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All We Ask is to be Let Alone—God Made this Country and Humans Made this Town!

February 6, 2020 2:48 am

We do not lose our sense of humour when we get older—we get older when we lose our sense of humour. It is great to be great, but it is greater to be human. “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove,” reports St. Matthew 17.20. Today I want to consider the question of how we—as individuals, as groups, as a culture—will live in, will respond to, will adapt to, this brave new World. What stance will we take in the face of these new developments? Deny and Ignore—one attitude which we can take is to deny that these scientific advances are taking place, and simply take the view that there can be no study of human behaviour which is truly scientific. We can hold that the human being cannot possibly take an objective attitude toward oneself, and that therefore no real science of behaviour can exist. We can say that humans are always a free agent, in some sense that makes scientific study of one’s behaviour impossible. Not long ago, at a conference on the social sciences, curiously enough, I heard a well known economist take just this view. And one of this country’s most noted theologians writes, “In any event, no scientific investigation of past behaviour can become the basis of predictions of future behaviour.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

This attitude of the general public is somewhat similar. Without necessarily denying the possibility of a behavioural science, the being in the street simply ignores the developments which are taking place. To be sure one becomes excited for a time when one hears it said that the Communists have attempted to change the soldiers they have captured, by means of “brainwashing.” One may show a mild reaction of annoyance to these revelations which show how heavily, and in what manipulative fashion, the findings of the behavioural sciences are used by modern industrial corporations. However, by and large one sees nothing in all this to be concerned about, any more than one did in the first theoretical statements that the atom could be split. We may, if we wish, join one in ignoring the problem. We may go further, like the antiquated intellectuals, and looking at the behavioural sciences may declare that “there ain’t no such being.” However, since these reactions do not seem particularly intelligent I shall leave them to describe a much more sophisticated and much more prevalent point of view. Among behavioural scientists it seems to be largely taken for granted that the findings of such science will be used in the prediction and control of human behaviour. Yet most psychologists and other scientists have given little thought to what this would mean. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

An exception to this general tendency is Dr. B.F. Skinner of Harvard who has been quite explicit in urging psychologists to use the powers of control which they have in the interest of creating a better World. In an attempt to show what he means Dr. Skinner wrote a book some years ago entitled Walden Two, in which he gives a fictional account of what he regards as a Utopian community in which the learnings of the behavioural sciences are fully utilized in all aspects of life—marriage, child rearing, ethical conduct, work, play, and artistic endeavour. There are also some writers of fiction who have seen the significance of the coming influence of the behavioural sciences. Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, has given a horrifying picture of saccharine happiness in a scientifically managed World, against which humans eventually revolt. George Orwell, in 1984, in which the behavioural sciences are used as instruments of absolute control of individuals so that not behaviour alone but even thought is controlled. The writers of science fiction have also played a role in visualizing for us some of the possible developments in a World where behaviour and personality are as much the subject of science as chemical compounds or electrical impulses. I should like to try to present, as well as I can, a simplified picture of the cultural pattern which emerges if we endeavour to shape human life in terms of the behavioural sciences. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

There is first of all the recognition, almost the assumption, that scientific knowledge is the power to manipulate. We must accept the fact that some kind of control of human affairs is inevitable. We cannot use good sense in human affairs unless someone engages in the design and construction of environmental conditions which affect the behaviour of humans. Environmental changes have always been the condition for the improvement of cultural patterns, and we can hardly use the more effective methods of science without making changes on a grander scale…Sciences has turned up dangerous processes and materials before. To use the facts and techniques of a science of humans to the fullest extent without making some monstrous mistake will be difficult and obviously perilous. It is not time for self-deception, emotional indulgence, or the assumption of attitudes which are no longer useful. The next assumption is that such a power to control is to be used. It is seen as being used benevolently, though we recognize the danger of its being misused. Even if control is used with benevolent intent, it could actually create a nightmare. If such power of the behavioural sciences is used malignantly, the results will be that it will enhance the degree of regulation exercised by a dictatorial government. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Let us look at some of the elements which are involved in the concept of the control of human behaviour as mediated by the behavioural sciences. What would be the steps in the process by which a society might organize itself so as to formulate human life in terms of the science of humans? First would come the selection of goals. One possible goal is to be assigned to the behavioural technology is this: Let humans be happy, informed, skillful, well-behaved, and productive. Well, what do you say to the design of personalities? Would that interest you? The control of temperament? Give me the specifications, and I will give you the man! What do you say to the control of motivation, building the interests which will make humans most productive and most successful? Does that seem to you fantastic? Yet some of the techniques are available, and more can be worked out experimentally. Think of the possibilities! Let us control the lives of our children and see what we can make of them. What is essentially being said here is that the current knowledge in the behavioural sciences plus that which the future will bring, will enable us to specify, to a degree which today would seem incredible, the kind of behavioural and personality results which we wish to achieve. This is obviously both an opportunity and a very heavy burden. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

The second element in this process would be one which is familiar to every scientist who has worked in the field of applied science. Given the purpose, the goal, we proceed by the method of science—by controlled experimentation—to discover the means to these ends. If for example our present knowledge of the conditions which cause humans to be productive is limited, further investigation and experimentations would surely lead us to new knowledge in the field. And still further work will provide us with the knowledge of even more effective means. The method of science is self-correcting in thus arriving at increasingly effective ways of achieving the purpose we have selected. The third element in the control of human behaviour through the behavioural sciences involves the question of power. As the conditions or methods are discovered by which to achieve our goal, some person or group obtains the power to establish those conditions or use those methods. There has been too little recognition of the problem involved in this. To hope that the power being made available by the behavioural sciences will be exercised by the scientists, or by a benevolent group, seems to me a hope little support by either recent or distant history. It seems far more likely that behavioural scientists, holding their present attitudes, will be in the position of the rocket scientists specializing in guided missiles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

First they worked devotedly for the aggressor to destroy Russia and the United States. Now depending on who captured them, they work devotedly for Russian in the interest of destroying the United States, or devotedly for the United States in the interest of destroying Russia. If behavioural scientists are concerned solely with advancing their science, it seems most probable that they will serve the purposes of whatever individual or group has the power. However, this is, in a sense a digression. The main point of this view is that some person or group will have and use the power to put into effect the methods which have been discovered for achieving the desired goal. The fourth step in this process whereby a society might formulate its life in terms of the behavioural sciences is the exposure of individuals to the methods and conditions mentioned. As individuals are exposed to the prescribed conditions this leads, with a high degree of probability, to the behavioural which has been desired. People then become productive, if that has been the goal, or submissive, or whatever it has been decided to make them. To give something of the flavour of this aspect of the process as seen by one of its advocates. Now that we know rewarding reinforcement works, and why negative does not, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That is the source of the tremendous power of using rewards as a way to reinforce behaviour you want—there is no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behaviour, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that cause the question of freedom never arises. The neurotic, in contrast to the psychotic, cannot help registering with painful accuracy all the thousand little incidents of real life which do not fit in with one’s conscious illusion. Consequently one wavers in one’s self-valuation between feeling great and feeling worthless. At any minute one may shift from one extreme to the other. At the same time that one feels most convinced of one’s exceptional value one may be astonished that anyone takes one seriously. Or at the same time that one feels miserable and down-trodden one may feel furious that anyone should think one in need of help. One’s sensitivity can be compared with that of a person who is sore all over one’s body and flinches at the slightest touch. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

One easily feels hurt, despised, neglected, slighted, and reacts with proportionate vindictive resentment. Here again we see a “vicious circle” at work. While grandiose ideas have a definite reassurance value and afford some support, even though only in an imaginary way, they not only reinforce the tendency to recoil, but through the medium of sensitivity create greater rage and thereby greater anxiety. This is, to be sure, the picture of severe neuroses, but in minor degrees it can also be seen in less serious cases, where it may not even be recognized by the person concerned. On the other hand, however, a sort of lucky circle may start as soon as the neurotic is able to do some constructive work. By this means one’s self-confidence grows, and there is thus less necessity for one’s grandiose ideas. The neurotic’s lack of success—one’s falling behind others in any respect, whether it concern career or marriage, security or happiness—makes one envious of others and thus reinforces the attitude of begrudging envy which has developed from other sources. Several factors may lead one to repress one’s begrudging attitude, factors such as inherent nobility of character, a deep conviction that one has no right to demand anything for oneself, or simply failure to recognise one’s existing unhappiness. However, the more it is repressed the more it may be projected on others, resulting in a sometimes almost paranoid fear that others begrudge one everything. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

If something goof happens to one, a new job, a flattering recognition, a fortunate acquisition, good fortune in a love-relationship, this anxiety may be so great that one feels absolutely uneasy. Hence it may greatly reinforce one’s tendencies to refrain from having anything or getting anywhere. Leaving out all details, the main outlines of the “vicious circle” which develops out of the neurotic striving for power, prestige and possession may roughly indicate as follows: anxiety, hostility, impaired self-esteem; striving for power and the like; enhanced hostility and anxiety; tendency to recoil from competition (with accompanying tendencies toward self-belittling); failures and discrepancies between potentialities and achievements; enhanced grandiose ideas (with fear of envy); enhanced sensitivity (with renewed tendency to recoil); enhanced hostility and anxiety, which starts the cycle all over again. In order, however, to understand fully the role hat envy plays in neuroses, we have to regard it from a more comprehensive viewpoint. The neurotic, whether or not feels it consciously, is not only a very unhappy person indeed, but one does not see any chance of escaping one’s misery. What the outside observer describes as vicious circles developing out of attempts to get reassurance, the neurotic oneself feels as being hopelessly caught in a net. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

As a patient of mine has described it, he feels tied up in a Brooklyn Basement with many doors, and whichever door he opens leads only into new darkness. And all the time he knows that others are walking outside in Sunshine. All because he was looking for love in all the wrong places and ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Family secrets are revealed and he learns blood is not always thicker than water! I do not believe that one can understand any severe neurosis without recognizing the paralyzing hopelessness which it contains. Some neurotic persons express their exasperation in no uncertain terms, but in others it is deeply covered by resignation or by a show of optimism. It may be difficult then to see that behind all the odd vanities, demands, hostilities, there is a human being who suffers, who feels excluded from all that makes life desirable, who knows that even if one gets what one wants one cannot enjoy it. When one recognizes the existence of all this hopelessness it should not be difficult to understand what appears to be an excessive aggressiveness or even meanness, unexplainable by the particular situation. A person so shut out from every possibility of happiness would have to be a veritable Angel if one did not feel hatred toward a World one cannot belong to. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Coming back now to the problem of envy, this gradually developing hopelessness is the basis from which envy is constantly generated. It is not so much an envy of something special, but what is described as Lebensneid, a very general envy of everyone who feels more secure, more poised, more happy, more straightforward, more self-confident. If such a feeling of hopelessness has developed in a person, regardless of whether it is close to one’s awareness or far away, one will attempt to account for it. One does not see it—as the analytical observer does—as the outcome of an inexorable process. Instead one sees it as caused either by others or by oneself. Often one will blame both sources, though usually one or the other is in the foreground. When one puts the blame on others an accusatory attitude results, which may be directed toward fate in general, toward circumstances, or toward special persons: parents, teachers, husband, physician. Neurotic demands on others, as we have pointed out frequently, are to be understood largely from this point of view. It is as if the neurotic thought along these lines: “Since you are all responsible for my suffering, it is your duty to help me, and I have a right to expect it from you.” In so far as one seeks the source of evil in oneself, he feels that one has deserved one’s misery. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Speaking of the neurotic’s tendency to put the blame on others may give rise to a misunderstanding. It may sound as if one’s accusations were unwarranted. As a matter of fact one has definite good reasons to feel accusatory, because one has indeed been dealt with unfairly, particularly in childhood. However, there are also neurotic elements in one’s accusations: they often take the place of constructive efforts toward beneficial goals and usually they are blind and indiscriminate. They may be directed, for example, toward persons who want to help one and at the same time one may be entirely incapable of feeling and expressing accusations against those persons who really injure one. When the floodtides of evil break across the television screen or wash the pages of print media in what is now called “news,” people roll their eyes helplessly and say, “Why?” They never say “Why?” when something good happens. However, they would if they ever faced up to the reality of the ruined soul. However, they simply cannot deal with the actual content of the human heart, mind, body, social context, and soul. In intellectual circles (and do not we all live there now?) evil, like sin, is a non-category. It is impolite and politically incorrect to speak seriously of it, even if it is the most tragic event that has ever taken place in modern history. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Some years ago a leading media personality had a high-level conference in Aspen, Colorado USA, on the topic of evil. (Should not that meeting have been held elsewhere? South Los Angeles or Sacramento?) The outcome was that one or two participants out of a large group thought that there was such a thing as evil. However, most were either noncommittal on the point or certain that evil did not exist at all. When you heard their comments it was clear that they simply could not conceptualize the evil to be seen flourishing abundantly around them in the twentieth century. One of the most glaring evidences of the bankruptcy of contemporary ethical thinking is that it cannot deal with evil. A recent proposal to found a field of “Evil Studies” within academia will not be enthusiastically received. We should be very sure that the ruined soul is not one who has missed examination at the end of life. Hell is not an “oops!” or a slip. One does not miss Heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God. “Outer darkness” is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the Universe actually is. It is for those who are disastrously in error about their own life and their place before God and humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life that naturally leads into spiritual formation in Christlikeness. Spiritual formation is not something that may, or may not, be added to the gift of eternal life as an option. Rather, it is the path that the eternal kind of life “from above” naturally takes. It is the path one must be on if one is to be an eternal kind of life. It is not a project of life enhancement, where the life in question is the usual life of normal human beings—that is, life apart from God. It is, rather, the process of developing a different kind of life, the life of God himself, sustained by God as a new reality in those who have confidence that Jesus is the anointed One, the Son of God. “Believing in him we have life in his name,” reports John 20.31. Those “in Christ”—that is, caught up in his life, in what he is doing, by the inward gift of birth from above—“are of a new making. The ‘old stuff’ no longer matters. It is the new that counts,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.17. Here in this new creation is the radical goodness that alone can thoroughly renovate the heart. “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which one hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons (and daughters) of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like hum, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as one is pure. Amen,” Moroni 7.48. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Almighty and everlasting God, Who adornest the sacred body of Thy Church by the confessions of holy Martyrs; grant us, we pray Thee, that both by their doctrines and their pious example, we may follow after what is pleasing in Thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Mercifully give us, O Lord, an increasing of faith in Thee; that as it glorifies Thy holy Martyrs who held it fast even unto blood, it may also justify us who follow it in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that as we welcome with a temporary service the commemoration of Thy Saints, so we may rejoice in beholding them perpetually; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of my exodus, great was the joy of Israel’s sons, when Egypt died upon the shore, far greater the joy when the redeemer’s foe lay crushed in the dust. Jesus strides forth as the victor, conqueror of death, hell, and all opposing might; He bursts the bands f death, tramples the powers of darkness down, and lives for ever. He, my gracious surety, apprehended for payment of my debt, comes forth from the prison house of the grave free, and triumphant over sin, Satan, and death. Show me herein the proof that his vicarious offering is accepted, that the claims of justice are satisfied, that the devil’s sceptre is shivered, that one’s wrongful throne is levelled. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Give me the assurance that in Christ I died, in him I rose, in his life I live, in his victory I triumph, in his ascension I shall be glorified. Adorable redeemer, thou who wast lifted up upon a cross art ascended to highest Heaven. Thou, who as Man of sorrows wast crowned with throns, art now as Lord of life wreathed with glory. Once, no shame more deep than thine, no agony more bitter, no death more cruel. Now, no exaltation more high, no life more glorious, no advocate more effective. Thou art in the triumph BMW M5 leading captive thine enemies behind thee. What more could be done than thou hast done! Thy death is my life, thy resurrection my peace, thy ascension my hope, thy prayers my comfort. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that the examples of Thy Saints may stir us up to a better life, so that we who celebrate their solemnities, may also imitate their actions; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who permittest us to celebrate the commemoration of all Thy Saints, grant that we Thy servants may enjoy their fellowship in eternal gladness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, Who dost enkindle the flame of Thy love in the hearts of the Saints, grant to our minds the same faith and power of love; that as we rejoice in their triumphs, we may profit by their examples; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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With Me, the Liberty of the Country is All in All—If this be Preserved, Everything Will be Preserved; but if Lost, All Will be Lost!

January 22, 2020 2:23 am

I came upstairs into the World; for I was born in a cellar. Wise are those who learn that the bottom lie does not always have to be their top priority. Listen long enough and the person will generally come up with an adequate solution. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves,” St. Matthew 7.15. Fundamental to much of what I wish to say is the term “congruence.” This construct has been developed to cover a group of phenomena which seem important to therapy and to all interpersonal interaction. I would like to try to define it. Congruence is the term we have used to indicate an accurate matching of experiencing and awareness. It may be still further extended to cover a matching of experience, awareness, and communication. Perhaps the simplest example is an infant. If he is experiencing hunger at the physiological and visceral level, then one’s awareness appears to match this experience, and one’s communication is also congruent with one’s experience. He is hungry and dissatisfied, and this is true of him at all levels. He is at this moment integrated or unified in being hungry. On the other hand if he is satiated and content this too is a unified congruence, similar at the visceral level, the level of awareness and the level of communication. He is one unified person all the way through, whether we tap his experience at the visceral level, the level of his awareness, or the level of communication. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

Probably one of the reasons why most people respond to infants if that they are so completely genuine, integrated or congruent. If an infant expresses affection or anger or contentment or fear there is no doubt in our mind that he is this experience, all the way through. He is transparently fearful or loving or hungry or whatever. For an example of incongruence we must turn to someone beyond the stage of infancy. To pick an easily recognizable example take the man who becomes angrily involved in a group discussion. His face flushes, his tone communicates anger, he shakes his finger at his opponent. Yet when a friend says, “Well, let us not get angry about this,” he replied, with evident sincerity and surprise, “I am not angry! I do not have any feelings about this at all! I was just pointing out the logical facts.” The other men in the group break out in laughter at this statement. What is happening here? It seems clear that at a physiological level he is experiencing anger. This is not matched by his awareness. Consciously he is not experiencing anger, nor is he communicating this (so far as he is consciously aware). There is a real incongruence between experience and awareness, and between experience and communication. Another point to be noted here is that his communication is actually ambiguous and unclear. In its words it is a setting forth of logic and fact. In its tone, and in the accompanying gestures, it is carrying a very different message—“I am angry at you.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

I believe this ambiguity or contradictoriness of communication is always present when a person who is at that moment incongruent endeavors to communicate. Still another facet of the concept of incongruence is illustrated by this example. The individual himself is not a sound judge of his own degree of congruence. Thus the laughter of the group indicates a clear consensual judgment that the man is experiencing anger, whether or not he thinks so. Yet in his own awareness this is not true. In other words it appears that the degree of congruence cannot be evaluated by the person oneself at that moment. We may progress in learning to measure it from an external frame of reference. We have also learned much about incongruence from the person’s own ability to recognize incongruence in oneself in the past. Thus if the man of our example were in therapy, he might look back on this incident in the acceptant safety of the therapeutic hour and say, “I realize now I was terribly angry at him, even though at the time I thought I was not.” He has, we say, come to recognize his defensiveness at that moment kept him from being aware of his anger. The wise and good people who have died who have left their examples for imitation or their words for germination, and any living beings whom we have heard met or read about—all these are our spiritual guides; if we only make it so, all these can become masters. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

Why then should we narrow ourselves down to a single person with a single point of view? If one cannot find entry into the society of a master, one can meditate upon the life stories of historic masters of the past. Let one take the significant situations and devotional attitudes of these great souls into their own thought and study, to analyse the one and imitate the other. Let one think often and long of their character and conduct. Let one also read and reread the written messages they have left us. In this way one will imbibe something of their quality. Such is rarity of qualified teachers that today it is no longer a question of selecting one who particularly or personally appears to the seeker, but of finding one at all! The search for a master is often fruitless and abortive. Why is this? The answer is first, that few such masters exist today and second, that few of the searchers are qualified to work with one. Those who have this knowledge are nor easily accessible nor, even when found, do they easily divulge it. They are exceedingly rare. Not only are teachers more rare but the most sensitive seekers feel shyly inhibited from approaching them. It is a claim at once irrational and unjust that no being to be saved who does not approach a master in the flesh. For few beings can find such a master nor, finding one, can they always know one expect from a distance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

In ancient times there were few books to guide the aspirant and fewer still available to one. Consequently the need of a living guide was much greater than it is now. Even in ancient times such teachers were hard to find. The self-actualized is rare who can bring riddance to one’s disciple from the sorrows which agitate one’s heart. Beings of the highest spiritual caliber are not necessarily waiting around for disciples to come to them. They know quite well that each being is one’s own teacher in the end. One more example will portray another aspect of incongruence. Mrs. Tavard, who has been stifling yawns and looking at her watch for hours, says to her hostess on departing, “I enjoyed this evening so much. It was a delightful party.” Here the incongruence is not between experience and awareness. Mrs. Tavard is well aware that she is bored. Thus it might be noted that when there is an incongruence between experience and awareness, it is usually spoken of as defensiveness, or denial to awareness. When the incongruence is between awareness and communication it is usually thought of as falseness or deceit. There is an important corollary of the construct of congruence which is not at all obvious. It may be stated in this way. If an individual is at this moment entirely congruent, one’s actual physiological experience being accurately represented in one’s awareness, and one’s communication being accurately congruent with one’s awareness, then one’s communication could never contain an expression of and external fact. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Accurate awareness of experience would always be expressed as feelings, perceptions, meanings from an internal frame of reference. I never know that he is uneducated or you are bad. I can only perceive that you seem this way to me. Likewise, strictly speaking I do not know that the rock is hard if I fall down on it. (And even then I can permit the physicist to perceive it as a very permeable mass of high-speed atoms and molecules.) If the person is thoroughly congruent then it is clear that all of one’s communication would necessarily be put in a context of personal perception. This has very important implications. As an aside it might be mentioned that for a person always to speak from a context of personal perception does not necessarily imply congruence, since any mode of expression may be used as a type of defensiveness. Thus the person in a moment of congruence would necessarily communicate one’s perceptions and feelings as being these, and not as being facts about another person or the outside World. The reverse does not necessarily hold, however. Perhaps I have said enough to indicate that this conception of congruence is a somewhat complex concept with a number of characteristics and implications. It is not easily defined in operational terms, though some studies have been completed and other are in process which do provide crude operational indicators of what is being experienced, as distinct from the awareness of that experience. It is believed that further refinements are possible. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

I believe all of us tend to recognize congruence or incongruence in individuals with whom we deal. With some individuals we realize that in most areas this person not only consciously means exactly what one says, but that one’s deepest feelings also match what one is expressing, whether it is anger or competitiveness or affection or cooperativeness. We feel that “we know exactly where one stands.” With another individual we recognize that what one is saying is almost certainly a front, a façade. We wonder what one really feels. We wonder if one now what one feels. We tend to be wary and cautious with such an individual. Obviously then different individuals differ in their degree of congruence, and the same individual differs at different moments in degree of congruence, depending on what one is experiencing and whether one can accept this experience in his awareness, or must defend oneself against it. Any communication is marked by some degree of congruence. The greater the congruence of experience, awareness, and communication, the more like it is that someone will experience it as a clear communication. If all the cues from speech, tone and gesture are unified because they spring from a congruence and unity in an individua, then there is much less likelihood that these cues will have an ambiguous or unclear meaning to our audience. Consequently, the more clear the communication from an individual is, the more others will respond with clarity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

This is simply saying that even though an individual might be quite incongruent in one’s experiencing the topic under discussion, nevertheless one’s response will have more clarity and congruence in it than if one had experienced the other person’s communication as ambiguous. If the aspirant is fortunate enough to meet a man or woman in person or writing who genuinely represents the true and real, no effort will be made to influence one; it will be left entirely to one’s own free choice weather one follow this light hidden behind a bushel or any will-o’-the wisp masquerading as a light. It is hard to establish human contact with a master, hard to get one interested in one’s personal activities. It is not the actual meeting with a master that constitutes it importance, but the recognition that one is a master. There are beings who come as ambassadors from Heaven, and the writings or arts of beings, which come as revelators. However, unless the reaction includes recognition, the contact is fruitless, the meeting useless. How shall one know who is really a master, and who is not? It is easy at a distance of a thousand years to put an estimate on those who have left the effect of their spiritual greatness on generation after generation, but it is hard to measure contemporaries who look like other ordinary mortals. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

The more a person is congruent in the topic about which they are communicating, the less one has to defend oneself against in this area, and the more able one is to listen accurately to another individual’s response. Putting it in other terms, one has expressed what one genuinely feels. One is therefore more free to listen. The less one is presenting a façade to be defended, the more one can listen accurately to what another person is communicating. To this degree, then, one who is expressing their point of view feels empathically understood. One feels that in so far as one has expressed oneself, (and whether this is defensively or congruently) the other individual has understood one pretty much as one sees oneself, and as one perceives the topic under consideration. For a person to feel understood is a beneficial regard for the person we are communicating with. To feel that one is understood is to feel that one has made some kind of beneficial difference in the experience of another. And this is how a therapeutic relationship is formed. To the extent a person feels they can relate to and be understood by another person and that person is not acting in malice or facetiousness towards one, an individual will find oneself experiencing fewer barriers to communication. Hence one tends to communicate oneself more as one is, more congruently. Little by little one’s defensiveness decreases. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

Having communicated oneself more freely, with less of defensiveness, an individual is now more able to listen accurately, without a need for defensive distortion, to another’s further communication. This allows people to form a parallel therapeutic relationship with each other because they feel like they are trusted and understood and communicating with someone who has a similar intellectual ability and interests. This means that these people will have an easy time being friends and they will see a change in their personalities in the direction of greater unity and integration; less conflict and more energy utilizable for effective living; change in behavior in the direction of greater maturity. Of course you cannot force a relationship or always have a lot of friction, hostility, sarcasm is your speech. Often times, people do this with young people because they are inexperienced, but as they grow and mature they will understand that you are not a good person and not someone they want to communicate with them and no matter how much they talk to you, you will never change. This even happens with family members, which is why people eventually distance themselves from their family, for the relationships are toxic. In healthy communication, there must be a minimal wiliness on the part of two people to be in contact; an ability and minimal willingness of the part of each to receive communication from the other; and assuming the contact to continue over a period of time; then the following relationship is hypothesized to hold true. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

The greater the congruence of experience, awareness and communication on the part of one individual, the more the ensuing relationship will involve: a tendency toward reciprocal communication with a quality of increasing congruence; a tendency toward more mutually accurate understanding of the communications; improved psychological adjustment and functioning in both parties; mutual satisfaction in the relationship. Conversely the greater the communicated incongruence of experience and awareness, the more the ensuing relationship will involve: further communication with the same quality; disintegration of accurate understanding, less adequate psychological adjustment and functioning in both parties; and mutual dissatisfaction in the relationship. With probably even greater formal accuracy this general law could be stated in a way which recognizes that it is the perception of the receiver of communication which is crucial. Thus the hypothesized law could be put in these terms, assuming the same pre-conditions as before as to willingness to be in contact, and so forth. The more that Y experiences the communication of X as a congruence of experience, awareness, and communication, the more the ensuing relationship will involve parallel acceptance and trust. Stated in this way this “law” becomes an hypothesis which it should be possible to put to test, since Y’s perception of X’s communication should not be too difficult to measure. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

People are, of course, unsure if they should dare to communicate the full degree of congruence which they feel? At times unaware if they match their experience, and their awareness of that experience, with their communication? One may be uncertain if they should communicate themselves as they are or must their communications be somewhat less than or different from this? The sharpness of this issue is possessed in the often vividly foreseen possibility of threat or rejection. To communicate one’s full awareness of the relevant experience is a risk in interpersonal relationships. It seems to me that it is taking or not taking of this risk which determines whether a given relationship become more and more mutually therapeutic or whether it leads in a disintegrative direction. To put it another way. I cannot choose whether my awareness will be congruent with my experience. This is answered by my need for defense, and of this I am not aware. However, there is a continuing existential choice as to whether my communication will be congruent with the awareness I do have of what I am experiencing. In this moment-by-moment choice in a relationship may possess the answer as to whether the movement is in one direction or the other in terms of this hypothesized law. It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that one is one who never inflicts pain. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

True understand—“Knowledge of the HOLY One is understanding,” reports Proverbs 9.10. “Knowledge” in biblical language never refers to what we today call “head knowledge,” but always to experiential involvement with what is known—to actual engagement with it. Thus when Jesus defines the eternal life that one gives to one’s people as “that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent,” as reported in John 17.3, he is speaking of the grace of constant, close interaction with the Trinitarian being of God that Jesus brings into the lives of those who seek and find him. This is only a deeper and fuller understanding of Proverbs 3.5-8: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely exclusively in your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will smooth your paths. Do not imagine you have got it all figured out. Be afraid of the Lord and avoid evil. It will heal your body and bring refreshments to your bones.” Colossians 3.17 expresses the same basic fact, but now as the ultimate outcome of spiritual (trans)formation in Christ: “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of [in the place of, on behalf of] the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. Families and schools are part of those larger groups that we call society and state. Much has been said and written about the conformist influence that both of them exercise on the way of life of each of us. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

I do not need to repeat these often trenchant and distressing observations. I do not need to pint to the pressures exerted by suburban neighborhoods, by the laws of competition, by political threats, and by radio and TV filling our air waves twenty-four hors daily and impressing our unconscious even as we try to resist them in our conscious center. Again, the difficulty in resisting the conformist impact of all this is that it is not evil in our social and political forms makes every acts of protest a risk, not in the sense that we risk friendship, acknowledgement, or success—this we might be able to do—but in the sense that we risk making the wrong decision and losing ourselves in it. However, even so, we must risk, as the discipled to whom Jesus spoke had to risk. We must risk “being delivered up to councils, to stand before governors and kings and queens, and bear testimony before them, to be put to death by friends and relatives, to be hated by all.” This is certainly a picture of an extreme situation, although it has happened in our century to many people. Most of us will probably never have to face such grace decisions. However, it our daily life, in dealing with society and state, we have to face social tribunals that accuse us and may condemn us, because we are not conformed to their way of life. The picture of extreme non-conformity that Jesus paints includes all the small acts of non-conformity that we must perform in our daily life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Do not be conformed to the society group which you belong. Do not be conformed to those who have political power over you, even if you obey them. However, work for their transformation. God is just and holy. He judges sin and disciplines His children. However, He is also “the God of all grace” reports 1 Peter 5.10. No one knew that better than the apostle Peter. He had a history of blowing it even before the night when he dined Jesus. Simon Peter did not exactly get started on the right foot with Jesus. “Wherefore, a person being evil cannot do that which is good; neither will one have a good gift. For behold, a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water; wherefore, a person being a servant of the devil cannot follow Christ; and if one follow Christ one cannot be a servant of the devil. Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil; for the devil is an enemy unto God, and fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin, and to do that which is evil continually,” reports Moroni 7.10-13. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we, putting off the old man with his deeds, may live according to His life, of Whose very self Thou hast made us partakers by the healing gifts of our daily grace, Who with Thee we shall live, prosper, and have eternal life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

O God the Holy Spirit, that which I know not, teach thou me, keep me a humble disciple in the school of Christ, learning daily there what I am in myself, a fallen sinful creature, justly deserving everlasting destruction; O let me never lose sight of my need of a saviour, or forget that apart from Him I am nothing, and can do nothing. Open my understanding to know the Holy Scriptures; reveal to my soul the counsels and works of the blessed Trinity; instill into my dark mind the saving knowledge of Jesus; make me acquainted with His covenant undertakings and His perfect fulfillment of them, that by resting on His finished work I may find the Father’s love in the Son, His Father, my Father, and may be brought through thy influence to have fellowship with the Three in One. O lead me into all truth, thou Spirit of wisdom and revelation, that I may know the things that belong unto my peace, and through thee be made a new. Make practical upon my heart the Father’s love as thou has revealed it in the Scriptures; apply to my soul the blood of Christ, effectually, continually, and help me to believe, with conscience comforted, that it cleanseth from all sin; lead me from faith to faith, that I may at all times have freedom to come to a reconciled Father, and may be able to maintain peace with Him against doubts, fears, corruptions, temptations. Thy office is to teach me to draw near to Christ with a pure heart, steadfastly persuaded of His love, in the full assurance of faith. Let me never falter in this way. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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Knowledge of the HOLY One is Understanding—I Know that is a Secret, for it is Whispered Everywhere!

January 21, 2020 2:35 am

War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace. You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. Today’s pressures on the principalship show no signs of decreasing their intensity. Future challenges include encouraging dispersed yet centered leadership, creating a cohesive community out of increasingly diverse populations, being responsible without being in charge, changing rapidly in response to social needs without leaving people behind, building trust and confidence in an openly cynical society, and caring for people while challenging them to grow. Together, these challenges will continue to fill every day with problems to solve, puzzles to unravel, and paradoxes to manage and endure. The whole ask of psychotherapy is the task of dealing with a failure in communication. The emotionally maladjusted person, the “neurotic,” is in difficulty first, because communication within oneself has broken down, and second because, as a result of this, one’s communication with others has been damaged. If this sounds somewhat strange to you, then let me put it in other terms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

In the “neurotic” individual, parts of oneself which have been termed unconscious, or repressed, or denied to awareness, become blocked off so that they no longer communicate themselves to the conscious or managing part of oneself. As long as this is true, there are distortions in the way one communicates oneself to others, and so one suffers both within oneself, and in one’s interpersonal relationships. The task of psychotherapy is to help the person achieve, through a special relationship with a therapist, good communication within oneself. Once this is achieved one can communicate more freely and more effectively with others. We may say then that psychotherapy is good communication, within and between people. We may also turn that statement around and it will still be true. Good communication, free communication, within or between beings, is always therapeutic. It is, then, from a background of experience with communication in counseling and psychotherapy, that I want to present to you tonight two ideas. I wish to state what I believe is one of the major factors in blocking or impeding communication, and then I wish to present what in our experience has proven to be a very important way of improving or facilitating communication. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

I would like to propose, as an hypothesis for consideration, that the major barrier to mutual interpersonal communication is our very natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person, or the other group. Let me illustrate my meaning with some very simple examples. As you leave the meeting tonight, one of the statements you are likely to hear is, “I did not like that man’s talk.” Now what do you respond? Almost invariably your reply will be either approval or disapproval of the attitude expressed. Either you respond, “I did not either. I thought it was terrible,” or else you tend to reply, “Oh, I thought it was really good.” In other words, your primary reaction is to evaluate what has been said to you, to evaluate it from your point of view, your own frame of reference. Or take another example. Suppose I say with some feeling, “I think the Republicans are behaving in ways that show a lot of good sound sense these days,” what is the response that arises in your mind as you listen? The overwhelming likelihood is that it will be evaluative. You will find yourself agreeing, or disagreeing, or making some judgment about me such as “He mist be a conservative,” or “He seems solid in his thinking.” Or let us take an illustration from the international scene. Russian says vehemently, “The treaty with Japan is a war plot on the part of the United States.” We rise as one person to say “That is a lie!” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

This last illustration brings in another element connected with my hypothesis. Although the tendency to make evaluations is common in almost all interchange of language, it is very much heightened in those situations where feelings and emotions are deeply involved. So the stronger our feelings the more likely it is that there will be no mutual element in the communication. There will be just two ideas, two feelings, two judgments, missing each other in psychological space. I am sure you recognize this from your own experience. When you have not been emotionally involved yourself, and have listened to a heated discussion, you often go away thinking, “Well, they actually were not talking about the same thing.” And they were not. Each was making a judgment, an evaluation, from one’s own frame of reference. There was really nothing which could be called communication in any genuine sense. This tendency to react to any emotionally meaningful statement by forming an evaluation of it from our own point of view, is, I repeat, the major barrier to interpersonal communications. However, is there any way of solving this problem, of avoiding this barrier? I think that we are making exciting progress toward this goal and I would like to present it as simply as I can. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Real communication occurs, and this evaluative tendency is avoided, when we listen with understanding. What does this mean? It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view, to sense how it feels to one, to achieve one’s frame of reference in regard to the thing one is talking about. Stated briefly, this may sound absurdly simple, but it is not. It is an approach which we have found extremely potent in the field of psychotherapy. It is the most effective agent we know for altering the basic personality structure of an individual, and improving one’s relationships and one’s communications with others. If I can listen to what one can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to one, if I can see its personal meaning for one, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for one, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in one. If I can really understand how one hates one’s father, or hates the university, or hates corruption—if I can catch the flavor of one’s fear or of insanity, or one’s fear of atom bombs, or of Russia—it will be of the greatest help to one in altering those very hatreds and fears, and in establishing realistic and harmonious relationships with the very people and situations toward which one has felt hatred and fear. We know from our research that such empathic understanding—understanding with a person, not about one—is such an effective approach that it can bring about major changes in personality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Some of you may be feeling that you listen well to people, and that you have never seen such results. The changes are very great indeed that your listening has not been of the type I have described. Fortunately I can suggest a little laboratory experiment which you can try to test the quality of your understanding. The next time you have words with your wife, or your friend, or with an experiment, institute this rule. “Each person can speak up for the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction.” You see what this would mean. It would simply mean that before presenting your own point of view, it would be necessary for you to really achieve that other speaker’s frame of reference—to understand one’s thoughts and feelings so well that you could summarize them for the individual. Sounds simple, does it not? However, if you try it you will discover it is one of the most difficult things you have ever tried to do. However, once you have been able to see the other’s point of view, your own comments will have to be drastically revised. You will also find the emotion going out of the discussion, the differences being reduced, and those differences which remain being of a rational and understandable sort. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

If it were projected into larger areas, can you imagine what this kind of an approach would mean? What would happen to a labor-management dispute if it was conducted in such a way that labor, without necessarily agreeing, could accurately state management’s point of view in a way that management could accept; and management, without approving labor’s stand, could state labor’s case in a way that labor agreed was accurate? It would mean that real communication was established, and one could practically guarantee that some reasonable solution would be reached. If then this way of approach is an effective avenue to good communication and good relationships, as I am quite sure you will agree if you try the experiment I have mentioned, why is it not more widely tried and used? I will try to list the difficulties which keep it from being utilized. In the first place it takes courage, a quality which is not too widespread. If you really understand another person in this way, if you are willing to enter one’s private World and see the way life appears to one, without any attempt to make evaluative judgments, you run the risk of being changed yourself. You might see it one’s way, you might find yourself influenced in your attitudes or your personality. This risk of being changed is one of the most frightening prospects most of us can face. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

It I enter, as fully as I am able, into the private World of a neurotic or psychotic individual, is not there a risk that I might become lost in that World? Most of us are afraid to take that risk. Or if we had a Russian communist speaker here tonight, or Senator Joseph McCarthy, how many of us would, after the shock of him being alive wore off, dare to try to see the World from each of these points of views? The great majority of us could not listen; we would find ourselves compelled to evaluate, because listening would seem too dangerous. So the first requirement is courage, and we do not always have it. However, there is a second obstacle. It is just when emotions are strongest that it is most difficult to achieve the frame of reference of the other person or group. Yet, if communication is to be established, this is the time the attitude is most needed. We have not found this to be an insuperable obstacle in our experience in psychotherapy. A third party, who is able to lay aside one’s own feelings and evaluations, can assist greatly by listening with understanding to each person or group and clarifying the views and attitudes each holds. We have found this very effective in small groups in which contradictory or antagonistic attitudes exist. When the parties to a dispute realize that they are being understood, that someone sees how the situation seems to them, the statements grow less exaggerated and less defensive, and it is no longer necessary to maintain the attitude, “I am 100 percent tight and you are 100 percent wrong.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

The influence of such an understanding catalyst in the group permits the members to come closer and closer to the objective truth involved in the relationship. In this way mutual communication is established and some type of agreement becomes much more possible. So we may say that though heightened emotions make it much more difficult to understand with an opponent, our experience makes it clear that a neutral, understanding, catalyst type of a leader or therapist can overcome this obstacle. This last phrase, however, suggests another obstacle to utilizing the approach I have described. Thus far all our experience has been with small face-to-face groups—groups exhibiting industrial tensions, religions tensions, racial tensions, and therapy groups in which many personal tensions are present. In these small groups our experience, confirmed by a limited amount of research, shows that a listening, empathic approach leads to improved communication, to greater acceptance of others and by others, and to attitudes which are more beneficial and more problem-solving in nature. There is a decrease in defensiveness, in exaggerated statements, in evaluative and critical behavior. However, these findings are from small groups. What about trying to achieve understanding between larger groups that are geographically remote? Or between face-to-face groups who are not speaking for themselves, but simply as representatives of others, like the delegates at the United Nations? #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Frankly we do not know the answers to these questions. I believe the situation might be put this way. As social scientists we have a tentative test-tube solution of the problem of breakdown in communication. However, to confirm the validity of this test-tube solution, and to adapt it to the enormous problems of communication breakdown between classes, groups, and nations, would involve additional funds, much more research, and creative thinking of a high order. Even with our present limited knowledge we can see some steps which might be taken, even in large groups, to increase the amount of listening with, and to degrease the amount of evaluation about. To be imaginative for a moment, let us suppose that a therapeutically oriented international group went to the Russian leaders and said, “We want to achieve a genuine understanding of your views and even more important, of your attitudes and feelings, toward the United State of American. We will summarize and resummarize these views and feelings if necessary, until you agree that our description represents the situation as it seems to you.” Then suppose they did the same thing with the leaders in our own country. If they then gave the widest possible distribution to these two views, with the feelings clearly described but not expressed in name-calling, might not the effect be very great? It would not guarantee the type of understanding I have been describing, but it would make it much more possible. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

We can understand the feelings of a person who hates us much more readily when one’s attitudes are accurately described to us by a neutral third party, than we can when one is shaking one’s fist at us. However, even to describe such a first step is to suggest another obstacle to this approach of understanding. Our civilization does not yet have enough faith in the social sciences to utilize their findings. The opposite is true of the physical sciences. During the war when a test-tube solution was found to the problem of synthetic rubber, millions of dollars and an army of talent was turned loose on the problem of using that finding. If synthetic rubber could be made in milligrams, it could and would be made in the thousands of tones. And it was. However, in the social science realm, if a way is found of facilitating communication and mental understanding in small groups, there is no guarantee that the finding will be utilized. If may be a generation or more before the money and the brains will be turned loose to exploit that finding. Our research and experience to date would make it appear that breakdowns in communication, and the evaluative tendency which is the major barrier to communication, can be avoided. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

The solution is provided by creating a situation in which each of different parties comes to understand the other from the other’s point of view empathically, and who thus acts as a catalyst to precipitate further understanding. This procedure has important characteristics. It can be initiated by one party, without waiting for the other to be ready. It can even be initiated by a neutral third person, provided one can gain a minimum of cooperation from one of the parities. This procedure can deal with the insincerities, the defensive exaggerations, the lies, the “false fronts” which characterize almost every failure in communication. These defensive distortions drop away with astonishing speed as people find that the only intent is to understand, not judge. This approach leads steadily and rapidly toward the discovery of truth, toward a realistic appraisal of the objective barriers to communication. The dropping of some defensiveness by one party leads further dropping of defensiveness by the other part, and truth is thus approached. This procedure gradually achieves mutual communication. Mutual communication tends to be pointed toward solving a problem rather than toward attacking a person or a group. It leads to a situation in which I see how the problem appears to you, as well as to me, and you see how it appears to me, as well as to you. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Thus accurately and realistically defined, the problem is almost certain to yield to intelligent attack, or if it is in part insoluble, it will be comfortably accepted as such. This then appears to be a test-tube solution to the breakdown of communication as it occurs in small groups. Can we take this small scale answer, investigate it further, refine it, develop it and apply it to the tragic and well-nigh fatal failures of communication which threaten the very existence of our modern World? It seems to me that this is a possibility and a challenge which we should explore. When my first wife—who is not with the Lord—and I were married, we asked that the following Scripture, which we felt God had given us as a promise, be read at our wedding: “They will by my people, and I will be their God, I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul,” reports Jeremiah 32.28-41. Note the expression of God’s goodness. He will give us singleness of heart for our own good of our children. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

God will never stop doing good to us, in fact He will rejoice in doing us good. This sounds appropriate, does it not, for two young people committed to service in full time? However, this assurance of God’s goodness was not originally given to people who were serving God or who “deserve” His goodness. Instead it was given to a group of people who were described by God as those who “have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth” (verse 30). These people were in captivity in Babylon because of their sins over many generations. Just a few chapters before in Jeremiah, God has said to these people: This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future,” reports Jeremiah 29.10-11. The goodness of God is demonstrated in His assurance of plans to prosper them and not to harm them. Note in verse 10 that God refers to His gracious promise, that is, a promise given freely without regard to the fact that they obviously did not deserve it. Here we see a vivid illustration of the truth of Samuel Storms’ statement that grace is no longer grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the present of human demerit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

If anyone qualified for demerits, surely the Israelites in captivity did. Yet God promised to prosper them, to rejoice in doing them god. Another insight into God’s gracious disposition is found in the prophecy of Joel. Joel prophesied judgment through a tremendous invasion of locusts that would devour all the trees and plants, resulting in widespread famine in the land. Then Joel looked forward to a day of restoration, a day when the trees would again bear fruit, the threshing floors would again be filled with grain, and the vats overflow with new wine and oil. In the midst of the prophecy of restoration, God made the following promise: “I will replay you for the years the locusts have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locust and the locust swarm—my great army that I sent among you,” reports Joel 2.25. Consider the amazing generosity of God. He does not limit His promise merely to restoring the land to its former productivity. He says He will repay them for the years the locusts have eaten, years that they themselves forfeited to the judgment of God. God could well have said, “I will restore your land to its former productivity, but it is too bad about those years you lost. They are gone forever. That is the prince you pay for sin.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

God would have been generous just to have restored them, but He went beyond that. God would cause their harvests to be so abundant they would recoup the losses from the years of famine. God says He will repay them, though He obviously owes them nothing. From time to time I have opportunity to minister individually to people who in some way have really “blown it” in life. For some, it may have been before they became Christians; for others it occurred while they were believers. Usually these people lament their “lost” years, the years when they served sin instead of God, or years that were wasted as Christians. I try to encourage these people about the grace of God. I cannot promise them God will “repay” those lost years as He did for the Israelites, but I can assure them that it is God’s nature to be gracious. I encourage them to pray to this end and to realize, as they pray, that they are coming to a God who does not withhold His grace because of demerits. “For behold, if a person being evil giveth a gift, one doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto one the same as if one had retained the gift; wherefore one is counted evil before God. And likewise also is it counted evil unto a being, if one shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it porfiteth one nothing, for God recevieth none such,” reports Moroni 7.8-9. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Almighty and everlasting God, Who hast vouchsafed the Paschal mystery in the covenant of a being’s reconciliation; grant unto our souls, that what we celebrate by our profession we may imitate in our practice; through Jesus Christ our Lord who will bless us with everlasting love and eternal life. O God the Holy Spirit, Thou who dost proceed from the Father and the Son, have mercy on me. When thou didst first hover over chaos, order came to birth, beauty robed the World, fruitfulness sprang forth. Move, I pray thee, upon my disordered heart; take away the infirmities of unruly desires and hateful lusts; life the mists and darkness of unbelief; brighten my soul with the pure light of truth; make it fragrant as the garden of paradise, rich with every goodly fruit, beautiful with Heavenly grace, radiant with rays of divine light. Fulfill in me the glory of thy divine offices; be my comforter, light, guide, sanctifier; take of the things of Christ and show them to my soul; through thee may I daily learn more of God’s love, grace, compassion, faithfulness, beauty; lead me to the cross and show me His wounds, the hateful nature of evil, the power of Satan; may I there see my sins as the nails that transfixed him, the cords that bound him, the thorns that tore him, the sword that pierced him. Help me to find in his death the reality and immensity of his love. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Open for me the wondrous volumes of truth in his, “It is finished.” Increase my faith in the clear knowledge of atonement achieved, expiation completed, satisfaction made, guilt done away, my debt paid, my sins forgiven, my person redeemed, my soul saved, hell vanquished, Heaven opened, eternity made mine. O Holy Spirit, deepen in me these saving lessons. Write them upon my heart, that my walk be sin-loathing, sin-fleeing, Christ-loving; and suffer no devil’s device to beguile or deceive me. O God, Who by Christ’s Resurrection restores us to life eternal; raise us up to the Author of our salvation, Who is seated at Thy right hand that He Who came to be judged for our sake, may come to judge in our favour, Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord, Who with thee we may enter he shrine of Heaven, and that we may abandon bleak despair and hard cynicism. Lord, please keep us from becoming engulfed in the agency of moral wickedness. Let us take your unseen hand and may you be our personal saviour or spiritual guide, whether dead or alive—someone who we believe to have come to enlighten human kinds. Lord, become our secret refuge, and may we deserve your grace. May our intellectual effort be sustained beyond the stage of ordinary beings in which we now rest. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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In Nature there are Neither Rewards Nor Punishments–there are Consequences!

January 18, 2020 2:59 am

We grew up in a World of stability with spasms of change. Today we live in a World of change with spasms of stability. There are large numbers of young people who are radical not just in their political demands but in another respect that is closely linked to the rejection of authoritarian morality. The rebellion is directed not solely at authority (all revolutions voice a protest against authority) but at the patriarchal principle and the morality rooted in that principle, a morality that calls obedience a virtue and disobedience a sin. If these youngsters do not do what they are supposed to do, a phenomenon of great significance that follows from this morality, is that, people develop guilt feelings. If the youth violate the patriarchal principle and the morality it is founded on, instead of doing what their own hearts, their own feelings, their own humanity tells them to do, they submit to an authoritarian order that punishes them with guilt. What characterizes a large number of young people and what makes them so likable for so many of the rest of us, myself included, is, I think that they have freed themselves from the guilt feelings imposed by authoritarian morality. They have, by and large, discarded the guilt that has been drilled into the New World humankind in the Judeo-Christian tradition for the last two thousand years and put aside the fear of acting outside the norms that have determined our behavior to such a great extent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

However, in doing so they have not become immoral themselves. On the contrary, they are in search of new principles of morality. And here I have to mention another distinctive feature of this young generation: a new honesty. They do not feel the same compulsion that earlier generations did to make up excuses for themselves, to rationalize, to refuse to call a spade a spade. One result is that they sometimes use language that is of questionable taste and that puts off people raised in the old tradition. However, the key point is that they give expression to an honesty that is completely at odds with the dishonesty prevalent in bourgeois, patriarchal society, where we always have to hide what we feel guilt about and where we always have to act as if we were the very incarnation of all good qualities. We cannot admit that nothing human is alien to u, because such an admission would push us to the brink of disobedience. However, at the moment when we understand and acknowledge that the reality of a human includes both one’s best and one’s worst, at that moment we become fully human. Instead of feeling outraged over our negative potential, we have to experience that, too, as part of our humanity. Dr. Sigmund Freud contributed a great deal to the new honesty. Indeed, he opened up a wholly new dimension of honesty. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Before Dr. Freud we took it at face value when people assured us of their good intentions. However, now, after Dr. Freud’s discovery and systematic study of the unconscious, asseverations of good intentions will not do any more. We want to know what the unconscious motives behind those good intentions are. And we have come to the realization that it makes little difference whether someone is aware of one’s bad intentions or whether one is simply clever enough to rationalize them and so hide them both from others and oneself. Indeed, someone with truly evil intentions may have achieved greater honesty with oneself than someone who has repressed one’s evil intentions from one’s conscious mind and is therefore in an even better position to carry them out because one can package them in the guise of good and virtuous ideas. Ever since Dr. Freud, we have had to face the fact that we are responsible not only for our conscious minds and our good intentions but also for our unconscious. Our actions and not our words alone speak for us. It is even possible that our words mean nothing at all. However, Dr. Freud’s work is not the only reason we have for being suspicious o mere words. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

We have also had the experience of seeing human dishonesty lead us into wars in which hundreds of millions of people were killed or, for the sake of honor, voluntarily marched off to their deaths. All those deaths can be traced back to lies and empty slogans. We have good reason today to be less impressed than ever by what people say. Words and ideas come cheap and can be done up in all kinds of packages. That is why young people are less inclined to ask, “What did you think about all that?” and ask instead, “What did you do? What were your motives?” I think this effect of Dr. Freud’s work, the introduction of a new honesty into our lives, is of far more importance in the development of the New World than the revolution in the pleasures of the flesh that happened around 1925, if that is what you want to call it. Some people believe it would have come about even without Dr. Freud, but I think since he is so heavily referenced, even today, that pleasures of the flesh would still be repressed and hidden behind closed doors without his influence. Yet, the thought is that we cannot exhort people to obtain everything they need to satisfy their senses and at the same time urge abstinence of pleasures on the flesh on them. However, if no one came along encouraging people to express the passions of the flesh, perhaps our society would still be more Victorian because it would still be engrained in our culture, like religion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Still, others believe that in a consumer society pleasures of the flesh will inevitably become a consumer article. A number of industries depend on that fact, and a lot of money is spent t maintain the attractiveness of the flesh. That represents a change from earlier times but, and so it is kind of a revolution. People are no longer wearing long dresses and covering every square inch of their flesh, they now make close to even expose parts that are traditionally hidden from the public. You have to call it a sexual revolution. Women are now spending a lot of money making up their faces to get men to focus on what is visible to the public and people just cannot seem to take no for an answer these days. The story on pleasures of the flesh is on shaky grounds. Because it is considered sinful, people who act upon them feel guilty and those who do not make be pressured and stigmatized by society for not, so they may feel guilty. All is not gold that glitters. Because of our consumer orientation, pleasures of the flesh are exploited increasingly to disguise a lack of intimacy. We use physical intimacy alone cannot emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy, a genuine harmony between two people, may well be inked with physical intimacy, may even begin with it, and can be confirmed again and again by it, but those two kinds of intimacy are not identical. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

At those moments when we lack emotional intimacy we are most likely to substitute physical intimacy for it. And if we are normally constituted both physically and mentally, that is quite easy to do. The younger generation, as I have said, rejects the patriarchal kind of consumerism, which is exemplified in young people’s use of drugs. Their parents buy cars, clothes, jewelry; the children take drugs. There are many reasons why they reach for drugs (partially because California and other states have legalized marijuana) and tend to develop an ever greater dependency on them, reasons that demand our careful consideration; but whatever else drug dependency is, it is also an expression of that same lazy, passive Homo consumens that the children criticize in their parents but that they themselves also represent in a different guise. The young people, too, are always waiting for something to come to them from the outside, waiting for the high of drugs, the high of pleasures of the flesh, the high of the rock rhythms that hypnotize them, carry them off, sweep them away. Those rhythms do not encourage activity. They transport the young into an orgiastic state, into a state like a drug high, in which they forget themselves and so are profoundly passive. An active human being does not forget oneself; one is oneself and is constantly becoming oneself. One becomes more mature, one becomes more adult, one grows. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

A passive person is, as I suggested before, an eternal suckling babe. What one consumes is ultimately of little consequence to one. One simply waits with open mouth, as it were, for whatever the bottle offers. Then one is gradually sated without having to do anything oneself. None of one’s psychic powers is called into play, and finally one grows tired and sleepy. The sleep one experiences is often a narcosis, an exhaustion induced by boredom, more than a sleep of healthy regeneration. Once again you may feel that I am exaggerating here, but estimates suggest that more people than we would imagine are having that kind of experience. And the media involved in producing our false needs keep reassuring us that it is our level of consumption that demonstrates the high level of our culture. The question we have to ask in our society of bad, superfluous affluence that no one can possibly digest and that contributes nothing to our vitality—the question we have to ask is whether we can still manage, in principle at least, to create a good affluence. Can we somehow make good, truly productive use of the overabundant production we are technologically capable of, a use that serves human beings and their growth? That should be possible if we will understand that what we have to do is encourage and satisfy those needs that makes people more active, livelier, freer, that they will not be driven by their feelings or simply react to stimuli but will be open and attentive and determined to realize their own potential, to enliven, enrich, and inspire themselves and others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

One prerequisite for accomplishing that is, of course, to reorganize not only our work but also our so-called leisure. Our free time is, for the most part, nothing but lazy time. It provides us with an illusion of power because we can bring the World into our living rooms by pressing a button on the TV set or because we can get behind the wheel of a car and fool ourselves into thinking the engine’s 1,400 horsepower is our own. We have truly “free time” only to the extent that we cultivate needs that are rooted in humans and that move one to become active. That is why work has to stop being monotonous and boring. And the central problem we face in organizing our work is: How can we make work interesting, exciting, lively? Here we come up against an even ore basic question: What is the point of our work? Is it to increase production and consumption? Or is it to promote the development and growth of human beings? It is usually claimed that the one cannot be separated from the other. What is good for industry is good for people, and vice versa. That sounds like the proclamation of some lovely, preordained harmony, but in fact it is an outright lie. It is easy to demonstrate that many things that were beneficial to industry were bad for people. And that is our dilemma today. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

If we continue on the path we are on, progress will be achieved only at the expense of human beings. And so we have to make a choice. To put it in biblical language, we have to choose between God and the Democrats. That may sound very dramatic, but if we are going to talk seriously about life, then thins do get dramatic. What I have in mind here is not only the question of life and death but also whether we will choose the increasing death in the life we see around us or will opt for lives of vitality and activity. The whole point of life is to become increasingly vital, more full of life. People deceive themselves about that. They live as if they have stopped living or as if they have never begun to live. Our folk wisdom tells us that everyone over forty is responsible for one’s own face. That means that our own life histories will reveal whether we have lived our lives rightly or wrongly (not rightly or wrongly in a moral sense but in terms of our own unique being). And the most glowing funeral orations with their lists of achievement cannot gloss over the crucial question that we must not avoid answering: Were we or are we truly alive? Do we live our own lives, or are they lived on someone else’s terms? I agree with thinkers like Marx and Disraeli, who were convinced that luxury is no less an evil than poverty. And by luxury they meant what we have been calling superfluous affluence here. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

However, if we want to make genuine abundance our goal instead, we will have to make some fundamental changes in our ways of living and thinking. I am, of course, fully aware of the great difficulties that are possessed in the way of effecting such changes. I think that the changes can be effected only if people feel a deep need for more life and less routine, only if they reject boredom and respond to needs that make them more vital and spontaneous, freer and happier. Many nations (mainly the underdeverloped ones) dream that they would be happy if they only had everything that Americans has. However, America is where more people than in any other country have learned that all our modern comforts do is tend to make us passive, impersonal, and manipulable rather than happy. It is no coincidence that our rebellious youth comes primarily from the middle and upper classes, in which superfluous affluence is most apparent. That kind affluence may make for happiness in our imaginations, in our fantasies, but it does not make us happy in our heart of hearts. It seems extremely important to me to grasp clearly a principle that is essential to formulating our strategies in the art of living. We will botch out lives if we pursue conflicting goals and do not realize that they are at odds with each other and are mutually exclusive. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

Human beings will become physically ill if they pursue conflicting goals. They lose their equilibrium, their self-confidence, their powers of discrimination. They no longer know what is good for them. The first thing we have to do, the, is to ask ourselves in all honesty what the conflicting goals are that we are pursuing. Why are they incompatible? What damage is the conflict between them causing in us? These questions cannot be answered by speeches and certainly not by propaganda, which does nothing but make fanatics of people. Every single one of us should try to call oneself to account and think something along this line: “You will live only a short time. Who are you, and what is it you really want?” If we give ourselves up to the kind of affluence that is ultimately poverty, ultimately misery, we shall be squelching the richness that is ready to unfold and flourish within us; and on our decision for superfluity or abundance, for a good or bad affluence, depends no more nor less than the future of humankind. I strongly recommend the discipline of elevation. If you could not be who you are, who would you like to be? If I could not be who I am, I would most like to be…my wife’s second husband. A commitment to building up your wife is of greatest importance. Men, if you think what your wife does is less important than what you do, you are wrong, and you have big problems. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Compliments on your wife’s kindness and her daily provisions should be commonplace, as should showing her respect. And I know men love golf, but if you love your wife, there must be times when you forsake the Heavenly green because you value her interests and simply love her. Years ago, in the Midwest, a farmer and his wife were lying in bed during a storm when the funnel of a tornado suddenly lifted the roof right off the house and sucked their bed away with them still in it. The wife began to cry, and the farmer called to her that it was no time to cry. She called back that she was so happy, she could not help it—it was the first time they had been out together in twenty years! One of the major “staying” factors that keeps couples together is time spent together. Make sure you maintain this priority. Your calendar reveals what is important to you, so write her calendar into yours. Schedule weekly ties together that do not just “happen.” Be creative. Date! Surprise her. Be extravagant. Men, when was the last time you opened the door for her…said “I love you” or complimented her, wrote her a loving note, sent her flowers, dated her, or gave her extraspecial attention? To keep a new marriage going, it requires careful attention, developed skill, and work. Men, are you working on the second most important relationship of your life (God is first)? Act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

O God, Who hast bestowed upon us the Paschal remedy, let Thy Heavenly gift accompany Thy people; that what is now the cause of their delight in time, may hereafter be their joy throughout eternity; through Jesus Christ our Lord anything is possible. Blot out, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the handwriting made by the law of sin, which Thou hast made void in us by the Paschal mystery, through the Ressurrection of Thy Son; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “And their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner of the workings of the Spirit, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; for as the power of the Holy Ghost led them whether to preach, or to exhort, or to pray, or to supplicate, or to sing, even so it was done,” reports Moroni 6.9. O Lord God, I pray not so much for graces as for the Spirit himself, because I feel his absence, and act by my own spirit in everything. Give me not weak desires but the power of his presence, for this is the surest way to have all his graces, and when I have the seal I have the impression also; He can heal, help, quicken, humble suddenly and easily, can work grace and life effectually, and being eternal he can give grace eternally. Save me from great hindrances, from being content with a little measure of the Spirit, from thinking thou wilt not give me more. When I feel my lack of Him, light up life and faith, for when I lose thee I am either in the dark and cannot see thee, or Satan and my natural abilities content me with a little light, so that I seek no further for the Spirit of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

Teach me then what to do. Should I merely humble myself and not stir up my heart? Should I meditate and use all means to bring him near, not being contented by one means, but trust Him to give me a blessing by the use of all, depending only upon, and waiting always for, thy light, by use of means? It is a duty or an error to pray and look for the fullness of the Spirit in me? Am I mistaken in feeling I am empty of the Spirit because I do not sense his presence within, when all the time I am most empty and could be more fully by faith in Christ? Was the fullness of the Spirit in the apostles chiefly a power, giving the subsistence outside themselves in Christ, in whom was their life and joy? Teach me to find and know fullness of the Spirit only in Jesus. We beseech Thee, O Lord, be pleased by the Paschal remedies to grant unto us that we may learn to scorn Earthly desires, and to long after things Heavenly; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O merciful God, that in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we may in very deed have our portion; through the same our Lord Who art in Heaven. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God that we who celebrate the Paschal solemnities may evermore live in Thy sanctifying grace; through out ever providing and guiding light, Jesus Christ, our Lord. O God, Who by the Paschal solemnity hast bestowed healing gifts on the Word, let Thy Heavenly bounty attend Thy people, that they may both attain to perfect freedom, and advance to everlasting life’ through Jesus Christ our Lord bless it be. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

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Something Very Strange and Mystic Happened to Me, Something Realistic and as Weird as Can be!

January 11, 2020 3:36 am

To give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not ask for any reward, save that of know that we do Thy will. Do not lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality. Life is not a destination, it is a journey. It is not a series of goals, it is a series of steps, of events unfolding as you make your way. If a person is accepted, fully accepted, and in this acceptance there is no judgment, only compassion and sympathy, the individual is able to come to grips with oneself, to develop the courage to give up one’s defenses and face one’s true self. However, this is not a perfect World and there is evidence of hostility as members differ. Somehow, in a setting where people are interested in being normal, civil, and peaceful every blow is softened, as if the sharp edges have been removed; if undeserved, people will go off on something else; and the blow is somehow lost. In my own case, even those people who originally irritate me, with further acquaintance I begin to accept and respect; and the thought occurred to me as I tried to understand what was happening: Once you come close to a person, perceive one’s thoughts, one’s emotions, one’s feelings, one become not only understandable but good and desirable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

Some of the more aggressive ones speak more than they should, more than their right share, but the group itself, by its own being, not by setting rules, eventually made its authority felt; and unless a person is very sick or insensitive, members more or less, in this respect, conform to what is expected of them. The problem-the hostile, the dominant, the neurotic—is not too acute; and yet if measured in a formal way, with a stop watch, at no time is a session free from aimless talk and waste of time. However, as one watches the process, the idea may persist that perhaps this waste of time may be necessary; it may very well be that that way a person learns best; for certainly, as I look back at the whole experience, I am fairly certain that it would have been impossible to earn as much or as well or as thoroughly in the traditional classroom setting. What a better way can a person learn than by becoming involved with one’s whole self, one’s very person, one’s root drives, emotions, attitudes and values? No series of facts or argument, no matter how logically or brilliantly arranged, can even faintly compare with that sort of thing. In the course of this process, I saw hard, inflexible, strict and rigid persons, in the brief period of several weeks, change in front of my eyes and become sympathetic, understanding and to a marked degree non-judgmental. I saw neurotic, compulsive persons ease up and become more accepting of themselves and others. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

In one instance, a student who particularly impressed me by his change, told me when I mentioned this: “It is true. I feel less rigid, more open to the World. And I like myself better for it. I do not believe I ever learned so much anywhere.” I saw shy persons become less shy and aggressive persons more sensitive and moderate. One might say that this appears to be essentially an emotional process. However, that I believe would be altogether inaccurate in describing it. There was a great deal of intellectual content, but the intellectual content was meaningful and crucial to the person, in a sense that it meant a great deal to one as a person. In fact, one student brought up this very question. “Should we be concerned,” he asked, “only with the emotions? Has the intellect no play?” It was my turn to ask, “Is there any student who has read as much or thought as much for any other course?” The answer was obvious. We had spent hours and hours reading; the room reserved for us had occupants until 10 o’clock at night, and then many left only because the university guards wanted to close the building. Students listened to recordings; they saw motion pictures; but best of all, they talked and talked and talked. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

In the traditional course, the instructor lectures and indicates what is to be read and learned; students dutifully record all this in their notebooks, take an examination and feel good or bad, depending on the outcome; but in nearly all cases it is a complete experience, with a sense of finality; the laws of forgetting begin to operate rapidly and inexorably. When people read and think inside and outside the class; it was they who chose from this reading and thinking what was meaningful to them, not the instructor. This non-directive kind of teaching, I should point out, was not 100 percent successful. There were three or four students who found the whole idea distasteful. Even at the end of the course, although nearly all became enthusiastic, one student to my knowledge, was intensely negative in his feelings; another was highly critical. These wanted the instructor to provide them with a rounded-out intellectual piece of merchandise which they could commit to memory and then give back on an examination. They would then have the assurance that they had learned what they should. As one said, “If I had to make a report as to what I learned in this course, what could I say?” Admittedly, it would be much more difficult than in a traditional course, if not impossible. The desperateness with which detachment is defended has a further explanation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

The threat to detachment, “smashing the wall,” often means more then temporary panic. What may result is a kind of disintegration of personality in psychotic episodes. If in analysis detachment beings to crumble, the patient not only becomes diffusely apprehensive but directly and indirectly express definite fears. There may be, for instance a fear of becoming submerged in the amorphous mass of human beings, a fear, primarily, of losing one’s uniqueness. There is also a fear of being helplessly exposed to the coercion and exploitation of aggressive persons—a result of one’s utter defenselessness. However, there is still a third fear, that of going insane, which may emerge so vividly that the patient wants absolute reassurance against such a possibility. Going insane in this context does not mean going berserk, nor is it a reaction to an emerging wish for irresponsibility. It is a straight expression of the specific fear of being split right open, often expressed in dreams and associations. This would suggest that relinquishing one’s detachment would bring one face to face with one’s own conflicts; that one would not be able to survive it but would be split like a tree struck by lightning, to use an image that occurred to a patient. This assumption is confirmed by other observations. Highly detached persons have an almost insurmountable aversion to the idea of inner conflicts. Later will tell the analyst that they simply did not know what one was talking about when one spoke of conflicts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Whenever the analyst succeeds in showing them a conflict operating within themselves, they will imperceptibly and with amazing unconscious skill veer away from the subject. If, inadvertently, before they are ready to admit it, they recognize a conflict in a momentary flash, they are seized with acute panic. When later they approach the recognition of conflicts on a more secure basis, a greater wave of detachment follows. Thus we arrive at a conclusion that at first glance would have been bewildering. Detachment is an intrinsic part of the basic conflict, but it is also a protection against it. The puzzle resolves itself, however, if we are more specific. It is a protection against the two more active partners in the basic conflict. Here we must reiterate the statement that the predominance of one of the basic attitudes does not prevent the other contradictory ones from existing and operating. We can see this play of forces in the detached personality even more clearly than in the other two groups described. To begin with, the contradictory strivings often show in the life history. Before one has clearly accepted one’s detachment a person of this type will often have gone though episodes of compliance and dependence as well as through periods of aggressive and ruthless rebellion. In contrast to the clearly defined values of the other two types, one’s sets of values are most contradictory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

In addition to one’s permanent high evaluation of what one regards as freedom and independence, one may at some time in the analysis express an extreme appreciation for human goodness, sympathy, generosity, self-effacing sacrifice, and at another time swing to a complete jungle philosophy of callous self-interest. One may feel puzzled by these contradictions, but with some rationalization or other one will try to deny their conflicting character. If one has no clean perspective of the whole structure, the analyst will easily become confused. One may try to follow one path or the other without getting very far in either direction because again and again the patient takes refuge in one’s detachment, thereby shutting all the gateways as one would shut the watertight bulkheads of a ship. There is a perfect and simple logic underlying the special resistance of the detached person. One does not want to relate oneself to the analyst or to take cognizance of one as a human being. One does not really want to analyze one’s human relationships at all. One does not want to face one’s conflicts. And if we understand one’s premise, we see that one cannot even be interested in analyzing any of these factors. One’s premise is the conscious conviction that one need not bother about one’s relations with others so long as one keeps at a safe distance from them; that a disturbance in these relations will not upset one if only one keeps away from others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

And even the conflicts of which the analysts speaks can and should be left formant because they will only bother one; and that there is no need to straighten things out because one will not budge from one’s detachment anyway. As we have said, this unconscious reasoning is logically correct—up to a point. What one leaves out and for a long time refuses to recognize is that one cannot possibly grow and develop in a vacuum. The all-important function of neurotic detachment, then, is to keep major conflicts out of operation. It is the most radical and most effective of the defenses erected against them. One of the many neurotic ways of creating an artificial harmony, it is an attempt at solution through evasion. However, it is no true solution because the compulsive cravings for closeness as well as for aggressive domination, exploitation, and excelling remain, and they keep harassing is not paralyzing their carrier. Finally, no real inner peace of freedom can ever be attained as long as the contradictory set of values continue to exist. Let us meditate on the mystery of time. Augustine points to the depth of this mystery, when he says, “If nobody asks me about it, I know. If I want to explain it to somebody who asks me about it, I do not know.” There is something unspeakable about time, but this has not prevented the most profound religious minds from thinking and speaking about it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

It is not vain speculation when the writer of the first part of the 90^th Psalm confronts the eternity of God with the transitoriness of human existence. The melancholy experience of human finiteness drives one to utter the tremendous words of the psalm. It is not empty curiosity when Augustine tries, in his most personal book, the Confessions, to penetrate the ground of our temporality. We are not making an abstract statement but are rater expressing a profound religious feeling, when we sing, “Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away.” It is not mere philosophy, but a tragic feeling of life, which impels the earliest Greek philosopher to say that all things must return to their origin, suffering punishment, “according to the order of time.” It is not merely in the interest of systematic theory that the Fourth Gospel uses again and again the phrase “eternal life” as the expression of the highest good, which is ever present in Christ. It was a religious event when Meister Eckhardt pointed to the “eternal now” within the flux of time, and when Soren Kierkegaard pointed to the infinite significance of every moment as the now of decision. Time is as inexhaustible as the ground. Even the greatest minds have each discovered only one aspect. However, everyone, even the most simple mind, apprehends the meaning of time—namely, one’s own temporality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

One may not be able to express one’s knowledge about time, but one is never separated from its mystery. One’s life, and the life of each of us, is permeated in every moment, in every experience, and in every expression, by the mystery of time. Time is our destiny. Time is our hope. Time is our despair. And time is the mirror in which we see eternity. Let me point to three of the many mysteries of time: its power to devour everything within its sphere; its power to receive eternity within itself; and its power to drive toward an ultimate end, a new creation. Humankind has always realized that there is something fearful about the flux of time, a riddle which we cannot solve, and the solution of which we could not stand. We come from a past which is no more; we go into a future which is not yet; ours is the present. The past is ours only in so far as we have it still present. The past is ours only in so far as we have it still present; and the future is ours only in so far as we have it already present. We possess the past by memory, and the future by anticipation. However, what is the nature of the present itself? If we look at it closely, we must say: it is a point without extension, the point in which the future becomes the past; when we say to ourselves, “This is the present,” the moment has already been swallowed by the past. The present cannot be caught; it is always gone. So it seems that we have nothing real—neither the past nor the future, nor even the present. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

Therefore, there is a dreaming character about our existence, which the psalmist indicates, and which religious visionaries have described in so many ways. Time, however, could not even give us a place on which to stand, if it were not characterized by that second mystery, its power to receive eternity. There is no present in the mere stream of time; but the present is real, as our experience witnesses. And it is real because eternity breaks into time and gives it a real present. We could not even say “now,” if eternity did not elevate that moment above the ever-passing time. Eternity is always present; and its presence is the cause of our having the present at all. When the psalmist looks at God, for Whom a thousand years are like one day, he is looking at that eternity which alone gives him a place on which he can stand, a “now” which has infinite reality and infinite significance. In every moment that we say “now,” something temporal and something eternal are united. Whenever a human being says, “Now I am living; now I am really present,” resisting the stream which drives the future into the past, eternity is. In each such “now,” eternity is made manifest; in every real “now,” eternity is present. Let us think for a moment of the way in which we are living our lives in our period of history. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

Have we not lost a real present by always being driven forward, by our constant running, in our indefatigable activism, toward the future? We suppose the future to be better than any present; but there is always another future beyond the next future, again and again without a present, that is to say, without eternity. According to the Fourth Gospel eternal life is present gift: one, who listens to Christ, has eternity already. He is no longer subject to the driving of time. In him the “now” becomes a “now eternal.” We have lost the real “now,” the “now eternal;” we have, I am afraid, lost eternal life in so far as it creates the real present. There is another element in time, its third mystery, which makes us look at the future; for time does not return, nor repeat itself: it runs forward; it is always unique; it ever creates the new. There is within it a drive toward an end, unknown, never to be reached in time itself, always intended and ever fleeing. Time runs toward the “future eternal.” This is the greatest of all the mysteries of times. It is the mystery of which the prophets, Christ, and the Apostles have spoken. The eternal is the solution of the riddle of time. Time does not drive toward an endless self-repetition, nor to an empty return to its beginning. Time is not meaningless. It has a hidden meaning—salvation. It has a hidden goal—the Kingdom of God. It brings about a hidden reality—the new creation. The infinite significance of every moment of time is this: in it we decide, and are decided about, with respect to our eternal future. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

Life is not a destination, it is a journey. It is not a series of goals, it is a series of steps, of events unfolding as you make your way. The purpose of life is not to be happy. The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make a difference that you lived at all. “Time is nothing. I shall wait for another to come who is as strong as you are. Humans are changing. Their dreams are filled with the forecast of these changes. Mortals dream ceaselessly of immortality, as their lives grow longer. They dream of unimpeded flight,” page 884 of The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. Be careful of what you focus on. There are forces in this World that are billions of years old. “It is sufficient to say not that he is Precambrian and self-sufficient, and if not immortal, his life span could be billions of years. It is conceivable that he absorbed consciousness from mankind, that is consciousness gives off a palpable energy, he had fed upon this energy and a mutation has created his mind. He continues to feed upon the consciousness of the Mayfair Witches and their associates, and from this springs his learning, and his personality, and his will,” page 886 of The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. This is why the King James Bible says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you,” reports James 4.8. And it is also where the idea of the law of attraction comes from. You attract what you focus on. You give that power in your life, and it will have the ability to manifest. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

The law of attraction is also why some Christians do not seek revenge. They believe God will act in the favour and take care of all that needs to be handled. God says he will never give us more than we can bear and through our faith, we have to consent to that truth. Speak to our hearts, O Christ our Overseer; say to us, “Hail, be strong and of good courage.” Thou who didst this of old, canst Thou not do the same now? Thou canst, Thou canst indeed! For Thou art Almighty. Thou canst, O most Loving, Thou canst do what we cannot conceive; for nothing is impossible to Thee, Almighty God! Truly, O Saviour, for us Thy Body is red with Blood; Thou has “washed Thy garment in wine, and Thy clothes in the blood of grapes;” for Thou art God alone, crucified for us, whom the old transgression gave over unto death; by Thy wound have been healed the countless wounds of our sins. And now, O loving and crucified Christ, redeem us with Thine own; save us, O loving Goodness, O God, Who reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God for ever, throughout all ages. Hear us, O Lord, Father Almighty, through the New Adam; that being buried with Jesus Thy Son, and raised up again by His life, we may in this ensuing night of His holy Resurrection, by the grace that attends the great solemnity, by His gift and Thy blessing, and the counsel and mysterious working of the Holy Spirit, obtain absolution through Him, Who with Thee we will have World peace and overcome all obstructions and bondage. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

God by mode is in all things by His presence, power and substance; still He is said to be present more familiarly in some by grace. God is said to be in a thing in two ways; in one way after the manner of an efficient cause; and thus He is in all things created by Him; in another way he is in things as the object of operation is in the operator; and this is proper to the operations of the soul, according as the things know is in the one who knows; and the thing desired in the one desiring. In this second way God is especially in the rational creature which knows and loves Him actually or habitually. And because the rational creature possessed this prerogative by grace. He is said to be thus in the saints by grace. However, God is in other things created by Him, may be considered from human affairs. A king, for example, is said to be in the whole kingdom by his power, although he is not everywhere present. Again a thing is said to be by its presence in other things which are subject to its inspection; as things in a house are said to be by its present to anyone, who nevertheless may not be in substance in every part of the house. Lastly, a thing is said to be by way of substance or essence in that place in which its substance may be. Now there were some (the Manichees) who said that spiritual and incorporeal things were subject to the divine power; but that visible and corporeal things were subject to the power of a contrary principle. Therefore against these it is necessary to say that God is in all things by His power. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

O God, Thy main plan, and the end of thy will is to make Christ glorious and beloved in Heaven where he is now ascended, where one day all the elect will behold his glory and love and glorify him for ever. Though here I love him but little, may this be my portion at last. In this World thou hast given me a beginning, one day it will be perfected in the realm above. Thou hast helped me to see and know Christ, though obscurely, to take him, receive him, to possess him, love him, to bless him in my heart, mouth, life. Let me study and stand for discipline, and all the ways of worship, out of the love for Christ; and to show my thankfulness; to seek and know his will from love, to hold it in love, and daily to care for and keep this state of heart. Thou hast led me to place all my nature and happiness in oneness with Christ, in having heart and mind centered only om him, in being like him in communicating good to others; this is my Heaven on Earth, but I need the force, energy, impulses of thy Spirit to carry me on the way to my Jerusalem. Here, it is my duty to be as Christ in this World, to do what he would do, to live as he would live, to walk in love and meekness; then would he be known, then would I have peace in death. “And I, Moroni, will not deny the Christ; wherefore, I wander withersoever I can for the safety of mine own life,” reports Moroni 1.3. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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A Well-Written Life is Almost as Rare as a Well-Spent One!

January 10, 2020 4:52 am

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And I Want Just to Call You ‘Cause We Go Together Just Like Jam and Bread or Maybe Birds of a Feather!

January 9, 2020 1:39 am

Accept the pain, cherish the joys, resolve the regrets; then can come the best of benedictions. As you simplify your life, the laws of the Universe will be simpler. There is only a slight difference between keeping your chin up and sticking your neck out, but it is a difference worth knowing. All of us try to feel, and pretend to feel, but we seldom do so alone. Most often we do it when we exchange gestures or signs of feelings with others. Taken together, emotion work, feeling rules, and interpersonal exchange make up our private emotional system. We bow to each other not only from the waist but from the heart. Feeling rules set out what is owed in gestures of exchange between people. They enable us to assess the worth of an outward tear or an inward attempt to feel sad for people who are inappropriate behavior. Looking at a bright light to make a tear glisten is a mark of homage, a way of paying respect to those who proclaim that sadness is owed. More generally, it is a way of paying respects to a rule about respect paying. In psychological “bowing,” feeling rules provide a baseline for exchange. There are two types of exchange—straight and improvisational. In straight exchange, we simply use rules to make an inward bow; we do not play with them. In improvisational exchange, as in improvisational music, we presuppose the rules and play with them, creating irony and humor. However, in both types, it is within the contact of feeling rules that we make our exchange and settle our accounts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

In our society, some unmeant gestures occur in such a wide variety of performances and convey impressions that are in general so incompatible with the ones being fostered that these inopportune events have acquired collective symbolic status. First, performer may accidentally convey incapacity, impropriety, or disrespect by momentarily losing muscular control of oneself. One may trip, stumble, fall; one may belch, yawn, make a slip of the tongue, scratch oneself, or be flatulent; one may accidentally impinge upon the body of another participant. Secondly, the performer may act in such a way as to give the impression that one is too much or too little concerned with the interaction. One may stutter, forget one’s lines, appear nervous, or guilty, or self-conscious; one may give way to inappropriate outbursts of laughter, anger, or other kinds of affect which momentarily incapacitate one as an interactant; one may show too much serious involvement and interest, or too little. Thirdly, the performer may allow one’s presentation to suffer from inadequate dramaturgical direction. The setting may not have been put in order, or may have become readied for the wrong performance, or may become deranged during the performance; unforeseen contingencies may cause improper timing of the performer’s arrival or departure or may cause embarrassing lulls to occur during the interaction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Performances differ, of course, in the degree of item-by-item expressive care required of them. In the case of some international cultures, we are ready to see a high degree of expressive coherence. Granet, for example, suggests this of filial performances in China: Their fine toilet is in itself a homage. Their good deportment will be accounted an offering of respect. In the presence of parents, gravity is requisite: one must therefore be careful not to belch, to sneeze, to cough, to yawn, to blow one’s nose nor to spit. Every expectoration would run the risk of soiling the paternal sanctity. It would be a crime to show the lining of one’s garments. To show the father that one is treating him as a chief, one ought always to stand in his presence, the eyes right, the body upright upon the two legs, never daring to lean upon any object, to bend, nor to stand on one foot. It is thus that with the low and humble voice which becomes a follower, one comes night and morning to pay homage. After which, one waits for orders. Wen we commence a relationship with somebody for some purpose, we begin in a role, as teacher, or as customer, or as helper. In that sense each participant has a role to fulfill. A third party looking at this transaction can watch it and say, “You are fulfilling the role of the helper, and he or she is fulfilling the role of the helpee.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

I may be aware I am supposed to fulfill the role of helper, but I can do this in a way that expressed my genuine commitments and intentions and in my idiosyncratic way. It is the difference between taking a role and playing a role. To take a role is a commitment to a task; to play a role is a charade. Some people lose zest when they feel they can only work in a cut-and-dried, stereotyped way. In due time one outgrows that stereotype way. If one feels one must stick to that stereotyped way, it makes one sick. This is why many nurses, psychotherapists, doctors, and teachers ultimately get fed up with their professions. They lose zest because they feel that they have got to keep up the appearance of the role of a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, a therapist in some stereotyped way. When they do that, what they are telling you is that they are more committed to imitating the role than they are carrying out their professional commitment, that is [to] bring about results. When your commitment is to goals, and not means, you cannot help but be eccentric, idiosyncratic, offbeat, oddball, and creative. In contrast, in persons in whom the craving for prestige is uppermost, hostility usually takes the form of a desires to humiliate others. This desire is paramount in those persons whose own self-esteem has been wounded by humiliation and who have thus become vindictive. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Usually they have gone through a series of humiliating experiences in childhood, experiences that may have had to do either with the social situation in which they grew up—such as belonging to a underrepresented group, or being themselves poor but having wealthy relatives—or with their own individual situation, such as being discriminated against for the sake of other children, being spurned, being treated as a plaything by the parents, being sometime privileged, and other times shamed and snubbed. Often experience of this kind are forgotten because of their painful character, but they reappear in awareness if the problems concerning humiliation are clarified. In adult neurotics, however, never the direct but only indirect results of these childhood situations can be observed, results which have been reinforced by passing through a “vicious circle”: a feeling of humiliation; a desire to humiliate others; enhanced sensitivity to humiliation because of a fear of retaliation; enhanced wish to humiliate others. The tendencies to humiliate are deeply repressed, usually because the neurotic, knowing from one’s own sensitivity how hurt and vindictive one feels when humiliated, is instinctively afraid of similar reactions in others. Nevertheless some of these tendencies may emerge without one’s being conscious of it: in an inadvertent disregard of others, such as letting them wait, in inadvertently bringing others into embarrassing situations, in letting others feel dependent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Even if the neurotic is completely unaware of wishing to humiliate others or of having done so, one’s relations with them will be pervaded by a diffuse anxiety which is revealed in a constant anticipation of rebuke or humiliation for oneself. Inhibitions resulting from this sensitivity to humiliation often appear in the form of a need to avoid anything which might possibly seem humiliating to others; such a neurotic, for example, may be incapable of criticizing, of refusing an offer, of dismissing an employee, with the result that one often appears overconsiderate or over-polite. Finally, a tendency to humiliate may be hidden behind a tendency to admire. Since inflicting humiliation and bestowing admiration are diametrically opposed, the latter offers the best means of eradicating or concealing tendencies toward the former. This is the reason also why both these extremes are frequently to be found in the same person. There are several ways in which the two attitudes may be distributed, the reasons for the distribution being dependent on the individual. They may appear separately in different periods of life, a period of a general contempt for people succeeding a period of hero-worship; there may be admiration for men and contempt for women, or vice versa; or there maybe blind admiration for one or two persons, and just as blind a contempt for the rest of the World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

It is in the process of analysis that one can observe that the two attitudes in reality exist together. A patient may at the same time blindly admire and despise the analyst, either suppressing one of the two feelings or vacillating between them. In the striving for possession hostility usually takes the form of a tendency to deprive others. The wish to cheat, steal from, exploit or frustrate others is not in itself neurotic. It may be culturally patterned, or it may be warranted by the actual situation, or it may normally be considered a question of expediency. In the neurotic person, however, these tendencies are highly charged with emotion. Even if beneficial advantages one derives from them are sight or irrelevant one will feel elated and triumphant if one meets with success; in order to find a bargain, for example, one may spend time and energy entirely disproportionate to the amount saved. One’s satisfaction at success has two sources: a feeling that one has outwitted others, and a feeling that one has injured others. This tendency to deprive others takes many forms. The neurotic person will feel resentment toward a physician if one is not treated gratuitously, or for less than one is able to pay. One will feel anger toward one’s employees if they are not willing to work overtime without pay. In relations with friends and children the exploiting tendency is often justified by alleging that they have an obligation toward one. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The ordinary aspirant, whose intuition is not sufficiently developed, should test the person one proposes to accept as one’s master. This will require one to watch the other closely for a period of time. In some cases a week will give the answer, in others three months will be needed. In all cases, the aspirant ought not to commit oneself until one has enough evidence that one is committing oneself rightly. Those who lack the innate discernment or wide experience needed to detect the real character and true capacity of a master, should wait sufficiently long an seek outside advice before entrusting themselves to one. The faith that God is working through a particular being can be tested for its validity by watching one, for a sufficient length of time, what happens to those who reject one utterly or respond to one ardently. In their excessive eagerness to discover a master, they fail to practice discernment. However, wait for the true master requires a certain patience and strength. A true self-actualized person is hard to find. A false one, drooling one’s plagiarism or one;s platitudes, is easy to find. Do not fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Parents may actually destroy their children’s lives by demanding sacrifices on such a basis, and even if the tendency does not appear in such destructive forms, any mother who acts according to the belief that the child exist to give her satisfaction is bound to exploit the child emotionally. A neurotic of this kind may also tend to withhold things from others, withhold money which one ought to pay, information which one could give, pleasures of the flesh which one has led another to expect. The presence of robbing tendencies may be indicated by repeated dreams of stealing or one may have conscious impulses to steal, which one checks; one may actually have been a kleptomaniac at some period. Persons of this general type are often unaware that they purposely deprive others. The anxiety connected with their wish to do so may result in an inhibition as soon as something is expected of them, so that, for example, they forget to buy an expected birthday present, or they become impotent if a woman is willing to yield to them. This anxiety, however, does not always lead to an actual inhibition, but may become apparent in a lurking fear that they are exploiting or depriving others, as indeed they are, though consciously they would indignantly repudiate such an intention. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

A neurotic may even have this fear concerning certain of one’s activities in which these tendencies are actually not present, at the same time remaining unaware that in other activities one does exploit or deprive other people. These tendencies to deprive others are accompanied by an emotional attitude of begrudging envy. Most of us will feel some envy if others have certain advantages which we should like to have ourselves. With the normal person, however, the emphasis lies on the fact that one wishes to have these advantages oneself; with the neurotic the emphasis lies on the fact that one begrudges them to others, even if one does not want them at all. Mothers of this kind often begrudge the gaiety of their children and tell them that “those who sing before breakfast will cry before supper.” The neurotic will try to disguise the crudity of one’s begrudging attitude by putting it on the basis of a justified envy. The advantage of others, whether it concerns a doll, a girl, leisure or a job, appears so glorious and desirable that one feels entirely justified in one’s envy. This justification is possible only with the help of some inadvertent falsification of facts: an under-estimation of what one has oneself, and an illusion that the advantages of others are the really desirable ones. The self-deception may go so far as to make ne actually believe that one is in a miserable state because one fails to have the one advantage in which another person surpasses one, completely forgetting that in all other respects one would not like to change with the other. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The price one has to pay for this falsification is incapacity to enjoy and appreciate the possibilities for happiness that are available. This incapacity, however, serves to protect one from the much-feared envy of others. One does not deliberately keep oneself from satisfaction with what one has, as many normal persons who have good reason to protect themselves against the envy of certain persons, and therefore misrepresent their real situation; one does a thorough job of it, and really deprives oneself of any enjoyment. Thus one defeats one’s own ends: one wants to have everything, but in consequence of one’s destructive drives and anxieties one emerges at the end with empty hands. Love, power, and justice are metaphysically speaking as old as being itself. They preceded everything that is, and they cannot be derived from anything that is. They have ontological dignity. And before having received ontological dignity they had mythological meaning. They were gods before they became rational qualities of being. The substance of their mythological meaning is reflected in their ontological significance. Dike, the goddess of justice, receives Parmenides when he is introduced into truth itself. For there is no truth without the form of truth, namely justice. And being-itself, according to the same philosopher, is kept within the bondage of eternal laws. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The logos of being is the power which keeps the World going and the city alive, according to Heraclitus, and Mind is the divine power which swings the wheel of being, according to Xenophanes. According to Empedocles, it is hate and love, separation, and reunion which determine the movements of the elements. Love, power, and justice are ever repeated subjects of ontology. There is hardly a leading philosopher who does not put them into they very foundations of one’s thought. In Plato we find the doctrine of eros as the power which drives to the union with the true and the good self. In his interpretation of ideas as the essences of everything, he sees them as the power of being. And justice for him is not a special virtue, but the uniting form of the individual and the social body. In Aristotle we find the doctrine of the universal eros which derives everything towards the highest form, the pure actuality which moves the World not as a cause (kinoumenon) but as the object of love (eromenon). And the movement he describes is a movement from the potential to the actual, from dynamis to energeia, two concepts which include the concept of power. Marriage under the Lordship of Christ is a mutually sanctifying relationship—it moves us toward holiness. Most of us, by the time we get married, are like a well-furnished home—and a lot of furniture needs to be tossed out to make room for the other person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Marriage helps empty those rooms. Genuine marital love reveals rooms of self-centeredness. Beyond these are autonomy and self-will—an ongoing house cleaning. Marriage certainly did that for me. I had no idea how self-centered I was until I married! In fact, marriage is the one institution which tames the inveterate barbarianism of man. Over the years a good marriage can change us for the better—almost beyond recognition. There is indeed a mutual sanctification in marriage. However, the emphasis in the Scriptures is on the responsibility of a husband’s love for his wife: “to make her holy, cleansing her by he washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless,” reports Ephesians 5.21-6.9. This is what Christ will do through our divine married to Him, for at His return the washed and regenerated Church will be presented to Him in absolute perfection. This is the dealing of the romance of the ages. Meanwhile, these divine nuptials are a parable of what ought to be the loving husband’s elevating effect on his wide. He is to be the man ff the Word who lives a Godly life, praying and sacrificing for his wife. His authentic spirituality is meant to buoy her onward and upward toward the image of Christ. The man who sanctifies his wife understands that this is his divinely ordained responsibility. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Men (ignoring for the moment our wives’ spiritual responsibility to us), do you realize it is your responsibility to seek your wife’s sanctification? Even more, honestly, do you accept it? Marriage will reveal something about her which you already know about yourself—that she is a sinner. Marriage reveals everything: her weaknesses, her worst inconsistencies, the things others never see. Loving your spouse is not to love as a saint, but as a sinner. If we love her for her saintliness, we do not love her at all. You see your wife as you see yourself, and you love her as yourself. You realize your mutual need, and you delve into God’s Word, to listen to it with your heart and try, by His grace, to love out so that she will be encouraged by your life—and thus become an even more beautiful bride for Christ. This brings up some hard questions: Is my wife more like Christ because she is married to me? Or is she like Christ in spite of me? Has she shrunk from His likeness because of me? Do I sanctify her or hold her back? Is she a better woman because she is married to me? Is she a better friend? A better mother? Men, our call is clear: sanctifying love. A passage emphasizing the complete and absolute forgiveness of our sins is Isaiah 43.25, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Here God uses two expressions: He blots out our transgressions—that is, He removes them from the record—and He remembers them no more. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

A friend of mine, because of a teenage “prank,” had a felony conviction in Canada. Later, he received a Queen’s pardon. Now, if his past is ever investigated for criminal activity, the response given is, “We have no record of this person.” His record has not just been marked “pardoned,” it has been completely removed from the file and destroyed. It has been blotted out, never to be seen again. This is what God does with our sins. When you trust in Jesus Christ as you Savior, God removes your record from the file. He does not keep it there or daily add the long list of sins you continue to commit even as a Christian. God not only blots our sins from His record, He also remembers them no more. This expression means God no longer holds them against us. The blotting out of our transgressions is a legal act. It is an official pardon from the Supreme Governor. The remembering them no more is a relational act. It is the giving up by an injured party of all sense of being offended or injured. It is a promise never to bring up, either to Himself or to you, your sins. There is a difference between not remembering and forgetting. Forgetting is passive and is something that we human beings, not being omniscient, so. “Not remembering” is active; it is a promise whereby one person (in this case, God) determines not to remember the sins of another against him. To “not remember” is simply a graphic way of saying, “I will not bring up these matters to you or others in the future.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Consider a rebellious, recalcitrant student in a classroom. His acts of defiance toward the teacher may have both legal and relational consequences. Legally, he may be expelled from school. Relationally, the teacher may feel a deep sense of hostility toward the student. Even if the student is allowed to return to school (the equivalent of a pardon), the teacher may continue to hold hostility toward the student, “remembering” his rebellion and defiance. In order to gain a good standing in the classroom, the rebellious student needs to be both pardoned by the school authorities and forgiven by the teacher. On needs to have the teacher give up al sense of being offended and agree “not to remember”—for instance, not to bring up—his poor behavior. (Obviously, for this to happen, the student’s attitude and future conduct must change. However, still, the teacher must decide to not remember the past.) This, then, is similar to what God does when He blots out our transgressions and remembers our sins no more. As the Supreme Governor and Judge, God pardons us. As the offended party, God forgives us and He promises never to bring up our sins again. Through His death, Jesus not only secured our pardon with God, He also reconciled us to God. However, Paul said, “All this from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.18. God, acting in grace through the giving of His Son to die for us, was the initiator of reconciliation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

If you have trusted in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, you are both justified (a legal act) and reconciled (a relational act). You are no longer condemned by God. As Paul said, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8.1. In addition, you are no longer estranged from God. God is no longer against you; God is now for you. Again as Paul said, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (8.31). Both of these wonderful changes occurred because of God’s grace and despite our sin and guilt: “[For] where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (5.20). Those who hate you do not win unless you hate them—and then you destroy yourself. Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can be felt only if you do not set conditions. Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasure prove of golden sands and crystal brooks with silken lines, and silver hooks. “And there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth; and they shall be like unto the old save the old have passed away, and all things have become new,” reports Ether 13.9. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, Who didst descend from Heaven to Earth, out of the bosom of the Father, and didst sustain five wounds upon the wood of the Cross, and shed thy precious Blood for the remission of our sins. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

We humbly beseech Thee, God, that at the day of judgment we may be set at Thy right hand and be thought worthy to hear those sweetest words, “Come, ye blessed, into the kingdom of My Father:” Who with the same Father, who will save all beings. O Father, Thou hast made man from the glory of thyself, and when not an instrument of that glory, he is a thing of nought; no sin is greater than the sin of unbelief, for if union with Christ is the greatest good, unbelief is the greatest sin, as being cross to thy command; I see that whatever my sin is, yet no sin is like disunion from Christ by unbelief. Lord, keep me from committing the greatest sin in departing from him, for I can never in this life perfectly obey and cleave to Christ. When thou takest away my outward blessings, it is for sin, innot acknowledging that all that I have is of thee, in not serving thee through what I have, in making myself secure and hardened. Lawful blessings are the secret idols, and do mist hurt; the greatest injury is in the having, the greatest good in the taking away. In love divest me of blessings that I may glorify thee the more; remove the fuel of my sin, and may I prize the gain of a little holiness as overbalancing all my losses. The more I love thee with a truly gracious love the more I desire to love thee, and the more miserable I am at my want of love; the more I hunger and thirst after thee, the more I faint and fail in finding thee, the more my heart is broken for sin, the more I pray it may be far more broken. My great evil is that I do not remember the sins of my youth, nay, the sins of one day I forget the next. Keep me from all things that turn to unbelief or lack of felt union with Christ. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

By the shedding of the Blood of Christ our Lord, peace has been established in Heaven and Earth. O truly precious is the Covenant of peace, which was made by the offering of that holy Blood! Not with gold, nor silver, nor gems, nor pearls, but with the Blood that gushed from the side of the Saviour. That Blood-shedding gladdened Heaven, purified Earth, and terrified hell. Today, O good Jesus, for us Thou didst not hide Thy Face from shame and spitting. Today, Jesus our Redeemer, for us Thou wast mocked, buffeted by unbelievers, and crowned with thorns. Today, O good Shepherd, Thou didst lay down Thy life on the Cross for the sheep, and wast crucified with robbers, and hadst Thy sacred hands nailed through. Today Thou was laid in the guarded sepulcher, and the Saints burst open their tombs. Today, O good Jesus, put an end to our sins, that no the day of Thy Resurrection we may joyfully receive Thy holy Body, and be refreshed with Thy sacred Blood. O Christ, the Only-begotten Son of the Unbegotten Father, Who for us wast this say slain, the Innocent for the ungodly; remember the price of Thy Blood, and bout out the sins of Thy people; and as Thou wast pleased to endure for us reproaches, spitting, bonds, blows, the scourge, the cross. The nails, the bitter cup, death, the spear, and lastly burial, vouchsafe to us wretched ones for whom Thou didst suffer this, the infinite blessedness of Heavenly kingdom; that we who bow down in reverence for Thy Passion, may be raised up to things Heavenly in the joys of Thy Resurrection. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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I Used to think Love was Something I Could Take or Leave Alone but Now I Could Not do without My Supply!

January 5, 2020 4:28 am

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end. We should be lenient in our judgment, because often the mistakes of others would have been ours had we had the opportunity to make them. What is food to one being is bitter poison to others. Every negative development in a person is to be understood as the result of damaging influences in early childhood. This has led sometimes to irrational self-accusation on the part of parents who feel guilty for every undesirable or pathological trait that appears in a child after birth, and to a tendency of people in analysis to put the blame for all their trouble on their parents, and to avoid confronting themselves with the problem of their own responsibility. Good intentions mean noting if they cover up the unconscious intentions; “honest” dishonesty demonstrates that it is not enough to have “meant” well consciously. Forces operate in beings of which one is not aware and rationalization protects one from awareness; unconscious forces are integrated in a system to which we call character. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Character syndromes are rooted and nourished in the particular forms of relatedness of the individual to the outside World and oneself; furthermore, inasmuch as the social group shares a common character structure (“social character”) the socioeconomic conditions shared by all members of a group mold the social character. That is where the saying, “birds of a feather flock together” comes from. Love, tenderness, sadism, masochism, ambition, curiosity, anxiety, rivalry—these and many other drives are no longer each attributed to a special instinct, but to the influence of the environment (essentially the significant persons in early childhood) via the psyche. The description given thus far suggest that character determines, the character trait, whether loving or destroying, drives a person to behave in a certain way, and the person is acting according to one’s character feels satisfied. Indeed, the character traits tells us how a person would like to behave. However, we must add an important qualification: if one could. The conflict between what we would like to do and the demands of self-interest remains crucial. We cannot always behave as we are driven to by our passions, because we have to modify our behavior to some extent in order to remain alive. The average person tries to find a compromise between what one’s character would make one want to do and what one must do in order not to suffer more or less harmful consequences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The degree to which a person follows the dictates of self-preservation (ego interest) varies, of course. At one extreme the weight of the ego interest is zero; this holds true for the martyr and a certain type person who targets and terminates prominent people. At the other extreme is the opportunist for who self-interest includes everything that could make one more successful, popular, or comfortable. Between these two extremes all people can be arranged, characterized by a specific blend of self-interest and character-rooted passions. How much a person represses one’s passionate desires depends not only on factors within oneself but on the situations; if the situation changes, repressed desires become conscious and are acted out. This holds true, for instance, for the person with a sadistic-masochistic character. Everybody knows the type of person who is submissive to one’s boss and sadistically domineering to one’s wife and children. Another case in point is the change that occurs in character when the total social situation changes. The sadistic character who may have posed as a meek or even friendly individual may become a fiend in a terroristic society in which sadism is valued rather than deplored. Another may suppress sadistic behavior in all visible actions, while showing it in a subtle expression of the face or in seemingly harmless and marginal remarks. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Repression of character traits also occurs with regard to the most noble impulses. In spite of the fact that the teachings of Jesus are still part of our moral ideology, a being acting in accordance with them is generally considered a fool or a neurotic; hence many people still rationalize their generous impulses as being motivated by self-interests. These considerations show that the motivating power of character traits is influenced by self-interest in varying degrees. They imply that character constitutes the main motivation of human behavior, but restricted and modified by the demands of self-interest under varying conditions. Here is possessed the fundamental difference between behaviorism and psychoanalytic characterology. Conditioning works through its appeal to self-interest, such as the desire for food, security, praise, avoidance of pain. In animals, self-interest proves to be so strong that by repeated and optimally spaced reinforcements that interest for self-preservation proves to be stronger than other instincts like pleasures of the flesh or aggression. Humans of course also behave in accordance with one’s self-interest; but not always, and not necessarily so. One often acts according to one’s passions, one’s meanest and one’s noblest, and is often willing—and able—to risk one’s self-interest, one’s fortune, one’s freedom, and one’s life in the pursuit of love, truth, and integrity—or for hate, greed, sadism, and destructiveness. In this very difference is possessed the reason conditioning cannot be a sufficient explanation for human behavior. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

The discovery of unconscious processes and of the dynamic concept of character were radical because they went to the roots of human behavior; they were disquieting because nobody can hide any longer behind one’s good intentions; they were dangerous, because if everybody were to know what one could know about oneself and others, society would be shaken to its very foundations. Psychoanalysts is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one’s subjective needs and expectations (transference), of character, and of conflicts between passionate strivings embodied in character traits and the demands for self-preservation. Thus far, feelings of inferiority have nothing to do with any factual inferiority, but have been discussed only as the effects of a tendency to recoil from competition. Do they then have nothing to do with existing shortcomings, with a realization of actual flaws? They are in fact the result of both actual and imagined inadequacies: feelings of inferiority are a combination of anxiety-motivated belittling tendencies and a realization of existing defects. As I have emphasized several times, we cannot ultimately fool ourselves, though we may be successful in shutting certain impulses out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

And therefore a neurotic person of the character we have been discussing will know, deep down, that one has anti-social tendencies which one must conceal, that one is far from genuine in one’s attitudes, that one’s pretenses are quite different from the undercurrents below the surface. One’s registering of all these discrepancies is an important cause for one’s feelings of inferiority, even though one never recognizes clearly the source of the discrepancies because they arise from repressed drives. Not recognizing their source, one gives to oneself reasons for feeling inferior which are rarely the real reasons, but only a renationalization. There is another reason why one feels that one’s inferiority feelings are the direct expression of an existing deficiency. On the basis of one’s ambition one has built up fantastic notions of one’s own value and importance. One cannot help measuring one’s realistic accomplishments against one’s notions of being a genius or a perfect human being, and in this comparison one’s real acts or one’s real possibilities appear inferior. The total result of all these recoiling tendencies is that the neurotic incurs real failures, or at most does not get on as well as one should, considering one’s opportunities and one’s gifts. Others who started with one get ahead of one, have better careers, greater success. This lagging behind does not concern only external success. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The older one becomes the more one feels the discrepancy between one’s potentialities and one’s achievements. One feels keenly that one’s gifts, whatever they may be, are going to waste, that one is blocked in the development of one’s personality, that one does not mature as time goes on. The problem of persons around the age of forty is that they become blocked in their development. However, one has not recognized the conditions leading up to such a situation, and therefore has not found any satisfactory solution. And one reacts to the realization of this discrepancy with a vague discontent, a discontent which is not masochistic but real and proportionate. A discrepancy between potentialities and achievement may be due, as I have already pointed out, to external circumstances. However, the discrepancy which develops in a neurotic person, and which is a never-failing character of neuroses, is due to one’s internal conflicts. One’s actual failures and the consequent increasing discrepancy between potentialities and achievements inevitably give even greater force to one’s existing inferiority feelings. Thus one not only believes oneself to be, but actually is inferior to what one might be. The impact of this development is all the greater since it puts the inferiority feelings on a realistic basis. Meanwhile the other discrepancy which I have mentioned—that between high-flown ambitions and the comparatively poor reality—becomes so unbearable that it demands a remedy. As such a remedy fantasy offer itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

More and more the neurotic substitutes grandiose ideas for attainable goals. The value they have for one is obvious: they cover up one’s unendurable feelings of nothingness; they allow one to feel important without entering into any competition and thus without incurring the risk of failure or success; they allow one to build up a fiction of grandeur far beyond attainable goal. It is this blind-alley value of grandiose fantasies that makes them dangerous, because the blind alley has a definite advantage for the neurotic when compared with the straightforward road. These neurotic ideas of grandeur should be distinguished from those of the normal person and those of the psychotic. Even the normal person will at times think oneself wonderful, attribute undue importance to what one is doing, or indulge in fantasies of what one might do. However, these fantasies and ideas remain decorative arabesques and one does not take them too seriously. They psychotic person with ideas of grandeur is at the other end of the line. One is convinced that one is a genius, the Emperor of Japan, Napoleon, Christ, and will reject all evidence of reality which tends to disprove one’s conviction; one will be wholly unable to comprehend any reminder that one is actually a less affluent doorman, or patient in an asylum or the object of disrespect and ridicule. If one become aware of the discrepancy at all one will decide in favor of one’s grandiose ideas, and will believe that the others do not know any better, or that they are deliberately treating one with disrespect in order to hurt one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

However, if therapy enables the individual to reorient one’s pattern of life and to reduce the tension and anxiety one feels regarding one’s personal problems, then the reactions of one’s automatic nervous system in, for example, a situation of stress, should also be altered. Essentially, if a change in life pattern and in internal tension occurred in therapy, this should show up in organismic changes in autonomic functioning, an area over which the individual has no conscious control. Individual who have experienced therapy develop a higher frustration threshold during their series of therapeutic contacts, and are able to recover their homeostatic balance more rapidly following frustration. After therapy, the individual is able to meet, with more tolerance and less disturbance, situations of emotional stress and frustration or stress was never considered in therapy; the more effective meeting of frustration is not a surface phenomenon but is evident in autonomic reactions which the individual cannot consciously control and of which one is completely unaware. Thus, it is predicted that if therapy enabled the individual to better handle stress at the psychological level, then this should be evident also in one’s autonomic functioning. Therefore, do not major in the minors. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. Remember to breathe not weak, snatched gasps, but deep riveting drafts. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Another point in which the impossibility of the theory of addition of love and justice becomes visible is the relation of love and justice to the concrete situation. Justice is expressed in principles and laws none of which can ever reach the uniqueness of the concrete situation. Every decision which is based on the abstract formulation of justice alone is essentially and inescapably unjust. Justice can be reached only if both the demand of the universal law and the demand of the particular situation are accepted and made effective for the concrete situation. However, it is love which created participation in the concrete situation. It would be completely wrong to say that love must be added to justice if the uniqueness of the situation is to be reached. For this would mean that justice as such is impossible. Actually the situation shows that justice is just because of the love which is implicit in it. However, this can e understood fully only in the context of an ontological analysis of the root meanings of both love and justice. The weight of the problems and the dangerous character of the confusions is equally obvious when we finally confront power and justice. It is in this realm of problems that the relation of law and order to justice and of all of them to power is discussed and more often confused than illuminated. The first questions is: Who gives the law in which justice is supposed to be expressed? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

To give a law is the basic manifestation of power. However, if a group which has power gives laws, how are they related to justice? Are they not simply the expression of the will to power of this group? The Marxist theory of the State asserts that the laws of the State are tools which give social control to a ruling group. The origin of its power may be military invasion or it may be socioeconomic stratification. In both cases justice is possible only if the State has withered away and has been replaced by an administration without political power. The justice of the ruling class is injustice and, if defended, ideology. The laws it gives preserve a social order, and as long as there is no alternative social order, the laws of the ruling classes are better than chaos. The more cynical representatives of this theory interpret justice exclusively as a function of power and in no way as its judge. They accept the Marxist analysis without the Marxist expectation, and reduce justice completely to a function of power. In reaction against this removal of justice as an ultimate principle a theory has been developed which tries to separate justice from power and completely and to establish it as a self-contained system of valid judgements. Justice is an absolute, without any relation to structures of power. The absolute law, derived from the principles of the natural or rational law, does not express wat is, but it demands what should be. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Irrespective of power it commands and expects obedience because of its intrinsic validity. It does not express but it judges power. The contrast of these two theories about the relation of power to justice reveals the difficulty of the problem and the necessity of an ontological research into the rot meanings of power and justice. As announced before, I have led you into a jungle of problems and confusions, and, at every point, I have indicated the way out; namely, the ontological analysis of love, power, and justice. When the God we love chose to reveal Himself, He did so in creation itself and in more specific, special ways—most importantly, in the Scriptures and Jesus Christ. When we affirm that the Bible is a revelation from God, we do not simply assert that God as a person is known in and through it. We also mean that God has revealed understandable, objectively true propositions. The Lord’s Word is not only practically useful, it is also theoretically true (John 17.17). God has revealed truth to us and not just Himself. This truth is addressed to our minds and requires an intellectual grasp to understand and then apply. Because of the Bible’s nature, serious study is needed to grasp what it says. Of course, the Scripture contains easily grasped portions that are fairly straightforward. However, some of it is very difficult, intellectually speaking. In fact, Peter one said that some of Paul’s writings were intellectually challenging, hard to understand, and easily distorted (that is, uneducated in Christian theology) and unstable people (2 Peter 3.16). #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

The more a person develops the mind and the understanding of hermeneutics (the science of interpreting the Scriptures), the more one will be able to understand the meaning and significance of the Scriptures. Unfortunately, many today apparently think that hard intellectual work is not needed to understand God’s propositional revelation to us. Instead, they believe that the Holy spirit will simply make know the meaning of a text if it is implored to do so. Tragically, this represents a misunderstanding of the Spirit’s role in understanding the Scriptures. In my view, the Spirit does not help the believer understand the meaning of Scripture. Rather, He speaks to the believer’s soul, convicting, comforting, opening up applications of His truths through His promptings. On the evening Christ gave Himself up for us, John 17 tells us, He prayed in succession for Himself, for His twelve disciples, and for all of us who would later believe. When He finished praying for His future bride, He went to the cross. Then came Hos death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His enthronement at the right hand of the Father, where He constantly makes intercession for us. Thus we understand that giving ourselves for our brides involves prayerful intercession. Men, do you pray for your wives with something more than, “Bless good Meghan in all she does”? If not, you are sinning against her and against God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Most Christian men who claim to love their wives never offer more than a perfunctory nod to their wives’ needs before God. Men, you ought to have a list of her needs, spoken and unspoken, which you passionately hold up to God out of love for her. Praying is the material work of a Christian husband! The most basic command is, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave up himself for her.” Men, we are divinely called to die for our brides, to take on her sufferings as our own, and to make intercession for her. You are supposed to be her ride or die man. When it is said that the readiness of the seeker determines the appearance of the master, this applies to the first fundamental initiation of one’s spiritual life. It does not mean that a master will come into one’s own town and seek one out, but that one will come into one’s life. And this may be brought about in various ways—as by the seeker oneself being led, either by Worldly circumstances or by one’s own seeking, out of one’s own town to the town or country where the master is living. The location of one’s spiritual guide will in part be the accident of one’s own geographical situation, for one will obviously be limited in one’s selection to possibilities and reputations in one’s own country or nation or race. The sheer physical and financial difficulties of traveling throughout the World—not to mention the obstacles of personal circumstance, family obligations, and ignorance of where to search and whom to approach in foreign lands, combine to set this limitation upon one’s inquiry and hence upon one’s opportunity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

It is foolish to seek holiness geographically or holy beings in particular places. I have found that one being may live in a Himalayan abode and be a scoundrel and another being may live in a Bowery slum and be a saint. Wherever the live, people always carry their own thoughts and their own selves with them. The Soul, which is the object of our quest, is within us. The Master, who is to guide us upon our quest, will appear whenever we are ready for one and wherever we happen to live—or else we will be led to one. There are beings in the New World and the Old World, not less wise and noble than each other. If we have not met them, “the fault, Dear Brutus is…in ourselves,” primarily in our unworthiness, and secondarily in our incapacity to recognize what is beneath the surface. All speculation upon the motives and the methods of the illuminate will avail little. The light by which one works is denied to ordinary beings. We should not try to bind one down to qualities which fit only those who grope in the dark or move in twilight. We should trust where we cannot see and wait patiently for the day of revilement, when we will find all made clear and all riddle solved to our satisfaction. It is an old truism in the Old World that it takes an adept to understand an adept, but the New World will have to learn this truth by bitter experiences with pseudo-adepts. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

There are many signs of one’s spiritual status in the dignity and composure of one’s bearing, the deliberateness and truthfulness of one’s speech, and the impressiveness of one’s tension-free face. Helter Skelter is a phrase taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Charles Manson used it to characterize that state of confusion in which he kept his followers, and himself as well. In the state of helter-skelter nothing makes sense, and everything makes as much sense as anything else. Manson was able to use this ideology to brainwash his followers and make them believe they were not responsible for their actions and they were not doing anything wrong when the ended the life of an individual. He taught them they if harm came to a person by means of his follower’s hands, then it was meant to be, it was in divine order and they did no really harm the individual and the individual was still alive on a different plane of existence. Aldous Huxley, in one of his retrospective writings, commented on how, among the associates of his youth, the endless talk of meaninglessness—the meaninglessness of life and therefore of everything in it—was merely an excuse to permit them to do whatever they wanted. Their life was organized (or, more properly, disorganized) around their feelings and wayward thoughts, with their will in two. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

However, resolute action for the good requires that things make sense. You would not want someone caught up in helter-skelter to work on your lawn mower, do your gastrointestinal examination, nor work on your computer. Life makes sense only if you understand its basic components and how they interrelate to form the whole. Evil, on the other hand, thrives on confusion. God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14.33). Frankly, our visible Christian World is not too far from helter-skelter with reference to its understanding of the makeup of the person and therefore of the spiritual life and spiritual formation. We need to access the fullness of biblical teachings on these matters. We suffer far too much from the influence of a surrounding culture that thrives on confusions. (And therefore its denial that human beings have a nature.) This may seem like a harsh thing to say about our “Christian World,” and I am sorry to day it; but the issues here are too important to mince words. Accordingly, much of what we do in Christian circles with very good intentions—hoping, we say, to see steady, significant growth in Christlikeness—simply makes no sense and lead nowhere so far as substantive spiritual formation is concerned. What a brutal thing to say! However, we need to recognize this, or show why it is not the case. I hope we have taken significant first steps toward a clarity that can serve as a foundation for the effectual practice of Christian spiritual formation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. “As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgression from us,” reports Psalm 103.12. How far is the East from the West? If you start due north at any point on Earth, you would eventually cross over the North Pole and start going south, but that is not true when you go East or West. If you start West and continue in that direction you will always be going West. North and South meet at the North Pole, but East and West never meet. In a sense, they are an infinite distance apart. So when God says He removes our transgressions from us as far as the East is from the West, He is saying they have been removed an infinite distance from us. However, how can we get a handle on this rather abstract truth in such a way that it becomes meaningful in our lives? When God uses this metaphorical expression describing the extent of His forgiveness of our sin, He is saying His forgiveness is total, complete, and unconditional. God is saying He is not keeping score with regard to our sins. “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities,” reports Psalm 103.10. Yes, God actually says that! I know it seems too good to be true. I confess I almost hesitate to write those words because they are so foreign to our innate concepts of reward and punishment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

However, those gracious words are right in the Bible, and they are God’s words. How can God possibly do this? How can He so completely disregard our transgressions as to say He removes them an infinite distance from us? The answer is by His grace through Jesus Christ. God laid our sins on Christ and He bore the penalty we should have borne. Because of Christ’s death in our place, God’s justice is now completely satisfied. God can now, without violating His justice or His moral law, forgive us freely, completely and absolutely. He can now extend His grace to us; He can show favor to those who, in themselves, deserve only wrath. O Loving Wisdom of the living God, O living everlasting Word and everlasting Power of God the eternal Father—for everlasting is Thy birth, Who art the everlasting Son of God the everlasting Father, and art God; without Whom is nothing, by Whom are all things; in Whom consisteth whatever is; Who art God above us, and Man for our sakes; for Thou hast willed for us to be what we are: grant us what Thou hast promised; give to us, although unworthy, what Thou hast offered to all alike; that is, that Thy Passion may be our deliverance, and Thy Death our life, and Thy cross our redemption, and Thy Wound our healing; that being crucified with Thee, we may by Thy gift be lifted up on high to Thy Father, with Whom in bliss Thou livest and reignest. “And it is by faith that my fathers have obtained the promise that these things should come unto their brethren through the Gentiles; therefore the Lord hath commanded me, yea, even Jesus Christ,” reports Ether 12.22. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

O Source of All Good, what shall I render to three for the gift of gifts, then own dear Son, begotten, not created, my redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute, his self-emptying incomprehensible, his infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp. Herein is wonder of wonders: he came below to rise me above, was born like me that I might become like him. Herein is love; when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself. Herein is power; when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart he untied them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created. Herein is wisdom; when I was undone, with no will to return to him, and no intellect to devise recovery, he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost as man to die my death, to shed satisfying blood on my behalf, to work out a perfect righteousness for me. O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, and enlarge my mind; let me hear good tidings of great joy, and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore, my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose, my eyes uplifted to reconcile Father; place me with ox, mule, camel, goat, to look with them upon my redeemer’s face, and in him account myself delivered from sin; let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart, embrace him with undying faith, exulting that he is mine and I am his. In him thou hast given me so much that Heaven can give no more. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Oh, I Cannot Break Away I Must Have You Everyday as Regularly as Coffee or Tea!

January 4, 2020 5:40 am

When bad people combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Successful change requires: painstakingly laying a foundation; planning in incredible detail; tediously covering and recovering all the bases; continuously explaining and re-explaining; dealing with naysayers; playing politics; soothing egos; dispelling fears; cheerleading; troubleshooting; communicating; compromising; coaxing; cajoling; and ultimately, dragging a few stragglers kicking and screaming into the future. That is hard work. It is also leadership! And, the curious paradox is that when one accepts one’s self just as he or she is, then one has the ability to change. Many people are advocating members of society to get mental help, but no one is opening up with a testimony about their experience and what helped them. Drug therapy is not the only form of therapy. Sometimes all a person needs is someone to talk to and express what they are going through so they can feel like an accepted member of the population. Also, old theories about if you seem to have a problem with everyone, then you are likely the problem is an outdated hypothesis because tribalism and pack mentality has become a common expression for many groups in American culture. Therefore, some people are actually singled out and made to feel like misfits when nothing is actually wrong with them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

When the initial self-picture of someone has been in a therapeutic program is compared with those after therapy, it is found that after therapy the client sees himself or herself as changed in a number of ways. One feels one is more self-confident and self-reliant, understands oneself better, has more inner comfort, and more comfortable relationships with others. One feels less guilty, less resentful, less driven and insecure, and feels lees need for self-concealment. It is also an expectation that one will achieve greater congruence of self and ideal primary through alteration of their values, others through the alteration of self. Evidence supports this conclusion, and it appears that the concept of the self is what exhibits the greater change. Some change, however, does occur in the ideal self in the case of our client and the direction of this slight change is of interest. In other words, the self-deal has becomes less perfectly adjusted, or more attainable. It is to some degree a less punishing goal. We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden. Most people are willing to adapt not because they see the light but because they feel the heat. It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Another finding in connection with therapy has to do with the “remembered self.” This remembered self turns out to be very different from the self-picture one gives at the time of entering therapy. Usually people need about eighteen months of therapy to see a significant change. In sorting of for the remembered self we have a crude objective measure of the reduction in defensiveness which occurs. One is usually able to give a considerably truer picture of the maladjusted and disturbed person that one was when he or she entered therapy, a picture which is confirmed by other evidence. In client-centered therapy our theory is that in the psychological safety of the therapeutic relationship the client is able to permit in one’s awareness feelings and experiences which ordinarily would be repressed, or denied to awareness. These previously denied experiences now become incorporated into the self. For example, a client who has repressed all feelings of hostility may come, during therapy, to experience one’s hostility freely. One’s concept of oneself then becomes reorganized to include this realization that one has, at times, hostile feelings towards others. One’s self-picture becomes to that degree a more accurate map or representation of the totality of one’s experience. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

The most significant change in a person’s life is a change of attitude. Right attitudes produce right actions. All change in involves problems, and all successful change involves solving those problems. If you do not tackle problems, you might have less conflict, but you do not get anywhere in terms of change. That is why risk-taking is important. Those who are successful at implementing change do not have fewer problems. The difference is they have a problem-solving attitude and a problem solving mechanism. During and after therapy there will be an increasing congruence between the self as perceived by the client and the client as perceived by a diagnostician. The assumption is that a skilled person making a psychological diagnosis of the client is more aware of the totality of the client’s experience patterns, both conscious and unconscious, than is the client. Hence if the client assimilates into one’s own conscious self-picture many of the feelings and experiences which previously one has repressed, then one’s picture of oneself should become more similar to the picture which the diagnostician has of one. Thus we may say that the objective evidence indicates that the client has become, in one’s self-perception and in one’s total personality picture, substantially the person one wished to become when one entered therapy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

The individuals who will succeed and flourish will also be masters of change: adept at reorienting their own and other’s activities in untried directions to bring about higher levels of achievement. They will be able to acquire and use power to produce innovation. You may have habits that weaken you. The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Advice is like the snow. The softer it falls, the deeper it sinks into the mind. Among the many ways of thus recoiling from competition, perhaps the most important is that by which the neurotic creates in one’s imagination such a distance from one’s real or alleged competitor that any competition appears absurd, and is thereby eliminated in consciousness. This distance may be achieved either by setting the other person on a pedestal high out of reach, or by putting oneself so far below all others that any competitive thoughts or attempts seems impossible and ridiculous. The latter process is called “belittling.” Belittling oneself may be a conscious strategy, practiced merely for reasons of expediency. If the disciple of a great painter has done a good picture but has reason to fear the begrudging attitude of one’s master, one may belittle one’s work in order to allay the master’s envy. Always imitate the behavior of winners when you lose. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

The neurotic person, however, has only the vague notion of a tendency to undervalue oneself. If one has done a good job one will seriously believe that others would have done better, or that one’s success was an accident and that one probably could not do so well again. Or, having done well, one may pick out some flaw, such as having worked too slowly, and use this to devaluate one’s entire accomplishment. A scientist may feel ignorant about questions concerning one’s own field, so that one’s friends have to remind one that one’s self has written about them. When asked a question which is unwise or unanswerable one will be inclined to react with a feeling of one’s own folly; when reading a book with which one dimly disagrees one will be inclined, instead of thinking it through critically, to infer that one is not intelligent enough to understand it. One may perhaps cherish the belief that one has managed to preserve a critical and objective attitude toward oneself. However, not only will such a person take one’s inferiority feelings at their face value; one will insist on their validity. In spite of one’s complaints about them and the sufferings they cause one, one is far from accepting any evidence to disprove them. If regarded as a highly competent worker one will maintain that one is being overvalued or that one has succeeded in bluffing others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

For instance, there was a girl I mentioned heretofore, who developed an inordinate ambition at school after the humiliating experience with her brother, was always the first in her class and was regarded by everyone as a brilliant student, but was still convinced in her own mind that she was stupid. Although a glance into a mirror or the attention paid by men might be enough to convince a woman that she is attractive, she may still cling with an iron conviction to the belief that she is unattractive. A person may be convinced until he is forty that he is too young to assert his opinion or take a lead, and after forty he may switch to a feeling that he is too old. A well-known scholar was continually amazed at the reverence shown him, and in his own feelings insisted on being an insignificant mediocrity. Compliments are discarded as empty flattery or as prompted by ulterior motives, and may even result in anger. Observations of this kind, which can be made almost without limit, show that inferiority feelings, perhaps the most common evil of our times, have an important function, and for that reason are maintained and defended. Their value consists in the fact that by lowering one’s self in one’s own mind and thereby putting one’s self below other people and checking one’s ambition, the anxiety connected with competitiveness is allayed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

For one young lady, this strange sense of cruelty and ugliness always imminent, ready to seize hold upon her, who was the exception, formed one of the deepest influences of her life. Wherever she was, a school, among friends, in the street, in the train, she instinctively abated herself, made herself smaller, feigned to be less than she was for fear that her undiscovered self should be seen, pounced upon, attacked by brutish resentment of the commonplace, the average Self. Incidentally is should not be overlooked that inferiority feelings may factually weaken one’s position for the reason that self-belittling leads to an impairment of self-confidence. A certain amount of self-confidence is a prerequisite for any achievement, whether it be in varying a standard recipe for salad-dressing, selling merchandise, defending an opinion, or making a good impression on a potential relative. A person with strong tendencies to belittle oneself may have dreams in which one’s competitors excel, or in which one is at a disadvantage. Since there is no doubt that one subconsciously wishes for a triumph over competitors such dreams might look like a contradiction of Dr. Freud’s contention that dreams represent wish fulfillments. Dr. Freud’s view must not, however, be taken too narrowly. If direct wish-fulfillment involves too much anxiety, the allaying of that anxiety will be more important than a direct fulfillment of the wish. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

Thus when a person who is afraid of one’s ambition has dreams in which one id defeated, one’s dreams are the expression not of a wish to fail but of a preference for failure as the lesser evil. A patient of mine was scheduled to give a lecture during a period of her treatment when she was desperately fighting to defeat me. She has a dream that I was giving a successful lecture and that she was sitting in the audience humbly admiring me. Again, an ambition teacher dreamed that one’s pupil was the teacher and that he failed to know his assignment. The degree to which self-belittling serves as a check on ambitions is shown also by the fact that the capacities that are belittled are usually the ones in which the individual desires most ardently to excel. If one’s ambition is of an intellectual character, intelligence is its instrument and hence is belittled. This connection is so usual that one may guess from the focus of the self-belittling tendency where the greatest ambitions are possessed. The ambiguities in the meaning of love, power, and justice have confusing consequences and produce new problems as soon as the relation of the three concepts to each other is considered. Love and power are often contrasted in such a way that love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. Powerless love and loveless power are contrasted. This, of course, is unavoidable if love is understood from its emotional side and power from its compulsory side. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

However, such an understanding is error and confusion. It was this misinterpretation which induced the philosopher of the “will-to-power” to reject radically the Christian idea of love. And it is the same misinterpretation which induces Christian theologians to reject the philosophy of the “will-to-power” in the name of the Christian idea of love. In both cases an ontology of love is missing and in the second case power is identified with social compulsion. In the same period the theological school which has been created by Albrecht Ritschl dominated the field of Protestant theology. The anti-metaphysical bias of this school caused it to contrast the love of God with His power in such a way that the power actually disappeared and God became identified with love in its ethical meaning. The consequence was an ethical theism which neglected almost completely the divine mystery and majesty. God as the power of being was discarded as a pagan invasion. The trinitarian symbolism was dissolved. The kingdom of God was reduced to the ideal of an ethical community. Nature was excluded because power excluded. And power was excluded because the question of being was excluded. For if the question of being is asked and concepts like love and power are seen in the light of the ontological question, the unity of their root meanings can become visible. Yet most important are the problems in social ethics which result from the confrontation of love and power. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

One could say that constructive social ethics are impossible as long as power is looked at with distrust and love is reduced to its emotional or ethical quality. Such a division leads to a rejection of or indifference to the political realm on the side of religion. And it leads to the separation of the political from the religious and the ethical and to the politics of mere compulsion on the political side. Constructive social ethics presuppose that one is aware of the element of love in structure of power and of the element of power without which love becomes chaotic surrender. It is the ontological analysis of love and power which must produce this awareness. The problems and confusions which characterize the discussion of love in its relation to power, characterize equally the discussion of love in its relation to justice. One does not usually contrast love with justice in the way in which one contrast love with power. However, it is commonly accepted that love adds something to justice that justice cannot do by itself. Justice, one says, demands that an inherited fortune is distributed in equal parts amongst those who have the same legal claim. However, love may induce one of the heirs to surrender one’s right to one of the other heirs. In this case one acts in a way which is not demanded by justice, but may be demanded by love. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Love transcends justice. This seems rather evident, but it is not! If justice is not limited to proportional distribution, the act of resignation might have been an act of non-proportional justice, or it might have been an act of injustice against oneself, as in the first act of Shakespeare’s King Lear, when Lear surrenders all his powers to his daughters. The relation of love to justice cannot be understood in terms of an addition to justice which does not change its character. Only an ontology of justice can describe the true relation of the root concepts. Another example supports this view. A man may say to another: “I know your criminal deed and, according to the demand of justice, I should bring you to trial, but because of my Christian love I let you go.” Through this leniency, which is wrongly identified with love, a person may be driven towards a thoroughly criminal career. This means that one has received neither justice nor love, but injustice, covered by sentimentality. One might have been saved by having been brought to trial after his first fall. In this case the act of being just would have been the act of love. In classical theology the tension between love and justice is symbolized in the doctrine of atonement as developed by Anselm of Canterbury. According to Anselm, God Himself must find a way to escape the consequences of His retributive justice which conflicts with His merciful love. He is subject to the law of justice which is given by Himself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

And this law would cause the eternal death of all beings in spite of His desire to save humans according to His love. The solution is the undeserved, substitutional death of the God-man, Jesus Christ. In spite of its theological weakness this remained the predominant doctrine in Western Christianity because of its psychological power. It implies the ontological insight, which it explicitly contradicts, that ultimately love must satisfy justice in order to be real love, and that justice must be elevated into unity with love in order to avoid the injustice of eternal destruction. However, this is not manifest in the legal form in which the doctrine is developed. O God, Who for us hast willed Thy Son to endure the gibbest of the Cross, that Thou mightiest drive away from us the power of the enemy; grant to us Thy servants to attain the grace of resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “Our Lord, thy righteous will be done, for I know that thou workest unto the children of men accord to their faith,” reports Ether 12.29. O my God, thou fairest, greatest, first of all object, my heart admires, adores, loves thee, for my little vessel is as full as it can be, and I would pour out all that fullness before thee in ceaseless flow. When I think upon and converse with thee ten thousand delightful thoughts spring up, ten thousand sources of pleasure are unsealed, ten thousand refreshing joys spread over my heart, crowding into every moment of happiness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

I bless thee for the soul thou has created, for adorning it, sanctifying it, though it is fixed in barren soil; for the body thou hast given me, for preserving its strength and vigour, for providing senses to enjoy delights, for the ease and freedom of my limbs, for hands, eyes, ears that do thy bidding; for they royal bounty providing my daily support, for a full table and overflowing cup, for appetite, taste, sweetness, for social joys of relatives and friends, for ability to serve others, for a heart that feels sorrows and necessities, for a mind to care for my fellow-humans, for opportunities of spreading happiness around, for loved ones in the joys of Heaven, for my own expectations of seeing thee clearly. I love thee above the powers of language to express, for what thou art to thy beings. Increase my love, O my God, through time and eternity. O God, Who for our redemption hast received the Blood of Jesus Christ, destroy the works of the devil, and break through all the snares of sin; that those who have been created by a new birth may not be defiled by the old contagion. Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst stretch out Thine hands on the Corss, and redeem us by Thy Blood, forgive me a sinner, for none of my thoughts are hid from Thee. Pardon I ask, pardon I hope for, pardon I trust to have. Thou Who art pitiful and merciful, spare and forgive me. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

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Moonlight and Love Songs are Never Out of Date—Hearts Full of Passion!

December 28, 2019 4:27 am

The rich man has his BMW i8 motor car, his country and his town estate. He smokes a $1 million Gurkha Cigar, infused with the delectable Remy Martin Black Pearl Louis XIII. And jeers at Fate. Yet through my lamp burns low and dim, though I must slave for livelihood—think you that I would change with him? You bet I would. As things are now, education is so cluttered and tangled up with a thousand senseless notions and stupidities, that the task of reformation is almost a superhuman one. It is entirely a task of taking away and reducing—not one of adding to, or expanding. It is the task of the sculptor, who cuts the superfluous marble off, rather than that of the wax-workman who lays on the stuff thicker and thicker. Beneficial school change is built on common dreams, common concerns, common aspirations, common trust, and common sense! Those individuals and organizations that are most effective do not experience fewer problems, less stressful situations, and greater fortune—they just deal with them differently. The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. Probably the most dramatic metaphor for change as the watchword of our time is the experience of the Russian Cosmonaut Krikalev, who left Leningrad for a 313-day journey in space in 1991. Almost a year later he returned to a city no longer on the map and a country that no longer existed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Great changes require administrative support and necessary resources. Without these two elements the potential will die a slow death and the old negative patterns will return. Some people grin and bear it. Others smile and change it. At times it seems to us that the help promised us has not materialized. This is our opinion. However, it may also be that our ego stands in the way too obstinately. In any case it should been made clear to us in books and conversations that the people in positions of authority are not Masters, but only fellow students. If we cannot get the required help from such a one, we must accept the fact that it simply is not meant to be. When it comes to God’s grace, it cuts both ways: It can neither be earned by our merit nor forfeited by our demerit. If one sometimes feels one deserves an answer to prayer or a particular blessing from God because of one’s hard work or sacrifice, one is living by works, not by grace. However, it is just as true that if one sometimes despair of experiencing God’s blessing because of our demerits—the oughts one should have done but did not, or the do nots one should not have done but did—one is also casting aside the grace of God. Often time, we seldom think of merit on our part, but we are frequently painfully aware of our demerits. Therefore, we must, as much as possible, keep in mind that our demerits do not compel God to with draw His grace from us, but rather, God treats us without regard to deserts whatsoever. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

I would much rather stake my hope of God’s blessing on His infinite goodness than believed that I am cursed or focus on my good works. John Newton, the debauched and dissolute slave trader, after his conversation wrote the wonderful old hymn “Amazing Grace.” He never tired of contemplating with awed amazement the wonder of a grace that would reach even to him. However, the person who grew up in a Godly Christian family, who trusted Christ at an early age, and who never indulged in any so-called “gross” sins should be just as amazed at the grace of God as was John Newton. Here is a spiritual principle regarding the grace of God: To the extent you are clinging to any vestiges of self-righteousness are putting any confidence in your own spiritual attainments, to that degree you are not living by the grace of God in your life. This principle applies both in salvation and in living the Christian life. Grace and good works (that is, works done to earn favor with God) are mutually exclusive, which means being related such that each excludes or precludes the other. Essentially these principles are incompatible. We cannot stand, as it were, with one foot on grace and the other on our own works of merit. From hence, let fierce contending nation know what dire effects from civil discord flow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Go to the people. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build on what they have. And the best leaders, when their task is accomplished, and their work is done, the people will remark: we have done through God’s grace. However, if you are trusting to any degree in your own mortality or religious attainments, or if you believe God will somehow recognize any of your good works as merit toward your own salvation, you need to seriously consider if you are truly Christian. I realize I risk offending some with that statement, but we must be absolutely clear about the truth of the gospel of salvation. The most shining deeds and valuable qualities that can be found among humans, though highly useful and truly excellent, when set in their proper places, and referred to suitable ends, are, as to the grand article of justification treated as nonentities. For divine grace disdains to be assisted in the performance imperfect performances of humans. Attempts to complete what grace begins, betray our pride and often the Lord; but cannot promote our spiritual interest. Let the reader, therefore, carefully remember, that grace is either absolutely free, or it is not at all: and, that one who professes to look for salvation by grace, either believes in one’s heart to be saved entirely by it, or one acts inconsistently in affairs of the greatest importance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

Those who are truly saved are those who have come to Jesus with the attitude expressed in the words of an old hymn, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” Let us reflect for a moment on the classic definitions of activity and passivity we find in Aristotle, Spinoza, Goethe, Marx, and many other thinkers of the New World over the last two thousand years. Activity is understood as something that brings the powers inherent in people to expression, that helps give birth, that brings to life both our physical and emotional, both our intellectual and artistic capacities. Perhaps some of you will not quite understand what I mean when I speak of powers inherent in people, for we are accustomed to thinking of power and energy as residing in machines, not in people. And whatever powers human beings do possess are channeled primarily into inventing and operating machines. As we marvel more and more over the power of machines, we understand less and less of the wonderful powers of human beings. We no longer quite believe those lines from Sophocles’ Antigone: “Numberless are the World’s wonders, but none more wonderful than humans.” A rocket that can fly to the Moon seems far more wonderful to us than a mere human being. And in a certain sense we feel that in our modern inventions we have created things more marvelous than God did when he created humans. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

We have to reorient our thinking if we mean to focus our attention on human consciousness and on the development of the vast potential human beings have. We possess not only the ability to speak and to think but also the capacity for ever deeper insight, for ever greater maturity, a capacity for love and for artistic expression. All those things are potentially present in us, waiting to be developed. Activity, being active in the way that authors I have named understand it, means that: the bringing out, the manifesting of those powers that human beings have but that usually remain hidden or suppressed. If you take as your point of departure the human being as human being and one’s relationship to the World as a human one, then you can give only love in return for love, trust in return for trust, and so forth. If you want to influence other people, then you have to be a person who genuinely stimulates and challenges others. Each of your relationship with people—and with nature—has to be a specific expression of your own true, individual life appropriate to the object of your intentions. If you love without awakening love in return, that is, if your love as love does not produce a loving response, if the expression of your being as a loving person does not make you loved, then your love is powerless and brings unhappiness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Love is clearly a kind of activity. It rarely occurs to modern beings that they can create anything through love. One’s usual an almost exclusive concern is to be loved, not to emanate love oneself, not to awaken love in others through one’s love for them and so to create something new, something that had not existed in the World before. That is why one think that being loved is purely a matter of chance or something you can make happen is purely a matter of chance or something you can make happen by buying all sorts of things that will supposedly make you lovable, everything from the right shirt to an elegant suit will do for you I really cannot say. However, I do have to acknowledge as an unfortunate fact that many beings are loved for their sporty BMW motor cars. And here we have to add, of course, that many beings are fonder of their cares than they are of their wives. At any rate, both partners to such an arrangement often seem quite content, but after a while they will become bored with each other and possibly even hate each other, because they have both been deceived or will at least feel deceived. They thought they were both loved, but in reality all they have done is pretend at love. They have not practiced active love. Similarly, when we say, in the classic sense of the word, that someone is passive, we do not mean that one sits still, reflects, meditates, or looks at the natural World; we mean instead that one is driven by forces one does not control, that one cannot act but can only reacting. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

Human beings are a reactive being. Present one with a stimulus, and he or she will promptly react to it. Behaviorism assumes that all human behavior is essentially governed by the principle of rewards and punishments. Reward and punishment are the two great stimuli, and a human being will presumably react to them they way another other living creature does. One will learn to do things for which one is rewarded and not to do the ones for which there is a threat of punishment. One does not necessarily have to be punished; the threat of punishment alone usually suffices. Every now and then, of course, a few people do indeed have to be punished so that the threat of punishment does not become an empty threat. Now let us look at what it means to be “driven.” Take an inebriated person, for example. One may well be “active.” One yells and waves one’s arms around. Or think of someone in that psychotic state that we describe as “manic.” Such a person is hyperactive, one thinks one can help the whole World; one talks a blue streak, sends telegrams, gets things moving. One appears to be prodigiously active. However, we know that in the first case the motor behind the activity is alcohol; in the manic patient, it is some electrochemical malfunction in the brain. The external manifestations in both cases, though, appear to be those of extreme activity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

“Activity” that is either a mere reaction to a stimulus or a “driveness” or compulsion manifested as passion is, in reality, passivity, no matter how great a stir it may make. Our words “passion” and “passive” derive from passio and passivus respectively, both of which stem in turn from the Latin verb meaning “to suffer.” So if we say of someone that one is a very passionate person, we are paying one a rather dubious compliment. Jealousy is a passion that eagerly pursues what brings about suffering. That is true not only of jealousy but of any passion that takes on a compulsive character: ambition, green, the lust for power, gluttony. All addictions are passions that create suffering. They are forms of passivity. “Passion” has taken on a wider range of meaning in our modern usage and so has lost the clarity it once had. I will not go into the reasons for that. Now if you take a close look at the activity of people who merely react or who act compulsively, people who are therefore passive in the classical sense, you will notice that their reactions never take a new direction. Their reactions are always the same. The same stimulus will always produce the same reaction. You can predict with certainty what will happen each time. Everything can be calculated. There is no individuality in evidence here; no powers of thought come into play; everything seems to be programmed: the same stimulus, the same effect. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Since behaviorism sees the human being primarily as a mechanism, it makes similar assumptions about one: A certain stimulus will evoke a certain response. The study and exploration of that phenomenon and the formulation of prescriptions based on it is what the behaviorist call science. Perhaps it is a science, but it is not a human one, for a living human being never reacts twice in precisely the same way. At each moment one is a different person, one is at least never exactly the same. Heraclites expressed the same idea when he said, “It is impossible to wade into the same river twice.” The reason is, of course, that the river is constantly flowing. I would say that behavioral psychology may be a science, but it is not a science of humans. It is rather a science of alienated beings conducted with alienated methods by alienated researchers. It may be capable of illuminating certain aspects of human nature, but it does not touch on what is vital, on what is specifically human about human beings. It is clear that scientific findings can be communicated only to those who have agreed to the same ground rules of investigation. The Australian bushman will be quite unimpressed with the findings of science regarding bacterial infection. He knows that illness truly is caused by evil spirits. It is only when he too agrees to scientific method as good means of preventing self-deception, that he will be likely to accept its findings. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

However, even among those who have adopted the ground rules of science, tentative belief in the findings of a scientific research can only occur where there is a subjective readiness to believe. One could find many examples. Most psychologist are quite ready to believe evidence showing that the lecture system produces significant increments of learning, and quite unready to believe that the turn of an unseen card may be called through an ability labelled extrasensory perception. Yet the scientific evidence for the latter is considerably more impeccable than for the former. Likewise when the so-called “Iowa studies” first came out, indicating that intelligence might be considerably altered by environmental conditions, there was great disbelief among psychologists, and many attacks on the imperfect scientific methods used. The scientific evidence for this finding is not much better today than it was when the Iowa studies first appeared, but the subjective readiness of psychologists to believe such a finding has altered greatly. A historian of science has noted that empiricists, had they existed at the time, would have been the first to disbelieve the findings of Nicolaus Copernicus, who formulated a model of the Universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at the center of the Universe. Nonetheless, Aristarchus of Samos also formulated the same model about 1800 years prior. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

It appears then that whether I believe the scientific findings of others, or those from my own studies, depends in part on my readiness to put a tentative belief in such findings. One example from my own experience may suffice. In 1941 a research study done under my supervision showed that the future adjustment of delinquent adolescents was best predicted by a measure of their realistic self-understanding and self-acceptance. The instrument was a crude one, but it was a better predictor than measures of family environment, hereditary capacities, social milieu, and the like. At that time I was simply not ready to believe such a finding, because my own belief, like that of most psychologists, was that such factors as the emotional climate in the family and the influence of the peer group were the only real determinates of the future delinquency and non-delinquency. Only gradually, as my experience with psychotherapy continued and deepened, was it possible for me to give my tentative belief to the findings of this study and of a later one (1944) which confirmed it. One reason we are not particularly aware of this subjective fact is that in the physical sciences particularly, we have gradually adopted a very large area of experience in which we are ready to believe any finding which can be shown to rest upon the rules of the scientific game, properly played. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry. Draw your salary before you spend it. Because the soul encompasses and organizes the whole person, it is frequently taken to be the person. We naturally treat persons as souls. However, of course, the soul is not the person. It is, rather the deepest part of the self in terms of overall operations; and like body, it has the capacity to operate (and does, largely, operate) without conscious supervision. The soul is somewhat like a computer that quietly runs a business or manufacturing operation and only comes to our attention when it malfunctions or requires some adaption to new tasks. It can be significantly reprogrammed, and this too is a major part of what goes into the spiritual formation (re-formation) of the person. The figures of the soul are given off in the beams of Heaven, and the Earth receives them. There is an appetite that binds the whole and its parts, the motion of congruity or situation of the parts in respect of the whole, evident in so many particulars. This entails a consenting or proportion. There is the appetite in which the inferior kind moves toward its superior kind. Like agrees with like in small moments, as is seen when the magnet receives tiny iron particles; but iron in larger quantities will go to the Earth, the kind superior to the magnet. There is an appetite in every being to propagate the more general form of oneself, for instance, to multiply one’s species. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Because the soul is so inclusive and fundamental and to some degree independent of conscious direction, biblical and poetic language often addresses it in the third person. The psalmist asked, “Why are you in despair, O my Soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence,” reports Psalm 42.5. The “rich fool” of Luke 12 said, “I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry,’” reports verse 19. In his poem “The Chambered Nautilus,” Oliver Wendell Holmes intoned, “Build thee more stately mansion, oh my soul, as the swift season roll.” However, for all of the soul’s vastness and independence, the tiny executive center of the person—that is, the spirit or will—can redirect and re-form the soul, with God’s cooperation. It mainly does this by redirecting the body in spiritual disciplines and toward various other types of experiences under God. In the language of the prophets, it is the Lord Who shakes the mountains and melts the rocks. This is a language that modern being cannot understand. And so God, Who is not bound to any special language, not even to that of the prophets, spoke to the beings of today through the mouths of our greatest scientists, and this is what He said: You yourselves can bring about the end upon yourselves. I give the power to shake the foundations of your Earth into your hands. You can use this power for creation or destruction. How will you use it? #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

This is what God said to humankind through the work of the scientists and through their discover of the key to the foundations of life. However, through them He did even more. God forced His Word upon them, as He had forced it upon the prophets, in spite of their attempt ever to resist it. For no prophet likes to say what one has to say. And no scientist who participated in the great and terrible discovery liked to say what he or she had to say. However, one could not but speak; one had to raise one’s voice, like the prophets, to tell this generation what the prophet told their generations: that the Earth and humans, trees and animals, are threatened by a catastrophe which they can scarcely escape. A tremendous anxiety expresses itself through the words of these beings. Not only do they feel the shaking of the foundation, but also that they themselves are largely responsible for it. They tell us that they despise what they have done, because they know that we are left with only a slight chance of escape. Wavering between little hope and much despair, they urge us to use this chance. This is the way in which God had spoken to our generation about the shaking of the foundations. We have forgotten about such shaking. And it was science, more than anything else, which had made us forget it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

It was not science as knowledge, but rather science for the purpose of hidden idolatry, for the purpose of persuading us to believe in our Earth as the place for the establishment of the Kingdom of God, to believe in ourselves as those through whom this was to be achieved. There were prophets of this idolatry—false prophets, as they were called by Jeremiah—who cried: “Progress, infinite progress! Peace, universal peace! Happiness, happiness for everyone!” And now what has happened? That same science, in the saving power of which these false prophets believed, has utterly destroyed that idolatry. The greatest triumph of science was the power it gave to humans to annihilate themselves and their World. And those who brought about this triumph are speaking today, like the true prophets of the past—which is to say, not of progress, but of a return to the chaos of the beginning; not of peace, but of disruption; and not of happiness, but of doom. In this way science is atoning for the idolatrous abuse to which it has lent itself for centuries. Science, which has closed our eyes and thrown us into an abyss of ignorance about the few things that really matter, has revealed itself, had opened our eyes, and has pointed, at least, to one fundamental truth—that “the mountains shall depart and the hills shall be removed,” that “Earth shall fall down to rise no more,” because its foundations shall be destroyed. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

However, still we hear voices—and since the first shock, they have been increasing—which try to comfort us, saying: Perhaps humans will use the power to shake the foundations for creative purposes, for progress, for peace and happiness. The future is possessed in human’s hands, in our hands. If we should decide for constructiveness instead of destruction, why should we not be able to continue the creation? Why should we not become like God, at least in this respect? Job had to become silent when the Lord spoke to him our of the whirlwind, saying, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Declare if thou hast understanding!” However, out false voices continue: “Perhaps we can answer where Job could not. Have not our scientific discoveries revealed the mysteries of the ways in which the Earth was founded? Are we not, in thought and knowledge, able to be present at this event? Why should we be afraid of the shaking of the foundations?” However, humans are not God; and whenever one has claimed to be like God, one has been rebuked and brought to self-destruction and despair. When one has rested complacently on one’s cultural creativity, or on one’s technical progress, on one’s political institutions or on one’s religious systems, one has been thrown into disintegration and chaos; all the foundations of one’s personal, natural and cultural life have been shaken. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

As long as there has been human history, this is what has happened; in our period it has happened on a larger scale than ever before. Human’s claim to be like God has been rejected once more; not one foundation of the life of our civilization has remained unshaken. The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a being, who cannot grasp proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated. When the existence of a cause is demonstrated from an effect, this effect takes the place of the definition of the cause in proof of the cause’s existence. This is especially the case in regard to God, because, in order to prove the existence of anything, it is necessary to accept as a middle term the meaning of the word, and not its essence, for the question of its essence follows on the question of its existence. Now the names given to God are derived from His Effects; consequently, in demonstrating the existence of God from His effects, we may take for the middle term the meaning of the word “God.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

From effects not proportionate to the cause no perfect knowledge of that cause can be obtained. Yet from every effect the existence of the cause can be clearly demonstrated, and so we can demonstrate the existence of God from His effect; through from them we cannot perfectly know God as He is in His Essence. Before Thine eyes, O Lord, I stand guilty by the witness of my own conscience. I hardly dare to ask what I do not deserve to obtain. For Thou, Lord, knowest our doings. We blush to confess what we fear not to commit. Unto Thee, after falling into sin, I return from my wanderings; before Thee I lie sorely wounded; worthless as I am, my only relief is in Thee, O good Physician! Everywhere Thou findest us; therefore unto Thee we flee, because from Thee we cannot escape. Let Thy forgiveness comfort those whom their guilt terrifies. We plead guilty before Thee, O Lord; spare us, because Thou art kind. We know that unless Thou pardon, Thou mayest justly punish us. However, with Thee is great mercy, and overflowing readiness to forgive. Let Thy loving-kindness, from which we hope everything, not impute to us that wherein we have offended, but look upon that which we ask. O God, Who desirest not the death, but the repentance of sinners, reject not from Thy tender love my wretched self, a frail sinner; nor look to my sins and crimes, and my unclean and base thoughts, whereby I am woefully disunited from Thy will; but look Thou to thine own mercy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

We may meet a self-actualized person daily over several weeks and yet know nothing of one’s mind, have no insight into one’s true character. This is because you do not have the high-grade quality of perceptiveness needed to sense the individual. There is no level of contact, no real communication between you and the individual. Not every illuminated being has one’s status admitted and one’s knowledge recorded. Some have not been found out by the World until years after they have been dead. If the being has found one’s divine soul and it has fund one, one is thereby set free of the rules, restrictions, and disciplines which ascetically fence the life of a being who has not. Nothing can burn away the divine presence in one’s heart. “And no I, Moroni, have written the words which were commanded me, according to my memory; and I have told you the things which I have sealed up; therefore touch them not in order that ye may translate; for that thing is forbidden you, expect by and by it shall be wisdom in God. And behold, ye may be privileged that ye may show the plates unto those who shall assist to bring forth this work; and unto three shall they be shown by the power of God; wherefore they shall know of surety that these things are true,” reports Ether 5.1-3. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. I pray Heaven to be bestow the best of blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. My none but honest and wise beings every rule under this roof. O Lord, I hand on thee; I see, believe, live, when thy will, not mine, is done; I can plead nothing in myself in regard of any worthiness and grace, in regard of thy providence and promises, but only thy good pleasures. If thy mercy make me poor and vile, blessed be thou! Prayers arising from my needs are preparations for future mercies; help me to honour thee by believing before I feel, for great is the sin if I make feeling a cause of faith. Show me what sins hide three from me, and eclipse thy love; help me to humble myself for past evils, to be resolved to walk with more care, for if I do not walk holily before thee, how can I be assured of my salvation? It is the meek and the humble who are shown thy covenant, know thy will, are pardoned and healed, who by faith depend and rest upon grace, who are sanctified and quickened, who evidence they love. Help me to pray in faith and so find thy will, by leaning hard on thy rich free mercy, by believing thou wilt give what thou hast promised. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Strengthen me to pray with the conviction that whatever I receive is thy gift, so that I may pray until my prayer be granted; teach me to believe that all degrees of mercy arise from several degrees of prayer, that when faith is begun it is imperfect and must grow, as shaped ground opens wider and wider until rain comes. So shall I wait thy will, pray for it to be done, and by grace become fully obedient. Almighty and everlasting God, by Whom that begins to be which was not, and that which lay hid is made visible, cleanse away the folly of our heart, and purify us from our secret vices; that we may be able to serve Thee, O Lord, with a pure mind; though Jesus Christ our Lord. Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last. Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and it current is strong; no sooner does anything appear than it is swept away, and another comes in its place, and will be swept away too. Nothing happens to any person that one is not formed by nature to bear. Remember that to change your mind and follow one who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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Exemplified in the charm of this house Cresleigh Home is a design reminiscent of early America. The architecture is complimented by stucco and wood siding, which gives this classic Folk-Style Farmhouse the double advantage of good looks and a hardworking, vital floor plan. Note the covered porch provides shelter to the front door. The entry opens the way to causal gatherings. There is that is located right off the entry way, a great room with a fireplace, dining room, and an amazing kitchen, with a butler’s pantry, is handy for both living areas. Residence four is the largest home offered in Cresleigh Riverside.

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Randolph Harris II International Institute

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