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Obligations Curtail Our Freedom to Waste Ourselves
People who are kind, generous, and compassionate give others a striking affirmation of the intrinsic worth and importance of human beings. After being reduced to bodily terms, we are never the same. For the rest of our lives, we are unable to forget how much it is possible t be in need of others. We approach our relationships differently from then on, emphasizing those bonds which seem likely to withstand the tests of time and strain, and putting less effort into bonds of convenience. The nature of our aspirations changes along with the style of our relationships. We start asking different things of life. Considering how common impairments are, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, it becomes clear that each has our own special demons and divine figures, our own other-World landscapes and struggles. As a result of these changes, people suffering from detriment or restriction can often tell in a glance whether someone they meet has every had the experience of being helpless. They notice that a gap separates them from those who continue to be beguiled by good health. They watch as friends and relatives go on living from day to day as if they are invincible, dwelling inside a privileged deception. People suffering from ailments are not star athlete’s, who can take a hit and keep on ticking, and sometimes unnecessary psychological stress can make their condition worse, as it can amplify the pain they are experiencing or cause other conditions to flare up. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Healthy people often find themselves distracted by the crude exterior of affliction, bypassing much of the complexity going on beneath the surface. Knowing what to say and do in the presence of a person who is incapacitated requires an awareness of what it is like to have time on one’s hands and to be at the mercy of others, but also knowledge of the range of emotions that arise in reaction to helplessness itself. A man spent several weeks confined to his bed. He was seriously ill and was unable to get out of bed, or move at all, even if it was only to go from laying on one side to laying on the other side. It was in that state of extreme helplessness that he saw how much a person can be in need of others. He was in need not only of his doctors, nurses, and medical staff, but also of God and spiritual help. Not only for medical care, but for comforting words or gestures. The problem of impairment raises two fundamental questions…Why me? (the questions of bafflement), and What can be done? (The question of order and control). We oppose the lessons of helplessness, hardening ourselves against the indignities and rejecting the forced revisions of our priorities. We hope only for recovery and for a return to self-sufficiency. Anything less invokes bitterness. We want to see more clearly and hear more sharply the themes that are special to us. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The important thing is to realize that, although life seems to be a matter of literal causes and effects, in fact we are living our deep stories, often unconsciously. We are condemned to live out what we cannot imagine. People suffering from an aliment or disability first blame the condition. One says, “If only I was not elderly or disabled or pregnant, life for be better for me.” Then they blame other people, saying, “Life would be better if people did not treat me like I football player.” Then, we finally realize it is what we put out there is what determines how our life is and how people treat us. We make our life good—it does not just happen. There are countless pitfalls on the way our of misery. Focusing relentlessly on what has been lost, comparing oneself to others, aspiring for things that are out of reach, and placing blame on others are only some of the most common snares. Each personal variation is uniquely painful. Soul work involves an effort toward increasing awareness of these situations that form the foundations of our lives, for if we become familiar with the characters and themes that are central to our conditions, we can be free from their compulsions and the blindness that comes upon us when we are caught up in them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
When culture and language fail to acknowledge the difficulty of receiving, the dependent person is left doubly burdened, in disliking the help that cannot be repaid and in feeling guilty about the dislike. People know that when someone visits them, that they are simply being visited. They know that one is in receipt of a charitable act and that there is no true relationship. One knows they have nothing in common with the individuals coming to see them, they know all too well. We have often heard people who are elderly or disabled say, “Look at my life—all I do is eat and sleep. What kind of life is this?” They equate their lack of productivity activity with worthlessness. Some people take their mind off of their pain by thinking about what does work right. The most important thing to do is to keep the spirit supple. When we return to our central thought that the prayer of faith shall save the sick and God shall rise the individual up, we must remember that the prayer of faith is definite—it is faith in something and about something. This type of prayer is not generalized, but specific. It is conscious and definite. The prayer of faith is a prayer which expresses faith about some particular thing. What is included is a specific want, or definite need. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
If one was praying for a home, one would not be asking for an automobile. If one were praying that his or her neighbor be healed, one would not be asking for money with which to take a trip. In order to enjoy the soulfulness of mythic life, we need a deep inner faith that allows us to know and visit our own deep strata where meaning and values truly are formed. Ritual is an action that speaks to the mind and heart, but it may not make sense in a literal context. In church, people do not eat bread in order to feed their bodies, but to nourish their souls. It is a higher symbolic act. If we could grasp this simple idea, that some actions may not have an effect on actual life, but speak instead to the soul, and if we could let go of the dominant role of function in so many things we do, then we might give more to the soul every day. Frail people try to conceal their needs as much as they can and they like to keep their conditions private. Social workers have been admitted to many apartments where it is more like people are living in private cells, concealing the evidence of their incapacities and averting their eyes from each others’ problems. Usually their presence is only accepted because something had necessitated their help. It was discovered in one such instance that a client had been sitting in the dark for weeks. The light bulbs had burned out in the ceiling fixtures, and he had no floor or table lamps. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Rather than ask one of his neighbors to help, he had been reading by daylight and going to bed when it became too dark to see. His back was hurting and he could barely move without experiencing a great deal of pain, as if his spine was going to snap. Therefore, keep in mind, the one who gives help is more powerful than the one who receives it. Knowing what to do for a person suffering from an impairment and what to cease doing begins with understanding what life is like from that person’s perspective. Without this comprehension, there is a tendency to worry about the wrong things and to give assistance in the wrong ways. Learning all that we can about being dependent allows us to fall short of the ideal to the right extent. Sometimes fear can strike a disabled or elderly person like a malignancy, sapping every and power and attention from their daily lives. They are afraid of the process of their ailment, they are afraid of increasing loss of control, they are afraid of the outcome, and they are afraid of dying. They fear how their families and friends see them, how they feel about them and how their condition affects their lives. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
However, what can be even more difficult is when people do not know or cannot see that you are disabled or have a diminished capacity and they force you to work, harass you, physically attack you, use you for money, and threaten you because they know they can get away with it. For young people who are physically disabled, it is like experiencing one’s old age prematurely. They are locked into a parallel isolation, shamed by feelings they do not dare confess. These individuals are frightened because they are young and still have a lot of life to live and are deteriorating much sooner than they are supposed to. They do not have a professor of whatever to understand them and how they feel, and their economy of friends tends to shrink. People do not know how to behave toward them, and it is easy to lose heart for coping. Sometimes they have no spirit for anything, like their heart finally dropped out of them. Theses youngster even get bullied and attacked by people who are much older than them, but have not yet experienced what it is like to have fractured vertebrae in their spine, or whatever. However, they have courage. Courage that comes for their belief in God. The Word courage comes from the Latin cor for heart. We give ourselves fresh heart by pulling our attention away from what has been lost. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
It is not that fear and disheartenment can be willed away, but we have to turn our focus in a direction most favorable to their alleviation. The consciousness that heals is definite and deliberate; it is a specializing of the Universal Law. In this law we may have absolute and implicit confidence, but we must also remember that the law can do for us only what it does through us. Its energy and creativeness must be interpreted through our belief and imagination. This is but another way of saying that if we want the principle of electricity to light our living room we must provide a fixture which makes it possible for the electricity to become a light. When we pray in faith we receive what things we pray for. If we believe that we shall receive them, we shall receive them. There is a specific, definite thing we are to receive, but we are to receive it as we believe. For many, relief and happiness can come by understanding the relationship between peace of conscience and peace of mind and by living the principles upon which both of these blessings are founded. God wants each of his children to enjoy the transcendent blessing of peace of conscience. A tranquil conscience invites freedom from anguish, sorrow, guilt, shame, and self-condemnation. It provides a foundation for happiness. It is a condition of immense worth, yet there are few on Earth that enjoy it most often because the principles upon which peace of conscience is founded are either not adequately understood or followed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8 
Our Memories of the Family are a Significant Part of the Mythology
We have lost a certain depth in the way we understand our experiences, using language that is often doubletalk and shallow in order to describe complex and profound aspects of life. Resentment is a reliable gauge of when assistants are doing more than they should. The problem with heeding this measure is that there are ongoing pressures to deny its validity. Dedicated assistants insist that they are doing fine. At all costs, they want to avoid evoking in the person that they are assisting fear of abandonment and to keep from revealing that the care has become taxing. They conceal their feelings and strive to maintain a contented exterior. Eventually, their pretense isolates them from the person who needs their assistance, and any previous intimacy become veiled by this effort to hide the truth. A myth is a sacred story set in a time and place outside history, describing in fictional form the fundamental truths of nature and human life. Mythology gives to the invisible and eternal factors that are always part of life but do not appear in a literal, factual story. Most of the time, when we tell a story about our lives, we couch it in purely human terms. When was the last time you talked about monsters, angels, or demons when you were describing some strongly felt experience? Myth reaches beyond the personal to express an imagery reflective of archetypal issues that shape every human life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
When we are trying to understand our problems and our suffering, we look for a story that will be revealing. Our surface explanations usually show their shortcomings; they do not satisfy. And so we turn to family themes. Unacknowledged weariness puts a barrier between the ill people and those who assist them. However, the feelings leak through in subtle ways. My son says he likes fixing me dinner every night, but he looks so tense when he is here. He comes right over from work, and his wife holds dinner at their house until he gets home. He smiles, makes chitchat, but I know he is racing against times. Sometimes he looks like he is going to explode, his face is so tight, but he keeps on smiling. I wish he could just say it is too much for him. I would be disappointed, do not get me wrong, but TV dinners would not kill me. People can see beneath cheerful demeanor that their child is suffering, but do not want to initiate their release from the obligation. Many are afraid, not of TV dinners, but of the loneliness that would await them on a nightly basis if they spoke up and urged their child to only visit them on weekends. The worst consequence of silence, however, is the gap it leaves between them. When you notice your child can no longer speak to you beyond chitchat, it is clear that one has become an unmentionable problem in their life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Our memories of the family are a significant part of the mythology by which we live. We can learn things like the notion of exchange. For example, trading frequency for quality, guilty silence for relieving honesty. Dependent people and their helpers can release each other from guilt, but gestures must be mutual if they are to be effective. The reward for recognizing resentment as a limit is enjoying the elderly or disabled person’s company again. To feel that one can give pleasure and to receive small acts of sweetness is a fair exchange for new hours’ wait. A spiral of good feeling is set in motion between parent and child, which will replace the negative snowball that has been evolving between family members as the child becomes more and more weary of the care. If given the chance, few people would choose being waited on over being enjoyed. When we analyze what the prayer of faith means we discover that it is a statement of belief in some power which is able, ready, and willing to do the healing. At first, this may seem like a rather cold-blooded analysis, for to pick a prayer of faith apart seems to rob it of its sentimentality. Nevertheless, if we would arrive at a state of consciousness that heals we must be willing to analyze some of those things which seem so intimate and so holy that we that we dislike even to mention them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Some of those who are calling out for help are the honest in heart who are earnestly seeking the truth, but they do not know where to find it. The prayer of faith may be thought of as a petition, as a beseeching, or as an agonizing cry of the soul for deliverance, but whatever we term it and from whatever viewpoint we look at it, we discover that it still is an attitude of thought, a way of thinking, a movement in consciousness. If the prayer is one of faith, then this mental movement is one of acceptance, for faith is an acceptance unqualified by denial. Complete faith is absolute and beneficial. Faith is the attitude of one who makes a complete mental surrender. It can arise only through a consciousness of complete abandonment. To the consciousness of faith there are no longer any arguments against its conviction. Faith has no opposites; it is an uncompromising mental attitude, and this is exactly what the prayer of faith is. It is a prayer, a petition, or a beseeching stated in come form of mental acceptance, unqualified belief, unquestioned trust. While the burden of petition and the necessity of faith rests on the one making the petition or having the faith, the response to this petition and this faith is made by some creative agency which has the power and the willingness to perform the act. It is God who raises us up. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
We make some strong claims in faith. We do not apologize for that. We have that responsibility. We have the truth. We are proclaiming the truth. When we consider how we help others, give it careful, prayerful thought. Some of those who are calling out for help are confused and disturbed by this complex, somewhat contradictory World in which we live, a World that has many crosswinds and crosscurrents, and even some whirlpools that can entrap and destroy. Let us remember that. Many of these people are yearning for the inner peace and joy that really can come only through love of God and love of family and from keeping God’s commandments. If from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek hum with all they heart and with all thy soul, we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free. That implies that there is a truth which, known, automatically becomes demonstrated. Civilizations may come and go, empires may flourish and decay, time may pass, and change may deface all previous experience, but law is eternal. Thus, the scientist learns to depend on law. As we are able to perfect our lives, the blessings we have become more meaningful, and we experience that inner joy and peace for which there is no substitute. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
There are Seven Billion People on this Planet and God Cares What I Had for Lunch
God is life, God is power, and this life and this power are available right now. Perspective is the way we see things when we look at them from a certain distance, and it allows us to appreciate their true valuable. Professional psychology has created a catalogue of disorders, known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition (DSM-5), which is used by doctors and insurance companies to help diagnose and standardize problems of emotional life and behavior with precision. For example, there is a category called adjustment disorders. The problem is adjusting to life, while perhaps sane to all outward appearances, may sometimes be detrimental to the soul. It is extremely important that we do not make decisions of eternal value from the perspective of mortality. For decisions that affect eternity, we need to consider the perspective of our Father in Heaven, as his perspective is essential. God’s eternity signifies an everlasting, endless time. God is a Father, King, and Friend mediated with a knowledge that cannot be surpassed by abstract speculation. God’s plan gives us endurance even amid the wreckage of proximate hopes. Hope keeps us anxiously engaged in good causes even when these appear to be losing causes. Not having an eternal perspective, or losing it, can lead us to have an Earthly perspective as our personal standard and to make decision that are not in harmony with the will of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
God is eternal and through the contingency of finite things and as through the holy through the demands of the moral law, are an immediate, purely spiritual experience called mystical. The union of love and will between the Creator and his creations is permanently retained. Perversion, however, may be regarded either as a condition or as a capability. Society is more eager to accept it as a condition than to respect it as a capability. On its path to progress, society gets just so far—and then again prefers birth to merit, social status to personal achievement. The DSM-5 should also include the diagnosis psychological modernism, an uncritical acceptance of the values of the modern World. It includes blind faith in technology, inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to electronic media, and a life-style dictated by advertising. This orientation toward life also tends toward a mechanistic and rationalistic understanding of matters of the heart. In this modernist syndrome, technology becomes the root metaphor for dealing with psychological problems. A modern person comes to therapy and days, “Look, I do not want any long-term analysis. If something is broken, let us fix it. Tell me what I have to do, and I will do it.” The boogey man has long been an indispensable figure in the family for frightening children. Grownups are now terrorized with the threat that the psychiatrist will come get them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Doctors have no imagination in describing diseases. Perhaps that is why their accounts of real illnesses fit imaginary illnesses so well. Such a person is rejecting out of hand the possibility that the source of a problem in a relationship, for example, may be a weak sense of values or failure to come to grips with mortality. The modernist syndrome urges people to buy the latest electronic gear and to be plugged in to news, entertainment, and up-to-the-minute weather reports. It is vitally important not to miss out on anything. There are some people who spend most of their day in front of several television monitors keeping track of events from around the World. These people do not need all of this information professionally, but they feel their lives would be empty if they let any gaps appear in their grasp of the news. A woman who manages a computer firm knows the very latest chemical and mechanical medical treatments, and she can tell you the side effects of whatever pill you are taking; yet in private she feels overwhelmed by her failure to get her life on track and settled. Her sickness is not amenable to the literal medications she knows so well, because her World-weariness is a soul of malady. The difference between mad-doctors and other man-people is roughly the same as that between convex and concave folly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The revenge of mollusk on man, of Shaw on Shakespeare, of the ghetto on God is rapid technological progress, opposition to which qualities one as a reactionary. There seems to be an inverse relationship between information and wisdom. We are overloaded with information about living healthfully, but we have largely lost our sense of the body’s wisdom. We can tune in to news reports and know what is happening in every corner of the World, but we do not seem to have much wisdom in dealing with these World problems. The World demands that we be responsible to it, not to ourselves. We have many demanding academic programs in professional psychology, and states often have rigid requirements for the practice of psychotherapy, and yet there is undoubtedly a severe dearth of wisdom about the mysteries of the soul. Only one is an artist who can see the mysterious in what is ordinary, and can thus transform a solution into a problem. The modernist syndrome also tends to literalize everything it touches. We have a spiritual longing for community and relatedness and for a cosmic vision, but we go after them with literal hardware instead of with sensitivity of the heart. We want to know about peoples from far away places, but we do not want to feel emotionally connected to them. The Lord has given us his standards of worthiness. He has not done it to keep us away from him, but to draw us to him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Philosophy is at the center of every life problem, but it takes soul to reflect on one’s own life with genuine philosophical seriousness. If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. Our many studies of World cultures are soulless, replacing the common bonding of humanity and it shared wisdom with bites of information that have no way of getting into us deeply, nourishing and transforming our sense of ourselves. Soul, of course, has been extracted from the beginning because we conceive education to be about skills and information, not about depth of feeling and imagination We are not concerned with the weeping and wailing of the family. That is why we must look at life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective. The Lord knows what he wants to accomplish with each one of us. He knows the kind of reform he wants to achieve in our lives, and we do not have the right to counsel him. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We have a loving, just, and merciful Heavenly Father, who has prepared a plan for our eternal happiness. How seldom do we realize that there are no obstructions to divine power. The Heavens, even the highest Heavens, cannot contain you. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
As an individual gradually accumulates a storehouse of faith, when the emergency arises, one is able to stand calm and certain, uncaught by the fears of others. God always comes first and that is why our faith is sufficient. Our trust is complete. Our assurance is absolute. Our words are honored by a power great than us—that power which we all have access to, life itself. In life, joy and happiness are important also. For life intended us to be glad. Peace is also important because it rises above the storm of confusion and doubt and uncertainty that so often confronts us. If we listen to peace we will hear it, and it will infiltrate our whole being. We will discover that our words of peace, acting the law of good, will draw upon a power greater than we are and liquidate the confusion. This is the presence of God. Coming to know that divine power and understanding the complexity and the order and the harmony of the human body reinforces our faith in God. Here alone are peace and joy and certainty. Here alone is freedom from fear and doubt. We must learn to turn daily to the one and only supreme source, which is God. To be worthy of the celestial kingdom and the joy that is there, we must keep the commandments! For one who is not able to abide by the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Born of God–Gratitude is the Memory of the Heart
The World is God (the only substance) under his attributes of thought and extension. Spirituality does not arrive fully formed without effort. Occasionally, there is a time gap between the sacrifice and the blessing. The sacrifice may come according to our time schedule, but the blessing may not come by our calendar, but by the Lord’s date book. Religions around the World demonstrate that spiritual life requires constant attention and a subtle, often beautiful technology by which spiritual principles and understanding are kept alive. The Lord comforts us by acknowledging us. He tells us to be not weary in well-doing, for we are laying the foundation of a great-work. For good reason we prayer, go to church, temple, or the cathedral regularly and at appointed times, as it is easy for consciousness to become lodged in the material World and to forget the spiritual. Sacred technology is largely aimed at helping us remain conscious of spiritual ideas and values. This great gift of life is to be accepted. All that God has is our, there is nothing in us that can deny his presence, his power, his wisdom, his guidance, and his protecting love. Today and every day we shall live life to the full and we shall be glad. Always within us there is the power and the presence and the life of God, and unto this presence be glory and honor, dominion and power, both now and forever. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
When we get in agreement with God and believe what he says about us, then what we believe can supersede any natural law! There is something called a spiritual bank account. There are great spiritual forces that we can draw on and deposit in our souls and minds, and which can be used in any emergency, in any stress or strain of life. Life has enough of everything to meet our needs. It contains love and faith and peace and joy. The blessings surely come to us. Please remember when we make sacrifices, it might be a blessing itself because we are show we have faith and making deposits into our spiritual bank accounts. Things could not have been produced by God in any other manner or order than that in which they were produced. All things must have followed of necessity from a given nature of God, and they were determined for existence or action. God or the Absolute, as in its essence a self-diversifying unity, gave us the ability to meet emergences—the times when we need more love and tolerance, more kindness and understanding, a deeper faith and a higher hope by allowing these blessings to be poured out on us. There are the real crises in our lives. And at such time, unless we have a vast amount of good stored up, we not only become impoverished, but we sometimes become destitute of hope. And then despair takes the place of hope, and fear takes the place of faith. This is what we want to avoid because it means our inner work is not being allowed to reach deep enough. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
If we put God in remembrance of his promises and do not put him in remembrance of our problems, then we will be faithful to his word. How would it be if we all opened a spiritual account with the Bank of Life and, realizing that we were drawing on the infinite, each day deposited enough hope and happiness and faith to more than meet any emergency that might possibly arise? It is just like our surprise and joy when we receive an unexpected gift. As we give, we find that sacrifice being forth the blessings of Heaven. Love is the base of everything. We feel the need of a more genuine means of bringing outer experience deep inside us. Just as the mind digests it, creating wisdom and character out of the fodder of experience. The outer World serves as a means of deep spirituality and the transformation of ordinary experience into the stuff of soul is all important. If the link between life experience and deep imagination is inadequate, then we are left with a division between life and soul, and such a division will always manifest itself in symptoms. This can make us become skeptical and cynical and sometimes wonder if love, after all, is the greatest reality in life. And yet, we know that we could not live without love, for life is absolutely meaningless unless its whole motivation is built on love and giving. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
What God promised, he will do. Often prayers are given for specific blessings which we, in our incomplete understanding, believe we need. While the Lord does answer prayers according to his will, he certainly must be pleased when we offer humble prayers of gratitude. God has already answered a huge prayer for everyone born into this World, because God has given himself to us. He has imparted his own life and, in a mysterious way which is beyond our comprehension, has endowed us with the capacity to love. If God is love—and no sane person can doubt this—and if each one of us has, as we must have, immediate access to the love of God, then we earn the ability to draw on the bank of life in such degree as we become loving. The spirit of gratitude is always pleasant and satisfying because it carries with it a sense of helpfulness to other; it begets love and friendship, and engenders divine influence. Gratitude is the memory of the heart. God is love and all the love there is is ours now. We shall endeavor to see something lovable in everyone we meet, in every situation in which we find ourselves, and as we do this we shall accumulate a great degree of love to be deposited in our bank. And then when some experience comes along which seems unkind or unlovable, we shall be able to write a check on our bank of life which will cover every liability of hate or unkindness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Let us adopt an attitude of gratitude in all we do, we must keep our hearts full of thanks and appreciation for what we have and not dwell on what is not ours. The greatest secrets of nature—the person who has taken the time to harmonize oneself with love will find that, when some incident that seems hateful or discordant arises in one’s experience, one can draw on a reserve force which one now has. One can actually apply this to the situation when it arises. The most satisfying experience we have is to see what God does for people. He gives them a new outlook on life. He gives them a perspective that they have never felt before. God raises their sights to things noble and divine. Something happens to them that is miraculous to behold. They look to God and come alive. He brings love to bear on our situations—a love which comprehends and includes everything, a love which has no hurt in it, a love which is not afraid, a love which is clam and confident and sure of itself. Our lives and the lives of our posterity are changed forever. Right here is where the law of mind in action comes into play. When we apply our thought of love directly to discordant situations, and there is nothing in us which is afraid, our thought of love it applied to that situation will heal it, and any situation that confronts us will be healed. We must have a firm faith that God is love, and an equally firm faith when we apply this principle of love to any human problem. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
The commandments of God give emphasis to improvement of the individual as the only real way to bring about the real improvement of society. The very words we speak in out meditation or treatment or prayer will operate as law in the condition that confronts us, and will neutralize or overcome everything that opposes it. The Lord works from the inside out. The World works from the outside in. This is not an act of will. It has nothing whatsoever to do with concentrating our mind or influencing people. It has to do with this one thought: God is love. God has deposited love at the center of every human’s soul, whether we know it or not, and this love which we now use is not only the greatest sentiment in the Word; it is the supreme power, it is the perfect law, it is reality. And because we have deposited a love which can see around everything that contradicts it, and because we have ample love left in our own thought, we will find that the love we use, acting as law, will definitely overcome the fear and the hate and the sense of insecurity that comes where there is a sense of lack of love. God changes us, and then we change our environment. The World would shape human behavior, but God can change human nature. Above all odds, believe that you can do what God put in your heart. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
We will gain a new measure of vitality and strength as we learn that perfect love can cast out all fear. Love is always greater than fear. Fear is not really an enemy of love. All that fear can do is cast a shadow across our pathway. However, this shadow is dissipated when we look at it with love. This vitality and strength is a mighty force, an instrument in God’s hands to cause the only one force, which is absolute and conclusive. However, we must spend much time with ourselves straightening out all the little animosities and resolving them into one great love which is God. God never fails and love never fails and we will never fail if we use the love that is God. The most important thing next to love is faith—faith in God, faith in ourselves, faith in what we are doing, and faith in those around us. A person without faith is so insecure, so shaken by circumstances, that one becomes unstable in everything. Faith is natural; fear is unnatural. Faith is beneficial; fear is negative. Faith is affirmative; fear is a denial of life. If we are going to meet all the fears and uncertainties that we are sure to encounter, we need a great deal of faith. It is the nature of faith to believe God upon his bare word. It will not be, says sense; it cannot be, says reason; it both can and will be, says faith, for I have a promise for it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Get Ready Like Royalty—Feel Like Royalty!
Open up your mind and it will sing to you. The love that goes out into our work comes back as love of self. Work is an important component of the spiritual life, it can be a path to holiness, and profoundly affects the soul. When we think of work, we only consider function, and so the soul elements are left to chance. However, the rituals that are taking place when one performs a task is the soul’s work: something of the soul is being created in the work of ritual. Ordinary actions, too, accomplish something for the soul. Yet, where there is no artfulness about life, there is a weakening of soul. It seems that the problem with most modern manufacturing is not a lack of efficiency, it is a loss of soul. If people had a deep sense of the truly magical nature of their product, they would take care of the souls of their products with sacred imagination. The same principle holds for all professions and for all forms of labor. We could say, then, that all work is sacred, whether you are building a castle, creating a beautiful stain glass window, or taking out the rubbish. A special window might help ritualize a house, or a dinning room table of a special design or select wood could transform the house into an arena that has imaginal depth that feels one’s soul. It may conjure up certain memories and fantasies that have significance. Or work may be a means of sorting out issues that have little to do with the work itself. It may be a response to fate. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
We may find ourselves doing work that has been in the family for generations or working at a job that appeared after a number of coincidences and chance events. In this sense, all work is a vocation, a calling from a place that is the source of meaning and identity, the foundation of which are beyond human intention and interpretation. However, we can never do this unless we believe that we can, for the belief that we cannot binds us back to the antiquated precedents and compels us to accept only as much good as has been experienced in the past. If we can get firmly fixed in our mind that the principle of the soul is never bound by precedent, that the doing of new things in science through new discoveries always existed as a possibility, and there was nothing in nature which prohibited the larger experiences, we shall no longer be hypnotized by limitations of the past. It is possible that most of us go through life more or less hypnotized by what everyone has believed. We say that the good we desire cannot come to us because we have never experienced much of it, or there is not enough good to go around, of that God does not hear our prayers. Too often we turn over the possibilities of the individual life to the acceptance of the collective group. Not understanding soul, companies look to the work of other cultures and try to mimic their methods. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
It is not possible to care for the soul while violating or disregarding one’s own moral sensibility. What we should break down is the hypnotic suggestions that bind us, and create new avenues in the mind for a fresh approach and a new outlook to the spirit. This is something every individual must do for oneself, but there must be a method or a way to begin. We have to start with the firm faith that we are dealing with power which is not bound. It is not limited. It is not only some power; it is all-power. It is not difficult to convince the mind of this, since plain reasoning compels one to accept such a viewpoint. Alchemy was a process in which raw material was placed in a vessel where it was heated, observed closely, heated some more, passed through various operations and observed once again. In the end, the result was an arcane product imagined mysteriously to be gold, the stone of the philosophers, or a potent elixir. Alchemy was a spiritual practice carried out for the benefit of the soul. Just like many of you work to benefit your family, who are part of your soul. Face it, the only reason many of you get out of bed everyday and go to work is because you believe that the qualities you produce are scared rituals which benefit your soul and are a way to honor God and the people and things you love. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
You find your poetic inspiration in your home, family, garden, and furniture to keep going even when you are tired. We must assure ourselves that we have access to the power of God. We could never do this if we felt that the power was external to us, if it were something apart from or different from our own being. We discover that God is immediate and personal, a possibility latent within the self, and ready to be called upon and used. We could imagine our own everyday work alchemically in the same way. We work on the stuff of the soul by means of the things of life. This is an ancient idea. Ordinary life is the means of entry into higher spiritual activity. At the very moment we are hard at work on some Worldly endeavor, we are also working on a different plane. Perhaps without knowing it, we are engaged in the labours of the soul. The more deeply our work stirs imagination and corresponds to images that are sacred at the core of identity and fate, the more it will have soul. Having identified ourselves with the power which is law, and the presence which is the spirit, we must consciously increase our expectation and deepen our realization. This is done by prayer, communing with the divine, until gradually we so extend our concepts of life and the possibilities of living that we are no longer bound by our thought patterns of lack and limitation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is simply to try to get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever had, and to hail it with delight as an opportunity of obtaining a larger measure of divine grace. There is one life, that life is God, that life is my life now. This power, this presence, and this life are perfect, complete, whole, and happy. We identify the mind with this wholeness, happiness, and perfection, affirming its presence and embodying a certain feeling about it, and inward awareness. This practice must continue until the idea becomes real to us, not as though we were something apart from or approaching the reality, but as through we were operating from the very center of it, which of course we are. It is an extension or reflection of ourselves. When one concludes a successful business transaction, one feels good about oneself. When one builds their dream house or gets a new care, one stands back and contemplates it, feeling a surge of pride. However, if we allow ourselves to do bad work, the whole society suffers a wound to soul. When it is not possible to feel good about our work, then soulful pride, so necessary for creativity, turns into narcissism. Pride and narcissism are not the same thing; in a sense, they are opposites. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
The product of our work should reflect a means of loving ourselves. However, if those products are not lovable, we are forced into a narcissistic place where we lose sight of the work itself and focus on our own personal needs. Love of the World and our place in it, attained largely by our work, turns into solipsistic craving for love. We will never achieve the flowing of our own natures until we find that piece of ourselves, that lovable twin, which lives in the World and as the World. Therefore, finding the right work is like discovering your soul in the World. There will be new thoughts, new ideas coming. We will open our whole consciousness to the influx of that which is larger and better, as we identify with inward peace and joy. At times, however, we may be confronted with negative arguments of set mental patterns which circumscribe, limit, and depress the mind. Our sense may try to insist that we follow the old established precedents as our true guide, since they have been adhered to by humankind from time immemorial. Contradict those vibes, they are so deceiving as the clouded heart. A major part of faith is trusting God when we do not understand why things happen the way they do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
We all know that God gives us opportunities. We have seen God give us favour, good situations, blessings, and promotion. That is the hand of God opening the World up for us. Right here, a certain amount of adventure, of imagination must be brought into play to create a feeling of acceptance which will break down those old thought patterns. We must understand that they are not the Truth of God’s Being, but merely monotonous repetitions of all the negative thought of the ages. We must know that our new declarations of truth have the power within themselves to completely destroy the old thought patterns. We are no longer hypnotized by the old thought patterns; we are no longer bound by negative precedents; we are no longer limited to what everyone has believed, because we know it has no truth, no reality, and no law to support it. It is but a phantom. It is obvious that climbing the ladder of success can easily lead to a loss of soul. Are there any moral problems in the job or workplace—making things detrimental to people or to the Earth, taking excessive profits or contributing to racial and sexist oppression? It is not possible to care for the soul while violating or disregarding one’s own moral sensibility. They will misconstrue your answers due to a lack of love. An alternative may be to choose a profession or projects with soul in mind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Signs of love and therefore of soul are feelings of attraction, desire, curiosity, involvement, passion, and loyalty in relation to our work. When the soul is involved, the work is not carried out by a need for prestige alone; it raises from a deeper place and therefore is not deprived of passion, spontaneity, and grace. We are and always have been part of God’s Universe. Do not ask someone else to justify your belief, for this is confusion. We must in our own minds increase our faith, reaffirming its own position, which will awaken the mind to the greater influx of blessings. Just as surely as we do this, the prison walls of the lesser self begin to crumble, the horizon experiences begins to push itself father away, and, because more spiritual territory is taken in, greater experiences are bound to follow. “Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright. Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy. The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the house of the upright will flourish (Proverbs 14.9-11).” Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God’s motives, but in understanding his character, in trusting in his promises, and in leaning on him and resting in him as the Sovereign who knows what he is doing and does all things well. Look at others with patient eyes, as some leave reality early due to the lack of love. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
God Promises He Will Renew Your Strength
In darkness there is to be found a precious brilliance, our essential nature, distilled by depression as perhaps the greatest gift of melancholy. The one and only way to know what fear, anger, joy, or remorse is, is to actually experience those feelings. If we persist in our modern way of treating depression, as an illness to be cured only mechanically and chemically, we may lose the gifts of soul. Our identity is located deeply in the soul, rather than on the surface of personality. Identity is felt as one’s soul finding its weight and measure. Some people who are experiencing depression or sadness related to a situation that they have no way of controlling, and are not suffering from a behavioral problem or a chemical imbalance need to be careful. Recovery from depression can be a lot like recovering from a dangerous and deadly narcotic addiction. People who go into rehabilitation programs, to save their lives, from drug addiction often have to terminate relationships with the people that helped power and fuel their addiction. And after they are released from a rehabilitation program, they are most vulnerable. That is why it is advised that they stay away from their friends and family, who make hang out with people who use drugs. Even if only one or two people in the group use drugs, a recovering addict has to avoid them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
When a person is released from a rehabilitation program, their systems are pure and they may not be able to handle any drugs at all in their system, but may not be aware and could die much easier from an overdose. Correspondingly, people who are suffering from a situation they find intolerable and it has been going on a long time, and there is nothing the individual can do to change their circumstances, they have to do whatever they can to avoid the people who intentionally harassing them and using them as a source pleasure by humiliating them and reminding them of painful aspects of their lives and doing things to hurt that individual to make themselves feel better. People like that are wicked, and beyond help. Recovering from trauma is a lot like recovering from a drug addiction, in that sense. You have to stay away from the group, even if there is only one bad person in the group because depression can lead to suicide, and you have endured so much that you may not know how much more you can take before you end your own life. A sad or depressed mood is just part of the soul’s cycle. The depressed person sometimes thins that the good times are all past, that there is nothing left for the present or the future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but sometimes the problem seems to be permanent. At the clinic, the patient states that he or she feels young and wants to live; and claims that one had no serious intention of killing oneself, but was only singing the lyrics of an operetta. One admits that, in retrospect, one might have been a little careless in showing oneself in a theater loge in the company of. Therefore, it is important to save yourself from this temporary problem, before you do something you may not be able to recovery from. These thoughts and feelings, sad as they are, favor the soul’s desire to be both in time and in eternity. Sometimes we associate depression with literal aging. Having been identified with youth, the soul now takes on important qualities of age that are beneficial and helpful. If age is denied, soul becomes lost in an inappropriate clinging to youth. However, there are also people who are mature, but have not been able to grow and experience adult life as they would like to, and that can also make them sad. It is like one has been promised straight whiskey, but fearing that one is being fed weak tea. Not everyone is clinging to youth, some people are trying to grow beyond their life circumstances. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
It would be wrong to believe that all the foul deeds in this World are caused by corruption, as if baseness operated automatically with the insertion of a coin. There are people who gladly place the misuse of their knowledge and skills at the disposal of the ruling classes, in the expectation that they will be rewarded by positions, titles, medals, and riches. As we age, we get a sense of having lived through something, of being older and wiser. We know that life is suffering, and that knowledge makes a difference. Your life may not matter to others, it may be a joke to them, but that life is precious, it is all you have. One cannot enjoy the bouncy, carefree innocence of youth any longer, and there is a pleasure in a new feeling of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. Our age and maturity is a measure of nobility. Scholars can become easily depressed and have to find ways to counter their dark moods. However, there are also dangers of living without study and speculation, and without reflection on our lives. Some detest psychiatry because it feeds the individual’s hunger for power, and because, like journalism, it carries within itself vast potentialities for its abuse. The psychiatrist, whose capacity for well-considered action and hence one’s talent for corruptibility some consider slight, as essentially feebleminded. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The genius of insanity is thus opposed by the feeblemindedness of psychiatry. This psychiatric stupidity often turns into malice and even a maniacal desire to persecute. However, what is scary to people who do not believe in God is that there is a being, there is something, there is a force vastly more powerful than human beings. Do not allow people to box you in and make you feel that you make never break free of the chain that you are bound by. They do not know what God has planned for your life. If you allow depression to visit, you will feel the change in your body, in your muscles, and on your face—some relief from the burden of youthful enthusiasm and the unbearable lightness of being. Aging brings out the flavors of a personality. The individual emerges over time, the way fruit matures and ripens. Depression, aging, and individuality all go together: the sadness of growing old is part of becoming an individual. Melancholy thoughts carve out an interior space where wisdom can take up residence. As we age, our ideas, formerly light, rambling, and unrelated to each other, become more densely gathered into values and a philosophy, giving our lives substance and firmness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
A journalist is a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time they have, the worse the write. Depression is sometimes described as a condition in which there are no idea—nothing to hang on to. However, maybe we have to broaden our vision and see that feelings of emptiness, the loss of familiar understandings and structures in life, and the vanishing of enthusiasm, even though they seem negative, are elements that can be appropriate and used to give life fresh imagination. We can initiate a new creative series by the definite and deliberate contemplation of our own minds, and out of the new thoughts will some new things, for the law is a reflector only. We shall discover that the very law that bound us will now free us; the power that seemed to stifle us will bring emancipation. The very power which appeared to produce evil will produce the opposite if, as, and when we change our thought patterns. The changing of these thought patterns is more than a thing of the intellect; it is also a thing of feeling, of a deep, inner conviction. We must feel that we are one with the eternal reality, and that our word is spoke in complete reliance on it; therefore it cannot fail. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Sometimes, of course, depression, like any emotion, can go beyond ordinary limits, becoming a completely debilitating illness. However, in extreme cases, too, even in the midst of strong treatments, we can still look at the core of depression and find ways to overcome it. One of the greatest stressors associated with depression is that it will never end, that life will never be joyful and active. This is one of the feelings that is part of the pattern—the sense of being trapped, forever to be held in the remote of a labyrinth of haunts. One may feel constrained, with nowhere to go. This stress seems to decrease when we stop fighting it. We must get control of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Gradually, as we re-form our thoughts they will become subjective; they will sink into that place in mind which is the power within us and which must constitute the meeting place between the absolute cause and the relative effect which it projects. It may take time to do this, but think of the reward, the gift, the outcome. Keeping the goal in mind, refusing to be baffled or defeated, with uplifted thought and calm but definite purpose, we cannot fail. This is a starting point for a more grounded, open-ended kind of knowledge that never closes up in fixed opinions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
The emptiness and dissolution of meaning that are often present in depression show how attached we can become to our ways of understanding and explaining our lives. Often our personal philosophies and our values seem to be all too neatly wrapped, leaving little room for mystery. Depression comes along then and opens up a hole. Depression makes holes in our theories and assumptions, but even this painful process can be honored as a necessary and valuable source of healing. At first, we are prone to treat everything and everyone around us, in an attempt to influence our environment and other people, and to exercise control over things to our own liking. Most of us pass through this phase. As we progress in this science we come to realize that the aim of scientific treatment is not control of people and things. We treat ourselves, our own mind, our own consciousnesses, no matter what the desired end may be, and gradually we learn to include a larger and a more harmonious field of action. We learn that when we get our own consciousness straightened out, things in our external World adjust themselves to meet our new and better inward awareness. The final mystery is oneself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Depression’s devaluation of human life, shows that cold remorse and self-judgment do not have to be seen as clinical syndromes, but as a necessary humility in human life that actually accomplishes something for the soul. We know who we are because we have uncovered the stuff of which we are made. It has been sifted out by depressive thought, reduced, in the chemical sense, to essence. Months or years focused on God and his love and healing power has allowed us to understand that everything bends back upon itself, even time, space, and light. This is divine intuition that teaches that everything which goes out will come back again. “All of you that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for you may, if your minds are firm, forever (Jacob 3.2).” If we deny or cover up anything that is home in the soul, then we cannot be fully present to others. Hiding the dark places results in a loss of soul; speaking for them and from them offers a way toward genuine community and intimacy. Even after you uncover piece after piece of the sacrifices you have made, and feel an intense regret, but discover the real core of your being and the loyalty to the things you love. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
As you reflect on your core the feeling of guilt and depression will be replaced by a stronger individual, who is no longer manipulated. Do not focus on thoughts and experiences the sad feelings and turmoil is waiting in the for you. Especially when the first time around was so painful and apparently unsuccessful. Care of the soul does not mean wallowing in the symptom, but it does mean trying to learn from depression what qualities the soul needs. Allow the Angel of God to carry your soul out of the coldness, isolation, darkness, and emptiness away to its remote places where it is no longer quarreling and where it finds unique insight and enjoys a special vision. Experience teaches us what is best. We learn that God alone is eternal and that loves overcomes hate. We have brought chance into compliance with love, reason, and faith. We have caught the lightning and made it turn the wheels of industry. We have engaged the laws of nature and harnessed their energy to our purposes. Truth will enter into a new Heaven and a new Earth, a different consciousness. When consciousness is changed, experience automatically changes. Now in the thing we do rejoice. When you become weary and feel like quitting, there is a way to have your strength renewed—wait on the Lord. The reward is in the attempt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Undergo Whatever Fate is Asking of the Soul
If we want Sunshine, step out into the Sunshine. A deepening of consciousness sometimes requires a strong move in life. Sometimes living on our own could be a way of getting to know more precisely what our souls are searching form. Love finds its soul in its feelings of incompleteness, impossibility, and imperfection. There was once an Angel who came to visit Earth. He found himself in the usual stream of human activities and found himself fascinated with the television. As he watched the news for the first time, he heard negative comments. Some of these news anchors who were supposed to be an authority called religion a mental illness and said that there might be a way and human life would be destroyed. The news reporters also went on to say that there would be a great epidemic of illness, and that financial hardships were certain to limit us all. He heard that there was not enough food, water, and housing to go around, and that people were going to die as a result. He felt like he needed to take a bath in holy water to rid himself of the negativity from the news. The Angel began to wonder if these things might not be true, and even as he entertained the thoughts of negation to which he was listening, the brightness of his angelic presence faded into dark shadows. His form seemed to shrivel, and looking at himself he saw that he was dressed as a human being, walking the Earth in fear, doubt, and uncertainty. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
And so the weary years went by, years of unhappiness and impoverishment and dread, years so filled with stress that he wished her were dead, and that some oblivion might forever swallow him up. And yet, even in the midst of all this, something within him remembered that he was once an Angel of God, living in a Heaven of beauty and a place of peace and joy, living in a garden of Eden which God has provided for him. And, remembering, a determination arose within him to somehow or other find his way back to this lost paradise. Hunger and love are two things that motivate the World. Hunger could be taken to represent the instincts which aim at preserving the individual; while love strives after objects, and its chief function, favoured in every way by nature, is the preservation of the species. This situation shows that there is something about him that is superior to the experience he is having. This determination grew into a great faith, and as his faith was renewed, a light seemed to shine in the distance; and he had the courage to travel toward the light. As he did, a miracle gradually took place. The Angel found that the shadows were being cast behind him, until finally he so completely entered into the light that no shadows were cast at all, and he started to awaken to the reality of God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
We must undergo whatever fate is asking of the soul. We think we know what love is about, both theoretically and in an episode of life, but love sometimes leans toward the mysterious dark niches of the soul’s underworld. Life takes us to the edge of what we know and have experienced, and this we are willing to assent to love and freely awaken out of sleep. So let us wake up, and let us be certain that we no longer drug ourselves with the sleeping potion of fear and uncertainty and doubt, but awake into faith and confidence, into peace and joy, into love and happiness. For there is something in us too, like the Angel in the fable, that have never forgotten. There is a silent witness at the center of every human’s being which evermore proclaims: One of the strongest needs of the soul is for community. The Soul yearns for attachment, for variety in personality, for intimacy and particularity. So these qualities in community that the soul seeks out. “Pray unto the Father in Heaven with all the energy of heart, that you may be filled with this love, which he has bestowed upon all (Moroni 7.48).” We must be with others, enjoy them and act with them, without in any way seeking to control their actions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
There are many signs in our society that we lack a sufficiently deep experience in community. There is the energetic search for a community. No one can live to oneself alone. Other people are so much a part of our lives that we cannot think of living without them. People who feel themselves excluded from society may just need a little encouragement and support. Loneliness is a major complaint and is responsible for deep-seated emotional pain that leads to despair and a consideration of not wanting to live. It is wonderful to be around people and it is a pleasure to be surrounded by friends. Community is a group pf people held together by feelings of belonging, and those feelings are the attitude of the well-adjusted person, one who has been permitted to be an individual, but who has also learned to cooperate with others. It is a fortunate child who is born into a community that understand this and that gives the child as much freedom as possible, while at the same time teaching the individual to cooperate with others who are good and trustworthy. We must succeed in obtaining the clearest insight into God’s nature and relation to us, as the one guardian of life is love, but to be loved we must love. This is the new birth that comes through a new outlook on life, a new way of thinking, a new sense of our relationship to our environment, to the people around us, to ourselves, and to God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
However, a person oppressed by loneliness can go out into the World and simply start belonging to it, not by joining organizations, but by living through feelings of relatedness—to other people, to nature, to society, to the World as a whole. Relatedness is a signal of soul. By allowing the sometimes vulnerable feelings of relatedness, soul pours into life and does not have to insist on itself symptomatically. We know that the psychological, emotional, and mental readjustments which are necessary to our well-being will be made if we experience this firm faith that all people live in God, and we must have a deep realization that we are all one in this Universal spirit which is God. If we have ourselves locked away in a dark closet, why not come out into the light? If we really have been feeling that everything is against us and no one really cares for us, know that God is in everyone, and meet the God in others and see what happens. I can love anyone I meet and be loved in return. The foundation of community is immeasurably deep, and the process of belonging, dealing actively with loneliness, begins in the depths of the soul. Love keeps the soul on the track of its fate and keeps consciousness at the edge of the abyss of the infinity that is the range of the soul. Forgive yourself and everyone else for everything that has ever happened. Try to feel that everyone is doing the best they can. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Some people do not like their jobs because there never seems to be completion and satisfaction, but they keep going to fulfill those aspirations. Find God in yourself because blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Seek, and you shall find. Love must go forth and meet love. All people are rooted in God, and it is the only being as we go down to the roots of our beings that we unify with others in spirit and truth. Manifestation of God is the force of life itself and is the fountain of love that keeps the soul alive and full. There is no way toward divine love expect through the discovery of human intimacy and community. One feeds the other. Care of the soul, then requires an openness to love’s many forms. Because we are one with God, we are one with all people, and that allows us to feel our union with people and nature. We feel that we belong to life, love life, and into the joy of living. We enter into companionship and cooperation with them. And there is something within us that reaches out and embraces the whole World. Something within the core of our being blesses everything we touch, brings life and happiness and joy to everyone. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Do not let your life be full of regrets of the past. As our trust in God grows, we open our hearts, seeking to do his will, and waiting for answers that will help us understand. Know that we have something inside of us that acts as a healing force, restoring everything to its natural and native perfection. In time and by degrees, we receive God’s gracious strength and direction. As we silently listen to the spirit within us and think of its perfection, we know that we are born again—born into joy and hope and gladness, born into love and faith and assurance. Silently, release every negative thought from your mind. With a growing understanding of the Lord’s grace and mercy, we will find that our self-willed hearts begin to accept gratitude. We will receive new hope and fresh guidance through the Holy Ghost. God’s way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the World to come. Some may thing they have failed too many times and feel too weak to change sinful acts or Worldly desires of the heart. However, if we earnestly appeal to God, he takes us as we are—and makes us more than we ever imagined. Truly dedicated to the Savior, we can say with confidence that it will work out. I pray that we will focus on the simplicity that is in Christ and allow his grace to lift and carry us. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
I Have Been Struck by the Way that Most People Finally Say Good-Bye!
The final good-bye does not involve words, almost as if words lone are insufficient to communicate their true feelings. The ideas that people gather over time about what a couple is supposed to be like is derived from overt messages and less direct influences from their family, neighborhood, school, ethnic community, racial, religious, and class identity. Management of feeling and expression enhances the functioning of groups by allowing continuity of action, building solidarity among members, and indicating status differences. Expressive control allows collective action to continue without the situation becoming redefined as the interrupted action or novelty that emotional arousal implies. To further highlight this illustration, expressive control suppresses the potential embarrassment in intimate examinations by a medical professional. Nonemotional voice tines and other nonintimate gestures suppress stress, giving the interaction a routine, technical meaning. A similar display rule in public settings shields onlookers from intimate gestures that would disrupt civil comportment. Kissing, fondling, and other gestures between lovers are normally prohibited in public settings. Intimate expressions remind onlookers that they are being excluded from a desirable relationship. Violators of this display rule are usually the young, tourists, and others who disregard public sensitivity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The most simple and direct type of human communication does not need words. Let us awaken tomorrow with all our zest and seal by embracing and creating life. Sentiment management can build group solidarity. The disruptive effects of envy are controlled universally by belief systems that proscribe envy, and by norms that diminish conditions for envy. These norms require that enviable goods be concealed from observation, that people show humility over good fortune, and that enviable objects or events be shared symbolically or materially. Solidarity can also be enhanced by evocation of humor. Laughter and humor among hospital patents has been observed to be invitations to decrease social distance, emphasizing shared experiences and common definitions of the situation. The liberating effect of joined laughter consists in the consensus that it brings about in a brief span of time. As soon as humans discovered the existence and function of the heart, they recognized that it was influenced by human companionship and love. Most of us have, at one time or another, felt our hearts beating rapidly when we are close to those we love or, occasionally, when we have been offended by others. Many of us have felt our heart sink, as if pressed by some crushing weight, after the loss of loved ones. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The psychological impact of suddenly finding oneself a patient in a hospital can be devastating. Lying in bed with needles in one’s arms, tubes in one’s chest recording every heartbeat on a television screen, being forces to use a bedpan, threatened with imminent death, rendered totally helpless and dependent on others—the experience is shattering. As his heart blips ominously on a television screen next to his bed, a patient’s life is reduced to a few essentials. What does it all mean? Is he going to die? Would he have done anything differently? The World of the patient’s wife or children or loved ones is also reduced to a few stark essentials, for the man or woman they visit in such a unit may not be alive the next time they come back. What do you say in such circumstances—what can you sat to help—what is important to communicate? The very existence of units that house people faced with the imminent possibility of death helps outline in stark simplicity certain elementary facts about life. One of those is our basic need to communicate. We ought always to thank God for you, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you, and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. Assumptions are ideas which one holds to be true without any proof that they are true—things that are taken for granted. Some people are more gifted at living than others. They do have an effect on those around them, but the process stops there because there is no way of describing in technical terms just what it is they do. Expression management is a continual affirmation of a group’s structure of status and deference. We may claim statuses by displaying affective coolness when greater involvement would ordinarily be expected. Some male groups admire men who can attract and conquer a beautiful woman without becoming involved, or who can engage in homosexual prostitution while displaying affective detachment. Business managers are expected to control their emotional reactions, in contrast to ordinary workers who are not believed to be able to do so. The value of humanistic psychology is not limited to the mentally unwell. Its techniques can be useful in your life, but they should not be used to manipulate other people. Psychology can be most useful in helping you to become more fully human. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
High status includes the power to elicit beneficial and optimistic gestures from subordinates and to inhibit their hostile expressions. Smiling and laughter are usually offered upward in statues hierarchies, ostensibly indicating pleasant, egalitarian relations and concealing status differences temporarily when the later have invited a decrease in social distance. In traditional Far Eastern cultures, a subordinate is expected to conceal anger or sulk when criticized, and to mask these feelings by showing pleasure at being corrected. In contemporary New World societies, women are more likely than men to smile, even when angered or frustrated. Women’s initial facial expression of anger is masked or covered up instantly. Groups manage sentiments through the kinds of information they allow to enter open awareness. Growing numbers of physicians now recognize that the health of the human heart depends not only on such factors as genetics, diet, and exercise, but also to a large extent on the social and emotional healthy of the individual. A fully human person values human beings above material goods, and feels strongly that human rights are far more important than material rights. These also recognize they have a capacity for enjoyment and pleasure, and they try to be real and open in their relationships with others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
People who are fully human are willing to risk another person’s reaction to his or her open expression of feelings. They use openness and authenticity, not to manipulate or control, but to share knowledge of oneself with others. Hatred is sustained by emphasizing an enemy’s perceived negative qualities, overlooking or explaining away anything favorable, and then directing hatred toward this contrast conception. Love between parents and their grown children may be strengthened by limited contact that allows earlier conflicts to be forgotten. Generational gaps in attitudes and behavior are accentuated by accurate knowledge about each other, weakening love bonds. Selective recall is sometimes a conscious feeling-management technique. College men reported control over jealousy by prohibiting any mention of their girlfriends’ previous lovers. The couple jointly censured anyone who indiscreetly disclosed information about the woman’s earlier relationships. Sentiments are managed by sensitivity and avoidance within the social framework of memory. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you to, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders so that you will not be dependent on anybody (1 Thessalonians 4.11).” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
When faces with danger or the threat of danger, human beings can derive an enormous sense of comfort from their fellow humans. Whether the danger is artificially contrived in a laboratory or part of the infinite variety of real life stresses, human beings instinctively seek out each other’s company in adverse circumstances. In all our distress and persecution, we are encouraged about you because of your faith. For now, we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Night and day, we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and virtuous in the presence of our God and Father. When someone’s life is in mortal peril, the medical effectiveness of proper care is well documented. Incidence of sudden death dropped by 56 percent in hospitals that are trained to properly treat a person’s symptoms and offer emotional support. Also, it is clear that the heart of human relationships and human love ultimately moves belong anything that can be objectively described or measured. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Kindness is the Essence of a Celestial Life
Kindness is how Godlike people treat others and should permeate all our words, education, works, and actions. The temporal aspects of exchange relations allow the development of emergent aspects of the relations, such as trust, commitment, solidarity, investments, concerns about justice and equity, and contractual agreements. The most important single feature of the exchange process is the tendency for actors to become—through exchange—drawn into patterns of more or less lasting mutual dependency. However, if one person is more powerful and uses that power advantage to gain benefits, that individual or organization becomes more dependent and the advantage is lost. That is why reciprocity is important is business and intimate relationships. Reciprocity is developed and woven into good enough relationships, sometimes without participants knowing what they are doing. If a relationship is important enough to them, partners will be emotionally invested in it enough to work at building and maintaining it. Business reciprocity as a strategy has huge advantages. People do business with those they know, like, and trust. When you give first, without expecting anything in return, it goes a long way in helping to build the like and trust factor. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
What is your business giving away? What product, service, bit of knowledge, or piece of information could you charge for, but should probably give away instead? When you give away valuable information or goods and services for free, your business has greatly increased its credibility and likelihood of picking up new customers through this strategy. When someone foes you a solid favor, you feel compelled to return the favor. The same goes for your customers. No good deed goes unpunished. It is completely counterintuitive, but without fail, when you give first (without expecting anything in return), you will get back much more than you initially gave. Competitors may use you, possibly. However, whose credibility and reputation just went up, your business who is providing enormous value for free, or your competitor, who is now trying to sell what you are giving away for free? (Believe this, your competitors will not try to repay a good deed, and if they are stealing your material, they will not understand how or why the law of reciprocity works.) Some of the benefits include search engine optimization, increased brand recognition, and customer loyalty. A charity enduring long, and is kind, and fair, and is not ostentatious, is not easily provoked. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
If we are not kind to others, we do not honor God. When a competitor is using you or your business and providing no benefit in return, and they become dependent on you, the coalition formation will transform the structure of the network, redistributing power to your advantage, and eventually you will be able to vertically integrate markets and channels of distribution. Vertical integration is a strategy where a company expands its business operations into different steps on the same production path, such as when a manufacturer owns its supplier and/or distributor. Family lines can be analyzed similarly with kin-based economic opportunities flowing down and filial loyalty and support flowing up across generations. Examples of negatively connected networks include competitive economic market structures, dating networks and friendship networks. Most concrete networks involve connections of both types. If we do not have charity, we are nothing, for charity never fails. Therefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail, but charity is the pure love of God, and it will endure forever, and those whoso are found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Judging from the frequent occurrence of such words as power, influence, dominance, and submission, status, and authority, the importance of power is widely recognized. When I was in college and studying for my final examines, my grandmother asked me did I pray to God to help me on my exams. Even though I was raised in the church, I did not understand, at that time, how God could help me with my education. I did not yet see spirituality as a holistic concept. Nevertheless, I prayed to God and that semester in college I got a 3.83 grade point average, and the next semester God helped me earn a 4.0 grade point average and I was accepted into an honors program to attend college overseas. Each student had to have a 4.0 grade point average to be accepted. Power relations are frequently intransitive. The scriptures teach us that the righteous exercise of our ability is dependent upon our living the principles of kindness, charity, and love. By kindness, and pure knowledge, we shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile. Social structure is created, maintained, and changed through symbolic interaction, and once created is a constraining interaction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
If people do something anyway, there is no need to have a norm prescribing it. The norm is redundant. It is a waste of time prescribing things that people are going to do even if they are not prescribed. Let us examine our lives and determine to follow the Savior’s example by being kind, loving, and charitable. And as we do so, we will be in a better position to call down the powers of Heaven for ourselves, for our families, and for our fellow travelers in this sometimes difficult journey back to our Heavenly home. We have a deep tendency to create social ties through exchange of gifts. Exchange theory offers a soft interpretation of power. Exchange theory emphasizes mutually beneficial exchange rather than coercion. Therefore, power inequalities are seen to result from asymmetric or unilateral exchange. Stated differently, power inequality stems from unequal dependence. However, a person does not necessarily require a Church calling, an invitation to help someone, or even good healthy to become an instrument in God’s hands. Domination is usually found in institutionalized forms of power called authority, embedded in or deriving from a legitimate social order. Both weak and the strong party can gain through the yielding act of a weak person. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
Power, like exchange, can be symmetrical and even equal. Domination can take purely coercive forms, but taken by itself, coercive rule is unstable and costly. Stable and enduring forms of domination are based upon claims of and beliefs in the legitimacy of domination (including the right to use coercive force). When legitimized, domination is called authority. Different bases for legitimacy generate qualitatively different systems of authority. Three pure types of authority can be analytically distinguished, deriving their legitimacy from rational-legal, charismatic, and traditional sources. Concrete empirical systems approximate those types in varying degree. However, none of the forms of domination can be conceptualized properly on the basis of exchange. Charity and love are the greatest principles in existence. If we can lend a helping hand to the oppressed, if we can assist those who are despondent and in sorrow, if we can uplift and ameliorate the condition of humankind, it is our mission to do it, it is an essential part of our religion to do it. When we feel love for God’s children, we are given opportunities to help them in their journey back to his presence. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Power and influence are based upon exchange processes, but domination and authority are not. There are two diametrically contrasting types of domination. Domination by virtue of constellation of interests (in particular: by virtue of a position of monopoly), and domination by virtue of authority. The purest type of the former is monopolistic domination in the World; of the latter, patriarchal, magisterial, or princely power. God has asked us to journey, go on missions, accept callings, invite someone to church, or help someone in need. The Lord will grant unto them a portion of his Spirit to go with the, and abide with them, that they might be an instrument in the hands of God to bring, if it were possible, others to the knowledge of truth. Do we really want to be instruments in God’s hands? If so, our desire will permeate our prayers and be for focus of our reality. It may be conformity with respect to a belief, an attitude, a value, a behavior; it may be conceptualized as deviance from one set of norms, that than adherence to another; it may be thought of as conformity to the norms of a group to which the individual aspires to belong rather than to those of one in which he or she currently hold membership. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
What do all of these have in common in shaping of behavior, feeling, or thought in accordance with that of a referent, and to the extent that such attitudes and behaviors are organized around a particular social status (student, mother, father, teacher), the consequence of normative reference orientation is socialization or anticipatory socialization. It illuminates social mobility, acculturation, attitude change. May our minds be enlightened and the cloud of darkness lifted from us. Let us see with our spiritual eyes. Financial difficulty is a reality faced by millions of people. There is precious little money for the essentials—things like food, mortgage, rent, car repairs, and luxuries like dining out and going to the opera or theater. That is a reality in many households. However, fear not. God is there and he has already given you the key to prosperity: prayer. It is not just a matter of asking for money, there is more to it than that. God, we come to you with thanksgiving for all you have given us, and how you have blessed and sustained us for all this time. We lift up to you our finances and that you for your words and promises that you will supply all of our needs. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
We pray that you will bless us with your provision now. Open the storehouse of Heaven and pour financial blessings up us. Give us wisdom as to how to handle all finances, and keep us from making any foolish decisions. Bless our work with success. Reveal to us how we can earn more and handle our finances more efficiently. Show us where we have spent unwisely and how we can reduce our debt and expenses. Show us if we are doing what you want us to do, or if you have other work for us. Open our eyes to see where we are not ling your way with regard to our finances. Teach us how to spend, save, invest and better organize our money and resources such a land, estates, travel, and other forms of capital. We know that our true treasure is found in you. Forgive us for any times when we have not fully loved out that truth. We choose to seek you, God, and your kingdom first and foremost in our lives, trusting that you will provide all we require. It is our glory that we may be an instrument in the hands of God, to bring some soul to repentance; and this is our joy. May our confidence in God increase. God treasures those who help his children (grown and youthful). Kindness is key to a celestial life. #RandolpHarris 9 of 9
Speak the Truth?
Some voices speak of the things of the World, providing useful information we need to make our way in mortality. Others, whom are called alternate voices speak on important subjects without calling or authority. The alternate voices are conducting Psychoanalytic character assassination. It is a pathography, and is dignified as a scientific endeavor designed to find out fact rather than destroy reputations. That form of analysis has become the worst enemy of the soul. It killed what it analyzed. The individual conducting the psychoanalytic analysis lacked any trace of self-mastery, and seemed to be altogether unrestrictedly at the mercy of their instincts. The analysis displayed the unconscious mechanisms of which, moreover, implicated they have that mental disease, schizophrenia. They acted as false prophets in their dehumanizing organizations, whining and trotting about, listening to a chorus of voices in their heads. Many people have heard the things reported by these alternate voices, and as a result some people have been misled, put in danger, and the work of the Lord can suffer. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
Our age has witnessed the decline of a number of subject, and has suffered more amazingly in this respect than rhetoric. When one recalls that a century ago rhetoric was regarded as the most important humanistic discipline taught in our colleges—when one recalls this fact and contrasts it with the very different situation prevailing today—one is forced to see that a great shift of valuation has taken place. Alternate voices are pursuing selfish personal interests, such as property, pride, prominence, or power. Other voices are the bleatings of lost souls who cannot heart the voice of God and trot about trying to find their way without his guidance. Some of these voices call out guidance for others—the lost leading the lost. Many alternate voices are of those whose avowed or secret object is to deceive and devour the children of God. The great shift in valuation, of course, is the movement away from the value-laden languages of theology and tragedy, poetry and prose, in short of the humanities, and toward the ostensibly value neutral languages of junk science. This attempt to escape, or to deny, valuation is, for obvious reasons, especially important and dangerous in psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and the so-called social sciences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Indeed, one could go as far as to say that the specialized language of these disciplines serve virtually no other purpose than to conceal valuation behind an ostensibly scientific and therefore nonvaluational semantic screen. There have always been alternate voices whose purpose or effect is to deceive. Alterative voices are heard in magazines, on TV, in journals, newspapers, in lectures, and conferences. Language, which is thus predicative, is for the same cause sermonic. We do not wish to isolate people from alternative voices, but it is important to teach correct principles and then leave people to govern themselves by personal choices. We are all of us preachers in private or public capacities. We have no sooner uttered words than we have given impulse to other people to look at the World, or some small part of it, in our way. Language is intended to be sermonic. Because of its nature and its intimacy with our feelings, it is always preaching. This brings us to the necessity of concluding that the upholders of mere dialectic are among the most subversive enemies of societies and culture. That is why it is important to listen to the voice or source that can provide a spiritual quality, which informs, but uplifts people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
Among these subversive enemies, social scientists can be very high on the list. If science deals with the abstract and the universal, rhetoric is near the other end, dealing in significant art with the particular and the concrete. All of these reasons combine to show why rhetoric should be considered the most humanistic of the humanities. It is credited to individual people in their individual situations, so that by the very definitions of the terms here involved, it takes into account what science deliberately, to satisfy its own purposes, leaves out. If a source is bias, it is a threat to human freedom and dignity. Your medical records are considered confidential information under federal privacy rules established by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. However, you still may become the victim of improper disclosure of medical records through a data security breach, the improper maintenance of records, or the unauthorized snooping of your patient file. The law states you have a right to sue for invasion of privacy or breach of doctor-patient confidentiality, and receive damages as compensation for injuries suffered as a result of the disclosure of medical records. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The idea of humaneness, the demarcation between the human and nonhuman being, is characterizes as the bearing and behavior that a paradigmatic individual exhibits in order to promote a flourishing human community. A slave is one who cannot speak or communicate one’s thoughts. Which raises the question: Is a person a slave because one cannot speak nor communicate one’s thoughts, or is one a slave because one in not permitted to communicate? Humaneness springs from an internal source, namely human nature. This means that humane conduct is an outgrowth of inherent traits, and hence moral or humane conduct comes from the virtue of humaneness. Goodness is a moral behavior. The internalization of virtue advocates that humanness, rightness, properity, and intelligence all are virtues that can and should be performed. The mind’s feeling of pity and compassion is the sprout of humaneness; the mind’s feeling of shame and aversion is the sprout of rightness; the mind’s feeling of modesty and compliance is the sprout of propriety; and the mind’s sense of right and wrong is the sprout of wisdom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
One’s natural tendencies enable one to do good; human nature is good. When one does what is not good, it is not the fault of one’s native capacities. The mind of pity and commiseration is possessed by all human beings. While it is understood that some people have to be tough and mean to stay safe, and they may have to defend their homes, it does not mean they are bad people. God loves us all and we should not judge each other, we all sin. And sometimes our sins keep us safe. For instance, we cannot say what we always think as it may cause problems. On Bewitched in an episode called Speak the Truth, which originally aired 16 December 1965, Endora magically makes everyone speak the truth, and chaos ensured. Darrin told his wife that he did not find her beautiful with rollers in her hair, he also told a client that the was worthless, did not like working on his account, although the product was great, he wanted a more prestigious account. A lot of people’s feelings got hurt because they did not truly know what they were saying. They did not take the time to craft their messages in a constructive honest way. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Another important issue is racism, especially with rap music and TV shows using certain words. Some people thing just because people use certain words, regardless of if they should be used or not, makes them racist, but that may not be the case. I tried to explain to someone that Archie Bunker, from All in the Family, was not truly racist, he just did not have much experience with other cultures and some of the people he was around were not friendly to other culture. However, Archie Bunker never went out of his way to hurt people and he never assaulted any one, expect for the one time he was trying to defend a Puerto Rican lady from a thug. On the TV show, The Jeffersons, in an episode called Me and Mr. G, which aired originally 12 December 1979, Louise, George’s wife takes in a troubled orphan for a week. The girl really opens up to George Jefferson, and starts calling him Mr. G. However, George called one of his neighbors a derogatory term, and the told the little girl it was okay to use that term. So, she called a social worker that name, and they removed her from Mr. G’s custody. The little girl was not racist, she did not even know what it meant, but it was a term she learned. They have to explain to her that it was not okay to use that word because it hurts people. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
People sometimes misuse language because they are mad, angry, hurting, or confused, but that does not necessarily make them a bad person. They just may need to be taught not to use those words. A lot of rap music uses a word that makes many people uncomfortable and I am surprised they are still allowed to use it. Imagine how uncomfortable it would be to be in the car with someone and a rapper uses the N word. Or imagine how offended you might be if you hear someone listening to music and they sing along and use the N word. And although it may be offensive it does not necessarily make someone racist. Racism is more when you allow certain cultures to break laws others have to obey or when you target someone because of their culture, ethnic background, race, gender, or medical condition and purposely hurt them, physically, mentally, systematically, and verbally. Some people sin because they like to. They do not have to, but it brings them great joy to hurt others and they will eventually be judged by the laws of human and God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Some of life’s most complicated decision involve mixtures of good and evil. To what extent can one seek the benefit of something good one desires when this can only be done by simultaneously promoting something bad one opposes? That is a personal decision, but it needs to be made with a sophisticated view of the entire circumstance and with a prayer for Heavenly guidance. The noble person has as one’s nature humaneness, rightness, decorum and wisdom, which, being rooted in one’s heart, grows apparent in the brightness of one’s countenance. Dear God, loving essence of all there is. Please fill us with your sacred presence. We ask for your love and guidance and for your blessing, as we explore the deep reaches of our heart. May you grant us assistance in releasing that which stands in the way of true love. Make our hearts pure and our intentions clear. Please bring us to our most perfect partners. We seek someone who enhances us by their very being, who brings more love, joy, peace, and prosperity to our lives, who we can fully love, and who can fully receive our love. In our presences, we wish to see people who loves, honor, and cherish us completely and always. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
May our hearts be open and head be clear. May life be ready to welcome true love. God, embrace us in a circle of your love and may we be uplifted by your grace. We seek learning by studying the accumulated wisdom of various disciplines and by using the powers of reasoning placed in us by our Creator. We should also seek learning by faith in God, the giver of revelation. Many great discoveries and achievements in science and the arts have resulted from a God-given revelation. Seekers who have paid the price in perspiration have been magnified by inspiration. The acquisition of knowledge by revelation is an extra bonus to seekers in the sciences and the arts, but is the fundamental method for those who seek to know God and the doctrines of his gospel. In this area of knowledge, scholarship and reason are insufficient. A seeker of truth about God must rely on revelation. The way to revelation is righteousness. Diligently seek and we shall have the mysteries of God unfolded unto us by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is important to have our minds on the things of God. Whatever it is, always know you can go to God, and he will handle it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Randolph Harris II International Institute 