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Arrogant Wrongdoing is the Deepest Possible Wound People Can Inflict on their Soul!
Life experiences become acting experiences, which in turn become life experiences. If there is anything to learn from the history of movies, it is that corruption leads to further corruption, not to innocence. We are told that in certain happy regions of the Earth, where nature provides in abundance everything that humans require, there are races whose life is passed in tranquility, and who know neither coercion nor aggression. I can scarcely believe it and I should be glad to hear more of these fortunate beings. The Manus are an illustration for a system which is clearly distinguished from system A, which is Life-Affirmative Societies. Where as in system A, which are Life-Affirmative Societies, the main emphasis of ideals, customs and institutions is that they serve the preservation and growth of life in all its forms. There is a minimum of hostility, violence, or cruelty among people, no harsh punishment, hardly any crime, and the institution of war is absent or plays an exceedingly small role. Children are treated with kindness, there is no severe corporal punishment; women are in general considered equal to men, or at least not exploited or humiliated; there is a generally permissive and affirmative attitude toward pleasures of the flesh. There is little envy, covetousness, greed and exploitativeness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
In system A there is also little competition and individualism and a great deal of cooperation; personal property is only in things that are used. There is a general attitude of trust and confidence, not only in others but particularly in nature; a general prevalence of good humour, and a relative absence of depressive moods. In it are societies with relatively abundant food supply and others characterized by a good deal of scarcity. However, in system B, which are Nondestructive-Aggressive Societies, this system shared with the first the basic element of not being destructive, but differs in that aggressiveness and war, although not central, are normal occurrences, and in that competition, hierarchy, and individualism are present. These societies are by no means permeated by destructiveness or cruelty of by exaggerated suspiciousness, but they do not have the kind of gentleness and trust which is characteristic of the system A societies. System B could perhaps be best characterized by stating that it is imbued with a spirit of male aggressiveness, individualism, the desire to get things and to accomplish tasks. On the other hand, the system of the Manus is very different from system which. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
System C, which characterizes Destructive Societies, is very distinct structure. It is marked by much interpersonal violence, destructiveness, aggression, and cruelty both within the tribe and against others, a pleasure in war, maliciousness, and treachery. The whole atmosphere of life is one of hostility, tension, and fear. Usually there is a great deal of competition, great emphasis on private property (if not in material things then in symbols), strict hierarchies, and a considerable amount of war-making. The main contrast lies between systems A and B on the one hand, which are both life affirming, and system C, which is basically cruel or destructive, id est, sadistic or necrophilous. The Manus are sea-dwelling, fish people living in villages built in the lagoons along the south coast of the Great Admiralty Islands in a system A structure. They trade their surplus catch with nearby agricultural land dwellers and obtain from them manufactured articles from more distant sections of the Archipelago. All their energy is completely dedicated to material success, and they drive themselves so hard that many men die in their early middle age. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In fact, it is rare for a man to live to see his first grandchild. This obsession for relentless work is upheld not only because of the fact that success is the main value, but because of the shame related to failure. Not to be able to pay back one’s debts is a matter which leads to humiliation of the afflicted individual; not to have any economic success which promotes a certain amount of capital accumulation puts one in the category of a man without any social prestige. However, whatever social prestige a man has won by hard work is lost when he is no longer economically active. The main emphasis in the training of the young is laid upon the respect for property, shame, and physical efficiency. Individualism is enhanced by the fact that relatives compete with each other for the child’s allegiance, and the child learns to consider itself valuable. Their marriage code is a strict one, resembling nineteenth-century middle-class morality. The main vices are intimate partner offenses, scandalmongering, obscenity failure to pay debts, failure to help relatives, and failure to keep one’s house in repair. The training for hard work and competition seems to be contradicted by one phase in the life of young men before their marriage. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The young unmarried men form a kind of community, living in a common clubhouse, sharing a common mistress (usually a war prisoner) and their tobacco and betel nut. They lie in a rather marry, roistering life on the borders of society. Perhaps this interval is necessary to produce a modicum of pleasure and contentment during one period of a male’s life. However, this idyllic life is interrupted for a good by the act of marriage. In order to marry, the young man has to borrow money, and for the first few years of his marriage there is only one goal for him, to repay the debt incurred to his financial backer. He must not even enjoy his wife too much as long as he owes part of her to his sponsor. Energy is so completely devoted to the overriding aim of success that personal motives of affection, loyalty, preference, dislike, and hatred are all barred. It is of crucial importance for the understanding of this system that while there is little love and affection, there is also little destructiveness or cruelty. Even within the fierce competition which dominates the whole picture, the interest is not to humiliate others but only to maintain one’s own position. Cruelty is relatively absent. In fact, those who do not succeed at all, who are failures, are left alone, not made the butt of aggression. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
In the system C, while they have no chiefs, they are a well-organized group arranged in concentric circles, within each of which specified traditional forms of hostility are allowed. Aside from a matrilineal grouping, the susu (“mother’s milk”), where one finds a certain amount of cooperation and trust, the Dobuans’ interpersonal relations, inhabitants of the Dobu Islands, have the principle of distrusting everybody as a possible enemy. Even marries does not lessen the hostility between the two families. A certain degree of peace is established by the fact that the couple live during alternate years in the village of the husband and in the village of the wife. The relationship between husband and wife is full of suspiciousness and hostility. Faithfulness is not expected, and n Dobuan will admit that a man and woman are every together even for the shortest period expect for purposes of pleasures of the flesh. Two features are the main characteristics of this system; the importance of private ownership and of malignant sorcery. The exclusiveness of ownership among them is characterized by its fierceness and ruthlessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Ownership of a garden and its privacy is respected to such a degree that by custom, man and wife have intercourse within it. Nobody must know the amount of property anyone has. It is as secret as if it had been stolen. The same sense of ownership exists with regard to the ownership of incantations and charms. The Dobus have “disease-charms” which produce and cure illnesses and each illness has a special charm. Illness is explained exclusively as a result of malevolent use of a charm. Illness is explained exclusively as a result of malevolent use of a charm. Some individuals own a charm which completely controls the production and cure of a certain illness. This disease-and-cure monopoly for one illness naturally gives them considerable power. Their whole life is governed by magic since no result in any field is possible without it, and magical formulae quite aside from those connected with illness are among the most important items of private property. All existence is cutthroat competition and every advantage is gained at the expense f the defeated rival. However, competition is not as in other systems, open and frank, but secret and treacherous. The ideal of a good and successful man is one who has cheated another of his place. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The most admired virtue and the greatest achievement is “wabuwabu,” a system of sharp practices which stresses one’s own gains at the expense of another’s loss. The art is to reap personal advantage in a situation in which others are victims. (This is a system quite different from that of the market which, in principle at least, is based on a fair exchange by which both sides are supposed to profit.) Even more characteristic of the spirit in this system is their treachery. In ordinary relations the Dobuan is suave and unctuously polite. As one man puts if: “If we wish to kill a man we approach him, we eat, drink, sleep, work and rest with him it may be for several moons. We bide our time. We call him a friend.” As a result, in the not infrequent case of murder, suspicion falls on those who have tried to be friends with the victim. There is also an obsessional emphasis on pleasures of the flesh by otherwise joyless people can be observed in present-day Western society among the “swingers” who practice group sex and are extremely bored, unhappy, and conventional people clinging to sexual satisfaction as the only relief from continuous boredom and loneliness. The Dobu fosters and lives out without repression of man’s worst nightmares of the ill-will of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
It may not be too different from those sectors of the consumer society, including also many members of the younger generation, from whom sexual consumption has been freed from restrictions, and for whom sex (like drugs) is the only relief in an otherwise bored and depressed mental state. According to their view of life, virtue consists in selecting a victim upon whom one can vent the malignancy one attributes alike to human society and to the powers of nature. All existence appears to one as a cut-throat struggle in which deadly antagonists are pitted against one another in a contest for each one of the goods of life. Suspicious and cruelty are one’s trusted weapons in the strife and one gives no mercy, as one asks none. However, the fact that destructiveness and cruelty are not part of human nature does not imply that they are not widespread and intense. This fact does not have to be proven, not only can it be seen in modern life, but also in primitive society. Unfortunately, we ourselves have been and still are witnesses of such extraordinary acts of destruction and cruelty that we need not even look at the historical record. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Humans, during most of their history, have lived in a zoo and not “in the wild”—id est, under the condition of liberty conducive to human growth and well-being. Human’s often act cruelly and destructively even in situations that do not include crowding. Destructiveness and cruelty can cause one to feel intense satisfaction; masses of humans can suddenly be seized by lust for blood. Individuals and groups may have a character structure that makes them eagerly wait for—or create—situations that permit the expression of destructiveness. Animals, and even hunters, on the other hand, do not enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on other animals or their prey, nor do they kill “for nothing.” Sometimes an animal seems to exhibit sadistic behaviour—for instance, a cat playing with a rodent; but it is an anthropomorphic interpretation to assume that the cat enjoys the suffering of the rodent; any fast-moving object can serve as a plaything, whether it is a rodent or a ball of wool. The wish to destroy for the sake of destruction is different. Only some types of humans take pleasure in destroying life without any reason or purpose other than that of destroying. To put in more generally, only humans appear to be destructive beyond the aim of defense or of attaining what one needs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Human’s destructiveness and cruelty cannot be explained in terms of animal heredity or in terms of a destructive instinct, but must be understood on the basis of those factors by which humans differ from their animal ancestors. The problem is to examine in what manner and to what degree the specific conditions of human existence are responsible for the quality and intensity of human’s lust for killing and torturing. There is no doubt about the presence of aggressiveness and destructive tendencies in the human psyche which are of the nature of biological drives. However, the most pernicious phenomena of aggression, transcending self-preservation and self-destruction, are based upon a characteristic feature of humans above the biological level, namely one’s capability of creating symbolic Universe in thought, language and behaviour. Biologically, nonadaptive, malignant aggression, id est, destructiveness and cruelty, is not a defense against a threat; it is not phylogenetically programmed; it is characteristic only of humans; it is biologically harmful because it is socially disruptive; its main manifestations—killing and cruelty—are pleasureful without needing any other purposes; it is harmful not only to the person who is attacked but also to the attacker. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Malignant aggression, though not an instinct, is a human potential rooted in the very conditions of human existence. Malignant parts of human’s aggression is not innate, and hence not ineradicable, but it admits that malignant aggression is a human potential and more than a learned pattern of behaviour that readily disappears when new patterns are introduced. A number of experiments have shown that male hormones tend to generate aggressive behaviour. For an answer to the question why this should be so, we must consider that one of the most basic differences between male and female is the difference in function during the act of pleasures of the flesh. The anatomic and physiological conditions of male pleasures of the flesh functioning require that the male be capable of piercing the hymen of the virgin, that he should not be deterred by the fear, hesitation, or even resistance she might manifest; in animals, the female in position during the act of mounting. Since the male capacity to function in pleasures of the flesh is a basic requirement for the survival of the species, one might expect that nature has endowed the male with some special aggressive potential. The expectation appears to be borne out by a number of data. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Of course, some aggression is needed in life. Mostly self-assertive aggression. A general lack in aggressiveness in this sense will be a hesitant and poor officer; an attacking soldier who lacks it will easily retreat. However, one must differentiate between aggression with the aim to damage and the self-assertive aggression that only facilitates the pursuit of a goal, whether it is to damage or to create. The connection between self-assertion, aggression, male hormones, and—possibly—Y chromosomes suggests the possibility that men may be equipped with more self-assertive aggression than women and may make them better general, surgeons, or hunters, while women may be more protective and caring and make better physicians and teachers. Yet, many men lack self-assertive aggressiveness, and many women perform excellently those tasks that require it. Obviously, there is not a simple relationship between maleness and the self-assertive aggressiveness, but a highly complex one about whose details we know almost nothing. This is no surprise to the geneticist who knows that a genetic disposition can be translated into a certain type of behaviour, but can be understood only in terms of its interconnection with other genetic dispositions and with the total life situation into which a person is born and has to live. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The person with unimpeded self-assertive aggression feels less easily threatened and, hence, is less readily in a position of having to react with aggression. The sadistic person is sadistic because one is suffering from an impotence of the heart, from the incapacity to move the other, to make one respond, to make oneself a loved person. One compensates for that impotence with the passion to have power over others. Since self-assertive aggression enhances the person’s capacity for achieving one’s aims, its possession greatly diminishes the need for sadistic control. The shy our inhibited person, as well as the one with compulsive obsessional tendencies, suffers from an impediment of this type of aggression. The therapeutic task is, first, to help the person to become aware of this impediment, then, to understand how it developed, and most importantly, to understand by what other factors in one’s character system and in one’s environment it is supported and supplied with energy. Perhaps the most important factor that leads to the weakening of self-assertive aggression is an authoritarian atmosphere in family and society, where self-assertion is equated with disobedience, attack, sin. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
For all irrational and exploitative forms of authority, self-assertion—the pursuit by another of one’s real goals—is the arch sin because it is a threat to the power of the authority; the person subject to it is indoctrinated to believe that the aims of the authority are also one’s, and that obedience offers the optimal chance for fulfilling oneself. The divine soul having somehow lost is consciousness is now seeking to become self-conscious again. It is supposed that the ego originates and ends on the same level—divinity—and therefore the question is often asked why it should go forth on such a long and unnecessary journey. This question is a misconceived one. It is not the ego itself which ever was consciously divine, but its source, God. The ego’s divine character lies in its essential but hidden being, but it has never known that. The purpose of gathering experience (the evolutionary process) is precisely to bring it to such awareness. The ego comes to slow birth in finite consciousness out of utter unconsciousness and, later, to recognition and union with its infinite source. That source, whence it has emanated, remains untouched, unaffected, ever knowing and serenely witnessing. The purpose in this evolution is the ego’s own advancement. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
When the Quest is reached, God revels its presence fitfully and brokenly at first but later the hide-and-seek game ends in loving union. On the other hand, sin or disobedience to what we know to be right distances us from God and forces us to live on our own. That means it makes soul rest impossible and is very destructive to the soul. “He who is partner with a thief hates one’s own soul,” Psalm 29.24. Those are surely right who have recognized in pride the root of all disobedience. We think we are “big enough” to take our life into our own hands and disobey, instead of “humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God.” If we do not take things into our own hands, we will not get what we want—another blow to our pride, and this will certainly be driven by the thought. Our attitude should be, to the contrary, that there is no particular reason why I should get what I want, because I am not in charge of the Universe. The understanding of all this no doubt lies back of the warning already from Saint Peter: “abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul,” reports 1 Peter 2.11. How do fleshy lusts war against the soul? Very simply, by enticing us to uproot our dependent life, pulling it away from God, which will deprive our soul of what it needs to function correctly in the enlivening and regulation of our whole being. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
To allow lust (or strong desire) to govern our life is to exalt our will over God’s That is why Saint Paul calls covetousness “idolatry” (Ephesians 5.5; Colossians 3.5). We are the idol, in that case, prepared to sacrifice the well-being and possessions of others to ourself. One also speaks of those whose God is their belly—that is, their desire center (Romans 16.18; Philippians 3.19). James also assigns the origin of sin to our strong desires or lusts (1.14), and now, perhaps, we see clearly how that works. So sin, through desire and pride, alienates the life in us (the soul) from the life that is in God and leaves us in the turmoil of a soul struggling with life on its own. Those who go so far as to abandon themselves to evil—consciously choosing evil as their goal (the “wicked” of Proverbs 21.10)—will be totally abandoned by God. Arrogant wrongdoing is the deepest possible wound people can inflict on their soul. Efforts at spiritual formation in Christlikeness obviously must reverse this process of distancing the soul from God and bring it back to union with Him. What can help us to do that? The Law of God. At this time of great change, I tell you the hard truth: you are the one who must undergo this task. I cannot do it for you, nor can any others do it for you. You magic lies within. You know what to do. Look deeply and you will see. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
A hard time lies before you, but you go under the protection of the Holy Ones and you go guarded by love. God of clear sight, God of the fierce change, please help your children in what they must do. Be beside them, be with them, be their unfailing assistant. Help them to do what they must. Let all the Earth revere the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the World stand in awe of Him. For God spoke, and the World came into being; He commanded, and it stood firm. The Lord brings the design of the heathens to naught; He makes their thoughts to be of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations. Happy is the people whose God is the Lord; the people whom He hath chosen for His possession. The Lord looks down from Heaven; He beholds all the children of humans. From the place of His habitation, He gazes upon all the inhabitants of the Earth; He that fashions the hearts of them all, gives heed to all their doings. A king is not saved by the greatness of power; a mighty human is not delivered by sheer strength. A horse is a vain thing for safety; neither does it afford escape by its great strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that revere Him, upon the that hope in His mercy, to deliver them from death, and to keep them alive in famine. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Our soul still waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For in God does our heart rejoice, for we trust in His holy name. Let Thy loving kindness, O Lord, be upon us, for our hope is in Thee. Expressions of will are called divine wills, not as being signs that God wills anything; but because what in us is the usual expression of our will, is called the divine will in God. Thu punishment is not a sign that there is anger in God; but it is called anger in Him, from the fact that it is an expression of anger in ourselves. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High; to declare Thy loving kindness each morning, and Thy faithfulness every night, with an instrument of ten strings and the lute, with sacred music upon the harp. For Thou, O Lord, hast made me rejoice in Thy work; I will glory in the works of Thy hands. How great are Thy deeds, O Lord! Thy thoughts are very deep. The ignorant human does not know, nor does the fool understand this—the wicked may spring up as the grass, and the workers of iniquity may flourish, only to be destroyed forever. However, Thou, O Lord, shalt be exalted forever. Thine enemies, O Lord, Thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Upon Your Skirts Have Fallen Tears of Mine–Genuine Joy and Creativity Come Out of Paradox!
The run-of-the-mill have a truer capacity for love than intellectuals, who should know better. I have always worked with the temperamental conviction that at bottom there are no insoluble problems, and experience justifies me in so far as I have often seen patients simply outgrow a problem that destroyed others. This “outgrowing,” as I called it, proves on further investigation to be a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appears on the patient’s horizon, and through this broadening of one’s outlook the insoluble problem loses its urgency. It is not solved logically in its own terms, but fades out when confronted with a new and stronger life urge. It is not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appears in a different light, and so really does become different. What, on a lower level, leads to the wildest conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion, from the higher level of personality now looks like a storm in the valley seen from the mountain top. This does not mean that the storm is robbed of its reality, but instead of being in it one is above it. However, since, in a psychic sense, we are both valley and mountain, it might seem a vain illusion to deem oneself beyond what is human. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
One certainly does feel the affect and is shaken and tormented by the storm, yet at the same time one is aware of a higher consciousness looking on which prevents one from becoming identical with the affect, a consciousness which regards the affect as an object, and can say, “I know that I suffer.” What our text says of indolence, “Indolence of which a human is conscious, and indolence of which one is unconscious, are a thousand miles apart,” hold true in the highest degree of affect. Now and then it happens in my practice that a patient grows beyond oneself because of unknow potentialities, and this becomes an experience of prime importance to me. In the meantime, I have learned that all the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They must be so, for they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. I therefore asked myself whether this outgrowing, this possibility of further psychic development, is not the normal thing, and whether getting stuck in conflict is pathological. Everyone must possess that higher level, at least in embryonic form, and must under favourable circumstances be able to develop this potentiality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
When I examine the course of development in patients who quietly, and as if unconsciously, outgrow themselves, I see that their fates have been something in common. The new thing comes to them from obscure possibilities either outside or inside themselves; they accept it and grow with its help. It seems to me typical that some take the new thing from outside themselves, others from inside; or rather, that it grows int some persons from without, and into others from within. However, the new thing never comes exclusively either form within or from without. If it comes from outside, it becomes a profound inner experience; if it comes from inside, it becomes an outer happening. In no case is it conjured into existence intentionally or by conscious willing, but rather seems to be borne along on the stream of time. The goal toward which the individuation process is ending is “Wholeness” or “Integration”: a condition in which all the different elements of the psyche, both conscious and unconscious, are welded together. The person who achieves this goal possess an attitude that is beyond the reach of emotional entanglements and violent shocks—a consciousness detached from the World. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Individuation is a spiritual journey; and the person embarking upon it, although one might not subscribe to any recognized creed, is nonetheless pursuing a religious quest. By paying careful attention to the unconscious, as manifested in dream and fantasy, the individual comes to change one’s attitude from one in which ego and will are paramount to one in in which one acknowledges that one is guided by an integrating factor which is not of one’s own making. This integrating factor, expressed by the emergence of quaternity or mandala symbols, is named the Self; and archetype which not only signifies union between the opposites within the psyche, but is a God-image, or at least cannot be distinguished from one. Unity and totality stand at the highest point on the scale of objective values because their symbols can no longer be distinguished from the imago Dei. Imago Dei (The Image of God) is a concept and theological doctrine in Judaism, Christianity, and Sufism of Islam, which asserts that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. Hence all statements about the God-image apply to the empirical symbols of totality. Ironically, facing death can being the courage to live and create. By the creative act, we are able to reach beyond our own death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Because we are able to reach beyond our own death when we are creative, this is why creativity is so important, and why we need to confront the problem of the relationship between creativity and death. One needs to devote one’s aesthetic and sensibilities as an artist and their fantasy to the outside World and harness it for the task of creating a real life in relationship with others. The role of the artist is the greatest kind of courage. Many people struggle to create life through symbol and imagination, they demonstrate the essential task of creating in the face of death. It they create themselves and their own lives, however, it may be asked what “self” they are creating. Are they creating false selves and role expectations or authentic selves and authentic lives? Mandalas are cryptograms concerning the state of the self which is presented to the individual creating them. In them, some people see the self—that is, their whole being—actively at work. To be sure, at first one may only simply understand them; but they seem to the individual highly significant, and one guards the like precious pearls. One has the distinct feeling that they are something central, and in time one may acquire through them a living conception of the self. The self, one may think, is like the monad which one is, and which is their World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The mandala represents his monad, and corresponds to the microcosmic nature of the psyche. Now, for clarity, the mandala is an art form that one usually creates, like a painting of patterns or a sketch, and it represents one’s mind. It makes it easier for one to concentrate on, transform, and internalize unconscious things in oneself. Monads are one of the ultimate indivisible units of existence. Monads are independent of one another and innately have the power of action and direction toward some end. Although no monad in reality acts on any other, they work in a divinely preestablished harmony so that an appearance of causal connection is maintained. The concept of the monad is intended, in part, to address the mind-body problem arising from Cartesian dualism. While working on mandalas, there may be a great many and some questions may arise repeatedly: What is this process leading to? Where is its goal? From one’s own experience, one may know that one cannot presume to choose a goal which would seem trustworthy to oneself. It may be necessary to abandon the idea of the superordinate position of the ego. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
It may be a good idea to go with the scientific analysis of myths which are Symbols of Transformation. This may be an unconscious process. Therefore, let oneself be carried along by the current without a notion of where it will lead one. When one begins drawing the mandalas, however, one will see that everything, all the paths one has been following, all the steps one has been taking, are leading back to a single point—namely, to the mid-point. It may become increasingly plain to one that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the paths to the center, to individuation. Some people have seen these artworks on the exterior of Victorian houses, or in the pattern of stained-glass windows, like the stained-glass window Mrs. Winchester created with the spider web and thirteen orbs. The goal of psychic development is the self. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the center. This insight gives one stability, and gradually one’s inner peace will return. One will know that finding the mandala as an expression of the self, one has attained for one the ultimate. And perhaps one will learn more. There is great importance of authenticity and subjectivity in the creation of the self in the World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Our subjectivity is our true home, our natural state, and our necessary place of refuge and renewal. It is the font of creativity, the stage for imagination, the drafting table for planning, and the ultimate heart of our fears and hopes, our sorrows and satisfactions. To the extent that some are struggling to create, not just any selves, but experientially coherent authentic selves, subjectivity is a necessary aspect of one’s creativity. The confrontation between life and death, the courage to create in the face of death, and the authenticity of a subjective self can be organized into a paradoxical model. Genuine joy and creativity come out of paradox. The human psyche is a continuum of constrictive and expansive possibilities. The dread of constriction and expansion promotes dysfunctional extremism or polarization, whereas confrontation with or integration of the poles promotes optimal living. Some people oscillate between the poles of expansion out into life and withdrawal into depression and a fantasy World (light and dark imagery, pleasures of the flesh and spirituality), these extremes can be understood as resting on a continuum, with the therapeutic task being to name and integrate the poles. However, the solitary journey toward independence may be molded after the heroic journey towards consciousness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The pull toward unconsciousness and the need for nurturance and interdependence is part of one’s journey. In Victorian women, hysteria often was a form personality of the vamp and the little girl. The mental hospital is a metaphorical space in which to articulate the crazy-making pressures of middle-class life, particularly for women. The home, the mental hospital, the body: these are woman’s places in the social order that apportion different roles to the genders; and woman herself is the very sense of mutilation. Some women, especially young women experience death by suicide or have a lust for it because they may want to die perfect, certainly not mutilated. To lose your virginity is to be mutilated; virginity is unopen, not yet spoiled. Sleeping Beauty remained perfect. Being Sleeping Beauty also expresses one’s desire to remain a child, and object of fantasy, dependent, and this beauty in their lives makes them want to die as Sleeping Beauty rather than risk imperfection. Some are seeking to balance freedom and security, meaning and emptiness, loneliness and relationship. Death may be seen as warm arms, as a release from the struggle of living. Perhaps it is a good idea to let them know it is acceptable to live and remain pure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
When pain becomes too great, contain it with humour and with writing. Presence is critical. Having someone listen to one’s silence, to one’s presence (dasein), and give one immediate, kinesthetic, and profound attention is absolutely necessary. When in a suicidal depression, one needs someone to hold one’s hand. One needs someone to help them see life as a composition, to bring one’s extremes more integrated whole, and to apply one’s creativity to one’s actual life. An essential part of healing is to see one’s individual story in a larger cultural perspective. The balance tbween nurturance and work, and the themes of sacrifice, homelessness, and the closeness between death and rebirth, are especially close to the psyche and psychotherapy of women. Sacrifice is the basis of the early primordial fertility rites and is a necessary part of the spring rebirth. Feeling sacrificed to the dominant patriarchal culture and experiencing the plight of insecurity in the living environment through the dispossession of an archetypal place in the World bring some people together in a bond of empathy and shard humanity. This bond can also unite individuals in an empathy of an intense, preverbal sibling type relationship. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
When people have someone to groan with in sympathy, it implies a way of being that does not distance but noncognitively feels with one one’s experience and allows one to descend into the underworld, transform the pain unto image and symbol, and re-emerge stronger. As one has someone to work with them through the process and changing imagery, those who have faith and the word of God deep in their hearts will be able to absorb and overcome the fiery darts that the adversary will surely send to destroy us. Otherwise, our faith, hope, and conviction may not endure, and we could become a casualty. I have learned that having the word of God deep in my soul, coupled with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement, allows me to draw upon the power of God to overcome the adversary and anything he may throw at me. As we face challenges, we can rely upon the promise of the Lord taught by Saint Paul: “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” We know that as a child the Saviour grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him. We know that as He grew older, Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and humans. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
And we know that by the time God’s ministry commenced, those who heard Him were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power. Through preparation, the Saviour grew in power and was able to resist all of Satan’s temptations. As we follow the Saviour’s example and prepare through studying the word of God and deepening our faith, we also can draw upon the power of God to resist temptations. Clear the space for change to happen. Let go of the vestiges of your old life, and of illusions that others provide a home for and that your Ghostly Love can provide a relationship. The second phase has to do with descent. These entails one’s experiencing one’s aloneness, one’s vulnerability, tracking the images in one’s dreams and journals, and experiencing one’s images of fire, darkness, crosses, and sacrifice. Remember, there is no expiration date associated with the power God bestows upon those who make and keep temple covenants, nor is there a restriction from accessing that power during a pandemic. However, if we fail to keep our covenants and do not life in a way that allows us to continually qualify to receive His power, the God’s power diminishes in our lives. Focus on your readiness to create your own life, and to meet another person without any baggage or encumbrances from your past. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
When you are free from encumbrances and baggage, when you do meet someone, you will be free and ready to move into a relationship with clear intentions of creating a stable home and a place for yourself. From then on, your images will deal with rebirth, light, and interdependence. Staying with this process means trusting in the Lord and the logic of one’s psyche and helping one to put one’s images and experiences into the context of a meaningful story. Because without working through the healing process, one is faced with total lack of understanding, either not wanting to understand what one is talking about because it is too painful or one is unable to understand because it is too foreign to their experience or because one is totally unable to listen to another person and hear what one is saying. In any event, the World will seem to offer nothing of care or concern for one’s experience or one’s feelings. It will seem unable and unprepared to give one anything to help one in suffering. One will just suffer, and by asking others to listen, and getting no response, one’s suffering will increase. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
However, through it all, our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, love us! They care for us! They and Their holy angels are watching over us. I know this is true. As we seek union of feeling, we will call down the power of God to make our efforts whole. We often think of substance in terms of food or money, but perhaps what we all need more of is mercy. Sometimes when a person witnesses your suffering, it makes a difference. Just being seen and heard by another. And one listening and sharing in your deep mourning. It has an impact on other people. Their eyes fill with tears. This makes some people want to listen quietly and mourn with you. The ability to listen is a rare quality, born of love. The ability to sit in silence is even more rare—a holy moment when two sit as one. Th feeling has no need for explanation. When a person manifests the least kindness and love, oh what a power it has over one’s mind. The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more are we disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls—we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders and cast their sins behind our back. If you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on another. Let us not judge each other or let or words bite. Let us keep each other’s names safe and give the gift of mercy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Differences can be turned to advantage instead of disadvantage. Unity does not magically happen; it takes work. It is messy, sometimes uncomfortable, and happens gradually when we clear away the bad as fast as the good can grow. Each of us is going to have deeply wounding experiences, things that should never happen. Each of us will also, at various times, allow pride and loftiness to corrupt the fruit we bear. However, Jesus Christ is our Saviour in all things. His power reaches to the very bottom and is reliably there for us when we call on Him. We all beg for mercy for our sins and failures. Jesus freely gives it. And Jesus Christ asks us if we can give that same mercy and understanding to each other. That is the meaning of the soul in the Christian understanding, and can be seen from what the Bible says about God’s soul. Many people are surprised to learn that God, too, has a soul, and even translators of the Bible often do not seem to know what to do about it. Referring to the gross wickedness into which Judea had fallen, the prophet Jeremiah gives the Lord’s word: “Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee: and lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited,” reports Jeremiah 6.8. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
However, more recent versions translate this as “or I shall turn from you in disgust,” or “Lest I be alienated from you.” Similarly I Jeremiah 9.9: “Shall not my soul be avenged on a nation as this?”; “Shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?”; and “On a nation such as this I shall not avenge Myself?” In these and other cases the word “nephesh” (or soul) occurs in the Hebrews text with reference to God. That is done in order to indicate the utter depth of the response of God to the wickedness of his people. That depth is not successfully communicated by the alternative language offered. The true meaning is hollowed out and lost. Similar observations must be made about Isaiah 1.14. In speaking of the soul of God, reference is always made to the deepest, most fundamental level of his being. And similarly in the New Testament texts such as, “Behold, My Servant Whom I Have Chosen; My Beloved In Whom My Soul Is Well-Pleased” (Matthew 12.18; see Leviticus 26.11; Psalm 11.5; and numerous other passages referring to God’s soul. The heart of the matter is that to refer to someone’s soul is to say something about the ultimate depths of one’s being and something that cannot be communicated by using terms like “person” or “self” or various available pronouns. (see Matthew 11.29.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The human entity has travelled through joy and suffering, experienced birth and death, experimented with good and evil for the very purpose of becoming a fully conscious entity. How then could annihilation—Vendantic or any other kind—be its ultimate fate? Is it for this, that humans should end as a mere speck of dust, that they were born? Consciousness, aspiration insight, and inspirations, artistic creations and scientific revelations, the noblest ethical feeling—all useless because the being hey serve is destined to vanish utterly? If all human’s seeming progress comes to an end with one’s death, one’s own end, how futile it is! It helps little to say that others will benefit by it, for this merely shifts the futility to them, for they too will die. The human situation is unsatisfactory and the Biblical Psalmist succinctly lamented. We have not come from oblivion. All our past is present in our characters, capacities, and tendencies; therefore we shall not go into oblivion. There is no death—only a change of state. We have the power to remove prejudice and build unity while we are here in mortal form. May we draw upon God and walk upright with one another—in perfect peace and harmony. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
We bring before you today one of yours, people of our past, one who will continue what you started in the long-ago time. God your beloved child is one of us, the family that reached so far back, and we will need you to please guide your family until they are ready to assume their full responsibilities. Be with you children and us as we do that; as your children grow, please be at their side to help. Please come to us today and learn who your children are, come and celebrate with us. Whatever the Lord desireth, He performeth, in Heaven and Earth, in the seas, and all deeps; He causeth mists to arise from the ends of the Earth; He maketh lightening for the rain; He being forth the wind out of His store-houses. God smote the first-born of Egypt, both man and beast. He sent signs and wonders into the midst of Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all His servants. God concerned many nations, and struck down might kings; Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of the Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan; and gave their land for a heritage unto Israel His people. “Lord” is Thy name for ever; as Lord art Thou known throughout all generations. For the Lord shall judge His people, and have compassion upon His servants. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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In a World where the Pulse of Time Beats Infinitely Slowly, Birth and Death Count for Little!
Hardships do not build character. They reveal it. Anyone who will tear down Victorian craftsmanship will tear down America. Victorian architecture and religion have made America what it is today. A World without Victorian architecture is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval prison. Just like the unconscious mind, Victorians have a lot of secrets that can take several lifetimes to reveal. Faith and the word of God fills our inner soul and is sufficient to sustain us—and allows us to access His power. The notion that God created this World spectacle for the benefit of the human alone is an absurd and unwarranted anthropolatry, but the notion that life first attains individual self-consciousness in humans is justified in philosophy and by experience. What is it of which one alone is conscious? It is of being oneself, one’s ego. In all earlier stages of evolution, consciousness is entirely veiled in its forms and never becomes self-aware. Only in the human state does individual consciousness of being first dawn. There may exist on other planets creatures infinitely more intelligent and more amiable than human beings. We may not be the only pebbles on the beach of life. Nevertheless the piece of arrogance which places humans highest in the scale of existence contains the dim reverberation of a great truth, for humans bear the divine within their hearts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Human beings have made too much fuss about themselves, their own importance in the cosmic scale. Why should there not be other forms of life superior t them, conscious intelligent beings higher in mentality, character, and spiritual knowledge, better equipped with powers and techniques? Even a partial awareness of what it means to be a human—as above an animal—capable of thinking abstractly, conscious of the vastness of the Universe and the littleness of the ego, asking the ago-old questions about meaning and purpose in life, sometimes getting a glimpse of a few words of the answer through religion, art, Nature, mysticism, joy, suffering, or intelligence, even this is enough to make one wonder what follows in development after one, higher than oneself, if not here then perhaps on other planets or in a fourth dimension. Such beings must already exist somewhere. Are they the gods of ancient fable and myth, disfigured or miscomprehended in human narratives by passing of time? Were they visitors who helped infant humanity reach its tends and then left it, withdrew, except for rare appearances as avatars, angels, or lawgivers? There are existences for beings on levels and in times and space different from ours. The Level we know and the humans we see only partially manifest the World-Idea. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
The multibirthed nature of human experience fits in with the shimmering galaxies of the multiverse itself. “We are not alone,” could be echoed back by this planet Earth itself. There are beings not subject to the same laws as those governing humankind’s physical existence. They are normally not visible to humans. They are gods. The Gods are both symbols of particular forces and beings dwelling on higher planes. All these figures irrupt autonomously into consciousness as soon as it gets into a pathological state. With regard to the anima, I would particularly like to draw attention to the case described by Nelken. Now the remarkable thing is that these figures show the most striking connections with the poetic, religious, or mythological formulations, though these connections are in no way factual. That is to say, they are spontaneous products of analogy. One such case even led to the charge of plagiarism: the French writer Benoit gave a description of the anima and her classic myth in his book L’Atlantide, which is an exact parallel of Rider Haggard’s She. The lawsuit proved unsuccessful; Benoit and never heard of She. (It might, in the last analysis, have been an instance of cryptomnesic deception, which is often extremely difficult to rule out.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The distinctly “historical” aspect of the anima and Benoit’s condensation with the figures of the sister, wife, mother, and daughter, plus thus associated incest motif, can be found in Goethe (“You were in times gone by my wife of sister”), as well as in the anima figure of the regina and femina alba in alchemy. The English alchemist Eirenaeus Philalethes (“love of truth”), writing about 1645, remarks that the “Queen” was the King’s “sister, mother, or wife.” The same idea can be found, ornately elaborated, in Nelken’s patient and in a whole series of cases observed by me, where I was able to rule out with certainty any possibility of literary influence. For the rest, the anima complex is one of the oldest features of Latin alchemy. When one studies the archetypal personalities and their behaviour with the help of the dreams, fantasies, delusions of patients, one is profoundly impressed by their manifold and unmistakable connections with mythological ideas completely unknown to the layperson. They form a species of singular beings whom one would like to endow with ego-consciousness; indeed, they almost seem capable of it. And yet this idea is not borne out by the facts. There is nothing in their behaviour to suggest that they have an ego-consciousness as we know it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The behaviours show, on the contrary, all the marks of fragmentary personalities. They are masklike, wraithlike, without problems, lacking self-reflection, with no conflicts, no doubts no sufferings; like gods, perhaps, who have no philosophy, such as the Brahma-gods of the Samyutta–nikaya, whose erroneous views needed correction by the Buddha. Unlike other contents, they always remain strangers in the World of consciousness, unwelcome intruders saturating the atmosphere with uncanny forebodings or even with the fear of madness. If we examine their content, id est, the fantasy material constituting their phenomenology, we find countless archaic and “historical” associations and images of an archetypal nature. This peculiar fact permits us to draw conclusions about the “localization’ of anima and animus in the psychic structure. They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the unconscious, especially that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of their strangeness: they being into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the World, gods and humans. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The existence of these archaic strata is presumable the source of the human’s belief in reincarnations and in memories of “previous existences.” Just as the human body is a museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche. We have no reason to suppose that the specific structure of the psyche is the only thing in the World that has n history outside its individual manifestations. Even the conscious mind cannot be denied a history reaching back at least five thousand years. It is only our ego-consciousness that has forever a new beginning and an early end. The unconscious psyche is not only immensely old, it is also capable of growing into an equally remote future. It moulds the human species and is just as much a part of its as the human body, which, though ephemeral in the individual, is collectively of immense ago. The anima and animus live in a World quite different from the World outside—in a World where the pulse of time beats infinitely slowly, where the birth and death of individuals count for little. No wonder their nature is strange, so strange that their irruption into consciousness often amounts to a psychosis. They undoubtedly belong to the material that comes to light in schizophrenia. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
What I have said about the collective unconscious may give you give a more or less adequate idea of what I mean by their term. If we now turn back to the problem of individuation, we shall see ourselves faced with a rather extraordinary task: the psyche consists of two incongruous halves which together should form a whole. One is inclined to think that ego-consciousness is capable of assimilating the unconscious, at least one hopes that such a solution is possible. However, unfortunately the unconscious really is unconscious; in other words, it is unknown. And how can you assimilate something unknown? Even if you can form a fairly complete picture of the anima and animus, this does not mean that you have plumbed the depths of the unconscious. One hopes to control the unconscious, but the past masters in the art of self-control, the yogis, attain perfection in samadhi, a state of ecstasy, which so far as we know is equivalent to a state of unconsciousness. It makes no difference whether they call our unconscious a “universal consciousness”; the fact remains that in their case the unconscious has swallowed up ego-consciousness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
They do not realize that a “universal consciousness” is a contradiction in terms, since exclusion, selection, and discrimination are the root and essence of everything that lays claim to the name “consciousness.” “Universal consciousness” is logically identical with unconsciousness. It is nevertheless true that a correct application of the methods described in the Pali Canon or the Yoga-sutra induces a remarkable extension of consciousness. But, with increasing extension, the contents of consciousness lose in clarity of detail. In the end consciousness becomes all-embracing, but nebulous; and infinite number of things merge into an indefinite whole, a state in which subject and object are almost completely identical. This is all very beautiful, but scarcely to be recommended anywhere north of the Tropic of Cancer. For this reason we must look for a different solution. We believe in ego-consciousness and in what we call reality. The realities of a north climate are somehow so convincing that we feel very much better off when we do not forget them. For us it makes sense to concern ourselves with reality. Our European ego-consciousness is therefore inclined to swallow up the unconscious, and if this should not prove feasible we try to suppress it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
However, if we understand anything of the unconscious, we know that it cannot be swallowed. We also know that it is dangerous to suppress it, because the unconscious is life and this life turns against us if suppressed, as it happens in neurosis. When one of them is suppressed and injured by the other, conscious and unconscious do not make a whole. If they must contend, let it at least be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too—as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, and “individual.” This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process. As the same shows, it is a process or course of development arising out of the conflict between the two fundamental psychic facts. The symbol of formation has the closet affinities with alchemical ideas, and especially with the conception of the “uniting symbol,” which yield highly significant parallels. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Naturally these are processes which have no meaning in the initial stages of psychological treatments. On the other hand, more difficult cases, such as cases of unresolved transference, develop these symbols. Knowledge of them is of inestimable importance in treating cases of this kind, especially when dealing with cultured patients. How the harmonizing of conscious and unconscious data is to be undertaken cannot be indicated in the form of a recipe. It is an irrational life-process which expressed itself in definite symbols. It may be the task of the analyst to stand by this process with all the help one can give. In this case, knowledge of the symbols is indispensable, for it is in them that the union of conscious and unconscious contents is consummated. Out of this union emerge new situations and new conscious attitudes. I have therefore called the union of opposites the “transcendent function.” This rounding out of the personality into a whole may well be the goal of any psychotherapy that claims to be more than a mere cure of symptoms. As experience piles up, self-structures gradually establish themselves and, in doing so, separate out more and more from other structures which have less to do with one’s identity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
In the course of this process, as the self becomes more distinct, other people and things also gain coherence and individuality. There is a growing sense of “Ah yes, this is me, and that is that, and you are you, and this is what goes on between us.” Gradually, with further experiences, if all goes well, the personality develops a relatively stable sense of itself in its environment and a stable sense of what is not self but other people and things. Our life-experiences are increasingly reorganized and integrated, with more linkages to the more central regions of the self, and/or with more clearly delineated object-imagery. Our experiences can become more closely connected with (or, on the other hand, more distant from) the feelings or excitements which originally accompanied the experiences. This is a process through which our experiences can also become relatively less integrated with the person with whim we first experienced them, and relatively less integrated with the feelings or excitements with which we first experienced them. Thus feelings and excitements can be isolated from the structures in terms of which they were first experienced, isolated from structures of self and/or isolated from object-imagery. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
To give an imaginary illustration of a very complicated process, the experience may be of a child being hugged by the mother and enjoying it. In words: “I like being hugged by mother.” This may be broken up into such substructures as “hugging is lovely” (whoever hugs whom: the “depersonalized” relationship), as well as “I liked being hugged,” “I love mother,” “I like hugging,” “mother loves me,” “mother loves hugging me,” “mother likes hugging,” and so on. This example is also useful in letting us realize just how many structures can emerge out of one experience; it is a mistake to think of an experience being broken up into one self-concept, one object-concept, one relationship, one emotion. “Depersonalizing” is used to describe this process. Depersonalizing is a useful way of coping with distressing feelings, I shall often call it “distancing” or “disowning.” In depersonalizing, emotions and objects differentiate. My first experience of a dog may have been frightening, but “frightening” and “dog” will eventually probably differentiate from each other, so that in due course I can distinguish between the dog which scared me, and dogs in general which have no personal significance for me either frightening or lovable, and so on. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
At that level of abstraction, dogs remain dogs, whatever my experience of them: object-constancy has been achieved. In depersonalizing, the emotions and self differentiate. “I” and “frightened” differentiate. More generally, I learn that I am not wholly (always) good or wholly (always” bad, or wholly (always) happy or wholly (always) unhappy. Later I have to discover that my feeling hat someone or something is good or bad does not mean that it is so. And I have to discover that my feeling that someone or something is good or bad does not mean that other people think so. Subjectivity is thus turned into objectivity. This process of depersonalizing may be patchy or superficial. Underneath what we have learned about dogs which helps us say we know that not all dogs are frightening although we once knew a frightening puppy, there may be unconscious connections very tightly integrated with a feeling of good or bad about dogs. Part of psychotherapy is to being these unconscious connections into consciousness. When thinking about feelings, it is useful sometimes not to think in a “distancing” or depersonalized way of “love,” or “distress,” or “fear.” It can be instructive to think for a while in terms of “love-of,” and “distress-from,” and “fear-of,” and “hate-of,” and “greed-for,” and “bliss-with.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
If we think of feelings apart from who-feels-what-towards-whom, we risk being cut from out roots. Feeling are experienced as relational—once stated, it seems obvious, at least for a healthy functioning organism. Feelings are relational from the start except when something has gone wrong with our biochemistry. When feelings are detached from the experiences in which they were aroused, that is normally due to a later and defensive manoeuver. This component in the object-relation does not therefore separate out in an organized way, as self-structures or object-imagery do in the healthy infant. On the contrary, it looks as though health may consist in keeping feelings attached to the experiences with which they are bound up. Healthy people may have a clear sense of self and of the people and things around them, but they are not much visited by isolated waves of “fear-of” or “bliss-with.” Such feelings would normally be anchored in an experience. Depersonalized feelings are very weird. One of the many contributions made by Dr. Melanie Klein and her associates comes from their intuitive understanding that “I am angry (with a person or thing)” is very close to “Someone or something is very angry with me.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The feeling “angry-with” may be depersonalized, detached from particular experiences, and associated at random with self or with other. Similarly “I feel torn apart (by something in the course of hunger)” may become “I have torn apart (the breast associated with hunger).” For some people there is no differentiation between self-and-feeling; for others there is none between others-and-feeling. It seems that people vary in this respect. The former are likely to experience “I am fine, sad, content, frightened, furious,” et cetera. The latter are likely to experience “He is nice, she is frightening, that is nasty, this is sweet, the other wicked.” Only people who are very out of touch would be assailed by feelings of fear or well-being or anger or love without any clear connections with anything. Illustrating the extreme, a person mainly organized in terms of self-structures, and distant from the World of people and things, might say, “I was so worried when I did not hear…I wondered what I had done wrong. I felt so guilt and worried, then I remembered that I am always forgetting people’s birthdays. Are I not awful.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Another kind of person, mainly organized in terms of other people and things, and distant from one’s own feelings, might say, “They sent this letter which said they were closing down. With a cheque. The cheque was an insult. They have no right to send a notice like that through the post. I went to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau round the corner from where I used to live—not last year but the year before. Almost everyone there was new, much younger and two were Asian.” Yet another kind of person hardly experiences either self or other people, but picks up feelings without firmly attaching them to anyone: “It was really eerie, a dangerous atmosphere. There were a lot of booming noises and a lot of talk which I do not remember. It felt very heavy and threatening. It did not mater, though.” People differ in how they are aware, more in some ways, less in others. One wonders at which point thee types begin to become fixed. It is an interesting area to speculate in. Whole cultures or subcultures may be found which prefer one or other type, so that polite conventional speech requires more awareness of some aspect than another. Thus in some circles it is discourteous to talk about oneself, and in others it is band manners to talk about others, and in yet other circles one should not talk about impersonal matters. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Because I cannot deal with the soul here in a thorough and systematic manner that would address main issues (I refer again to the literature noted), my strategy will be twofold: First, I will elaborate a picture or image of the soul, and second, I will look at certain things said about the soul in the Bible. Now the image: Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and His kingdom, including nature: and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream. Therefore we are in harmony with God, reality, and the rest of human nature at large. As is usual in biblical themes, a little child that has been allowed to develop naturally and have been natured in all the aspects of its being gives us the best presentation of that a life flooded with a healthy soul looks like. Now, beyond the image or picture of an inner stream is this reality: Life is self-initiating, self-directing, self-sustaining activity and power. In this full sense, of course, only God has life. That is the biblical view. Moreover, it his “hand is the soul of every living thing,” Job tells us (Job 12.10). #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Can it be truth that all this cast travail, all this long long ingathering of experience, all this travel to the farthest limit, is only to end in negation, in unlearning all knowledge and returning to where we started? My heart does not believe it, my reason cannot accept it. “The Father has life in Himself,” Jesus taught, and “gave to the Son also to have life in Himself,” reports John 5.26. “He alone possesses undying life,” reports 1 Timothy 6.16, according to Saint Paul, and is the one “who gives and preserves life to all things,” reports 1 Timothy 5.13. The individual living thing receives its relatively “self-initiating, self-directing, self-sustaining power” from the hand of God. This derivative life flows through the living being in the form of its own soul. As for the human, its peculiar form of soul is related to the unique spirit relationship it has to be God (Genesis 2.7). It is its peculiar form of soul that enlivens everything else in the creature, and its overall condition reflects the state of its soul. In the human being, spiritual life in the kingdom of God is central to its soul and its life. This, we seriously suggest, is not an image but a reality, and one that the image of a stream of water can portray with some force. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
When we speak of the human soul, then, we are speaking of the deepest level of life and power in the human being. On this land, please pour blessings, O Lord, pour blessings. On this house please pour blessings, O Lord pour blessings. Spirits of the Ancestors, do you see what has been done? A house has been born to continue your line. Once again, a link is forged in the ancient chain and we are all connected that much tighter. Bless this Victorian Mansion; it carries your memory forward to the future. Because God has set His love upon Sarah Winchester’s Mansion and estate, He will protect it; God will protect it because it knows His name. God will rescue the Winchester and its fine Victorian architecture and bring honour to it. Give will give Mrs. Winchester’s estate abundance of long life, and the Winchester mansion shall witness God’s salvation. Hallelujah. Praise the name of the Lord; give praise, ye servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing praise unto the name of God, for it is pleasant. For the Lord hath chosen this estate as wonder of the World and a treasure for many generations to enjoy. Indeed I know that the Lord is great, that our Lord is above all who are worshipped as gods. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah Winchester’s Daisy Bedroom – the room she was trapped in during the 1906 earthquake. Legend says that she had the front of the house boarded up after the earthquake.
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A Million Years to Her are Nothing Remarkable—Heaven and Earth Have Faded!
I know what happened there and I am not the only one who knows. There is nothing else that can be said about it. Although defensive aggression, destructiveness, and cruelty are not ordinarily the cause of war, these impulses manifest themselves in warfare. Hence some data on primitive warfare will help to complete the picture of primitive aggression. Among the Walbiri of Australia the characterization of warfare in hunting-gathering societies generally does not emphasize militarism—there is also no class of permanent or professional warriors; there is no hierarchy of military command; and groups rarely engage in wars of conquest. Every human was (and is still) a potential warrior, always armed and ready to defend one’s rights; but one is also an individualist, who prefers to fight independently. In some disputes kinship ties are align humans into opposed camps, and such a group may occasionally have comprised all the humans of a community. However, there are no military leaders, elected of hereditary, to plan tactics and ensure that others adopt the plans. Although some people are respected as capable and courageous fighters and their advice is valued, other humans do not necessarily follow them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Moreover, the range of circumstances in which fights occur is in effect so limited that humans know and can employ the most effective techniques without hesitation. This is still true today even of young bachelors. There was in any case little reason for all-out warfare between communities. Slavery was unknown; portable goods were few; and the territory seized in a battle was virtually an embarrassment to the victors, whose spiritual ties were wit other localities. Small-scale wars of conquest against other tribes occurred occasionally, but I am sure that they differed only in degree from intratribal and even intracommunity fights. Thus the attack on the Waringari that led to the occupation of the water wholes in the Tanami area involved only Wangeiga men—a few score at most; and I have no evidence that communities ever entered into military alliances, either to oppose other Walbiri communities or other tribes. Technically speaking, this kind of conflict among primitive hunters can be described as war; in this sense one may conclude that “war” has always existed within the human species, and hence, that it is the manifestation of an innate drive to kill. This reasoning, however, ignores the profound differences in the warfare of civilized cultures. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Primitive warfare, particularly that of the lower primitives, was neither centrally organized nor led by permanent chieftains; it was relatively infrequent; it was not war of conquest nor was it bloody war aimed at killing as many of the enemy as possible. Most civilized war, in contrast, is institutionalized, organized by permanent chieftains, and aims at conquest of territory and/or acquisition of slaves and/or booty. In addition, and perhaps most important of all, is the frequently overlooked fact that there is no important economic stimulus among primitive hunter-gatherers to full-scale war. The birth-death ratio in hunting-gather societies is such that it would be rare for population pressure to cause some part of the population to fight others for territorial acquisition. Even if such a circumstance occurred it would not lead to much of a battle. If hunting rights or rights to some gathering spot were demanded, the stronger, more numerus, group would simply prevail, probably even without battle. In the second place there is not much to gain by plunder in hunting-gathering society. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
All bands are poor in material goods and there are no standard items of exchange that serve as capital or as valuables. Finally, at the hunting-gathering level the acquisition of captives to serve as slaves for economic exploitation—a common cause of warfare in more modern times—would be useless, given the low productivity of the economy. Captives and slaves would have a difficult time producing more than enough food to sustain themselves. The overall picture of warfare among primitive hunter-gatherers given by Service is supported and supplemented by a number of other investigators, some of who are quoted in the following paragraphs. Dr. D. Pilbeam stresses the absence of war, in contrast to occasional feuds, together with the role of example rather than power among the leaders in a hunting society, and the principle of reciprocity and generosity and the central role of cooperation. (D. Pilbeam, 1970.) Dr. U. H. Stewart comes to the following conclusion concerning territoriality and warfare: There have been many contentions that primitive bands own territories or resources and fight to protect them. Although I cannot assert that this is never the case, it is probably very uncommon. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
First, if they are too small, the primary groups that comprise the larger maximum bands intermarry. If they are too large, they split off. Second, in the cases reported here, there is no more than a tendency for primary groups to utilize special areas. Third, most so-called “warfare” among such societies is no more than revenge for alleged witchcraft or continued interfamily feuds. Fourth, collecting is the main resource in most areas, but I know of no reported defense of seed areas. Primary bands did not fight one another, and it is difficult to see how a maximum band could assemble its manpower to defend its territory against another band or why it should do so. It is true that durian trees, eagle nests, and a few other specific resources were sometimes individually claimed, but how they were defended by a person miles away has not been made clear. (U. H. Stewart, 1968.) Dr. H.H Turney-High (1971) comes to similar conclusions. He stressed that while the experiences of fear, rage, and frustration are universal, the art of war develops only late in human evolution. Most primitive societies were not capable of war because war requires a sophisticated level of conceptualization. Most primitive societies could not imagine an organization necessary to conquer or defeat a neighbour. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
According to Rapaport, Turney-High’s work did not find a very friendly reception among anthropologist because he stressed that secondary accounts of battles written by professional anthropologists were hopelessly inadequate and sometimes downright misleading; he believed that primary sources were more reliable, even when they were by amateur ethnologist generations ago. (H.H. Turney-High, 1971.) Dr. Quincy Wright’s monumental work (1,637pages including an extensive Bibliography) presents a thorough analysis of warfare among primitive people based on the statistical comparison of the main data to be found among six hundred and fifty-thee primitive peoples. The shortcomings of his analytical in the classification of primitive societies as well as different kinds of warfare. Nevertheless, his conclusions are of considerable interest because they show a statistical trend that corresponds to the result of many other authors: “The collectors, lower hunters and lower agriculturalists are the least warlike. The higher hunters and higher agriculturalists are more warlike, while the highest agriculturalists and the pastors are the most warlike of all.” (Q. Wright, 1965.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
This statement confirms the idea that warlikeness is not a function of human’s natural drives that manifest themselves in the most primitive form of society, but of one’s development in civilization. Dr. Wright’s data show that the more division of labour there is in a society, the more warlike it is, and that societies with compulsory classes are the most warlike of all people. Eventually his data show that the greater the equilibrium among groups and between the group and its physical environment, the less warlikeness one finds, while frequent disturbances of the equilibrium results in an increase in warlikeness. Dr. Wright differentiates among four kinds of war—defensive, social, economic, and political. By defensive war, he refers to the practice of people who have no war in their mores and who fight if actually attacked, “in which case they make spontaneous use of available tools and hunting weapons to defend themselves, but regard this necessity as a misfortune.” By social war he refers to people with whom war “is usually not very destructive of life.” (This warfare corresponds to Dr. Service’s description of war among hunters.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Economic and political wars refer to people who make war in order to acquire women, slaves, raw materials, and land/or, in addition, for the maintenance of a ruling dynasty or class. Almost every body reasons: if civilized humans are so warlike, how much more warlike must primitive humans have been! However, Dr. Wright’s results confirm the thesis that the most primitive humans are the least warlike and that warlikeness grows in proportion to civilization. If destructiveness were innate in humans, the trend would have to be the opposite. A view similar to Dr. Wright’s has also been expressed by M. Ginsberg, who writes: It would seem that war in this sense grows with the consolidation of groups and economic development. Among the simplest peoples we ought to speak rather of feuds, and these unquestionably occur on grounds of abduction of women, or resentments of trespass or personal injury. It must be conceded that these societies are peaceful by comparison with the more advanced of the primitive peoples. However, violence and fear of violence are there and fight occurs, though that is obviously and necessarily on a small scale. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The facts are not adequately known, and if they do not support the view of a primitive idyllic peace, they are perhaps compatible with the view of those who think that primary or unprovoked aggressiveness is not an inherent element of human nature. (E. Glover and M. Ginsberg, 1934.) Dr. Ruth Benedict (1959) makes the distinction between “socially lethal” and “non-lethal” wars. In the latter, the aim is not that of subjugating other tribes to the victor as masters and profiteers; although there was much warfare among North American Indian: The idea of conquest never arose in aboriginal North America, and this made it possible for almost all these Indian tribes to do a very extreme thing: to separate war from the state. The state was personified in the Peace Chief, who was a leader of public opinion in all that concerned the in-group and in his council. The Peace Chief was permanent, and though no autocratic ruler he was often a very important personage. However, he had nothing to do with war. He did not even appoint the war chiefs or concern himself with the conduct of war parties. Any human who could attract a following led a war party when and where he would, and in some tribes, he was in complete control for the duration of the expedition. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
However, this lasted only till the return of the war part. The state, according to this interpretation of war, had no conceivable interest in these ventures, which were only highly desirable demonstrations of rugged individualism turned against an out-group where such demonstrations dis not harm the body politic. (R. Benedict, 1959.) Dr. Benedict’s point is important because it touches upon the connection of war, state, and private property. Socially nonlethal war is to a large extent an expression of adventurousness and the wish to have trophies and be admired, but it was not invoked by the impulse to conquer people or territory, to subjugate human beings, or to destroy the basis for their livelihood. Dr. Benedict comes to the conclusion that “elimination of war is not so uncommon as one would think from the writing of political theorists of the prehistory of war…It is a complete misunderstanding to lay this havoc [war] to any biological need of humans to go to war. The havoc is humanmade.” (R. Benedict, 1959.) Another outstanding anthropologist, Dr. E. A. Hoebel (1958) characterizes warfare among early North American Indians in these terms: “They come closer to William James’s Moral Equivalents of War. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
“They release aggressions harmlessly: they provide exercise, sport and amusement without destruction; and only mildly is there any imposition of desires by one part on the other.” (E.A. Hoebel, 1958.) Dr. Hoebel comes to the general conclusion that human’s propensity to war is obviously not an instinct, because it is an elaborate cultural complex. He gives as an interesting example the pacifistic Shoshones and the violent Comanches who in the 1600 were still culturally and racially one. The humans of the old did not till the field, but the fruits of plants and trees were sufficient for food. Nor did the women weave for the furs of birds and animals were enough for clothing. Without working there was enough to live, there were few people and plenty of supplies, and therefore the people did not quarrel. So neither large rewards nor heavy punishments where used, but the people governed themselves. However, nowadays people do not consider a family of five children as large, and each child having again five children, before the death of the grandfather, there may be twenty-five grandchildren. The result is that there are many people and few supplies, that one has to work hard for a meagre return. So the people fall to quarreling and though rewards may be doubled and punishments heaped up, ooooooone does not get away from disorder. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Now, of all the dimensions of human being that must be dealt with in understanding spiritual formation, the soul is by far the most controversial and inaccessible in today’s World. For various reasons, it was rejected by the field of “psychology”—by very name the “theory of the soul”—as that field tried to develop itself into a “scientific” understanding of humans. The alleged failure to “find” and enduring, nonphysical center that organizes life into a whole has become a part of what is regarded as the outcome of modern thought, as everyone with a high-school education now knows. The issues here certainly run deep, and we do not mean to dismiss them lightly. However, they are not the kind of matters that can be dealt entirely in this scope. Part of soul growth and development involves charity. Charity is act of service, but it is more. It is a condition of the heart. While charity is an essential part of our lives, the ways we develop and exercise it vary as much as each life. “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work: Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.6, 8, 16. The Apostle Paul taught that persistence is necessary in serving, as it is in planting and harvesting. “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good until all,” report Galatians 6.9-10. We may plant a good seed, but we must then spend long hours cultivating the plant before we can reap the harvest. And in service to others, our harvest is always twofold. First, our service blesses those we serve. Second, we are blessed with divine help as we serve. Cultivation of the soul has expressed itself in a great wave of popular publications and media presentations on the soul. “Soul” has become almost as attention-getting a some of the biggest celebrities, and as widely used as selling the most popular music. People pride themselves on having and knowing and expressing “soul.” The superficial conditions of ordinary life in most Western contexts have brough this forth. It is a natural reaction to a deeply felt need, for indeed the soul—or, more generally, the spiritual side of life—simply cannot be indefinitely suppressed. Fundamental aspects of life such as art, sleep, pleasures of the flesh, ritual, family (“roots”), parenting, community, health, and meaningful work all are in fact soul functions, and they fail and fall apart to the degree that soul diminishes. It is possible that the reason modern intellectuals have failed to find soul is that soul really is no longer present in their individual lives. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Perhaps something like a soulless life really is possible and not just something to be portrayed in fashionable literary works. That would explain why meaning is such a problem for human beings today. “Meaning” in action is fundamentally a matter of “carry over” or transcendence. Meaningful experience flows. It does not leave you stuck on something you cannot get past-whether a word you do not understand or a pointless social situation. Meaning is one of the greatest needs of human life, one of our deepest hungers—perhaps it is, in the final analysis, the most basic need in the realm of the human experience. If life as a whole is meaningful, almost anything can be born. However, in the absence of meaning, boredom and mere effort or willpower are all that is left. “Dead” religion or a dead job or relationship is one that has to be carried on in “meaningless” human routine. In boredom and carrying on by mere willpower, almost nothing can be endured, and people who are well off by all other physical and social standards find such a life unbearable. They re “dead souls.” By contrast, though in meaningful experience we are very active, the presence of meaning, with its power of “carryover,” relieves the pain of effort and makes even great strain exhilarating. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is as if a power beyond us meets our action and carries us. That is always, in some measure, the presence of soul. The human fetus grows through various stages, each of which corresponds to a parallel stage of the whole human race’s own previous evolution. Examine any living organism you choose and you will find that its conception, birth, and growth show an innate evolutionary trend. The process of passing from an embryonic stage to a more evolved one involves considerable differences physically. It is equally true although less apparent, mentally. The nature and functions of humans are reflected in miniature in the cells which compose one’s body, while one oneself reflects those of the Universal Mind in which one is similar to the cell. There is no one cell in the whole organism of a human which does not reflect in miniature the pattern, the proportions, and the functions of the immense cosmos itself. The microorganism has within it all the varied possibilities of becoming a human entity. The body’s physical cells disintegrate into the Earth and become part of the soil until they take new forms in plant and animal life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Just as a class in school one day breaks up and all the students go their separate ways, and in its place another class is formed, so the units are fully individualized only when they enter human stage. Until then they very, very slowly approach this release, just as an embryo in the womb approaches the form of a new born baby. The human body is composed of millions of tiny different intelligences, each having its own specialized life, all having developed from a single generalized cell. Some cells die within hours, others within days or even longer after the body’s own death. The fertilized egg contains all the organs of the human being in miniature. They merely grow and become big to produce the adult. It is an astonishing thought that the entire human body, from its head to its feet, is contained in miniature in the cell from which it starts existence. No microscope can see it, for it still is only an idea. However, given time, the idea finds expression is a form. In our bodies, the phagocyte cells follow they very opposite path to all the other cells, scattering and moving restlessly where the others are settling down into groups. There are millions of living cells which, in their totality, compose the human body. Each has its own separate birth, life, and death. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Nature extravagantly spends large fragments of time on outworking her high purpose; a million years to her are nothing remarkable. We poor mortals, however—being helpless prisoners in the captivity of time, whose tyrannous character we have yet to understand—are eager to see improvement and progress before the same day’s sun has set. We need but to consider the enormous duration of the aeons which have straddled the globe since the first Lemurian lived and loved. If they study the World-Idea, those who get discouraged by seeing how slow is humanity’s moral growth, and how few are the signs of its spiritual awakening, may gain fresh hope. The will of Gd is entirely unchangeable. On this point we must consider that to change the will is one thing; to will that certain things should be changed is another. It is possible to will a thing to be done now, and its contrary afterwards; and yet for the will to remain permanently the same: whereas he will would be changed, if one should begin to will what before one had not willed; or cease to will what one had willed before. This cannot happen, unless we presuppose change either in the knowledge or in the disposition of the substance of the willer. For since the will regards good, a human may in two ways begin to will a thing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
In one way when that thing begins to be good for one, and this does not take place without a change in one. Thus when the cold weather begins, it becomes good to sit by the fire; though it was not so before. In another way when one knows for the firs time that a whing is good for one, though one did not know it before; hence we take counsel in order to know what is good for us. Now it has already been shown that both the substance of God and His knowledge are entirely unchangeable. Many of the words the Lord has spoken are to be understood metaphorically, and according to the likeness of nature. For when we repent, we destroy what we have made; although we may even do so without change of the will; as, when a human wills to make a thing, at the same time intending to destroy it later. Therefore God is said to have repented, by way of comparison with our mode of acting, in so far as by the deluge He destroyed from the face of the Earth humans whom He had made. The will of God, as it is the first and universal cause, does not exclude intermediate causes that have power to produce certain effects. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Since however all intermediate causes are inferior in power to the first cause, there are many things in the divine power, knowledge and will that are not included in order of inferior causes. Thus in the case of Lazarus, one who looked only on inferior causes might have said: “Lazarus will rise again.” And God wills both: that is, that in the order of the inferior cause a thing shall happen; but that in the order of the higher cause it shall not happen; or He may will conversely. We may say, then, that God sometimes declares that a thing shall happen according as it falls under the order of inferior causes, as of nature, or merit, which yet does not happen as not being in the designs of the divine and higher causes. The He foretold Ezechias: “Take order with thy house, for thou shalt die, and not live,” reports Isaiah 38.1. Yet this did not take place, since from eternity it was otherwise disposed in the divine knowledge and will, which is unchangeable. Hence Gregory says (Moral, xvi, 5): “The sentence of God changes, but not His counsel”—that is to say, the counsel of His will. When therefore God says, “I also will repent,” His words must be understood metaphorically. For when they do not fulfill what they have threatened, humans seem to repent. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
It does not follow from this argument that God has a will that changes, but that He sometimes wills that things should change. Although God’s willing a thing is not by absolute necessity, yet it is necessary by supposition, on account of the unchangeableness of the divine will, as has been said above. There are different stages in the development of people: some stand on the lower, some on the higher ones—and others fill in the space between. There is no equality among human beings, in character or manners, in intelligence or intuitiveness. Those who resent this fact may deny it, thereby revealing their incapacity for understanding truth. Exploitation of the lower types by the higher ones has bred the resentment, and this in turn has blinded the eyes or the mind. By one’s own reactions to the fragments of knowledge of the World-Idea which come to a human, one reveals oneself, one’s kind of character and stage of development. The wise and the foolish, the enlightened and the ignorant, the good, and the bad, dwell on the same Earth outwardly but on different planets inwardly. The human being slowly unfolds its possibilities through the workings of manifold experience. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
It is there, in this manifold of experience, that there are to be seen conscience, guiding it along ever-higher moral paths; capacity, expressing its active power and creative talent; and intelligence, teaching it to discriminate between foolishness and wisdom or to penetrate through appearance to reality. It is significant that animals tend to live in herds. As humans mature, they reach more and more individuality. Slowly, at times pleasurably and at times painfully, the human entity builds up its consciousness and capacities through the ages. If human needs brought us thus far, human curiosity is bringing us into another kind of cycle. Yet this perception of the ultimate goodness behind life, the ultimate triumph of light and love, need not keep us from recognizing that there are evil tendencies in many humans. We may recognize the as motes in the beam, as dust in the sunray, for we must not lose our perspective about them; but we may still regard them as temporary phases of human vicissitude that will be over-passed and left behind as the slow course of evolution carries out its work upon the human race. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as a day that is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest humans away as with a flood; they are like moss; they are like grass that grows in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and grows up; in the evening it is cut down and withers. Truly we perish by reason of Thy displeasure, and are overwhelmed by Thy wrath; for Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy presence. Yea, all our days pass away because of Thy displeasure; we bring our year to an end as a sign. The days of our years are but three-score years and tend, or by reason of strength four-score. Yet is their pride but travail and vanity; for seedily our life is over and we vanish. Who knows the power of Thy wrath? And how fearful is Thine anger! Please teach us, therefore, to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. Return unto us, O Lord; how long wilt Thou be wroth? O relent Thee concerning Thy servants. Please give us abundantly every morning of Thy lovingkindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Gladden us according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, the years wherein we have seen sorrow. Please let thy work be revealed unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
And let Thy graciousness, O Lord our God, be upon us; establish Thou also the work of our hands for us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it. Please watch over our families and protect them during their whole life. May our children, and our children’s children know to worship God. May each moment we experience on this Earth welcome us and bring protection. May God increase all His people and may we rejoice with a new life. May our lives grow and give us strength. Lord, please guide us in the way to grow being us healing and strength. May be learn and know the meaning and purpose of our lives on this Earth. Deep inside, may we learn what we must know and do what we must do. Please go before us an open the gates of opportunity. May our journey in this life be smooth and safe. May we know the right thing with all of us and do it no matter what the pain. A hard road lies before us, shining ones, a road filled with great difficulties, a road filled with great joys. Please guide us alone it. Please be at our side, Lord, and send guardian angels. Father of World, we turn to you in prayer that you might bless us, our Father, who took your role here on Earth and performed it well. May we act the role as artfully. Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Heaven Holds a Sense of Wonder and I Wanted to Believe—It Keeps Eternal Whisperings Around!
American journalists today have been forced and lured out of their normal and proper role in our society. Many of them have become not just the critics in the aisles but the actors in the play. It is not possible, and it is not necessary, for any human mind to learn all the higher laws governing life. However, it is possible to learn some of them and also the archetypal ways in which the World-Ideas manifests. With them, one has something of a key to the unknown laws. It must be remembered that these higher laws are established throughout the cosmos, not merely in our part of it; that this higher truth can never undergo any alteration in itself, whatever way different humans of insight may speak about it; that we human being can have the privilege, when purified, of partaking in the real holy communion which alone fulfills our highest prayers. Those who seek to do God’s will must first seek to discern it not only within themselves but also in their environment outside. For this a study of the pattern of the World-Idea is necessary. Heaven holds a sense of wonder and many of us want to believe we will get caught up when the rage in one subsides. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Passion chokes the flower till she cries no more, possessing all the beauty, hungry still for more. Heaven holds a sense of wonder. Dr. Spinoza saw that the whole Universe conformed to a World-order under what he named “laws of necessity.” However, the source of these laws is God. Dr. Spinoza saw too that Man, in the effort to understand all this, and drawn by an intellectual love of God, would unfold intuition and come closer to God. Learning what these cosmic laws are and trying t live in obedience to them is the only way whereby humanity can do what is best for itself. It will have to come to such obedience through the lessons of experience and cannot escape it. The more a human learns what laws move this Universe in which one exists, the better will one find the Universe to be and the happier will one’s existence be. In the long slow course of development, as it stretches out with time, humans will come to understand the true nature of the Universe around them and the correct nature of their relationship to it. It will be a logical corollary that as they come thereafter to understand also the harm they do themselves by every violation of the higher laws they will begin to change their thoughts and amend their conduct. #RandolphHarrus 2 of 24
It is not possible to know what lies at the heart of the great mystery, but it is possible to know what it is not. The intellect, bound by the forms of logic and conditioned by the linkage between cause and effect, here enters a realm where these hold no sway. The discoveries of Germany’s leading nuclear physicist, Professors Heisenberg, were formulated in his law of indeterminacy. The ancient Egyptians sages symbolize this inscrutability under the figure of the Veil of Isis. The ancient Hindu sages called it Maya, that is, the inexplicable. Argument and debate, ferreting and probing among all available facts, searching and sifting of records are futile here. This is the real truth behind the doctrine of agnosticism. Every human, no matter who one be, from the most knowledgeable scientist to the profoundest philosopher, must bow one’s head in acknowledgment of this human limitation. One is still a human being, one is not a god. Yet there is something godlike within one and this one must find and cling to for one’s true salvation, one’s only redemption. If one does this one will fulfill one’s purpose on Earth and then only one finds true peace of mind and an end to all this restless, agitated, uncertain mental condition. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Study what this planet’s best humans have given us. It is no truer message than this: “Seek for the divine within yourself, return to it every day, learn how to continue in it and finally be it.” Groups are an important part of treatment for people in any kind of recovery. Some will find that they like living with people. What turns many things around is having healthy people who care around. When people find a group of people they enjoy, they will usually never want to be along again. One will enjoy the attention and being able to experience oneself as part of humanity. One will find with true friendships, there is no need for the “Ghostly Lover,” and ending their relationship with that individual will be something one inherently senses is necessary, in order to be able to be available for real humans and to live. Just make sure your next move is not one into the call of the forbidden, to mystery, and danger. This is the call to the underworld, and the object of your romantic passions may be your guide in this morbid realm. They may play the part in you hitting the bottom. Your task is, no matter what decision you make, do not remain in the underworld but disintegrate and reintegrate into real life in community and creativity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
It often happens, but should not come to this, that it takes a near-death experience to give one life. In China, they say that helps to rid one of bad omens. It is like being reborn, starting from scratch. Many people report that it feels rather amazing to come back to life, that it wonderful to just feel. Individuals often do not know that they are cut off from their feelings. In some cases, the only access people have to their feelings is in dreams. When one is cut off from one’s feelings, one often feels like they are growing old and dying. This process often goes on for a long time. There are no intimate relationships. Once people see this being cut off as a problem, it makes one want to dare to connect. Instead of just reading about it, they would rather be out experiencing freedom. Because of this desire to reconnect, some individuals will forgo watching TV. They want to be active and realize that life is more important than watching TV. You will notice when some people reconnect to life they will start to look better. A woman might buy a gold dress, and pair it with gold earrings, and show off their glimmer suntan. One may express a new interest in diet and health, one will notice the transition from lunar to solar imagery. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This new solar energy is related to the day World, to sunshine and overtness. As this adventure progresses, some will feel that their journey is leading to somewhere hopeful. One will marvel at the turn their life has taken for the better. It will feel like something that they could not plan got rolling. Other will detect an expression of new innocence in one’s voice. This is usually due to a long period of celibacy and spiritual reflection. Some say that God is able to communicate more when an individual is celibate because their focus on life is not geared to pleasures of the flesh, but on the true purpose of why we are on Earth. This is an opportunity to get to know oneself, one’s own body and oneself as a human being. After a person feels who they are, they will be ready to venture out in the World again, and hopefully no one is obstructing their path from being with someone and living a life they feel safe with. A new found courage is discovered because one has a choice to live or die. It may be a leap of faith to journey in a new liberating direction. You have to be able to go across the pond (metaphorically speaking) and see what is there. It is risky, but the choice to live is one everyone has to make. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Some people will find that after spending time alone, they no longer want to be “free.” They may enjoy being in a relationship and helping taking care of someone else and making that individual happy. The opportunity to care for others, clean, and shopping for someone else is enjoyable for some people. It seems this healthy relationship just manifest for some after they spend time working of themselves instead of chasing love. However, it is important to still keep a strong identity and balance the needs for work and nurturance. Some women and men are thrown out into the World in their teenage years and they need a lot still, they are still babies. That may cause them to stay in that youth neediness. Once they get what they need, they will grow life a tree, sprout leaves and branches and roots, and grow up and have a life. Some may still be an adolescent. Staying virginal is a way of staying attached to family values and pleasing the Lord. Negative habits like drinking to bound with others may occur. However, the journey to break away from home and individuate one’ self often parallels with the hero’s journey. The hero must confront challenges, learn to be alone, overcome darkness, and bring one’s new found wisdom back to one’s home and community. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
The day you can wake up and say that you are grateful for that day is a blessing. When one can say that they are grateful for their lives they know they are happy. That is a big thing to say, and one will really feel it. When life is going nowhere, some adults may experience suicide attempts, and that is often the beginning of a return All the parts, in ritual sacrifices, sacrificed over and over again, until the sacrifice is complete. Going through these motions can make one see that God has something more planned for their lives, and one will get to the essence of the spark of life, to find one’s own voice, one’s own spirituality. When in a relationship, a new sense of spirituality takes over. Couples find that they say grace together before meals and “gratefuls” before bed. It is good to share. One will experience a sense of clam, serenity, grace. People will be able to help each other with soul losses they experience. Celibacy is like a period of hibernation or dormancy. For some it is like they just go to sleep, Sleeping Beauty, or Prince Eric, a soul waiting to be awakened or saved. For many people, the ideal arrangement of life under God will be only partially realized, at best. For many, it remains an impossible dream, for their soul is running amuck and their life is in chaos. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
They are “dead in trespasses and sins,” living off of incoherent dreams and illusions. Enslaved to their desires or their bodily habits or blinded by false ideas, distorted images, and misinformation, their soul cannot find its way into a life of consistent truth and harmonious pursuit of what is good. It is locked in a self-destructive struggle with itself and with all around it. Naturally, unfulfilled desires and poisonous relationships are the most prominent features of such lives. I confess that as a sometimes counselor of those in trouble, I am often stunned with the reasons people give for not doing the only things that could possibly be of help to themselves. The individual soul’s specific formation—the character it has taken on through its life course—is seen in the details of how thoughts, feelings, social relations, bodily behaviours, and choices unfold, and especially how they interact with each other. In most actual cases, the individuals are not at harmony with themselves, much less with truth and with God. Their habitual condition is one of conflict, and one of acting other than how they themselves intend or regard as wise. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Their intentions of good are, precisely, not effectively related to the other components of their person—the thoughts and feelings, the bodily habits, the social dynamics, the relationship to God’s kingdom—in a way that would bring the good o pass. The failure of good intentions is the outcome of the underlying disconnects or “wrong connects” between thoughts, feelings, and actions, permitted or enforced by their disordered soul. The dimensions of the self are not coherently drawn together by the soul to form a whole life devoted to God and to what is acknowledged as good. Such a person cannot “get it all together” or “get one’s act together,” as we say now. That language is not metaphorical, but expresses the reality of one’s life. Extreme cases of this are found in people for whom everything in personal and social life is painful or unmanageable. They cannot find a place in human affairs. This can take many forms, but their inner condition makes it impossible for them to deal with life. Often this comes from early experiences. Severe deprivation or suffering in the early years will invariably distort the soul and leave it receptive to malfunction and evil in many forms, or simply stunted. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
The protective forcefield of the soul seems to have been broken down by pain and evil, leaving the person at the mercy of everything that happens. There is a developmental order in the soul, such that if it does not receive what it needs to receive within appropriate periods of time as it grows, its further progression toward wholeness is permanently hindered. It will never be what it might have been. Sometimes horrible events of later life, such as being tortured or cruelly betrayed, have similar effects, from which the soul may never recover. However, one must not overgeneralize on such matters. And one must not underestimate the powers of recovery of the soul under grace. Reconnecting to the Spirit of God allows lost souls to discover that they have power and capacity beyond anything they could have dreamed. The restoration of the soul is more than a recovery of connectedness. Significant strength, ability to achieve, guidance, and awareness are imparted. Truly we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” reports Psalm 139.14. The human soul is a vas spiritual (nonphysical) landscape, with resources and relationships that exceed human comprehension; and it also exists within an infinite environment of which, as our best, we have little knowledge. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The forces which move humans and bring about events are not always to be found by rational analysis. There is another factor present which eludes such analysis. We only know if it can only acknowledge its wounded condition, and understand that God is over it all the soul, when it finds its home in God and receives His grace, the soul manifests amazing capacities for recovery. It may be called the evolutionary intent of the World-Mind. All things and beings flow forth from the illimitable Power, all derive their consciousness from It. Nor may we stop with this acknowledgement. For they derive whatsoever they have of intelligence from It, too. Is it not a grand thought, full of promise and hope, that in the gradual progression of this intelligence from minute cells to celestial beings, it passes upward through humans, enabling one in time to attain and know one’s own Divinity? After the pattern of its own infinite perfection, the World-Idea is drawing us little by little. To say that humans are unconsciously seeking God, or rather our Higher Self, is the truth. To ay that God is seeking humans is an error based upon a truth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
This truth is that in the divine idea of the Universe, the evolutionary development of life-cells will bring them slowly up to an awareness of the diviner level; but the Higher Self, having no desire and no emotions, cannot be said to be seeking anything. Indeed, the evolutionary pattern being what it is, there is no need for it to seek, as the development of all beings from primitive amoeba to perfect spiritual consciousness is assured. If we wish, we may call it evolutionary. However, the actuality is not quite the same. The Universe is being guided to follow the World-Idea—that is the essence of what is happening. The pattern of evolution is an endless one. The meaning of the pattern could not but be a wise one. Because mind is the basal reality, all this majestic progression is nothing else than an evolution from lower to higher forms of intelligence and consciousness. Within the Overself, the infinite absolute principle of mind, there arises the idea of the cosmos, and from this original idea proceeds all other mental constructions that constitute a Universe. Because the Overself (God) is formless and unindividuated, we have to picture Him under the glyph darkness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The cosmic idea will then appear as a primordial germ of light, called by the Hindus Hiranyagarbha (the golden embryo). The entire panoply of suns and stars and creations are contained latently within this point of light. This first-born God is the primal Idea. World-Mind, concerned only with Its own larger purposes, which are hidden from us, directs us in that light. We must begin by recognizing that this planet exists for a specific purpose and that the evolution of all creatures upon it is part of that purpose. This Earth, with the varied experiences of good and evil joy and suffering, peace and peril which it offers us, is a school of initiation leading primitive terrestrial humans into the development of awareness until one reaches the first discovery of God. The World exists for the training of ever-ascending living things—form their early start as protoplasmic cells to their later development as human beings. “He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake,” Psalms 23.2-3. The comfort and sense of well-being we feel on special mornings comes not only from the external influence of beauty of the landscape and the sea, lovely as they are, but also from the inner peace, strength, and security of knowing that God lives and from a testimony of the divinity of His work upon the Earth. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
It is not where but who and how. God restores out souls. The replenishing of our inner selves occurs as we come to know the Saviour through keeping his commandments and serving Him. “While I was labouring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one say reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let one ask of God, that giveth to all humans liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given one,’” reports Joseph Smith—History 1.11. Joseph Smith was driven to the scriptures to seek guidance, which he found. The young Joseph Smith said, “At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I do as James directs, that is, ask God,” reports Joseph Smith—History 1.13. Joseph no doubt also read the following words given by James: “But let one ask in faith, nothing wavering. For one that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed,” reports James 1.6. Joseph knelt to offer up the desire of his heart. Then came a wrestling with darkness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
This was followed by the light of the divine message. The answer and the instruction were complete and full. It not this the instruction, the how-to we need to obtain divine answers to the confusion and to the vexatious problems in our lives? First, when possible, study the scripture daily, with an emphasis upon the Book of Mormon and the modern scripture. Pray daily. Listen for divine answer. Be obedient to it. Some people are literally twice born, with energy, conviction, and a desire to tell all their acquaintances and others of the healing and sanctifying message of the gospel. It is possible for all of us, through the power of the Holy Ghost, to have a personal witness. It is a personal source for information and revelation. There seems to be a great need for a restoration of goodness and decency in the souls of many throughout the World. Could not much goodness be brought about in our societies by members of the Church individually, humbly, wisely, and persuasively adhering to their convictions at all times and under all circumstances? It could be brought about by the young lawyer who has the courage to let one’s voice be heard as a voice of reason to remind others that there are no “victimless crimes.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Restoration of goodness can also be brought about by physicians, acting individually, but each refusing to allow someone one to terminate their lives. Could it not be encouraged by teachers sharing the examples of individual moral and civil responsibility with young people as they teach history, woodshop, auto shop, English, geometry, chemistry, and trigonometry? Could restoration of goodness also be fostered by business people refusing to compromise or to be compromised? Restoration of goodness—could it not be exemplified by those who hold positions of honour and trust in government, to function always from a position of personal honour and integrity? This would be the beginning of a different kind of revolution. It would be a revolution of thought and purpose. It would be a quiet revolution, which each individual acting independently and courageously in one’s own peace of conscience. This kind of moral courage does not destroy one’s credibility. It enhances it. Acting in harmony with our own conscience and beliefs is fundamental to our own inner peace and security. May all who are seeking to act in harmony with their conscience enjoy an inner peace. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Gd will have all human be saved. God wills all human to be saved that are saved, not because there is no human whom God does not wish saved, but because there is no human saved whose salvation He does not will. God wills some humans of every class and condition to be saved, men, women, Jews and Gentiles, great and small, but not all of every condition. They are understood of the antecedent will of God; not of the consequent will. This distinction must not be taken as applying to the divine will itself, in which there is nothing antecedent nor consequent, but to the things willed. To understand this we must consider that everything, in so far as it is good, is willed by God. A think taken in its primary sense, and absolutely considered, may be good or evil, and yet when some additional circumstances are taken into account, by a consequent consideration may be changed int the contrary. Thus a human should live is good; and that a human should be killed is evil, absolutely considered. God antecedently wills all humans to be saved, but consequently wills some to be damned, as His justice exacts. Nor do we will simply, what we will antecedently, but rather we will it in a qualified manner; for the will is directed to things as they are in themselves, and in themselves they exist under particular qualifications. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Hence we will a thing simply inasmuch as we will it when all particular circumstances are considered; and this is what is meant by willing consequently. Thus it is clear that whatever God simply wills takes place; although what He wills antecedently may not take place. An act of the cognitive faculty is according as the thing known is in the knower; while an act of the appetite faculty is directed to things as they exist in themselves. However, all that can have the nature of being and truth virtually exist in God, though it does not all exist in created things. Therefore God knows all truth; but does not will all good, except in so far as He wills Himself, in Whom all good virtually exists. A first cause can be hindered in its effect by deficiency in the secondary cause, when it is not the universal first cause, including within itself all cases; for then the effect could in no way escape its order. And thus it is wit the will of God, as said above. Despite the pious assertions of our New World theologians, the World does not exist solely for the benefit of the human species. It is a means of development and expression for all kinds of creatures, a development in which the humans share so largely. Who can calculate the number of years which shaped the primal atom into its latest form—the modern human? #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The differences in consciousness between an amoeba, an insect, an animal, and a human represent a line of growth. Because evolution is not merely a physical matter of size and shape, because it is primarily a mental matter of intelligence and consciousness, philosophy finds the ant nearer to humans than is the panther. Animal life climbs ever higher in the scale of evolution, reappears in forms of a more developed type. That is one compensation for the manner of its death, which is so often to be devoured by other forms. Everything that has feeling or awareness, however sim, is capable of developing to higher and higher forms of existence. However, only when it is individuated and attains the human form does it fulfill its possibilities. With longer shadows, I sit down to my supper. Before me are the products of Winter, the Moon’s light become food. Listen, food and Moon: I thank you. Hunting is a source of some controversy among people. Our respect for life has led some of us to reject hunting. I doubt that any would approve of hunting simply for trophies. And yet, what about hunting for food? If we are to eat meant, we owe it to the animals who die for us to make their deaths a sacred act. It is doubtful that a worker in a slaughterhouse will do this for us. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
Those who hunt, however, have a chance to take part in the dance of life and death. A properly prayerful attitude makes hunting a sacred act. Through prayer a hunter is reminded that what they hunt is sacred, and that the God was Himself the victim of a hunt. (This is a myth that is implicit in carious forms of the myth of the year.) The hunter then puts themselves and their actions under the control of the God. In essence, it is the God who will be hunting. In this way the hunter takes the part of God as hunter, but in the back of their mind is the thought that, as they are the God, so are they the hunted as well. In American, hunting is richer, deeper, and more rewarding than the old trophy-mount stereotypes. Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA) serve dishes such as lovingly prepared squirrel, grouse, barnacles, oyster mushrooms, bowhead whale. Some of the cuisines are dishes like venison pasties with a cherry and morel sauce, served alongside trout and wild rice. Antelope jackrabbit tacos alongside elote-style cholla cactus, bacon-wrapped rattlesnake. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
Some people like game meat because it is low on fat, and because animals eat a wild diet, and it often tastes like the ecosystem from which it came. BHA also has a long-held spiritual connection to wild places because there is not a dinner on the planet, regardless of price, that has any more authenticity and labour involved. The meat from game animals is considered a delicacy to BHA. It is good. It is exquisite. It is not a compromise. These people hunt to eat and do not let the meat go to waste. There are an estimated 12 million hunters in the United States of America. Hunting builds culture and kinship ties that sustain people during a time when Americans feel more isolated than ever. There is something very civilized about retuning to a hunting-gathering society. Hunters feel an intimate, personal connection to their food during a time when we are largely disconnected from food production systems. They like feeling an immediate relationship to the ecosystems that support you at a time when we spend less and less time outside. Hunting motivates one’s desire to source one’s own food and deepens one’s relationship to the wildlands they love to explore. They are following in the footsteps of every hunter who ever came before them. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
This culture into which new millennial hunters, seeking out sustainable meat for the table, are entering—one which meat is ethically sourced represents a place, labour, time, and community. Hunting is work, especially for those who pack into the backcountry to challenge themselves and to take time to observe and admire wild animals: Meat represents hours, days, sometime weeks spent in the field and processing the meat is n easy task, it can take a couple of days. It also build friendships because hunters share their meat with their friends who may have been unsuccessful that day so they have food to put in their freezer. The taste of that deer meet is perfect: savory, tender, flavourful. And there is not much to gain by plundering in hunting-gathering societies. Ground game meat mac and cheese, carne asada bison covered fries, Texas Spicey wild boar pork belly burn ends, Elk shank and pepper medley tacos, classic backyard smoked venison brats, sting ray stakes, black bear barbeque ribs, and black pepper venison burgers with cheddar and remoulade are a few favourites. The flame on the trees burns away the green of summer. Summer’s last heat is put to good use. Run with the prey as hunting time starts, race through the forest with the deer, god of stages. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The blood on the ground, as red as the leaves that fall on it, flows from your sacrifice as this season is born. In autumn, the hunting time, you come into your own; the day comes round for your greatest of gifts. Lord of flame and blood, Lord of deer and sacrifice, Lord of autumn and gifts, please bless your people with a feast the winter. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as are of a contrite spirit. Ay are the misfortunes of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth one out of them all. One protecteth all one’s limbs; not one of them is broken. Evil shall destroy the wicked; and they that hate the righteous shall suffer punishment. The Lord redeemeth the soul of His servants; and none shall be condemned who trust in Him. “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything,” reports Genesis 9.3. Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the Earth and the World, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God. But as for humans, Thou turnest one back unto dust, and sayest: “Return, ye children of men.” #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Rubbing their Sleepy Eyes with Lazy Wrists–There is the Brute and the Angel in Almost Every Human!
Americans are trained from infancy for mutationhood. Western civilization is a human running with increased speed through an air-sealed tunnel in search of additional oxygen. In your prayers, pour out your heart to your Father in Heaven in thanks for the blessings you have received. Please be specific in thanking God for His goodness, for your family, for your friends, for your home, for your leaders and teachers, for the gospel, and for His Son, Jesus Christ. If we prayed for the small and simple blessings of if our prayers were only prayers of gratitude, what would our prayers be like? Recognizing our blessings and expressing gratitude increases our happiness. God gives us commandments to protect us and help us to be happy. The commandment to be grateful is no exception. Gratitude takes us outside of ourselves and focuses our attention on God and others. At this beautiful time of year, may our hearts be softened and changed as we increase our gratitude. May we always choose, no matter the season, to be grateful and qualify for God’s acknowledgement and promised blessings. “And one who recieveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this Earth shall be added unto one, even an hundred fold, yea, more,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 78.19. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
When things get tough, perseverance is demonstrated by those who keep going, who do not give up even when others say it cannot be done. When we encounter challenged, success is usually earned by persevering and not becoming discouraged. Early warning signals are evident in many aspects of our lives. For example, a fever can be a first symptom of sickness of disease. Various financial and labour market indicator are used to forecast future trends in local and national economies. And depending upon the area of the World in which we live, we may receiver flood, Earthquake, avalanche, hurricane, tsunami, tornado, or winter storm warnings. We are also blessed by spiritual early warning signals as a source of protection and direction in our lives. Recall how Noah was alerted by God of things not yet seen, and he “prepared the ark to the saving of his house,” reports Hebrews 11.7. Consider the language of the Lord in the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom: “In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring humans in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 89.4. Spiritual warning should lead to increasingly vigilant watching. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
You and I live in “a day of warning,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 63.58. And because we have been and will be warned, we need to be, as the Apostle Paul admonished, “watching with all perseverance,” reports Ephesians 6.19. I pray for the guidance of the Holy Ghost. The highest possibility which separates humans from beast is attainment of insight into truth, experience of one’s divine source. A tension holds all thins in equilibrium between coming together of their elements, temporary maintenance of their forms, and passing away int dissolution. This includes the mineral, the plant, the animal, and the human. However, when we look at the last-named, a new possibility opens up which could not have happened to Nature’s earlier kingdoms. All things dissolve in the end, but humans alone dissolve consciously into a higher Consciousness. We are not just higher animals and nothing more, but as human beings we possess a self-consciousness which can be developed until it matures into a thinking power as well as a totally superior kind of awareness—that of God. A human life presents only the opportunity for attaining the realization of God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Developing the full potential of the human mind ought not to be taken away from any human, however evil one may be, and however remote from this goal, in punishment for one’s crimes. Our sole objective where the truths of salvation are concerned should be to find out what the Lord has revealed and then to believe and act accordingly. We testify that God is infinite and eternal and that He ordained the laws whereby His spirit children might have power to advance and progress and become like Him. We know the salvation is in Christ; that He was the Firstborn Son of the Eternal Father; that he was chosen and foreordained in the councils of Heaven to work out the infinite and eternal atonement; that Christ was born into the World as the Son of God; and that He has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. We believe with perfect surety that Christ came to ransom humans from the temporal and spiritual death brought into the World by the Fall of Adam and that Christ took upon Himself the sins of all humans on condition of repentance. We testify that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the plan of salvation; and that through the Lord’s atoning sacrifice all humans shall be raised in immortality to be judged by Jesus Christ according to the deeds done in the flesh. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Those that believe and obey the fullness of gospel shall be raised also unto eternal life in our Father’s kingdom. We believe it is by grace that we are saved after all that we can do, and that building upon the foundation of the atonement of Christ, all humans must work out their salvation with fear and trembling before the Lord. We proclaim that to gain salvation humans must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, repent of their sins, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, and then press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, keeping the commandments and enduring to the end. How can humans be so blind to the truth of their very being? Their quality of consciousness provides the clue, but it must be followed up. It is questionable whether the advantages of being a human creature are outweighed by the disadvantages. Why? Simply because humans may use their human faculties to transcend their present level and, as they call it, “realize oneself.” The choice between submitting or not submitting to one’s terrestrial genes and hormones belongs to humans, but the tendency to follow them belongs to the earlier stage; it is very, very ancient and is coming under their control very, very slowly. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
When this transcendence of their ancestry is complete, humans fulfill themselves as truly human. If a human walks upright, it is because this upright poster is symbolic of their gradual progression into ruling their terrestrial body and human nature. The ordinary ego-driven unenlightened human is acted on by lower cosmic Nature, just as plants and animals are. However, in human animal, individuality and intellect are additionally present—whether slightly in the savage or markedly in the highly civilized person. The enlightened human is also acted on, but in one’s case it is by higher cosmic Nature. Instead of being guided by passion and desire, one is guided by intuition. The changeover from lower to higher requires one’s contribution, one’s effort to control nature, to discipline individuality, and to achieve self-mastery. It is not only in the possession of reason and the reception of intuition that the human form of life is superior to other beings, but also in the exercise of will. Humans are an individualized creature. They are aware of their own separate identity and special personality. If humans feel one feel they are not individually responsible for their actions, being entirely responsive to their instincts, they have the choice to learn how to modify their behaviour. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Human beings add a new urge, that of conscious development through intelligence to the Earth. The impersonal and eternal part of us is the God in us, symbolized by the upper half of the Sphinx’s head, as the lower half symbolizes the human part, and as the body itself symbolizes the terrestrial part. We cannot separate the importance of the body from the importance of the mind. We are animals in one part of our nature, human beings in the second part, and sometimes angelic in the third part. All make one creature. We learn what our bodies are through the physical senses. We learn a part of what the mind is through our thoughts. We learn still more about the mind’s deeper phases through our non-thoughts—that is, intuitions. Such is the triple nature of humans—a lower self of animal instincts, a middle self of human thoughts, a higher self of divine nature. We may well wonder how animal lust, human cunning, and angelic nobility can come to be mingled in a single entity. That indeed is the mystery of humans. When the whole cosmos shows its double-face of Eternal Consciousness, shadow and light, we must expect the individual creature to show the same. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Hence, humans are half animal and half god, with reason as their link; only when they establish an equilibrium between then do they fulfill themselves. Nature is what it is—bipolar—so existence involves struggle and conflict of all of us until the genius in a million finds the point of equilibrium between the two opposing pulls, between the savage and the saint in one. The animal nature is naturally selfish, the spiritual nature unselfish. Between those two poles, humans are brought more and more into conflict with oneself as one evolves. Because they are human animals bonded to a divine spirit, we see humans as erratic in their behaviour and irrelevant in their purposes. They bear the human form externally but are largely predatory animal internally. Mind—that is, character and consciousness—is the real essence of a human. There is the brute and the angel in almost every human. However, how much there is of the one and how little of the other, differs with every human. Returning for a moment to the metaphor of “islands,” it has to be acknowledged that the islands undergo some atypical developments in the course of time. As the infant encounters further experiences, we may think of the island both as disintegrating and as merging in new ways. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
However, this transformation happens not on a geographical but on a multidimensional scale, and it is not easily visualized on a flat map. It is as though all the green on al the islands (green of leaves, of sea, of stones) merged to contribute to the more abstract concept of “green” without, however, bleaching the green objects on the island. It is as though the flying of the birds and of the leaves in the win were integrated to make the concept of flying. In short, each experience remains itself although generalized abstracted aspects may grow in relative importance as further experiences contribute to them. Differentiating, generalizing, and abstracting go together. Abstraction, differentiation, and generalization are names for different aspects of the same process which are in connection with learning to recognize triangles, oranges, and musical notation: the formation of concept. The concepts now under consideration are at a higher level, that is all. In order to conceptualize the colour puce, I have to perceive and recognize as puce a particular shade in a variety of contexts—generalizing. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
I have to disentangle it from other features of the situation in which it is embedded—abstracting. And I have to distinguish it from other shades which are not puce—differentiating. Three main sets of abstractions, generalizations, and differentiations with which we are concerned just now are to do with the achievement of some sense of self, some sense of other people and things, and, thirdly, some ways in which self is experienced as related to other people and things. These will be considered one by one. However, perhaps yet another caution is needed before we do so. It is only for the sake of clarity we look at these three sets one by one and “abstract” them. Except in very rare circumstances, my experience of myself is not of me in some pure abstract sense. I am aware at this moment, not of “me,” but of me-getting-an-idea-across-to-you-the-reader and of you-the-reader-understanding-me, you-liking-this-point, you-put-off-by-my-style. In short, and to say it yet again, our experiences come in units of relationship. Gradually, if all goes well, a self, and a sense of self, is established, made up from all the bits of experience in which the persons has been involved. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The memory-traces of all these bits remain, but the structures which they form are profoundly affected by the context which the evolving structures provide for each new experience as it happened. Some experiences will have integrated with much that has gone before; some will have been left more or less isolated. Under the influences of a well integrated ego-identity, more central controls gain increasingly more dominance over new information coming in, and the map is no longer so easily modified by further experience. New information, although registered, then has relatively little effect on behaviour or indeed on consciousness. This is in reference to the process of selective perception, by which certain meanings come to predominate over others. Through these processes the sense of self differentiates from not self. Strong psychological structures are created in which the self is involved—self-structures. Self-structures are often strong enough to be functioning as “maps” to the working model of what is going on in and around the organism at a particular time. When this is so, they are strong enough to steer behaviour in a particular direction. When this has happenes, we recognize a stable identity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Appetite and will are two different faculties, yet they have the same function: they impel humans to action. The two faculties are essential to action. Appetite is the efficient and effective cause of processes not having sense organs. It appears, for example, in the movements of nutrition and excretion. It seemed logical to postulate the same kind of originative power for all kinds of movement. That is why we admonish the mora philosophers who spend such an infinite quantity of debate touching good and the highest good to cast their eye abroad upon nature and behold the appetite that is in all things to receive and to give. With receiving and giving as the controlling ideas, there are appetitive motions more precise than that of philosopher in their long and wandering discourses of pleasure, virtue, duty, and religion. Furthermore, if one looks deeply into the experience of human desire one can detect movement, for every obtaining of a desire hath a shew of advancement, as motion though in a circle hath a shew of progression. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
That is, a desire—say that of obtaining political office, or a mistress—directs one initially to a goal, and arriving at the goal is like retuning to one’s starting point. The will, too, seems to be the immediate impetus to any action that is the outcome of reasoning and judgment. Reason might work well and true, judgment might be sound, but unless the will were moved the intellect would have cerebrated in vain. One function of the imagination, described previously, is that of making reason appealing to the will; and the art of rhetoric discharged its office by applying the dictates of reason to imagination for “better’ moving of the will. As efficient causes, appetite and will allowed two different kinds of behaviour, the sensuous and the rational. In sensuous actions, three features were always present. First, they were immediate and nonreflective; there was no thinking about consequence. Desire, for example, was often touched off by some unlawful wish, and the wish rashly granted before it has been understood and weighed. Second, pleasure and pain attend sensuous actions, and hence were guides to desire. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
These qualities of experience are shown most clearly in the passions, some emotional experience giving pleasure, as with joy, other experiences giving pain, as with anger. Pleasure and pain are to the particular affections, as light is to particular colours. That is, pleasure or pain is always a feature of emotional experience, just as light is always present in colour. As a quality of experience, pleasure is not most pure and satisfying when accompanying knowledge and learning. Delight always attends upon learning; there is no satiety for satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable. Many other kinds of behaviour give pleasure because of their novelty. Accordingly, some of life’s pleasures can be graded, the pleasures of knowing exceed those of affections, the affections those of the senses, achievement and victory those of a strong dinner. If the pleasure of learning be not insatiable, why do voluptuous men turn friars, and ambition men turn melancholy? The third feature of sensuous behaviour in some manner involves the affections of passions; that is, sensuous actions are emotional to some degree, great or small. The center of emotional experience is in the heart or its region. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Both affections and passions are linked to appetite rather than will. Their activity, strongly tinctured with pleasure and pain, powerfully affects the appetite. Their influence, however, need not be bad. In fact, in the scheme of things, if it does not conflict with reason and will, appetitive behaviour is coloured with good. The affections, indeed, can be properly enlisted by the imagination in efforts to move the will. Only when the affections of their perturbation rise up to disturb judgment and overpower the will are the issues of appetite are evil. As a general rule, behaviour controlled by will is preferable to actions controlled by appetite. “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Now the Earth was a formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day,” reports Genesis 1.1-3. Light is a species of quality. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Some writers have said that the light in the air has not a natural being such as the colour on a wall has, but only an intentional being, as a similitude of colour in their air. However, this cannot be the case for two reasons. First, because light gives a name to the air, since by it the air becomes actually luminous. However, colour does not do this, for we do not speak of the air as coloured. Secondly, because light produces natural effect, for by the rays of the sun bodies are warmed, and natural changes cannot be brought about by mere intentions. Others have said that light is the sun’s substantial form, but this also sems impossible for two reasons. First because substantial forms are not of themselves objects of the senses; for the object of the intellect is what a thing is. Whereas light is visible of itself. In the second place, because it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be accidental for of another; since substantial forms of their very nature constitute species: wherefore the substantial form always and everywhere accompanies the species. However, light is not the substantial for of air, for if it were, the air would be destroyed when light is withdrawn. Hence it cannot be the substantial form of the sun. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
We must say, then, that as heat is an active quality consequent on the substantial form of fire, so light is an active quality consequent on the substantial form of the sun, or of another body that is of itself luminous, if there is any such body. A proof of this is that the rays of different stars produce different effects according to the diverse natures of bodies. Since quality is consequent upon substantial form, the mode in which the subject receives a quality differs ad the mode differs in which a subject receives a substantial form. For when matter receives its form perfectly, the qualities consequent upon the form are firm and enduring; as when, for instance, water is converted into fire. When, however, substantial form is received imperfectly, so as to be, as it were, in process of being received, rather than fully impressed, the consequent quality lasts for a time but is not permanent; as may be seen when water which has been heated returns in time to its natural state. However, light is not produced by the transmutation of matter, as though matter were in receipt of a substantial form, and light were a certain inception of substantial form. For this reason light disappears on the disappearance of its active cause. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
It is accidental to light not to have a contrary, forasmuch as it is the natural quality of the first corporal cause of change, which is itself removed from contrariety. As heart acts towards perfecting the form of fire, as instrumental cause, by virtue of the substantial form, so does light act instrumentally, by virtue of the Heavenly bodies, towards producing substantial forms; and towards rendering colours actually visible, inasmuch as it is a quality of the first sensible body. God hath done all things, whatsoever He would. The will of God must needs always be fulfilled. In proof of which we must consider that since an effect is confirmed to the agent according to its form, the rule is the same with active causes as with formal causes. The rule in forms is this: that although a thing may fall short of any particular form, it cannot fall short of universal form. For though a thing may fail to be, for example, a man or a living being, yet it cannot fail to be a being. Hence the same must happen in active causes. Something may fall outside the order of any particular cause, but not outside the order of the universal cause; under which all particular causes are included: and if any particular cause fails of its effect, this is because of the hindrance of some other particular cause, which is included in the order of the universal cause. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Even in corporeal things this is clearly seen. For it may happen that a star is hindered from producing its effects; yet whatever effect does result, in corporeal things, from this hindrance of a corporal cause, must be referred though intermediate causes to the universal influence of Heaven first. Since, then, the will f God is the universal cause of all things, it is impossible that the divine will should not produce its effect. Hence that which seems to depart from the divine will in one order, returns into it in another order; as does the sinner, who by sin falls away from the divine will as much as lies in one, yet falls back into the order of that will, when it is punished. In the spiritually transformed social dimension is abandonment of all defensiveness. This of course could occur only in a social context where Christ dwells—that is, among his special people. However, it is natural it would occur in the absence of attack and withdrawal, wherever that may be, or where we have an impregnable defense against it. This abandonment includes a willingness to beknown in our most intimate relationships for who we really are. It would include abandonment of all practices of self-justification, evasiveness, and deceit, as well as manipulation. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
That is not to say we should impose all the fact about ourselves upon those close to us, much less on others at large. Of course we should not. However, it does mean that we do not hide and we do not follow strategies for “looking good.” Jesus’ teachings about not performing for public approval, about letting our “yes” be a “yes” and nothing more, and about not being a hypocrite—having a face that differs from our reality—all find application here. “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before humans, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have n reward from your Heavenly Father,” reports Matthew 6.1. (Important to read Matthew chapters 5 and 6 in the Christian Bible.) Frequently, death comes as an intruder. It is an enemy that suddenly appears in the midst of life’s feasts, putting out is lights and gaiety. It visits the aged as they walk on faltering feet. Its summons is heard by those who have scarcely reached midway in life’s journey, and often it hushes the laughter of little children. Death lays its heavy hand upon those dear to us and at times leaves us baffled and wondering. In certain situations, as in great suffering and illness, death comes as an Angel of mercy. However, for the most part, we think of it as the enemy of human happiness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The darkness of death can ever be dispelled by the light of revealed truth. “I am the resurrection, and the life,” spoke the Master. “One that believeth in me, though one were dead, yet shall one live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die,” reports John 11.25-26. This reassurance, yes, even holy confirmation of life beyond the grace, could well be the peace promised by the Saviour when he assured his disciples: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the World giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nether let it be afraid,” reports John 14.27. So all those who walk with God in this Earthly pilgrimage will be blessed and know that God will not abandon his children who trust in Him. In the night of death God’s presence will be better than a light and safer than a known way. The door is starting to swing from hot to cold. Although it is not as cold as it should be, occasionally a cold day comes. The pokeberries are purple, the sassafras is starting to turn, and the gardens are heavy with tomatoes and mandarin oranges. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
It is a time to stop and pay attention: the spirit of the land are very busy. I pray to them at this liminal time to open my eyes. Do not let me awake one day and ask where winter has gone. May I be aware of its heavy rain and feet and feet of deep snow, and artic chill. May I be aware of winter’s presence, may we experience rain and lightning and thunder storms, and be as thrilled with it as I will be with arrival of the spring. I set my face to the dark I will travel with the Sun through the dark. I will go with confidence in the deepest dark. Though about me the dark may grow, God is always at my side guiding me to light. This is what I know, God of the Universe. This is what you are telling me and this is what I tell you: the Earth prepares for a great change. Light and dark are equal today, but that will not last. I see the Heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. The Earth makes its way around the Sun and takes u with it into the year’s dark half. We travel with it, not in calm resignation, but with wild anticipation of what dreams may be dreamt in the night of the World. May they be good dreams. For we saw Him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he if the Only Begotten of the Father. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
That by God, and through God, and of God, the World are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters of God. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork; day unto day expresses His greatness; night unto night makes Him known. There is no speech, there are no words, their voice is not heard. Yet their sway extends over all the Earth and their message to the ends of the World. In the Heavens, He hath set a tent for the Sun. For the Sun is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber it rejoices as a strong human to run its course. Its going forth is from one end of the Heaven, and its circuit unto the other; nothing is hidden from its heat. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true, they are righteous altogether; more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than must fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. More over by them is Thy servant warned; in keeping of the there is great reward. What can humans discern of their own errors? Please clear me of my hidden faults. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Winchester Mystery House
The Witches Cap – named for it’s conical resemblance of a witches hat. Many famous mediums claim this room was “important” to Sarah Winchester, all though we do not know what it may have been used for. How did you feel when you experienced the Witches Cap for the first time?
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻 The original mansion still stands, but there were also other Victorian houses on the estate for employees. Be sure to show your support and help keep tours possible in the future by taking virtual tours and exploring items in the online gift shop.
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
To Live with Gratitude Ever in Our Hearts is to Touch Heaven!
It is very peaceful to be able to live for your work alone. The self-denial, the sacrifices that our work demands are all compensated for by that lovely serenity of giving yourself to inherit the kingdom of Heaven. Many people believe that we can only experience peace when the conditions in our lives are pleasant. However, we can even feel peace in times of war, and when there is no war raging, many people often lack peace. In order to have peace a person must first find atonement; peace is the result of change within humans in which union has replaced alienation. Peace is harmony and union between humans, it is the overcoming of separateness and alienation. Peace comes through the gospel—through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Even when the World is in turmoil all around us, we can receive the blessings of inner peace. This blessing will continue with us as we stay true to our testimony of the gospel and as we remember that Heavenly Fathers and Jesus Christ love us and watch over us. In addition to feeling peace ourselves, we can be an influence for peace in our families, our community, and the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
When we keep the commandment, give service, care for family members and neighbour’s, and share the gospel, we work for peace. Think about it. Why do people make fun of people and spread vicious rumors and lies? Because they want to spread evil and hate. However, if we share the Word of God, we will spread love and peace. Whenever we help relieve the suffering of another, we work for peace. “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall tech you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the World giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid,” reports John 14.26-27. At this time of year, we frequently think of gifts. We sometimes obsess over gifts we want to give and gifts we hope to receive. However, do we consider the great gift of gratitude? Gratitude is deeper than thanks. Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts. It especially blesses of families. The Saviour exemplified and taught the importance of gratitude. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Many of us had a hard year, and some of us knew 2020 was not going to be a great year. As we lay in bed on the first day of 2021, I am sure a lot of people were thinking, “Is this going to be worth it. Going through another year of uncertainty. Nothing ever changes.” However, a grateful heart comes through expressing gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His blessings and to those around us for all that they bring into our lives. To live with gratitude ever in out hearts is to touch Heaven. When our lives change or become difficult and we have to deal with a lot of difficult people and it seems we are not getting the help we need and thinks are taking much longer than we expect them to, sometimes we need someone to help teach us how to think and look at life. The Scriptures and church are the best way to reeducate ourselves and train our brains to think different. You could spend years trying to convince the people around you to live right and confess their sins, and in many cases, all they will do is get more entrenched in lives, sarcasm, and ignorance. To some people sinning and lying and breaking the law is cool. They think it allows them to be part of an elite group and that they are cool, hip, trendsetters. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Therefore, it is important to focus on self. Our hearts must be changed in order to inherit the kingdom of God. How might we change our actions so that our heart may be changed int a grateful hearts and touch heaven? Our Father in Heaven has placed great trust in you. He has a work for you to do. Seek His guidance in prayer. The decisions you make now will set the course for much of what will follow during your mortal life and throughout eternity. We testify that God lives. It is our fervent prayer that you will remain steadfast and valiant throughout your lives and that you will trust in the Saviour and His promises. As you do this, you will be an influence for good in helping to build the kingdom of God and prepare the World for the Second Coming of the Saviour. Heavenly Father has given to us agency, the ability to choose right from wrong and to act four ourselves. Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct our life is one of God’s greatest gifts. We are responsible for the choices we make and must have the agency and courage to stand firm in obeying God’s will, even if we have to stand alone. While we are free to choose our course of actions, we are not free to choose the consequences. Whether for good or bad, consequences follow as a natural result of the choices we make. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Some sinful behaviour may bring temporary, Worldly pleasures, but such choices delay our progress and lead to heartache and misery. Righteous choices lead to lasting happiness and eternal life. Remember, true freedom comes from using our agency to choose obedience; loss of freedom comes from choosing disobedience. We are responsible for developing the talents and abilities Heavenly Father has given us. We are accountable to God for what we do with our talents and how we spend our time. Choose to do many good things of your own free will. It seems evident, that humans are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external Universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist, though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creation are governed by a like opinion, and preserve this belief of external objects, in all their thoughts, designs, and actions. It seems also evident, that, when humans follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images, presented by these senses, to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion, that the one are nothing but a representation of the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This very table, which we see white, and which we feel hard, is believed to exist, independent of our perception, and to be something external to our mind, which perceives it. Our presence bestows not being on it. Our absence does not annihilate it. It preserves its existence uniform and entire, independent of the situation of intelligent beings, who perceive or contemplate it. However, this universal and primary opinion of all humans is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourses between the mind and the object. The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove father from it: But the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: It was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason; and no human, who reflects, ever doubted, that the existences, which we consider, when we say, this house and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the mind, and fleeting copies or representations of other existences, which remain uniform and independent. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
So far, then, are we necessitated by reasoning to contradict or depart from the primary instincts of nature, and to embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our sense. However, here philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed, when she would justify this new system, and obivate the cavils and objections of sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instincts of nature: For that led us to a quite different system, which is acknowledged fallible and even erroneous. And to justify this pretended philosophical system, by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of all human capacity. By what argument can it be proved, that the perceptions of the mind must be caused by external objects, entirely different from them, though resembling them (if that be possible) and could not arise either from the energy of the mind itself, or from the suggestion of some invisible and unknown spirit, or from some other cause still more unknown to us? It is acknowledged, that, in fact, many of these perceptions arise not from anything external, as in dreams, madness, and other diseases. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
And nothing can be more inexplicable than the manner, in which the body should so operate upon the mind as ever to convey an image of itself to a substance, supposed of so different, and even contrary a nature. It is a question of fact, whether the perceptions of the sense be produced by external objects, resembling them: How shall this question be determined? By experience surely; as all other questions of a like nature. However, here experience is, and must be entirely silent. The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with object. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning. To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being in order to prove the veracity of our sense, is surely making a very unexpected circuit. If one’s veracity were at all concerned in this matter, our sense would be entirely infallible; because it is not possible that one can ever deceive. Not to mention, that, if the external World be once called in question, we shall be at a loss to find arguments, by which we may prove the existence of that Being or any of his attributes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The Darwinian idea of evolution as a struggle for existence is blind; the philosophic idea sees it as rhythmic unfoldment, following a spiral pattern and accompanied by involution. If we start with the theory that the human form was born out of a pair of apes, that it originated by a process of natural selection, a different view of the descent of humans may be obtained. However, we still need the Missing Link. This is something which will never be found by the methods of scientific investigation. There is evolution only in outward appearance but unfoldment inward reality. The human entity paradoxically contains within itself all lower forms of life from the very beginning, although they are quite different from the one it manifests when fully developed. The living, intelligent human entity preexists elsewhere, and takes up its physical residence on Earth only when it is ready for it. From the moment this specific unit of life separated from the cosmic Life, through all the differences experiences whereby it developed, and through all the different kingdoms of Nature, its spiritual identity as Man was predetermined. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
The materialist belief that humans have evolved from the monkey is not accepted by philosophy. The race of apes came from a conjunction of primitive man and a female beast. It was a degeneration, not an evolution. It is true that we got our bodies, as Dr. Darwin says, from the best type of animals on Earth through a utilization of them at the time of conception. The progeny was animal plus human. The monkey did not precede man, as so many materialistic biologists assets, but appeared after hi. Had it really preceded him it would not have been in existence today, for in ever case of the evolution of species the predecessors die off and disappear. There is a long evolutionary arch between a thinking animal in human form and a beauty-inspired man. According to philosophic tradition, we are in the “monkey” stage of development where our relationship toward the full “human” stage is as far away as that of a monkey is to a present-day man. The “half-ape” half-human being which passes today for a real “man” will one day give place to the real thing. Only then will it deserve the appellation. The grossest humans, not far from animals in habits and ways, and the most unrefined primitive communities contain this possibility of eventual development. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
However, the full humans realization can come only with time, with birth after birth slowly and spirally unfold the World-Idea. Anne Rice also mentioned in the Vampire novels that humans may not be God’s final and best creation and that they could still be evolving. Is man only a reasoning ape—a creative animal? The religious instinct, the ethical conscience, the metaphysical faculty, and the mystical intuition proclaim, with one vice, the answer: “No!” Man is the keystone of the arch of material life, whereas an animal lives solely under the impulses of self-preservation and self-procreation. Only in man can this Divine Being arrive at Self-consciousness, because only man can develop intelligence in its fullness. The intelligence which animals possess, however excellently it suffices them, is after all one which is concerned purely with objective things. Animals cannot move in the realm of abstract ideas, but man can escape from the concrete through his developed reason, his religious feeling, his mystic intuition. So far as man is an animal body, he shares with the other animals their interest in eating, drinking, and copulation. However, their interest does not go beyond this point where his does. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Men and woman want to know about other things and to express what they know or to receive communications from others concerning what they know. No living creature in the kingdom of animals knows more than its immediate surroundings or cares for more than the sustenance of its immediate existence. It lives in an immense and varied Universe but that fact is lost to its mentality and outside its interest. Only when the evolving entity attains the stage of developed human beings does this unconsciousness disappear. Then life takes on a larger meaning and the life-force becomes aware of itself, individualized, self-conscious. Only then does a higher purpose become possible and apparent. Is there any animal which tries to understand the meaning of is life, much more the meaning of life in the whole cosmos? Only when its consciousness has advanced to some extent to the human kingdom does the beginning of such an attempt become noticeable. When Consciousness in any creature reaches by successive periods of growth the stage where it asks itself “What am I?” thus betraying developed intelligence of a kind which no animal possesses, it is ready to seek the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
As far as we know, the moral idealism and metaphysical thinking which is possible to humans may be impossible to animals. What animal could hold any metaphysical theory, could generalize ideas about space, time, and mind, could analyse situations and relationships, could be seriously concerned about a higher ethical problem? Since we cannot truly communicate with animals, we do not truly understand their mental capabilities, and therefore they do not seem to have the capacity to get outside themselves and to perceive themselves quite impersonally. Some humans do have it and more will have it as they develop their potentialities. A self-conscious creature is one that not only knows its own individual feelings and thoughts, its own mind, but can also reflect upon them. The animal, as far as we know, has not reached this stage but the human has. If there were no way of going beyond it, tied to the physical body as humans are, the outlook would seem bleak for humans. However, they have mental and emotional possibilities and capacities, imaginations and sensitivities, which can carry them where animals may not be able to penetrate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
There are certain ideas which belong exclusively to the higher part of human’s nature. We would look in vain into any animal’s mind to match them. Humans are the only creature among Earth’s animals which, as far as we know, aspires to reach beyond themselves, which has the inner urge to grow. Humans also are the only creature which desires to know what life is here for. The human animal is unique. Yes, let it be admitted that man moves and acts with a terrestrial body but let it not be forgotten that humans think with a human brain and feel with a heart capable of responding to calls for charity. More, there is something in them which aspires to spirituality. There are two basic feelings, pleasure and pain, attached to two basic drives: libidinal/pleasure-seeking and aggressive/destructive/pain-associated respectively. According to this view, all pleasurable experiences are associated with libidinal drives, all painful experiences with aggressive/destructive drives. The emergence of self and other out of the earliest units of experience is attributable to these two drives and their associated feelings. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
The painful experiences which the infant encounters are the first to be organized, and they are experienced as somehow inflicted on the infant by an “other.” This primitive organization of experience constitutes the first differentiation of self from other. It is as though the baby knew that the self is good and the other bad. According to this theory, organization starts when something is experiences as bad—it does not start from an experience of well-being. The sense of “other” is thought to come from times of distress which the infant experiences in terms of “this is terrible but it is not me.” This is in contrast to what is thought to happen at times of well-being. These are so pleasant that it is thought to be of no advantage to the infant to organize the experience into “this is very nice but it is not me. On the contrary. This is how the sense of omnipotent well-being develops which Dr. Freud calls the “purified pleasure-ego”: “all that is good is me and all that is me is good.” The purified pleasure-ego and the pleasant experiences which lead to its construction are the core or germ of the self. The basic units of experience are “precipitants” round which parts of the self “consolidate.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
They consolidate by virtue of the common element of pleasure in a number of experiences. What is important is the intense, overwhelming nature of early feeling and its irradiating effect on all other perceptual elements of the introjection. In this view, not only does distress not get organized at this stage with what will become part of the self, but also distressing experiences are not recognized as having a common factor—they are not given meaning except as “other.” Unpleasant experiences are kept apart from each other, and from the sense of well-being—defensively. From this viewpoint, pleasure and pain are the organizing principles for all experiences, taking precedence over any other means of conceptualizing experience. It is not difficult to imagine circumstances in which this could be so, for instance when the infant is so frequently uncomfortable that this makes an overwhelming impact on its development: distress and the absence of distress could come to matter more than anything else. And if we picture a system in which those neural pathways come to be the most dominant, down which pleasure-messages and pain-messages flow, we may imagine how this can happen; this would be a system in which those pathways have more enduring and more extensive reverberations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
We could also account for the relatively later conceptualization of distressing experiences, by imagining that, in early states of development, distress somehow disrupts normal message-sending. This disruptive process would be the same as that referred to when it is said of a human baby that the ego is overwhelmed by anxiety, and disintegrates. In the adult, we call it panic. When distress disrupts the immature organism’s organization, this prevents it doing anything other than calling for help from more mature animals. There may be survival-value in this. If the young organism is too immature to react to danger with fight or flight in a successful way, it is perhaps safest that it should be unable to try, and be reduced to only crying for help. The beginnings of ego-functioning are thought to be defensive in this tradition, the purpose being to maintain a sense of well-being and to ward off the infant’s discover that the distress is also its own. However, it may not be true that the sense of well-being and the sense of distress can be the original organizing principles of self and other in every case, though perhaps it was the general cause among those who sought psychotherapeutic help at a particular time during this century. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
For the most part, to my mind, people need to be fairly well and integrated, before they are able to organize their experiences of the World in terms of “I like” versus “I do not like,” “libidinally” versus “aggressively.” I think it is at least as possible for people’s minds to be organized according to what happened in their early relationships with others, whether pleasurable or painful. Sensations and emotions are thought of as organized into the landscape of what occurs as experience follows experience. Psychic structures form because repeated experiences create them from the most commonly experiences connections, which after a certain point gain some independence from the structures in which they were originally embedded. To my mind, the neurophysiological/classificatory/concept-attaining/structure-building approach provides the basic ideas in terms of which we should understand the emergence of self and other from the original state which Dr. William James (1890) called a “big buzzing blooming confusion,” and Dr. Balint a “harmonious interpenetrating mix-up.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Pleasure and pain may profoundly affect the harmonious interpenetrating mix-up differentiation, but they are not solely responsible. The process I have called concept-formation start off the differentiation of self from other, as they start every other differentiation and integration. Growth is the characteristic of the plant kingdom, movement of the animal, thought of the human. The mineral, the plant, and the animal have the infinite Life-Power within them, too, but they do not know that they have it. Humans alone can know their own divinity. Indeed one is not truly a human until one has know it. What the fishes and birds cannot attain, the human can. And that is the Supreme Awareness, the Divine Being discovered under the cosmic masquerade. The first main element in the transformed social dimension is for individuals to come to see themselves whole, as God Himself sees them. Such a vision sets them beyond the wounds and limitations they have received in their past relationships to others. It is this vision of oneself from God’s point of view that makes it possible to regard oneself as blessed, no matter what has happened. “We are dead,” Paul tells us, and “our life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then we will appear with him, glorious,” reports Colossians 3.3-4. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
We have stepped into a new life where the primary relationship is with Christ and we are assured of a glorious existence forever. If we place our hope entirely in God, God has a plan for each of us in the work he is doing during our lifetime, and no ne can prevent this from being fulfilled. The part we play in His plans now will extend to the role God has set before us for eternity. Our life in Him is whole and it is blessed, no matter what has or has not been done to us, no matter how shamefully our human circles of sufficiency have been violated. It is God’s sufficiency to us that secures everything else. Paul again said, “Our sufficiency is of God.” “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes for God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” reports 2 Corinthians 3.5-6. “And God is able to make all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: ‘He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever,’” reports 2 Corinthians 9.8-9. It is the God-given vision of us as whole in Him that draws all the poisons from our relationships to others and enables us to go forward with sincere forgiveness and blessings toward them. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
Only when we have the God-given vision can we stand free from the wounds of the past and from those who have assaulted or forsaken us. Every efficient cause is greater than the thing effected. However, nothing is greater than the will of God. We must not then seek for a cause of it. In no wise has the will of Gd a cause. In proof of which we must consider that, since the will follows from the intellect, there is cause of the will in the person who wills, in the same way as there is a cause of the understanding, in the person that understands. The case with the understanding is this: that if the premiss and its conclusion are understood separately from each other, the understanding the premiss is the cause that the conclusion is known. If the understanding perceive the conclusion in the premiss itself, apprehending both the one and the other at the same glance, in this case the knowing of the conclusion would not be caused by understanding the premises, since a thing cannot be its own cause; and yet, it would be true that the thinker would understand the premises to be the cause of the conclusion. It is the same with the will, with respect to which the end stands in the same relation to the means to the end, as do the premises to the conclusion with regard to the understanding. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
Hence, if anyone in one act wills and end, and in another act means to that end, one’s willing that end will be the case of one’s willing the means. If in one act one will both end and the means to the end, this cannot be the case. Yet it will be true to say that one wills to order to the end the means to the end. Now as God by one act understands all things in His essence, so by one act He wills all things in His goodness. Hence, as in God to understand the cause is not the cause of His understanding the effect, for He understand the effect in the cause, so, in Him, to will an end is not the cause of His willing the means, yet He wills the ordering of the means to the end. Therefore, He will this to be as means to that; but does not will this on account of that. The will of God is reasonable, not because anything is to God a cause of willing, but in so far as He wills one thing to be on account of another. Since God wills effects to proceed from definite causes, for the preservation of order in the Universe, it is not unreasonable to seek for causes secondary to the divine will. It would, however, be unreasonable to do so, if such were considered as primary, and not as dependent on the will of God. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Philosophers have their vanity have thought fit to attribute contingent effects to other causes, being utterly unable to perceive the cause that is shown above all others, the will of God. Since God wills effects to come from causes, all effects that presuppose some other effect do not depend solely on the will of God, but on something else besides: but the first effect depends on the divine will alone. Thus, for example, we may say that God willed humans to have hands to serve His intellect by their work, and intellect, that humans might be human; and willed humans to be humans so that they might enjoy Him (God), or for the completion of the Universe. However, this cannot be reduced to other created secondary ends. Hence such things depend on the simple will of God; but the others on the order of other causes. Look! The garden is growing well! Through your help, and through my work, we have done a great deed, Holy Ones. We have produced food from seeds’ promise. I stop for a moment to praise tomatoes, honouring them by eating one. Lovely is the Spirit of God who grows such things. First I praise their shapes—they shun the easy perfection of the sphere and take instead their own forms. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The weight of these tomatoes is worth praising, and the depth of their colour. Before I eat this one, I smell it, taking its scent in deeply, finding in me a resonance that tells me that this is the smell of fertile Earth. Their skin, though stretched tightly, yields quickly; it has performed its duty of containing treasure with uncommon devotion and now relinquishes command to me. With silent thanks, then, I accept the task and eagerly receive the honour so bestowed, hoping, by so doing, to honour in turn the giver of the gift and the gift itself. Our soul has waited for the Lord; He is our help and shield. For our heart rejoices in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name. Let Thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, according as we have hoped in Thee. Show us Thy loving kindness, O Lord, and please grant us Thy salvation. Arise for our help and redeem us for Thy mercy’s sake. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt; open your mouth, and I shall grant you of My bounty. Happy is the people that fares thus, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. As for me, in Thy loving kindness do I trust; my heart rejoices in Thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because He hath dealt bountifully with me. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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I Have a Little Shadow that Goes in and Out with Me
The knights-errant, who wandered about to clear the World of dragons and giants, never entertained the least doubt with regard to the existence of these monsters. What is a human? This is the most important question which has ever been put before the mind. The idea of a human which exists in and is eternally known by the World-Mind is a master-idea. When we can learn what the true worth of a human is and wherein lies one’s real salvation, we shall learn the most practical of all things. For this, more than anything else, will show us how to live on Earth peacefully, prosperously, healthily, and usefully. If a human does not know what one is in the very essence of one’s human beingness, one does not really know what one is talking about. Scientific concepts of the nature of humans which leave out the intuitive and spiritual element in it as existing independently and in its own level, will always remain inadequate to explain humans, however brilliant they themselves admittedly often are. If a human’s life were nothing more than a physiochemical process, then human’s highest aspirations and intuitions, unselfishness and aestheticism would still need an explanation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
For more than a century we have been listening to what humans think about the Universe. It might be more illuminating, now, to learn what the Universe thinks about humans. The more one perceives the immensity of intelligence behind the World-Idea, the more one perceives the insignificance of one’s own entity in relation to it. This increasing humility is in striking contrast to the increasing pride which so many intellectuals develop. It is not arrogantly to overrate the function of humans in the Universe to say that one has a co-operative and creative role to play in it. Those who point to one’s insignificance and helplessness do well, but they do not do enough. If experience teaches anything at all, it teaches the littleness of humans but the greatness of Humans. Science frightened humans when, in the last century, it told them that they were not the constant attention of God, as they believed but a most insignificant particle in an immense Universe. Against this immense cosmic background, we may see the paltriness of human pride, the ridiculousness of human conceit. Although it is not possible to offer irrefutable scientific prof of the doctrine of spiritual evolution, it can be shown to be as reasonable a doctrine as any of is rivals. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
And for those who have had mystical experience of the divine presence behind the mind, of divine wisdom being the cosmos, it is the only acceptable doctrine. For a while after birth, the infant has experiences and memory-traces of experiences, but these are isolated and not connected with each other. The infant’s mind is then like the first map of an unexplored country, mostly blank spaces. Or, since that is too static a picture, the infant’s mind would have a number of what is called units of experience floating around in it, more or less connected with each other but as yet in no ordered or meaningful fashion. Slowly they become organized in gradually more enduring ways. As experiences continue to happen, and repeatedly have common elements, connections begin to be made. These connections are like threads—nerve fibers. The processes referred to are similar but the pictures are different because people need different elements to enliven their imagination. As further experiences become introjected, units of experience can begin to merge, to integrate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This integration is complex business. There is both fusion and fission, both merging and separation as things begin to sort themselves out. Some units of experience will merge with others into more general organizations, but others will separate out (or more accurately will have followings) before merging elsewhere. How this will happen will depend on what “followings” the experiences have in common. Experiences, at this very early stage in life, integrate and develop toward conceptual status, but we can safely say that these experiences are very different form their adult equivalent. Infants cannot organize their World in adult fashion because not enough has happened yet to get more than some very blurry-edged units of experience, each rather separate from the others in some ways, and each incorporating that the observer might call inappropriate (that is misclassified) components. We may think of a sea with floating bits of seaweed, shipwreck wood, fishes, and birds. Slowly, under the impact of further experiences, the flotsam and jetsam of events begin to fit together and to merge into more complex islands, floating in the sea. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
This merging is accompanied by all kinds of differentiation: all fishes are organized under the heading “fish,” all seaweed—wherever it is and of whatever kind—with seaweed, all gulls with gulls and separate from albatross, and so on. In at least one way, the metaphor of “islands” is a dangerous one, for the early clusters of memory-traces do not disappear upon reorganization, the way islands would disappear if they were magically shunted elsewhere to join up with others. We should rather say new followings both give new significance to the experience and also submerge it in the new contexts, just as a figure may be harder to find once it has been put into a new context. Meanings depend on context. However, the original meanings are not destroyed in the process of further organization—in regression something like the original experiences can be re-experienced. To return from these imaginative flights back to more sedate metaphors: from the beginning of life, experiences leave their mark. That is from the beginning of life, an experience becomes an internalized object-relation with potentially three elements: a sense of self, a sense of other people and things, and a sense of what goes on between the two. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
And almost from the beginning, some aspects of some experiences have something in common with what has already been experienced. And almost from the beginning, some aspects of some experiences have something in common with what has already been experienced. The common factor may lie mainly in the regions of self-imagery, or in the regions representing other people and things, or in the regions registering relating and feeling, or in all of them, of course. Because of this, our experiences of ourselves are affected by the structures we already have, although of course the later experience may modify them. Similarly our experiences of other people and things are affected by already established structures reflecting our sense of other people and things, although these are, in turn, modified. From the earliest days on, then, differentiating and integrating processes are expanding, solidifying, attenuating, structuring, organizing. The boundaries between self and other (ego-boundaries) become ever more delineated, what the ego (or the self) exerts increasingly more central control over perception and action. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
As life unfolds, experiences are integrated into more and more complex structures. More object-relations are continually acquired, internalized, differentiated, integrated, made part of the person. This complex reorganizing and integrating does not proceed evenly: there will be some highly organized structures, and others less highly organized: some experiences will be more tightly integrated (that is with many connections to other structures) and some will be connected very loosely indeed. The more easily new experiences are absorbed into structures which already exist (that is the more easily they are connected with them, and organized and integrated with them), the less we notice them. We hardly ever seen experiences for what they are at first glance—our existing structures are so tightly organized that we do not allow the actual information to reach us consciously. Concepts that are strongly connected with other structures and ideas are more difficult to abstract out again. However, things that are more tightly organized as structured patterns (that is they are less integrated with the surrounding structures and less embedded in them), are more easily noticed or understood. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Of course, readers who have made a hobby of looking deeper at puzzling things and deceptions will already have strongly established structures with programmes to look for the catch, and they will see exactly what is in the message—but that is just the point I am making. Stronger and more tightly organized structures will act as a context for new experiences, giving meaning which depend on the established context. A slap in the face can be experienced: purely as pain (non-integrated), or as mother attacking me, or as mother angry because I spilled honey all over the tablecloth, or as mother inadvertently hitting me as she whirled round while playing rounders with us. The “slap” can be integrated in different ways. In the final example the “slap” may not have “hurt” at all. Meaning depends more on the context in more integrated structures. It will become less important later that we can use consciousness, words, and language to reassess the context and hence the meaning of an experience. By these means we can abstract even well-absorbed experiences from the context in which they have become embedded. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The process by which an experience is integrated into an existing psychic structure is called “metabolizing.” This means the transformation of an experience so that it becomes part of a person, in the same way that we metabolize a biscuit by eating it and it becomes part of our bodies. I used to amuse Leo by saying it is raining cats and dogs. This metaphor of “metabolizing” is useful, providing that we do not lose sight of the fact that the process may also be described by other metaphors, such as “organizing” and “integrating.” The faculties, as we have seen, enabled humans to know and to act. Humans acquired knowledge because learning and knowing in themselves give satisfaction and pleasure. Humans also desire to know because they want to act better, that is, to conduct themselves more effectively and acceptably among their fellows and before their God. Voluntary movement is the kind that humans themselves have control over; they decide whether to act or not to act, to believe or not to believe. Appetite is held to be the efficient cause of actions that are affective or emotional, and nonreflective. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The will, distinct from the appetite, is the efficient cause of reflective behaviour. It is the power of saying yes or no prior to action. It is heralded in consciousness by moments of choice. All movement has to have causes, one of which is the efficient cause—that which makes effective all other casual conditions of motion. That which originates any and all human movement is called appetite or desire. It is originative in the sense that it literally starts or triggers off a motion. There are other less immediate causative conditions—material, formal, and final—but they are ineffective without the trigger. Furthermore, appetite is itself best thought of as a kind of conduct-oriented motion. It is the last of a series of events that prompts action, and hence could be have been moved or nudged by forces temporally prior to it. In turn it moves, and thus set things into motion, as for example, the muscles involved in gesturing and speaking. The motion of appetite is like that of a ball and socket joint, having a convex and concave side. There is both a receiving aspect and an impelling aspect, a notion used when postulating a receiving and giving force in the appetites of inanimate things, in their consents and sympathies, and the like. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The receiving aspect of notion we still have in our idiom, as when we refer to the moving of the appetite, or to the moving of the will. The impelling aspect of the idea lingers in phrases such as strength of will, strength of appetite, and one had the will to do so-and-so. The idea that the appetite is itself moved prior to moving something else has an important consequence. It is easier to analyze the means of moving the appetite than to describe the impelling aspect of appetite; hence in most analyses of appetite as a force in voluntary movement one discovers much talk and description of the means of moving the appetite and will, and little about the mechanism involved when the appetite and will are movers. There are two forms of appetite. One is the sensitive appetite, which is the efficient cause of all action and conduct that is habitually associated with the senses and emotion. The guides of appetite are pleasure and pain as features or outcomes of the immediate behaviour in prospect. The vision of pleasure is enough to initiate a pleasurable act; the specter of pain is sufficient to inhibit a painful act. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The other form of appetite is rational in character, and is best verbalized in English as will. The will is the efficient cause of deliberative or calculative behaviour. As a movement, it is preceded by activity of the rational faculties, notably reason and judgment, when they are directed to practical matters entailing choice and decision. In consciousness it is marked by feelings pleasant and unpleasant and by designations of right and wrong, good and bad. Human action, the sensitive appetite beholds apparent good; the will always takes into account the real good. In the one case, conduct looks good, because the image promises pleasure; in the other case, conduct is good, because it rests on the solid ground of valid and true judgment. Apparent good is that which passes the test of sense experience; real good is that which passes the test of reason. Rational knowledge to moral knowledge is signaled by the announcement, “We proceed now to that knowledge which considers of the Appetite and Will of Humans.” Voluntatem humanam is voluntary movement, id est, all conduct over which the human being can exercise control. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The will is governed by right reason, seduced by apparent good, having for its spurs that passions, for its ministers the organs and voluntary motions. We also find that pictures of good, virtue, duty, and felicity are the true objects for the will and desires of humans to aim at. The word desire here and elsewhere refers most often to the appetite of living things, although it is applied metaphorically as in the desire of the magnet for iron particles. “Now I, Moroni, write somewhat as seemeth me good; and I write unto my brethren, the Lamanites; and I would that they should know that more than four hundred and twenty years have passed away since the sign was given of the coming of Christ. And I seal up these records, after I have spoken a few words by way of exhortation unto you. Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of humans, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things. And whatsoever thing is good is just and true; wherefore, nothing that is good denieth the Christ, but acknowledge that he is. And ye may know that he is, by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore I would exhort you that ye deny not the power of God; for he worketh by power, according to the faith of the children of humans, the same today and tomorrow, and forever. And again, I exhort you, my brethren, that ye deny not the gifts of God, for they are many; and they come from the same God. And there are different ways that these gifts are administered; but it is the same God who worketh all in all; and they are given by the manifestations of the Spirit of God unto humans, to profit them. For behold, to one is given by the Spirit of God, that he may teach the word of wisdom; and to another, that one may teach the word of knowledge by the same spirit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
“And to another, exceedingly great faith; and to another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; and again, to another, that one may work mighty miracles; and again, to another, that one may prophesy concerning all things; and again, to another, the beholding of Angels and ministering spirits; and again, to another, all kinds of tongues; and again, to another, the interpretation of languages and of divers kinds of tongues. And all these gifts come by the Spirit of Christ; and they come unto every human severally, according as he will. And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that every good gift cometh of Christ. And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that all these gifts of which I have spoken, which are spiritual, never will be done away, even as long as the World shall stand, only according to the unbelief of the children of men. Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
“And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither ye can do all things which are expedient unto me. And now I speak unto all the ends of the Earth—that is the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief. And wo be unto the children of men if this be the case; for there shall be none that doeth good among you, no not one. For if there be one among you that doeth god, one shall work by the power and gifts of God. And wo unto them who shall do these things away and die, for they die in their sins, and they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God; and I speak it according to the words of Christ; and I lie not. And I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust? #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
“I declare these things unto the fulfilling of the prophecies. And behold, they shall proceed forth out of the mouth of the everlasting God; and his word shall hiss forth from generation to generation. And God shall show unto you, that which I have written is true. And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing. And awake, and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion; and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders forever, that thou mayest no more be confounded, that the covenants of the Eternal Father which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel, may be fulfilled. Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot. And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great God Almighty, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen,” Moroni 10.7-34. So, to heal the open sore of social existence, there is no doubt we must start with the marriage relationship—or, more inclusively, with how men and women are together in our World. If that relationship is wrong in its many dimensions, all who come through it will be seriously damaged. And they will be further damaged by a surrounding World of similarly damaged people, who are trying to manage their ways of being together on the assumption that assault and withdrawal are just the facts of life. Consequently, spiritual formation, and all our efforts as Christians to minister to people, must focus on this humanly most central relationship. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Frankly, however, we sometimes see families arriving at church frozen in coldness or seething in anger about many things, even about what it took to get them there on times. And then we may have people conducting the services who can hardly endure one another because of disagreements and painful incidents that have occurred between them—even in the process of determining how the service should be done. Do we need a bumper sticker that says, “There is no excuse for hostility and coldness among Christians”? Yes, that might help. Obviously it is relevant. However, we can only begin to recover the correct social dimension of our lives under Christ by unshakable recognition that there is no human answer to human problems, not even a “religious” answer—which is why the various humanistic “spiritualities” of our day are dead ends. Of course they may offer some help to the distressed human condition. However, they are powerless to dissolve the pervasive structures of assault and withdrawal that characterize our individual and corporate existence. Or, if they are not, then let them do it. They in turn can rightly say to the church, “You do it.” And that too is fair enough. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The visible churches, congregations of apprentices to Jesus, must return to the transcendent power of Christ for which they stand. They must drain the assault and withdrawal, the attack and coldness, from the individual men and women who form families under their ministry of Jesus and his kingdom. We must affirm, and make clear by teaching and example, both that and how it takes “three to get married.” (The “Third” of course is God.) That is the true meaning of the union “with benefit of the clergy” that the people of Christ offer. From this basis in the home, established through the church of Jesus Christ, the power of God on Earth can break up the deadly hold of assault and withdrawal over the entire social dimension of the human self. Please rise up, Judge of the Earth, render to the arrogant their recompense. Deliverance comes from the Lord; Thy blessing be upon Thy people. The Lord of hosts be with us; the God of Jacob be our high tower. O Lord of hosts, happy is the human that trusts in Thee. Save, O Lord; O King, please answer us on the day that we call. Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance; tend them, and sustain them forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Spotted: the coziest place to watch the countdown is in this #MillsStation Residence 3 Great Room. All we need is a glass of sparkling cranberry juice and we are good to go! 🎉
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#HappyNYE from #CresleighHomes!! 💙
A Human that Studieth Revenge Keeps One’s Own Wounds Green!
Success is a drug in itself. When you strive to become somebody and you become that person, it is difficult to give it up. The cycles which show the path of the universal movement are not horizontal ones, but ascending spirals. If there is return to the same place, it is on a higher level. The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small instances. The understanding is found of darting around in all directions. It is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest. It presses onward, looking for final causes; that is, it is looking for purpose and design in nature that will satisfy its own craving for order and form in everything. It desires regularity, perhaps because of the homogeneity of the substance of the human spirit. It seeks to give a substance and reality to things that are fleeting. The real business of the human understanding is with the figments of the human mind. Except for a few natural forms—it will be recalled that quantity is one of them—the mind frames its own experience according to the categories and rubrics it finds necessary and inevitable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
By its own nature the mind is compelled to categorize and so by nature its own activity is channeled. The human understanding can be like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. The human of a human is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced. The mind cannot be like a fair sheet of paper with no writing on it. There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and Ideas of the divine. An idolon involves images of sense; the term also means images of other kinds of mental experience, such as ideas and feelings about ourselves, about things familiar and authoritative, et cetera. These might or might not be false, but when they are false we usually term them idol rather than image. Hence, idols mean false appearances. There are four kinds of them, according to their sources or causes. As monitors to the understanding, the idols are to the interpretation of nature what the traditional doctrine of fallacies are to traditional logic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Idols are errors of apprehension to be recognized, allowed for, and if possible, circumvented. All Interpretation of Nature commences with the senses, and leads from the perceptions of the sense by a straight, regular, and guarded path to the perceptions of the understanding, which are true notions and axioms. Thus one may see what the senses can do, what the understanding can do, and one becomes aware of distinct levels of abstraction. The culmination of the method is to discover the nature of the nature being investigated, and this means to discover the form, or true specific difference, or nature-engendering nature, or source of emanation. Obviously the object of search is at the top of the abstraction ladder, and a statement describing the nature discovered will reflect a high-level abstraction. When a change in concrete bodies is being investigated, one searches for the latent process carried on from the manifest efficient and the manifest material to the form which is engendered; and in like manner the discovery of the latent configuration of bodies at rest and in motion. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
True knowledge, after all, is the knowledge of causes, and this knowledge entails statements that identify form, or “Forms.” The inward-going and outward-turning forces of the cosmos work with perfect reciprocity and carry everything with them by turns. The line they follow is a spiral curve. The neural points where they meet are points of rest and inactivity. Thus, although they oppose each other, they also balance each other. The movement of every energy and trend takes a curved direction. This is why there is no straight-line, lapse-free evolution in human nature or history. And the curse develops itself with time into a circle, and this again with further time into a spiral. The history of the Universe is a history of cycles: of birth, development, disintegration, death, and rest endlessly repeated on higher and higher levels. The energy impulses which rise from the void and accumulate as electrons, only to disperse later, reproduce the same cycles through which the entire Universe itself passes. Political justice has two aspects arising from the fact that a just constitution is a case of imperfect procedural justice. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
First, the constitution is to be a just procedure satisfying the requirements of equal liberty; and second, it is to be framed so that all the feasible just arrangements, it is the one more likely than any other to result in a just and effective system of legislation. The justice of the constitution is to be assessed under both headings in the light of what circumstances permit, these assessments being made from the standpoint of the constitutional convention. The principle of equal liberty, when applied to the political procedure defined by the constitution, I shall refer to as the principle of (equal) participation. It requires that all citizens are to have an equal right to take part in, and to determine the outcome of, the constitutional process that established the laws with which they are to comply. Justice as fairness beings with the idea that where common principles are necessary and to everyone’s advantage, they are to be worked out from the viewpoint of a suitably defined initial situation of equality in which each person is fairly represented. The principle of participation transfers this notion from the original position to the constitution as the highest-order system of social rules for making rules. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
If the state is to exercise a final and coercive authority over a certain territory, and if it is in this way to affect permanently human’s prospects in life, then the constitutional process should preserve the equal representation of the original position to the degree that this is practicable. For the time being I assume that a constitutional democracy can be arranged so as to satisfy the principle of participation. However, we need to know more exactly what this principle requires under favourable circumstances, when taken to the limits so to speak. These requirements are, of course, familiar, comprising what Constant called the liberty of the ancients in contrast to the liberty of the moderns. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to see how these liberties fall under the principle of participation. The adjustments that need to be made to existing conditions. We may want to recall certain elements of a constitutional regime. First of all, the authority to determine basic social policies resides in a representative body selected for limited terms by and ultimately accountable to the electorate. This representative body has more than a purely advisory capacity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
The representative body is a legislature with lawmaking powers and not simply a forum of delegates from various sectors of society to which the executive explains its actions and discerns the movements of public sentiment. Nor are political parties mere interest groups petitioning the government on their own behalf; instead, to gain enough support to win office, they must advance some conception of the public good. The constitution may, of course, circumscribe the legislature in numerous respects; and constitutional norms define its actions as a parliamentary body. However, in due course a firm majority of the electorate is able to achieve its aims, by constitutional amendment if necessary. All sane adults, with certain generally recognized exceptions, have the right to take part in political affairs, and the precept one elector one vote in honoured as far as possible. Elections are fair and free, and regularly held. Sporadic and unpredictable tests of public sentiment by plebiscite or other means, or at such times as may suit the convenience of those in office, do not suffice for a representative regime. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
There are firm constitutional protections for certain liberties, particularly freedom of speech and assembly, and liberty to form political associations. The principle of loyal opposition is recognized, the clash of political beliefs, and of the interests and attitudes that are likely to influence them, are accepted as a normal condition of human life. A lack of unanimity is part of the circumstances of justice, since disagreement is bound to exist even among honest humans who desire to follow much the same political principles. Without the conception of loyal opposition, and an attachment to constitutional rules which express and protect it, the politics of democracy cannot be properly conducted or long endure. Three points concerning the equal liberty defined by the principle of participation call for discussion: its meaning, its extent, and the measures that enhance its worth. Starting with the question of meaning, the precept of one elector one vote implies, when strictly adhered to, that each vote has approximately the same weight in determining the outcome of elections. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Making sure electoral votes are fair requires, assuming single member territorial constituencies, that members of legislative districts be drawn up under the guidance of certain general standards specified in advance by the constitution and applied as far as possible by an impartial procedure. These safeguards are needed to prevent gerrymandering, since the weight of the vote can be as much affected by feats of gerrymander as by districts of disproportion size. The requisite standards and procedures are to be adopted from the standpoint of the constitutional convention in which no one has the knowledge that is likely to prejudice the design of constituencies. Political parties cannot adjust boundaries to their advantage in the light of voting statistics; districts are defined by means of criteria already agreed to in the absence of this sort of information. Of course, it may be necessary to introduce certain random elements, since the criteria for designing constituencies are no doubt to some extent arbitrary. There may be no other fair way to deal wit these contingencies. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
The principle of participation also holds that all citizens are to have equal access, at least in the forma sense, to public office. Each is eligible to join political parties, to run for elective positions, and to hold places of authority. To be sure, there may be qualifications of age, residency, and so on. However, these are to be reasonably related to the tasks of office; presumably these restrictions are in the common interest and do not discriminate unfairly among persons or groups in the sense that they fall evenly on everyone in the normal course of life. The second point concerning equal political liberty is its extent. How broadly are these liberties to be defined? Offhand it is not clear what extent means here. Each of the political liberties can more or less widely defined. Somewhat arbitrarily, but nevertheless in accordance with tradition, I shall assume that the main variation in the extent of equal political liberty lies in the degree to which the constitution is majoritarian. The definition of the other liberties I take to be more or less fixed. Thus the most extensive political liberty is established by a constitution that uses the procedure of so-called bare majority rule (the procedure in which a minority can neither override nor check a majority) for all significant political decisions unimpeded by any constitutional constraints. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Whenever the constitution limits the scope and authority of majorities, either by requiring a greater plurality for certain types of measures, or by a bill of rights restricting the powers of the legislature, and the like, equal political liberty is less extensive. The traditional devices of constitutionalism—bicameral legislature, separation of powers mixed with checks and balances, a bill of rights with judicial review—limit the scope principle participation. I assume, however, that these arrangements are consistent with equal political liberty provided that similar restrictions apply to everyone and that the constrains introduced are likely over time to fall evenly upon all sectors of society. And if the fair value of political liberty is maintained, this seems probable. The main problem, then, is how extensive equal participation should be. Turning now to the worth of political liberty, the constitution must take steps to enhance the value of the equal rights of participation for all members of society. It must underwrite a fair opportunity to take part in and to influence the political process. The distinction here is analogous to that made before: ideally, those similarly endowed and motivated should have roughly the same chance of attaining positions of political authority irrespective of their economic classes. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
But how is this fair value of these liberties to be secured? We may take for granted that a democratic regime presupposed freedom of speech and assembly, and liberty of thought and conscience. These institutions are not only required by the first principle of justice but, as Dr. Mill argued, if political affairs are to be conducted in a rational fashion, they are necessary. While rationality is not guaranteed by these arrangements, in their absence the more reasonable course seems sure to be rejected in favour of policies sought by special interests. If the public forum is to be free and open to all, and in continuous session, everyone should be able to make use of it. All citizens should have the means to be informed about political issues. They should be in a position to assess how proposals affect their well-being and which policies advance their conception of public good. Moreover, they should all have a fair chance to add alternative proposals to the agenda for political discussion. The liberties protected by the principle of participation lose much of their value whenever those who have greater private means are permitted to use their advantages to control the course of public debate. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
For eventually these inequalities will enable those better situated to exercise a larger influence over the development of legislation. In due time they are likely to acquire a preponderant weight in settling social questions, at least in regard to those matters upon which they normally agree, which is to day in regard to those things that support their favoured circumstances. Compensating steps must, then, be taken to preserve the fair value for all of the equal political liberties. A variety of devices can be used. For example, in a society allowing private ownership of them means of production, property and wealth must be kept widely distributed and government monies provided on a regular basis to encourage free public discussion. In addition, political parties are to be made independent from private economic interest by allotting them sufficient tax revenues to play their part in the constitutional scheme. (Their subventions might, for example, be based by some rule on the number of votes received in the las several elections, and the like.) What is necessary is that political parties be autonomous with respect to private demands, that is, demands not expressed in the public forum and argued for openly by reference to a conception of the public good. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
If society does not bear the costs of organization, and party funds need to be solicitated from the more advantaged social and economic interests, the pleadings of these groups are bound to receive excessive attention. And when the less favoured members of society, having been effectively prevented by their lack of means from exercising their fair degree of influence, this is all the more likely t withdraw into apathy and resentment. Historically one of the main defects of constitutional government has been the failure to insure the fair value of political liberty. The necessary corrective steps have not been taken, indeed, they never seem to have been seriously entertained. Disparities in the distribution of property and wealth that far exceed what is compatible with political equality have generally been tolerated by the legal system. Public resources have not been devoted to maintaining the institutions required for the fair value of political liberty. Essentially the fault lies in the fact the democratic political process is at best regulated rivalry; it does not even in theory have the desirable properties that price theory ascribes to truly competitive markets. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Moreover, the effects of injustices in the political system are much more grave and long lasting than market imperfections. Political power rapidly accumulates and becomes unequal; and making use of the coercive apparatus of the state and its law, those who gain the advantage can often assure themselves of a favoured position. Thus inequities in the economic and social system may soon undermine whatever political equality might have existed under fortunate historical conditions. Universal suffrage is an insufficient counterpoise; for when parties and elections are financed not by public funds but by private contributions, the political forum is so constrained by the wishes of the dominant interests that the basic measure needed to establish just constitutional rule are seldom properly presented. These questions, however, belong to political sociology. Our discussion is part of the theory of justice and must not be mistaken for a theory of political system. We are in the way of describing an ideal arrangement, comparison with which defines a standard for judging actual institutions, and indicates what must be maintained to justify departures from it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
A just constitution sets up a form of fair rivalry for political office and authority. By presenting conceptions of the public good and policies designed to promote social end, rival parties seek the citizens’ approval in accordance with just procedural rules against a background of freedom of thought and assembly in which the fair value of political liberty is assured. The principle of participation compels those in authority t be responsive to the felt interests of the electorate. Representatives are not, to be sure, mere agents of their constituents, since they have a certain discretion and they are expected to exercise their judgment in enacting legislation. In a well-ordered society they must, nevertheless, represent their constituents in the substantive sense: they must seek first to pass just and effective legislation, since this is a citizen’s first interest in government, and secondly, they must further their constituents’ other interests insofar as these are consistent with justice. The principles of justice are among the main criteria to be used in judging a representative’s record and the reasons one gives in defense of it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Since the constitution is the foundation of the social structure, the highest order system rules that regulates and controls other institutions, everyone has the same access to the political procedure that is sets up. When the principle of participation is satisfied, all have the common status of equal citizen. Finally, to avoid misunderstanding, it should be kept in mind that the principle of participation applies to institutions. It does not define an ideal of citizenship; nor does it lay down a duty requiring all to take an active part in political affairs. The duties and obligations of individuals are a separate question. What is essential is that the constitution should establish equal rights to engage in public affairs and that measures be taken to maintain the fair value of these liberties. In a well-governed state only a small fraction of persons may devote much of their time to politics. There are many other forms of human good. However, this fraction, whatever its size, will most likely be drawn more or less equally from all sectors of society. The many communities of interests and centers of political life will have their active members who look after their concerns. #RandolphHrris 17 of 24
In the conditions of modern life, especially since the two World Wars, it has, for various reasons, been increasingly unclear how marriage, union of souls, could be caried out in practice. Individual desire has come to be the standard and rule of everything. If individual desire is the standard for everything, and if what we desire can be acquired from many competing providers, how are we to serve one another in intimate relations? The ways in which man and wife, or parents and children, would “naturally” serve one another—and traditionally have done so—are increasingly viewed as available (usually less expensively and perhaps with “better quality”) from various sources. This is true all the way from food, clothing, entertainment, attractiveness, to romance, gratifications involving pleasures of the flesh, and surrogate “motherhood” and “fatherhood.” The perilous condition of labours competing with others to sell their labour is now the condition of everyone in current society. Individual desire is accepted as a principle governing everything. When one or both parties are constantly shopping for “a better deal” or constantly appraising one another in light of convenient alternatives, what, then, does devotion to another mean? #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Withdrawal, rejection, and assault will naturally become a constant factor in the most intimate human relations. That is what Satan has always used to defeat God’s plans for human community on Earth, from Adam blaming Eve for his own sin, to Cain killing Abel, to the latest cases of “ethnic cleansing,” and the million of men, women, and children living on their own in the streets and sewers of urban centers around the globe or starving in poverty. The very same principle of withdrawal and assault operates at the highest levels of cultural, social, and political interaction, with constant glorification in the popular arts and media. “An epistle of my father Mormon, written to me, Moroni; and it was written unto me after my calling to the ministry. And on this wise did he write unto me, saying: My beloved son, Moroni, I rejoice exceedingly that your Lord Jesus Christ hath been mindful of you, and hath called you to his ministry and to his holy work. I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, though his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“And now, my son, I speak unto you concerning that which grieveth me exceedingly; for it grieveth me that there should disputations rise among you. For, if I have learned the truth, there have been disputations among you concerning the baptism of your little children. And now, my son, I desire that ye should labour diligently, that this gross error should be removed from among you; for, for this intent I have written this epistle. For immediately after I had learned these things of you I inquired of the Lord concerning the matter. And the word of the Lord came to me by the power of the Holy Ghost, saying: Listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. Behold, I came into the World not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the whole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefore the curse of Adam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them; and the law of circumcision is done away in me. And after this manner did the Holy Ghost manifest the word of God unto me; wherefore, my beloved son, I know that it is solemn mockery before God, that ye should baptize little children. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“Behold I say unto you that this thing shall ye teach—repentance and baptism unto those who are accountable and capable of committing sin; yea, teach parents that they must repent and be baptized and humble themselves as their little children, and they shall all be saved with their little children. And their little children need no repentance, neither baptism. Behold, baptism is unto repentance to the fulfilling the commandments unto the remission of sins. However, little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the World; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a respecter to persons; for how many little children have died without baptism! Wherefore, if little children could not be saved without baptism, these must have gone to an endless hell. Behold I say uno you, that one that supposeth that little children need baptism is in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; for one hath neither faith, hope, nor charity; wherefore, should one be cut off while in the thought, one must go down to hell. For awful is the wickedness to suppose that God saveth one child because of baptism, and the other must perish because one hath no baptism. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what humans can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear. And I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love; wherefore, all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are alike and partakers of salvation. For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity. Little children cannot repent; wherefore, it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them, for they are all alive in him because of his mercy. And one that saith that the little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the atonement of him the power of his redemption. Wo unto such, for they are in danger of death, hell, and an endless torment. I speak it boldly; God hath commanded me. Listen unto them and give heed, or they stand against you at the judgment-seat of Christ. For behold that all little children are alive in Christ, and also all they that are without the law. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“For the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law; wherefore, one this is not condemned, or one that is under no condemnation, cannot repent; and unto such baptism availeth nothing—but it is mockery before God, denying the mercies of Christ, and the power of his Holy Spirit, and putting trust in dead works. Behold, my son, this thing ought not to be; for repentance is unto them that are under condemnation and under the curse of a broken law. And the first fruits of repentance is baptism; and baptism cometh by faith unto the fulfilling the commandments; and the fulfilling the commandments bringeth remission of sins; and the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowlines of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God. Behold, my son, I will write unto you again if I go not out soon against the Lamanites. Behold, the pride of this nation, or the people of the Nephites, hath proven their destruction except they should repent. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“Pray for them, my son, that repentance may come unto them. However, behold, I fear lest the Spirit hath ceased striving with them; and in this part of the land they are also seeking to put down all power and authority which cometh from God; and they are denying the Holy Ghost. And after rejecting so great a knowledge, my son, they must perish soon, unto the fulfilling of the prophecies which were spoken by the prophets, as well as the words of our Saviour himself. Farewell, my son, until I shall write unto you, or shall meet you again. Amen,” reports Moroni 8.1-30. In the cold days of December, I am reminded of you by the Frost-covered grass now white in my yard. It is frozen and dormant. It is life appearing in the semblance of timelessness, for when the winter rains come, it will be green again. Of such small miracles, splendid God, is your World made. May the Lord bless thee and keep thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord make His countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord turn His countenance unto thee and give thee peace. So may it be His will. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Cresleigh Homes
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And Now the Purple Dusk of Twilight Time Steals Across the Meadows of My Heart!
Civilization beings with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. If one is always a little hungry, never quite warm enough, and never falling prey to the dangers of the soft life of self-gratification, a person can think and meditate better. Meditation is just oiling the machinery and making the unused parts come into use. You have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is possible that you have something of value to contribute. Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them. I shall discuss the matter in connection with religious toleration. With appropriate alterations the argument can be extended to these other instances. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Several questions should be distinguished. First, there is the question whether an intolerant sect has any title to complain if it is not tolerated; second, under what conditions tolerant sects have a right not to tolerate those which are intolerant; and last, when they have the right not to tolerate them, for what ends it should be exercised. Beginning with the first question, it seems that an intolerant sect has no title to complain when it is denied an equal liberty. At least this follows if it is assumed that one has no title to object to the conduct of others that is in accordance with principles one would use in similar circumstance to justify one’s action toward them. A person’s right to complain is limited to violations of principles one acknowledges oneself. A complaint is a protest addressed to another in good faith. It claims a violation of a principle that both parties accept. Now, to be sure, an intolerant human will say that one acts in good faith and that one does not ask anything for oneself that one denies to others. One’s view, let us suppose, is that one is acting on the principle that God is to be obeyed and the truth accepted by all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This principle is absolute authority is perfectly general and by acting on it one is not making an exception in one’s own case. As one sees that matter, one is following the correct principle others reject. The reply to this defense is that, from the standpoint of the original position (designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice), no particular interpretation of religious truth can be acknowledged as binding upon citizens generally; nor can it be agreed that there should be one authority with the right to settle questions of theological doctrine. Each person must insist upon an equal right t decide what one’s religious obligations are. One cannot give up this right to another person or institutional authority. In fact, a human exercises one’s liberty in deciding to accept anther as an authority even when one regards this authority as infallible, since in doing this one in no way abandons one’s equal liberty of conscience as a matter of constitutional law. For this liberty as secured by justice is imprescriptible: a person is always free to change one’s faith and this right does not depend upon one’s having exercised one’s powers of choice regularly or intelligently. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
We may observe that human beings having an equal liberty of conscience is consistent with the idea that all humans ought to obey God and accept the truth. The problem of liberty is that of choosing a principle by which the claims humans make on one another in the name of their religion are to be regulated. Granting that God’s will should be followed and the truth recognized does not as yet define a principle of adjudication. From the fact that God’s intention is to be complied with, it does follow that any person or institution has authority to interfere with another’s interpretation of one’s religious obligations. This religious principle justifies no one in demanding in law or politics a greater liberty for oneself. The only principles which authorize claims on institutions are those that would be chosen in the original position. Let us suppose, then, that an intolerant sect has no title to complain of intolerance. We still cannot say that tolerant sects have the right to suppress them. For one thing, others may have a right to complain. They may have this right not as a right to complain on behalf of the intolerant, but simply as a right to object whenever a principle of justice is violated. For justice is infringed whenever equal liberty is denied without sufficient reason. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The question, then, is whether being intolerant of another in grounds enough for limiting someone’s liberty. To simplify things, assumes that the tolerant sects have the right not to tolerate the intolerant in at least one circumstances, namely, when they sincerely and with reason believe that intolerance is necessary for their own security. This right follows readily enough since, as the original position is defined, each would agree to the right of self-preservation. Justice does not require that humans must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence. Since it can never be to human’s advantage, from a general point of view, to forgo the right of self-protection, the only question, then, is whether the tolerant have a right to curb the intolerant when they are of no immediate danger to the equal liberties of others. Suppose that, in some way or other, an intolerant sect comes to exist within a well-ordered society accepting the two principles of justice. How are the citizens of this society to act in regard to it? Now certainly they would not suppress it simply because the members of the intolerant sect could not complain were they to do so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Rather, since a just constitution exists, all citizens have a natural duty of justice to uphold it. We are not released from this duty whenever others are disposed to act unjustly. A more stringent condition is required: there must be some considerable risks to our own legitimate interests. Thus just citizens should strive to preserve the constitution with all its equal liberties as long as liberty itself and their own freedom are not in danger. They can properly force the intolerant to respect the liberty of others, since a person can be required to respect the rights established by principles that one would acknowledge in the original position. However, when the constitution itself is secure, there is no reason to deny freedom to the intolerant. The question of tolerating the intolerant is directly related to that of the stability of a well-ordered society regulated by the two principles. We can see this as follows. It is from the position of equal citizenship that persons join the various religious associations, and it is from this position that they should conduct their discussions with one another. Citizens in a free society should not think one another incapable of a sense of justice unless this is necessary for the sake of liberty itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If an intolerant sect appears in a well-ordered society, the others should keep in mind the inherent stability of their institutions. The liberties of the intolerant may persuade them to a belief in freedom. This persuasion works on the psychological principle that those whose liberties are protected by and who benefit from a just constitution will, ceteris paribus (other things equal), acquire an allegiance to it over a period of times. So even if an intolerant sect should arise, provided that it is not so strong initially that it can impose its will straightway, or does not grow so rapidly that the psychological principle has no time to take hold, it will tend to lose its intolerance and accept liberty of conscience. This is the consequence of the stability of just institutions, for stability means that when tendencies to injustice arise other forces will be called into play that work to preserve the justice of the whole arrangement. Of course, the intolerant sect may be so strong initially or growing so fast that the forces making for stability cannot convert it to liberty. This situation presents a practical dilemma which philosophy alone cannot resolve it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Whether the liberty of the intolerant should be limited to preserve freedom under a just constitution depends on the circumstances. The theory of justice only characterizes the just constitution, the end of political action by reference to which practical decisions are to be made. In pursuing this end the natural strength of free institutions must not be forgotten, nor should it be supposed that tendencies to depart from them go unchecked and always win out. Knowing the inherent stability of a just constitution, members of a well-ordered society have the confidence to limit the freedom of the intolerant only in the special cases when it is necessary for preserving equal liberty itself. Therefore, while an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger. The tolerant should curb the intolerant only in this case. The leading principle is to establish a justice constitution with the liberties of equal citizenship. The just should be guided by the principles of justice and not the fact that the unjust cannot complain. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
It should be noted that even when the freedom of the intolerant is limited to safeguard a just constitution, this is not done in the name of maximizing liberty. The liberties of some are not suppressed simply to make possible a greater liberty for others. Justice forbids this sort of reasoning in connection with liberty as much as it does in regard to the sum of advantages. It is only the liberty of the intolerant which is to be limited, and this is done for the sake of equal liberty under a just constitution the principles of which the intolerant themselves would acknowledge in the original position. The argument in this and in the preceding sections suggests that the adoption of the principle of equal liberty can be viewed as a limiting case. Even though their differences are profound and no one knows how to reconcile them by reason, humans can, from the standpoint of the original position, still agree on this principle if they can agree on any principle at all. This idea which arose historically with religious toleration can be extended to other instances. Thus we can suppose that the persons in the original position know that they have moral convictions although, as the veil of ignorance requires, they do not know what these convictions are. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
They understand that the principles they acknowledge are to override these beliefs when there is a conflict; but otherwise they need not revise their opinions nor give them up when these principles do not uphold them. In this way the principles of justice can adjudicate between opposing moralities just as they regular the claims of rival religions. Within the framework that justice established, moral conceptions with different principles, or conceptions representing a different balancing of the same principles, may be adopted by various parts of society. What is essential is that when persons with different convictions make conflicting demands on the basic structure as a matter of political principle, they are to judge these claims by the principles of justice. The principles that would be chosen in the original position are the kernel of political morality. They not only specify the terms of cooperation between persons but they define a pact of reconciliation between diverse religions and moral beliefs, and the forms of culture to which they belong. If this conception of justice now seems largely negative, we shall see that it has a happier side. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
When we overcome our own selfish desires and put God first in our lives and covenant to serve God regardless of the cost, we are then living the law of sacrifice. One of the best ways to be sure we are keeping the first great commandment is to keep the second. “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange god before me. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The faithful are required to honour the name of God. If we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it makes sense that we are naturally to respect the name of God with equal passion and vigour. The law of sacrifice provides an opportunity for us to prove to the Lord that we love Him more than any other thing. As a result the course sometimes becomes difficult since this process of perfection that prepares us for the celestial kingdom to “dwell in the presence of God and His Christ forever and ever,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 76.62. The sacred mission of the Church is to “invite all to come unto Christ,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 20.59. Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him. In that light, the law of sacrifice has always been a means for God’s children to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; it is though the medium of the sacrifice of all Earthly things that humans do actually know that they are doing the things that are well pleasing in the sight of God. When a human has offered in sacrifice all that one has for the truth’s sake, not even withholding one’s life, and believing before God that one has been called to make this sacrifice because one seeks to do one’s will, one does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept one’s sacrifice and offering, and that one has not, nor will seek one’s face in vain. Under these circumstances, then one can obtain the faith necessary for one to lay hold on eternal life. We know what we do is pleasing before God and understand that this knowledge comes to us through sacrifice and obedience. Those who come unto Christ in this way receive a confidence that whispers peace to their souls and that will eventually enable them to lay hold upon eternal life. Sacrifice allows us to learn something about ourselves—what we are willing to offer the Lord through our obedience. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Through sacrifice and service, one comes to know the Lord. As we sacrifice our selfish desires, serve our God and others, we become more like Him. We do this by our obedience to the commandments of God. Thus, the laws of obedience and sacrifice are indelibly intertwined. As we comply with these and other commandments, something wonderful happens to us. We become more sacred and holy—more like our Lord! In fact, the word sacrifice means literally “to make scared,” or “to render sacred.” Our first lessons about the law of sacrifice, as well as other gospel principles, began in our premotal life. We were taught the fulness of the gospel and the plan of salvation. We knew of the Saviour’s mission and of His futre atoning sacrifice, and we willingly sustained Christ as our Saviour and our Redeemer. In fact, we learn from Revelation 12.9, 11 that it is by “the blood of the Lamb” (Christ’s atoning sacrifice) and our testimony that we are able to overcome Satan. The Lord designed in the beginning to place before humans the knowledge of good and evil, and gave one a commandment to cleave to good and abstain from evil. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
However, if one should fail, God would give unto one the law of sacrifice and provide a Saviour for one, that one might be brought back again into the presence and favour of God and partake of eternal life with God. This is the plan of redemption chosen and instituted by the Alight before human was placed on Earth. Adam and Eve were taught the law of sacrifice and were commanded to practice it by giving offerings. These included two emblems: the firstlings of the flock and the first fruits of the field. They obeyed without questioning. The effect of this law was that the best of the Earth produced, the best specimen in the flock or heard should not be sued for self, but for God. At a time in history when it was a struggle to make sure the family had food, those who sought to worship the Lord were asked to sacrifice the best part of their source of life. It was the real test of Adam and Eve’s faith, and they obeyed. “And now I speak concerning baptism. Behold, elders, priests, and teachers were baptized; and they were not baptized save they brought forth fruit meet that they were worthy of it. Neither did they receive any unto baptism save they came forth with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and witnessed unto the church that they truly repented of all their sins. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
“And none were received unto baptism save they took upon them the name of Christ, having a determination to serve him to the end. And after they had been received unto baptism, and were wrought upon and cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost, they were numbered among the people of the church of Christ; and their names were taken that they might be remembered and nourished by the good word of God, to keep them in the right way, to keep them continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who was the author and the finisher of their faith. And the church did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls. And hey did meet together oft to partake of bread and wine, in remembrance of the Lord Jesus. And they were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them; and whoso was found to commit iniquity, and three witnesses of the church did condemn them before the elders, and if they repented not and confessed not, their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
“However, as oft as they repented and sought forgiveness, with real intent, they were forgiven. 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 6.1-9. It is especially in our families and similarly close associations that we must identify the elements of assault and withdrawal that defeat love and right relation to others. By insight and practice we must break away from them and reserve them, first by learning a calm but firm non-cooperation with those poisonous elements, and then by initiatives of goodwill and blessing in the midst of them. What we do in our meetings as Christians should be focused on enabling us to do this effectively wherever we are. Those meetings should and could be centers from which powerfully redemptive community spreads. Where to start? In various parts of the United States of America, publicly owned vehicles (police, street maintenance, schools) wear a bumper sticker that proclaims, “There is No Excuse for Domestic Violence.” It is a wonderful idea. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
However, we need to go deeper, of course. We need to become the kind of people whom domestic violence is unthinkable and never an option. We must be transformed in such a way that our minds and bodies—our very souls—simply do not have the makeup for it. This is the work of the Christian spiritual formations. We must begin in the family. Now the slogan must be, “There is No Excuse for Assault or Withdrawal in the Home.” Do you think that would take care of intimate partner violence? Of course it would. However, the reserve is not true: merely avoiding the subject of intimate partner violence, domestic violence or assault can still leave the home a hell of cutting remarks, contempt, coldness, and withdrawal or noninvolvement. Such a hell is often found in the homes of Christians and even of Christian leaders. Frequently they seem to honestly think that such a condition is normal, and they have no knowledge of any other way. Their very theology may strengthen this tragically false outlook. If I were married, I would seek the help of my spouse in this matter. If not, then a trusted friend who is spiritually mature and not abusive. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
I would then number my areas of need in order of importance, say: Purity, Mind, Prayer, Witness, Giving, Work, Friendship, and Leadership. Then, beginning with the first need, Purity, I would look over the suggested sub-disciplines and choose one to three things which I think would best help me improve. In doing this, I would resist the temptation to commit myself to too many disciplines. Better to succeed in a few than to assure failure by overcommitment. Perhaps, regarding the discipline of Purity I would choose to commit myself, first, to memorizing Scripture which help steel me to temptations, and second, to not watching anything sensual on TV or at the movies. Perhaps under Witness, I would make commitments to pray that God would give me someone to share Christ with and to join an interest club to meet unchurched people. After going through my life I would have perhaps twenty specific things which I could do to improve my eight weakest areas. However, before commitment to the specifics, I would look at the whole list with honest realism, asking, “Are the things which I am about to commit to really within my reach with the help of God?” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Perhaps, regarding the discipline of Mind, I have become so convicted that I am considering committing myself to reading the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice, plus reading The Book of Mormon. Make sure your commitments make you sweat, but also make sure that taken together they are manageable. It is better to increase your commitments as you succeed than to bite off more than you can do. Success begets success. Before setting your commitments in concrete, give yourself a week to think about them and pray over them. Seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance for other ways of personal discipline not mentioned in this essay. Ask your spouse of friend to hold you accountable for your disciplines. Even if it has to be over the phone, make sure you regularly confer and pray. Be honest about your success and failures. And be willing to take advice and make adjustments. You may have some complications, no doubt, and may not succeed at time. When this happens, wounded pride and embarrassment can make you want to take your marbles and go home. We do not like to do things which we fail. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, we must realize that failure is a part of succeeding, provided we admit our failures and go at it again. Moreover, we are not under Law but grace. God is not counting our failure against us, and we are not building a treasure of merit with our success. We are simply trying to live a disciplined life which pleases our loving Father—and He understands our failures better than we understand our own children’s. When the movement in one direction has exhausted itself, there is a pause, and then a reversal directs the movement into the opposite direction. The flow of Nature follows the course indicated by the Principle of Reversion, which throws it back after a time in the opposite direction. When the point of farthest travel is reached, the forces reverse themselves. In this way, excess disciplines and even defeats itself. In this way too the Universe and all the different kinds of existence in it are kept in equilibrium. In the to-and-fro movement of human breathing, we have a kay to human development. Study it well with this assistance and you will discern a forward and backward movement, a pendulum-like swing, here too. Everything in the Universe is subject to a pendulum-like movement. It shuttles to and from with a coming-to-be and a ceasing-to-be effect. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah Winchester had multiple rooms dedicated to plants and flowers. This room, her South Conservatory, contains over 200 panes of glass to allow for natural light. How would you spend a day alone in this room?
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A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 