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You Will Live Fifteen More Years!
Discovering the rules of society best suited to nations would required a superior intelligence that beheld all the passions of humans without feeling any of them; who had no affinity with our nature, yet knew it through and through; whose happiness was independent of us, yet who nevertheless was willing to concern itself with ours; finally, who, in the passage of time, procures for oneself a distant glory, being able to labour in one age and find enjoyment in another. (A people never becomes famous except when its legislation begins to decline. It is not known for how many centuries the institution established by Lycurgus caused the happiness of the Spartans before the rest of Greece took note of it.) Gods would be needed to give humans laws. The same reasoning used by Caligula regarding matters of fact was used by Plato regarding right in defining the civil or royal humans one looks for in one’s dialogue The Statesman. However, if it is true that a great prince is a rare man, what about a general legislator? The former merely has to follow the model the latter should propose to one. The latter is the engineer who invents the machine; the former is merely the workman who constructs it and makes it run. At the birth of societies, it is the leaders of republics who bring about the institutions that forms the leaders of the republic. One who dares to undertake the establishment of a people should feel that one is, so to speak, in a position to change human nature, to transform each individual (who by oneself is a perfect and solitary whole), into a part of a larger whole from which this individual receives, in a sense, one’s life and one’s being; to alter humans’ constitution in order to strengthen one’s life and one’s being; to alter humans’ constitution in order to strengthen it; to substitute a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence we have all received from nature. In a word, one must deny humans their own forces in order to give one forces that are alien to one and that one cannot make use of without the help of others. The more these natural forces are dead and obliterated, and the greater and more these natural forces are dead and obliterated, and the greater and more durable are the acquired forces, the more too is the institution solid and perfect. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Thus if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing except in concert with all the others, and if the force acquired by the whole is equal or superior to the sum of the natural forces of all the individuals, one can say that the legislation has achieved the highest possible point of perfect. The legislator is in every respect an extraordinary human in the state. If one ought to be so by one’s genius, one is no loess so by one’s office, which is neither magistracy nor sovereignty. This office, which constitutes the republic, does not enter into its constitution. It is a particular and superior function having nothing in common with the dominion over humans. For if one who has command over humans must not have command over laws, one who has command over the laws must no longer have any authority over humans. Otherwise, one’s laws, ministers of one’s passions, would often only serve to perpetuate one’s injustices, and one could never avoid private opinions altering the sanctity of one’s work. When Lycurgus gave laws to one’s homeland, one began by abdicating the throne. It was the custom of most Greek cities to entrust the establishment of their laws to foreigners. The modern republics of Italy often imitated this custom. The republic of Geneva did the same and things worked out well. (Those who view Calvin simply as a theologian fail to grasp the extent of one’s genius. The codification of our wise edicts, in which one had a large role, does one as much honour as one’s Institutes. Whatever revolution time may bring out in our cult, so long as the love of homeland and of liberty is not extinguished among us, the memory of this great human will never cease to be held sacred.) In its finest age Rome saw the revival within its midst of all the crimes of tyranny and saw itself on the verge of perishing as a result of having united the legislative authority and the sovereign power in the same hands. Nevertheless, the decimvirs themselves never claimed the right to have any law passed on their authority alone. Nothing we propose, they would tell people, can become law without your consent. Romans, be yourselves the authors of the laws, therefore, does not or should not have any legislative right. And the populace itself cannot, even if it wanted to, deprive itself of this incommunicable right, because, according to the fundamental compact, only the general will obligates private individuals, and there can never be any assurance that a private will is in conformity with the general will until it has been submitted to the free vote of people. I have already said this, but it is not a waste of time to repeat it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Thus we find together in the work of legislation two things that seem incompatible: and undertaking that transcends human force, and, to execute it, an authority that is nil. Another difficulty deserves attention. The wise humans who want to speak to the common masses in the former’s own language rather than in the common vernacular cannot be understood by the masses. For there are a thousand kinds of ideas that are impossible to translate in the language of the populace. Overly general perspectives and overly distant objects are equally beyond its grasp. Each individual, in having no appreciation for any other plan of government but the one that relates to one’s own private interest, finds it difficult to realize the advantages one ought to draw from the continual privations that good laws impose. For an emerging people to be capable of appreciating the sound maxims of politics and to follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause. The social spirit which ought to be the work of that institution, would have to preside over the institution itself. And humans would be, prior to the advent of laws, what they ought to become by means of laws. Since, therefore, the legislator is incapable of using either force or reasoning, one must of necessity have recourse to an authority of a different order, which can compel without violence and persuade without convincing. This is what has always forced the fathers of nations to have recourse to the intervention of Heaven and to credit the gods with their own wisdom, so that the peoples, subjected to the laws of the state as to those of nature and recognizing the same power in the formation of humans and of the city, might obey with liberty and bear with docility the yoke of public felicity. It is this sublime reason, which transcends the grasp of ordinary humans, whose decisions the legislator puts in the mouth of the immortals in order to compel by divine authority those whom human prudence could not move. (And in truth, there has never been among a people a single legislator who, in proposing extraordinary laws, did not have recourse to God, for otherwise they would not be accepted, since there are many benefits known to a prudent human that do not have in themselves evident reasons enabling one to persuade others.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
However, not everybody is capable of making the gods speak or of being believed when one proclaims oneself their interpreter. The great soul of the legislator is the true miracle that should prove one’s mission. Any human can engrave stone tablets, buy an oracle, or feign secret intercourse with some divinity, or train a bird to talk in one’s ear, or find other crude methods of imposing one’s beliefs on the people. One who knows no more than this may perchance assemble a troupe of lunatics, but one will never found an empire and one’s extravagant work will soon die with one. Pointless sleights-of-hand form a fleeting connection; only wisdom can make it lasting. The Judaic Law, which still exists, and that of the child of Ishmael, which has ruled half the World for ten centuries, still proclaim today the great humans who enunciated them. And while pride-ridden philosophy or the blind spirit of factionalism sees in them nothing but lucky impostors, the true political theoretician admires in their institutions that great and powerful genius which presides over establishments that endure. We should not, with Warburton, conclude from this that politics and religion have a common object among us, but that in the beginning stages of nations the one serves as an instrument of the other. Giant historical shifts are sometimes symbolized by minute changes in everyday behaviour. One such change—its significance all but overlooked—occurred early in the 1970’s when a new product began invading the pharmacies of France, England, Holland, and other European countries. The new product was a do-it-yourself hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) test. Within a few years, an estimated 15 to 20 million such kits had been sold to European women. Soon advertisements in American newspapers were clamouring: “Pregnant? The sooner you know, the better.” When Warner-Lambert, an American firm, introduced the kit under its brand name it found the response “overwhelmingly good.” According to our report, the global pregnancy testing market size is estimated to be worth $136 Billion US Dollars as of 2021. Furthermore, it is forecasted to grow to $174 billion by 2026, which is a 5.1 percent increase. Year, nearly 8 million women in America used these tests, but it is still recommended to seek medical attention to confirm the results and find out how to plan for life with a baby growing inside you. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Manufacturers focus on new product launches, expansions of their markets, mergers, and collaborations and this is having a beneficial influence on the pregnancy testing market. Planned or meant pregnancies have increased the awareness among women, offering immense growth opportunities to the key players. Some people see this as sidestepping the physician. However, self-care—the idea that people can and should be more medically self-reliant—is a fast-rolling new bandwagon…Across the land, ordinary people are learning to handle stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs, administer breast self-examinations and Pap smears, even carrying out elementary surgical procedures. However, you want to make sure that you are having a healthy baby, and find out what special needs your child may have, what kind of diet and exercise routine you need, and so forth. So, it is important to seek medical advice. Do not know the symptoms, you cannot hide a growing baby and they will not just go away. It is a human life and this is a very serious situation, so one needs to consult a professional and find out the proper methods of caring for a fetus. Today, many mothers and fathers are becoming educated parents. Overall, 77.1 percent of women initiate prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy; 4.6 percent began prenatal care in the third trimester, and 1.6 of women receive no car at all. Schools offer courses on everything from foot care to “instant pediatrics.” And people are checking their own blood pressure in coin-operated machines located in more thousands of shopping centers, airports, and department stores in the United States of America. As government and health insurers Worldwide implement measures to control costs, public hospitals are operating on tighter budgets, while private facilities are receiving lower reimbursements. These measures are triggering a transformation of the purchasing process that is changing the way that medical products are bought and valued and who is paying for them. In the past, few medical instruments were sold to non-physicians. However, a growing share of the instrument market is destined for the home. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
With the aging population, driven by declining fertility rates, and increasing life expectancy this represents a need for more self-care. Sales of otoscopes, ear-cleaning devices, nose and throat irrigators, air purifiers, dehumidifiers, humidifiers, other instruments, articles, apparatuses, or machines that are used in the prevention diagnosis, or treatment of illness or disease, or for detecting, measuring, restoring, correcting, or modifying of the function of the body for some health purpose. The early account for nearly 33 percent of total healthcare consumption, and specialized convalescent products are all booming, as individual take on more responsibility for their own health, reduce the number of visits to the doctor, and cut short their hospital stays. Healthcare eCommerce is anticipated to be over $435 billion by 2025. Hospitals are buying 53 percent of all sold medical equipment, but consumer demand is also growing. The United States of American remains the largest medical device market in the World: $156 billion (40 percent of the global medical market). By 2023, it is expected to grow to $208 billion. Personal healthcare spending for the population segment is approximately $22,000 per person, $4,100 for children, and an estimated $9,800 for working people. The elderly population is expected to expand from less than 8 percent of the population to more than 21 percent of the total population by 2060. Healthcare expenditure if expected to grow from $3.5 trillion to $6 trillion in 2027, an average annual growth rate of 5.5 percent. The industry includes almost 2 million jobs in the United States of America, including both direct and indirect employment. Medical technology directly accounts for well over 300,000 of these jobs. In California alone, there is an expected demand for almost 450,000 new allied healthcare workers through 2024. The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) predicts a shortage of as many as 122,000 physicians by 2032. If the health care patterns were equalized across race, insurance coverage, and geographical location, the United States of American will need an additional 95,900 doctor immediately. By 2025, there will also be a forecast shortage of more than 400,000 home health assistants, and 29,400 nurse practitioners. There will also be shortages in other health care professions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
On the surface all this might create a new fad of unlicensed medical professionals and individuals taking health care into their own hands, or deferring their needs to veterinarians to reduce costs. The rust to treat one’s own problems (instead of paying a licensed professional to) reflects a substantial change in our values, in our definition of illness, and in our perception of body and self. There is a notoriously strong association between social anxiety and loneliness. Loneliness is associated with many of the same features as social anxiety—namely, a lack of optimism about interpersonal encounters, low sociability, avoidance of others, and poor social skills. Like socially anxious or depressed individuals, lonely people devalue communication with others and view their own communication skills negatively. Social anxiety is positively correlated with loneliness, and each of these problems is negatively associated with various aspects of social skills. Another large sample survey study showed tht apprehensions about public speaking and apprehension about dyadic interaction were both positively associated with loneliness. Most explanations of the relationship between social anxiety and loneliness argue that loneliness is a consequence or result of social anxiety. Socially anxious persons tend to approach social interactions with discomfort and nervousness. As a consequence, other people tend to respond unfavorably to these awkward and reserved interactions. The disrupted and unpleasant interactions, with their attendant negative responses from others, have the obvious effect of leaving socially anxious persons longing for mor satisfying and intimate personal relationships. In more extreme cases, such as full-blown social phobia, avoidance of social contact may sever as a temporarily effective means of managing and coping with the anxiety. However, this coping mechanism comes high price. Eventually, all but the most inherently antisocial individuals, anxious or not, become painfully lonely as a result of prolonged avoidance of social contact. There are four mechanism that can cause socially anxious persons to become lonely. First, the reticent interaction style of socially anxious people may be misinterpreted as aloof or snobbish. This is thought to prompt others to avoid the anxious persons, therefore producing feelings of loneliness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Second, some people have a desire for sociability despite feeling socially anxious. Not that sociability and shyness are distinct concepts. Although it may sound paradoxical, many socially anxious people would actually like to socialize with others. The problem is that they feel such encounters will go badly, and they will in some ways be worse off than if they just avoid the encounters altogether. Therefore, among those socially anxious people with a desire for social contact, loneliness is expected to be prevalent. Third, many stressful events (exempli gratia, moving away from home for the first time, loss of a spouse through death or divorce) present many interpersonal challenges and create feelings of uncertainty. Such events are inherently threatening and anxiety-provoking. Coping with them often requires a great deal of social skills. Of course, the people least equipped with these skills, such as socially anxious individuals, have the greatest cause for anxiety. In such cases, loneliness becomes a likely outcome. Socially anxious people have a pessimistic style of social cognition that is likely to cause loneliness—namely, blaming themselves for social failures and seeing personal flaws as fairly stable, unchangeable traits. For example, if a man goes on a date with a woman and it goes badly, if he interprets this as a result of the fact that “I am just no good with women,” it stands to reason that one should experience anxiety over such encounters in the future. The interpretation of the past failures suggests that the same outcome is inevitable in similar future encounters. There is a notoriously strong relationship between social anxiety and depression. Among those seeking clinical attention, the comorbidity between social anxiety disorder and depression is between 40 percent and 50 percent. It is believed that social anxiety creates a predisposition to developing other psychological problems, and that it precedes the development of the depression in most cases. It is impossible to overlook the striking similarity in the interpersonal foundations of social anxiety and depression. Each is associated with poor social skills, interpersonal rejection, loneliness, and problematic experiences in the family of origin. If depression is often secondary to social anxiety, one must wonder whether the interpersonal phenomena that have been linked to social anxiety are mostly the result of comorbid depression. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
These three possible connections between social anxiety and depression are worthy of consideration. First, they suggest that depression may be the result of repeated self-presentational failures. Feelings of chronic failure in social situations may produce a sense of learned helplessness that culminates in depression. This account places social anxiety (self-presentational concerns) before depression in the causal chain of events. A second possibility is that depression may predispose people to experience social anxiety. This is due to the negative effect of depression on effectiveness in social encounters. This possibility is useful for explaining the social skills deficits that have been documented in both depression and social anxiety. Third, depression and social anxiety may each be caused by a common third variable: social exclusion. When people are excluded and isolated, they may come to simultaneously doubt their social abilities (social anxiety) and question their self-worth (depression). This proposition is a useful explanation for the interpersonal rejection that is concomitant to both depression and social anxiety. One of the challenges for future research on interpersonal aspects of social anxiety will involve the identification of interpersonal phenomena that are caused by social anxiety, by depression, or by both problems. In most of the existing research on social anxiety, there is not often an assessment of comorbid depression, much less an attempt to control or account for its influences on interpersonal behaviour. However, such a research strategy would be useful for refining our knowledge about the interpersonal aspects of both depression and social anxiety. When a child is abused by a family member, social anxiety disorder is a very likely outcome. Parents may also model excessive concern with the opinions of others and isolate their children from varied opportunities for social interaction. Social anxiety is marked by a pervasive tendency to expect negative outcomes for social interactions. Furthermore, social anxiety often coexists with loneliness and depression. These three are something of a “holy trinity” in psychosocial problems. They share many phenomenological features, such as doubts and questions about self-worth, and have many common interpersonal correlates, such as social skills deficits and interpersonal rejection. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Of the four primary distortion of Christian life, which also affect non-Christians, the pattern of the Striving Christian may well be the most subtle. Does not everyone admire the Christian who is industrious, busy, and constantly on the go? It is not a great virtue to burn oneself out for the kingdom of God? Do we not praise the person who weathers every storm, overcomes every temptation, and always has the victory? The striving Christian is stuck on the strength polarity. Somewhere along the line of personality development, this person received the message that work, personal achievement, and competitive performance are the things that make life meaningful. If perfectionistic standards are not met, one is afraid of being judged as being inadequate or unworthy. The corollary to this assumption is that play, fun, recreation, and the joy of intimate relationships with others are a waste of time. Hard, continuous work replaces love as the central goal of life. Achievement is the one note that the Striving Christian plays compulsively day after day. Most probably, the Striving Christian was hurt early in life when one, like all children, felt psychological and spiritual hunger for unconditional affection and love from others. At an unconscious level, this person feels betrayed that this deep human need was not adequately met. Love was probably given only for being a “good girl” or a “good boy.” This child was probably told not to be sentimental—that it is a doggy dog (dog-eat-dog) World, so it is necessary to toughen up and get to work to have any success out there. There is a saying that “God helps those who help themselves.” Even though this saying has some wisdom in it, it can easily become only a rationalization for putting more emphasis on performing, accomplishing, and getting ahead, rather than on living oneself and others. The saying appears nowhere in the Bible. The Striving Christian suffers under the heavy burden of perfectionism. One is the Pharisee of the modern-day life. Since the joy of being loved or loving others is lacking, one works oneself to death trying to appear worthy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
It then becomes difficult for this individual to understand the grace of God because one is trying so hard to be perfect and please everyone. It becomes almost impossible to feel genuinely loved by God, because one is constantly giving attention to meriting or earning that love. However, love is a gift, and, despite all the accomplishments, the Striving Christian has the worst time simply accepting it. So one jumps back on the treadmill of life seeking another project, thinking up another program, or contriving another emergency. Unconsciously, this person is still trying to please mom and dad and even God. The striving business executive needs to have a perfectly efficient organizational machine in which persons are manipulated as thought they were objects or statistics. The striving housewife compulsively cleans the house as though it were a museum showcase, not a home in which people enjoy living together. The perfectionistic student makes a ritual out of mastering technique, memorizing trivia, and making high grades. The striving church worker may become so preoccupied with “saving souls” that one neglects completely the deeper opportunity for understanding, loving, and growing in relationships with other people. Unfortunately, self-awareness and sensitivity to others are often lost in the struggle to achieve perfection. One remains a spiritual infant. There is another important dimension to this stuckness. The Striving Christian has been given the idea that always acting strong is a virtue, and that experiencing one’s weakness, limitation, or vulnerability is a humiliating experience. Indeed, one was probably embarrassed as a child or young person for disclosing personal fears, doubts, hurts, and faults. So instead of admitting and confessing needs and weaknesses to others, one has learned to bottle everything up inside. This person develops a psychological rigidity that other people can sense. Especially spouse, children, and colleagues will sense the tenseness, irritability, and distance. One avoids honest sharing with one’s family and mainly invest energy in solitary projects. The inner attitudes that a person lives by are inevitably reflected physically. The body of the Striving Christian is often stiff and rigid. Tension is stored in the neck and shoulder muscles, as well as around the area of the jaw. Rather than walking with a relaxed and natural gait, one develops a hurried, tense walk that reflects the inner need to always appear busy and productive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Psychosomatic symptoms such as high blood pressure, chronic muscular tension, migraine headache, or lower back pain often accompany this style of living the Christians who adopt the striving lifestyle might blame the disorders of the body on the devil. One might rationalize this physical deterioration by thinking: “Look how much I am doing for God. The devil must be punishing me for being such a hard-working Christian.” What one does not recognize is that the one who is punishing and abusing the body that God fashioned is oneself. The Striving Christian is so caught up in seeking status, wealth, or acclaim that one constantly ignores the God-given warning signs of a body that is gradually breaking down long before the Lord intended it to. However, rather than own up to one’s limitations and take responsibility to give and receive love without the heavy criterion of achievement and performance, the Striving Christian is off to another convention, off to buy another piece of property, off to preach another sermon, off to start another program. In therapy, many Striving Christian realize in their success, they are lonely. They worked so hard to get there that they have no one they can really connect with. These adults often times come to terms with the fact that the as a youth, they had not gotten the kind of unconditional love others receive. Instead, the attention they received was mostly for doing things well and performing well or for warning their way. And that is how they spent their adult years. With awareness, however, one can relax more in life and take things more as they come instead of wearing oneself out, trying to make them happen. One can slowly learn how to love oneself whether or not one achieves. However, instead of being an eagle on top of a mountain peak, keep in mind you could, instead, being a carb on the bottom of the barrel, trying to pull others down to your life. So, the Striving Christian is not always a curse. We will focus more about the different types of Christians and some things that go along with those personality traits in upcoming reports. For now, I want to focus on some other material before the end of this report. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
O Lord my God, who created me to look like You, please grant me this grace You keep talking about, the one that is greatly necessary for salvation. Perhaps it will help me get hold of my lowest nature—it is dragging me down to sins and into Perdition. I feel in my flesh the law of sin contradicting the law of my mind, as Paul so haply put it to the Roman (7.23), and lashing me with silken bonds to sensuality. I am helpless! Help me! I cannot resist my passions unless Your Most Holy Grace, branded hotly into my heart, assists me. “Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply your mind to my knowledge; for it will be pleasant is you keep them within you, that they may be ready on your lips. So that your trust may be in the LORD,” Proverbs 22.17-19. Your grace is necessary, and a great grace it has to be if it is to do the job. My nature has to be overthrown. It is been plaguing me since adolescence. That was God’s appraisal of human nature in the aftermath of the flood, at least as it was recorded in Genesis (8.21). Yes, it was through Adam, our Primal Father, that our nature was pocked and pummeled by Sin until it finally fell. And from that moment on, as Paul reminded the Romans (5.12), the punishment left that terrible strawberry blotch on the human soul. Since that time Dame Nature herself, who was fathered by You in Your goodness and rightness, has been in a compromising position. Poor babe, now that she has slipped from her pedestal, she has had to shop such putrid wares as Vice and Weakness and Corruption. A mere remnant of her former self, though, she still has power enough in her little finger to grab your foot and drag you under the bushes where all mortal and venial sins are committed. Modest, like an ember in the ask, is the force for good that remains in her, that is to say, Natural Reason. Up to this point in human history, it is managed to survive as if in a dear but dark night. It still has the ability to distinguish good and bad and to discern the distance between truth and falsehood. All this Natural Reason can do, but, oh, the powers she has lost! To logick the Universe, illumine the Truth, restore Sanity to its own terribly troubled affections. Hence it is, my God, that as the Letter to the Romans has said (7.22), “I am truly delighted with the rules of engagement You have laid down for the interior self.” However, then again, I knew Your commandment would be good, just, and holy, arguing as it does that every evil and every sin has to be fled. However, oh, the reality! Again the Letter to the Romans, the next verse (7.23). However, “when I follow the law of sin, I am enslaved by my flesh.” Which is, I think, another way of saying, I err more in favour of Sensuality than Reason. Romans again (7.25). #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Thence it is then that, again from the same chapter in Romans, but an earlier verse (v. 18), “I want to do good for You, but I often find I just cannot pull it off.” Hence I often propose a flurry of actions that far exceed the grace in my purse. Thence, my infirmity returns with a vengeance, and I have to advance to the rear. Hence, it happens that I know the path of perfection and see clearly where it is on the map. Thence, donkeyed as I am by the deadly weight of self-corruptions, I just cannot climb any faster or indeed any higher. Oh, how much I need You, O Lord, You and You grace! To begin well, not to flag in the middle, to finish strong! Without it I cannot do anything; that is if I remember correctly John on God as the Vintner and You as the Vine (15.5). With Your grace comforting me and in You I can do everything; that is as Paul encouraged the Philippians (4.13). Many have heard it before and have heard it many times: Your mind is similar to a computer. One of the most important bits of information that you need to reinstall in your mental computer is that you are successful and not a failure nor a victim. “If God is for you, who can be against you,” reports Romans 8.31. When negative, discouraging thoughts come, cast them down immediately, and make a conscious choice to dwell on what God says about you. For instance, a thought comes to you that you are getting sick or that you have some serious aliment. Refuse to dwell on that. Just say, “Father, I thank You that You are restoring health unto me. I thank You that I am going to live and not die, that I will declare the works of the Lord.” O Truly Celestial Grace! Without You there would be no proper merits, nor would any of the gifts of nature have any value! Without grace, O Lord, there would be no validity to, no vitality in art, wealth, beauty, courage, talent, eloquence. These gifts of nature are common to both the good and the bad. However, the appropriate gifts for Your Elect are Grace and Love; emblems of You and Eternal Life worn on the sleeves of Your Elect. This grace has an eminence of its own. Without it there is no such things as the gift of prophecy, the operation of miracles, the revelation of Theology, the reasoning of Philosophy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When the thought comes to you that you are not going to get a promotion at work or your proposal for a big project will be rejected, reject that soft of thinking and declare instead, “Father, You promised that no good thing will You withhold when I walk righteously. And by being obedient You blessings will chase me down and overtake me, so I thank You that You have blessed us with good things in store.” Without Charity and Grace, neither Faith nor Hope nor any of the other virtues are acceptable to You. “However, when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking,” reports Matthew 6.7. Jesus Christ cut away some religious theology right there. I had always heard that if you just keep praying, God would finally answer you. “Just keep on praying, keep bombarding the gates of Heaven!” Some think if you can get more people praying, you will finally talk God into it. However, you are not going to change God by your praying. God said, “I am the Lord, I change not,” reports Mal. 3.6. You can change yourself by praying and get yourself in line with the Word so God can answer. Prayer changes things, but it does not change God. Hezekiah is a good example of this. God sent a prophet to tell him to get his house in order for he was going to die. Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, prayed, repented, and changed his position before God. The God said, “You will live fifteen more years.” Many think that he prayed and changed God’s mind. For years I thought that was true, but he did not change God’s mind. It was God’s will all along that he live a full life, but Hezekiah got out of His will and God said that this would cause him to die a premature death. When he repented, God said, “Now you will live.” You do not change God by your praying, for He does not change. For years I thought God did not want me to have whatever I was praying about, so I was trying to talk Him into letting me have it. I thought my job was to keep pestering Him like I did my Earthly daddy, until He changed His mind just to get rid of me. No, God does not operate that way. Faith moves God, not prayer alone. O beautiful grace! How You make the poor in spirit rich with virtues! How You make the rich into persons of humble heart! Come, each morning, descend on me, let me break my fast with You consolation. If You do not, my soul will falter, my intellect buckle. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Reprogram one thought at a time by going back to the Bible, where you discover that God will always cause you to triumph. God said whatever you put your hands to is going to prosper and succeed. He says that you are blessed and cannot be cursed. People may try to tell you that your dreams are not going to come to pass, that you are not able to go any further in life. However, do not believe those lies. God said you are well able to fulfill your destiny. When you go through disappointments in life—and we all do—or when you face a setback and it looks as though one of your dreams had not become successful, keep believing. When it looks like you cannot go any further and humans are destroying the World and ruining your life, remember, God is in control of the entire Universe for He created it. God is in control of your life, guiding you and protecting you. His plans for you are good and not evil. Do not make the mistake of sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. No, put on a brand-new attitude. Take what God has given you and make the best of it. You know the truth; you were born to be a success and that will set you free. You may be near your Promised Land. God may be about to part the Red Sea for you. God has great things He wants to do in your life. He wants to promote you. He wants to increase you. God wants to heal your body, He wants to restore your marriage, He wants to renovate your house, He wants to bless you financially, He wants to warm your heart. You are on the verge of a miracle. Do not lack faith and do not let anyone rob you of your destiny. Obey the law, stay in church, be a good Christian so no one can trap you. If you get your thinking in lines with the Ten Commandments, nothing will be able to stop your righteousness. No obstacle will be too high, no situation too difficult. Just have faith! Remember, the enemy always fights the hardest when he knows Go has something great in store for you. The darkest battle, the darkest storm will always give way to the brightest sunrise. Keep believing. I beseech You, O Lord, that I may find grace in Your eyes, as Abraham begged favour of the three lordly gentlemen suddenly in front of his tent, as Genesis recorded it (18.3). I know from the Great Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (12.9) that “Your grace is always enough to do the job.” I say that now, and I will say it again, even though I do not get all the other things my lousy nature desires. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
If I am going to be taxed and vexed by many trials and troubles, I have nothing to fear from evil. That is to say, so long as Your grace is with me. The Psalmist himself could live and die on that promise (23.4). That is my courage, my counsel, and my help. It is stronger than all my enemies combined; wiser than all the wisdoms universal. “Do not get tired of doing what is right, for in due season you shall reap if you faint not,” reports Galatians 6.9. It may be hard right now, but remind yourself that you have the power of God inside of you. You can do what you need to do. Step out in faith, knowing that Almighty God is on your side. Decide to go with God. Even if negative thoughts bombard your mind in the morning, and you are unhappy, find something to be thankful about and praise God. “This book of the law should not depart out of your mouth but you should mediate on it day and night. Then you will prosper and have good success,” reports Joshua 1.8. That is my courage, my counsel, and my help. It is stronger than all my enemies combined; wiser than all the wisdoms universal. Grace teaches truth, monitors the monastery, illumines the soul, lightens pressures, banishes sadness, reduces fear, nourishes devotion produces tears. What am I without her, but dead wood, the dry rot of a family tree not good enough even for the Final Fire? If I may, the Collect of the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost: “May Your grace, O Lord, always precede me and succeed me, and keep my mind constant only on good works, through Jesus Christ, You Son. Amen.” Father, I am going to dare to believe what You say about me, rather than what anyone else says. Please help me to fill my mind with thoughts that are pleasing to You, thoughts that will cause me to progress all the way to my Promised Land. The remembered glimpse helps one to go on living, because its recap—true is both a possibility and a spur. The one gives one hope, the other determination to provide conditions which may renew it. It is a spiritual miracle, for it is not only transforming one’s character but also releases some latent powers. Because it gives new hope, fresh encouragement, and the prospect of eventual relief from trouble, the glimpse is like a rainbow in the sky. It reminds one that a providential love is still behind the World and one’s own existence. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The glimpse will help one to live through the dark periods that may come, when otherwise one might succumb to despair. The remembrance of most of those years spent in the World is dim but the remembrance of these exquisite interludes is vivid. One will remember it as a momentary benediction, something to be saved from the tragic inexorable fleetingness of life. What one discovers during these deepest possible experiences becomes a part of one. The more one exposes oneself to these moments of alignment of mind, the more will negative outbursts and destructive passions calm and die away. The extraordinary thing that this illumination, the most important even that can happen to a human being, lessens one’s feeling of self-importance. The memory of this day will last longer, mean more, and touch deeper than any other. Spirit of God in the clear running water, blowing to greatness the trees on the hill, Spirit of God in the finger of morning, please sill the Earth, bring it to birth and blow where You will. Blow, blow, blow till I be but breath of Spirit blowing in me. Down in the meadow the willows are moaning, sheep in the pasture land cannot lie still. Spirit of God, creation is groaning, please fill the Earth, bring it to birth and blow where You will. Blow, blow, blow till I be but breath of the Spirit blowing in me. Spirit of God, every human’s heart is lonely watching and waiting and hungry until Spirit of God, man longs that you only fulfill the Earth, bring it to birth and blow where You will. Blow, blow, blow till I be breath of the Spirit blowing in me. Thine, O Lord, is greatness and the power, the glory, the victory and the majesty; for all that is in the Heaven and on the Earth is Thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted supreme above all. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool; holy is He. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy mountain for the Lord our God is holy. May the Father of compassion have mercy upon a people who He loving tended. May He remember the covenant with the patriarchs; may He deliver us from evil times, curb the evil inclinations in the people whom He hath tenderly protected, and graciously grant us enduring deliverance. Many He abundantly fulfill our desires and grant us salvation and mercy. O God, or Creator, you are the source of all life. It is through your divine providence and infinite power, that the wonder and splendour of all creation surrounds us. How majestic is your name in wall the Earth. We pray to you whom calms the raging waters and commands the wind, to provide of us with sufficient rain to meet our needs. Not only during this time of drought, but always, we are mindful of our dependence on you for all that sustains our body and soul. We pray for the cooling, gentle rain that will once again bring life to the fields and crops that feed us, restore the colourful rainbow of flowers and the cooling shade of trees. We also pray for those who are suffering from natural disasters. May the look to you for strength to restore their lives and heal their wounded land. Please helps us to always be good stewards of your creation and care for the many resources of this Earth. May your grace refresh our souls. We ask for these blessings through the intercession of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Ametn. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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I am Worthless and I Cannot Trust Anyone!
My dear friend, pay close attention to the movements of Nature and Grace, because they can be very subtle, sometime quite contrary. It takes a spiritual and enlightened Devout to discern them. Hence, let God discern them for you. Every Devout has one’s heart set on good, as indeed does all Humankind—Aristotle, God’s pagan philosopher friend, put that down right at the beginning of his Nichomachean Ethics (1.1). And every Devout pretends there is something good in what he says and does. And so it is that many Devouts fall by having clouded their own minds into thinking they were doing something good when, actually, they were doing something quite bad. Horace, God’s pagan poet friend, expresses much the same sentiment in his Poetic Art (25). Natura, Dame Nature is familiarly known, is hot, and as if to prove her point, she had dragged any number of Devouts under the bushes; she is a tramp, a deceiver who always gets her way. Gratia, as Lady Grace, is commonly known, cool, walking in the Garden at twilight, pruning all the deadly nightshade; she is not pretentious or fallacious and has the pure intention of doing everything for God, in whom all Finality rests. First Thessalonians recommends much of the same thing (5.22). Natura will not entertain the possibility of death; nor does she allow herself to be oppressed, overwhelmed or underwhelmed, or tamed by a master. Gratia, though, truly strives to mortify herself, she asks for direction, desires to be taught, and has no intention of dancing in innocents in the fountain; that is to say, she resists sensuality. She thrives under discipline and abhours the thought of disciplining someone else. However, she lives, stands, and exists under God, and because of God she has always prepared to defer to every other human creature. Here God refers you to First Peter (2.13). Natura labours only for her own advantage and looks only to what financial gain she can squeeze out of a situation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Gratia has it the other way around. She expresses no interests in promoting or advancing her own career; she does only what will be good for others. First Corinthians (10.33). Natura freely accepts honours and decorations she does not deserve. Gratia attributes all honours and decorations to God, on whose bountiful breast they should be proudly displayed. Psalms (29.2). Natura likes to be in control; when she is not, she fears confusion and contempt, disgust and disgrace. Gratia likes protocol and rejoices when she is asked to suffer some contumely for the name of Jesus. Acts of the Apostles (5.4). Natura likes to lounge about in silk and have her body bathed in milk. Gratia cleans up quite nicely, thank you very much, but she does not spend a lot of time in front mirror; there is too much to do, too many people to help, for her to loll around. Natura surrounds herself with curious and objets d’art and abhours the cheap and the dull, ad if she knew the difference. Gratia does not clutter her residence with cutesy artifacts; no bibelots or furbelows for her; she delights in humble fabrics with simple designs and swans about in secondhand splendour. Natura has to keep pace with the latest fashions, is a bad winner and a poor loser, and bristles at the slightest barb, real or imagined. Gratia takes the long view, with Eternity at the end of the scope. She hardly notices when things come into, let alone when they go out of, fashion; nor do her lips go pouty when she is slapped in the face with an insult. That is because she keeps her treasure and joy where it is truly secure, that is to say, in the Vaults of Heaven. Matthew (6.20). Natura has to have one of the everything. Slower to give than to receive—that is her motto. Gratia, however, prefers none of anything, develops the common touches, avoids particular friendships, and had modest needs and desires; that is because she judges it “more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts of the Apostles (20.35). #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Natura has a fondness for creature comforts, flashy displays, witty dinners. Gratia is attracted to God and the virtuous life, does not invest in unguents or ointments, turns her back on the World, detests carnal desires, restricts her travels, and blushes when she had to appear in public. Natura’s not beneath getting her jollies by sipping the sort of drinkies that make her skin crawl. Gratia’s not above seeking a little consolation for herself, but she finds it in God alone; her delights are not in the visible World of the Summum Malum, but in the invisible World of the Summum Bonum. Natura’s a heartless businesswoman. No pro bono work for her. As for remuneration, she expects better than equal pay. In lieu of that, she will trade up to preference or praise from those who set the standards. For her benefactions, partly and tawdry as they are, she wants instant public recognition. Gratia, on the other hand, seeks nothing ephemeral, certainly not a reward; she prefers God, the greatest reward of all. She does with only a few necessities in this life, a comb and a brush and just enough diet to get her through to the next life. Natura arranges a ball for a thousand of her closet friends—as if she had that many!—not so much for them to dance and to sing as for her to boast about the stateliness of her home and the lengthiness of her lineage. She flashes her teeth at the powerful and rubs up against the rich. And she is assembled a virtual retinue of viragos like herself. Not so Gratia. She feels affection even for those who have shown no signs of friendliness. Nor does she surround herself with yea-sayers and gainsayers. She takes no extraordinary pride in her distinguished family or historical home, and rarely lets slip the Virile Virtue is the major domo managing her estates. She favours Lazarus to Dives, feeling more warmly for the indigent than for the potentate. She rejoices with Truth and politely refuses Untruth. She has this habit, annoying to some, of exhorting the good to yearn for greater charisms; as for herself, she yearns only to be assimilated through virtues to the Son of God. Matthew (5.44) and First Corinthians (12.31). #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
At the hint of famine or drought, Natura begins to binge. In the face of want, Gratia keeps on an even keel, eating and drinking like a bird. Natura quickly turns the conversation back to herself, always pestering and pummeling until she gets her own way. Gratia begins with herself, but very quickly leads the conversation back to God, whence everything came in the first place. She ascribes nothing good to herself, nor does she give off even the faintest aroma of arrogance. She is neither contentious or sententious. And she submits her senses and intellects for the Divine Examen by Eternal Wisdom. Natura wants to know all the secrets and to hear the latest news; she appears in public with daring dress and brazen mouth. She acts audacious and talks salacious, yet desires to be thought gracious. Gratia, though, does not care a fig about that latest in fig leaves. That is because this whole thing had its start with the Primal Corruption; that was when there lay over the Earth nothing new and nothing lasting. So she trains her senses to avoid Vain Complacency and Empty Ostentation, humbly hides in herself what is considered laudatory and wonderful in others, and seeks in every situation and every branch of knowledge to find something for the praise and honour of God. She does not wish to advertise the importance of herself or the magnitude of her gifts, merely to choose that God be blessed when He gives His gifts; after all, He is the One who has showered everyone else with gifts, and just for the love of it all. Gratia is supernatural light. She is a certain special gift of God, properly a little sign of God’s favour to the Elect, and a pledge of Eternal Salvation. She is meant to lift up Humankind from Terrenals to the Celestial Lovables, that is to say, to make a carnal Devout into a spiritual Devout. Ephesians (2.8). Therefore, I say, the sooner Nature’s impediments are removed, the freer Grace’s improvements will flow. And when that happens, the interior Devout will be reformed according to the image of God by a new series of daily visitations. That, according to Colossians (3.10). #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
On February 9, 1831, at Kirtland in the presence of twelve elders, God gave the people His law by revelation as He had promised. This is the law as given by the Lord that govern His church: Hearken, O ye elders of my church, who have assembled themselves together, in my name. Hearken and hear and obey the law which I shall give unto you. Ye shall go forth in the power of my Spirit, preaching my gospel, two by two, in my name, lifting up your voices as with the voice of a trump, declaring my word like unto Angels of God. And ye shall go forth baptizing with water, saying, Repent ye, repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And from this place ye shall go forth into the regions westward. Ye shall build up my church in every region, until the time shall come when it shall be revealed unto you from on high, when the city of the New America shall be prepared that ye may be gathered in one, that ye may be my people, and I will be your God. The elders, priests, and teachers of this church shall teach the principles of my gospel which are in the Christian Bible and the Book of Mormon, in which is the fullness of the gospel. And they shall observe the covenants and church articles to do them, and the Spirit shall be given unto you by the prayer of faith, and if ye receive not the Spirit ye shall not teach. Then the Lord gave commandments similar to those he gave through Moses to the children of America, which we refer as the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not lie. Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shall cleave unto her and none else. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not speak of evil of thy neighbour, nor do one any harm. If thou lovest me, thou shalt serve me and keep all my commandments. Thou wilt remember the poor, and consecrate of thy properties for their support, and inasmuch as ye impart of your substance unto the poor, ye will do it unto me. Every human shall be made accountable unto me a steward over one’s own property. Thou shalt not be proud in thy heart; let all thy garments be plain, and their beauty the beauty of the work of thine own hands, and let all things be done in cleanliness before me. Thou shalt not be idle; for one that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the labourer. The Lord gave instructions concerning those who were sick when he said: And whosoever among you are sick, and have not faith to be healed, but believe, shall be nourished with all tenderness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
And the elders of the church, two or more, shall be called, and shall pray for, and lay their hands upon them in my name; and if they die, they shall die unto me, and if they live, they shall live unto me. Those that die in me shall not taste death, for it shall be sweet unto them; and they that died not in me, woe unto them, for their death is bitter. One that has faith in me to be healed, and is not appointed unto death, shall be healed; one who has faith to see shall see; one who has faith to hear shall hear, the lame who have faith to leap shall leap. And they who have not faith to do these things, but believe in me, thou shalt bear their infirmities. Concerning the storehouse, the Lord said: Thou shalt stand in the place of thy stewardship; thou shalt pay for which thou shalt receive of thy brother. And if thou obtainest more than that which would be for thy support, thou shalt give it unto my storehouse, that all things may be done according to that which I have said. Thou shalt ask, and it shall be revealed unto thee in mine own due time, where the New America [Zion] shall be built. Concerning the keeping of the law, they were instructed: And again, every person who belongeth to this church of Christ shall observe to keep all the commandments and convents of the church. This was the law of God given to govern the church in the latter day. Had the Saints heeded, it much of the trouble they afterwards experienced might have been avoided. If we will heed it, we shall be able to build New America and receive the promise of the kingdom. This is one of the most important documents ever given to the church. Everyone, even the very young person, should study it carefully. A few days after the revelation concerning the law of the church was given, another revelation was given thought Joseph Smith for the church in which instructions were given that no one was to receive revelations and commandments for the church except Joseph Smith. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The Saviour said: And this shall know assuredly, that there is none other appointed unto you to receive commandments and revelations until one be taken, if one abide in me. However, verily, verily I say unto you, that none else shall be appointed this gift except it be through him. In this revelation the Lord was instructing that if Joseph Smith should not remain faithful, or if he should die, still that one he had designated as his successor should continue his work as a prophet. And no one would have this power to appoint his successor, chosen by Joseph Smith, should be one who would teach the same things he taught, and whose teachings would be in harmony with the Scriptures as found in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and the revelations previously given. Hence it does not follow that there exists in God anything besides relation in reality; but only in various names imposed by us. If the divine perfection contained only what is signified by relative names, it would follow that it is imperfect, being thus related to something else; as in the same way, if nothing more were contained in it than what is signified by the word “wisdom,” it would not in that case be a subsistence. However, as the perfection of the divine essence is greater than can be included in any name, it does not follow, if a relative term or any other name applied to God signify something imperfect, that the divine essence is in any way imperfect; for the divine essence comprehends within itself the perfection of every genus. In the day that Jesus Christ was teaching, they were operating under the Law. The prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray was under the old covenant. You will notice that it did not include the name of Jesus. New Testament prayer is prayed in the name of Jesus. The New covenant prayer is different, for it is governed by the rules of the new covenant. The New Testament is a new contract. It is the will of the Lord Jesus Christ, sealed with Jesus’s own blood. It is established on better promises. If the old had been perfect, it would not have passed away; but finding fault with it, God made new covenant. “However, as it is now, He [Christ] has acquired a [priestly] ministry which is as much superior and more excellent [than the old] as the covenant (the agreement) of which He is the Mediator (the Arbiter, Agent) is superior and more excellent, [because] it is enacted and rests upon more important (sublime, higher, and nobler) promise. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
“For if that first covenant had been without defect, there would have been no room for another one or an attempt to institute another one. However, He finds fault with them [showing its inadequacy] when He says, Behold, the days will come, says the Lord, when I will make and ratify a new covenant or agreement with the house of America and with the house of California,” reports Hebrews 8.6-8. And this is your new contract. There are many people that have been saved and filled with the Spirit for years, yet have never read their contract. They are quick to tell you that you never know what God will do. They do not realize that their new contract reveals what He will do! “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it to you,” reports John 16.23. Here Jesus is beginning to teach the disciples new covenant rules for prayer. “In that day.” What day is He talking about? After the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost has come—in that day when the new covenant is in operation—then, “ye shall ask nothing.” You see, Jesus supplied every need the disciples had while He was with them. He also fed the multitude in the wilderness. When Peter needed some tax money, Jesus told him to go fishing and the first fish he caught would have the tax money in its mouth. Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons. Even with all this taking place, He turned to them one day and said “It is expedient for you (of it is better for you) that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you,” reports John 16.7. In other words, “Until I go away, the Holy Ghost will not come and the new covenant will not be in force.” Jesus said that this new covenant was even better for us than if He had stayed here on Earth. “One that believeth on me, the works that I do shall one do also; and greater works than these shall one do; because I go unto my Father,” reports John 14.12. We were to do the greater works after the Holy Ghost came. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
“And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full,” reports John 16.23-24. If your joy is not full, then you need to ask so that you may have the full joy Jesus Christ promised. His will for us under the new covenant is that our joy be full. Jesus taught us to pray to the Father in the name of Jesus. We have authority to use His name, but we are not to pray to Jesus. Somebody says, “Yes, but the Lord knows what I mean.” Well, that is true. I am sure the Lord does know what you mean, but He does not answer prayer just because He knows what you mean. He answers prayer when you pray according to His rulebook—the Bible. You must fulfill your part of the covenant or contract. The one element that makes prayer work is faith. Faith is a spiritual law designed to unlock the treasures of the unseen. Sometimes people will classify this one or that one as a faith teacher. If you teach the Word of God, you are a faith teacher. The Word of God is the Word of faith (Romans 10.8-9). Prayer gets its power from faith, and faith works by love. Somehow down through the years we have gotten the idea that prayer makes faith work. It does not. Faith makes prayer work. Faith will work without prayer, but prayer will not work without faith. You can put your faith to work through prayer. “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise one up,” reports James 5.15. The physical regimes and disciplines of prayer can purify the body and restore health, but it is not sufficient to answer the mind’s questionings, nor to still the heart’s yearning for peace. When one gives too much importance to the practice of the bodily disciplines, they become obstacles on the way, new attachments that have to be broke. It is a matter of faith. If you concentrate your mind upon the Word of God and have faith, you will see beneficial end results that are health-giving and therapeutic. Following the Ten Commandments will help one overcome faults, which left alone would make prayer impossible. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The psychic purpose of faith has physical benefits. The aged, the studious, and the overworked particularly need these benefits of more vigour, more buoyancy, quicker response, and better functioning. The drudgery of daily life exhausts the body and the mind, whereas the philosophic exercise of faith, prayer, and the Word of God invigorated them. Too many people focus their minds upon the violence of the fake news media and gossip, and as one would expect, these sources become embedded in their minds, hearts, and souls, instead of the Word of God and it produces disharmony in the home, family, workplace, amongst friends and causes people’s hearts to wax cold. The TV news media is so violent and full of negative information because they are intended to bring about the greatest result of illness and chaos in the shortest time. Others make use of natural satisfactions by tuning into the scripture, which is intended not only to correct the errors which wrong habit has introduced into the World, but also to let live, when actions are righteously done, assist in keeping the mind and body fit and vital. Some people have tapped into the Word of God for natural healing, which must be accompanied by the appropriate medical attention for the ideal recovery. The glimpse is impermanent, its satisfaction fugitive; but it leaves behind a residue of hope and revelation which the impermanent and fugitive pleasures of the World can never do. Those who catch this glimpse are not necessarily better persons than others, not even wiser persons. However, having caught it, the result cannot fail to make them better and wiser. Yet their goodness will not be of a kind that is outwardly measurably by Worldly approval, nor their wisdom by Worldly success. The rapturous exaltation soon dissolves in the humdrum toil and play of every day. However, its cleansing remembrance does not. It is only desires and lusts which fade and leave one, but even the prying curiosities which express themselves at every level from mere gossip to the majestic investigations of science. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The human who tries for years vainly to transcend one’s human nature is released by this experience. One no longer tortures oneself practising excessive asceticisms. The stillness ends one’s quest, or rather its struggles and strivings; but if it passes away, as it usually does, one will at least know now what to look for again. It will affect one to the extent that one will always venerate its memory. One must come to see that, by valuing and applying philosophic attitudes to the troubles and vexations of the World, one is truly recalling those moments of uplifting and joy which glimpse provide. This is another way, and one of the best, in which they can bear good fruit (products) for one. For these delicate dreamlike experiences one can draw strength and courage to endure either the World’s buffeting or one’s personal difficulties. Evidence is accumulating to suggest that certain experiences in the family origin may predispose people to develop social anxiety disorder. The family’s contribution to the development of social phobia can be organized into two distinct areas of influence: (1) child-rearing styles, and (2) parental modeling of social concerns combined with restricted exposure to social situations. The family environment in which a child is reared can have a substantial impact on the child’s concurrent and future mental health. The rates of highly rigid (low-adaptability) and enmeshed (high-cohesion) family structures in families of children with social anxiety are double those of families in the general populations. Adults with social phobia tend to recall their parents as less caring and less affectionate, but at the same time as overprotective. This noxious combination of parental behaviours is associated with a host of other psychological problems for offspring. Parental overprotection can send a message to the child that the World is a harmful dangerous place from which the child needs protection, since the child is incapable of taking care of oneself. As with other psychological disorders, an increased incidence of childhood trauma and abuse is evident among those with social anxiety disorder. Childhood physical abuse rates to higher in both males and females with anxiety disorders, and childhood sexual abuse rates to be higher particularly in women with anxiety disorders. #RandolpHarris 11 of 18
In a related study of patients with anxiety disorders (panic disorder, agoraphobia, and/or social phobia), childhood trauma was evident in 63 percent of the cases, as compared to 35 percent of controls. However, histories of sexual and/or physical abuse were found to be most specific to those patients with social phobia. Analyzed representative samples drawn from the National Comorbidity Survey to explore the relationship between life experiences and various phobias had some interesting results. Resulted of this particular study showed that sexual assault by a relative, and exposure to verbal aggressiveness between parents, had unique effects on social phobia onset in women (as opposed to specific phobia or agoraphobia). The occurrence of childhood (id est, before the age of 18) sexual abuse makes the development of social anxiety disorder two to four times more likely. Sexual and physical abuse, particularly when perpetrated by a relative, conveys an interpersonal message of (1) devaluation (“I am worthless”) and (2) uncertainty (“I cannot trust anyone”). When people carry these psychological burdens into their future social relations, they are undoubtedly fearful of further rejection and devaluation, and suspicious of how they will be treated by others. These are key symptoms of social anxiety. A second family-of-origin process that may contribute to social anxiety disorder involves parental modeling of social concerns. Virtually all behavioural, cognitive, and affective learning from direct experience can be achieved vicariously be observing people’s actions and the consequences for them. The family is near-ideal context for modeling and social learning. Parents of children with social phobia are often excessively concerned with the opinions of others. In a study of over 2,700 adolescents, middle school students completed a self-report instrument describing their family environments. Students who were classified as high in social anxiety described their mothers and fathers as being more concerned about the opinions of others, and more ashamed of their sons’ or daughters’ shyness. This study is note worthy in that the participants were currently residing with their parents and were still in the process of being actively reared by them. Many, if not most, of the studies on family-of-origin environment and social anxiety disorder are retrospective in nature and obviously susceptible to recall bias. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Related to the modeling of parent concerns is the restricted exposure to social situations. If the child has limited exposure to social situations, then the child rarely has the opportunity to learn that social situations are not typically harmful. Indeed, individuals with social anxiety disorder often indicate that they were isolated by their parents when growing up, and that their mothers tended to avoid social situations that were anxiety-provoking. The socially anxious middle school students in the study also indicated that their parents were less socially active than parents of nonanxious student. Collectively, these findings reveal that people with social anxiety disorder may not have had sufficient opportunities for varied social interaction while in their families of origin. This social isolation corrupts opportunities for developing a sense of confidence and mastery in social situations. Experiences in the family of origin can be instrumental in the development of social anxiety disorder. Specifically, emotionally distant but overinvolved and controlling parenting, physical and sexual abuse, modeling of parental social anxiety, and social isolation have all been identified at elevated rates in the histories of individuals with social anxiety disorder. Although there is some evidence to suggest an inherited genetic predisposition to anxious, this predisposition is not specific to social phobia. Social phobia may in fact run in families in a relatively specific fashion. Thus is there is not a specific genetic predisposition responsible for this finding, it would seem that family environment is instrumental in this transmission. There are savage creatures, moral monsters, and insane terrestrial beings who look like humans but have only partially entered into the human species in their passage up from lowers ones. Having human faces and limbs, digestive organs, is not enough to render them worthy of human classification. If there is so much more interest in the spiritual truth, there is also much more interest in its sinister reversions and perversions, the misuse of drugs and the abuse of pleasures of the flesh, influencing others through mental means for selfish ends, and worship of the powers of darkness. Young naïve and unbalanced persons seeking occult thrills and excitements, or recklessly curious about (to them) psychical novelties, are brought into foul malignant circles where their character is degraded and their understanding twisted. “I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need,” reports Philippians 4.13. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
We draw to our lives that which we constantly think about. If we dwell on the negative, we will attract negative people, experiences, and attitudes. If we dwell on our fears, we will draw in more fear. You set the direction of your life with your thoughts. The choice is up to you. You do not have to entertain every thought that comes to mind. The first thing you need to do is ascertain where that thought is coming from. Is that thought from God, is it your own thought, or is it a destructive thought from the enemy? If a thought is negative, most likely it is from the enemy. If it is a discouraging, destructive thought; if it brings fear, worry, doubt, or unbelief; if the thought makes you feel weak, inadequate, or insecure, it is not from God. You need to deal with it immediately. “We should cast down every wrong imagination and take into captivity every wrong thought,” 2 Corinthians 10.5. That simply means do not dwell on it. Get rid of it immediately. Reject it, and choose to think on something optimistic. If one makes the mistake of dwelling on the enemy’s lies, one allows the negative seed to take root. And the more one thinks about it, the more it will grow like a weed, and kill all the plants you desire. The desired plants, in this case, are like the Word of God, faith, and love. The weed is like negative thoughts. Now, you do not want to let the weed grow so strong that it over takes your garden and spreads to your neighbour’s yard and through the community, until all the pretty plants and green grace is gone. “Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply you mind to knowledge; for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you, that they may be ready on your lips. So that your trust may be in the LORD,” reports Proverbs 22.17-19. Your mind is similar to a computer. However, what we often fail to consider is the fact that what you program into your computer will dictate how well it will function. How unwise it is to complain, “I hate this computer! It never gives me the right answer; it never does what I want it do it.” Think about it: You can have the most powerful computer in the World, but if you program it with the wrong software or with misinformation, it will not be able to function as the manufacturer intended. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Beyond that, there is a myriad of negative information lurking around, waiting for an opportunity to destroy your mind and faith in God. Such negative information can get into a perfectly good person’s mind and contaminate its thoughts. Before long, the person will start to become depressed and malfunction. Then this malfunction will spread to your school work, family, friends, and career and you will lose pleasure in everything. However, keep in mind, you are not defective, you have just received untrue information about yourself from people who want to hurt you. We were created in the image of God. Before we were ever formed, He programmed us to live abundant lives, to be happy, healthy and whole. However, when our thinking becomes contaminated, it is no longer in line with God’s Word. We make serious mistakes and wrong choices. We go through life with low self-esteem, worries, fears, feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Making matters worse, we pass on our negative attitudes to others. When you recognize these things happening, you must reprogram your mind. You must change your thinking. Understand that you are not defective. Some people contain much cruelty and hatred. To inflict suffering on others gives them pleasure: and this could include cold-blooded scientists and politicians, misguided idealists and statesmen, obsessed drug addicts and one-sided vivisectors. The World today, more fiercely than ever, is a battleground for this ancient conflict between Right and Wrong. Various kinds and degrees of madness have appeared in the World in various expressions—in the forms of immorality, in the frictions of politics, and in the teachings of religion. If there is infinite love in or behind the World, there is also infinite suffering in the World. The evil forces have stirred up evil events and provocative crises, and striven to get the masses to react to them in an evil way. “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses, beneficial and negative; therefore, God says choose life,” reports Deuteronomy 30.19. This is not a once-and-for-all matter. It is a choice we have to make on a moment-by-moment basis. We have to choose to dwell on what is right, rather than on what is wrong. Choose to focus on what you have, not what you do not have. Choose to think righteous thoughts. God has programmed you for success. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
You cannot prevent negative thoughts from coming into your World, but you can control whether or not you copy those thoughts into your behaviour and actions. If you stand guard over that entrance and keep your mind focused on the good things of God, the Bible says that “God will keep you in perfect peace,” reports Isaiah 26.3. If you choose to dwell on righteous thoughts, you can have peace in the midst of your storms. Dwell on the truth that no weapon formed against you can prosper. If you start thinking these kinds of thoughts, you will be filled with faith and confidence, no matter what comes against you Monday through Sunday. Father, I get shaken up so easily by events in the World, and in my life. Please help me to keep my mind centered on You, and on the truth of Your Word. Please help me to have an optimistic, faith-filled attitude in the midst of difficult days as well as the good days. The mystics, in claiming that God is to be discovered in the self are well aware of what they are saying. It is by neglecting self that so many people have become really incapable of finding God. In the battle for survival, one of the ways of dealing with fear is to rigidify one’s response to life. Human beings have a deep, instinctive need to be loved and affirmed. When they are not loved, and are discounted instead—as inevitably occurs in growing up—they experience great pain, hurt, and fear. In order to survive, a person may adopt a specific defensive stance in life rather than dare spontaneous expression and risk being hurt again. One literally gets scared out of being one self. Such a person becomes like a piano player who gets stuck playing one note on the assumption that this is the only note that is safe to play. Many Christians gets stuck playing one note, rather than expressing the entire symphony of their personalities. There are four types that evolve out of being stuck on the four polarities and they are somewhat like characters one would read about in a novel. However, we are running out of time today, and will not be able to cover all the martial, but will in the coming week. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Nonetheless, these character traits can be seen from a humorous point of view, characterized like comic strip figures. A psychological portrait can have the fascination of a novel the humour of a comic strip. What we seek to do further is to explain the dynamics of such behaviour. Each of us reflects some of this behaviour and can grow from learning about it. We encourage the reader to keep a sense of humour as well as an attitude of understanding about such typical human foibles. We often grow most when we can laugh appropriately and with love at ourselves. Sometimes there is a pain or fear in seeing certain things about ourselves. Our suggestion is that that kind of pain is okay—even essential if one is to grow. It is like coming out of a dark cave and feeling painful sensation in our eyes at the first ray of the sun. After awhile we become accustomed to the light, and the temporary pain is replaced with permanent joy of seeing! In organization the presentation of the four primary ways that Christians get stuck in their growth, we wish to use the categories of the Striving Christian (strength polarity), the Helpless Christian (weakness polarity), the Critical Christian (anger polarity), and the Compliant Christian (love polarity). For each of these categories, we will develop the deterioration process from manipulative level to character style to psychosis. In describing these three levels, we will use commonsense words to explain the meaning of all clinical terminology. Now, keep these four types of Christians in mind, and we will cover them later this week in the upcoming lectures. Earth teach me stillness as the grasses are stilled with light. Earth teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory. Each teach me humility as blossoms are humble with beginning. Earth teach me caring as the mother who secures her young. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands alone. Earth teach me limitation as the ant which crawls on the ground. Earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall. Each teach me regeneration as the seeds which rise in the spring. Earth teach me to forget myself as snow forgets its life. Earth teach me to remember kindness as dry field weep with rain. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
O God, in whom we live and move and have our being, please grant us sufficient rain and snow, so that, being supplied with what sustains us in this present life, we may seek more confidently what sustains us for eternity. Heavenly Father, we beg your protection, please save us from the perils of drought and fire, so that we may continue to serve you in good health, safety, and peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. We praise You, Eternal God—God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel. You are the Eternal God, who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall—for a bless and not for a curse, for life and not for death, for plenty and not for scarcity. Creator God, bless us with water poured down from the sky. As surely as your word stands forever, so let the rain fall. Bring to life the water of the California Valley and surrounding terrain. Please open up your water spouts on high and let rivers of water flow, and send forth the blessing of lands on your heads, on our crops, and in our reserviours. Please bless us again that we may be energized to praise your name and to feed the hungry. May the rains come quickly and bless us through Jesus Christ by water and spirit. For the beauty and constancy of creation, we give You thanks; for our abuse and neglect of Your good, creation, we ask for forgiveness; for rain to refresh our bodies and to satisfy the parched Earth, we appeal to your mercies. For the sake of Your Son, our Lord Christ, who calmed the seas, O Father, please bring us rain. Thou who helpest the poor, save us. O Redeemer and Deliverer, do Thou cause us to prosper. Thou Rock of Ages, please answer us in the day that we call. Holy and revered God, please save us. Merciful and Compassionate One, do Thou cause us to prosper. Thou who keepest the covenant, please answer us in the day that we call. Thou who upholdest the innocent, please save us. Sovereign of eternity, do Thou cause us to prosper, Thou who art perfect in Thy ways, please answer us in the day that we call. Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. One is our God; great is our Lord; holy is His name. Extol the Lord with me, and together let us exalt His name. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Witches, Warlock, and Ghost in the Mansion of Mrs. Winchester!
Some people call themselves witches, and believe that they are able to contact and utilize powers from the invisible realm. However, there are many questions about witchcraft. Is it merely a game some people play? Is it beneficial to humanity? Or is it evil and dangerous? Universities all over the World are offering courses in occultism, and teams of scientists are investigating reports of mysterious magical phenomena all over the globe. They are baffled by some of the amazing incidents they encounter, and admit that present scientific knowledge cannot account for them. The Word of God may not provide a specific explanation for every problem one may encounter as one studies Satan, Satanism, and witchcraft, but it sheds much light on these subjects and offers practical guidelines by which God’s children can avoid dangers inherent in occultism. An unexpected and amazing development of this enlightened age is the resurgence of interest in Satan and an increase in occultic activity. A few years ago, most people assumed that the devil was dead, in the same manner that some theologians recently have affirmed the death of God. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that these reports were premature. Satan is very much alive, and is actively involved in today’s World. Though many scientists and philosophers still scoff at the idea of a personal devil, highly educated people all over the World meet regularly to worships Satan. Some groups, having dedicated themselves to the service of the devil, have committed brutal sacrificial slayings, while others engage in vile acts of immorality. Witchcraft, seances, and fortunetelling, for many years limited to areas of ignorance and superstition, are now discussed in highly respected magazines. Newspapers carry horoscopes, and multitudes consult them seriously every day. Prominent people have received a great deal of publicity by reporting the reception of personal messages from the spirits of the dead. The late Bishop Pike, for example, published a widely-read book telling of seances in which he purportedly talked with his dead son who had committed suicide. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Others, claiming the ability to foretell the future, also have become the objects of widespread interest, and have name Jeane Dixon comes to mind. She reportedly communicated with Mrs. Winchester who wanted to continue the restoration of her mansion. Mrs. Dixon is considered a prophetess by many people, and top leaders in government industry consult her for information about the future. In Europe today, more people are making a livelihood through the practice of occultism than the total number engaged in the Christian ministry. Belief in the existence of an unseen spiritual realm to be entered at death, and which has an influence upon human life, has captivated the minds of multitudes. The millions involved with occultism are unaware of the real nature of these mysterious and dangerous areas of investigation, and refuse to turn to the one source of truth regarding the kingdom of darkness. The Bible, the holy Word of God, reveals the true nature of the supernatural. It teaches that two real spiritual Worlds exist, one good and the other evil. It tells us that God is a Spirit (John 4.24), and that a great number of angels called “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1.14) worship Him in Heaven and carry out His assignments upon Earth. The other invisible kingdom is evil, and is under the direction of Satan, who controls an organized host of wicked spirit beings. They are a formidable foe arrayed against God and His people, and the apostle Paul declared, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. All that can be known about the devil’s origin, fall, and present activity is to be found in the Bible. Although it does not specifically answer every question we may ask, it tells us the important facts about him and his kingdom. He was once a glorious, sinless creature, but he rebelled against God, was cast out of Heaven to Earth, and now leads his great army of spirit beings in a futile attempt to defeat God and destroy His people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The devil was created an angelic being of great beauty and splendor and at one time had great favour with God. Ezekiel describes him in his sinless state as follows, “Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyre, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have seen thee so; that wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee,” Ezekiel 28.12-15. Although the prophet was addressing these words primarily to an Earthly ruler, the king of Tyre, it is apparent that the full meaning of this prophecy is not exhausted by its reference to a flesh-and-blood monarch. The ultimate subject of Ezekiel’s words was Satan, the real instigator of the king’s pride and cruelty. Many Bible students reject this interpretation of Ezekiel’s dirge. They consider this viewpoint to be untenable and imaginative, and prefer to consider the prophet’s description to be a highly figurative portrayal of the king of Tyre. Some even say this lamentation incorporates a well-known Tyrian myth about a primeval being who lived in the “Garden of God” until he was expulsed for pride and rebellion. It is unlikely, however, that the inspired prophet would incorporate a myth into his message of judgment. Then, too, many prophetic pronouncements contained a double perspective. Isaiah, for example, after giving a stern warning of impending disaster, told Ahaz that the Lord would give a sign that the message he had spoken was true. “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken by both her kings,” reports Isaiah 7.14-16. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The fourteenth verse is a definite reference to Christ, the virgin-born Son of God, but verses fifteen and sixteen point to Maher-shalal-hash-baz, the infant son of Isaiah whose birth and early years are described in the following chapter. Before the lad was three years old, Pekah and Rezin, king of Israel and Syria, had been executed as the prophet had predicted. Since this type of double reference is common in the prophetic Scriptures, it should not be thought strange that Ezekiel, in pronouncing judgment upon the king of Tyre, should also be alluding to Satan, who motivated the Earthly monarch to his sinful pride and cruelty. The prophet declared that in his original state Satan was a creature of great wisdom and beauty. He portrays the devil as having been in Eden, the garden of God, and describes him as having been lavishly adorned with jewels at that time. The translation in our King James Version also speaks of the “timbrels” and “flutes” prepared by him on the day he was created, and some Bible students have inferred from this that he had great musical ability and was given charge of the Heavenly choirs which sang their praises to God. The Hebrew words, however, are difficult to translate, and most students are convinced that the words rendered “timbrels” and “flutes” more likely refer to the gold settings and engravings of his ornamental attire. “Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created,” reports Ezekiel 28.13. This exalted creature is also declared to be “the anointed cherub that covereth,” reports Ezekiel 28.14, which indicates that God appointed him to have a place of special prominence in connection with his throne. The remainder of the verse, “thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire,” indicates that before his sin, he was in the immediate presence of God’s glorious holiness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In fact, Satan may have been the most exalted of all the angels, and the memory of this former glory could have been the reason Michael did not dare “bring against him a railing accusation,” (Jude 9). Dr. Eric Sauer suggests the possibility that even before God created man, He committed to Lucifer a position of authority in relation to the Earth and its surrounding planets. For this reason, Satan is called the “god of this World” in the New Testament. In England and Scotland during the mediaeval and later periods of its existence, witchcraft was an offence against the laws of God and man; in Celtic Ireland dealing with the unseen were not regarded with such abhorrence, and indeed had the sanction of custom and antiquity. Consequently, when the Anglo-Normans came over, they found that the native Celts had no predisposition towards accepting the view of the witch as an emissary of Satan and an enemy of the Church, though they fully believed in supernatural influences of both good and evil, and credited their Bards and Druids with the possession of powers beyond the ordinary. The persecution of witches did not cease in the countries where that the growth and spread of witchcraft made headway—far from it; on the contrary it was kept up with unabated vigour. Infallibility was transferred from the Church to the Bible; the Roman Catholic persecuted the witch because Supreme Pontiffs had stigmatized her as a heretic and an associate of Satan, while the Protestant acted similarly because Holy Writ contained the grim command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The evil that was wrought by such amongst an unenlightened and superstitious people can be well imagined; unbelievers would be converted, while the credulous would be rendered more secure in their credulity. In the 16th century, during the rule of the Commonwealth Parliament thirty thousand witches were put to death in England. Even as late as 1690 torture was judicially applied to extract evidence, for in that year a Jacobite gentleman was questioned by the boots. However, Scotland, even at its worst, fades into insignificance before certain parts of the Continent, where torture was used to an extent and degree that can only be termed hellish; the appalling ingenuity displayed in the various methods of applying the “question extraordinary” seems the work of demons rather than of Christian, and makes one blush for humanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Nonetheless, the punishment of death by fire for witchcraft or sorcery was not employed to any extend in Ireland. We have one undoubted instance, and a general hint of some others as a sequel to this. How the two witches were put to death in 1578 we are told, but probably it was by hanging. Subsequent to the passing of the Act of 1586, the method of execution would have been that for felony. On the Continent the stake was in continual request. In 1514, three hundred persons were burnt alive for this crime at Como. Between 1615 and 1635, more than six thousand sorcerers were burnt in the diocese of Strasburg, while, if we can credit the figures of Bartholomew de Spina, in Lombardy a thousand sorcerers a year were put to death for the space of twenty-five years. The total number of person executed in various ways for this crime has, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, been variously estimated at from one hundred thousand to several millions; if the latter figure be too high undoubtedly the former is too low. In the persecution of those who practised magical arts, no rank or class in society was spared; the noble equally with the peasant was liable to torture and death. This was especially true of the earlier stages of the movement when sorcery rather than witchcraft was the crime committed. For there is a general distinction between the two, though in many instances they are confounded. Sorcery was, so to speak, more of an aristocratic pursuit; the sorcerer was the master of the Devil (until his allotted time expired), and compelled him to do his bidding: the witch generally belonged to the lower classes, embodied in her art many practices which lay on the borderland between good and evil, and was rather the slave of Satan, who almost invariably proved to be a most faithless and unreliable employer. Anybody might become a victim of the witch epidemic; noblemen, scholars, monks, nuns, titled ladies, bishops, clergy—none were immune from accusation and condemnation. Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
According to alchemists, the souls of the dead can be pinned into homunculi. A homunculi is a very small human being or humanoid creature; a supposed microscopic but fully formed human being which a fetus was formerly believed to develop. Much that passed current in the west as White (id est permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The pentagram is a symbol of faith, a symbol of the five elements Spirit, Air, Earth, Water, and Fire (one for each point), and the circle (the Universe) contains and connects them all. The Golden Ratio is the number 1.61803399, represented by the Greek letter Phi, and considered truly unique in its mathematical properties, prevalence throughout nature, and its ability to achieve a perfect aesthetic composition. It is integral to the pentagram. Shorter and longer sections of each line exist in golden ratio. If you look at God’s fingers and the general position of the bodies in Michelangelo’s fresco, you will see pentagrams. After Mrs. Winchesters mysterious disappearance in 1922, the mansion of emptied of her belongings. It took six trucks working around the clock for six weeks to move all of her furniture out. Many people say not only was it a lot of stuff, but the movers would get lost in the mansion. Nonetheless, some things were left behind. From time to time the mansion was rented out. A young couple Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor rented the place, but the story of what happened is very fascinating. No one ever thought that Ethel Taylor would marry Oliver Hall; but he thought differently, and things which Oliver Hall intended had a queer way of coming to pass. He asked her to marry him before he went Yale. She laughed and refused him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The Next time Oliver came home, he asked her again. However, she laughed, tosses her luscious blonde locks, and refused again. A third time he asked her; she said it was becoming a confirmed bad habit, and laughed at him more then ever. Oliver was not the only man who wanted to marry her, but his attempts were like an elephant, at whose clumsy feats were considerably amusing. Ethel was the belle of the Santa Clara Valley, and every one was in love with her more or less; it was a sort of fashion, like masher collars or Inverness capes. Therefore everyone was very annoyed as surprised when Oliver Hall walked into the Bank of Italy Building and invited everyone to his wedding. “Your wedding?” “You do not mean it?” “Who is the happy fair? When is it to be?” Oliver Hall filled his pipe and lighted it before he replied. Then he said—“I am sorry to deprive you fellow of your only joke—but Miss Taylor and I just let the Winchester mansion and are to married at the estate in April. “You do not mean it?” “He has got the mitten again, and its turned his head.” “No,” he said, rising “I see it is true. Lend me a pistol someone—or a first class fare to other end of Nowhere. Hall has bewitched the only pretty girl in our twenty-mile radius. Was it a mesmerism, or a love-potion, Oliver?” “Neither, sir, but a gift you will never have—perseverance—and the best luck a man ever had in this World. It is so glorious to know of a surety that now we can think, feel, speak, act—above all, love one another—haunted by no counteracting spell, responsible to no living creature for our life and our love.” There was something in his voice that silenced everyone, and all chaff of the other fellows failed to draw him further. The queer thing about it was that when we congratulated Miss Taylor, she blushed and smiled, and dimpled, for all the World as though she were in love with him, and had been in love with him all the time. They had been laughing very heartily, cherishing the mirth, as it were like those who caress a lovely bird that had been frightened out of its natural home and grown wild and rare in its visits, only tapping at the lattice for a minute, and then gone. Women are strange creatures. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
In Santa Clara everyone who was anyone was asked to the wedding at Llanada Villa. Many people were truly more interested in the trousseau than the bride herself. The coming marriage was much canvasses at afternoon tea-tables, and at the Bank of Italy over the saddler’s, and the question was always asked: “Does she care for him?” The best man used to ask that question in the early days of their engagement, but after a certain evening in April, the pause between the acts, when the house was half-darkened, and the laughter died away made him never ask that question again. “How cold is it,” said John, the best man, shivering. Oliver shivered too; but not with cold, it was more like the involuntary sensation at which people say, “Someone is walking over my grave.” He said so, jestingly. “Hush, Oliver,” whispered John, and again the draught of cold air seemed to blow right between them. The next week, John was coming home from the Bank of Italy through the churchyard. Their church was on a thyme-grown hill, and the turf about it is so thick and soft that one’s footsteps are noiseless. He made no sound as he vaulted the low lichened wall, and threaded his way between the tombstones. It was at the same instant that he heard Oliver Hall’s voice, and saw his face. Ethel was siting on a low flat gravestone with the full splendour of the western sun upon her mignonne face. Its expression ended, at once and for ever, any question of her love of Oliver; it was transfigured to a beauty John should not have believed possible, even to that beautiful little face. Many people said she was like a reincarnation of Mrs. Winchester. Oliver lay at Ethel’s feet, and it was his voice that broke the stillness of the golden April evening. “This spring is cold for you, my love. I half wish we had taken courage, and sailed once more for Hispaniola. My dear, my dear, I believe I should come back from the if you wanted.” John coughed at once to indicate his presence, and passed on into the shadow fully enlightened. “Oh, no—oh, no! No mor of the sea. Llanada Villa is perfect for me,” she said, with another and stronger shoulder. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
“Ethel,” he said at last, rousing himself, with a half-smile, “I think I must have grown remarkably attractive. Look! half the glasses opposite are lifted to our box. It cannot be to gaze at me, you know. Do you remember telling me I was the ugliest fella you ever saw?” “Oh, Oliver!” Yet it was quite true—she had thought him so, in far back, strange, awful times, when she, a girl of sixteen, had her mind wholly filled with one idea!—one insane, exquisite dream; when she brought her innocent child’s garlands, and sat him down under one spreading magnificent tree, which trees of the Victorian garden at Llanada Villa, until she felt its dews dropping death upon her youth, and her whole soul withering under its venomous shade. “Oh, Oliver!” She cried once more, looking fondly on his beloved face, where no unearthly beauty dazzled, no unnatural calm repelled; where all was simple, noble, manly, true. “My dearly beloved, I thank Heaven for that dear ‘ugliness’ of yours. Above all, though blood runs strong, they say , I thank Heaven that I see you no likeness to—” Oliver knew what name she meant, though for a whole year past—since God’s mercy made it to them only a name—they had ceased to utter it, and let it die wholly out of the visible World. The wedding was to be early in April. Two days before, John had to run up town on business. The train was late, of course, for they were on the South-Eastern, and as he stood grumbling with his watch in his hand, who should he see but Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor. They were walking up and down the unfrequent end of the platform, that he obtrusively passed the pair with his Gladstone, and took the corner in a first-class smoking-carriage. He did this with as good an air of not seeing them as he could assume. John prided himself on his discretion, but if Oliver were traveling alone he wanted his company. He had it. “Hullo, old man,” came his cheery voice as he swung his bad into John’s carriage; “here is luck; I was expecting a dull journey!” “Where are you off to?” John asked, discretion still bidding him turn his eyes away, though he saw, without looking, that hers were red-rimmed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
“To old San Francisco,” he answered, shutting the door and leaning out for a last word with his sweetheart. He stood—clasping her hand secretly and hard; then he grew quitter; until, as the drop-scene fell, the same cold air swept past them. It was as if someone fresh from the sharp sea-wind had entered the box. “Oh, I wish you would not go, Oliver,” she was saying in a low, earnest voice. “I feel certain something will happen.” “Do you think I should let anything happen to keep me, and the day after tomorrow our wedding-day?” “Do not go,” she answered, with a pleading intensity which would have sent anyone’s Gladstone on to the platform and one after it. However, Oliver Hall was made differently; he rarely changed his opinion, never his resolutions. He only stroked the little ungloved hands that lay on the carriage door. “I must go, Ethel, The old boy’s have been awfully good to me, and now he is dying I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for—” the rest of the parting was lost in a whisper and in the rattling lurch of the starting rain. “You are sure to come?” she spoke as the train moved. “Nothing shall keep me,” he answered; and they steamed out. After he had seen the last of the little figure on the platform he leaned back in his corner and kept his silence for a minute. When he spoke it was to explain to John that his godfather, whose heir he was, lay dying in Le Petit Trianon, some fifty miles away, and had sent for Oliver, and Oliver felt bound to go. “I shall be surely back tomorrow,” he said, “or, if not, the day after, in heaps of time. Thank Heaven, one has not to get up in the middle of the night to get married nowdays!” “And supposed Mr. Koshland dies?” “Alive or dead I mean to get married on Thursday!” Oliver answered, as he unfolded Oakland Tribune. At the Third and Townsend Depot they said their “goodbye,” and he got out and John saw him ride off; John went to Berkeley, where he stayed the night. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
When John got home the next afternoon, a very wet one, by the way, his sister greeted him with—“Where is Oliver Hall?” “Goodness knows,” he answered testily. Every man, since Cain, has resented that kind of question. “I thought you might have heard from him,” she went on, “as you are to give him away tomorrow.” “Is he not back,” I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at Llanada Villa. “No, John,”—his sister Alexis always had a way of jumping to conclusions, expecially such conclusion as were least favourable to her fellow-creatures—“he has not returned, and, what is more, you may depend upon it he will not. You mark my words, there will be no wedding tomorrow.” His sister Alexis has the power of annoying him which no other human being possess. “You mark my words,” John retorted with asperity, “you had better give up making such a thundering idiot of yourself. There will be more wedding tomorrow than ever, you will take first part in.” A prophecy which, by the way, came true. However, though, John could snarl confidently to his sister, he did not feel so comfortable when, late that night, standing on the door step of the Winchester mansion, heard the Oliver had not returned home. Filled with German superstitions, the young man grew almost pale, but kept a courteous calmness. There was nothing too ghastly or terrible for his own imagination to conjure up. John went home gloomily through the rain. Next morning brought a brilliant blue sky, gold sun, and all such softness of air and beauty of cloud as to make up a perfect day. However, he woke with a vague feeling of having gone to bed anxious, and of being rather averse to facing that anxiety in the light of full wakefulness. However, with his shaving-water came a note from Oliver which relieved his mind and sent him to the Winchester mansion with a light heart. Ethel was in the garden. He saw her blue gown through the hollyhocks as the mansion’s gates swung behind him. So he did not go up to the mansion, but turned aside down the turfed path. “He has written to you too,” she said, without preliminary greeting, when John reached her side. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“Yes, I am to meet him at the station at three, and come straight back to the mansion.” Her face looked pale, but there was brightness in her eyes, and a tender quiver about the mouth that spoke of renewed happiness. “Mrs. Koshland begged him so to stay another night that he had not the heart to refuse,” she went. “He is so kind, but I wish he had not stayed.” John was at the station at half-past two. He felt rather annoyed with Oliver. It seemed a sort of slight to the beautiful young lady who loved him, that he should come as it were out of breath, and with the dust of travel upon him to take her hand, which some of them would have given the best years of their lives to take. However, when the three o’clock train glided in, and glided out again having brought no passengers to their little station, John was more than annoyed. There was no other train for thirty-five minutes; he calculated that, with much hurry, he might just get back to the mansion in time for the ceremony; but, oh, what a fool to miss that first train! What other man could have done it? That thirty-five minutes seemed like a year, as he wandered round the station reading the advertisements and the time-tables, and the company’s bye-laws, and getting more and more angry with Oliver Hall. This confidence in his own power of getting everything he wanted the minute he wanted it was leading him too far. John hated waiting. After no sight of Oliver, he flung himself into the carriage that he had brough for him. “Drive to the mansion!” he said, as someone shut the door. “Mr. Hall has not come by this train.” Anxiety now replaced anger. What had become of the man? Could he have been suddenly taken will? John had never known Oliver to have an illness in his life. And even so, he might have telegraphed. Some awful accident must have happened. Maybe his corpse was picked up off a wreck, and committed to the deep—in the Gulf of Mexico. The thought that he had played her false never—no, not for a moment, entered John’s head. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Yes, something terrible had happened to Oliver, and on John lay the task of telling his bride. John almost wished the carriage would upset and break his head so that someone else might tell her, not Joh, who—but that is nothing to do with the story. It was five minutes to four as they drew up to the gate of the Winchester mansion. A double row of eager onlooker lined the path of the palm avenue. John sprang from the carriage and passed up between them. The estate’s gardener had a good front place near the door. He stopped. “Are they waiting still, Thomas?” he asked, simply to gain time, for of course he knew they were by the waiting crowd’s attentive attitude. “Waiting, sir? No, sir, why it must be over by now.” “Over! Then Mr. Hall has come?” ‘To the minute, sir; must have missed you somehow, and I say, sir,” lowering his voice, “I never see Mr. Oliver the bit so afore, but my opinion is he has been drinking pretty free. His clothes was all dusty and his face a sheet. I tell you I did not like the looks of him, with never a look or a word for none of us; him that was always such a gentleman!” I had never heard Thomas make so long a speech. The crowd in at mansion wee talking in whispers and getting ready rice and slippers to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their hands on the ropes to rung out the merry peal as the bride and bridegroom should come out. A murmur from the Winchester mansion announced them; out they came, Thomas was right. Oliver Hall did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his hair was disarranged. He seemed to have been in some row, for there was a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. However, his pallor was not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in ivory—dress, veil, orange blossoms and all. As they passed out the ringers stooped—there were six of them—and then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling of the Winchester Bell. A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through all the guests. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
However, the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like rabbits down the belfry stairs. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where the people stood with the handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding-bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged to remedy their mistake: the protested with many whispered expletives that they would see themselves further first. In a hush like the hush in the chamber of death the bridal pair passed into their carriage and its door slammed behind them. Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from the guests and spectators. “If I had seen his condition, sir,” said old Seymour to me as we drove off, “I would have stretched him on the floor of the mansion, sir, by Heaven I would, before I would have let him marry my daughter!” Then he put his head out of the window. “Drive like fury,” he cried to the coachman; “do not spare the horses.” He was obeyed. They passed the bride’s carriage. John forbore to look at it, and old Seymour turned his head away and swore. They reached reception hall before it. They stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about half a minute, they heard the wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage stopped in the front of the steps old Seymour and John ran down. “Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet—” he had the door open in a minute, and this is what he saw—No sign of Oliver Hall; and of Ethel, his wife only a huddled heap of white satin lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat. “I drove straight here, sir,” said the coachman, as the bride’s father lifted her out; “and I will swear no one got out of the carriage.” We drove back to the Winchester mansion, and carried her back into the house in her bridal dress, and drew back her veil. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Her face. No one would ever forget. White, white and drawn with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as no one has never seen except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, it was white like snow. As John and her father stood, both half mad with horror and mystery of it, a body came up the avenue—a telegraph boy. They brought the orange envelop to John. He tore it open. “Mr. Hall was thrown from his horse on his way to the station at half-past one. Killed on the spot!” And he was married to Ethel Taylor in the Winchester Mansion at half-past three, in the presence of fifty guests. “I shall be married, dead or alive!” What had passed in that carriage on the drive to the reception hall? No one knows—no one will ever know. Oh, Ethel! Oh, my dear!” Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in the Oak Hill Memorial Park on the northern most hill in the San Juan Bautista Hills of South San Jose. Thus was accomplished Oliver Hall’s wedding. Whether or not one believes in superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss the unusual events that have taken place at this estate. Just like the original construction, restoration and maintenance work at Winchester Mystery House is never complete. The actual amount of materials requires is staggering. For example, it takes over 20,000 gallons of pain to cover the exterior—and by the time the workers have finished, they have to start all over again! Continuous work is being done on the massive structure, with carpenters, painters, and gardeners toiling away just like they did during Mrs. Winchester’s day. The sons, grandsons, and great grandson of Mrs. Winchester’s original employees have been some of these workmen! The restoration work is very demanding. Although you can still find spots where the cracked plaster has not been fixed after the 1906 Earthquake, almost everything will eventually be restored. This has been left like this on purpose, like a frozen moment in time, to show people how Mrs. Winchester lived there. An ongoing search continues for fine examples of the period furnishings, similar to what Mrs. Winchester herself would have used. Her original furnishings were auctioned off after her death and never have been recovered. The job of overseeing the restoration is a painstaking one. The historical accuracy of every project is researched and approved by the Restoration Board of Directors. Winchester Mystery House receives no funds from any government agency; the continuous restoration and maintenance programs are funded entirely from tour, café, and gift shop revenues. Since 1973, millions of dollars have been invested to ensure that this unique landmark will be preserved as the premier showcase of the Santa Clara Valley’s gracious past. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The Witches Cap 🧙🏼♀️- named for it’s conical resemblance of a witches hat. Many famous mediums claim this room was “important” to Sarah Winchester, although we do not know what it was used for. How did you feel when you experienced the Witches Cap for the first time? winchestermysteryhouse.com
Is There Someone Who Teases You and Makes Fun of You?
Through the social compact we have given existence and life to the body politic. It is now a matter of giving it movement and will through legislation. For the primitive act whereby this body is formed and united still makes no determination regarding what it should do to preserve itself. Whatever is good and in conformity with order is such by the nature of things and independently of human conventions. All justice comes from God; He alone is its source. However, if we knew how to receive it from so exalted a source, we would have no need for government or laws. Undoubtedly there is a universal justice emanating from reason alone; but this justice, to be admitted among us, ought to be reciprocal. Considering things from a human standpoint, the lack of a natural sanction causes the laws of justice to be without teeth among humans. They do nothing but good to the wicked and evil to the just, when the latter observes them in one’s dealings with everyone while no one observes them in their dealings with one. There must therefore be conventions and laws to unite rights and duties and to refer justice back to its object. In the state of nature where everything is commonly held, I owe nothing to those to whom I have promised nothing. I recognize as belonging to someone else only what is not useful to me. It is not this way in the civil state where all rights are fixed by law. However, what then is a law? So long as we continue to be satisfied with attaching only metaphysical ideas to this word, we will continue to reason without coming to any understanding. And when they have declared what a law of nature is, they will not thereby have a better grasp of what a law of the state is. I have already stated that there is no general will concerning a particular object. In effect, this particular object is either within or outside of the state. If it is outside of the state, a will that is foreign to it is not general in relation to it. And if this object is within the state, that object is part of it; in that case, a relationship is formed between the whole and its parts which makes two separate beings, one of which is the part, and the other is the whole less that same part. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
However, the whole less a part is not the whole, and so long as this relationship obtains, there is no longer a whole, but rather two unequal parts. Whence it follows that the will of one is not more general in relation to the other. However, when the entire populace enacts a statute concerning the entire populace, it considers only itself, and if in that case a relationship is formed, it is between the entire object seen from one perspective and the entire object seen from another, without any division of the whole. Then the subject matter about which a statute is enacted is general like the will that enacts it. It is this act I call a law. When I say that the object of the laws is always general, I have in mind that the law considers subjects as a body and actions in the abstract, never a human as an individual or a particular action. Thus the law can perfectly well enact a statute to the effect that there be privileges, but it cannot bestow them by name on anyone. The law can create several classes of citizens, and even stipulate the qualification that determine membership in these classes, but it cannot name specific persons to be admitted to them. It can establish a royal government and a hereditary line of succession, but it cannot elect a king or name a royal family. In a word, any function that relates to an individual does not belong to the legislative power. One this view, it is immediately obvious that it is no longer necessary to ask who is to make the laws, since they are the acts of the general will; not whether the prince is above the laws, since one is a member of the state; nor whether the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to oneself; not how one is both free and subject to the laws, since they are merely the record of our own wills. Moreover, it is apparent that since the law combines the universality of the will and that of the object, what a human, whoever one may be, decrees on one’s own authority is not a law. What even the sovereign decrees concerning a particular object is no closer to being a law; rather, it is a decree. Nor is it an act of sovereignty but of magistracy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
I therefore call every state ruled by laws a republic, regardless of the form its administration may take. For only then does the public interest govern, and only then is the “public thing” [in Latin: res publica] something real. Every legitimate government is republican. (By this word I do not have in mind merely an aristocracy or a democracy, but in general every government guided by the general will, which is to the law. To be legitimate, the government need not be made indistinguishable from the sovereign, but it must be its minister. Then the monarchy itself is a republic.) I will explain later on what government is. Strictly speaking, laws are merely the conditions of civil association. The populace that is subjected to the laws ought to be their author. The regulating of the conditions of society belongs to no one but those who are in association with one another. However, how will they regulate these conditions? Will it be by common accord, by a sudden inspiration? Does the body politic have an organ for making known its will? Who will give it necessary foresight to formulate acts and to promulgate them in advance, or how will it announce them in time of need? How will a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wants (since it rarely knows what is good for it), carry out on its own an enterprise as great and as difficult as a system of legislation? By itself the populace always wants the good, but by itself it does not always see it. Then general will is always right, but the judgment that guides it is not always enlightened. It must be made to see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought to appear to it. The good path it seeks must be pointed out to it. It must be made safe from the seduction of private wills. It must be given a sense of time and place. It must weigh present, tangible advantages against the danger of distant, hidden evils. Private individuals see the good they reject. The public wills the good that it does not see. Everyone is equally in need of guides. The former must be obligated to conform their will to their reason; the latter must learn to know what it wants. Then public enlightenment results in the union of the understanding and the will in the social body; hence the full cooperation of the parts, and finally the greatest force of the whole. Whence there arises the necessity of having a legislator. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Earlier we saw that when all the Second Wave principles were put to work in a single organization the result was a classical industrial bureaucracy: a giant, hierarchical, permanent, top-down, mechanistic organization, well designed for making repetitive products or repetitive decisions in a comparatively stable industrial environment. Now, however, as we shift to the new principles and begin to apply them together, we are necessarily led to wholly new kinds of organizations for the future. These Third Wave organizations have flatter hierarchies. They are less top-heavy. They consist of small components linked together in temporary configurations. Each of these components has its own relationships with the outside World, its own foreign policy, so to speak, which it maintains without having to go through the center. These organization operate more and more around the clock. However, they are different from bureaucracies in another fundamental respect. They are what might be called “dual” or “poly” organizations, capable of assuming two or more distinct structural shapes as conditions warrant—rather like some plastic of the future that will change shape when heat or cold is applied but spring back into a basic form when the temperature is in its normal range. One might imagine an army that is democratic and participatory in peace time but highly centralized and authoritarian during war, having been organized, in the first place, to be capable of both. We might use the analogy of a football team whose members are not merely capable of rearranging themselves in T formation and numerous other arrangements for different plays but who, at the sound of a whistle, are equally capable of reassembling themselves as a soccer, baseball, or basketball squad, depending upon the game being played. Such organizational players need to be trained for instant adaptation, and they must feel comfortable in a wider repertoire of available organizational structures and roles. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
We need managers who can operate as capably in an open-door, free-flow style as in a hierarchical mode, who can work in an organization structured like an Egyptian pyramid as well as in one that looks like a Calder mobile, with a few thin managerial strands holding a complex set of nearly autonomous modules that move in response to the gentlest breeze. We do not yet have a vocabulary for describing these organizations of the future. Terms like matrix or ad hoc are inadequate. Various theorists have suggested different words. Advertising man Lester Wunderman has said, “Ensemble groups, acting as intellectual commandos, will begin to replace the hierarchical structure.” Tony Judge, one of our most brilliant organization theorists, has written extensively about the “network” character of these emerging organizations of the future, pointing out, among other things, that “the network is not ‘coordinated’ by anybody; the participating bodies coordinate themselves so that one may speak of ‘autocoordination.’” Elsewhere he has described them in terms of Buckminster Fuller’s “tensegrity” principles. However, whatever terms we use, something revolutionary is happening. We are participating not merely in the birth of new organizational forms but in the birth of a new civilization. A new code book is taking form—a set of Third Wave principles, fresh ground-rules for social survival. It is hardly any wonder that parents—still mainly tied to the industrial-era code book—find themselves in conflict with children who, aware of the growing irrelevance of the old rules, are uncertain, if not blindly ignorant, of the new ones. They and we alike are caught between a dying Second Wave order and the Third Wave civilization of today. The principal interpersonal theories of depression emphasizes the role of interpersonal rejection in maintain the disorder. This interpersonal phenomenon is evidently not specific to depression, as people with social anxiety disorder are also likely to experience interpersonal rejection. Of course, it is possible that in at least some cases, the relationship between anxiety and rejection is secondary to the relationship between depression and rejection. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Notwithstanding this possibility, the anxiety-rejection relationship appears robust. Evidence for this rejection effect comes from a variety of populations and interpersonal contexts. For example, a group of socially anxious male high school student who interacted with female confederates received less desirable ratings as potential dates by those confederates. Friends and family members of socially anxious people view them as less likeable and more difficult to talk to, in comparison to their nonanxious peers. Socially anxious high school students in one study indicated that they received less support and less acceptance from their classmates. However, there was no relationship in this study between social anxiety and support from parents or teachers, indicating that this rejection effect is most evident from peers. Younger children with social anxiety also experience interpersonal rejection. For example, 7- to 14-year-olds were observed interacting with peers, and also observed was the quality (positive, negative, or neutral) of peer responses to interaction with the target child. Children with social anxiety disorder received fewer positive responses from their peers during the observed interaction than nonanxious children did. Another sample of children aged 6-11 with social anxiety disorder indicated that they did not feel socially accepted and that they had more negative interactions with peers (exempli gratia, being teased, made fun of, having enemies) than nonannxious controls did. Children with anxiety disorders tend to be disliked by their peers. In a study of over 1,000 children aged 6-11, students were classified as “cooperative,” “friendly-dominant,” “hostile-dominant,” or “submissive,” based on peer nominations. As might be expected, social anxiety was highest among the submissive group. When students were asked who they “liked most,” those in the submissive group (id est, socially anxious) ranked last out of the four, and were tied for first with the hostile-dominant group for peers’ rating of whom they “liked least.” Evidence from family studies, shows that even parents may act rejecting toward children with social phobia. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Children and adults with social anxiety disorder are typically non-threatening, and, if anything, more likely than nonanxious individuals to try to appease others. Why then should they be the recipients of the interpersonal rejection? It has been hypothesized that this effect is due to perceived dissimilarity. In this study, participants engaged in a conversation with a confederate, who, along with peers observed, rated the similarity of the target person to the confederate and indicated their acceptance or rejection of the target. The relationship between the target’s social anxiety and interpersonal rejection from others was mediated by perception of the target’s similarity. It was concluded that “we reject socially anxious individuals because we perceive them as different than ourselves and that we use how uncomnfortable they appear and any unwillingness on their part to reciprocate our confidence as information about exactly how different they are. Interpersonal rejection plays a crucial, and perhaps etiological, role in social anxiety disorder. Children with poor social skills are likely to experience interpersonal rejection. These rejection experiences lead to pessimistic expectations for social interactions, which in turn generate affective and psychological anxiety responses to social interactions. Anxious children are assumed to avoid such interactions because of these responses, and this avoidance reduces their opportunities for learning and enhancing social skills, thus returning them to the start of the cycle. If any stage of the model is present (id est, poor social skill, interpersonal rejection, negative expectations, anxiety reactions, avoidance), social phobia can develop. As such, one could characterize this as a cascade model: Once any stage in the cycle is initiated in force, subsequent stages are inevitable. Then apparent consequences of problematic social skills, expectations for negative social outcomes, and interpersonal rejection are a lack of close relationships and a turbulent interpersonal environment for the socially anxious person. This pattern begins very early in life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Socially anxious children in primary school indicate that they have more negative interactions with peers (exempli gratia, “Is there someone who teases you and makes fun of you?”) than nonanxious children do. Similarly, adolescents who experience social anxiety report less frequent contact and intimacy with friends, compared to their less anxious peers. A sample of socially anxious high school students who were interviewed about their friendships indicated that they received less support from their classmates, that they had fewer friends, and that their friendships were less intimate than those of nonanxious classmates. The pattern of troubled personal relationships that begins in childhood continues into adulthood. Adolescents and young adults (aged 14-24 years) with social anxiety disorder exhibit impairment in social and leisure activities, in addition to problems with household and work relations. University students with social anxiety report fewer interactions with members of the opposite gender, and great dissatisfaction with their performance in those interactions, than their nonanxious counterparts do. When college students were asked to keep a diary of their social interactions, those who classified as high in social anxiety rated the quality of these interactions (exempli gratia, “difficult,” “guarded,” “many communication breakdowns,” “a great deal of misunderstanding”) more negatively than students who were low in social anxiety did. Another sample of college students with social anxiety indicated that they engaged in pleasures of the flesh less frequently than students low in anxiety, and that when they did they rated it as less enjoyable. Socially anxious college students evaluate themselves as generally nonassertive and socially avoidant. As they continue into early and middle adulthood, people with social phobia report a great deal of difficulty establishing and maintaining romantic relationship, and perhaps as a result less likely to marry than their nonanxious counterparts. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Among those who do not marry, social dysfunction is particularly evident. An unfortunate reality of social anxiety and social phobia is a lack of satisfying interpersonal relationships and interactions. The relationships that are available are often judged, at least by the socially anxious person, to be of low quality and intimacy. Like problems with social skills, these relationship problems may maintain, if not worse, feelings of anxiety. At the same time, social anxiety itself (especially when it reaches the point of social phobia) undoubtedly had the potential to spoil opportunities for relationship development. “I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need,” reports Philippians 4.13. We draw to our lives that which we constantly think about. If we dwell on the negative, we will attract the negative people, experiences, and attitudes. If we dwell on our fears, we will draw in more fear. You set the direction of your life with your thoughts. “Seek, inquire for, and require the Lord while He may be found [claiming Him by necessity and by right]; call upon Him while He is near,” reports Isaiah 55.6. God’s grace is such a precious commodity. Therefore, do not allow it to be watered down or thinned out with extraneous things or terennal consolations. The choice is up to you. You do not have to entertain every thought that comes to mind. The first thing you need to do is ascertain where that thought is coming from. Is that thought from God, is it your own thought, or is it a destructive thought from the enemy? If a thought is negative, it is most likely from the enemy. If a thought is discouraging, or destructive, brings fear, worry, doubt, or unbelief; if the thought makes you feel weak, inadequate, or insecure, that thought is not from God. If you hope to keep receiving God’s grace on a regular basis, one of the things you have to do is ditch all impediment to grace. Look for a secret garden of your own. Spend some time there. Alone, preferably. Leave your friends at the path, leave your books at the gate, and God will be there waiting in this fine Chatsworthy place. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
We can pray to God, and He will give us a few snippets on how to keep one’s spirit penitential and one’s conscious pure. The Bible says, “We should cast down every wrong imagination and take into captivity every wrong thought,” reports Corinthians 10.5. That simply means: Do not dwell on it. Get rid of it immediately. Reject it, and choose to think on something optimistic. If you make the mistake of dwelling on the enemy’s lies, you allow the negative seed to take root. And the more you think about it, the more it is going to grow, creating an enemy stronghold in your mind from which attacks can be launched. Night and day, the enemy will pummel your mind with notions such as: You are never going to be successful. Nobody in your county has ever amounted to much. You are not smart enough. Your parents do not trust you with their money. Your mayor was always depressed and evil. Your governor could not keep a job. Even your local news reporters are always having a mental health crisis and are pathological liars! You were just born in the wrong city and state. Therefore, you must realize that God is in control and He is the only source of authority that matters. God is not limited by geographical location, time, or space. He is not limited by your education, your social standing, your economic standing, your income source, nor your race. The only thing that limits God is your lack of faith. There is no such thing as the wrong side of the pond with God. If you will put your trust in Him, God will make your life significant. God longs to make something great out of your life. He will take a nobody and shape that person into an extraordinarily successful individual. However, you must cooperate with God’s plan; you must start thinking of yourself as the champion God made you to be. The enemy attacks your mind saying that you do not have what it takes; God says you do have what it takes to be successful. Whom are you going to believe? #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The enemy attacks your mind saying that you do not have what it takes; God say you have what it takes to be whatever you want in life. The enemy says you are not able to become extraordinarily successful; God declares you can do all things through Christ. The enemy says you will never get out of debt; God has proclaimed that you will have abundance and financial success, you will lend and not borrow. The enemy says you are never going to get well; God says He will restore your health. The enemy says you will never amount to anything; God says He will make you a great success and your life will be significant. The enemy says your problems are too big, there is no hope; God says He will solve those problems. Not only that, but God will turn those problems into blessing. Therefore, develop a habit of believing what God says about you; start agreeing with Godly thoughts. God’s thoughts will build you up and encourage you. They will give you the strength you need to persevere. God’s thoughts will give you a spirit of success. How can you discover God’s thoughts? Easy, just start reding and meditating on His Word, allowing its truths to become the operating system for your life. Father, I choose to think in patterns that will be pleasing to You. Please help me, I pray, to recognize those areas where the enemy is trying to make inroads into my mind. Please help me to cast down every evil thought and imagination, and to replace those negative ideas with input from Your Word. As for the rest of the World, do not give it a thought. Do God first; do all the rest later, if there is any time left over. That is to say, you will not be able to wait on God and at the same time tickle your own Tranitories. As for your friends and acquaintances, tell them you are going on holiday. However, if you are going on holiday with God, then leave behind all your usual baggage. So prayed Blessed Apostle Peter in his First Letter, that those faithful to Christ should describe themselves as “strangers and wayfarers” (2.11). When you are about to die, will you have enough faith in your wallet to let go of those final affections of the World? #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Will your sallow and indeed shallow flesh ever let your soul escape to the Freedom Beyond? Sentiments similar to those in First Corinthians (2.14). If you truly wish to be spiritual, you have to renounce everything near and far and take care of no one more than yourself. If you have perfectly conquered yourself, then you will be able to subjugate the rest of the World more easily. The perfect victory? To triumph over oneself. If you yourself in check—that is to say, if your sensuality obeys your reason, and your reason obeys God in all things—then you can truly claim victory over yourself and have yourself proclaimed lord of the World. If you are determined to scale this crest, then you should follow the advice of John the Baptist, as it is recorded in Matthew (3.10); that is to say, you have to begin by picking up the ax and putting it swiftly, virilely, to the roots, uprooting and destroying all the wildly successful plants that are destroying you. Self-love is the radical vice, the root that needs to be eradicated at all costs. Evil once conquered and captured must be led in triumph through the streets! After that, there will be a period of peace and tranquillity. Only a few take seriously this business of dying to self, and even they have had only partial success. Some, caught up in the wonderfulness of themselves, remain entangled in their own desires and cannot rise above themselves in spirit. Others, on the other hand, who freely desire to walk with Me in the Garden have to leave all their clingings—that is to say, their diddly depravities and fickle affections, their creature comforts and private stashes—at the gate. Sometimes we pray for things we do not need and are not good for us. I heard of a man in World War II who prayed for God to move him from one concentration camp to another. It was just a few miles away and he prayed and God answered his prayer. He was very happy but it was short lived. In a few weeks the Allied forces came into the camp he left and liberated all the prisoners. He stayed two more years in the other camp. He used his faith and his prayer was answered, but it prolonged the problem. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
First of all, you need to determine what is the will of God. When you know God’s will, you know that God is going to hear you. The Word says if God hears you, you will get what you ask. First John 5.14-15 is simply saying that if you get an audience with your Father, you will get your prayer answered. When I was growing up, I knew if I could get to my dad, I could get him to drop me off at school is his brand-new Maserati Ghibli. However, sometimes my mother would say, “No, do not bother him now. He is asleep.” So I could not get an audience with him. I knew if I could get an audience with him, I would get what I wanted. The Word tells us how to get an audience with our Heavenly Father. Sometimes we think the Lord must have heard us because we have goose bumps running up and down our back. That has nothing to do with it. You may get some feeling (and that is all right), but do not base your faith on feelings. What if you do not get any feeling at all? That is right, too. That does not change the Word of God. “Let one ask in faith, nothing wavering. For one that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that human think that one shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded human is unstable in all one’s ways,” reports James 1.6-8. You receive because you believe God and act on His Word. Goose bumps will never produce an answer to prayer—faith will! The actualizing person is relatively free to experience and express personal fears. Such a person is able to live from within along the polar axes of one’s being. Few people remain in the actualizing process all the time. More common is the tendency to be actualizing part of the time and manipulative part of the time. However, if the person remains unaware of manipulative tendences, they may grow like weeds and eventually overtake the garden of the personality. Unfortunately, most people learn to relate at the manipulative level. This comes about when experiences that bring pain and fear result in a tendency to live a more controlled and calculating way. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Since the open and direct experience of feelings makes one vulnerable in bearing one’s heart to others, the manipulative person closes up and becomes less straightforward in order to avoid any possibility of being hurt or frightened again. One relates to others primarily in mechanical and unfeeling ways, thus becoming less authentic, less spontaneous, and less creative than the actualizing person. Manipulative behaviour is stereotypic and compulsive, lacking novelty and choice. That is why it becomes a boring and tedious way to live and often leads to depression. Manipulation is a way of using others to get what you consciously or unconsciously want from one. However, the person who exploits people as though they were things loses the capacity to enjoy intimacy and love in relationships. In contrast to the actualizing person, the manipulator invests more energy in fortifying the ego boundary and less in living rhythmically and responsively. Even the body becomes tighter and less sensitive. It is as though in pursuit of security, the manipulative person retreats into a walled city and tries to hide there. Next some the character level, in which the person literally becomes a “character”—that is, someone who reacts in the same narrow, limited way to almost any input from outside. This level of functioning is even more emotionally constricting. The fear is greater than that of the manipulator, and the person is more thoroughly stuck in rigid behaviour patterns. There is a real inability to learn from new situations or from life. Rather, the person reacts in the same stiff, repetitious way day after day, year after year. This is the level of most neurotic behaviour. The games the manipulative pattern now reflect a rather grim, frozen stance against a hostile and threatening World. The walls of the self become still more thick and rigid. This level could be described as further withdrawal into a central fortress within the city walks. Finally comes the psychotic level, the desperate “Custer’s last stand” against a World that is experienced as overwhelming. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Everything is subordinated to the task of psychological survival in the “Custer’s last stand” crisis mode of existence. Fear has completely filled the center of the personality. There is no room for love, hope, joy, wisdom, or peace. The muscles remain chronically tensed or flaccid, depending upon the specific form the psychosis takes. The behaviour of the psychotic is bizarre and extreme. The person may hallucinate, repeat certain phrases incessantly, or sit in one position for days on end. Meaning and emotional connectedness to others have almost completely disappeared, so the psychotic must construct an entirely new reality based on fantasies or unconscious drives. At the chronic psychotic level, life is restricted to the tiny dungeon deep in the recesses of the walled city. During the acute stage, or “psychotic break” with reality, the individual can no longer sustain the heavy investment of energy required to keep defenses going. Therefore, the walls begin to collapse and the self is lost in chaos, apathy, terror, or rage. Much human suffering makes sense when viewed as distorted attempts to survive in a World that has been painful, frightening, and poisonous to the individual. Fear, the central mechanism that sustains the defensive stance, occupies the center of the personality. In the deterioration process, the person makes the terrible journey downward from fulfillment to fragmentation, from purpose to chaos, from humanness to robot-likeness—from the image of God to the pale of nothingness. Manipulative behaviour, character disorders, and psychoses represent progressively more involved systems whereby one tries desperately to win in a World that is perceived as a fearful battleground rather than a place for love and intimacy. This is when a person begins to suffer the misery of “shut-upness.” Thus in shutting oneself off from the unfolding adventure of a God-directed Universe, one begins gradually to lose touch with the deepest meaning of one’s life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
For anyone caught up in the downward spiral of deterioration, the biblical principle “love casts out fear” is like a lighthouse in a stormy cove. It means that we are no longer lost. Life can get pretty tough, but we can find our way home. The monstrous cruelty and baleful influences which have shown their detestable faces in World history from time to time, are reminders of how far humans have yet to go in fulfilment of the World-Idea. In large regions of the Earth it seems as though moral darkness has enveloped humankind. Although a fair appraisal requires us to examine how far this swing of the pendulum against established religion represents rebellion against its superstition and imposture and how far it represents a real loss of conscience and deterioration of character, there is still enough residue of evil to instigate apprehension as to the future course and results of this situation. Anyone who has travelled this wide Earth knows that there are greedy humans who are like ferocious tigers, and smooth-tongued women who are as dangerous as devouring serpents. The evil of such people lies not so much in the character which they reveal as in the character which they hide. It is the suave dissembler who reproduces the word of goodness without its heart and who cynically divorces creed from conduct that we must fear, rather than the human who has “scoundrel” stamped all over one’s face and actions. We are not apt to be on our guard against a silky voice, saintly manner, and smiling lips, but when these things hide a devil’s heart of dark intentions, we are in peril of being undone. It is true that the respectable often hides the rotten. Whether they call it evil and sin with the Christians, or ignorance and immaturity with the Hindus, or insufficiency of the good with the Platonic thinker, or weakness and failure, or the blindness of materialism, the presence of deplorable or horrible or criminal tendences need not be denied. They are in the World, but then, other better nobler and purer tendencies are also there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The manifest relation really existing in God is really the same as His essence and only differs in its mode of intelligibility; as in relation is meant that regard to its opposite which is not expressed in the name of essence. Thus it is clear that in God relation and essence do not differ from each other, but are one and the same. If we can gain the power to enter the Presence, it will work silently upon the reform and reshaping of our character. Every such entry will carry the work forward, or consolidate what has already been done. One begins to look on the World afresh, as if for the first time. However, it is the beauties, the harmonies, the inner meanings, and the higher purposes that one now sees. One becomes more attentive to the attractiveness of Nature, observes her colourings and forms with new delight. If the glimpse ends, its memory does not and will always be preserved. Those who forget have only let changes in character or circumstance push it down out of sight for a period. For a time thrill of having had the glimpse inspires one. However, it soon fades and then one becomes dependent upon one’s simple memory of it. Even after one sinks back to one’s former state, the mystic who has had a flash, a glimpse, a revelation, or a vision of something beyond it can never be exactly the same as one was before. The light cannot fall upon one without leaving some little effect behind at the least, or some tremendous change at the most. One of the purposes of the glimpse is to make the human aspire that one shall be made worthy of its coming again. In the first contribution of memory is an unconscious one, intuitively reminding humans of what one really is but seems to have lost, the second is a conscious one. it is to keep up one’s interest in the establishment of the higher awareness and to stop one from forgetting the pursuit of this goal. That is, it is to keep one on the Quest. These experiences if taken aright will lead one not to spiritual pride but to spiritual humbleness. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Because one has been once illumined, the darkness can never again be total darkness. One will know that the possibility of light flashing across it always exists. No one can know in advance how long it will stay with one. It is here out of nowhere and nowhen, and then gone away the next hour. The visitation may or may not be repeated but because it is nothing that one has achieved, the repetition is outside one’s reach to control. Thus begins a lifelong haunting by what becomes one’s dearest wish—to repeat, and especially to continue in, this magical transformation. We must keep a proper proportion in our minds between these different branches of self-preparation and purification. A human whose spine is straight but whose conduct is crooked is doing worse than a human whose conduct is straight but whose spine is crooked. May the wind blow sweetness, the rivers flow sweetness, the herbs grow sweetness, for the People of Truth! Sweet be the night, sweet the dawn, sweet be the Earth’s fragrance, sweet be our Heaven! May the tree afford us sweetness, the sun shine sweetness, our cows yield sweetness—milk in plenty! We beseech Thee, O Lord, save us. We beseech Thee, O Lord, do Thou cause us to prosper. O Lord, answer us in the day that we call. God of all souls save us. Thou who searchest hearts, do Thou cause us to prosper. O Lord, answer us in the day that we call. God of all souls save us. Thou who searchest hearts, do Thou cause us to prosper. Thou mighty Redeemer, answer us in the day that we call. Thou who utter righteousness, save us. Thou who art clad in glory, do Thou cause us to prosper. Everlasting and gracious God, answer us in the day that we call. Thou who art pure and upright, save us. Thou who pitiest the needy, do Thou cause us to prosper. O good and bountiful Lord, answer us in the day that we call. Thou who knowest our thoughts, save us. Mighty and resplendent God, do Thou cause us to prosper. Thou who are clothed in righteousness, answer us in the day that we call. King of the Universe, save us. Source of light and majesty, do Thou cause us to prosper. Thou who supportest the falling, answer us in the day that we call. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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A Person Who Jumps Out a Window to Escape Fire is Guilty of Committing Suicide?
Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. If the state or the city is merely a moral person whose life consists in the union of its members, and if the most important of its concerns is that of its own conservation, it ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each human an absolute power over all one’s members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members, and it is the same power which is directed by the general will and bears the name sovereignty. However, over and above the public person, we need to consider the private persons who make it up and whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it. It is, therefore, a question of making a rigorous distinction between the respective rights of the citizens and the sovereign (Attentive readers, please do not rush to accuse me of contradiction here. I have been unable to avoid it in my choice of words, given the poverty of the language. But wait.), and between the duties the former have to fulfill as subjects and the natural right they should enjoy as humans. We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of one’s power, one’s goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence. A citizen should render to the state all the services one can as soon as the sovereign demands them. However, for its part, the sovereign cannot impose on the subjects any fetters that are of no use to the community. It cannot even will to do so, for under the law of reason nothing takes place without a cause, any more than under the law of nature. The commitments that bind us to the body politic are obligatory only because they are mutual, and their nature is such that in fulfilling them one cannot work for someone else without working for oneself. Why is the general will always right, and why do all constantly want the happiness of each of them, if not because everyone applies the word each to oneself and thinks of oneself as one votes for all? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
This proves that the quality of right and the notion of justice it produces are derived from the preference each person gives oneself, and thus from the nature of humans; that the general will, to be really such, must be general in its object as well as in its essence; that it must derive from all in order to be applied to all; and that it loses its natural rectitude when it tends toward any individual, determinate object. For then, judging what is foreign to us, we have no true principle of equity to guide us. In effect, once it is a question of a state of affairs or a particular right concerning a point that has not been regulated by a prior, general convention, the issue becomes contentious. It is a suit in which the interested private individuals are one of the parties and the public the other, but in which I fail to see either what law should be followed or what judge should render the decision. In these circumstances it would be ridiculous to want to defer to an express decision of the general will, which can only be the conclusion reached by one of its parts, and which, for other party, therefore, is merely an alien, particular will, inclined on this occasion to injustice and subject to error. Thus, just as a private will cannot represent the general will, for its part, alters its nature when it has a particular object; and as general, it is unable to render a decision on either a human or a state of affairs. When, for example, the populace of Athens appointed or dismissed its leaders, decreed that honours be bestowed on one inflicted penalties on another, and by a multitude of particular decrees, indiscriminately exercised all the acts of government, the people in this case no longer had a general will in the strict sense. It no longer functioned as sovereign but as magistrate. This will appear contrary to commonly held opinions, but I must be given time to present my own. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
It should be seen from this that what makes the will general is not so much the number of votes as the common interest that unites them, for in this institution each person necessarily submits oneself to the conditions one imposes on others, an admirable accord between interest and justice which bestows on common deliberations a quality of equity that disappears when any particular matter is discussed, for lack of a common interest uniting an identifying the role of the judge with that of the party. From whatever viewpoint one approaches this principle, one always arrives at the same conclusion, namely that the social compact establishes among the citizens an equality of such a kind that they all commit themselves under the same conditions and should all enjoy the same rights. Thus by the very nature of the compact, every act of sovereignty (that is, every authentic act of the general will) obligates or favours all citizens equally, so that the sovereign knows only the nation as a body and does not draw distinctions between any of those members that make it up. Strictly speaking, then, what is an act of sovereignty? It is not a convention between a superior and an inferior, but a convention of the body with each of its members. This convention is legitimate because it has the social contract as a basis; equitable, because it is common to all; useful, because it can have only the general good for its object; and solid, because it has the public force and the supreme power as a guarantee. So long as the subjects are subordinated only to such convention, they obey no one but their own will alone. And asking how far the respective rights of the sovereign and the citizens extend is asking how far the latter can commit themselves to one another, each to all and all to each. We can see from this that the sovereign power, absolute, wholly sacred and inviolable as it is, does not and cannot exceed the limits of general conventions, and that every human can completely dispose of such goods and freedom as has been left to one by these conventions. This results in the fact that the sovereign never has the right to lay more charges on one subject than on another, because in that case the matter becomes particular, no longer within the range of the sovereign’s competence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Once these distinctions are granted, it is so false that there is, in the social contract, any genuine renunciation on the part of private individuals that their situation, as a result of this contract, is really preferable to what it was beforehand; and, instead of an alienation, they have merely made an advantageous exchange of an uncertain and precarious mode of existence for another that is better and surer. Natural independence is exchanged for liberty; the power to harm others is exchanged for their own security; and their force, which others could overcome, for a right which the social union renders invincible. Their life itself, which they have devoted to the state, is continually protected by it; and when they risk their lives for its defense, what are they then doing but returning to the state what they have received from it? What are they doing, that they did not do more frequently and with greater danger in the state of nature, when they would inevitably have to fight battles, defending at the peril of their lives the means of their preservation? If necessary, for the homeland; but it also is the case that no one has to fight on one’s own behalf. Do we not still gain by running, for something that brings about our security, a portion of the risks we would have to run for ourselves once our security is taken away? The question arises how private individuals who have no right to dispose of their own lives can transfer to the sovereign this very same right which they do not have. This question seems difficult to resolve only because it is poorly stated. Every human has the right to risk one’s own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a person who jumps out a window to escape a fire is guilty of committing suicide? Has the crime ever been imputed to someone who perishes in a storm, unaware of its danger when one embarked? #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The social treaty has as its purpose the conservation of the contracting parties. Whoever wills the end also wills the means, and these means are inseparable from some risk, even from sone losses. Whoever wishes to preserve one’s life at the expense of others should also give it up for them when necessary. For the citizen is no longer judge of the peril to which the law wishes one be exposed, and when the prince has said to one, “it is expedient for the state that you should die,” one should die. Because it is under this condition alone that one has lived in security up to then, and because of one’s life is not only a kindness of nature, but a conditional gift of the state. The death penalty inflicted on criminals can be viewed from more or less the same point of view. It is in order to avoid being the victim of an assassin that a person consents to die, were one to become one. According to this treaty, far from disposing of one’s own life, one thinks only of guaranteeing it. And it cannot be presumed that any of the contracting parties is then planning to get oneself hanged. Moreover, every malefactor who attacks the social right becomes through one’s transgressions a rebel and a traitor to the homeland; in violating its laws, one ceases to be a member, and one even wages war with it. In the case the preservation of the state is incompatible with one’s own. Thus one of the two must perish; and when the guilty party is put to death, it is less as a citizen than as an enemy. The legal proceeding and the judgment are the proofs and the declaration that one has broken the social treaty, and consequently that one is no longer a member of the state. For since one has acknowledged oneself to be such, at least by one’s living there, one ought to be removed from it by exile as a violator of the compact, or by death as a public enemy. For such an enemy is not a moral person, but a human, and in this situation the right of war is to kill the vanquished. However, it will be said that the condemnation of a criminal is a particular act. Fine. So this condemnation is not a function of the sovereign. It is a right the sovereign can confer without itself being able to exercise it. All of my opinions are consistent, but I cannot present them all at once. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
In addition, frequency of physical punishment is always a sign of weakness or of torpor in the government. There is no wicked human who could not be made good for something. One has the right to put to death, even as an example, only someone who cannot be preserved without danger. With regard to the right of pardon, or of exempting a guilty part from the penalty decreed by the law and pronounced by the judge, this belongs only to one who is above the judge and the law, that is, to the sovereign. Still its right in this regard is not clearly defined, and the cases in which it is used are quite rare. In a well governed state, there are few punishments, not because many pardons are granted, but because there are few criminals. When a state is in decline, the sheer number of crimes insures impunity. Under the Roman Republic, neither the senate nor the consuls ever tried to grant pardons. The people itself did not do so, even though it sometimes revoked its own judgment. Frequent pardons indicate that transgressions will eventually have no need of them, and everyone sees where that leads. However, I feel that my heart murmurs and holds back my pen. Let us leave these questions to be discussed by a just human who has not done wrong and who oneself never needed pardon. Many other sections of the Second Wave social code are also being drastically rewritten as the Third Wave arrives. Thus Second Wave civilization’s obsessive emphasis on maximization is also under sharp attack. Never before have advocates of Bigger Is Better been so assailed by advocates of Small Is Beautiful. It was only in the 1970’s that a book with that title could have become an influential, Worldwide best seller. Everywhere we are seeing a dawning recognition that there are limits to the much-vaunted economies of scale and that many organizations have exceeded those limits. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Corporations are now actively searching for ways to reduce the size of their work units. New technologies and the shift to services both sharply reduced the scale of operation. The traditional Second Wave factory or office, with thousands of people under a single roof, will be a rarity in the high-technology nations. In Australia, when I asked the president of an auto company to described the auto plant of the future, he spoke with utter conviction, saying, “I would never, ever again build a plant like this one with seven thousand workers under the same roof. I would break it into small unit—three hundred of four hundred in each. The new technologies now make this possible.” I have since heard similar sentiments from the presidents or chairmen of companies producing food and many other products. Today, we are beginning to realize that neither big nor small is beautiful, but that appropriate scale, and the intelligent meshing of both big and small, is most beautiful of all. (This was something that E.F. Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful, knew better than some of his more avid followers. He once told friends that, had he lived in a World of small organizations, he would have written a book called Big Is Beautiful.) We are also beginning to experiment with new forms of organization that combine the advantages of both. For example, the rapid spread of franchising in the United States of America, Britain, Holland, and other countries is often a response to capital shortage or tax quirks and can be criticized on various grounds. However, it represents a method for rapidly creating small units and linking them together in larger systems, with varying degrees of centralization or decentralization. It is an attempt to mesh large- and small-scale organizations. Second Wave maximization is on its way out. Appropriate scale is in. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Society is also taking a hard look at Second Wave specialization and professionalism. The Second Wave code book put experts on a towering pedestal. One of its basic rules was “Specialize to succeed.” Today, in every field, including politics, we see a basic change in attitude toward the expert. Once regarded as the trustworthy source of neutral intelligence, specialists have been dethroned from public approval. They are increasingly criticized for pursuing their own self-interest and for being incapable of anything but tunnel vision. We see more and more efforts to restrain the power of the expert by adding laymen to decision-making bodies—in hospitals, for example, and many other institutions. Parents demand the right to influence school decisions, no longer content to leave them to professional educators. After studying citizen political participation a few years ago, a task force in the state of Washington concluded, in a statement that summed up the new attitude, “You do not have to be an expert to know what you want!” Second Wave civilization encouraged yet another principle: concentration. It is concentrated money, energy, resources, and people. It poured vast populations into urban concentrations. Today this process, too, has begun to turn around. We see increasing geographical dispersal instead. At the level of energy, we are moving from a reliance on concentrated deposits of fossil fuels to a variety of more widely dispersed forms of energy and we are seeing numerous experiments aimed at “de-concentrating” the populations of schools, hospitals, and lunatic asylums. In short, one could move systematically through the entire code book of Second Wave civilization—from standardization to synchronization right on down to centralization, maximization, specialization, and concentration—and show, item by item, how the old ground rules that governed our daily lives and our social decision-making are in the process of being revolutionized as Third Wave civilization sweeps in. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Although behaviour inhibition in social settings may be the hallmark of social anxiety, social perception skills also appear to be negatively associated with social anxiety. This less visible aspect of social skill involves the ability to accurately detect and identify emotional states in other people, the impact one is having on others during conversations, and other people’s interest in continued interaction. If we look at what has happened in the World in the past hundred years, and what is still happening today, the exhibition of the negatives in human character is discouraging: so many weaknesses and cruelties, animalities and jealous, pettinesses and stupidities. Terrestrial humans have been violently on the rampage in our times, robbing, hating, attacking, destroying, and killing Spiritual humans have remained weakly in the background. Reasoning humans have oscillated between the two poles, sometimes sensitive to higher ideals in the guidance of one’s thinking, more often selfishly blind to any other welfare than one’s own. All sincere well-wishes of humanity are today distressed in heart and doubt-ridden in mind. Baffled and bewildered, they stand before the complex spectable of this disordered age. Doubt is a figure always pictured by the ancient World with a bandage across her eyes. This is the exact condition of our age. Whoever looks around at the World of the past three quarters of a century, at this negativity, its folly and insanity, its horrors, may say that it is a wicked World, that humans are incorrigibly evil. It would be fairer to introduce a note of balance and refer to the existence of Yin and Yang in life, in the Universe, and consequently in human character. It is the work of evolution in out time to bring to the surface of thought and action the most ferocious instincts and darkest bestiality which many humans still hide beneath their civilized exterior. However, such an outbreak of evil is destined eventually to modify evil itself, to tame those instincts and subside the bestiality. The night is darkest just before dawn. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The evil things we have seen and still see all around us in contemporary humanity have come to the surface only to be carried off again. The decadence of human society and the degeneration of the human race which shadow contemporary history, are signs of the scum arising out of the human subconscious. However, they arise only to be cleared away. Out of this clearance there will later come an awakening to the Good, an appreciation of the True. In this sense their darkness is an inverted precursor of the light, the worse which makes a way for the better. It is a token that the cycle of materialism will eventually turn on itself and yield to a cycle of spirituality. If the World’s present state is so ugly and menacing, we ought not to blame it as a failure on the part of God but rather on the part of humans. When asked to identify interpersonal information from audio-video presentations of dyadic interaction, socially anxious individuals decode more properly than nonanxious controls. Socially anxious people perform no better than a chance, and considerably worse than control subjects, when asked to detect deceptive communications in videotaped presentations. Evidence is also accumulating to indicate that social anxiety influences the interpretation of emotional facial expressions in other people. Socially anxious persons show a negative response bias when judging facial expressions. Thus they more readily identify negative facial expressions, but are less accurate in identifying neutral facial expressions, with a tendency to characterize them incorrectly as negative. The heightened social vigilance of socially anxious people may make them more accurate at identifying facial expressions of emotion, provided that the situation is nonstressful. However, when they are stressed, their accuracy in identifying facial expressions decreases noticeably. Evidence from the domains of nonverbal social behaviours, verbal behaviours, and social perception skills indicates that social skills deficits are evident among people with social anxiety. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The evidence is sufficiently pervasive that social skills deficits are not regarded as a potential theoretical explanation for social anxiety. However, this theorizing, and its associated evidence, have yet to determine the precise causal ordering of these two variables. One plausible account of the relationship between social skills deficits and social anxiety holds that social anxiety may be the result of poor social skills. Accordingly, people with poor social skills are expected to experience negative interpersonal outcomes, and to fail to achieve many beneficial outcomes. Such people may consequently come to fear and avoid interpersonal encounters as a result of such a learning history. Two rare longitudinal studies in this literature provide at least some support for this conceptualization. In one of these studies, university students were followed over a period of 4 months; in the other, high school students were followed over a 6 month period as they made the transition to college life. In each case, social skills at one time one were predictive of residual changes in social anxiety (id est, time 2 social anxiety with time 1 social anxiety partialed out), such that those with poor social skills at time 1 evidenced increases in social anxiety over the course of the study. These findings demonstrate that poor social skills can in fact lead to a worsening of social anxiety. The self-presentational model of social anxiety provides an explanation for why poor social skills may lead to social anxiety. People who are aware of their less than adequate social skills may reasonably expect that they will not be able to leave a desired impression on others. This expectation may then create a sense of anxiety in social situations. Unfortunately, the social anxiety that results from this negative expectation is likely to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. An alternative explanation of the relationship between social skills deficits and social anxiety suggests that social skills deficits may be pursuant to symptoms of social anxiety. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
According to such a hypothesis, some people may become socially anxious, perhaps due to a traumatic event, and consequently avoid social encounters in an effort to cope with and manage their anxiety. As a result, their social skills are assumed to atrophy from disuse. Although this hypothesis has considerable face validity, it has yet to be extensively investigated and is a prime candidate for immediate research attention. It should go without saying that is may not be appropriate to pit these two hypothesized casual paths against each other. In all likelihood, there are multiple avenues to both poor social skills and social anxiety. For some poor social skills may be a cause of social anxiety, while for others they may be a consequence. It is also important to note that the relationship between the “skilled” use of communication behaviours and social anxiety is neither perfect nor straightforward. A number of studies have found no differences between socially anxious and nonanxious subjects in various communication behaviours such as eye contact, use of questions and assertions, or performance on a simulated job interview. Some socially anxious people may do a good job of masking their anxiety, and may develop and exhibit adequate social skills. Similarly, some people with poor social skills may be so socially anxious people may have social skills that are quite functional from their own point of view. Socially anxious people appear to be very “skilled” at avoiding intense involvement in conversation, listening to others, being socially facilitative, and being attentive. When your thoughts have been running in a certain patterns for a long period of time, it is as though they have been eroding a deep riverbed, and the water can flow in only one direction. Imagine a person who habitually leans toward negative thinking day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. With every negative thought, one digs that riverbed so deep it feels like one is in Hell. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
That individual has programmed one’s mind into a negative thinking pattern. One of the most robust patterns of social cognition associated with social anxiety is the expectation that social encounters will go badly and that others will respond negatively. Even children with anxiety disorder expect negative outcomes to result from interaction with other children. The particularly harsh self-evaluations of social skills and expectations of rejection from others are consistent with the self-presentational model of social anxiety, particularly the doubt that one will be able to achieve a desired impression. The imagined and expected negative social responses from others that are characteristically of socially anxious individuals appear to be fairly automatic, robust, and not easily challenged. For example, a group of socially anxious female college students who told stories about themselves to partners felt more strongly that their partners perceived them as dishonest, and insincere than nonanxious controls felt about their partners. When patients with social phobia were asked to interpret ambiguous social events (exempli gratia, “You are in class and are asked to read a passage out loud. When you finish, you see that two people are staring at you”), they tended to choose negative interpretations, such as “They think you messed up the passage.” However, persons with social phobia did not exhibit this negative interpretation bias for nonsocial scenarios. When presented with objectively negative social scenarios, such as “You have been talking with someone for a while and it becomes clear that they are not interested in what you are saying,” people with social anxiety disorders interpreted these with catastrophizations—that is, interpretations such as “I was stupid, boring, incompetent,” and “I will lose all my friends, be rejected, lose my job.” Fortunately, we can cause a new river to flow, one going in an optimistic direction as we dwell on God’s Word and start seeing the best in the situation, little by little. With effort, one thought at a time, one will redirect that rushing river in the right direction. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Nonetheless, even in a study where social interactions had objectively beneficial outcomes, people with social anxiety disorder overestimated the visibility of their anxiety and underestimated the interest they conveyed to their partner and their overall likability. However, the socially anxious subjects in this study exhibited a positive evaluation bias for their conversational partners, indicating that such negative evaluations and expectations may be specific to the self. It was discovered that socially anxious people doubt the authenticity of positive feedback from others. When socially anxious individuals experience objectively positive social outcomes such as enthusiastic and friendly responses from a partner, their expectations for future interactions became even more pessimistic. This is because they feel that their partners will raise their standards and expect even more in the future interactions—an expectation that socially anxious persons “know” they will be unable to meet. Keep in mind, at first only a little of optimistic thinking will trickle into the river of negative thoughts, so it will take time for the mucky water to become diluted and pushed out so the clean water can replace it. You have to wash your mind of all that pain and trauma by constantly reading the Word of God and thanking God for the blessings in your life and this can take years, even decades because we are constantly taking in abuse, but the journey is worth it, instead of becoming bitter, evil, angry, and hateful. “Many waters cannot quench love, nor can floods drown it,” reports Solomon 8.7. Social anxiety may be associated with expectations for failure, in part, because of heightened self-focused attention. In interpersonal contexts, socially anxious persons will pay less attention to the environment and more attention to themselves and their performance. Although findings are mixed as to whether this self-focused attention impairs actual performance, it is likely to taint cognitions. #RanolphHarris 14 of 21
Self-focused attention implies that socially anxious people focus on the somatic and affective anxiety reactions that they experience in social situations, as opposed to focusing on the task at hand, the environment, and the partner. For example, when preparing to give a speech or public presentation, a person with social anxiety may notice such sensations and feelings as rapid heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and rising terror. Socially anxious people use perceptions of their bodily sensation to make more global inferences about their appearance. This tendency to make negative inferences from signs of automatic arousal is known as anxiety sensitivity, and is a risk factor for developing anxiety. So the conclusion of the hypothetical public speaker with self-focused attention would be “I must look terrible to them.” It then becomes a “logical” conclusion that “I will do badly.” Occasionally, one may be tempted to mull over discouraging thoughts. However, one must rise and “Learn to do right! Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow,” reports Isaiah 1.18. Social anxiety is associated with the tendency to expect social failure and negative reactions from other people. For socially anxious individuals, neutral social stimuli are interpreted negatively; negative social outcomes result in catastrophization; and, most interestingly, positive social outcomes prompt even more pessimistic appraisals for future success. Social success appears to have little positive impact on socially anxious persons’ self-efficacy expectations. Their negative expectations for social interaction may be fed in part by heightened self-focused attention in social context. It is certainly possible that the negative expectations for interpersonal interactions that are characteristic of socially anxious individuals serve also to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Findings on interpersonal rejection show that, unfortunately, these negative expectations are not baseless. “For by your words you will be justified and acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned and sentenced,” reports Matthew 12.37. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Do not be passive, sitting back and allowing negative, critical, pessimistic thoughts to influence your life. The Bible tells us that we need to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds,” reports Romans 12.1-2. If you will transform your thinking, God will transform your life. God will help you, but you are going to have to make quality decisions every day, choosing the good, rejecting the bad. Determine to keep your mind set on the good things of God. Right now you can say: Father, I am excited about today. This is a day You have made; I am going to rejoice and be glad in it. God, I know You reward those who seek You, so I thank You in advance for Your blessings, favour, and success in my life today. I am going to change the flow of my thoughts. For now on, I will choose to align my thinking with Your Word. When I tend to be negative, please show me the error of my way, so I can redirect the flow in the proper direction. O, Lord, I am not worthy of Your consolation, nor of any spiritual visitation from You. Please just treat me justly when You leave me empty and desolate. At this point in my life, even if I could weep tears like the waves of the sea, I still would not be worthy of You consolation. Whence, I am worthy of nothing more than flagellation and incarceration. That is because I have sinned mortally and frequently and been derelict in all sorts of responsibilities. Therefore, as True Reason has parceled it out, I am not worthy enough even of the least of Your consolations. However, You, O Clement and Merciful God, You do not want Your good work to die the death, do You? You would pour the riches of Your Goodness into amphorae of mercies, then deign to console Your servant, who have got only a few merits in one’s haven, beyond one’s capacity to count; that is You Paul to the Romans again (9.23). All of which is another way of saying, human stories often rely on a causality that produces a happy ending; spiritual stories, on the other hand, have a causality all of their own; that is to say, they produce only the most extravagantly happy endings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
What have I done, O Lord, that You would confer Celestial Consolation on me? Not a great deal, sad to say. I have always been prone to vices, and supine to doing anything about them. It is true. I would like to deny it, but I cannot. If I were to say otherwise, You would stand against me, and no one would rise to defend me. What have I have I earned for all my sins but Hell and Eternal Fire? In all truth I confess that I deserve only contempt; that is to say, to be made a laughingstock in a World that shuns public laughter. Nor is it decent of me to want to be remembered as one of Your Devouts. Although it will bruise my ears, nevertheless I am going to say it. Just to se the record straight. Yes, Sin and I have been keeping company. The only reason I make a public statement of it now is to make it somewhat easier for me when I try to gain an easier, better access to Your mercy. What can I say, I am a terrestrial being who does not know all the Divine knowledge. I do not need a mouthpiece—I can say this word myself. Peccavi. I have sinned, O Lord, over and over again. Have mercy on me. Please forgive me. Please let me follow poor job’s path “a little while that I might lick my wounds, before I have to make my way to that tenebrous land where the willows weep and are covered with the darkness of death” (10.20-22). Why do You require so much of me? I am only a terrestrial being, and a wretched sinner at that. Beat me, batter me, humble me for my derelictions. Hope of Forgiveness in conjunction with True Contrition and Humiliation of Heart produces two things. One’s conscience, having been driven mad, is finally reconciled. Ans one’s welfare is protected from future wrath. These done, who will run to meet each other with a holy embrace, but both God and the Penitent Soul. Humble Contrition for Sins—does this smell like an acceptable, old-fashioned sacrifice to You, O Lord? Does not the sickening, sweet stench arising from the temple sacrifice do more for Your hairy nostrils than a good censing from a smoking thurible? #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Again, Humble Contrition for Sins—does not this seem like an agreeable unguent? The Psalmist seemed to think so (51.17). The kind of slow-flowing, cool-feeling nard that Magdalene poured over Your feet? Luke made such a tender scene that of in his Gospel (7.46). Why do I think that? Because, if I may site the Psalmist again, again in the same place, You have never looked down Your nose at a contrite and humbled heart. Heaven is the place of refuge from the Enemy’s wrathful face. Heaven is also the place where the cracked crockery’s repaired and the soiled linen washed and bleached. Jesus Christ said, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask what God wills? NO! Ask what ye will, and it shall be do9ne unto you,” reports John 15.7. It does not say a thing about God’s will. Ask what you will. However, if the Word of God abides in you, then you are going to frame your prayer accurately according to the Word of God and you are not going to pray for things that you know are not the will of God. If you had a financial need to pray that someone would lose their billfold so you could find it and get their money, it would be foolish. That would be evil. The Bible says in James 4:2-3, “Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss.” Here James is not talking about asking for something that just was not God’s will. He goes further and deeper than that. The word amiss means evil. Ask evil. If you read on, you will find out what the problem was. He says to them, “ye adulterers and adulteresses.” They were probably praying for someone else’s wife, and that was evil! If you pray for things you know are evil, your heart will condemn you and your faith will not work. If Jesus had said, “If ye abide in me, ask what ye will and it shall be done,” would not it have been wonderful. Oh, praise God, that would have been great! #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Everyone who is born again could just ask what they want, and there it would be. However, it does not work that way. Jesus said, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask what ye will, and it shall be done. Sometimes people pray, “Dear Lord, I cast this care on You and I believe You to take this care and I praise You, Father, that the need is met.” However, before they get out of the church, they say, “You know I am so worried. I just do not know what I am going to do.” The Word did not abide in them. If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you. Someone says, “Oh, if I ask what I will, that would be selfish.” Read the next verse: Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit. Do you believe that it is God’s will for the Father to be glorified? Every time you get your prayer answered, it glorifies the Father. Now do you see how you can build wrong thinking by using one verse of scripture alone? People that think wrong believe wrong; when they believe wrong, they act wrong. That is one of the main problems in the church World today. Many people believe wrong because they think wrong. They are right in their hearts but wrong in their heads. Ken, a thirty-year-old-businessman, began to become aware of a lifelong pattern of fearing intimacy in relationships. His first marriage had failed because of his avoiding being close to his wife. However, just as disturbing were his many relationships with others that he characterized as being polite but rather boring and meaningless. As a child and teenager, no one would take him seriously. He often longed for someone to talk to him about something of importance. However, his family and friends would only tease him or ignore him. This served to increase his basic anxiety. He said: “If only someone had talked to me, I could have gained some self-respect and even learned how to talk back. However, they did not. I became real self-conscious, and I still do not know how to respond to people do I avoid them.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Ken’s body reflects his difficulty with relationships. It is tense and drawn. Poor posture and lack of bodily animation revel the isolation and fear he experiences in life. Even his monotone voice declares the agony of years of feeling, frightened, alone, and left out. The way Ken learned to handle people was to keep his distance, withhold his feelings, blame others when things did not go well, and withdraw into grim silence when he felt angry with anyone. However, with the awareness of his fears of intimacy, Ken made real progress with his group of friends. He became increasingly able to feel emotionally close to others. He took more of an active part in building relationships. He even surprised himself by being genuinely tender and even charming as he became moved by some of the difficulties that other people faced. Ken is like many Christians who spend their lives going to church, but who do not learn how to relate to people in a direct and caring way. However, with awareness, courage, and practice, ken has begun the challenge of opening himself up to new and exciting friendships. His group provided him with an atmosphere of caring that gave him the support to make the journey through his fears. We could say that Ken’s lifestyle was rigid enough to be called a character disorder, yet not severe enough to be psychosis. If the early development of a withdrawn approach to life had run its full course, it could have resulted in complete emotional isolation from others. This would be clinically diagnosed as schizophrenia, the ultimate inversion on the polarity of weakness. So the anti-growth forces that interrupt human growth can range in intensity all the way from mild to severe. It is like that for all of us, for we are somewhere along the continuum from full aliveness and effectiveness in living, to emotional deadness and incapacity to cope with life. The important thing is that we learn to be sensitive to our own growth as well as to the psychological and spiritual well-being of those around us. This means taking responsibility to make sure we are following the best path for a vital and meaningful life. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
My brother the star, my mother the Earth, my father the sun, my sister the moon, to my life give beauty, to my body give strength, to my work give goodness, to my house give peace, to my spirit give truth, to my elders give wisdom. We must pray for strength. We must pray to come together, pray to the weeping Earth, pray to the trembling waters and to the wandering rain. We must pray to the whispering moon, pray to the tip-toeing stars and to the hollering sun. Now whatever has an accidental existence in creatures, when considered as transferred to God, has a substantial existence; for there is no accident in God; since all in Him is His essence. May the Lord our God be with us as He was with our fathers; may He not leave us forsake us. Save us, O God of our salvation, gather us, and deliver us from among the nations that we may give thanks unto Thy holy name, and find honour in praising Thee. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever. May the Lord give strength unto His people. May the Lord bless His people with peace. We pray that our words may find favour before the Lord of all humankind. When the Ark moved forward, Moses said: Rise up, O Lord, let Thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate Thee flee before Thee. Arise, O Lord, unto Thy sanctuary, Thou, and the Ark of Thy strength. Let Thy priests be clothed with salvation; let Thy faithful ones exult. For the sake of David, Thy servant, reject not Thine anointed. And on that day it shall be said: This is our God; we placed our hope in Him that He might save us; this is the Lord in whom we put or trust; we shall be glad and rejoice in His salvation. Thy kingdom is a kingdom for all ages, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. You were designed to shine and to illuminate what is good. You are the light of the World, America, so do not add to the evil; turn your love on. It works best in evil places. For out of Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the Lord from America. In Thee alone do we put our trust, O King, high and exalted God, Lord of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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The general will is always right and always tends toward the public utility. However, it does not follow that the deliberations of the people always have the same rectitude. We always want what is good for us, but we do not always see what it is. The populace is never corrupted, but it is often tricked, and only then does it appear to want what is bad. There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter considers only the general interests, whereas the former considers private interest and is merely the sum of private wills. However, remove from these same wills the pluses and minuses that can each other out; each interest has different principles, and the accord of two private interests is formed in opposition to that of a third, and the accord of all the interests are found in opposition to that of each. If there were no different interests, the common interest, which would never encounter any obstacle, would be scarcely felt. Everything would proceed on its own and politics would cease being an art. What remains as the sum of the difference is the general will. If, when a sufficiently informed populace deliberates, the citizens were to have no communication among themselves, the general will would always result from the large number of small differences, and the deliberation would always be good. However, when intrigues and partial associations come into being at the expense of the large association, the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its members and particular in relation to the state. It can be said, then, that there are no longer as many voters as there are humans, but merely as many as there are associations. The differences become less numerous and yield a result that is less general. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Finally, when one of these associations is so large that it dominates all the others, the result is no longer a general will, and the opinion that dominates is merely a private opinion. For the general will to be well articulated, it is therefore important that there should be no partial society in the state and that each citizen make up one’s own mind. It is true that some divisions are harmful to the republic while others are helpful to it. Those that are accompanied by sects and partisan factions are harmful. Since, therefore, a ruler of a republic cannot prevent enmities from arising within it, one at least to prevent them from becoming sects. Such was the unique and sublime institution of the great Lycurgus. If there are partial societies, their number must be multiplied and inequality among them prevented, as was done by Solon, Numa, and Servius. These precautions are the only effective way of brining it about that the general will is always enlightened and that the populace is not tricked. Having seen how swiftly we are moving away from industrial style synchronization and standardization, it should surprise no one that we are also rewriting other sections of social code. While all societies need some measure of both centralization and decentralization, Second Wave civilization was heavily biased toward the former and against the latter. The Great Standardizers who helped build industrialism marched hand in hand with the Great Centralizers, from Hamilton and Lenin down to Roosevelt. Today a sharp swing in the opposite direction is evident. New political parties, new management techniques, and new philosophies are springing up that explicitly attack the centralist premises of the Second Wave. Decentralization has become a hot political issue from California to Kiev. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In Sweden a coalition of largely decentralist small parties drove the centralist Social Democrats from power after 44 years in office. Struggles over decentralization and regionalism have shaken France in recent years, while across the Channel and to the north the Scottish Nationalists now include a wing committed to “radical economic decentralization.” Similar political movements can be identified elsewhere in Western Europe, while in New Zealand a still-small Values Party has sprouted, demanding “an expansion of the functions and autonomy of local and regional government with a consequent reduction in the functions and size of central government.” In the United States of America, too, decentralism has picked up support and supplies at least some of the fuel for the tax revolt that is, for good or for ill, surging across the country. On the municipal level, too, decentralism gains force, with local politicos demanding “neighbourhood power.” Activists, neighbourhood-based groups are proliferating, from ROBBED (Residents Organized for Better and Beautiful Environmental Development) in San Antonio, or CBBB (Citizens to Bring Broadway Back) in Cleveland and the People’s Firehouse in Brooklyn. Many see the central government in Washington as the source of local ills rather than the potential cure. According to Monsignor Geno Baroni, himself a former neighbourhood and civil rights activists and once the Assistant Secretary for Neighbourhoods in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, such small, decentralized groups reflect the breakdown of machine politics and the inability of big government to cope with the wide diversity of local conditions and people. Say The New York Times, neighbourhood activists are winning “victories in Washington and across the country.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The decentralist philosophy is being spread, moreover, in schools of architecture and planning, from Berkeley to Yale in the United States of America to the Architectural Association in London, where students are, among other things, exploring new technologies for environmental controls, solar heating, or urban agriculture with the aim of making communities partially self-sufficient in the future. The impact of these young planners and architects will be increasingly felt in the years to come as they move into responsible positions. More important, however, the term “decentralization” has also become a buzzword in management, and large companies are racing to break their departments down into smaller, more autonomous “profit centers.” A typical case was the reorganization of Esmark, Inc., a huge company with operations in the food, chemical, oil, and insurance industries. In the past, Esmark had an unwieldy business. The only way it could develop coordinated effort was to divide it into bite-size bitts. The result: an Esmark cut into 1,000 different “profit centers,” each one largely responsible for its own operation. The net effect was to lift the routine decision-making from the chairman’s shoulders. Decentralization is evident everywhere but in Esmark’s financial controls. What is important is not Esmark—which has probably reorganized itself more than once since—but the general tendency it illustrates. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are also in the process of continual reorganization, decentralizing, sometimes overshooting and swinging back, but gradually, over time, reducing centralized control over their day-to-day operations. At an even deeper level, large organizations are changing the authority patterns that underpinned centralism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The typical Second Wave firm or government agency was organized around the principle of “one human, one boss.” While an employee or an executive might have many subordinates, one would never report to more than one single superior. This principle meant that the channels of command all went to the center. Today it is fascinating to watch that system crack under its own weight in the advanced industries, in the services, the professions, and many government agencies. The fact is, growing multitudes of us today have more than a single boss. Big organizations are increasingly honeycombed by temporary units like task forces, interdepartmental committees, and project teams. This phenomenon is called “ad-hocracy.” Since then, many large companies have moved to incorporate these transient units into a radically new formal structure called “matrix organization.” Instead of centralized control, matrix organization employs what is known as a “multiple command system.” Under this arrangement, each employee is attached to a department and reports to a superior in customary fashion. However, one is also assigned to one or more teams for jobs that cannot be done by a single department. Thus a typical project team may have people from manufacturing, from research, sales, engineering, finances, and from other departments as well. The members of this team all report to the project leader as well as to a “regular” boss. The result is that vast numbers of people today report to one boss for purely administrative purposes and another (or a succession of others) for practical get-the-work-done purposes. This system lets employees give attention to more than one task at a time. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The new system speeds up the flow of information and avoids their looking at problems through the narrow slit of a single department. It helps the organization respond to different, quickly changing circumstances. However, it also actively subverts centralized control. Spreading from such early users as General Electric in the United States of America and Skandia Insurance in Sweden, the matrix-style organization is now found in everything from hospitals and accounting firms to the U.S. Congress (where all sorts of new, semiformal “clearinghouses” and “caucuses” are springing up across committee lines). Matrix, in the words of Professor S.M. Davis of Boston University and P. R. Lawrence of Harvard, “is not just another minor management techniques or a passing fad, it represents a sharp break; matrix represents a new species of business organization.” And this new species is inherently less centralized than the old one-boss system that characterized the Second Wave era. Most important, we are also radically decentralizing the economy as a whole. Witness the rising power of small regional banks in the United State of America as against that of the handful of traditional “money market” gains. (As industry becomes more geographically dispersed, firms that previously had to rely on “money center” banks have increasingly turned to the regionals. The future of U.S. banking no longer lies with money market banks.) And as with the banking system, so too with the economy itself. The Second Wave gave rise to the first truly national markets and the very concept of a national economy. Along with these came the development of national tools for economic management—central planning in the socialist nations, central banks and national monetary and fiscal policies in the capitalist sector. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Today both these sets of tools are failing—to the mystification of the Second Wave economists and politicians who try to manage the system. Although the fact is only dimly appreciated as yet, national economies are swiftly breaking down into regional and sectoral parts—subnational economics with distinctive and differing problems of their own. Regions, whether the Sun Belt in the United States of America, the Mezzogiorno in Italy, or Kansai in Japan, instead of growing more alike as they did during the industrial era, are beginning to diverge from one another in terms of energy requirements, resources, occupational mix, educational levels, culture, and other key factors. Moreover, many of these subnational economies have now reached the scale of national economies only a couple of generations ago. Failure to recognize this accounts in good measure for the bankruptcy of government efforts to stabilize the economy. Every attempt to offset inflation or unemployment through nationwide tax rebates or hikes, or through monetary or credit manipulation, or through other uniform, undifferentiated policies, merely aggravates the disease. Those who attempt to manage Third Wave economics with such centralized Second Wave tools are like a doctor who arrives at a hospital one morning and blindly prescribes the same shot of Adrenalin for all patients—regardless of whether they have a broken leg, a ruptured spleen, a brain tumor, or an ingrown toenail. Only disaggregated, increasingly decentralized economic management can work in the new economy, for it, too, is becoming progressively decentralized at the very moment it seems most global and uniform. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
All these anti-centralist tendencies—in politics, in corporate of government organizations, and in the economy itself (reinforced by parallel developments in the media, in the distribution of computer power, in energy systems, and in many other fields)—are creating a wholly new society and making yesterday’s rules obsolete. Although a precise behavioural profile of social anxiety has yet to be developed, it is evident that this problem interferes with the skilled use of many nonverbal behaviours. For example, people with social anxiety gaze less, particularly while talking, and talk less than people who are socially secure. Gaze and talk duration are clear behaviour markers of social skill. In addition, social anxiety has been associated with poor vocal tone. What is particularly noteworthy is that investigators found that the nonverbal skills deficits (exempli gratia, gaze, vocal tone, speech duration) were most pronounced among those with social anxiety, and were not attributable to those with social anxiety, and were not attributable to anxiety in more in general. Socially anxious individuals also interact with others at a greater distance. One function of nonverbal skills that appears to be particularly disrupted among socially anxious individuals is conversational turn taking. People use nonverbal behaviours to manage and negotiate conversation. The effective use of certain nonverbal behaviours that are critical to the turn-taking function, such as gesture and pausing, appear to be impaired by the increase cognitive load of socially anxious persons in conversational settings. Research evidence from studies of planning, discussion of unfamiliar topics, and responding to difficult questions indicates that increased cognitive load can interfere with effective use of nonverbal turn-taking behaviours. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
This same phenomenon may also be responsible for disrupting the timing, not just the duration, of nonverbal behaviours that serve the turn-taking function. People often think of interruption as a breakdown of turn taking. At the same time, interruptions are a definite sign of enthusiasm and involvement in a conversation. It is therefore understandable that socially anxious people are less likely than socially secure individuals to interrupt their conversation partners. Another nonverbal skill that is impaired by social anxiety is deception. Although this may not be the most prosocial nonverbal function, it is generally considered to require considerable skill in the management of nonverbal behaviours. In one study, socially anxious people were less successful than socially secure individuals at deceiving others. Socially anxious subjects in this study exhibited a deceptive nonverbal demeanor that made them appear to be dishonest, regardless of whether or not they really were. A recent meta-analysis identified various themes of functions of the nonverbal behaviours of people with social anxiety. Some behaviours, such as speech dysfluencies and self-manipulative gestures, are characteristic of increased social arousal and are very prevalent among socially anxious individuals. Diminished verbal output, and inhibited initiation of conversation are behaviours that signify diminished behavioural involvement, which is also characteristic of socially anxious persons. Each of these nonverbal profiles is consistent with poor or problematic social skills. Social skills deficits associated with social anxiety may also extend into the domain of verbal behaviours. In a unique study of social anxiety and verbal behaviour, it was demonstrated that socially anxious people tend to make more “safe” utterances such as questions, acknowledgments, and confirmation, and to avoid more “risky” utterances such as those expressing objective information. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The functional values of “safe” utterances is that they allow the socially anxious person to be responsive while simultaneously making few bids for the floor during conversation. Consistent with this explanation, social anxiety has also been found to influence people’s willingness to self-disclose to others. Socially anxious subjects in this study were less likely than nonanxious control to engage in risky self-disclosures, such as mentioning gender-role-inconsistent information about the self to same-gender conversational partner. In meta-analysis, social anxiety has been found to be positively associated with cautious self-deceptions, expressions of similarity, conformity, and innocuous sociability, which is behaviour that indicates interest and agreement without getting actively involved in the interaction. This is accomplished though communication behaviours such as asking questions, using back-channel responses (exempli gratia, “uh-huh,” “I see,” “hmm” while the partner is talking), and not interrupting. “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 10.5. It is not honouring to God to go around with a nagging, negative feeling, always thinking that something is wrong. You may not even know why you do it, but you tend to think that things are never going to work out well for you. It is almost as though you have a cloud of doom and gloom following you around. That attitude will keep you from believing for the good things of God. The Bible teaches us to “cast down every negative thought and every wrong imagination,” reports 2 Corinthians 10.5. Yet it is so easy to slip into assuming the worst. Maybe you get the pain in your side, and the first thought that comes to your mind is that you are dying. Before long, your imagination is running wild, and you are seeing yourself in all sorts of negative scenarios. If you believe it and see it in your imagination long enough, many times those negative things will come to pass. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
You cannot allow fear have its way with you. “Fix your thoughts on what is true and honourable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise,” reports Philippians. Rather than thinking bad thoughts, focus on the fact that God has promised He will give Hid angels charge over your family. Say something such as “Thank you, Father, that Your angels are protecting my family members. Thank you that my children are safe and sound in the palm of Your hand.” It is all too easy to give in to fear and allow your imagination to run wild. Always remember: God honours faith; the enemy attacks with fear. Cast your thoughts on seeing good things happening in your life. Develop the habit of staying optimistic in your thoughts and conversations. Live in faith, not in fear. Make a decision today that you will no longer give in to negatives worries and fears, but instead you will think on things that are pure and wholesome and of good report. If you will do your part, God will keep you in perfect peace. Now for another witness let us go to Mark 11, verses 23 and 24. Here Jesus is teaching the greatest faith principle the World has ever known. It will absolutely transform your life. Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in one’s heart, but shall believe that those things which one saith shall come to pass; one shall have what one believed. One did not say that one would have what one hoped for. One said one would have whatsoever one saith. Then He connects that verse of scripture to the next one by saying it will also work in prayer. Verse 23 is not a prayer scripture. It is the faith principle. It is spiritual law. Just as the law of gravity will work, so will this law work when it is applied correctly. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Verse 24 is the prayer scripture. Therefore it will work in prayer. Therefore I say unto you, What things so ever ye DESIRE…Notice the words ye desire. It does not say what God desires, does it? No. Now let us put it in our language. He said, “Whatever you desire when you pray, you believe that you receive, and you shall have it.” Someone has said, “Oh. but if it is not God’s will, you cannot have it. So go ahead and pray for it; and if it is God’s will, you will receive. If it is not, you will not receive it anyway.” I beg your pardon! The Bible says you will. People are deceived in this area. Israel wanted a king. It was not God’s will for them to have one, but they received a king. That is why it is so very important that you learn God’s will before you pray. It would be better for you to spend a week reading and searching the Word of God before you ever form your prayer, than to just pray and assume it is God’s will. In Ecclesiastes, the 5th chapter, verses 1 and 2, we find this admonition: When you go into the house of the Lord, let your words be few. Then in Psalm 37, verse 7, we read, Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. The Hebrew translation says, “to be silent to the Lord.” Sometimes we do too much praying or we pray the wrong way at the wrong time. For instance, a man, as he was being robbed, cried out, “Oh God, do not let them find that $100 bill I hid in my shoe.” Now that is unwise! He told the thief what he needed to know. Sometimes we have given Satan valuable information while praying. We should learn when to be silent and when to pray. If it is not in line with the Word of God, or if it is not done accurately, prayer will get you into more trouble than you know how to handle. The effectiveness of prayer is governed by spiritual law. Sometimes people say that prayer could not hurt anyone. That is like saying, “Electricity cooks my food and washes my clothes and no one could get hurt by electricity.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Well, as long as you use it wisely and obey the laws that govern that power, it will work for you. However, if you violate the laws that govern that force, the same force that washes your clothes and cooks your food can also destroy. Prayer is designed to work for you, not against you. The Word of God was designed to work for you; but when you cross up the rules, it is like trying to play baseball with football rules. It does not work. Sometimes we use the wrong rules in prayer. There are different kinds of prayer and there are different rules for each kind. There is the prayer of dedication, the prayer of thanksgiving and praise, the prayer of intercession, the prayer of petition. We are talking about the prayer of petition. Do not get the rules for the prayer of dedication and worship mixed up with the prayer of petition. When you do, you get the thing shorted out and it will not work. Rightly divide the Word of Truth; search out these rules and apply them correctly. Then your prayers will move Heaven and Earth in your behalf. In fact, we read in the Word of God in Philippians 2.9-10, John 16.23, and Mark 16.17-18, that Jesus has been highly exalted and has given a name above every name and He has given that name to us to control the force of evil. The authority of this Earth has been given to man. We have authority in prayer and move the forces of Heaven in our behalf. We have authority in prayer by the words of our mouths to bind evil forces—the power of darkness—and render them harmless and ineffective against us. We do not need more power; we just need to apply the spiritual laws that God has given us. Jesus said, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them (Mark 11.24). Did not say anything about God’s will, did He? This is one verse of scripture that would contradict the interpretation of 1 John 5.14, “if it is God’s will.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
My Lord, I wish to know what has to be known. To love what has to be loved. To praise what tickles You the most. To appreciate what You think precious. To vituperate what soils the eyes. To put less reliance on visible and audible evidence when it comes to forming a judgment; that is what the Lord in Isaiah did (11.3). To inquire always, first and foremost, into the pleasure of the Divine Will. Often human senses fail when it comes to making a sound judgment. There fail too lovers of the present age when they allow what they see to cloud their judgment. Thinking something does not make it so. For example, is a person to be thought better just because one’s peers have decided one is so? I do not think so. That is how one liar deceives another liar, by praising one to the skies! And so on with the vain, the blind, the infirm. All of which is another way of saying, cheap praises is never a bargain for those who buy it. In the end, “the only thing that matters is how a person looks to the eyes of the Lord; that is it, nothing more.” That is the humble way Holy Father Francis from Assis put it. My dear friend, you just do not have the staying power when it comes to upping your desire for the virtuous life. I might say the same thing when it comes to moving up a grade in contemplation. While you are attempting both, you have to, because of the Original Corruption, descends to the Lower Depths, carrying, however unwillingly and tediously, the burden of life among the Corruptibles. Therefore, while you are still in the flesh, you have to weep about the burden of the flesh. So weep this! You do not have the strength to continue your spiritual pursuits. However, if you want to preserve, hie yourself to the nearest humble acts and find recreation in doing good deeds. Do continue to expect God’s Adventual and Supernal Visitation. It is going to happen! As for your feeling of exile and alienation, patiently endure until God visit you again and free you from all these anxieties. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
That is when God will make you forget your labours and enjoy your quiet. God will extend before you a vista, that is to say, a meadow of fragrant Scriptures in which to graze. You will run, with expanded heart and lung, the straight and narrow way of God’s Commandments, as God’s Psalmist has sung (119.32). And you will say, if the Letter to the Romans is any guide (8.18), “The passions of the present are not comparable with those of the future; that is to say, no glory now, but all glory then. Please forgive me, Father, for allowing fear and worry to dominate my thoughts. I am You child, and I know that Your power working in me is greater than what anyone or anything can do against me. I will trust in You today. When in the state of fear, we propose, one moves headlong into three progressively deteriorating levels. The actualizing level is one which one usually experiences as a child. However, when one leaves the actualizing mode, moved by the fears instilled by parents, teachers, and society, one’s life becomes more and more constricted. First, as one moved inward from the outer sphere, one enters levels of less mobility, greater rigidity, and more severe “shut-upness.” Second, as the pattern of fear becomes more and more severe, moving inwardly to each more and more severe, moving inwardly to each more tightly encased inner circle, the experiencing of the primary polarities of love/anger and strength/weakness becomes more and more constricted. And third, the center of the nonactualizing person is filled with fear, not love. The greater the fear the person experiences, the thicker the ego boundary becomes. For the actualizing person (the outermost circle) the ego boundary is open and permeable, thus enabling the person to be responsive to others and to the many elements of one’s life situation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Such a person can be emotionally moved by the feelings or experience of others, and can also react to others with the full intensity of one’s feelings, without cover-up. If one gets angry, one can show it honestly and directly without making a flowery or emotional scene. If one feels loving, one expresses it clearly. Or if one chooses not to express a particular feeling, one is still fully aware of it. Vitality is not diminished, as it is with the person who is fearfully constricting awareness of all feelings. The progressive levels in the process of deterioration we term manipulative style, character disorder, and psychosis. In each of these levels, the ego boundary becomes thicker and more rigid, as though the person were building a coat of armour or wall around the inner self. Some of these terms may be new to the reader, but we suggest that they are viable ways of looking at human behaviour that can enrich one’s understanding of self and others. Christianity is in accord with the claim of modern clinical psychology that not coming to terms with basic anxiety and fear blocks growth and breaks down relationships. Manipulative styles, character disorders, and psychoses are maladaptive survival mechanism based of fear. The advancing mystic has to undergo a very real temptation at certain points of one’s career—a temptation not unlike that of Jesus by Satan to great Worldly honours or that of Buddha by Mara to great sensual indulgence. It may come through crafty instigations of one’s enemies or through the innocent flatteries of one’s friends. One must beware especially of those whose excessive faith would exalt one to the role of a master, or perchance even glorify one as a new messiah! One must be on guard against being seduced by the attractions of power or the disguises of sensuality. One may have to suffer the hostility of unseen malignant force besetting the path at certain stages, especially at advanced stages. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
You force yourself into a Master’s presence and take the consequences of the immense forces around one playing on yourself. If you are weak in character anywhere the dark forces will use the disturbance by directing the forces engendered to that spot and may compass your ruin. It is so always. Pass the boundary that hedges in the occult realm, and quick forces, new ones, dreadful ones, must be met. Then if you are not strong you may become a wreck for that life. This is the danger. This is one reason why Masters do not appear and do not act directly very often, but nearly always by intermediate degrees. Those who are working for the survival of Truth in a truthless World thereby become targets for powerful forces of hatred, wrath, and falsehood. Whoever publicly bears a deeply spiritual message to humanity, has to suffer from evil’s opposition. These are warped minds who, fumbling on the lower levels of human existence, spit venom and spill hatred over the human who declares the existence of higher ones. These hostile manifestations invariably make their appearance after the teacher had made an appearance anywhere. Light must inevitably cast a shadow. Yet on the credit side they served a useful purpose. They help one and they help one’s probationers. They remind one that one must not stake a claim on any part of this Earth’s surface or in any human heart. They test the intuition and keenness of the probationers. When these have survived all the tests, one may accept them and begin their real inner work together; thereafter God Himself cannot prize them apart from their teacher, for then they know with whom they are dealing. The course of life brings encounters with those who are either inspired by, or symbolically represent, the adverse powers which at times beset it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Subconscious evil creeps out of its cage in moments of temptation. The neophyte who enters the portals becomes at once a victim of the malicious attention of Shaitans (demons) who plague one with a multitude of temptations and work on one’s mind. Rare is one who does not succumb. Tests can appear in very ordinary, quite prosaic situations. The things which hamper the student’s progress are varied, and although they may bring despondency and discouragement, impatience and rebellion, they need not and should not be permitted to bring the loss of all hope. Difficulties there must be, but they need not make us cowards. The times of swift progress are generally followed by times of slow moving; success alternates with failure as day with night. One must go on with the faith and trust that obstacles are not for all time, that fluctuations on the path are inevitable, and that one’s own inner divine possibilities are the best guarantee of ultimate attainment. The trials of the path, as indeed the trials of life itself, as inescapable. One should endure the tribulations with the inner conviction that a brighter World awaits one; hope and faith will lead one to it. Peace be to Earth and to airy space! Peace be to Heaven, peace to the waters, peace to the plant and peace to the trees! May all the powers grant me peace! By this invocation of peace may peace bring peace! With this peace the dreadful I now appease, with this peace the cruel I now appease. With this peace all evil I now appease. So that peace may prevail, happiness prevail! May everything for us be peaceful! Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, ruler of the Universe who hast sanctified us by Thy precepts and hast enjoined upon us the Counting of the Omer. This the eternal day of the Omer. You have been taught, and you know: the Lord is God; there is none else. He alone performeth wonderous things, for His lovingkindness endureth forever. There is none like unto Thee among the mighty, O Lord, and there are no works like unto Thine. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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A Verbal Contract is Not Worth the Paper it is Written on!
Pick your enemies carefully or you will never make it in Los Angeles. Sovereignty is indivisible for the same reason that it is inalienable. For either the will is general (for a will to be general, it need not always be unanimous; however, it is necessary for all the votes to be counted. Any formal exclusion is a breach of generality), or it is not. It is the will of either the people as a whole or of only a part. In the first case, this declared will is an act of sovereignty and constitutes law. In the second case, it is merely a private will, or an act of magistracy. At most it is a decree. However, our political theorists, unable to divine sovereignty in its principle, divide it in its object. They divide it into force and will, into legislative and executive power, into rights of imposing taxes, of justice and of war, into internal administration and power to negotiate with foreigners. Occasionally they confuse all these parts and sometimes they separate them. They turn the sovereign into a fantastic being made of interconnected pieces. It is as if they built a human out of several bodies, one of which had eyes, another had arms, another feet, and nothing more. Japanese sleight-of-hand artists are said to dismember a child before the eyes of spectators, then, throwing all the parts in the air one after the other, they make the child fall back down alive and all in one piece. These conjuring acts of our political theorists are more or less like these performances. After having taken apart the social body by means of a sleight-of-hand worthy of a carnival, they put the pieces back together who knows how. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
This error comes from not having formed precise notions of sovereign authority, and from having taken for parts of that authority what were merely emanations from it. Thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have been viewed as acts of sovereignty, which they are not, since each of these acts is not a law but merely an application of the law, a particular act determining the legal circumstances, as will be clearly seen when the idea attached to the word law comes to be defined. In reviewing the other divisions in the same way, one would find that one is mistaken every time one believes one sees sovereignty divided, and that the rights one takes to be the parts this sovereignty are all subordinated to it and always presuppose supreme wills which these rights merely put into effect. It would be impossible to say how much this lack of precision has obscured the decisions of authors who have written about political right when they wanted to judge the respective rights of kings and peoples on the basis of the principles they had established. Anyone can see, in Chapters III and IV of Book I of Grotius, how this learned man and his translator, Barbeyrac, become entangled and caught up in their sophisms, for fear of either saying too much or too little according to their perspectives, and of offending the interests they needed to reconcile. Grotius, taking refuge in France, unhappy with his homeland and desirous of paying court o Louis XIII (to whom his book is dedicated), spares no pain to rob the people of all their rights and to invest kings with them by every possible artifice. This would also have been the wish of Barbeyrac, who dedicated his translation to King George I of England. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
However, unfortunately the expulsion of James II (which he calls an abdication) forced him to be evasive and on his guard and to beat around the bush, in order to avoid making William out to be a usurper. If these two writers had adopted the true principles, all their difficulties would have been alleviated and they would always have been consistent. However, sad to say, they would have told the truth and paid court only to the people. For truth does not lead to fortune, and the populace grants neither ambassadorships, university chairs nor pensions. The Third Wave does more than alter Second Wave patterns of synchronization. It attacks another basic feature of industrial life: standardization. The hidden code of Second Wave society encouraged a steamroller standardization of many things—from values, weights, distances, sizes, time, and currencies to product and prices. Second Wave business people worked hard to make every widget identical, and some still do. Today’s savviest business person, as we have seen, know how to customize (as opposed to standardize) at lowest cost, and find ingenious ways of applying the latest technology to the individualization of products and services. In employment the numbers of workers doing identical work grows smaller and smaller as the variety of occupation increases. Wages and fringe benefits begin to vary more from worker to worker. Workers themselves become more different from one another, and since they (and we) are also consumers, the differences immediately translate into the market place. The shift away from traditional mass production thus is accompanied by a parallel de-massification of marketing, merchandising, and of consumption. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Consumers begin to make their choices not only because a product fulfills a specific material or psychological function but also because of the way it fits into the larger configuration of products and services they require. These highly individualized configurations are transient, as are the lifestyles they help to define. Consumption, like production, becomes configurational. Post-standardized production brings with it post-standardized consumption. Even prices, standardized during the Second Wave period, begin to be less standard now, since custom products require custom pricing. The price tag for an Ultimate Driving Machine or any other automobile depends on the particular package of options selected; the price of a hi-fi set similarly depends on the units that are plugged together and on how much work the buyer wishes to do; the prices of aircraft, offshore oils rigs, ships, computers, and other high-technology items vary form one unit to the next. In politics we see similar trends. Our views are increasingly non-standard as consensus breaks down in nation after nation and thousands of “issue groups” spring up, each fighting for its own narrow, often temporary, set of goals. In turn, the culture itself is increasingly de-standardized. Thus we breakup of the mass mind as the new communications media come into play. The de-massification of the mass media—the rise of mini-magazines, newletters, blogs, and small scale, often Xeroxed, communications along with social media, email, text messages, WiFi, wireless cable, digital video and music streaming, and computer—shatters the standardized image of the World propagated by Second Wave communications technologies, and pumps a diversity of ideas, symbols, and values. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Not only are we using customized products, we are using diverse symbols to customize our view of the World. Art News summarized the views of Dieter Honisch, director of the National Gallery in West Berlin: “What is admired in Cologne may not be accepted in Munich and a Stuttgart success may not impress the Hamburg public. Ruled by sectional interest, the country is losing its sense of national culture.” Nothing underlies this process of cultural de-standardization more crisply than a recent article in Christianity Today, a leading voice of conservative Protestantism in America. The editor writes, “Many Christians seem confused by the availability of so many different translations of the Bible. Older Christians did not face so many choices.” Then comes the punch line. “Christianity Today recommends that no version should be the ‘standard.’”Even within the narrow bounds of Biblical translation, as in religion generally, the notion of a single standard passing. Our religious views, like our tastes, are becoming less uniform and standardized. The net effect is to carry us away from the Huxleyan or Orwellian society of faceless, de-individualized humanoids that a simple extension of Second Wave tendencies would suggest and, instead, toward a profusion of lifestyles and more highly individualized personalities. We are watching the rise of a “post-standardized mind” and a “post-standardized public.” Because of what one is and what one seeks to do, the quester has special trials, special experiences and temptations, apart from the ordinary ones which accompany all human activities. Elaborate traps are set at intervals along one’s road, made up of a combination of one’s own weaknesses with persons or events related to them. One must be wary of replacing into complacency. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Complacency can cause an individual to become sick. When a person is sick, one may be affected with disease or ill health, queasy, nauseated; spiritually or morally unsound or corrpt. One could be disturbed by strong emotion, filled with disgust or chagrin, morbid, highly distasteful, lacking vigor, badly outclassed, incapable of producing profitable yields of a crop; outstandingly or amazingly good or impressive. Whatever the case maybe, the individual needs to be prepared for tests and temptations in a variety of forms before being released to the public. The rise of a “post-standardized mind” and a “post-standardized public,” this brings its own social, psychological, and philosophical problems, some of which we are already feeling in the loneliness and social isolation around us, but these are dramatically different from the problems of mass conformity that exercised us during the industrial age. Because the Third Wave is not yet dominant even in the most technically advanced nations, we continue to feel the tug of powerful Second Wave currents. We are still completing some of the unfinished business of the Second Wave. For example, hardcover book publishing in the United States of America (the best books to buy), long a backward industry, was just reaching the stage of mass-merchandizing that paperback publishing and most other consumer industries attain more than two generations ago, until audio books and electronic books came about. However, there is a class of docents who want to keep Americana alive and are encouraging Americans to still buy hardcover books and use as many physical library resources to do their reports, and to also recycle books and build their own libraries. (By the way, Thiftbooks.com is a great place to buy new, used, and collective books and other media items.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Other Second Wave movements seem almost quixotic, like the one that urges us at this late stage to adopt the metric system in the United States of America to bring American measurements into conformity with those used in Europe. Still others derive from bureaucratic empire building, like the effort of Common Market technocrats in Brussels to “harmonise” everything from auto mirrors to college diplomas—“harmonisation” being the current gobbledygook for industrial-style standardization. Finally, there are movements aimed at literally turning back the clock—like the back-to-basics movements in United States of America schools. Legitimately outraged by the disaster in mass education, it does not recognize that a de-massified society calls for new education strategies, but seeks instead to restore and enforce Second Wave uniformity in the schools. Nevertheless, all these attempts to achieve uniformity are essentially the rearguard actions of a spent civilization. The thrust of the Third Wave change is toward increased diversity, not toward the further standardization of life. And this is just as true of ideas, political convictions, proclivities dealing with pleasures of the flesh, educational methods, eating habits, religious views, American cultural attitudes, musical taste, fashion, and family forms as it is of automated production. An historic turning point has been reached, and standardization, another of the ruling principles of Second Wave civilization, is being replaced. This is creating a lot of interpersonal problems for many members of the human and animal communities. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Social anxiety arises when people are motivated to make a desired impression on others but feel that they may not be successful in doing so. Two components of social anxiety can be distilled from this perspective. First, social anxiety occurs when a person has some motivation to leave a desired impression on others. Second, social anxiety involves some subjective probability, reflecting the anxious person’s doubt about one’s ability to succeed in making that impression. Some of the components of social anxiety may be functional when one considers the evolutionary basis for the need to belong. The emotional distress that people sense when they feel that they have made undesirable impressions on others can deter them from making such impressions in the first place, make them interrupt what they are doing to make he undesired impression, and/or motivate behaviours to repair the damage caused by their behaviour. All of these are functional for humans as social beings who depend on others for their livelihood and survival. Unfortunately, for some people this emotional distress becomes crippling; I has the effect of drastically reducing their social contacts and/or producing exactly the kind of disastrous social behaviour that worries them. It is tantalizingly hard to effect the passage from the lower to the higher state. For between them lies an intermediate zone of consciousness which possesses an ensnaring quality and in which the ego makes its last desperate effort to keep one captive. Hence this zone is the course of attractive psychic experiences, of spiritual self-aggrandizements, of so-called messianic personal claims and redemptive missions, of great truths cunningly coalesced into great deceptions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
A human may travel quite a distance on the way towards this goal of self-conquest and then, as success begins to appear on the horizon, may fail and fall from it in the last few tests. One’s very success may begin to generate vanity, pride, self-importance, ambition, and arrogance. In this way one’s ego is once more stimulated instead of being subjugated. Thus one steps aside from the path although one has already gone so far along it. Self-presentational concerns are at the heart of all socially oriented anxiety problems (exempli gratia, social anxiety disorder, communication apprehension, shyness, public speaking anxiety, reticence). In the context of an interpersonal paradigm, one must ask these questions” “What leads people to feel that they will not be able to make a desired impression on others? Ans what are the interpersonal consequences of such feelings?” As in all psychosocial problems, the answers to these questions are multiple; they involve problematic experiences in the family or origin, poor social skills, maladaptive reactions and interpretations of social encounters, rejection from others, and loneliness. If impulsiveness is present, certain negative tendences of one’s character, by now controlled and largely suppressed but still laying latent in the subconscious, may rush up to the surface at intervals. When one is taken off one’s guard, they appear in speech or even action until one recovers oneself. The damage is done and although one returns to normal freedom from these faults, the consequences may remain and make one suffer for a disproportionate period. The farther one advances, the more important is the lapse. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Deep down in the lowest layers of the subconscious nature there, luck evil tendencies and evil memories belonging to the far past and not yet wholly wiped out by the spiritual rebirth. It is these tendencies which rise to the surface layers and challenge us at crucial moments when we seek initiation into the Higher Self or when we seek acceptance from a Master. In their totality they have been named by the Western Rosicrucians as the “dweller on the threshold.” No human can be taken possession of by one’s Higher Self or enter into a permanent relation with a Master unless and until one develops within oneself sufficient calm and sufficient strength to meet and overcome these arisen tendencies, whose character is marked by extreme sensuality or extreme cunning or extreme brutality, or even by a combination of the two or three of these. They are crude remnants and ugly reminders of the savage violence which one has inherited from pre-human reincarnations. One’s failure follows inevitably from one’s attempt to serve two masters. The ego is strong and cunning and clamant. The Overself is silent and patient and remote. In every battle the dice are loaded in the ego’s favour. In every battle high principle runs counter to innate prejudice. People with social anxiety tend to exhibit deficiencies in social skills. As in the case of depression, a model of social skills deficits has emerged as one of the theoretical paradigms in the explanation of social anxiety and social phobia. According to this perspective, people with poor social skills are expected to experience negative outcomes from their interpersonal encounters. Over time this causes these people to dread social interactions and anticipate negative responses from others. Of course, this anticipation may create a self-fulfilling prophecy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
If the ego cannot trap one through one’s vices, it will try to do so through one’s virtues. When one has made enough progress to warrant it, one will be led cunningly and insensibly into spiritual pride. Too quickly and too mistakenly one will believe oneself to be set apar from other humans by one’s attainments. When this belief is strong and sustained, that is, when one’s malady conceit calls for a necessary cure, a pit will be dug unconsciously for one by other humans and one’s own ego will lead one straight into it. Out of the suffering which will follow this downfall, one will have a change to grow humbler. The risk is greater because a human emissary of the adverse element in Nature will automatically appear at critical moments and consciously or unconsciously seek hypnotically or passively to lead one astray as one has gone astray. Our own World-wide experience, embracing the written reports and spoken confidences of thousands of individual cases of mystical, and occult seekers, both Old World and Occidental, has gravely taught the need of this warning. Furthermore, the avoidance of social interaction that often follows social anxiety may lead to an atrophying of social skills, which can only further worsen the circumstances. Thus far, research evidence is generally supportive of the hypothesis that social anxiety is linked to poor social skills, although the causal ordering of these variables has yet to be definitively established. Whoever seeks to tread this path such as the one shown here will sooner or later find that these forces set themselves in opposition to one’s interior journey. One’s way will be blocked by external circumstances that entangle one in hopeless struggles or heart-breaking oppressions and enslavements, or by physical attacks which seek to sweep one off one’s feet and destroy one’s higher aspirations. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
On general measures of social skills, people with social anxiety rate their own social skills more negatively than their nonanxious counterparts do. People who know and/or observe the social behaviour of socially anxious people also rate them low in social skills. Even parents rate their socially anxious children’s social skills more poorly than the parents of nonanxious children rate their offspring’s skills. Although socially anxious individuals may exhibit problems with social skills, they tend to perceive these problems more negatively than others do, suggesting that they may be unduly negative in their self-evaluations. Persons in one’s immediate environment may be moved by these invisible forces to work against one, causing uprisings of hatred and misunderstanding; one-time friends may turn into treacherous enemies more virulent than the poison of a cobra. Public critics will appear and endeavour to nullify whatever good one is doing for humanity, or to prevent its continuance. The single aim and object of all these attempts will be to prevent one’s alignment with the Overself, to render mental quiet impossible, or to keep one’s heart and mind crushed down to Earth and Earthly things. One must needs suffer these things. Their power, scope, and duration may be diminished, however. The path is best not only by pitfalls arising out of one’s own human failings, but at critical times by unconscious or conscious evil beings in human form who seek to destroy faith through falsehoods and to undermine reliance on true guidance through sidetracks and traps. “If you have been raised with Christ [to a new life, thus sharing His resurrection from the dead], aim at and seek the [rich, eternal treasures] that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. And set your minds and keep them set on what is above (the higher things), not on the things that are on the Earth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
“For [as far as this World is concerned] you have died, and your [new, real] life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, Who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in [the splendour of His] glory,” reports Colossians 3.1-4. We must continually choose to keep our minds set on the higher things. Notice again that there is something we are to do—we must continually choose, day in and day out, twenty-four hours a day, to keep our minds set on the higher things. What are those things that are above, the higher things? Quite simply, they are the beneficial things of God. The apostle Paul provides a great list by which we can evaluate our thoughts: “Whatever things are true. Whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things,” reports Philippians 4.8. Learn to look for he best in every situation. If you look hard enough and keep the right attitude, no matter what you are going though, you can find something good about the experience. If you get fired from your job, you can choose to be negative and bitter and blame God and your coworkers. Or, you can say, God, I know You are in control of my life, and when door closes, You always open a bigger and better door. So Father, I cannot wait to see what You have in store for me. One must thank the Lord for His guidance and protection and for keeping us perfect in His will. One must make a choice to keep one’s mind focused on the better things. It is not going to automatically happen. One must be determined and put forth some effort to keep one’s mind set on God’s best. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
We must be especially on guard during times of adversity, in times of personal challenges. When trouble is on the horizon, often the first thoughts that come to mind are not higher thoughts; they are not good thoughts. Negative thoughts bombard us from every possible angle. Right there, we must choose to trust God and not allow ourselves to get down and discouraged or just give up. We can determine by our own choices which way our lives are going to go. If you choose to stay focused on the beneficial and keep your mind set on the good things of God, all the forces of darkness are no going to be able to keep you from moving forward and fulfilling your destiny. However, if you make the mistake of dwelling on the negative, focusing on your problems and your impossibilities, it is basically backing away from the success God has in store for you. One must decide which way one wants to go. Psychologists are convinced that our lives move in the direction of our most dominant thoughts. Throughout this day, engage your minds in thoughts of joy, peace, success, abundance, and blessings, and one will move toward those things, drawing them to oneself at the same time. Now that is a magnetic personality! Father, help me to see as much as I can in every person and in every situation. I choose to have an optimistic outlook on life. O Father, just and always to be Praised, the hour comes for Your servant to be proved. O Father who must be loved, it is the right time—this very hour—that Your servant suffer something in Your behalf. Father Perpetually Venerated, my time has come—You knew it already from all eternity—that Your servant should lower one’s public profile for a while and live only the interior life with You. For the briefest time one will be treated as dirt, humbled and homeless, trod under the feet of Humankind, writhed by one’s passions, wreathed by one’s sargassos. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
All that so one may rise again with You in the dawn of new light and be clarified in the Celestials. Holy Father, so You ordained, and so You wished. This is a fact, and I perceive it as so. Recently in group therapy with Amanda and Ken, a forty-year-old woman declared her frustration with life. “Next week I am going to a twenty-year reunion of my high-school class. Only I am terribly embarrassed because I have accomplished exactly nothing in the last twenty years!” She had raised several children. However, she still felt lacking because in many ways her life had been completely dominated by her possessive and dictating husband. She had tried many tactics over the years, including fighting, pouting, or keeping silent. Now all feeling for her spouse was gone, and while the couple continued to occupy the same house, there was no emotional or intellectual communication. An important thing that the group fed back to her was the possibility that the next twenty years would not have to be a repeat of the last twenty. She could find the power in herself to change, even in basic ways, if she desired it enough to give her fears and helplessness. This was hard for her to believe. The key turning point for her came when she finally admitted a deep desire to make something out of her life, and expressed a willingness to face her many fears. Among them were fears that she was too old to find an occupation, that her marriage would dissolve, that her children would reject her, and that no one could like her. Fear and anxiety are built into human existence. We must all learn to cope with them. Fear is also known as basic anxiety; free-floating fear. Through a variety of adverse influences, a child may not be permitted to grow according to one’s individual needs and possibilities. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
As a result of being stifled, the child does not develop a feeling of belonging, but instead a profound insecurity and vague apprehensiveness, for which I use the term basic anxiety. It has one’s feeling of being isolated and helpless in a World conceived as potentially hostile. The cramping pressure of one’s basic anxiety prevents the child from relating oneself to others with the spontaneity of one’s real feelings. Fear is the reason so many people get stuck in life and stop growing. Or, more specifically, inordinate amounts of fear cause a person to stop growing. Everyone experiences basic anxiety. It is how we handle the basic anxiety that is so important. Do we use the fear as a catalyst for growth, or do we become paralyzed by it? Love, ager, strength, and weakness represent four basic polarities. Humans, however, are like the amoeba. The amoeba is a one-celled creature that constricts when a threat or danger arises. When fear is present in people, they, like the amoeba, often constrict to the center of the polarities. Do it is with the deteriorating personality. The resistance to expressing feelings is manifested by a feeling of basic anxiety (fear). It is as if the fear exists at the zero-point of the polarities of the core. This is the point of indifference, deadness, or apathy, where many people prefer to remain, thus avoiding risking feelings that are needed for being in touch with others. People must often begin to express their feelings by expressing their fear, for in the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. In expressing their basic anxiety of feelings, people paradoxically begin to risk moving out from dead center to the various levels of feeling expressions. Prayer is the key to Heaven’s storehouse, but faith unlocks the door. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
A prayer without faith is like a key without a hand to turn it. In 1 John 5.14-15 we find some great truths about prayer: “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, he heareth us: And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” Let us read it again and look at some key words. “This is the confidence.” Or, this is the faith. We have this confidence in Him, that if we ask anything, according to His will, He hears us. “And if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” Notice that two key words here are anything and whatsoever. John said you can ask anything that you desire and have whatsoever you ask. If we know that He hears us, we know that we have whatsoever we desire of Him. If God hears you, if you get an audience with Him, you already have granted to you as your present possession what you ask. This is the confidence that we have in God, that, if we ask anything, God will present you with your request. Let say it this way so you can see it, “If you ask according to His will for asking.” His Word is His will. This passage is not dealing with God’s will for you to have or not to have a certain thing. This is not even involved in this verse of scripture. Many have thought it was and it has held them in bondage for years. They said, “If I pray for something that is not God’s will, then I will not receive it.” Therefore they did not take time to find the will of God, but prayed saying, “Lord, if it be Your will.” There was no faith in that prayer. No need of praying that prayer. You are wasting your time. You do not know whether God has heard you, so you cannot release faith in your prayer. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
That prayer will produce for you because it des not qualify on the basis of God’s rules for asking. Answered prayer is governed by spiritual laws (God’s Word). Many times our prayers have gone unanswered because we did not determine the will of God before asking. Therefore we could not release faith in that prayer. Then on other occasions we have prayed beyond God’s ability to answer. If He did do what we ask, He would violate His Word. God’s will concerning your having or not having does not mean you should pray for just anything whether it is God’s will or not, but you can do that. The Bible says you can. If you know He heard you, you will have whatever you desired, you will have the petitions you requested—right, wrong, good, bad or indifferent. It is very dangerous for a person to pray for something assuming that it is God’s will. You can believe and receive things that are not God’s will. Israel received a king to rule over them. It was not God’s will, but they requested it. Now there are some things that are immaterial with God. Whether you drive a blue Ultimate Driving Machine or a red Ultimate Driving Machine does not matter to Him unless it matters to you. According to the Word in Mark 11.24, if you desire a red one, pray for a red one Do not pray for just a car—be specific! God has set a spiritual law before us. If we will learn to operate under the rules of His law, we will get our prayers answered. If we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask, the idea present in verse 14 is to ask according to God’s will for asking. I want to show you why you cannot interpret that verse the way most people have, namely, “if it is God’s will for you to have it.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The Bible says in the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be established; so let us go to the Word of God and find some more witnesses. Let us learn to interpret the Word of God in the light of the rest of the Bible. Do not just take one verse of the scripture and say, “That is what He said and that is all there is to it.” That can hold you in bondage. For instance, here it seems to be saying something that it really does not say. If you ask anything according to His will, He hears you. He is talking about your asking according to God’s rulebook for asking, His will for asking. What is God’s will for asking? “Let one ask in faith, nothing wavering. For one that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that human think that one shall receive anything of the Lord. A double minded human is unstable in all one’s ways,” reports James 1.6-8. That is one of the rules for asking anything from God. The insight, once caught, and however briefly, will leave behind a calm discontent with the triviality of ordinary life, a lucid recognition of its pathetic futility and emptiness, as well as a calm dissatisfaction with the human oneself. One will, at the least, win an enlarged conception of life, and at the most, an ennobled character. Better still, one will feel for the first time what it is like to attain an inner equilibrium. The glimpse may give one a dynamic charge of power, or leave one bereft of all aggression—depending on the particular need or phase of the moment. The door of one’s inner consciousness has opened; the regeneration of one’s moral nature have begun. The truth will come into the innermost chambers of one’s consciousness, sometimes abruptly but sometimes sluggishly. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
And because it comes in this way, because it comes from the God within one, it will be dynamic, creative, powerful. As one becomes aware of this sublime influx, so will one son become aware that character is aletering with it, and so will others become aware that one’s conduct is shaping itself around nobler standards. When a human discovers that one oneself is the bearer of divine forces, one ceases to run hither and thither in search of other humans. Once the soul has revealed its lovely self to one, one cannot help adoring it, cannot help the feeling of being carried away in lifelong pursuit of it. The attraction is not of one’s own choosing. It is as natural and inevitable as the movement of the sunflower towards the sun. The soul’s power of control has a distinct and useful place in the human life and constitutes a valuable aspect of God’s grace. Consciousness of the Spirit is obtained through prayer. Deep peace of the shining stars to you, which stay invisible till darkness falls and discloses their pure and shining presence beaming down in compassion on our turning World. Deep peace of the shining stars to you! Deep peace of the watching shepherds to you, of unpretentious folk who, watching and waiting, spend long hours out on the hillside, expecting in simplicity some Coming of the Lord. Deep peace of the watching shepherds to you! Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you, who, swift as the wave and pervasive as the air, quiet as the Earth and shining like a star, breathes unto us His Peace and His Spirit. Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you! Remember one whose ask ‘mid sedge was drawn from edge of water, Thy shepherd son who could not sleep before his sheep had water. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
And when Thy flock did likewise burn with thirst and yearn for water, he struck the rock, there gushed a rill, to give their fil of water. For Moses’ sake send water! Remember one, Thy Temple-priest, who hallowed feast with water. Atonement’s sun declined to night with fivefold rite of water. The Law was read, and then afresh he laved his flesh with water. Remote, in dread, he served his folk that swiftly broke Like water. For Aaron’s sake send water! Remember last the tribes who fled across the bed of water. Thy chosen caste for whom turned sweet the bitter sheet of water. For Thee their race have ever shed their hearts’ best red like water. Without Thy face their spirits whirl as in a swirl of water! For America’s sake send water! For Thou art the Lord our God who causest the wind to blow and the rain to descend: for a blessing and not for a curse. Amen. For life and not for death. Amen. For plenty and not for famine. Amen. Sovereign of Universe, as we count the days of the Omer, we recall the time when our people were established in the land of America. May this observance serve as another reminder of the need to reclaim the soil of the Holy Land so that it may again flow with milk and honey and provide a homeland for our scattered folk. May our love for America’s land quicken our love for the Constitution of the United States of America, the Holy Bible, The Ten Commandments, and The Book of Mormon, America’s heritage. As in the past, may God and His Beloved Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit become the center of our spiritual life from which again shall come Thy word, O Lord, revealing Thy will to all humans. Lo, I am about to fulfill the precept of the Counting of the Omer, as it is written in the Torah: Ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought an omer of grain as a wave-offering, seven complete weeks they shall be; until the morrow of the seventh week shall ye number fifty says. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Success Means Never Having to Admit You Are Unhappy!
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own. The first and most important consequence of the principles established in life is that general will can direct the forces of the state according to the purpose for which it was instituted, which is the common good. For if the opposition of private interest made necessary the establishment of societies, it is the accord of these same interests that made is possible. It is what these different interests have in common that forms the social bond, and, were there no point of agreement among all these interests, no society could exist. For it is utterly on the basis of this common interests, no society could exit. For it is utterly on the basis of this common interest that society ought to be governed. I therefore maintain that since sovereignty is merely the exercise of the general will, it can never be alienated, and that the sovereign, which is only a collective being, cannot be represented by anything but itself. Power can perfectly well be transmitted, but not the will. In fact, while it is not impossible for a private will to be in accord on some point with the general will, it is impossible at least for this accord to be durable and constant. For by its nature the private will tends toward having preferences, and the general will tends toward equality. Even if it ought always to exist, it is even more impossible for there to be a guarantee of this accord. This is not the result of art but of chance. The sovereign may well say, “Right now I want what a certain human wants or at least what one says one wants.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
However, it cannot say, “What this human will want tomorrow I too will want,” since it is absurd for the will to tie its hands for the future and since it does not depend upon any will’s consenting to anything contrary to the good of the being that wills. If, therefore, the populace promises simply to obey, it dissolves itself by this ac, it loses it standing as a people. The very moment there is a master, there no longer is a sovereign, and thenceforward the body politic is destroyed. This is not to say that the commands of the leaders could not pass for manifestations of the general will, so long as the sovereign, who is free to oppose them, does not do so. In such a case, the consent of the people ought to be presumed on the basis of universal silence. The Third Wave rhythms spring from deep psychological, economic, and technological forces. At one level they arise from the changed nature of the population. People today—more affluent and educated than their parents and faced with more life choices—simply refuse to be massified. The more people differ in terms of the work they do or the products they consume, the more they demand to be treated as individuals—and the more they resist socially imposed schedules. However, at another level the new, more personalized Third Wave rhythms can be traced to a wide range of new technologies moving into out lives. Music streaming, Movie streaming, streaming of television shows, and music video streaming, for example, make it possible for televiewers to listen to millions of songs and watching thousands of filmed programs at times of their own choosing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Television has stopped dictating the schedules of even the worst tube addicts. In fact, digital streaming platforms even have more programs available than the television. The power of the great networks—the NBCs, the BBCs, or NHKs—to synchronize viewing is coming to an end. Eventually all television will be provided through the Internet, which subscribers will be able to pick up a wireless signal like over air TV, and will be able to watch any program they want, so it will probably be impossible to synchronize television schedules or interrupt programs with breaking news. The computer, too, has recast our schedules and even our conceptions of time. Indeed, it is the computer which has made flextime possible in large organization. At its simplest it facilitates the complex interweaving of thousands of personalized, flexible schedules. However, it also alters our communication patterns in time, permitting us to access data and exchange in both “synchronously” (id est, simultaneously) and “asynchronously.” What that means is illustrated by the growing numbers of computer users who are today engaged in “computer conferencing.” This permits a group to communicate with one another through terminals in their homes or offices. For instance, 660 scientists, futurists, planners, and educators today in several countries have the ability to conduct lengthy discussions of energy, economics, decentralization, or space satellites with one another through the Electronic Information Exchange System, Internet, and Cisco TelePresence, which is designed to link two physically separated rooms so they can resemble a single conference room, regardless of location. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Cisco Systems documented the Telepresence concept and implementation details in the book Cisco TelePresence Fundamentals, where the difference between Telepresence and Videoconferencing, is that TelePresence is prevalent at that point in time, is higher quality, more simplistic, and by far more reliable. With some systems there is a choice of either instant or delayed communication. Many time zones are apart, each user can choose to send or retrieve data whenever it is most convenient. If one feels like it, a person can work at 3.00 A.M. Alternatively, if they choose, several can go on line at the same time. However, the computer’s effect on time goes much deeper, influencing even the way we think about it. The computer introduces a new vocabulary (with terms like “real-time,” for example) that clarifies, labels, and reconceptualizes temporal phenomena. It has replaced the clock as the most important timekeeping or pace-setting device in society. Computer operations take place so rapidly that we routinely process data in what might be termed “subliminal time”—intervals far too short for the human senses to detect for the human senses to detect or for human neural response times to match. We now have computer-operated 3D printers, which lets you sculpt real-World designs from leather, wood, plastic and more. Furthermore, computer scientists are now speaking in terms of nanoseconds (billionths of a second)—a compression of time almost beyond our powers to imagine. It is as though a person’s entire working life of, say 80,000 paid hours—2,000 hours per year for forty years—could be crunched into a mere 4.8 minutes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
During Second Wave civilization machines were clumsily synchronized to one another, and people on the assembly line were then synchronized to one another, and people on the assembly line where then synchronized to the machines, with all the many social consequences that flowed from this fact. Today, machine synchronization has reached such exquisitely high levels, and the pace of even the fastest human workers is so ridiculously slow by comparison, that full advantage of the technology can be derived not by coupling workers to the machine but only by decoupling them from it. Put differently, during Second Wave civilization, machine synchronization shackled the human to the machine’s capabilities and imprisoned all of social life in a common frame. It did so in capitalist and socialist societies alike. Now, as machine synchronization grows more precise, humans, instead of being imprisoned, are progressively freed. One of the psychological consequences of this is a change in the very meaning of punctuality in our lives. We are moving now from an across-the-board punctuality to selective or situational punctuality. Being on time—as our children perhaps dimly sense—no longer means what it used to mean. Punctuality, as we saw earlier, was not terribly important during First Wave civilization—basically because agricultural work was not highly interdependent. With the coming of the Second Wave one worker’s lateness could immediately and dramatically disrupt the work of many others in factory or office. Hence the enormous cultural pressure to assure punctuality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Today, because the Third Wave brings with it personalized instead of universal or massified schedules, the consequences of being late are less clear. To be late may inconvenience a friend or co-worker, but its disruptive effects on production, while still potentially severe in certain jobs, are less and less obvious. It is harder—especially for young people—to tell when punctuality is really important and when it is demanded out of mere force of habit, courtesy, or ritual. Punctuality remains vital in some situations but, as the computer spreads and people are permitted to plug into and out of round-the-clock cycles at will, the number of workers whose effectiveness depends on it decreases. The result is less pressure to be “on time” and the spread of more casual attitudes toward time among the young. Punctuality, like morality, becomes situational. In short, as the Third Wave moves in, challenging the old industrial way of doing things, it changes the relationship of the entire civilization of time. The antiquated mechanical synchronization that destroyed so much of the spontaneity and joy of life and virtually symbolized the Second Wave is on its way out. The young people who reject the nine-to-five regime, who are indifferent to classical punctuality, may not understand why they behave as they do. However, time itself has changed the “real World,” and along with it we have changed the ground rules that once governed us. The term social anxiety refers to “anxiety resulting from the prospect of presence of personal evaluation in real or imagined social situations.” Anxiety is experienced as an aversive cognitive and affective state accompanied by heightened autonomic arousal that can be extremely debilitating. (However, in some cases social anxiety can facilitate behaviour and be adaptive.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
In particularly severe instances, this phenomenon may develop into the clinical syndrome of social phobia. People with social phobia have an intense and debilitating fear of social or performance situations in which there will be exposure to unfamiliar others or scrutiny by others. To cope with this fear, many people will avoid any social situations in which novelty or scrutiny may be present; this avoidance sometimes culminates in a reclusive lifestyle. The most fear-provoking stimuli include speaking in public, entering a rom occupied by others, meeting strangers, eating in public, and writing in public. Fore those who have social phobia, exposure to such social situations may cause panic attacks. Less sever and/or more circumscribed forms of social anxiety including communication apprehension, public speaking anxiety, and shyness. These concepts overlap considerably with the symptomatology of social phobia. The general concept of social anxiety may be manifested as a clinical disorder (exempli gratia, social phobia), as an enduring trait (exempli gratia, shyness), or as a momentary state (exempli gratia, social anxiety). There is generally a lifetime prevalence of 13.3 percent for social phobia. The lifetime prevalence of this disorder is higher in women (15.5 percent) than in men (11.5 percent). Social phobia is also more common among those with lower income and less education, as well as among those who are unemployed, unmarried, and/or residing with their parents. Inherent in these demographic correlates is a subtext of social dysfunction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Milder versions of social anxiety are far more common than social phobia. Such forms of social anxiety as communication apprehension and heterosocial anxiety are evident in 20-30 percent of most samples studied. Social phobia most commonly has its onset during adolescence. In addition to being especially prevalent in the population, social phobia has a devastating impact on quality of life. Problems with family relations, educational attainment, employment, marriage, and romantic relationships, and friendships are evident in a majority of patients with social phobia. As reflected in these domains of psychosocial functioning, this disorder can be exceptionally pervasive, marring numerous aspects of people’s social lives. Even those with subthreshold social phobia suffer social consequences similar to those of individuals with diagnosable social phobia. These findings lend credence to the argument that social phobia is simply a more intense and enduring form of social anxiety. Social phobia is a rather recent discovery. A lack of attention to or awareness of this serious problem led to its characterization as a “neglected anxiety disorder.” Recently, some have called for a new name for this problem: social anxiety disorder. Social anxiety disorder more appropriately connotes the pervasiveness and impairment that is evident among those with the disorder, and also helps to distinguish it from specific phobias (which are often very circumscribed, such as fear of spiders). Because of its brief history as a recognized psychological disorder, the understanding of this problem is informed by research on related problems, such as reticence, shyness, communication apprehension, and what many refer to simply as “social anxiety.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
All of these constructs are associated with apprehensiveness about being judged negatively by others, and fear that one will not be able to project a desired image. Research on these related constructs essentially examines the behavioural manifestations of social anxiety and as such contributes to our understanding of this problem. In the domain of interpersonal communication, people with social anxiety harbour doubts about their ability to make a desired impression on others. Social anxiety is clearly associated with social skills deficits, and socially anxious individuals tend to hold negative expectations about how they will perform in social contexts and how other people will react to them. At the intersection of interpersonal communication and general personal relationships, people with social anxiety frequently encounter interpersonal rejection; loneliness and relational distress are other common themes of general personal relationships. Often such relationships are simply lacking. (Indeed, the difficulties experienced by socially anxious people in forming relationships partially account for why family-of-orientation experiences are not discussed in this essay, since such people are less likely than others to form stable romantic relationships or marry, and thus to create families of orientation. Another reason is that there simply have not been many research studies on romantic and marital relationships among the socially anxious.) People with social anxiety often have a history of problems associated with family-of-origin experiences. Their families of origin often exhibit excessive cohesion and poor adaptability. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Socially anxious people frequently have a history of parental abuse, overinvolvement, and parental modeling of maladaptive attitudes and behaviour. Social anxiety is highly comorbid with loneliness and depression. “What I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me,” reports Job 3.25. One problem with people with social anxiety disorder is perhaps they need to expand their horizons and change their thinking. Get a better vision of what is possible. Fear has created a stronghold in the minds of many. However, sometimes this fear is rational and needs to be listened to. Other times it is irrational and needs to be adjusted. Mentally, some people think that they are unlikable and that is keeping them in bondage physically. However, many people need to get a fresh vision of what God can do in their lives. One should start seeing oneself as popular, happy, well-adjusted, successful, and in their dream home. Look through the eyes of faith and see yourself living the life of your dreams. Throughout the day, meditate on God’s Word. Go around dwelling on the fact that you are a blessed child of the Most High. Remind yourself of the Scripture that says, “No good thing will God withhold from me when I walk uprightly.” Remember that you are a gift from God. Fear often creates a barrier that blocks one’s ability to conceive the blessings of God. Develop a fresh vision of what God can do, and overcome the fear, as you take on an entirely new dimension. Many people dwell on the negative and then wonder why nothing good ever happens to them. It is because their minds are focused in the wrong direction. One cannot constantly think thoughts of worry and fear and expect to have any kind of success in one’s life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The Scripture tells us, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind,” reports 2 Timothy 1.7. The Amplified Bible describes a sound mind as “well-balanced mind” and adds “discipline and self-control.” In other words, to live in success, we must discipline our minds to think thoughts that are consistent with God’s Word. Every day you will have negative thoughts that come at you and disturb your peace of mind. You cannot avoid them. However, you can choose whether you will give them life by focusing on them. You can control the doorway to your mind, reject the negative thoughts, and choose to dwell on something good. Lord God, Holy Father, may You be blessed now and forever. As You wish, so it is done. May Your servant rejoice in You, not in oneself and no in any other; You alone are my True Joy and Honour, O Lord; You alone are my Hope and my Crown. What do I have except what I receive from You? Paul asked that in his First Letter to the Corinthians (4.7). What do I receive, except what I have not earned or deserved? All if Yours, not only what You gave me, but also what You did for me. As the Psalmist put it (88.15), “I am a pauper, and have been in the throes since I was a youth.” I would like to say my soul has never been moved to tears, but I cannot. I would like to say my soul has never ever been thrown into confusion, but I cannot. Oceans of passions never leave me in calm. I desire the joy of peace, and I demand the peace Your children enjoy; the lambs in Your pasture You feed in the light of consolation. If You grant me peace, if You flood me with joy, Your servant’s soul will be full of melody and prayerful noise. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
However, if You absent Yourself from me without notice, as You have this very bad habit of doing, I will run afoul on Commandment Street; as the Psalmist named it (119.35). With You just a memory, I will beat my breast and bend my knees. That is because I am no the person I was yesterday or even the day before yesterday. That was when Your lantern was swinging above my head; Job had the same experience (29.3). And that was when Your huddled wings protected me like an umbrella from falling temptations; the Psalmist had the same experience (17.8). The Bible says, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success,” reports Joshua 1.8. Notice, God said if we will think about His Word day and night, and fill our minds with thoughts of faith and victory, then we will have successful lives. To meditate means to think about the same thing over and over. What are you meditating on? What is going on in your mind? Your consistent thoughts will determine what kind of life you live. If you go around full of fear all the time, you may not realize it, but you are actually believing for the negative. You are activating the enemy’s power. When you do that, if you do not get just what you are believing for, do not be surprised. The Old Testament story of Job has many lessons for us, but one especially powerful principle is revealed early in the calamities that came upon that good man. He lamented, “The thing I greatly feared came upon me. And that which I dreaded has happened” reports Job 3.25. When good people agree with the enemy, one is given the right to bring bad things into being. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Therefore, recognize what your negative thoughts and comments are doing. You are giving the enemy a foothold, an open door, a free shot as you and your family. Make up in your mind to be healthy, successful at your jobs, believe your business will grow, teach your children the word of God so they can choose good friends. When we live with fear, expecting the worse, we are agreeing with the enemy, and opening the door to all the troubled one can bring us. One can either act in faith and receive God’s blessings and favour, or one can act in fear and receive the defeat and misery from the enemy. Set your mind in a new direction, mediating on the good things of God. The things we fear can come upon us. Get in the habit of meditating on God’s Word, and you will discover that God has a great plan for your life. You will find that God is guiding you, that He is bigger than any of your problems, and He can turn any situation around in your favour. Your thoughts should be, I know something good is going to happen to me. I know God is at work in my life. I know my business is going to prosper. I know my family is going to thrive; my children are going to excel. God wants us to dwell on thoughts of faith, success, and grace. If you would simply start thinking the right thoughts, thoughts that are consistent with the beneficial principles of God’s Word, you could see your whole life turn into a success. A note on barter and money: The rise of the prosumer compels us to rethink the future of bater, too. Barter is becoming big business these days. It is not limited to small transactions between individuals, swapping a used sofa, let us say, for some auto repair services, or exchanging legal services for dental care. (Large numbers of people are discovering that barter can help them avoid taxes.) #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Bartter is becoming more important in the World economy, too, as countries and corporations—uncertain about the fast-changing relationships between hard and soft currencies—swap il for jet fighters, coal for electricity, Brazilian iron ore for Chinese oil. Such barter is a form of exchange. Father, please help me to dwell on thoughts that are pleasing to You, thoughts of a great future, of my family enjoying Your good gifts and having lives characterized by usefulness significance, and blessing. I pray thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within. As we move deeper into our understanding of human personality, we come to the fact that personality is dynamic, not static, in nature. Life itself is dynamic and changing. Human beings have four basic polarities: anger, love, strength, and weakness. These polarities come from the spiritual core of every person. They form a basis for understanding an individual’s personality and relationships to others. These polarities can be viewed as the “latitude and longitude” of the self. Love is the polar opposite of anger. Strength is the polar opposite of weakness. What the reader must project into these dynamics is the quality of continuous movement. Even in the closets of relationships, love eventually gives way to anger. And for even the most confident or capable person, the sense of strength and adequacy eventually gives way to anger. And for even the most confident or capable person, the sense of strength and adequacy eventually gives way to a sense of weakness or vulnerability. Likewise, anger that is expressed honestly and directly often generates feelings of love and tenderness. And weakness that is humbly experienced generates feelings of adequacy and strength. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The love/anger continuum enables us to be expressive all the way from agape love (the unconditional love that God has for humankind) to strong anger (a rightful anger at the violation of human rights). Self-actualizing people can express tender love or anger with ease. They are competent and strong, yet are keenly aware of their weaknesses. Thus, the actualizing lifestyle involves the dynamic and rhythmic experience of each and every one of these dimensions as they are deemed appropriate to every moment in life. Both ends of the continuum must be experienced to live life to the fullest. To love someone is to be close to one, often giving pleasurable “strokes” or messages that one is regarded as precious. Love involves a warm, nonjudgmental empathy that reaches deep into the heart of the other. Parents often experience this feeling for their children. Or spouses for each other. Persons who have grown significantly in Christlikeness experience tender and consistent love for all humanity—the reach out emotionally to men, women, and children wherever they encounter them. However, closeness also means “rubbing each other the wrong way” from time to time. And then it becomes appropriate to say “ouch” or “that irritates me.” This is the function that anger serves in a relationship. Many Christian married couples have a great deal of trouble expressing their anger to each other. They get angry, all right, but they tend to repress it rather than express it clearly. Anger that is repressed—or pushed out of one’s awareness—usually comes out behaviourally as either depression or nagging. Therefore, couples that do not honestly level with themselves and with each other about their anger maintain only a pretense of a loving relationship. Underneath they remain irritable, frustrated, and most probably critical with each other in subtle ways. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Even the word “encounter” has connotations that portray both ends of the love/anger polarity. One the one hand, encounter can imply a warm and tender sharing between persons. On the other hand, it can mean a fight or skirmish, as in a hostile encounter between troops. The word captures two opposing, yet complementary, aspects of being human—the aspect of “being with” others is an empathic way, and that of “being against” others in a confronting way. These two meanings are brought together when we speak of confrontation with caring. This is the kind of latitude that people need in order to develop honest, loving, and growth-oriented relationships. In human relationships this dialectic is never fully resolved, for we are constantly alternating between being alone and being with others, between giving ourselves to others and rediscovering ourselves in opposition to them, between cooperation and conflict. The point is that both aspects are necessary for balanced, expressive human interaction. One of the problems in many churches is the fear of open and direct communication. Many Christians have been taught to be polite and keep smiling. They do not know how to honestly and constructively express their disagreements, annoyances, or anger. Instead, they bottle it up inside. The perpetual smile, then, becomes a phony mask that overs up an angry heart. The irony is that the anger does come out, but in the form of gossip or dissension rather than creative conflict. A pastor was recently consulting with our firm about a troublesome situation developing in his congregation. He was revealed that some of the church members had been dissatisfied with his ministry over the past two years. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
He had heard through the DMs (Direct Messages on an Internet Social Media Account) that some members were planning to split the church and set out on their own. When asked whether or no he sought out the dissenting members in order to express his feelings to them, the pastor replied that he did not believe in sharing his feelings. “Pastors are not supposed to get mad or frustrated,” he said. The consultant challenged that assumption and suggested that if he leveled with the people, they might also level with him. If he shared his feelings of hurt, frustration, and anger with them, then they might share their feelings with him. Out of such honest expression of feelings could come new information and greater wisdom for guiding the church. The pastor was reluctant, but chose to take the risk. Within the next week he and his wife sent DMs to those who opposed his leadership and scheduled meetings to visit their homes. He shared his deepest feelings and concerns with them, then listened to them. Much to everyone’s surprise, air began to be cleared of resentment and bitterness and the DMs that caught on fire cooled down. The people involved began to breathe easier, owing to the relief of having gotten things off their heart and mind and soul. With a greater flow of information, everyone felt more confident in the possibility of a constructive outcome to the initial firestorm in the DMs. The pastor even stated that if the consensus of feelings came to be that he should resign from the church, he would do so in good conscious and with respect for the honest sentiment that had been shared. And to next time just send him a message in his in-box. It looks as though that will not happen, because members of the congregation have become much warmer and more open to one another as a result of the honest, ongoing exchange of views and feelings. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
In considering the strength/weakness continuum, we want to deal first with the two-edged sword of pride. We can easily be conditioned by our cultural emphasis on competition, industriousness, and performing to develop an exaggerated sense of self-sufficiency. Describing one side of the sword, Augustine believed that excessive pride was the greatest of all sins because it alone had the power to sever our humble reliance upon the Creator. So in one way, pride can cause a separation between out core self and God. Yet when managed artfully, it is healthy to have pride in one’s strengths. That kind of pride is a wise acceptance and awareness of one’s capabilities. Thereby, one can also gain an understanding of one’s limitations or weaknesses. No one remains “king of the mountain” indefinitely. Actualizing requires that each person, no matter how strong or gifted, accept that one is equally weak, often foolish, and makes many mistakes. The scriptures emphasize that “pride goeth before the fall” only to surface the reliable truth that actualizing one’s strengths is possible only when one has the courage to become aware of one’s weaknesses as well. Dealing with pride has been very difficult for me. It is hard to share my weaknesses openly. This may be due to the fact that I have felt attacked by others over the years for some of the important values I have adopted. So I have countered by always building a case to show that I am right and they are wrong. I am tired of doing this. I am gradually learning that I do not always have to be right or perfect. Increasingly I am able to let down my defenses and share my secret fears, weaknesses, and needs. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
A healthy and realistic acceptance of our weaknesses and limitations is the basis for humility. However, in order to balance a genuine sense of humility in our lives, we need to cultivate an awareness of courage and personal power. This we would call the strength dimension of personality. To ask which polarity is the most important in living would be like asking which child is more important. They all are essential for living life fully—and each emerges rhythmically in daily living. An interesting biblical description of such a lifestyle is found in Moses. We discover that he was both “the meekest man who ever lived” and a man of such courage that he led a nation from Egyptian Exodus, through forty years of wandering in the wilderness, on into the land that God had originally promised them. Moses was so angry at the rebellious behaviour at Sinai that he threw down and shattered the rock tables upon which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments. The next moment, however, we find him interceding with God in a profoundly unselfish and loving way for the well-being of those with whom he had just been so angry with. So in Moses we meet a man who expressed the polarities of love/anger and strength/weakness to the fullest. We see a man who talked with God as friend to friend and yet expressed his feelings deeply and honestly to people. Even with God he expressed one’s feelings directly. At the site of the burning bush, he declared his fear, his lack of confidence, and his embarrassment at the prospect of becoming leader of the Israelite nation. So God promised that Aaron would speak for him to the people. Then when Pharaoh did not immediately release the Israelites as Moses thought he would, Moses angrily asked God what had gone wrong. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Perhaps the scriptures pay such great honour to Moses partly because he was a person who gave all dimensions of oneself so honestly to his lifelong encounters with God and people. Psychology is supposed to pay tribute to human dignity. It is similar to religion as it is full of such wonderful topics as love, joy, and personal fulfillment. How many of you will become great someday? Well, the greatest limitation in your lives is your lack of personal vision and confidence. Actualizing people believe in their strengths and greatness. Actualizing Christians must experience their greatness as well as their limitations. This means feeling confident, strong, talented, and powerful, or weak, humble, and yielding as such feelings are appropriate to one’s life. Actualizing is cultivating a willingness to risk expression of the entire range of human feelings. Contrary to popular belief, the result of emotional freedom is not alienation or increased vulnerability, but decreased anxiety, close and meaningful relationship, self-respect, and social adaptivity. The actualizing Christians discovers and utilizes this principle. The invitation that God extends to people is to become aware, feeling-full persons like oneself. Both poles, and every level of intensity in between them, need to be developed so that we can come to experience life in the fullest and most sensitive way. Instead of being one or the other, the actualizing Christian is balanced: both strong and weak, both assertive and caring. Growth involves increased refinements of the skills involved in interweaving all the strands onto the loom of one’s inner calling from God. A striking and irreplaceable work of art emerges over time—one’s unique identity which is in essence the gift of oneself to God’s Universe. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
All tapestry, being handwoven, is imperfect, as all humans lives are imperfect. The imperfections do not detract from the original beauty, but rather contribute to the novel design of each person’s individuality. The feeling that one belongs to THAT to which all the Universe also belongs, is with one the moment the glimpse is over. If, as a full realization, it passes away with the experience, an afterglow remains as a residue, a strong conviction persists for years later. The Glimpse which discloses Heaven refines the mind as it does so, otherwise the two would remain too far from one another to make vision possible. Whoever has had this beautiful experience, felt its glorious freedom and known its amazing serenity, as had something which one will always remember. Even after one has fallen utterly away from both freedom and serenity, when darkness bitterness or degradation are one’s melancholy lot, the knowledge that a life of truth goodness and beauty is somewhere and sometime possible will continue to haunt one. The glimpse, when finally it does come, compensates for all the struggles and difficulties of the years that precede it. One can look back upon them with complete detachment, perhaps even smile at them. Even the sufferings seem no longer what they were, but diminish into unimportant little incidents. Yes, the Glimpse will gently go away, its fine exaltation will subside, but neither its lustrous meaning nor its loving memory will ever be forgotten. Even merely knowing that one has had such a glimpse gives one some kind of reassurance about life, some little security within oneself, some degree of faith that a higher power is taking care of the Universe—and hence of oneself. It may seem incredible that so short a glimpse should leave so large an effect, so misty a comprehension should give so profound a revelation, but so it is. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
The isolated glimpses will have this effect, that they will not only whet one’s appetite for farther ones but also for a lasting identity with the Overself. Ambition may remain but its objects will not. How could they when their triviality is so glaringly exposed by the Glimpse? If the beauty of one’s experience penetrates one’s heart deeply enough, it will not fail to bring about a change in one’s life. It will also point out the direction in which the change is to be made. Deep peace of the flowing air to you, which fans your face on a sultry day, the air which you breathe deeply, rhythmically, which imparts to you energy, consciousness, life. Deep peace of the flowing air to you! Deep peace of the quite Earth to you, who, herself unmoving, harbours the movements and facilitates the life of the ten thousand creatures, while resting contented, stable, tranquil. Deep peace of the quiet Earth to you! Our God and God of our Fathers, remember one who followed Thee as to the seas flows water, Thy blessed son, like tree well set where rivers met of water. Wherever one moved, Thou wast one’s shield, in fire or field or water, and Heaven-proved, his seed he sowed, wherever flowed a water. For Abram’s sake send water! Remembers one whose heralds three beneath the tree had water. Whose sire was won to do Thy will, one’s blood to spill oneself as high in faith could soar, one’s heart to pour like water. Where Earth lay dry, one dug and found deep underground the water. For Isaac’s sake send water! Remember one, one’s staff who bore from Jordan’s shore O’er water, and rolled the stone—one’s love to tell—from the well of water, and, wrestling hard, achieved to tire a prince of fire and water. Hence Thy regard one safe to bear through fire and air and water. For Jacob’s sake send water! #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Good Things Often Happen to Bad People!
We are the people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the World we inherit. Loneliness is a discrepancy between a person’s desired and achieved relationships with other people. Depression and loneliness are two psychological problems that are strongly associated. There are a great number of interpersonal, as well as psychological, similarities between the two problems. Problems with social skills are equally evident among depressed persons and lonely individuals. Difficulties in establishing and maintaining rewarding and intimate relationships are also very prevalent in loneliness. Both depressed and lonely people have a difficult time making friends, communicate poorly with family members, and experience low social integration. As in the case of people with depression, there is reason to suspect the family relationships of people who are lonely. Children’s loneliness tends to be positively correlated with that of their parents, just as in depression. What the lonely person appears to long for are meaningful and intimate friendships. Relationships with family members, on the other hand, do little to prevent or ameliorate the experience of loneliness. In fact, the more social support students have from their family, the more lonely they are. Although the increased family support may have been a result of the students’ loneliness, it is clear that these types of relationships do little to help a lonely person’s situation. In fact, very close family relationships may set up people for future loneliness. Retrospective reports of early childhood experiences indicate that children who had an excessively close, warm, and nurturing relationship with at least one parent were significantly more lonely as elderly adults than a group of controls. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
When it comes to producing lonely children, the effects of overinvolvement from parents can be as noxious as underinvolvement or neglect. This is due in part to the fact that parental overinvolvement can create a sense of narcissism in the child. It has also been suggested that extremely close parent-children build great expectations that other relationships chronically fail to meet, and that such relationships may displace the interactions that children would have with peers. Given the extent of problems with social skills, personal relationships, and family relationships in both depression and loneliness, the exceptionally high rate of comorbidity between these two problems is understandable. Why is it that these two pervasive problems should coexist with such regularity? Well, in addition to sharing common interpersonal and psychological antecedents, problems such as depression and loneliness are causally related to each other. From an interpersonal standpoint, there are several plausible versions of such relationships. Firs, people who are depressed often infect others with their negative mood and elicit interpersonal rejection. As this rejection accumulates and personal relationships become scarce, depressed persons would be expected to experience loneliness. If we look at these variables in reverse order, depression may be a more generalized reaction to prolonged loneliness. Momentary or state loneliness may be a painful experience that many can endure without global distress. However, as loneliness persists, people may become emotionally worn down, resulting in a major depressive episode. Human beings are inherently predisposed to find rewards in social relationships. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
For people who become chronically dissatisfied with the quality of such relationships, depression may be viewed as the inevitable consequence of this extinction of social rewards. Finally, depression and loneliness may each be associated with common interpersonal and psychological variables that contribute to each condition. One such interpersonal variable may be shyness. People who are characteristically shy, and lacking social support, are particularly vulnerable to developing depression. However, this relationship is partially mediated by the experience of loneliness, which is itself predicted by the interaction of shyness and low social support. Loneliness is conceptualized as a proximal contributor to depression, which indicates that its presence is a sign of impending depression. Presently, there is at least some support for the view of loneliness as a casual factor in depression. Ultimately, depression and loneliness may share a common causal origin, one of which may be shyness. Both depression and loneliness have clear links to problems with interpersonal communication and relationships. These include deficits in social skills, and problems with general personal as well as family relationships. Such problems, when sufficiently severe and chronic, surely have the potential to precipitate episodes of either state. However, interpersonal communication problems are certainly not the cause of all cases of depression or loneliness. Depression is one of the most common mental problems. Depression is highly comorbid with loneliness and has a very powerful relationship with disrupted communication behaviour and troubled interpersonal relationships. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Racism is a mental health issue because racism causes trauma. And trauma can lead to mental illnesses, which need to be taken seriously. Systemic racism (also called structural or institutional racism) is racism that exists across society within, and between institutions/organizations across society. It refers to the complex interactions of large scale societal systems, practices, ideologies, and programs that produce and perpetuate inequalities for marginalized groups. The key aspect of structural or systematic racism is that these marco-level mechanisms operate independent of the intentions and actions of individuals, so that even if individual racism is not present, the adverse conditions and inequalities for marginalized racial groups will continue to exists. Examples are housing discrimination, government surveillance, social segregation, racial profiling, predatory banking, access to healthcare, hiring/promotion practices, and mandatory minimum sentences. God loves all His children and makes salvation available to all. God created he many diverse races and ethnicities and esteems them all equally. As the Book of Mormon puts it, “all are alike unto God.” “Throw off your old evil nature and your former way of life, which is rotten through and through, full of lust and deception. Instead, there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes,” report Ephesians 4.22-23. You may not realize it, but you can choose your thoughts. Nobody can make you dwell on something. One decides what one will entertain in one’s mind. One’s mind is similar to a giant computer in that one’s brain stores every thought one has ever had. When can one stare at the Sun without a parasol, that is to say, contemplate God’s clarity without blinking an eye? #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
The fact that our brains are supercomputers is encouraging when one is trying to find one’s car keys, but it is not such good news when one considers the amount of smut, foul language, ungodly concepts, and other negative input with which we are inundated every day of our lives. Nevertheless, simply because a destructive thought is stored in one’s mental computer does no mean one has to pull it up and run it on the main screen of one’s mind. Only when one’s senses the desire of Eternal Beatitude rising in one’s soul is when we can fully understand the Word of God. Only when one thinks one’s soul is about to make the Grand Exit. To hasten that time, open your heart, spread wide your desire, and accept this holy inspiration. Return the fullest thanks to Supernal Goodness; she has dealt so decently with you, visited you so thoughtfully, grabbed hold of you so powerfully, before your own fat self fell to the Earth. Just do not think you had anything to do with any of this. You did not think it up, and you did not sweat it out! However, it had everything to do with Supernal Grace and Divine Kindness. However, if you make the mistake and start dwelling on the negative aspects of life, those thoughts will affect your emotions, your attitudes, and—if you continue to give it free rein in your mind—it will inevitably affect your actions. You will be much more prone to discouragement and depression, and if you continue pondering those negative thoughts, they hold the potential to sap the energy and strength right out of you. You will lose your motivation to move forward in a positive direction. The more we dwell on the enemy’s lies, the more garbage we willingly allow one to dump into out minds. It is also as though we have flung the door wide open and put up a sign that reads: “Trash goes here!” #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
What are you allowing your mind to dwell on? Are you constantly contemplating negative things? How you view life makes all the difference in the World—especially for you! It is unrealistic to ignore problems and live in denial, pretending that nothing bad ever happens to us. Bad things do sometimes happen to good people, just as good things often happen to bad people. Pretense is not the answer; nor is playing semantic games to make yourself sound more spiritual. If you are sick, it is okay to admit it; but keep your thoughts on your Saviour. If your body is tried, your spirit is weary, sometimes the most rational and spiritual thing to do is to get some res. However, focus your thoughts on the Saviour who has promised, “Those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength,” reports Isaiah 40.31. Tough times come to all of us. Jesus Christ said, “In this life you will have trouble, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the World,” reports John 16.33. He was saying that when troublesome times come, we can choose our attitudes. We can choose to believe that Jesus Christ is greater than our problems; we can choose the right thoughts. Today, if you will dwell on the promises of God’s Word, you will be filled with hope and grace. You will develop a successful and faithful attitude. Like bees to flowers, you will draw the sweetness of God. Many people want to wait until their situation improves before they have an attitude of gratitude. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen. One has the lexical order wrong. One must show an attitude of gratitude first, and then God will turn your situation around. As long as you harbour that poor, defeated foolish and ghoulish outlooks, one will continue to live in doom and gloom. “Strip off that old nature and put on the new man. Be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind, having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude,” reports Ephesians 4.22-24. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
You cannot sit back passively and expect this new person to suddenly appear, much like a baby cannot sit there with a poopy diaper and expect it to magically become fresh and clean without any effort. The baby has to cry and scream until he gets a clean diaper. “As a person thinks in one’s heart, so one will become,” reports Proverbs 23.7. Wen one thinks thoughts of failure, one is destined to fail. You will be stuck in the poopy pamper. When one thinks thoughts of mediocrity, one is destined to live an average life. However, when one aligns one’s thoughts with God’s thoughts and one starts dwelling on the promises of His Word, when one constantly dwells on His success, favour, faith, power, and strength, nothing can hold one back. Make up your mind today to think optimistically, excellent thoughts, and one will be propelled toward greatness, inevitably bound for increase, promotion, and God’s supernatural blessings. As you stockpile your virtues and increase your holdings in humility, you will be preparing to battle for God, and eventually to buttle for God, as is the duty of a fervent servant soul. Flame glows, as you have no doubt noticed, but without smoke it does not ascend. So as the desires for Celestials on your part flame up, they do not smoke; that is to say, they are not free from the temptation of carnal affection. You do the right things for the honour of God—that is to say, pray desiringly to Him—but all is not right with you. Why? More soot than wisp. Is that not the case with your own desire? You have clouded your own mind into thinking that your desire was perfectly suitable. However, it was not. It was not white smoke rising; it was just black soot falling. How to put time to good effect. Do not go looking for delectables for yourself. Do find what is acceptable and honourific to God. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
If you can make this midlife correction, then you will prefer God’s regulations to every desideratum of yours, whether in the past or the future, and follow it cheerfully. I know your desire, and many of the times God has heard you lusting for it in the night. You would like to be cavorting around the playing fields of the Lord with the children of God; Paul would have it that way, that is what he wrote to the Romans (8.21). That will be then, but here is now. The thought of the Eternal Home and Celestial Homeland delights you. Alas, that hour has yet to come. Yours is another clock, ticking another time. The time for war, the time for labour, the time for temptation. Replenish your depleted soul with the Summum Bonum—that should be your wish. However, alas, the time is not ripe. God is the One. Look for God, until the Kingdom of God comes; Luke has quoted Him on this already (22.18). Today, I chose to dwell on good thoughts, thoughts that based on the truths of Your Word, Father; thoughts that will build me up rather than tear me down. Thank You for renewing my mind and giving me a fresh new attitude of hope. Up to this point, My dear friend, you had to be put to the test and exercised in many different situations. For these, intermediate consolations have been issued to you, but the Final Lump Sum is not due jus yet. Therefore, stay cheery and keep in fighting trim. Especially when it comes to fighting against, as well as to just enduring, the contraries of nature. “Rejoice in the Lord always [delight, gladden yourselves in Him]; again I say, Rejoice. Let all humans know and perceive and recognize your unselfishness (your considerateness, your forbearing spirit). The Lord is near [He s coming soon]. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
“Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition (definite requests), with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God. And God’s peace [shall be yours, that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and being content with its Earthly lot of whatever sort that is, that peace] which transcends all understanding shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honourable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and loveable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things [fix your mins on them], reports Philippians 4.4-8. Often you have to do what you do not want to do; and it is important to leave behind what you truly hold dear. That will forward others’ interests, but it will not necessarily promote yours. What some will say will be heard, but there is no guarantee that what you will say will be worth hearing. Some will beg on the streets, and their pockets will be filled; you will hold your hand out on the corner, and no one will look your way. Some will develop a large following, but you will remain a comparative unknown. Bits and bobs will be done by others, but your immense contributions will go unnoticed. Because of experiences like these, your nature will always be thrown into a hissing fit. However, if you can manage to hang on to your tongue, you will take a giant stride along the path of spiritual progress. In these and many similars, the faithful servant of the Lord usually has to be proved; that is to say, to bring oneself low and to snap one’s attachment to all things. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Die you must to the things of this World, as you already know. However, there is scarcely somesuch in which you need to die more than this; namely, to endure, to suffer what makes your will scream, what does against your grain, what makes you wince at the mere scrape of it. That is especially so when disconveniences are the order of the day. Why? They just do not make sense to you. Even so, because you do not dare resist the Higher Power, you insinuate yourself into an already existing line of authority. Now that must seem hard to you, My dear friend—to walk around awaiting the nod from another Devout who is no worthier than yourself. It is like looking into a mirror and trying not to see yourself. However, think of the fruit of these labours, My dear Devout, the swiftly approaching End and the extravagantly large Reward. Do that, and you will lose your grounds for complaint, but you will surely have the strongest possible ground for patience. From just a small investment in Free Will Limited here on Earth, you will be able to trade up to Free Will Forever in Heaven. There is where you will find everything you want, everything you can possibly desire. You will have the faculty of doing nothing but good, without fear of losing a thing. Yours will be always one with Mine—no secrecies, no privacies. There, nobody will cross you; nobody will complain about you. Nobody will trip you up. No one will go around you. All your desiderata will be present to you at once and the same time, and each and every one will entertain your whole spirit, filling you with refreshment and continuing to top you off. In Heaven, God will match Celestial Comelies—that is to say, glories—with each of the Earthly Uncomelies—that is to say, contumelies—you have had to endure; the woolly white pallium of distinction, as Prophet Isaiah might have put it (6.13), in place of the rough bronze monk’s cloth of sorrow; a seat in the Kingdom of the Ages in place of your stool of ignorance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
In Heaven, making special guest appearances will be two fruits of Obedience. Labour of Penitence will rejoice, and Humble Subjection will be crowed with glorious fanfare. That will be then, but this is now. Incline yourself humbly under than hands of Humankind. Do not let yourself get hot and bothered about what someone may have said about your or another may have ordered you to do. However, take great care that whether a Prelate, a Priest, or a Devout demand something of you, you do it whole and entire for the good of the situation and to fulfill all expectations. Odd thing, though! One person asks for a tit; another, for a tat; both become celebrities and are praised to the skies. However, when you do the very same thing, no joy or glory attaches to you. Why? It is that your only joy, if I may say it, My dear Devout, will be found in contempt of self. Which may not be so bad if it means in the Long Run that you will become My pride and joy. One desire, and one alone is all you need, this side of death or that side of life: that God will always be glorified in you. “And my God will liberally supply (fill to full) your every need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever (though the endless eternities of the eternities). Amen (so be it),” reports Philippians 4.19-20. Lord, do not fully understand the meaning of this experience. I am filled with awe. Your love goes beyond anything I could ever have imagined. I know that someday I will trust you so much that I will not feel afraid; I will not draw back when you express your love to me. Thank you for being so patient. I have much to learn. Good night. Many Christian readers think that psychology undermines faith. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
However, if your faith is built on the foundation that learning to love God with your whole being, and learning to love others as yourself is the highest priority of the Christian life, then our message will affirm your faith. A psychological understanding of personality can contribute to the effectiveness with which Christians seek to live out their faith. We are also concerned with relationships between person and between a person and God. How can anyone, including a growing Christian, get the most out of life? We have coined a term—“the actualizing Christian”—to describe an approach to living a Christian life based on awareness, honesty, and trust. We believe this lifestyle leads to the graced fulfillment of one’s God-given potentials in life. It results in the full development of one’s personality and the increased capacity to have intimate and enduring relationships with others and God. Actualizing is a lifelong process, not a final state or a rigid ideal of perfectionism. It is a vision of how we can grow throughout the stages of life. The journey of actualizing is an opening of new doors, a becoming, a probing, a going inwards to one’s center, a developing of relationships. Every arrival is a new beginning! We believe that the growth of many people, especially those raised in the New World culture, has been limited by a lack of trust of their whole being—intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual. For many people, “head knowledge” is the stuff of life. If it is not logical, rational, and objective, then it is not so important. So these individuals have great difficulty experiencing their intuition or expressing their feelings. For others, emotionality is overemphasized at the expense of clear thinking and responsible planning. Yet others have difficulty when it comes to the body. They consider the body as somehow evil or at least neutral and fail to recognize the importance of the physical realm of human existence. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
One of the awesome affirmations of the Christian faith is that Jesus, the Son of God, expressed His deity through a human body. He clearly demonstrated that the physical realm is important and, beyond that, that it is to be valued positively. Actualizing Christians rely upon important information derived from their entire natural and supernatural beings. The growing Christian learns to listen carefully to the messages of the body. A headache may mean we are too tense about life. A backache may mean we have chronically overextended ourselves. An ulcer may mean that we hate someone. In actualizing, we learn to respect the wisdom of our own feeling and inner intuition. This this is called the wisdom organism. Time and again in my clients, I have seen simple people become significant and creative in their own spheres, as they have developed more trust of the process going on within themselves, and have dared to feel their own feelings and express themselves in their own unique ways. The actualizing Christian learns throughout life by continually exploring, expanding, and revising the meaning of one’s beliefs and values. In this open-ended approach, there is a desire to always grow beyond one’s prejudices and premature conclusions about life. In psychological terms, one has an open perceptual field in which new configurations of meaning constantly emerge. In religions terms, one tends to be sensitive to the heart and mind of Christ—one is easily moved by the spirit of God. Everything in the World is moving dynamically in the direction of completion, fulfillment, and actualization. Through the process, there is a vital link between the person’s or thing’s actual characteristics at a given moment and what will characterize it as a fully developed entity. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
For instance, the acorn has within it the potential of becoming an oak tree. However, it is only through the process of growth over time that the tiny acorn experiences transformation and actualization. The idea behind entelechy is that the ultimate end or purpose toward which the acorn is developing is embedded in the acorn itself. The internal blueprint pushes, energizes, and guides the acorn in fulfilling its project of becoming a mature oak. In much the same way the person who is rooted in God is being transformed over time into the unique individual that one was created to be. Although the actualizing process is pleasurable, it is not simply a hedonistic pursuit of fun or happiness. There will be real travail for anyone who desires to become a genuinely actualizing person. However, there will be real joy too—the joy of being what one is and becoming more of what one can be. This involves risk, faith, vulnerability, and adventure. We need to learn to place a high priority on our growth toward authentic personhood. It will not happen automatically. Even if we want to, we cannot change ourselves suddenly and drastically. Rather, real and enduring change is a gradual, steady process of becoming. It is nurtured by the courageous acceptance of our whole being—strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices, talents and deficits. And, if we take it for granted, it may never occur. Just as the athlete trains and warms up before the beginning of the hundred-yard dash, we must learn how to warm ourselves up to the process of actualizing. It does not happen all at once. We need to discover our energies; heighten our awareness of the challenges for meaning that life is inviting us to embrace; and gain access to the spiritual resources of the core of our being. Only then will we be able to live life with sensitivity, wisdom, and vitality that is possible for us. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Learning to live such a life requires concrete and specific guidelines. First of all, the spiritual core, the center of the personality, provides the function of lending stability to the always-evolving nature of the person. The physical appearance of the person changes throughout life in definite ways. The emotional responses change through a single day. The values and attitudes are altered over the course of weeks, months, and years. However, the core self, the center of spiritual identity, remain the same. Recognize and affirm that you are a Center of pure self-consciousness and self-realization. This is the permanent factor in every varying flow of your personal life. It is this which gives one the sense of being, or permanence, of inner security. You are a center of awareness and power. The spiritual core is an individual’s God-given personhood, one’s “God within.” The Holy Spirit dwells here. The core reflects the fact that one is made in the image of God, and shares with God the capacity for awareness, choice, and intimacy. Whether that potential is fully realized during the course of a person’s lifetime depends on one’s responsiveness to the wisdom of the core. The fact remains that the awakening to the Overself leaves great witness and striking testimony that it has passed over a humans’ head. It brings new and subtle powers, an altered outlook upon people and events, and a deep calm in the very center of one’s being. When one is given one’s primal glimpse of the spiritual possibilities of humans, one is immeasurably exalted. When one discovers the dynamic power of the Overself for the first and hears the beautiful hidden rhythm of its life, one’s heart becomes as the heart of Hercules and for hours, days, or weeks one walks on air. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
One begins to price is fleshly desires at their true worth and treads them under foot. One has been permitted to taste of the spirit’s fruits, and one knows that they alone are good. A sense of being lifted up from all Worldly cares will pervade one for some time as an afterglow of this experience. The gracious feeling swims away again and leaves one not forlorn but forsworn. One will never gain be alone. The remembrance of what happened is by itself enough to be company for one the rest of one’s life. Through our blessings and invocations, we acknowledge this network of forces that flows through the World, awakening the deeper levels of our consciousness to effect these patterns of change. Deep peace of the running wave to you, of water flowing, rising, and falling, sometimes advancing, sometimes receding. May the stream of your life flow unimpeded! Deep peace of the running wave to you! O look down upon us from Thy dwelling place on high and forgive Thy servant who now worships before Thee, so that Thou wilt prolong one’s days and pardon one’s sins, iniquities, and transgression. Extend Thy right hand to receive one in perfect repentance, and open Thy good treasure to satisfy thirsting creatures, as it is written in the Scripture: The Lord shall open unto thee His good treasure, the Heaven, to give the rain unto your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand. Amen. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possesses all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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The Dead and the Living Can Never be One—God Has Forbidden it!
Life is richest when you realize that we are all snowflakes. Each of us is absolutely beautiful and unique. And we are here for a very short time. Mrs. Winchester was a pretty little brunette, rather pale, with dark hair, brilliant brown eyes, a resolute mouth and a bright, intelligent expression. She was orderly, trim and feverishly energetic, and seemed to live every moment of her life. The Winchester mansion was like a paradise on Earth; and in this light I still regarded it, until a great change came over the temperature, and the month of April introduced me to red-hot winds, sleepless nights, and the intolerable “brain fever” bird. The next morning, rested and invigorated, we set out on a tour of inspection; and it is almost worthwhile to undergo a certain amount of baking on the sweltering heat of the plains, in order to enjoy those deep first draughts of cool hill air, instead of a stifling, dust-laden atmosphere, and to appreciate the green valleys and blue hills by force of contrast to the far-stretching, eye-smarting, white glaring roads that intersect the burnt-up plains—roads and plains that even the pariah abandon, salamander though he be! No doubt the work of some extremely roughish-looking and grotesque imps and demons, who were inflicting various torments. However, to our delight and surprise, Mrs. Winchester had by no means overdraw the advantages of her new estate. The Grand Queen Anne Victorian mansion was solidly built of wood, brick, and stone, nine storied, and ample in size. It stood on kind of a shelf cut out of the hill side, and was surrounded by a pretty flower garden, full of roses, fuchsias, carnations. There was also a fruit orchard, many exotic trees and plants, and an avenue of palm trees. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
There was a delightful, flagged verandah. The stairs were very steep. At the head of them, the passage and rooms were repeated. There were very small nooks, a switchback staircase, which has seven flights with forty-four steps, rising only about nine feet, since each step was just two inches. Miles of twisting hallways, secret passageways in the walls, a labyrinth of rooms, and dressing-rooms, 13 bathrooms, and plenty of good water. From the fourth-floor balcony, there was a glorious view, across a valley, far away, to the snowy range. As we looked around the drawing-room, here were carpets, curtains, solid, very solid chairs, and Berlin wool worked screens, a card-table, and any quantity of pictures. All the rooms were well, almost handsomely, furnished, in an old-fashioned style. There was no scarcity of wardrobes, looking-glasses, or even armchairs, in the bedrooms, and they pantry was fitted out—a most singular circumstance—with a large supply of handsome glass and china, lamps, old moderators, coffee and tea pots, plated side dishes, and candlesticks, cooking utensils and spoons and forks, wine coasters, and a cake-backet. The chins was Spoke, the plate old family heirlooms, with a crest—a winged horse—on everything, down to the very mustard spoons. There were gold- and silverplated chandeliers, imported Tiffany art glass windows, German silver and bronze inlaid doors, Swiss molded bathtubs, rare precious woods like mahogany and rosewood. Handsome Dresden china vases, nice boxes of firewood in every room, clocks, real hair mattresses—in short, it was a treasure trove. It was well built with some peculiar effects such as stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that go nowhere and that opened onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
It is estimated that there were some 500 to 600 rooms in the house. However, it is haunted! According to a Boston medium, Mrs. Winchester and her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits. Supposedly the untimely deaths of her daughter and husband were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester would be the next victim. We soon forget about the dismal prophecy, being too gay and too busy to give her, or it a thought. We had so many engagements—tennis parties and tournaments, picnics, concerts, dances and little dinners. We ourselves gave occasional afternoon teas in the verandah, using the best Spode cups and saucers and the old silver cake-basket, and were warmly complimented on our good fortune in being guests in such a charming house and garden. Mrs. Winchester also had an African grey parrot—a rare bird indeed—and a cute little dog named Zip. Later that night, we had dinner in a handsome and somewhat antique-looking room. A cheerful wood-fire blazed in the capacious hearth; a little at one side an old-fashioned table, with richly-carved legs, was placed—destined, no doubt, to receive the supper, for which preparations were going forward; and ranged with exam regularity stood the tall-backed chairs whose ungracefulness was more than counterbalanced by their comfort. A stranger stopped at the door of the room, and displayed his form and face completely. He wore a dark coloured cloth cloak, which was short and full, not falling quite to the knees; his legs were cased in dark purple silk stockings, and his shoes were adorned with roses of the same colour. The opening of the cloak in front showed the undersuit to consist of some very dark, perhaps sable material, and his hands were enclosed in a pair of heavy leather gloves which ran up considerably above the wrist, in the manner of a gauntlet. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
In one hand he carried his walking-stick and his hat, which he had removed, and the other hung heavily by his side. A quantity of grizzled hair descended in long tresses from his head, and its fold rested upon plaits of a stiff ruff, which effectually concealed his neck. So far all was well; but the face!—all the flesh of the face was coloured with the bluish leaden hue which is sometimes produced by the operation of metallic medicines administered in excessive quantities; the eyes were enormous, and the white appeared both above and below the iris, which gave to them the impression of insanity, which was heightened by their glassy redness; the nose was well enough, but the mouth was writhed considerably to one side, where it opened in order to give egress to two long, discoloured fangs, which projected from the upper jaw, far blow the lower lip; the hue of the lips themselves bore the usual relation to that of the face, and was consequently nearly black. The character of the face was malignant, even satanic, to the last degree; and, indeed, such a combination of horror could hardly be accounted for, except by supposing the corpse of some atrocious malefactor, which had long hung blackening upon the gibbet, to have at length become the habitation of a demon—the frightful sport of satanic possession. It was remarkable that the worshipful stranger suffered as little as possible of his flesh to appear, and that during his visit he did not once remove his gloves. There was something indescribably odd, even horrible about all his motions, something undefinable, something unnatural, unhuman—it was as if the limbs were guided and directed by a spirit unused to the management of bodily machinery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The stranger said hardly anything during his visit, which did not exceed half an hour; and the host himself could scarcely muster courage enough to utter the few necessary salutations and courtesies; and, indeed, such was the nervous terror which the presence of Theophilus Dunn inspired, that very little would have made all his entertainers fly bellowing from the room. During his stay he did not once suffer his eyelids to close, nor even to move in the slightest degree; and further, there was a death-like stillness in his whole person, owing to the total absence of the heaving motion of the chest caused by the process of respiration. These two peculiarities, though when told they may appear trifling, produced a very striking and unpleasant effect when seen and observed. He saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into the apartment. Sharp guests of wind and warning rumblings of thunder that seemed to shake the mountains, blew away the table cloth. As it was whirling into space, Dunn drew his sword, and raising the candle as o throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the figure had glided. No figure was there—nothing but the furniture which had belonged to the room, and yet he could not be deceived as to the fact that something had moved before them into the chamber. A sickening dread came upon him, and the cold perspiration broke out in heavy drops upon his forehead; nor was he more composed when he heard the increased urgency, they agony of entreaty, which Mrs. Winchester implored him not to leave for a moment. “I saw him,” she said. “He is there! I cannot be deceived—I know him. He is by me—he is with me—he is in the room. Then, for God’s sake, as you would save me, do no stir from beside me!” #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Mrs. Winchester had it prevailed upon her to lie down upon the bed, where she continued to urger everyone to stay by her. She frequently uttered incoherent sentences, repeating again and again, “The dead and the living cannot be one—God has forbidden it!” and then again, “Rest to the wakeful—sleep to the sleep-walkers.” There was a Greek curse inscribed on a lead tablet in the drawing room from the city of Selinus in Sicily. Mrs. Winchester used it to communicate with gods and spirits. A spirit had been summoned and bound to the tablet to make sure the curse was effective. Souls after death do as yet love their body which they left, as those souls do whose bodies want due burial or have left their bodies by violent death, and as yet wander about their carcasses in a troubled and moist spirit, being, as it were, allured by something that hath an affinity with them. Many spirits had been invoked that night, this one had been brought out and seated on a sixteen-sided stand (an improvement on the double pentacle called Solomon’s seat). Mrs. Winchester lay in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the bed, at her urgent desire, stood her niece Marion “Daisey” Marriam Marriott; a candle burned in the bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton arrived, and cleared his voice, as if about to commence a prayer; but before he had time to begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which Mrs. Winchester lay, and she with hurried alarm, explained: “Sir Lancelot, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe.” Sir Lancelot stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order to supply what she desired. “O God! do not go, Sir Lancelot!” shrieked the unhappy Mrs. Winchester; and at the same time she sprang from the bed and darted after him, in order, by her grasp, to detain him. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
However, the warning came too late, for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had Mrs. Winchester has time to utter the startling explanation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung to by a strong blast of wind. Sir Lancelot and Dunn both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to sake it. Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Sir Lancelot and Dunn applied every energy and strained every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain. There was no sound of struggling from within, but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open. One last shriek, so long and piercing and agonized as to be scarcely human, swelled from the room, and suddenly there followed a death-like silence. A light step was heard crossing the floor, as if from the bed to the window; and almost at the same instant the door gave way, and yielding to the pressure of the external applicants, they were nearly precipitated into the room. It was empty. The window was open, and Sir Lancelot sprang to the chair and gazed out upon the fruit orchard and the lake below. He saw no form, but he beheld, or thought he beheld, the waters of the broad lake beneath settling ring after ring in heavy circular ripples, as if a moment before disturbed by the immersion of some large and heavy mass. No trace of Mrs. Winchester was ever after discovered, nor was anything certain respecting her mysterious wooer detected or even suspected; no clue whereby to trace the intricacies of the labyrinth, and to arrive at a distinct conclusion was to be found. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
However, an incident occurred, which, though it will not be received by our rational readers as at all approaching to evidence upon the matter, nevertheless produced a strong and a lasting impression upon the mind of Sir Lancelot. Many years after the events at the Winchester Mansion, which we have detailed, Sir Lancelot, then remotely situated, received an intimation of his father’s death, and of his intended burial upon a fixed day in an independent chapel in Bath late in the day upon which the funeral was appointed to take place. The procession had not then arrived. Evening closed in, and still it did not appear. Sir Lancelot strolled down to the church—he found it open; notice of the arrival of the funeral had been given, and the vault in which the body was to be laid had been opened. The official who corresponds to our sexton, on seeing a well-dressed gentleman, whose object was to attend the expected funeral, pacing the aisle of the chapel, hospitably invited him to share with him the comforts of a blazing wood fire, which as was his custom in winter time upon such occasions, he had kindled on the hearth of a chamber which communicated by a flight of steps with the vault below. In this chamber Sir Lancelot and his entertainer seated themselves; and the sexton, after some fruitless attempts to engage his guest in conversation, was obliged to apply himself to his tobacco-pipe and can to solace his solitude. In spite of his grief and cares, the fatigues of a rapid journey of nearly forty hours gradually overcame the mind and body of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, and he sank into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened by someone shaking him gently by the shoulder. He first thought that the old sexton had called him, but he was no longer in the room. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
There was a kind of ghostly twilight. The ghostly lights passed and disappeared in the gathering darkness. He roused himself, and as soon as he could clearly see what was around him, he perceived a female form, clothed in a kind of black robe of muslin, part of which was so disposed as to act as a veil, and in her hand she carried a lamp. She was moving rather away from him, and towards the flight of steps which conducted towards the vaults. Sir Lancelot felt a vague alarm at the sight of this figure, and at the same time an irresistible impulse to follow his guidance. He followed it towards the vaults, but when it reached the head of the stairs, he paused; the figure paused also, and turning gently round, displayed, by the light of the lamp it carried, the face and features of the beloved, Sarah Winchesters. There was nothing horrible, or even sad, in the countenance. On the contrary, it wore the same arch smile which used to enchant him long before in his happy days. A feeling of awe and interest, too intense to be resisted, prompted him to follow the specter, if specter it were. She descended the stairs—he followed; and, turning to the left through a narrow passage she led him, to his infinite surprise, through the door to nowhere, into what appeared to be an old-fashioned Victorian apartment. Abundance of costly antique furniture was disposed about the room, and in one corner stood a four-post bed, with heavy black cloth curtains, and by the light of the lamp which she held towards its contents, she disclosed to the horror stricken clergyman, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the livid and demoniac form of Theophilus Dunn. Sir Lancelottt had hardly seen him when he fell senseless upon the floor, where he lay until discovered, on the next morning, by persons employed in closing the passages into the vaults. He was laying in a cell of considerable size, which had not been disturbed for a long time, and had fallen beside a large coffin which was supported upon small stone pillars, a security against the attacks of vermin. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
To his dying day Sir Lancelot was satisfied of the reality of the vision which he had witnessed, and he has left behind him curious evidence of the impression which it wrought upon his fancy, in a painting executed shortly after the event we have narrated, and which is valuable as exhibiting not only the peculiarities which have made the Winchester Mansion sought after, but even more so as presenting occurrences in Mrs. Winchester’s interviews and journals that defy explanation. However, Mrs. Winchester’s mysterious fate must ever remain a matter of speculation. Yes; sometimes at night the most terrible weeping and sobbing can be heard coming from the “Daisy bedroom,” and a phantom horse can be heard plunging in the carriage house, and the wild, unearthly and utterly appalling shriek. The scene of horrible dinner parities has even been seen in the dining room. A party of ghouls meets there a few times of year, after midnight, and are assembled with the spoils of the graves they have violated, and are feasting on the flesh of long-buried corpses. One of the servants even saw his own wife, who, by the way, never touched supper at home, playing no inconsiderable part in the hideous banquet. Hundreds of wild stories have appeared about this mysterious mansion. It seems odd that none of her relatives or former employees ever came forward to contradict these stories, despite the fact that many of them lived for forty years after the estate was opened for tours. For some reason, did they feel threatened by talking—or did they continue to guard Mrs. Winchesters privacy? At the Winchester Mystery House, we may never be able to separate fact from legend—so here are some stories that have been told since the late 1800s and early 1900s. We leave it to guests and readers to decide for themselves why Mrs. Winchester really built the house the way she did, or what is it really? A portal or just a museum? #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Winchester Mystery House is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftmanship—marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Tour guides must warn people not to stray from the group or they could be lost for hours. Countless questions come to mind as you wander through the mansion—such as, what was Mrs. Winchester thinking when she had a staircase built the descends seven steps and then rises eleven? By the way, Harry Houdini, an occultist, was attracted to the Winchester and tried to escape from the mansiin blindfolded; he also died Halloween 1926.
Winchester Mystery House
What it feels like walking through a microscopic spiderweb….🕷🕸
All Hallows’ Eve, Lost in the House tour tickets are still available for tonight. Hurry and purchase before they sell out!
🎟link: http://ow.ly/k5wM50GqWTb
Randolph Harris II International Institute 