His hearers that the Kingdom of Heaven was “within” or “among” them. However, His hearers were not merely in “a state of mind.” The planet He had created was beneath their feet, His sun above their heads; blood and lungs and guts were working in the bodies He had invented, photons and sound waves of Hs devising were blessing them with the sigh of His human face and the sound of His voice. We are never merely in a state of mind. The prayer and the meditation made in howling wind or quiet sunshine, in morning alacrity or evening resignation, in youth or age, good health or ill, may be equally, but are differently, blessed. Already in this present life we have all seen how God can take up all these seeming irrelevancies into the spiritual fact and cause them to bear no small part in marking the blessing of that moment to be the particular blessing it was—as fire can burn coal and wood equally but a wood fire is different from a coal one. From this factor of environment Christianity does not teach us to desire a total release. We desire, like St. Paul, not to be un-clothed but to be re-clothed: to find not the formless Everywhere-and-Nowhere but the promised land, that Nature which will be always and perfectly—as present Nature is partially and intermittently—the instrument for that music which will then rise between Christ and us. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

And what, you ask, does it matter? Do not such ideas only excite us and distract us from the more immediate and more certain things, the love of God and our neighbours, the bearing of the daily cross? If you find that they so distract you, think of then no more. I most fully allow that it is of more importance for you or me to-day to refrain from one sneer or to extend one charitable thought to an enemy than to know all that Angels and Archangels know about the mysteries of the New Creation. I write of these things because they are the most important but because this essay is about miracles. I suspect that our conception of Heaven as merely a state of mind is not unconnected with the fac that the specifically Christian virtue of Hope has in our time grown so languid. Where our father, peering into the future, saw gleams of gold, we see only the mist, white, featureless, cold and never moving. The though at the back of all this negative spirituality is really one forbidden to Christians. They, of all humans, must no conceive spiritual joy and worth as things that need to be rescued or tenderly protected from time and place and matter and he senses. Their God is the God of corn and oil and premium cranberry juice. He is the glad Creator. He has become Himself incarnate. The sacraments have been instituted. Certain spiritual gifts are offered us only on condition that we perform certain bodily acts. After that we cannot really be in doubt of His intention. To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from Ultimate Driving Machines instead of learning to ride in the gentleman’s express. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. However, behind all asceticism the thought should be, “If we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes, who will trust us with the true wealth the true wealth?” If I cannot control my Earthly body, who will trust me with a spiritual body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as pines are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride without worry, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and World-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawning and snorting in the King’s stables. Not hat the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else—since He has retained His own charger—should we accompany Him? [The Lord Said,] “My gracious favour is all you need. My power works best in your weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ may work through me, reports 2 Corinthians 12.9. My dear Devout, as you already know, there is no security in this life. As long as you live, you will have to bear spiritual arms. Why? Every day you traffic among enemies, and every day you are impugned from the right as well as from the left; that is as Paul described the Christian condition in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (6.7). Indeed, they are coming at you from all sides. If, therefore, you do not protect yourself with the Psalmist’s shield of patience (91.4), you will not be long without a wound. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Are you allowing your weaknesses and insecurities to keep you from being your best? Are you making excuses as to why you cannot take a new leadership position at work, or get involved in some program in your church, serve in your community, or help a friend in need? Rather than giving too much attention to your insecurities and weaknesses, decide today to focus on your God. Moreover, if you do not place your heart firmly in God, with the pure intention of suffering everything for God’s sake, you will not be able to sustain that ardor of yours, not will you be able to reach the palm of success at the end. God loves you and wants to help you achieve extraordinary success. You may have some doubt to your competence, but God will help you to overcome that. “These times I called upon the Lord and besought [Him] about this and begged that it might depart from me; but He said to me, My grace (My favour and loving-kindness and mercy) is enough for you [sufficient against any danger and enables you to bear the trouble manfully]; for My strength and power are made perfect (fulfilled and completed) and show themselves most effective in [your] weakness. Therefore, I will all the more gladly glory in my weakness and infirmities, that the strength and power of Christ (the Messiah) may rest (yes, may pitch a tent over and dwell) upon me! So for the sake of Christ, I am well pleased and take pleasure in infirmities, insults, hardships, persecutions, perplexities, and distresses; for when I am weak [in human strength], than I am [truly] strong (able, powerful in divine strength),” reports 2 Corinthians 12.9-10. God does not want your status to be based on someone else’s values. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

When you base you worth on nonbiblical concepts that are contrary to God’s opinion of you, it hurts His feelings. Yet many people do just that. Consequently, they feel insignificant and unworthy to receive God’s attention, much less His blessings. Their poor self-image keeps them from exercising their God-given gifs and authority, and it robs them of experiencing the abundant life their Heavenly Father wants them to have. Most often, the lack of joy and meaning in their lives is a direct result of how those individuals see themselves. What to do now? Verily, you have to act vilely, that is to say, heat up your resistance against all who oppose you. For the Torrid there will be manna at the end, or so the Book of Revelations promises (2.17); but for the Torpid there will be only misery in the aftermath. Beware of associating with or adopting the attitudes of people who, through their negative outlook and lack of self-esteem, will rob you of the greatness that God has for you. People may seem more powerful than you, like giants. However, our God is formidable, and much bigger. Granted the people are strong and can start a fight in an empty house, our God is stronger. Because of Him, we are well able. Let us go in at once and possess the land. Rest and repose you will have, but do you want it in this life or the next? Choose one. But which one. Which is better to choose, great rest or great patience? Choose the latter. Seek True peace, not on Earth, but in Heaven; not in Humankind or in other creatures, but in God alone. For the love of God you ought to freely undergo everything; that is to say, labours and dolors, temptations and vexations, anxieties and necessities, infirmities and injuries, apprehensions and reprehensions, humiliations and confusions. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

All these are stepping-stones to virtue. They test the raw recruit for Christ; they are materials of the Heavenly Crown. How do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as successful? Healthy? Upbeat? Happy? Do you see yourself as being used by God? Do you see yourself as “well able” to do what God wants you to do, strong in the Lord and the power of His might? Or have you allowed yourself to become defeated? God sees you as “well able” people, not disabled, not crazy, not broken, not evil, not ugly. Not because we are so powerful, but because our God is so powerful! When you face adversity and hardship in life, you can rise up with boldness and confidence, knowing that because of God, you are well able to overcome them. Learn to see yourself as God sees you—as a winner, an overcomer, as “well able.” God wants you to accomplish great things in life, and He has put incredible potential, gifts, and talents within you to enable you to do so. Start stepping out in faith and acting on the desire that He has placed in your heart. I acknowledge my weakness, Father, knowing that as I trust You to work in and through me, You make me strong. You make me adequate despite my insecurities; You provide the power to accomplish all that You ask me to do. Reward time. For a good if short life, God will return Eternal Life. For finite confusion on this Earth, God will give Infinite Confirmation. Do you think you will always have spiritual consolations? God’s Saints did not have them all the time. Most of the time what they had were depressions, temptations, and desolations. However, they withstood them patiently, knowing that, as Paul had told the Romans (8.18), “The passions of this time are not to be compared to the attainments of future glory.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Do you want to have right away what many have scarcely obtained after many tears and great labours? “Wait for the Lord like everyone else,” advised God’s Psalmist (27.14), “then act like a man!” And take comfort. Do not be different. Do not give it up. Let your body and soul constantly radiate the patience of God. I will be with your every step of the way, as My Psalmist has promised (19.15), and in the end God will reward you handsomely. “And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that You, Lord, are in the midst of this people [of America], that You, Lord, are seen face to face, and that Your cloud stands over them, and that You go before them in a pillar of fire by night,” reports Numbers 14.14. Even more mystifying and upsetting for them is the crack-up of the industrial mass society in which they were trained to operate. Second Wave managers were taught that mass production, that a mass market wants standardized goods, that mass distribution is essential, that “masses” of uniform workers are basically all alike and can be motivated by uniform incentives. The effective manager learned that synchronization, centralization, maximization, and concentration are necessary to achieve one’s goals. And in a Second Wave environment these assumptions were basically correct. Today, as the Third Wave strikes, the corporate manager finds all one’s old assumptions were basically correct. Today, as the Third Wave is up and running, the corporate manager finds all one’s old assumptions challenged. The mass society itself, for which the corporation was designed, is de-massifying. No merely information, production, and family life, but the marketplace and the labour market as well are breaking into smaller, more varied pieces. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The mass market has split into ever-multiplying, ever-changing sets of min-markets that demand a continually expanding rage of options, models, types, sizes, colour, and customizations. So physical stores need to be larger, and to accommodate the demands of consumers and the vast range of products expected, they are moving to new suburban communities where they can still find land that is available for development to build these superstores to accommodate all the products consumers expect in the marketplace. Stores that find they cannot meet consumer demand, notice a reduction in revenue because consumer turn to the holy grail, the Internet. BMW used to basically have three cars, the 3 Series, 5 Series, and 7 Series, now they have well over 30 different models in production. The vice president of BMW said, “we will be going into greater specialization with more different departments.” The fast-increasing variety of goods and services in the high technology nations is often explained away as an attempt by the corporation to manipulate the consumer, to invent false needs, and to inflate profits by charging a lot for trivial options. No doubt, there is truth to these charges. Yet something deeper is at work. For the growing differentiation of goods or services also reflects the growing diversity of actual requirements, desires, values, and lifestyles in a de-massified Third Wave/Fourth Wave society. This rising level of social diversity is fed by further divisions in the labour market, as reflected in the proliferation of new occupations, especially white-collar and service fields. Newspaper want ads calmour of “Vydec Secretary” or “Mini-Cooper computer Programmer,” while at a conference on the service professions I watched a psychologist list 68 new occupations from consumer advocate, corporate attorney, and Yoga instructor to psycho-chemotherapist and federal private investigators. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

As our jobs become less interchangeable, people do too. Refusing to be treated as interchangeable, they arrive at the workplace with an acute consciousness of their ethnic, religious, professional, sexual, subcultural, and individual differences. Groups that throughout the Second Wave era fought to be “integrated” or “assimilated” into mass society now refuse to melt their differences. They emphasize instead their unique characteristics. And Second Wave corporations, still organized for operation in a mass society, are still uncertain how to cope with this rising tide of diversity among their employees and customers. Though sharply evident in the United States of America, social de-massification is progressing rapidly elsewhere as well. In Britain, which once regarded itself as highly homogenous, marginalized groups, from Pakistanis, West Indians, Cypriots, and Ugandan Asians to Turks and Spaniards now intermingle with a native population itself becoming more heterogeneous. Meanwhile, a tidal influx of Japanese, American, German, Dutch, Arabic, and African visitors leave  in their wake American hamburger stands, apple pie, baseball, Japanese tempura restaurants and signs in store windows that read “Se Habla Espanol.” Around the World, underrepresented ethnic groups reassert their identities and demand long-denied rights to jobs, income, and advancement in the corporation. Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maoris, Canadian Eskimos, American Africans, Chicanos, and even Asians once regarded as politically passive are on the move and many are turning into Republicans because they believe in private property and lower corporate taxes, as many are business owners. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

From Maine to the Far West, Native Americans assert “Native Power,” demand the restoration of tribal lands, and dicker with the OPEC countries for economic and political support. Even in Japan, long the most homogenous of the industrial nations, the signs of demassification are mounting. An uneducated convict overnight emerges as spokes person for a small group of Ainu people. The underrepresented Koran groups grows restless, and sociologist Masaaki Takane of Sophia University says, “I have been haunted by anxiety….Japanese society today is quickly losing its unity and disintegrating.” In Denmark scattered streets fights break out between Danes and immigrant workers and between leather-jacket motorcyclists and long-hair youth. In Belgium the Walloons, the Flemish, and the Bruxelloises reactivate ancient, indeed preindustrial, rivalries. In Canada Quebec threatens to secede, corporations padlock their headquarters in Montreal, and English-speaking executives throughout the country take crash courses in French. The forces that made mass society have suddenly been thrown into reverse. Nationalism in the high-technology context becomes regionalism instead. The pressures of the melting pot are replaced by the new ethnicity. The media, instead of creating a mass culture, de-massify it. In turn all these developments parallel the emerging diversity of energy forms and the advance beyond mass production. All these interrelated changes create a totally new framework within which the production organization of society, whether called corporations or socialist enterprises, will function. Executives who continue to think in terms of the mass society are shocked and confused by a World they no longer recognize. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

If it were part of a larger program of living that included the spiritual, the Occidental worship of bodily arts, cultures, sports, exercises, and regimes would be excellent. However, it is not. The Occidental mostly stops and ends with glorification of the body. There is a most important difference between the work done in ordinary physical culture and the work done in this system. Those who jump about on a gymnasium floor or lift weights or engage in outdoor sports do so usually for the body’s sake. However, students who follow philosophic teachings practice their exercises for the Quest’s sake. This fully respects the body and cares scrupulously for it. It would be a delusion to believe that the practice of these physical disciplines alone can bring enlightenment. It is not obtainable by stretching the body, or holding the breath, although these may quite indirectly help to prepare the way for obtaining it. The ego must be transcended. It is necessary to make a daily ritual of these cleansing habits and physical exercises as it is of religious or mystical ones. They should be combined, the physical exercises as it is of religious or mystical ones. They should be combined; the physical being practiced before the spiritual as a preparation for it and for the day’s activity. Tai Chi is a system of slow, gentle, graceful movements combined with meditation. It can be used either for self-defense, health, or aesthetics. Breath control is a vial element of this practice. Weight and pressure are made to sink down to what is called in Zen the Hara Center (near the solar plexus). This system belongs to Chinese Taoism. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Long ago the dervishes in the Near East used a system of training which gave extraordinary control over the muscular system, swift reflexes, and striking mental concentration. For example, they would direct the movements of one limb while at the same time they directed another limb in a different way. Too much exercise may be as harmful in the end as too little, while improper exercise may be more injurious than either. Those who show their impatience by constantly tapping with their fingers or who betray their nervousness by fidgeting with their feet would benefit by a course in hatha yoga, but all such exercises are prohibited to anyone suffering from high blood pressure. Do not stifle me with the strange scent of low growing mountain lilies—do no confuse me with the salubrious odor of honeysuckle! I cannot separate in my mind sweetness from sweetness—mimosa from wild white violets; magnolia from Cape Jasmine! I am from the north tide country, I can understand only the scent of seaweed; salt marsh and scrub pine riding on the breath of an amorous frog! O do not confuse me with sweetness upon sweetness; let me escapes safely from this gentle madness—let me go back to the salt of sanity in the scent of the sea. For that glad prophetess who danced before the camp, to them whose heart was sad and sore, from whom there rose and sank a well of water—save them that dwelt in goodly tents of yore, save them our Father. For him who in the tent was fain to stay, on whom the spirit shone, who went his way O’er Jordan, and Thou didst divide the water—save her, the beautiful and pure as day, save her, our Father. For his sake who besought a sign, who cried “Where by Thy wonders?” and at morning-tide wringed dew from out the fleece, a bowl of water—save her who was in America a bride, save her, our Father. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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A dream which has not been interpreted is like a letter that has not been opened. There is a need for one to recognize that a dream is a message which we send to ourselves and which we have to understand in order to comprehend ourselves. Dr. Freud was the first individual to give the interpretation such a systematic and scientific basis. He gave us the tools for understanding of dreams, which anybody can use provided one learns how to handle them. One can hardly exaggerate the significance of dream interpretation. First of all it makes us aware of feelings and thoughts that exist within ourselves and yet which we are not aware of while we are awake. The dream, as Dr. Freud once put it, is the royal way to the understanding of the unconscious. Secondly the dream is a creative act in which the average person demonstrates creative powers of those whose existence one has no idea when one is awake. Dr. Freud discovered, furthermore, that our dreams are not the simple expressions of unconscious strivings but that they are usually distorted by the influence of a subtle censorship which is even present when we are asleep and forces us to distort the true meaning of our dream thoughts (the “latent dream”). Thus, if they are disguised, the censor is deceived, as it were, and permits the hidden thoughts to pass the frontier to consciousness. This concept led Dr. Freud to the assumption that every dream (with the exception of children’s dreams) is distorted and has to be restored to its original meaning by dream interpretation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

During the night, humans have many impulses and desires, especially in the nature of pleasure and the surreal, which would interrupt one’s sleep were it not that one experiences these wishes as fulfilled in the dream and hence does not have to wake up to seek realistic satisfaction. Dreams are the disguised expression of fulfillment of wishes. However, one obvious objection to this theory is that we have many nightmares which would be difficult to explain as fulfillment of a desire, since they are painful to the point of sometimes interrupting sleep. Yet, this may be because there are sadistic or masochistic wishes which produce great anxiety but are still wishes which the dream satisfies even though another part of us is frightened of them. Other dreams may also represent any feeling, wish, fear, or thought that is sufficiently important to be present during our sleep, and its appearance in dreams is a sign of its importance. Many dreams do not contain a wish but offer an insight into one’s own situation or into the personality of others. In order to appreciate this function, one must consider the particularity of the state of sleep. During sleep we are liberated from the task of sustaining our existence by work or by defending ourselves against possible dangers. (Only signals of an emergency wake us up from our sleep.) We are not under the influence of the social “noise,” by which I mean the opinion of others, common nonsense and common pathology. Perhaps one could say that sleep is the only situation where we are really free. This has consequences: we see the World subjectively and not from the viewpoint that guides us in our waking life objectively—that is to say, as we must see it in order to manipulate it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

For instance, in a dream the element of fire might express love of destructiveness, but that is a different fire from the one which one can bake a cake. The dream is poetic and it speaks the universal language of symbolism which is basically common to all times and all cultures. It is, together with poetry and art, a universal language which humankind has developed. In the dream we do not see the World as we have to see it when we manipulate it; rather, we see the poetic meaning it has for us. You have heard the saying, “Do not cast your pearls before swine,” well that goes for your dreams and even things you may share in therapy. Some people are rationalists with a lack of artistic or poetic inclination, and hence they have almost no feeling for symbolic language whether expressed in dreams or poetry. The lack forces upon them a very narrow concept of symbols. One ether understands them as psychological disturbance or sexual in nature—and the range of possibilities in the respect is great, since a line and a circle are exceedingly widespread forms of symbolism—or one understands them only by finding out through associations with what else they were connected. It is one of the most peculiar contradictions that many professionals are so little capable of understanding symbols. “Now the Angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak (terebinth) at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, and his son Gideon was beating wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of [fearless] courage. And Gideon said to him, O sir, if the Lord is with us, why is all this befallen us? And where are all His wondrous works of which our fathers told us, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

“However, now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian. The Lord turned to him and said, Go in this your might, and you shall save Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you? Gideon said to Him, Oh Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Behold, my clan is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house. The Lord said to him, Surely I will be with you, and you shall smite the Midianites as one man,” reports Judges 6.11-16. This feature, more than any other, brings out the wide gulf which separates the Hebraic from the Greek view of knowledge. In the latter, knowledge itself is purely theoretical…whereas in the Old Testament the person who does not act in accordance with what God has done or plans to do has but a fragmentary knowledge. For example, the Hebrew word for know generally refers to something one does. To know love, we must not only know about love but act lovingly. Likewise, to hear the word of God means not only to listen but also to obey. We read in the New Testament that by loving action a person knows God, for those who do what is true come to the light. Jesus declared that whoever would do the will of God would know God, that God would come and dwell within those who heeded what He said, and that we would find ourselves not by passive contemplation but by losing ourselves as we take up the cross. The wise human, the one who built one’s house on rock, differed from the foolish him in that one acted on God’s Word. Merely saying, “Lord, Lord,” does not qualify us as disciples; discipleship means doing the will of the Father. Over and over again, the Christian Bible teaches that the gospel power can be known only by living it. “The Lord touched their eyes, saying ‘It shall be done to you according to your faith,’” reports Matthew 9.29 #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Our theological understanding of faith is informed by this biblical view of knowledge. Faith grows as we act on what little faith we have. Just as experimental subjects become more deeply committed to something for which they have suffered and witnessed, so also do we grow in faith as we act it out. Faith is born of obedience. The proof of Christianity really consists in following. Only the doer of the Word is its real hearer. Follow the way by which [the committed] began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses, et cetera. Even this will naturally make you believe. Believe in God and you will have to face hours when it seems obvious that this material World is the only reality: disbelieve in God and you must face hours when this material World seems to shout at your that it is not all. No conviction, religious or irreligious, will, of itself, end once and for all [those doubts] in the soul. Only the practice of Faith resulting in the habit of Faith will gradually do that. People are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feelings in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is act as if you did. Do not sit around trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, “if I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?” When you have found the answer, go and do it. “The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior,” reports Judges 6.12. How you see yourself and how you feel about yourself will have a tremendous impact on how far you go in life and whether or not you fulfill your destiny. The reason your self-concept is so important is that you will probably speak, act, and react as the person you think you are. Psychologist have proved that you will most consistently perform in a manner that is in harmony with the images you have of yourself. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

If you see yourself as unqualified, unattractive, inferior, or inadequate, you will probably act in accordance with your thoughts. How can we apply the faith-follow-action principle to leading a church, to planning worship, and to nurturing personal faith? First, a top priority for churches must be to make their members active participants, not mere spectators. Many dynamic religious movements today—ranging from sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and the Unification Church to charismatics and discipleship-centered communities—share and insistence that all on board be members of the crew. That is easier said than done, but it does provide a criterion by which to evaluate procedures for admitting and maintaining members. As a local church makes decisions and administers its program, it should constantly be asking, Will this activate our people and make priests of our believers? If research on persuasion is any indication, this will best be accomplished by direct, personal calls to committed action, not merely by mass appeals and announcements. In worship, too, people should be engaged as active participants, not as mere spectators of religious theater. Research indicates that passively received spoken words have surprisingly little impact on listeners. Changes in attitude resulting from spoken persuasion are less likely to endure and influence subsequent behaviour than attitude changes emerging from active experience. What is needed is to have listeners rehearse and act on what they hear. When the people sing responses, write their own confessions, contribute prayer, read Scripture responsively, takes notes on the sermon, utter exclamations, bring their offerings forward, pass the peace, make the sign of the cross, or sit, stand, and kneel—acts that viewers of the electronic church do not perform—they are making their worship their own. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

The principle has its limits, of course. We can become so preoccupied with doing things that we no longer have time to quietly receive God’s Word of grace and direction for our lives. Like the Pharisees, we can substitute our deeds for God’s act or to think that any kind of action will do. To say that action nurture growth in faith is not to tell the whole story of faith. However, it does tell part of the story. The action-attitude interplay can also inform Christian education and Christian nurture. Researchers have found that the attitudes most likely to affect our actions are those that we form by experience. We might therefore consider new methods of encouraging faith. Few Christian families appreciate and reap the benefits of family worship. Old Testament family practices helped people remember the might acts of God. When today’s Jewish family celebrates the Passover by eating special foods, reading prayers, and singing psalms, all of which symbolize their historical experience, they are helped to renew the roots of deep convictions and feelings. Among Christians, family celebrations are becoming more common during Advent. With a boost from the church, home-based activity could be extended to celebrate all the great themes of the church year. Although church and family ritual may sometimes degenerate into a superficial religious exercise, few of us appreciate the extent to which the natural ritual of our own personal histories has shaped who we are. Many of the things we did without question in childhood have long since become an enduring part of our self-identities. Indeed, because we have internalized our own rituals, we find it difficult to recognize them as rituals; but it is easy to recognize other people’s rituals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The overarching objective on which all these points converge is this: we need to create opportunities for people to enact their convictions, thereby confirming and strengthening their Christian identity. Biblical and psychological perspectives link arms in reminding us that faith is like love. If we hoard it, it will shrivel. If we use it, exercise it, and express it, we will have it more abundantly. Every person has an image of oneself. The question is, does your image of who you are line up correctly with who God says you are? Individuals who see themselves as God sees them are usually happy about who they are. Do not look for your reflection in others. Know that you have been created in God’s image and He has crowed you with tremendous honor. “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of [Earthborn] man that You care for him? Yet You have made him but a little lower than God [or Heavenly beings], and You have crowned him with glory and honor,” reports Psalm 8.4-5. Christians who see themselves as God sees them feel good about themselves, because they know that God loves them and He feels good about them! They can honestly say, “Thank You, Father, for creating me the way You did. I know that You have a purpose and a plan for me, and I would rather be me than any other person on Earth. You have promised that You have good things in store for me, and I cannot wait to discover them!” My dear Devouts, just being within earshot of the way of perfection should, not turn you away or make you depressed. Rather, it should provoke you to fly higher, and if that makes your nose bleed, to sigh more for such a life while still on Earth. Would that you have arrived at a point where you no longer love yourself above all else! #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Would that you stood at the ready for Jesus’ command, and the command of the Father has put over us. That would please Jesus much, and our whole life on Earth would pass in joy and peace. God wants us to see ourselves as priceless treasure. He wants us to feel good about ourselves God knows we are not perfect, that we have faults and weaknesses, and sometimes we make mistakes. And yet, God loves us anyway. He created us in His image, and He is continually shaping us, conforming un to His character, helping us to become even more like Him. That is why it is important that we learn to love ourselves, faults and all, not because of pride or egoism, but because that is how our Heavenly Father loves us. We can hold our head up high and walk with confidence knowing that God loves us unconditionally. His love for us is based on what we are, not on what we do. However, up to this point, if I may be permitted a painful observation, My dear Devout, many of us have a lot of excess baggage to leave behind. We could resign it totally to Jesus Christ. Then we would get what we want. Gold refined in the fire by Jesus—that tis to say, as it is in the Last Book of the New Testament (3.18), rich in Celestial Wisdom, poor in all other wisdoms. Jesus has said it before, and He will say it again. While on this Earth, we should be humbler and have more faith and follow the Ten Commandments. There was a community in Virginia, where someone lost their life because they were a victim of a crime. The community responded by going to church more and putting the Ten Commandments back in the school because these rituals and laws remind us to be good people. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

God believes in us even more than we believe in ourselves. So often, we sense God telling us that He has something big for us to do. However, we say, “Oh, God, I cannot do that. I am just a nobody. I do not have the skills or talent.” God sees you as successful. You may not believe that you are at the pinnacle of success, but that does not change God’s image of you. God still sees you exactly as His Word describes you. You may feel unqualified, insecure, or overwhelmed by life; you may feel weak, fearful, and insignificant, but today dare to start seeing yourself as God see you—successful! We are also prepared for reality with a ground floor (Nature) and then above that one floor and one only—an eternal, spaceless, timeless, spiritual Something of which we can have no images and which, if it presents itself to human consciousness at all, does so in a mystical experience which shatters all our categories of thought. What we are not prepared for is anything in between. We feel quite sure that the first step beyond the World of our present experience must lead either nowhere at all or else into the blinding abyss of undifferentiated spirituality, the unconditioned, the absolute. That and an angelic World. That is why many believe in immortality who cannot believe in the resurrection of the body. That is why Pantheism is more popular than Christianity, and why many desire a Christianity stripped of its miracles. I cannot now understand but I well remember, the passionate conviction with which I myself once defended this prejudice. Any rumour of floors or levels intermediate between the Unconditioned and the World revealed by our present sense I rejected without trial as “mythology.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Yet it is very difficult to see any rational grounds for the dogma that reality must have no more than two levels. There cannot, from the nature of the case, be evidence that God never created and never will create, more than one system. Each of them would be at least extra-natural in relation to all the others: and if any of them is more concrete, more permanent, more excellent, and richer than another it will be to that other super-natural. Nor will a partial contact between any two obliterate their distinctness. In that way there might be Natures piled upon Natures to any height God pleased, each Supernatural to that below it and Subnatural to that which is surpassed it. However, the tenor of Christian teaching is that we are actually living in a situation even more complex than that. A new Nature is being not merely made but made out of an old one. We live amid all the anomalies, inconveniences, hopes, and excitements of a house that is being rebuilt. Something is being pulled down and something going up in its place. To accept the idea of intermediate floors—which the Christian story will, quite simply, force us to do if it is not a falsehood—does not of course involve losing our spiritual apprehension of the top floor of all. Most certainly, beyond all Worlds, unconditioned and unimaginable, transcending discursive thought, there yawns forever he ultimate Fact, the fountain of all other facthood, the burning and undimensioned depth of the Divine Life. Most certainly also, to be united with that Life in the eternal Sonship of Christ is, strictly speaking, the only thing worth a moment’s consideration. And in so far as that is what you mean by Heaven, Christ’s divine Nature never left it, and therefore never returned to it: and His human nature ascended thither not at the moment of the Ascension but at every moment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

In that sense not one word that the spiritualizers have uttered will, please God, ever be unsaid by me. However, it by no means follows that there are not other truths as well. I allow, indeed I insist, that Christ cannot be at “the right hand of God” except in a metaphorical sense. I allow and insist that the Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, can never be, nor have been, confined to any place at all: it is rather in God that all places exist. However, the records say that the glorified, but still in some sense corporeal, Christ withdrew into some different mode of being about six weeks after the Crucifixion: and that He is “preparing a place” for us. “And let us not lose heart and grow weary and faint in acting nobly and doing right, for in due time and at the appointed season we shall reap, if we do not loosen and relax our courage and faint,” reports Galatians 6.9. “There is [now no distinction] neither Jewish or Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” reports Galatians 4.24. “You also must be ready therefore, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect Him,” reports Matthew 24.44. It is not enough to have citizens and to protect them; it is also necessary to give some though to their substance. And seeing to the public needs is an obvious consequence of the general will, and the third essential duty of government. This duty is not, as should be apparent, to fill the granaries of private individuals and to exempt these people from working, but rather to maintain abundance so within their reach that to acquire it, labour is always necessary and never useless. It also extends to al the operations regarding the preservation of the public treasury and the expenditures of the public administration. Thus, after having discussed the general economy in relation to the government of persons, it remains for us to consider it in relation to the administration of goods. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

This part offers no fewer difficulties to resolve or contradictions to overcome than the preceding one. Certainly the right to property is the most sacred of all the citizens’ rights, and more important in certain respects than liberty itself, either because it is more intimately linked with the preservation of life, or because, being easier to usurp and more difficult to defend than one’s person, more respect needs to be given to what can more easily be stolen, or finally because property is the true foundation of civil society and the true guarantee of the citizens’ commitments. For if goods were not answerable for persons, nothing would be so easy as eluding one’s duties and scoffing at the laws. On the other hand, it is no less certain that the maintenance of the state and of the government demand costs and expenditures. And since anyone granting the end cannot refuse the means, it follows that the members of the society should contribute their goods toward its preservation. Moreover, it is difficult on the one hand to maintain the security of the property of private individuals without attacking it on the other. And it is impossible for all the regulations bearing on inheritance, wills, and contracts not to restrict the citizens in certain respects regarding the disposition of their estate, and consequently regarding their right to property. However, besides what I have already said about the unanimity which reigns between the authority of the law and the liberty of the citizen, there is, in relation to the disposition of goods, an important point to be made which eliminates several difficulties. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The nature of the right to property does not extend beyond the life of the property owner, and the moment a human dies, one’s estate generally no longer belongs to that individual. Thus, prescribing to one the conditions under which one can dispose of them is actually less an apparent alteration of one’s right than it is a real extension of it. In general, although the institution of the laws which govern the power of private individuals in the disposition of their own estate belongs only to the sovereign, the spirit of the laws which the government must follow in carrying them out is that, from father to son and from relative to relative, the family’s goods should leave the family and be alienated as little as possible. There is good reason for this in favour of children, to whom the right to property would be quite useless, were the father to leave them nothing, and who, moreover, having often contributed by their labour to the acquisition of the father’s goods, are associated in their own right with his right. However, another reason, more remote and no less important, is that nothing is more baneful to mores and to the republic than continual changes of status and fortune among the citizens, changes that are the proof and the source of a thousand disorders which overturn and confuse everything, and because of which neither those who were raised for one things and find themselves destined for another nor those who rise nor those who fall can adopt the maxims or the lights suitable to their new status, and much less fulfill its duties. The corporate identity crisis is intensified by the speed at which events are moving. For they very speed of change introduces a new element into management, forcing executives, already nervous in an unfamiliar environment, to make more and more decisions at a faster and faster pace. Response times are honed to a minimum. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

At the financial level the speed of transactions is accelerating since banks have computerized. They are even offer lone services twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. For a fee, you can even get a lone at 1am, deposited into your account with in a few hours. Some banks have even relocated geographically to take advantage of time zone differences. Time zones can be used as a competitive edge. In this hotted-up environment, the big corporations are driven almost willy-nilly to invest and borrow in various currencies not on an annual, a ninety-day, or even a seven-day basis, but literally on an overnight minute-to-minute basis. A new corporate officer has appeared in the executive suite—the “international cash manager,” who remains plugged into the Worldwide electronic casino twenty-four hours a day, searching for the lowest interest rates, the best currency bargains, the fastest turnaround. Nor is this function trivial. Like famers who make more from selling land than from growing food, some major corporations are making more profit—or racking up greater losses—from currency and financial manipulation than from actual production. Also, a new storm of online banks are creating a tsunami of new financial institutions for customers to choose form and offering high investment rate, zero interest loans, and direct deposit advances for free because they know consumers do not read the fine print. They can offer such good deals because they are not federally insured, so their customers could lose all of their money and never get it back. However, that is unlikely, unless a disaster happens. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

In marketing, a similar acceleration is evident. Marketers must respond quickly in order to insure the survival for tomorrow. Network TV programmers are accelerating their decisions on killing new TV series that show rating weakness. No more waiting six of seven weeks, or a season. Another example: Johnson & Jonson learns that Bristol-Myers is determined to undersell J&J’s Tylenol. Does J&J adopt a wait-and-see attitude? No. In an amazingly short times, it moves to cut Tylenol’s prices in stores. No more weeks or months of procrastination. The very prose is breathless. In engineering, in manufacture, in research, in sales, in training, in personnel, in every department and branch of the corporation the same quickening of decision-making can be detected. And once more we see a parallel process, though less advanced, in the socialist industrial nations. COMECON, which used to revise prices every five years when it issued its five-year plan, has been forced to revise its prices annually in an attempt to keep up with the faster pace. Before long it will be six months, then even less. The results of this generalized speedup of the corporate metabolism are multiple: shorter product life-cycles, more leasing and renting more frequent buying and selling, more ephemeral consumption patterns, more fads, more training time for workers (who must continually adjust to new procedures), more frequent changes in contracts, more negotiations and legal work, more pricing changes, more job turnover, more dependence on data, more ad hoc organization—all of it exacerbated by inflation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

The result is a high-stakes, high-adrenalin business environment. Under these escalating pressures it is easy to see why so many business people, bankers, and corporate executives wonder what exactly they are doing and why. Brought up with the Age of Information certainties, they see the World they knew tearing apart under the impact of an accelerating wave of change. Water flows from high in the mountains. Water runs deep in the Earth. Miraculously, water comes to us, and sustains all life. Water flows over these hands. May I use them skillfully to preserve our precious planet. O Lord, the God of America, You are rigidly just and righteous, for we are left a remnant that is escaped, as is this day. Behold, we are before You in our guilt, for none can stand before You because of this. for one who was a perfect human ‘mid all. Who once was saved through goodness at Thy call, Redeemed from overflowing floods of water—Save her who standeth steadfast as a wall, save her, our Father. For one unblemished in one’s works and ways though tried tenfold who, lifting up one’s gaze, saw angel forms, and ran to give them water—save her that shineth as the sunlight’s rays, save her, our Father. For that loved son who asked his aged sire, “Where is the lamb for offering made by fire?” For one who heard the tidings, “Here is water”—save her that wandereth in exile dire, save her, our Father. For one’s sake who before one’s brother came to take one’s blessing—hoping in Thy name; for one whose flocks increased by troughs of water—save her that was a palm-tree in her fame, save her, our Father. For one who meet to serve Thee Thou didst deem, apparelled as a bridegroom doth beseem; At Massah tried, at Meribah’s sad water—O save that goodly mountain of our dream, Save her, our Father. Love myself? Those words do not come easy for me, Father. However, with all my heart, I want to learn how to love myself, not so I can be America’s Next Top Model and bask in self-adulation, but so I can more deeply appreciate who You have made me to be, and that I might more effectively express Your #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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If one has only a few clues, it is in genera easy to recognize to which type of character a person belongs to.  The tight-lipped, withdrawn man whose first concern is that everything must be orderly and right, who shows little spontaneity, whose skin colour tends to be sallow, is easily recognizable as an anal character; is one knows that he tends to be stingy, ungiving, distant, one receives confirmation. The same holds true for the exploitative and the receptive character types. It is true of course that a person tries to hide one’s true face, provide one is away of the fact that it betrays trends that one would rather not divulge. Hence facial expressions are not even the most important indications of character structure. More important are those expressions that are much less controllable: the movements, the voice, the gait, the gestures and all that of a person which is in our field of vision when we look at one or see one walking. Character orientations allow one to relate oneself to the World in the “process of assimilation”—that is to say, in the process of getting from nature of from other human beings what is necessary for survival. The problem is not that we all need to get something from the outside; even the saint could not survive without any food. The real problem is what our method of getting it is, whether it is a method of being given, robbing, hoarding or producing. Whether people predominantly love or hate, submit or fight for freedom, are stingy or magnanimous, are cruel or tender, depends on the social structure that is responsible for the formation of all passions except the biological ones. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

There are in cultures in which, in their social character, the passions for cooperation and harmony dominates—and other in which extreme possessiveness and destructiveness dominate. Detailed analysis of the social character typical of any given society is required in order to understand how economic, geographical, historical, and genetic conditions have led to the formation of various types of social character. Human natures are like most houses—many sided; some aspects are pleasant and some not. So it is with human relations. No other species is capable of more brutal aggression against its own member, or of more compassion giving of help. What other terrestrial beings can feel such bitter prejudice toward others, or such so profound love? In much the same way that natural evils, such as earthquakes and tornadoes, can be studied, so, too, can behavioural scientists explore the workings of human evils. Some people attribute human evil to the disposition of “rotten apples”—the freeloaders, thieves, and other deviants who threaten the rest of us nice folds. If evil is a personal aberration, then its remedy must also be personal. The way to alleviate unemployment is to put individuals through job training. The way to remedy emotional suffering is to put the individual in therapy. They way to deal with sin is to convert the individual. However, research clearly reveals that the human problem is also collective and that these individualistic remedies often deliver less than expected. True, evil emanates from the hearts of individuals. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

The historically conditioned passions are of such intensity that they can be greater than even the biologically conditioned passions of survival, hunger, thirst and pleasures of the flesh. This may not be so for the average person whose passions have been largely reduced to the satisfaction of one’s physiological needs, but it is so for a considerable number of people in any historical period who risk their lives for their honour, their love, their dignity—or their hate. The Christian Bible expressed that in simple words: “Man shall not live by bread alone,” Matthew 4.4. The dramatic element in human life is rooted in nonbiological passions and not hunger and pleasures of the flesh. Hardly anybody commits suicide because of the frustration of one’s sexual desires, but many are ready to give up living because their ambition or their hate has been frustrated. In is an interesting fact that the suicide rate by and large has risen in the same proportion as the rate of industrialization. Laboratory experiments enable us to isolate some of the important features of social situations. By compressing social forces into a brief time period, we can see how these forces affect people. A number of such experiments have put well-intentioned people in an evil situation to see whether good or evil prevails. To a dismaying extent, evil pressures overwhelm good intentions, inducing people to conform to falsehoods or capitulate to cruelty. Nice guys often do not finish nice. The clearest example is Stanley Milgram’s classic obedience experiments. Faced with an imposing, close-at-hand commander, 65 percent of his adult male subjects fully obeyed instructions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

On command, they would deliver what appeared to be (but were not) traumatizing electric shocks to a screaming innocent victim in an adjacent room. These were regular people—a mix of blue-collar, white-collar, and professional men. They despised their task. Yet obedience took precedence over their own moral sense and the pleas of their victims. As often happens in everyday live, the entrapment of these men was a subtle step-by-step process. At first, they had to perform only little cruel acts. Then the demands for evil were gradually escalated. Before long, the barely perceptible 15 volts had become a seemingly excruciating 450 volts. Proving that bad behaviour is contagious and the safest road to hell is the gradual one. Succumbing to just a little temptation begins to erode the conscience, making the next evil act possible. In complex societies, a sequence of small evils can lead to vile evil. Individual psychology, to be sure, is concerned with the individual human being, and it examines the ways in which one tries to satisfy one’s instinctual drives. However, only rarely and under specific exceptional circumstances is it in a position to abstract from this person’s relationships with other individuals. In the individual’s psychic life, other people must be considered as either models, objects, helpers, or opponents. Thus, from beginning, individual psychology is simultaneously social psychology—in this extended but legitimate sense. The human being, from early childhood on, lives in seven circles; the narrowest one is the family, the next one is one’s class, the third one is the society in which one lives, the fourth one the biological conditions of being human in which one participate, and finally, one is part of a larger circle of which we know almost nothing, but which comprises at least our solar system. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

 Therefore, the drift towards evil usually comes in small steps, without any conscious decision to do evil. Primarily because the family itself is determined by the class and social structure and constitutes an “agency of society” whose function it is to transmit the character of society to the infant even before it has any direct contact with society. This is done through early upbrining and education, as well as through the character of the parents which is in itself a social product. The structure of society creates the kind of character it needs for its proper functioning and survival. The subtlety corrupting process can be illustrated: Over a drink or a cup of coffee, disguised as a triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naif or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which is not quite in accordance with the technical rules of fair play: something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but somethings, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for merely pleasure—something “we always do.” And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

It would be so terrible to see the other person’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are draw in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in crashes, a scandal, and penal servitude: it may end in millions, a peerage, and giving prizes at your old school. However, you will be a scoundrel. The social character structure which is common to most members of society; it contents depend on the necessities of a given society which mold the character of the individual in such a way that people want to do what they have to do in order to secure the proper functioning of society. What they do depends on the dominating passions in their character, which have been formed by the necessities and requirements of a specific social system. The differences brought about by diverse family constellations is minor in comparison with the differentiation brought about by different structures of society and present in the respective classes. A member of the feudal class had to develop a character which enabled one to rule others, to harden one’s heart toward their misery. The bourgeois class of the nineteenth century had to develop an anal character which was determined by the wish to save and hoard and not to spend. In the twentieth century the same class developed a character which made saving, if not a vice, only a minor virtue when compared with the trait of the modern character to spend and to consume. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

This development is conditioned by fundamental economic necessities: in the period of primary accumulation of capital, saving was necessary; in a period of mass production, instead of saving, spending is of the greatest economic importance. If the character of twenty-first century humans suddenly reverted to that of nineteenth-century humans, our economy would be confronted with crisis, if not collapse. However, in considering the relationship between humans and social psychology, there are needs or passions rooted in the existence of human beings and those that are not primarily conditioned by society but by the very nature of humans, the absence of which must be considered as the result of repression or of severe social pathology. Such strivings are those of freedom, for solidarity, for love. Procrastination and evil have similar seductions. For instance, a student knows of the deadline for a term paper weeks ahead. Each diversion from work on the paper—a video game here, Web surfing there—seems harmless enough. Yet the student gradually veers toward not doing the paper (or at least not doing it well) without consciously deciding not to do it. That nice people can be corrupted by evil situations is evident even in experiments that involve only minimal coercive social pressure. Numerous studies indicate the powerful effects of occupying a social role. Although a new role may at first feel artificial—we can feel that we are “playing” it—the sense of phoniness soon tapers off. We absorb the role into our personalities and attitudes. Participating in destructive roles can therefore corrupt a person. Soldiers, for example, almost unavoidably develop degrading images of their enemy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

The same is true for prison guards. There is a dehumanizing effect in role relations between guard-prisoner when one is locked behind steel bars. This dichotomy also symbolizes the way in which destructive role relations can affect rich and poor, the disabled and those with full physical ability, African American and European Americans, husband and wife, employer and employee, teacher and student. Evil behaviour is sometimes structure into the very roles we are forced to play. Another potentially corrupting social force is competition for scarce goods and resources. When people have to compete with other groups, typically name calling begins, they make derogatory posters, hurl food, and attack each other’s property. It is warfare. A living version of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies—despite there being no cultural, physical, or economic differences between the groups. As in the other experiments, the evil outcomes reflect the power of an evil situation. Dozens of other experiments reveal that groups often display in more striking form the individual tendencies of their members. It is true of our better tendences—fellowship may fan the flames of our compassion, faith, and hope. And it is true of our baser tendencies—group interaction may also exacerbate meanness and self-righteousness. Terrorism springs from groups in isolation. Self-serving perceptions may therefore mushroom into collective pride; racist, sexists, and nationalists all come to perceive that their group—their race, gender, or country—is superior to other groups. For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

Nations, by law, are solitary, self-centered, withdrawn into themselves. There is no such thing as affection between nations, and certainly no nation ever loved another. They bawl insults from their doorsteps, defecate into whole oceans, snatch all the food, survive by detestation, take joy in the bad luck of others, celebrate the death of others, live for the death of others. However, America is different. It is a loving nation. American is one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all, and is setting a great example and making friends with other nations. These social-psychological examples of collective evil parallel biblical teachings about evil. Evil’s external sources are represented in the story of the Fall as Even is seduced by an external demonic force. The social character of sin is further evident in the corporate personality of Israel, in which whole families and whole cities are sometimes condemned for their wickedness. New Testament images of “principalities and powers” reinforce this notion that evil transcends individuals. Precisely because of sin has a collective aspect, we must also make a collective response to it. Judaism and Christianity are distinguished not by the mystical visions of spiritual isolates but by a community life. Since we are not self-sufficient, we stand in need of the church’s corporate fellowship. Only in that context can we adequately struggle with the evil within and about us. It is the whole believing people, not isolated believers, that is the body of Christ. To say the church is Christ’s body reminds us that together we can admonish one another. Together we can enable each other to minister. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

And together we can contest evil in ways that we as individuals never could, by challenging and reforming not only the individual rotten apples, but also the social systems and situations that can make the barrel go bad. To repeat, evil is collective as well as personal and so requires a collective as well as a personal response. “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” reports 1 Corinthians 15.33.  At this point in my life, O Lord, I should be able to make good use of the graces You have given me. However, if I am ever to outdistance the rest of creation, I still need more of these very same graces. As long as a creature can lay a hand on me, I am grounded; that is to say, I cannot freely fly to the Creator. However, fly I must! Certainly the Psalmist wanted to do just that when he said, “Give me the wings of a dove, and I will fly until I find Your rest,” (55.6)? Who has achieved more peace of mind than the person who sees clearly? Who has achieved more peace of mind than the person who has abandoned all Earthly things? “It is You who blesses the righteous human, O LORD; You surround one with favour as a shield,” reports Psalm 5.12. Start expecting God’s blessings to chase after you. Expect the greatness of God to overtake you. The favour of God can bring you out of your difficulties and turn your adversities around for good. No matter what people do to you, you will continue to prosper. God will intervene in the midst of your trial, in the middle of life’s challenges, and you will stand with an uncluttered mind and see that the Lord and Tailor of the Universe is guiding you to success. If you have not freed yourself of all creatures, then you are still tethered to the ground; that is to say, you are off the ground a bit, but you cannot rise any higher to the divine. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Perhaps that is why there are so few contemplatives; that is to say, that is why so few know how to sequester themselves from the creation daily perishing around them. To do this great grace requires, a grace that rises the soul off the ground and keeps it airborne. And unless you are airborne in spirit and freed from all creaturely ties and rising to God, whatever you know, whatever you have, is only a drag. Whoever thinks one has found something important outside of the One Sole Immense, the One Eternal Good, is destined to fly small, fly low. The moral? God is all, and what is left is nothing and ought to be counted as such; at least that is what the Great Augustine wrote in his Confessions (3.8). When your whole World is falling apart—instead of becoming discouraged and developing a sour attitude, more than ever, your must choose to acknowledge you are a child of God and are blessed. Now is the time to allow God’s grace, blessings, love, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion to overtake you. Help me, Father in Heaven, to learn how to live favour-minded, to expect the best, to anticipate success rather than failure, to see good rather than evil. Even in the midst of difficulties, I will declare to believe that I have Your blessing and favour, and You will bring me out stronger, better, and more triumphant. “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. However, just as one who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’ Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

“For you know that I was not perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without a blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the World, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through Him you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him, and so your faith and hope are in God. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, ‘All humans are like the grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever,” reports 1 Peter 1.13-25. There is a World of difference between Devouts illumined by Divine Wisdom and Clerics well versed in humane knowledge. Much more noble is the doctrine dripping from the Divine Tap than the science drawn from a well. Many people think contemplation a pleasant, fashionable way to pass the time; they long for it, even lust for it. However, when they learn it is hard work, they quickly lose interest. There is mammoth misunderstanding here. They want to enjoy its consolations, yes, but they do no want to endure its mortifications. Go figure! If we Devouts are caught sharing this opinion, then we have clouded our own minds into thinking, as the public has every right to think that we are spiritual humans. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

We labour so hard and so long, and what do we get for it but more anxiety about the transitory, everyday things? As for our interior interests, we rarely gather our wits and our sense to try to figure out where we really stand. Some real pains! Has somebody been mistreating you recently? “Look forward to the special blessings that will come to you at the return of Jesus Christ,” reports 1 Peter 1.13. And thank God that His favour is going to cause these people to start treating you well. Similarly, if you are struggling financially, say something such as, “Father, thank You that You are causing me to be at the right place at the right time. You are bringing wonderful financial opportunities my way.” When one lives with that attitude of gratitude, before long God’s blessings, grace, favour, mercy, compassion, love and forgiveness will turn up, and that difficult situation will turn around to your benefit. After a modest period of recollection, we have to rush outside for a breather! When it comes to evaluating our works, we cannot hold our focus for more than a minute! Where our affections are at any particular moment in time, we have no idea. Impurities invade our souls, and we would like to deplore them one by one, but there is not enough time in the Universe for that! “Every creature has lost its way or fouled its nest”—that has been obvious since that notorious Garden Party in Genesis (6.12). It is any wonder, then, that the Great Deluge is never far off? Our interior affections have sustained so much damage that we can no longer rely on them for True Direction. Only a pure hear, which comes from a god life, as Paul wrote in First Letter to Timothy (1.5), can discern the shortest distance between two spiritual points. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

The populace is interested in everything celebrities do, but they do not pay much attention to their motives, that is to say, whether their actions are virtuous or not. Let God know you do not care what the situation looks like. That no matter how badly you feel, you know God is great, and His favour is going to turn the situation around in manifest a blessing for you. Do not give up. Keep on believing, expecting, declaring. Keep living favour-minded, and God promises that good things will come to you. If you will keep your hope in the Lord, God says divine favour is coming. One may not see it right now, but when God’s favour shows up, things are going to change. Regardless of your current circumstances, keep boldly declaring, “God I know Your favour is coming my way.” Courage, wealth, good looks, nice personality—that is what the populace looks for first. Can the celebrities carry a tune, write a decent paragraph, do something adventurous—that is what seems to be newsworthy. Mum is the word, though, about whether these glittering creatures have about them any whiff of poverty of spirit, patience, mildness, or any other desirable internal qualities. Nature looks at what Humankind does; Grace looks into how Humankind does it. Nature hopes in the Enemy, but its hopes are often hoodwinked; Grace hopes in God, and its hopes are often fulfilled. Remember that You have God’s favour. Live with confidence; dare to be bold. You can ask for things you normally do not ask for and expect the extraordinary, and even view your adversities in a new way. Why? Because deep down inside, you know you have an advantage in life. You have an advantage. You have the favour of God! #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

O save, we beseech Thee. I beseech Thee, give ear to their cry that implore Thee to save, that seek to give joy unto Thee with the willows that wave—O save! White floating clouds, clouds like the plains, please come and water the Earth. Sun, please embrace the Earth that she may be fruitful. Moon, lion of the north, bear of the west, badger of the south, wolf of the east, eagle of the Heavens, shrew of the Earth, elder war hero, intercede with the cloud people for us that they may water the Earth. Father in Heaven, please help me to hope and have faith to the end, no matter what circumstances I face today, know that I can respond boldly and with confidence because I have Your favour. Thank You for opening doors of opportunity for me. I beseech Thee, please deliver the stock Thou hast planted, and say on the day when Thou sweepest the remnant of nations away: “I will save.” I beseech Thee to look to the covenant sealed at our birth, when Thou castest men down to the darkness under the Earth, and save. I beseech Thee, remember the father who knew Thee alone, when we say, “To his children to-day make Thy kindnesses known”; then save. I beseech Thee, O worker of wonders for hearts without stain, be it known that herein is the wonder of Thee—that again Thou wilt save. I beseech Thee, O honoured in strength, give salvation to us, for in ages of yore Thou didst swear to our forefathers thus: “I will save.” I beseech Thee, fulfill their desires that do call Thee in woe, that are bound as Thy suppliant was on the mountain, when lo! Thou didst save. I beseech Thee, the trees of Thy planting!—give shelter to these; when uprooting the mighty—Almighty, remember Thy trees, and save. I beseech Thee, throw open Thy treasures of rain; please let us see the good of the land that is thirsting for showers from Thee, and save. I beseech Thee, give friendship to those who have called Thee; and feed with the goodness and fat of Thy pasture their hunger and need, and save. I beseech Thee, O lift up Thy gates from their desolate fall, O lift up that ruinous heap for Thy people that call, O save!” #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s

Now Selling!

Now selling! Cresleigh Havenwood is the newest Cresleigh community coming to Lincoln, CA. With four distinct floor plans to choose from ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet offering up to five bedrooms, we are sure you’ll find your dream home here at Havenwood!

Each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Home Mini! https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/