Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there. Knowledge has never been known to enter the head through an open mouth. Sometimes it is better to remain quiet and look like a fool, than to pen one’s mouth and remove all doubt. “What therefore God … Continue reading
Lord, I Have Done this Sacrificial Service for You, and Now I am in Need of this Special Answer to Prayer!
Absence of occupation is not rest, a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee,” reports Numbers 6.24. The illumined being gives oneself, the unenlightened one gives one’s possessions. If they are judged by appearances only, the truth of the situation will become reserved, and falsity will appear as truth. That is, the illumined being will seem the most uncharitable. They master’s motive may easily remain unknown to others, especially when one has a mission to fulfill for them, and by this unenlightenment they may just as easily misunderstand one’s actions. If this happens and they turn away from one, an opportunity for their higher growth will be missed. The distorted reading of one’s actions will also cause them to judge one unfairly and incorrectly. One will accept this injustice as part of the price of descending into an evil World where one does not really belong. T expect from such a being at all times and in all places, as both sceptics and followers often expect, a pharisaical propriety of conduct simply shows how little they have comprehended the perfect selflessness and utter purity of one’s character. For they expect ne to behave rigidly according to the patterns of conventional morality, although these are not always sincere or generous or wise. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
Because one’s guidance must come from within, from one’s diviner consciousness and not from outside, from a society led by its ego consciousness, these will be occasions when one’s actions will not conform to these patterns. And this is so in spite of the fact that one knows well, and obeys where possible, the requirement that one shall set an example to others. One’s nonconformity will then be denounced or misunderstood, reviled or viewed with bewilderment. There are those who lightly appraise such a being’s spiritual worth by the superficial signs which accident throws their way or by the stories gossip brings to their ears. They are wasting their time. To offer no contradiction to false or slanderous statements made by others in their presence about a Spiritual teacher, is silently to consent to such criticism. It is such a being who most serves one’s fellows yet who least receives the recognition of one’s service. This is because humanity fails to understand where its true interests are possessed, what its true goal is, and why it is here at all. One will be the victim on one side of friendly enthusiasts who credit one with powers and adorn one with virtues which one does not possess, and on the other side of prejudiced enemies who malign one with motives and besmirch one with weaknesses which are wholly foreign to one’s temperament. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
One’s illusionless life may not seem attractive to the mass of people who cannot afford the high cost of truth. Why do so many people stumble over this parable in the Holy Bible, Matthew 20.12-15, about the labours who did less work being paid as much as the one who worked twelve hours, and consider the landowner to be unfair? I believe it is because we Christians instinctively identify with the workers who had worked all day. We place ourselves in their shoes instead of in the shoes of those who worked only one hour. We look at society around us, instead of at Jesus Christ, and we begin to feel pretty good about ourselves. We consider ourselves to be twelve-hour workers, and we expect to be rewarded accordingly. That is the way Peter felt and that is the way many people feel today. I was talking one day with a man whose mother, a faithful servant of God for over forty years, was dying of painful cancer. He said, “After all she has done for God, this is the thanks she gets.” Such a statement sounds irreverent to us, but the man did not intend it to be that way. He simply thought God owed hos mother a better life. He only verbalized what many people feel in their hears. There are other occasions when we remind God of the sacrifices we have made to serve him. “Lord, I have done this sacrificial service for You, and now I am in need of this special answer to prayer.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
When we assume such an attitude, we are putting ourselves in the position of the twelve-hour workers. We suggest to God that we deserve this answer to prayer because of our sacrificial service. With such an attitude we may grumble about blessings not received instead of being grateful for those we have received. We need to adopt the attitude of the Roman centurion described in Luke 7. The man sent some of the Jewish elders to Jesus asking Him to come and heal his sick servant. When the elders came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with Him: “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue” (verses 4-5). Notice the Jewish elders’ emphasis on deserving. The centurion surely was a remarkable man. He was an officer in the Roman occupation army, yet he served the occupied people by building a synagogue for them. Think of an occupying army in today’s culture and ask yourself how many “enemy” officers would do such a thing. However, the centurion’s attitude about oneself is even more remarkable than one’s deeds. Instead of thinking of what one should receive because of what one deserved, one freely confessed one did not deserve anything. He sent word to Jesus, saying, “I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you” (verses 6-7). #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The centurion placed oneself in the shoes of the eleventh-hour workers. Because of this he not only experienced the joy of having one’s request granted, but also the added joy of knowing he had received what he did not deserve. He experienced the joy of knowing he had received a gift—not a repayment of a debt. Thus no one chooses in the abstract to go to hell or even to be the kind of person who belongs there. However, their orientation toward self leads them to become the kind of person for whom away-from-God is the only place for which they are suited. It is a place they would, in the end, choose for themselves, rather than come to humble themselves before God and accept who he is. Whether or not God’s will is infinitely flexible, the human will is not. There are limits beyond which it cannot bend back, cannot turn or repent. One should seriously inquire if to live in a World permeated with God and the knowledge of God is something they themselves truly desire. If not, they can be assured that God will excuse them for his presence. They will find their place in the “outer darkness” of which Jesus spoke. However, the fundamental fact about them will not be that they are there, but that they have become people so locked into their own self-worship and denial of God that they cannot want God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
A well-known minister of other years used to ask rhetorically, “You say you will accept God when you want to?” And then he would add, “How do you know you will be able to want to when you think you will?” The ultimately lost person is the person who cannot want God. Who cannot want God to be God. Multitudes of such people pass by every day, and pass into eternity. The reason they do not find God is that they do not want him or, at least, do not want him to be God. Wanting God to be God is very different from wanting God to help me. Is it insulting to suggest that someone is or may be lost? That his or her soul is ruined? There are so many fine-looking people all about us! Well, is it insulting to say, in appropriate circumstances, that someone has poor social hygiene and it could be fatal, when you know it to be true? Perhaps treatment depends upon coming to know it. Say it is cancer or worst? No doubt, in our hypersensitive, egotistical age, that could be insulting to some people. However, that merely illustrates the delusional human condition that has been described earlier. If I am god, people should not say such things to me. Lostness is a factual condition of the self, of the ruined soul. You either have it or not, just as you either have or do not have a certain physical disease that can kill you. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
If you have that condition of lostness, you may not know it. Indeed, it is most likely you will not know it, because it is inherently a condition of self-blindness. You need treatment nevertheless, if you are not to be lost forever; and being informed of your condition and what to do about it can help you find relief. Should I say nothing to you merely because you might find it insulting? I must think more highly of you than that. The reality of evil in the human heart is not something to be ignored or treated lightly. God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being; and hence as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity. The “now” that stands still, is said to make eternity according to our apprehension. As the apprehension of time is causes in us by the fact that we apprehend the flow of the “now,” so the apprehension of eternity is caused in us by our apprehending “now” standing still. God is the author of eternity, and this is to be understood of participated eternity. For God communicate His eternity to some in the way as He communicates His immutability. God is before eternity, according as it is shared by immaterial substances. That is why intelligence is equal to eternity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
In the words of Exodus, “The Lord shall reign for eternity, and beyond,” eternity stands for age, as another rendering has it. Thus it is said that the Lord will reign beyond eternity, inasmuch as He endures beyond every age, for instance, beyond every kind of duration. For age is nothing more than the period of each thing. Or to reign beyond young eternity can be taken to mean that is any other thing were conceived to exist forever, as the movement of the Heavens according to some philosophers, then God would still reign beyond, inasmuch as His reign is simultaneously whole. Eternity is noting else but God Himself. Hence God is not called eternal, and if He were in any way measured; but the idea of measurement is there taken according to the apprehension of our mind alone. Words denoting different times are applied to God, because His eternity includes all times; not as if He Himself were altered through present, past, and future. “And again, behold I say unto you that one cannot have faith and hope, save one shall be meek, and lowly of heart. If so, one’s faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart; and if a human be meek and lowly in heart, and confess by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have charity; for if her have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity,” reports Moroni 7.43-45. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
O Lord, the Saviour and Guardian of such as fear Thee, turn away from Thy Church the deceitful allurements of this World’s wisdom; that under the teaching of Thy Spirit, we may find pleasure in the prophetic delineations and the apostolic instructions, rather than in the terms of philosophy; lest the vanity of falsehoods should deceive those whom the teaching of truth illuminates; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Blessed and glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thanks be to Thee, very and one Trinity, one perfect Godhead. Thee, God the Father Unbegotten; Thee, the Only-begotten Son; Thee, the Holy Spirit the Paraclete; the Holy and Undivided Trinity, do we confess and praise with heart and mouth; to Thee by glory forever Alleluia. O God, the Strength of all Thy Saints, Who hast granted them in Thine abundant bounty the grace to come to their present glory; vouchsafe, we beseech Thee, pardon to our sins, that we may be able worthily to celebrate their solemnities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of unsearchable greatness, before thee I am nothing but vanity, iniquity, perishing; sin has forfeited thy favour, stripped me of thy image, banished me from thy presence, exposed me to the curse of thy law; I cannot deliver myself, and am in despair. However, a resource is found in thee, for without my desert or desire thou didst devise an everlasting plan, honourable to thy perfections, and which Angels desired to look into. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
And the word which announces all the glory of this goodness is nigh me, invite me, beseeches me. May I, a convinced and self-despairing sinner, find Jesus as the power unto salvation, his death the centre of all relief, the source of all gospel-blessings. Help me to repair to that cross, be crucified to the World by it, and in it find deepest humiliation, motives to patience and self-denial, grace for active benevolence, faith to grasp eternal life, hope to lift up my head, love to bind me forever to him who died and rose for me. May his shed blood make me more thankful for thy mercies, more humble under thy correction, more zealous in thy service, more watchful against temptation, more contented in my circumstances, more useful to others. The seeker whose preconceived picture of what constitutes a master is correct—but this is uncommon—will be able to recognize one at their first meeting. One will feel with absolute certainty the inner greatness of the master of the master. Yet it does not follow that this is one’s particular master. There must also be a feeling of personal affinity as well as an intellectual appeal f the doctrines taught. Without this feeling of affinity and the considerable satisfaction which derives from it, one would be prudent to look elsewhere and not accept this person as guru. Take that person as your teacher whose character mentality approach the ideal you have formed, and with whose doctrine and personality you feel in sympathy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
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A Marry Heart Maketh a Cheerful Countenance
New opinion are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. Some psychiatrists believe that humans are much more destructive and much crueler than animals. Animals are not sadistic; animals are not enemies of life. However, human history is a chronicle of unimaginable cruelty and destructiveness. That record gives us no reason to make light of the strength and intensity of human aggressiveness. However, I also think that the rots of our aggressiveness do not go back to our terrestrial nature, our instincts, and our past, but that human aggressiveness, to the extent that it is greater than that of animals, can be explained by the specific conditions of human existence. Aggressiveness, or destructiveness is an evil; it is not just a “so-called” evil. However, it is human. It is potential present in humans, present in all of us, and it will come to the fore if our development does not take better, more mature directions. The human “extra” of aggression, that measure of aggression in humans that exceeds animal aggression, is rooted in human character. I do not mean character here in a legal sense but in a psychoanalytical sense: character as a system of relationships that link an individual to the World. By character I mean what humans have created to replace the animal instincts that are only minimally developed in one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
What I am saying about character here may sound somewhat theoretical, but if you look back on your own experience I am sure that many of you will understand precisely what I am driving at when I speak of character in that sense. You will surely have come across people whom you would identify as having a sadistic character. And you will also have met others would characterize as “kindly.” When you make those judgments you are not saying that this person once did something sadistic or that that one was once very friendly. You are referring instead to a quality of character that runs through the individual’s entire life. There are sadistic individuals who never do anything sadistic because they never have the opportunity to, and only a very few acute observer will ever catch them red-handed in some small sadistic act. Conversely, there are character that are not basically destructive, yet individuals of this kind may shoot someone else down in a fit of rage or despair. However, that does not by any means indicate that their characters are essentially destructive. If we assume that human, that is, rooted in human’s specifically human condition and not in one’s primitive past, then we can avoid a logical paradox that the theoreticians of instinct cannot escape, try as they might. They claim that human’s greater aggressiveness can be explained from the lesser aggressiveness of animals. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
How can that be? We cannot assume that what a human has inherited from their primitive past has made them much more and aggressive and destructive than animals have ever been. The more logical conclusion is that human behaviour that differs from animal behaviour—in this case, human’s greater cruelty—is not something humans have inherited from their primitive past but something originating in the specific conditions of human existence. However, now let me make a few remarks about animal aggressiveness. Animal aggressiveness is attuned to biological needs. It serves the survival of the individual and of the species, and it is mobilized whenever there is an external threat to the animal’s vital interests, for example, whenever one is faced with a threat to one’s life, one’s food, one’s relations with animals of the opposite gender, one’s territory, or the like. If threatened, animals—and human beings—will react with either aggressiveness or flight. If no threat is present, no aggression will be mobilized. Aggressiveness is present in the brain as a mechanism that can be activated at any time but does not accumulate and does not have to be vented in actions if there is no particular stimulus or occasion for such behaviour. It does not, in other words, reflect the “hydraulic” model. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
When the neurophysiologist Hess showed which centers or which areas of the brain produced aggressiveness when the appropriate stimuli were present and when a threat to vital interests mobilized those centers, he was the first to make it very clear that animal aggressiveness does not reflect the hydraulic model. The aggressiveness of predators is a different matter. Predators attack to obtain their food. That predatory aggressiveness is located, neurophysiologically, in enters of the brain different from the ones that control defensives aggression. On the whole, then, we find that animals are generally not very aggressive at all, unless they happen to be threatened. Blood is rarely spilled among animals, even when they actually fight. Observation of chimpanzees, sacred baboons, and other primates has shown how extraordinarily peaceful the social life of those primate actually is. We can probably safely say that if humanity displayed no more aggression than the chimpanzees, we would not have to worry about war and aggression at all. The same is true of wolves. Wolves are predators, and if they attack a sheep, they are of course aggressive. Human beings imagine the wolf to be an incredibly aggressive creature. However, in doing so they confuse one’s aggressiveness in finding food with one’s aggressiveness when one is not hunting for food. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Wolves among themselves are not the least bit aggressive; they are downright friendly. It is therefore unjust to characterize human aggressiveness by comparing it with aggressiveness among wolves, as we do when we say that one man behaved toward another as one wolf did toward another (homo homini lupus). We could possibly say “as a wolf behaved toward a sheep” but not “as a wolf did toward a wolf.” We can see, then, that animal aggressiveness does not follow the hydraulic model. As long as the animal is not threatened, there is no constantly increasing aggressiveness that finally produces an explosion. To put it another way, human aggressiveness is a possibility provided by biology and present in the brain, but its activation is not a necessity. It will not manifest itself unless the need for self-preservation sets it in motion. That is an important difference from the behaviouristic thesis holding that aggressiveness is a learned trait and that it is circumstances and circumstances only that make people aggressive. Things are not that simple either, for if aggressiveness could be taught by circumstances, it could not move into action as quickly and intensely as it does and as it in fact must. The reality is that aggressiveness is a biological given, a possibility that is present and that can be mobilized very quickly. All the neurophysiological mechanisms necessary for its activation are there and functional in us, but, as I have said, they have to be mobilized first, and without mobilization they need not go into action. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Let me illustrate the point with a graphic example. If, for self-defense, someone keeps a revolver next to one of one’s bed at night or in one’s desk during the day, that does not mean one intends to shoot that revolver all the time. However, it does mean that one will use it in case of danger. That is precisely the way the physiology of our brain is organized. There is a revolver present in out brain, as it were, always ready for quick action in case of an attack. However, contrary to what the instinct theory claims, the existence of that state of preparedness does not result in a piling up of aggression that eventually has to explode. Then, too, Hess and other neurophysiologists have found that animals respond to danger not only with attacks but also with flight. Attack is the last resort the animal takes when its chances of flight are cut off. Only then does it attack; only then does it fight. And if we are to speak of an “aggressive instinct” in human beings, then we must also speak of a flight instinct as well. If the proponents of a theory of aggression and of instinct say humans are constantly prodded on by aggressive feelings that one can control only when the greatest of difficulty, we are obliged to add that humans are also motivated by an almost irresistible urge to flee, and this impulse, too, can be controlled only with the greatest of difficulty. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Anyone who has ever observed combat knows very well how strong the human impulse to flee is. Otherwise we would not need the laws that often punish military desertion with death. In other words, the human brain provides us with two possibilities for reacting to an attack: We can fight or we can flee. However, both the flight impulse and the attack impulse remain inactive if there is no threat, and they do not automatically produce a constantly active and ever-increasing tendency for aggression or flight. We have seen that the “hydraulic” theory of aggression is not tenable. Neurophysiological findings show that neither human or animal aggressiveness is a constantly growing, spontaneously self-activating drive but is mobilized by stimuli carrying a threat to either the human being’s or the animal’s existence or vital interests. However, there are reasons other than physiological ones that make the “hydraulic” theory untenable. It collapses, too, in the face of facts we can marshal from anthropology, paleontology, psychiatry, and social psychology. If the theory were correct, then we would expect that on the whole aggressiveness would be about the same in all individuals and in all cultures and societies. We would, of course, make allowance—as we do with intelligence—for differences in intensity, relatively small though those differences are. However, by and large people everywhere should display the same amount of aggressiveness and destructiveness. However, that is simply not the case. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Perhaps even more impressive than our knowledge of groups is the knowledge which is accumulating in the behavioural sciences as to the conditions which will be followed by specified types of behaviour in the individual. It is the possibility of scientific prediction and control of individual behaviour which comes closet to the interest of each one of us. Let us look at scattered bits of this type of knowledge. We know how to set up the conditions under which many individuals will report as true, judgments which are contrary to the evidence of their senses. And when a person is led to believe that everyone else in the group has an opinion, then one has a strong tendency to go along with this judgment, and in many instances does so with a real belief in one’s false report. Not only can we predict that a certain percentage of the individuals will thus yield, and disbelieve their own senses, but we can also determine the personality attributes of those who will do so, and by selection procedures would be able to choose a group who would almost uniformly give in to these pressures for conformity. We know how to change the opinions of an individual in a selected direction, without one’s ever becoming aware of the stimuli which changed one’s opinion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
A static, expressionless portrait of a man was flashed on a screen by Smith, Spence and Klein. Then they intermittently flashed the word “angry” on the screen, at exposures so brief that the subjects were consciously completely unaware of having seen the word. They tended, however, to see the face as becoming more angry. When the word “happy” was flashed on the screen in similar fashion, the viewers tended to see the face as becoming more happy. Thus they were clearly influenced by stimuli which registered at a subliminal level, stimuli of which the individual was not, and could not be, aware. We know how to influence psychological moods, attitudes, and behaviours, through drugs. For this illustration we step over into the rapidly developing borderline area between chemistry and psychology. Fromm drugs to keep awake while driving or studying, to so-called “truth serum” which reduces the psychological defenses of the individual, to the chemotherapy now practiced in psychiatric wards, the range and complexity of the growing knowledge in this field is striking. Increasingly there are efforts to find drugs with more specific effects—a drug which will energize the depressive individual, another to calm the excited, and the like. Drugs have reportedly been given to soldiers before a battle to eliminate fear. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Trade names for the tranquilizing drugs such as Miltown have already crept into our language, even into our cartoons. While much is still unknown about this field, in the not-too-distant future, the motivational and emotional conditions of normal life will probably be maintained in any desired state through the use of drugs. While this seems to be a somewhat exaggerated view, this prediction could be partially justified. We know how to provide psychological conditions which will produce vivid hallucinations and other abnormal reactions in the thoroughly normal individual in the waking state. This knowledge came about as the unexpected by-product of research at McGill University. It was discovered that if all channels of sensory stimulation are cut off or muffled, abnormal reactions follow. If healthy subjects lie motionless, to reduce kinaesthetic stimuli, with eyes shielded by translucent goggles which do not permit perception, with hearing largely stifled by foam rubber pillows as well as by being in a quiet cubicle, and with tactile sensations reduced by cuffs over the hands, then hallucinations and bizarre ideation bearing some resemblance to that of the psychotic occur withing forty-eight hours in most subjects. What the results would be if the sensory stifling were continued longer is not known because the experience seemed so potentially dangerous that the investigators were reluctant to continue it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
We know how to use a person’s own words to open up whole troubled areas in one’s experience. When a recorded therapeutic interview with a patient, brief statements by the patient which seem significantly related to the underlying dynamics of the case. Such a brief statement is then put on a continuous tape so that it can be played over and over. When the patient hears one’s own significant words repeated again and again, the effect is very potent. By the time it has been repeated twenty or thirty times the patient often begs to have it stopped. It seems clear that it penetrates the individual’s defenses, and opens up the whole psychic area related to that statement. For example, a woman who feels very inadequate and is having marital difficulties, talked about her mother in one interview, saying of her, among other things, “That is what I cannot understand—that one could strike at a little child.” This recorded sentence was played over and over to her. It made her very uneasy and frightened. It also opened up to her all her feelings about her mother. It helped her to see that “not being able to trust my mother not to hurt me has made me mistrustful of everybody.” This is a very simple example of the potency of the method, which can not only be helpful but which can be dangerously disorganizing if it penetrates the defenses too deeply or too rapidly. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
We know the attitudes which, if provided by a counselor or a therapist, will be predictably followed by certain constructive personality and behaviour changes in the client. Studies we have completed in recent years in the field of psychotherapy justify this statement. The findings from these studies may be very briefly summarized in the following way. If the therapist provides a relationship in which one is a genuine, internally consistent; acceptant, prizing the clients as a person of worth; empathically understanding of the client’s private World of feelings and attitudes; then certain changes occur in the client. Some of these changes are; the client becomes more realistic in one’s self-perceptions; more confident and self-directing; more beneficially valued by oneself; less likely to repress elements of one’s experience; more mature, socialized and adaptive in one’s behaviour; less upset by stress and quicker to recover from it; more like the healthy, integrated, well-functioning person in one’s personality structure. These changes do not occur in a control group, and appear to be definitely associated with the client’s being in a therapeutic relationship. We know how to disintegrate a being’s personality structure, dissolving one’s self-confidence, destroying the concept one has of oneself, and making one dependent on another. We have an accurate study of the process popularly know as “brainwashing.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The study has shown that no magical nor essentially new methods have been used, but mostly a combination of practices have been developed for brainwashing by rule of thumb. What is involved is largely a somewhat horrifying reversal of the conditions of psychotherapy briefly noted above. If the individual under suspicion is rejected and isolated for a long time, then one’s need for a human relationship is greatly intensified. The interrogator exploits this by building a relationship in which one shows mostly non-acceptance, and does all one can to arouse guilt, conflict and anxiety. One is acceptant toward the subject only when the subject cooperates by being willing to view events through the interrogator’s eyes. One is completely rejecting of the subject’s internal frame of reference, or personal perception of events. Gradually, out of ones need for more acceptance, the subject comes to accept half-truths as being true, until little by little one has given up one’s own view of one’s self and of one’s behaviour and has accepted the viewpoint of one’s interrogator. One is very much demoralized and disintegrated as a person, and largely the puppet of the interrogator. One is then willing to “confess: that one is an enemy of the state, and has committed all kinds of treasonable acts which wither one has not done, or which actually had a very different significance. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
In a sense it is misleading to describe these methods as a product of the behaviour sciences. They were developed by the police, not by scientists. Yet I include them here since it is very clear that these crude methods could be made decidedly more effective by the means of scientific knowledge which we now possess. In short our knowledge of how personality and behaviour may be changed can be sued constructively or destructively, to build or to destroy persons. Remember the story in the Bible, Matthew 20.12-15, about a land owner who paid all the workers equally no matter how many hours they worked? Well, at a certain state university there was a freshman English class with the typical variety of students. One the one hand there were a few conscientious and well-disciplined students who had learned good study habits in high school. They consistently did assignments, studied well for tests, and turned in well-prepared term papers on time. At the opposite end of the spectrum were the typical “party boys” who did just enough work to get by. They rarely did assignments, hardly studied for tests, and never turned in a term paper on time. And as is typical in such a class, the vast majority of students were somewhere in between. At last final exam day arrived. As expected, the disciplined students all did well, and the party boys all did poorly. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
After a couple of days, the professor posted the grades outside his office door. As the students crowded around to see what grade they had received, they were all stunned to see that everyone in the class had received an “A.” The party boys could hardly believe their good fortune, and the good students were outraged to realized that those who deserved to fail had received the same tip grade as they had. If you saw any credibility in this story you probably shared in the outrage of the hardworking students. It certainly does seem unfair that the class of “goof-offs” should receive the same grade as those who actually earned an “A.” However, what you have read is simply a modern-day version of the parable of the generous landowner we considered in the Bible story. Although I have recast the story in terms of a present-day setting, the essential elements of the two stories are identical. In both versions a group of people got far more than they deserved and received as much reward as those who had actually worked for theirs. The message even of the biblical parable strikes many people as unfair. One some speaking occasions, I have actually asked for a how of hands on the issue, and the vast majority of people have felt the landowner was unfair. People agree with those workers who labored a full twelve hours, right through the heat of the day, that they should be paid more than those who worked only one hour. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the strict context of labour relations (or of class grades in the modern parable), they are right that the people who worked longer should have been paid more. The landowner and the English professor both seem unfair. However, Jesus was not teaching principles of labour relations. He was teaching principles of grace. He said, “The kingdom of Heaven is like…” and proceeded to tell the parable. In effect, He said to Peter, “In the kingdom of Heaven the operative principle is not merit but grace.” One group of people did not think the landowner was unfair: the labourers who worked only one hour. Jesus did not tell us their reaction, but we can easily assume they were elated and grateful. As the day had worn on, leaving them standing unemployed in the marketplace, their hope for any pay and hence any food for their families for the day had gradually eroded. At give o’clock in the afternoon they faced an evening with no supper. Finally they were given an opportunity to earn what they assumed would be a mere pittance, one-twelfth of a day’s wages—not nearly enough to buy food for their families. It is not hard to imagine, then their joy upon receiving a day’s wages, enough to feed their families that day. They did not think about any unfairness on the part of the landowner; they considered him very generous. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
God is teaching us to be the change we want to see in the World and giving everyone grace so they can feel compelled to treat others well. “I judge that ye have faith in Christ because of your meekness; for if ye have not faith in him then ye are not fit to be numbered among the people of his church. And again, my beloved brethren I would speak unto you concerning hope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope? And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise. Wherefore, if a being have faith one must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope,” reports Moroni 7.39-41. Lord Jesus Christ, pour into us the Holy Spirit promised by the Father, that He may give us life, and teach us the fulness of truth in the Mystery of the blessed and undivided Trinity; that our salvation may be perfectly accomplished by His gift, wherein consists the perfection of all virtue. O Holy Spirit of the Comforter, Who with the Father and the Son abides One God in Trinity; descend this day into our hearts, that while Thou makest intercession for us, we may with full confidence call upon our Father. May the infinite and ineffable Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, direct our life in good works, and after our passage through this World vouchsafe to us eternal rest with the righteous. Grant this, O Eternal and Almighty God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Lord God Almighty, Thou art beforehand with men for thou hast reconciled thyself to the World through the cross, and dost beseech people to accept reconciliation. It is my responsibility to grasp thy overtures of grace, for if thou, the offended part, act first with the word of appeasement, I need not call in question thy willingness to save, but must deplore my own foolish maliciousness; if I do not come to thee as one who seeks thy favour, I live in contempt, anger, malice, self-sufficiency, and thou dost call it enmity. Thou hast taught me the necessity of a mediator, a messiah, to be embraced in love with all my heart, as king to rule me, as prophet to guide me, as priest to take away my sin and death, and this by faith in thy beloved Son who teaches me not to guide myself, not to obey myself, not to try to rule and conquer sin, but to cleave to the one who will do all for me. Thou hast made known to me that to save me is Christ’s work, but to cleave to him by faith is my work, and with this faith is the necessity of my daily repentance as mourning for the sin which Christ by grace has removed. Continue, O God, to teach me that faith apprehends Christ’s righteousness not only for the satisfaction of justice, but as unspotted evidence of thy love to me. Help me to make use of his work of salvation as the ground of peace, and thy favour to, and acceptance for me the sinner, so that I may live always near the cross. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
NOW SELLING! Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/
God is Our Refuge and Strength, a Very Present Help in Trouble!
It is good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity…It is part of nature. Progressive people cannot help having detractors, for people can see only what one permits them to see. And if that small part is misread by them, … Continue reading
We Mortals Cross the Ocean of this World Each in One’s Average Cabin of Life!
A smile confuses an approaching frown. Mirth can be a major tool for insight, changing “ha ha” to “aha.” The illuminate prefers to pull strings from behind the curtain of obscurity. One does not want to impose oneself where one may not be wanted. One does not want to intrude on the mental privacy of others. It is this quality of remoteness in one which baffles some people, provokes others, antagonizes many, but attracts a few. It makes one profoundly different from the average being, foreign to one and hard to understand. The self-actualized is built too high for ordinary beings to appreciate one and too remote for them to understand one. it is inevitable that one should dwell isolated and aloof from all except those whose great aims justify the contact. One will descend into the arena of this World only by the direct order of God. One dwells apart in solitude. Why? “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me leadeth me beside the still waters,” reports Psalms 23.1. The World cannot grant the existence of one’s tremendous modesty, one’s perfect poise, one’s freedom from chatter, one’s vast self-restraint, and so, failing to understand, it would misunderstand. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them,” reports Genesis 1.27. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The self-actualized prefers to remain anonymous, but if the mission requires it, one submits to publicity’s glare. Restrained in speech, withdrawn in self, one comes out of one’s inner World to meet one’s fellows only so far, and therefrom will not further descend. For it is a lofty World. If, in their discretion, they suppress their true beliefs and hide their inmost mind from the masses as behind a veil, it must be granted that both history and psychology justify this caution. They are reluctant to tell others about their inmost experiences; if the questioner is unsympathetic or uncomprehending, some even refuse absolutely to admit they have had such experiences. One’s rare experience, one’s precious wisdom, one’s special knowledge of life’s higher laws are not put on parade to impress others. Rather does one have among them as if one were, had, knew nothing exceptional. The other strong influence on late nineteenth-century culture was eating and the home-economics movement. Well-educated, middle-class, nonimmigrant women not only created a profession of their own, but also sought to Americanize urban slum dwellers. Home economists and social workers tried to teach immigrant women about nutrition and tried to wean them away from the “hot,” spicy cuisine of their homelands. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The favourite foods of the home economics movement were gelatin salads and boiled dressings. A blanket of white sauce covering a slab of boneless protein was the ideal dish. Salads were orderly, encased, cool, and controllable rather than hot, sloppy, and sensuous. Jello, after all, is a Victorian product invented during the 1890s by the Genesee Pure Food Company of Leroy, New York, and was usually served in the dining room, as the dappled light of Gothic stained glass fell across the table. The elegance and refinement of manners in the dining room were, in fact, brand new, developed in the previous forty years. Nonetheless, this change in cuisine was not all one-way bullying. Cookbooks like Fannie Farmer’s and Mrs. Beeton’s, as well as manners books like Emily Post’s, were eagerly bought by immigrant women who wanted to fit into American culture. These books gave advice on food, eating, and household management to Europeans who wanted to know how things were “done” in American. Silver-plate manufacturers were constantly on the lookout for new objects and new shapes to send to market, such as the bell and Adirondack style stand was popular. Although transfer-printed chinaware existed before the Industrial Revolution, it was the establishment of transportation networks that made large-scale factories possible. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The decoration of the parlor and the choice and arrangement of the furniture reflect the changing role of women in the nineteenth century. Woman as the embodiment of purity and high moral virtue was a theme which nineteenth-century popular culture adopted with obsessive fevour. Before the middle of the century the image of woman was what it has been since the Middle Ages. She was the daughter of Eve, the embodiment of wantonness. Before the Industrial Revolution, misogynic literature always pictured woman as less than human beings, closer to animals, and less able to control their lusts by exercise of their intellect or moral powers, but some say this is more applicable to the average male than a female. By the 1880s, the myth of the pure Victorian woman was fully formed, and the transformation of woman’s image was complete. Late nineteenth-century reformers wrote that women hard no libido; that, in fact, it was replaced by a “maternal instinct,” and that women only consented to pleasures of the flesh to please their husbands and to have children. Women were also said to be the kinder, gentler gender with higher moral standards and greater self-control. Men were thought of as smarter and more competent but more lustful and “primitive” with less ability to control their passions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Two dramatic changes took place in gender roles in the middle of the nineteenth century. Not only did men and women trade places as the moral force in society; but also the accepted roles of men and women grew further apart and took distinctly different paths. Imagine life in American in the 1830s and ‘40s. Most people lived on farms. While there were areas of market economy farming like cotton, tobacco, and wheat, the majority of people still grew most of their own food. There were some cities in America, but they were small commercial cities at harbours and along rivers. Men, women, and children had separate and unequal roles in the family, but the family was still an economic unit that worked together. The “little commonwealth” of the family needed each member to survive. It is true that the growing of the major crop was the “man’s job,” along with his children’s labour, while the growing of vegetables, fowl, and livestock; preserving food; and maintaining clothing was the “woman’s job.” However, no one would survive without both contributions. The garden, the chickens, and the food preservation ensured the family’s survival as much, if not more, than the cash crop. “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,” reports Psalms 19.14. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Life in the 1830s and ’40 was limited in scope for everyone. Individuals were known by all their neighbours and restricted by the mores of the culture. Men and women were very unequal under law but were more alike in real life. Society was not under great pressure; men and women had a much more even balance of power than they were to have fifty years later. The 1830s saw Watt’s improvement of the steam engine which made the railroads and steamboats possible. The completion of the Erie canal in the 1820s opened the near Midwest and the Great Lakes to commerce and settlement. The 1850s saw the discovery of coal and iron together in Pennsylvania, which permitted the cast-iron and steel industries to produce factories in cities and to produce railroads to ship their raw materials and manufactured goods. The Civil War caused the railroads to boom and heavy industry to flourish. As a result, everything changed in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. American became urbanized. The 1870 census revealed that, for the first time, most Americans lived in cities. In a small town or a farm village, everyone knew each other, and behaviour was controlled by the neighbours. In a big city each person was anonymous, and standards for behaviour had to be internalized and enforced by the individual. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
For most of history right and wrong were external rules; now personal morality had to prevail. The ideal of “self-control” for modern people became widespread in the late nineteenth century. At the same time, the family as an economic unit, a “little commonwealth,” disappeared. It was replaced by the modern cash economy where each person is an individual. By the turn of the century in American, most people worked in manufacturing or in offices. The new middle class worked in skyscrapers and took a commuter railroad or “el” (elevated railroad) or trolley to work. “Home” was an apartment or flat of row house. Rococo Revival chairs by Henry Belter represented the Victorian ideal—modern high technology in historic costume. Belter developed a process for gluing mahogany veneers in a curved mould, creating fancy plywood. He then carved them into caricature of eighteenth-century, French Rococo chairs, much stronger and more elaborate than the originals. This was a new class of people. They were not the gentry of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century who made their living from owning land that others farmed or from shipping. They were not the “yeoman farmers” who grew their food with their own hands. They were clerks and office workers whose work was not manual and who saw themselves as newly arrived gentry. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The Irish potato famine of the 1840s drove millions of immigrants to America, including the paternal ancestors of actress Tia and Tamera Mowry, while revolutions and repressions pushed millions out of Eastern Europe in the 1850s through the ‘80s. Thus, labour was cheap. Even clerical, white-collar workers could have several servants, either live-in maids or daily cleaning ladies who returned to their (newly invented) tenements at night. In the Victorian estates, the parlor was the heart of the home and the piano the heart of the parlor. “Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly; “’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.” –“The Spider and the Fly,” Mary Howitt (1799-1888). Perhaps this poem holds a clue as to significance to the spiderweb pattern, which is a common feature on windows and fireplaces in the Winchester mansion. The kaleidoscope of home designs paralleled changes effected by the Industrial Revolution: mass production; railroad, telegraph, and telephone connecting East Coast to West; the development of water and sewer systems, and the progression of lighting from kerosene to gas to electricity. All these changes, and their resulting social ramifications, were reflected in the ways the Victorians lived. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
By the end of the century, an agrarian society had moved into the cities and created new communities called suburbs. People began vigorously consuming the natural resources around them and outputting new, consumer goods. Family-oriented households turned outward to involvement in social movements and to work outside the home, for money to buy consumer goods. When the Victorian era ended, electric light had turned night into day, forever disrupting nature’s rhythms. Some have divided the era of 1837-1901 into a Romanic and a Victorian period, separated by the Civil War, calling Victorian only those houses with flamboyant styles made possible by balloon framing and technology that eliminated the need for the handcraftsmanship of timber frame building. However, most writers and scholars of that era merely ascribe a romantic aspect to the beginning of the period, adding the moniker “The Gilded Age,” coined by Mark Twain, to aptly describe the heyday of the Victorians, 1870 through the end of the century. When the words “Victorian house” are uttered, an image instantly springs to mind, though in truth, there is no architectural category by the name “Victorian.” The fanciful gingerbread clapboard dwelling, with its dizzy array of towers, gables, spindles, and porches is but one of many architectural genres, or combinations of genres, that existed during that era. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Since the Victorian period began in 1837 and lasted until 1901, it is impossible that any one style of architecture could have dominated for that long. What was a predominant feature of that era was how classical British and European architectural models were adapted to suit North American tastes, raw materials, and technology. The advent of new technologies such as the balloon framed houses, where standardized pieces of machine-cut lumber, uniformly spaced, and held together by machine-made nails, replaced the hand-hewn post and beam structures of the past, meant that more people could own homes. House plans by mail, at the end of the 1840s, when readers of Godey’s Lady’s Book could order any one of 450 house styles, followed by mail order catalogs of houses themselves, after the Civil War, also played a part in the evolution and proliferation of house styles. The millennium will be at hand when everyone agrees that beauty and human scale are as important as efficiency in anything designed for human consumption. By painting Victorian houses with extraordinary attention to details and in every colour that hand, mind, and eye can conceive, San Francisco’s Colourist Movement is bringing that new age closer house by house. Why did the Colourist Movement arise in San Francisco? #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
San Francisco is a unique architectural museum. Its 16,000 redwood Victorians constitute one of the World’s architectural treasures. Brilliant Sunshine and crystal clarity are the natural medium of this hill-filled, fog-washed Baghdad-by-the-Bay. The warmth of these houses reflects as it enhances the city’s great natural beauty. There once were some 48,000 Victorian houses built in San Francisco during the 65 years between the Gold Rush and the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Nearly all sumptuous palaces on Nob and Rincon Hills were destroyed by the 1906 Earthquake and fire. The smaller mansions, town houses, row houses, and mass-produced Victorians that remained, in sections west and south of the burned-out downtown area, survived. Since the early 1970s, San Francisco’s Victorian houses have been shining forth in blazing colors. The city is a haven for people who can appreciate as well as create Painted Ladies. In American architecture, the painted ladies are enchanting, three-story, Queen Anne Victorian houses, which were built in the late 1880s. They are a row of multimillion dollar, colourful Victorian houses located at 710-720 Steiner Street in San Francisco, California. Each house usually has three vibrant colours and are famous Worldwide. If you like Victorian architecture, consider studying Trigonometry. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
To people feeling increasingly like helpless victims of big corporations, big government, and jobs which are means not ends, painting their homes is a satisfying form of self-expression. Nothing in San Francisco has been as effective in making people take pride in their homes, streets, neighbourhoods, and city as paint applied with imagination. (And if that gives the bureaucrats any ideas on urban renewal, and increasing unemployment, so be it!) The Colourist Movement developed spontaneously but haltingly in the 1960s. Isolated beacons of colour painted by a few courageous souls cropped up and immediately aroused the ire Pained Ladies still do on the grounds of tradition and aesthetics. Nevertheless, the momentum of the movement accelerates, spurred by the creative tension of beauty and money. Thanks to the passion and creativity of painters, colorists, and homeowners, the Painted Ladies will not only survive the evils of modernization but are now more beautiful than ever. Tradition is not only preserved but enriched with a fresh eye and bright coat of paint. The Painted Ladies are exquisite examples of how an American tradition worth preserving can be revitalized and made meaningful to a new generation. Because they are a breathtakingly beautiful lesson in renewing a tradition and a city, they have additional significance for this and future generations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Yet even these dazzling damsels cannot be taken for granted. San Francisco has not been granted immunity from the inevitable Earthquake. The right of these Victorians to exist must also be balanced against the need for adequate housing for all income levels, a reality which the success of the Colourist Movement has paradoxically made more difficult to achieve by rapidly escalating the cost of a house. The immortalized Painted Ladies must be seen in person to really appreciate them. Nothing can match the experience of encountering three stories of bright colours against a clear blue San Francisco sky. And few urban delights equal wandering around the town’s Painted Ladies on a sunny day. If you are still wondering what makes San Francisco so special, all you have to do is go look. The combined effect of colour and scale is, like inhaling pure oxygen, irresistibly exhilarating. To come upon one of these houses unexpectedly is to experience a sudden rush of pleasures. As you stroll along a street like Fair Oaks in the Mission District, your eyes develop greater sensitivity to felicities of colour and design. You sense how one house being painted led to another, creating an endless series of gems in the variegated necklace of Victorian San Francisco. However, do not wait. Colours face the same need for protection and artistic expression which inspired homeowners to paint these Victorians will inspire them again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
By the time you see these houses, some will be repainted. Painted Ladies only captures a moment in time. Painted Ladies is a collection of the best houses, details, and rows of houses our search uncovered. The aim in selecting was that each house be unique in color and architecture. Some are stronger on colour, others on architecture, but most are a happy marriage of both. “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased because Christ hath ascended into Heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of humans? For he hath answered the ends of the law, and he claimeth all those who have faith in him; and they have faith in him will cleave unto every good thing; wherefore he advocateth the cause of the children of humans; and he dwelleth eternally in the Heavens. And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have Angels ceased to minister unto the children of humans. For behold, they are subject unto him, to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of Godliness,” reports Moroni 7.27-30. The self-actualized enlightenment, like the being, eludes the unenlightened observer, who cannot comprehend this kind of being, and so usually ends by misunderstanding one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Wisdom is called mobile by way of similitude, according as it diffuses its likeness even to the outermost of things; for nothing can exist which does not proceed from the divine wisdom by way of some kind of imitation, as from the first effective and formal principle; as also works of art proceed from the wisdom of the artist. And so in the same way, inasmuch as the similitude of the divine wisdom proceeds in degree from the highest things, which participate more fully of its likeness, to the lowest things which participate of it in a lesser degree, there is said to be a kind of procession and movement of the divine wisdom to things; as when we say that the sum proceeds to the Earth, inasmuch as the ray of light touches the Earth. Every procession of the divine manifestation comes to us from the movement of the Father of light. These things are said of God in Scriptures metaphorically. For as the Sun is said to enter a house, or to go out, according as its rays reach the house, so God is said to approach to us, or to recede from us, when we receive the influx of His goodness, or decline from Him. “And the office of their ministry is to call humans unto repentance, and to fulfill and to do the work of the covenants of the Father, which he hath made unto the children of humans, to prepare the way among the children of humans, by declaring the word of Christ unto the children of humans, by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him,” Moroni 7.31. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Lost persons, in Christian terms, are precisely the ones who mistake their own person for God. They falsely identify, and cannot recognize, what is closet to them—themselves. Then, as we have noted, everything becomes delusional. Such a one really does think one is in charge of one’s life—though, admittedly, to manage it “successfully,” one may have to bow outwardly to this or that person or power. However, one is in charge (one believes), and one has no confidence in the one who really is God. As we have seen, such ones “do not see fit to center their knowledge upon God.” Their god, as Paul elsewhere wrote, is their “belly” (Philippians 3.19), the feeling center of the self. They are willing slaves of their feelings or appetites (Romans 16.18). They “want what they want when they want it,” as the song says, and that is the ultimate fact about them. If they do not get it, they become angry and depressed, and are a danger to themselves and others. The philosophy of living with an underlying motive of doing everything for one’s own personal peace and comfort rapidly colours everything that might formerly have come under the headings of right and wrong. This new way of thinking adds entirely new shades, often in blurring brushstrokes of paint that wipe out the existence of standards or cast them into a shadow that pushes them out of sight. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
If one’s peace, comfort, way of life, convenience, reputation, opportunities, job, happiness, or even ease is threatened, “Just abort it.” Abort what? Abort another life that is not yet born. Yes, but also abort the afflictions connected with having a disabled child, and abort the burdens connected with caring for the old or invalid. Added swiftly are the now supposedly thinkable attitudes of aborting a child’s early security in one’s rights to have two parents and a family life; aborting a wife’s need for having her husband be someone to trust and lean upon; aborting the husband’s need for having a companion and friend as well as a feminine mate; aborting any responsibility to carry through a job started. Thus self-idolatry rearranges the entire spiritual and moral landscape. It sees the whole Universe with different eyes. If it is not abortion that is at the center, it will be something else; but the fundamental pride of putting oneself at the center of the Universe is the hinge upon which the entire World of the ruined self turns. The surest source of destruction to humans is to obey themselves. Yet, self-obedience seems the only reasonable path for nearly everyone. So blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one thinks one has a good reason for exalting oneself and despising all others in comparison. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Whereas the primal relationship of human to human is giving one, in the state of sin it is purely demanding. Every person exists in a state of complete voluntary isolation; each being lives one’s own life, instead of all living the same God-life. Well, of course. Each is a god unto oneself. “And by so doing, the Lord God prepareth the way that the residue of beings may have faith in Christ, that the Holy Ghost may have place in their hearts, according to the power thereof; and after this manner bringeth to pass the Father, the covenants which one hath made unto the children of humans. And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me. And he hath said: Repent all ye ends of the Earth, and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, and have faith in me, that ye may be saved,” reports Moroni 7.32-34. O God, Who gavest the Holy Spirit to Thine Apostles, vouchsafe a good effect to Thy people’s devout prayer; that as Thou hast given them faith, Thou mayest also bestow on them peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit enkindle in us that fire which our Lord Jesus Christ sent upon the Earth, and ardently desired to see enkindled, Who with thee will allow of to see deeply into the hidden meaning of life for ye are the best qualified to guide us in matters of conduct and motive. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
My Father, enlarge my heart, warm my affections, open my lips, supply words that proclaim “Love lusters at Calvary.” There grace removes my burdens and heaps them on thy Son, made a transgressor, a curse, and sin for me; there the sword of thy justice smote the man, thy fellow; there thy infinite attributes were magnified, and infinite atonement was made; there infinite punishment was due, and infinite punishment was endured. Christ was all anguish that I might be all joy, cast off that I might be brought in, trodden down as an enemy that I might be welcomed as a friend, surrendered to hell’s worst that I might attain Heaven’s best, stripped that I might be clothed, wounded that I might be healed, athirst that I might drink, tormented that I might be comforted, made a shame that I might inherit glory, entered darkness that I might have eternal light. My Saviour wept that all tears might be wiped from my eyes, groaned that I might have unfading healthy, bore a thorny crown that I might have a glory-diadem, bowed his head that I might uplift mine, experienced reproach that I might receive welcome, closed his eyes in death that I might gaze on unclouded brightness, expired that I might for ever live. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
O Father, who spared not thine only Son that thou mightiest spare me, all this transfer thy love designed and accomplished; help me to adore thee by lips and life. O that my every breath might be ecstatic praise, my every step buoyant with delight, as I see my enemies crushed, Satan baffled, defeated, destroyed, sin buried in the ocean of reconciling blood, hell’s gates closed, Heaven’s portal open. Go forth, O conquering God, and show me the cross, might to subdue, comfort and save. The Lord wants us to bring our children up with tenderness, discipline, and instruction. The words “bring them up” mean “to nourish or feed.” Bring them up also means to let them be kindly cherished, and to speak to one’s children with gentleness and friendliness. When I was a teenager, my best friend’s father was a man’s man. He had spent thirty-two years in the Coast Guard as a noncommissioned officer, a chief bosun’s mate. He was a big man, and in his prime he had put on the gloves with Joe Louis. When he walked down the street, officers greeted him first. He could be rough and tumble. However, do you know what he called his 165-pound son? “Dear Ken.” I was “Mr. Randy,” and I did not mind at all. In fact, it made me feel great. He was not hung up on “Real men do not show affection.” In fact, he still hugs his grown son—a man’s man himself. We are to be tender. Men are never manlier than when they are tender with their children—whether holding a baby in their arms, loving their grade-schooler, or hugging their teenager or adult children. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
A child needs also to know that one’s father and one’s mother are happily married, and supportive of their children. A child who comes from a happy home is more likely to be stable. Tenderness—verbal and physical—comes naturally to a father living under God’s Word. Men, how do we measure up? Next there is training. This is a strong word which means discipline, even by punishment. Discipline certainly includes corporal discipline as needed. However, it encompasses everything necessary to help train a child in the way one should go. The tragedy is that so many men have left this to their children’s mothers. Not only is this unfair to the mother, but it robs the child of the security and self-esteem which come from being disciplined by the father. Men, do you leave the discipline of your sons and daughters to your wives? If so, that is a sad breach of domestic responsibility. You are not living under God’s Word! O God, the Enlightener and the Life of believers, the ineffable greatness of Whose gifts is celebrated by the testimony of this day’s festival; grant unto Thy people to apprehend in their understandings what they have learned by a miracle, that Thine adopted children, whom the Holy Spirit has called together, may love Thee without any lukewarmness, and confess Thy Faith without any dissension; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
You can see Bear River Park from here! 🤩 The #Meadows and #Riverside neighborhoods are now selling! Check out our website for floor plans, contact info, and more.
Residence Four is the largest home offered in Cresleigh Riverside. This two-story, 3,489 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage. The covered porch provides a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way. The Kitchen is connected through the Butler’s Pantry providing ample storage. The great room and loft upstairs allow for various uses that will suit your family and lifestyle. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/residence-4/
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Better is a Dinner of Herbs Where Love is, than a Stalled Ox and Hatred therewith!
Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I am not there, I go to work. “With God all things are possible,” reports St. Matthew 19.26. The sciences which deal with behaviour are in an infant state. This cluster of scientific disciplines is usually thought of as including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and biology, though sometimes the other social sciences such as economics and political science are included, and mathematics and statistics are very much involved as instrumental disciplines. Though they are all at work trying to understand the behaviour of beings, and though research in these fields is growing by leaps and bounds, it is still an area in which there is undoubtedly more confusion than solid knowledge. Thoughtful workers in these fields tend to stress the enormity of our scientific ignorance regarding behaviour, and the paucity of general laws which have been discovered. They tend to compare the state of this field of scientific endeavour with that of physics, and seeing the relative precision of measurement accuracy of prediction, and elegance and simplicity of the discovered lawfulness in this latter field, are vividly aware of the newness, the infancy, the immaturity, of the behavioural science field. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Without in any way denying the truthfulness of this picture, I believe it is sometimes stressed to the point where the general public may fail to recognize the other side of the coin. Behavioural science, even though in its infancy, has made mighty strides towards becoming an “if—then” science. By this I mean that it has made striking progress in discerning and discovering lawful relationships such that is certain conditions exist, then certain behaviours will predictably follow. I believe that too few people are aware of the extent, the breadth, and the dept of the advances which have still been made in recent decades in the behavioural sciences. Still fewer seem to be aware of the profound social, educational, political, economic, ethical, and philosophical problems posed by these advances. Each general statement I shall makes is supported by reasonably adequate research, though like all scientific findings each statement is an expression of a given degree of probability, not of some absolute truth. Furthermore each statement is open to modification and correction or even refutation through more exact or more imaginative studies of the future. In behavioural sciences there is an element of prediction which is prominent. The pattern of each of these can be generalized as follows: If an individual possesses measurable characteristics a, b, and c, then we can predict that there is a high probability that one will exhibit behaviours x, y, and z. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Thus, we know how to predict, with considerable accuracy, which individuals will be successful college students, successful industrial executives, successful insurance agents, and the like. I will not attempt to document this statement, simply because the documentation would be so extensive. He whole field of aptitude testing of vocation testing, of personnel selection is involved. Although the specialists in these fields are rightly concerned with the degree of inaccuracy in their predictions, the fact remains that here is a wide area in which the work of the behavioural sciences is accepted by multitudes of hardheaded industries, universities and other organizations. We have come to accept the fact that out of an unknown group the behavioural scientist can select (with a certain margin of error) those persons who will be successful typists, practice teachers, filing clerks, or physicists. This field is continually expanding. Efforts are being made to determine the characteristics of the creative chemist, for example, as over against the merely successful chemist, and, though without outstanding success, efforts have been and are being made to determine the characteristics which will identify the potentially successful psychiatrist and clinical psychologist. Science is moving steadily forward in its ability to say whether or not you possess the measurable characteristics which are associated with a certain type of occupational activity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
We know how to predict success in schools for military officer candidates, and in combat performance. To select one study in this field, Williams and Leavitt (31) found that they could make satisfactory predictions regarding a Marine’s probably success in Officer Candidates School (OCS) and in later combat performance by obtaining ratings from one’s “buddies.” They also found that in this instance the human’s fellow soldiers were better psychological instruments than were the objective tests they used. There is illustrated here not only the use of certain measures to predict behaviour, but a willingness to use those measures, whether conventional or unconventional, which are demonstrated to have predictive power. We can predict how radical or conservative a potential business executive will be. Whyte (30), in his recent book cites this as one of many examples of tests that are in regular use in industrial corporations. Thus in a group of young executives up for promotion, top management can select those who will exhibit (within a margin of error) whatever degree of conservatism or radicalism is calculated to be for the best welfare of the company. They can also base their selection on knowledge of the degree to which each person has a latent hostility to society, or latent homosexuality, or psychotic tendencies. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Testing giving (or purporting to give) such measures are in use by many corporations both for screening purposes in selection of new management personnel, and also for purposes of evaluation of beings already in management position, in order to choose those who will be given greater responsibilities. We know how to predict which members of an organization will be troublemakers and/or delinquent. A promising young psychologist (10) has devised a short, simple pencil and paper test which has shown a high degree of accuracy in predicting which of the employees hired by a department store will be unreliable, dishonest, or otherwise difficult. He states that it is quite possible to identify, with considerable precision, the potential troublemakers in any organized group. This ability to identify those who will make trouble is, so far as the technical issues are concerned, simply an extension of the knowledge we have of prediction in other fields. From the scientific point of view it is no different from predicting who will be a good typesetter. We know that a competent clerical worker, using a combination of test scores and actuarial tables, can give a better predictive picture of a person’s personality and behaviour, than can an experienced clinician. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Paul Meehl (18) has shown that we are sufficiently advanced in our development of personality tests, and in information accumulated through these tests, that intuitive skill and broad knowledge, experience, and training, are quite unnecessary in producing accurate personality descriptions. He has shown that in many situations in which personality diagnoses are being made—mental hygiene clinics, veteran’s hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and the like, it is wasteful to use well-trained professional personnel to make personality diagnoses through the giving of tests, interviewing the person and the like. He has shown that a clerk can do it better, with only a minimum and impersonal contact with the patient. First a number of tests would be administered and scored. Then the profile of scores would be looked up in actuarial tables prepared on the basis of those measurement, appraisal and evaluation of human characteristics, and the prediction of certain behaviour patterns on the basis of those measurements. Indeed, there is no reason why Meehl’s clerk could not also be eliminated. With proper coded instruction there is no reason why an electronic computer could not score the tests, analyze the profiles and come up with an even more accurate picture of the person and his predicted behaviour than a human clerk. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
We have all seen it—and perhaps done it! The father walks in the door after a pressured day, preoccupied, with brow furrowed. His three-year-old comes running to him, but Dad is busy unburdening himself to his wife. “Just a moment, Leo.” Leo tugs at his father’s britches—no response. He tugs again! His father explodes, picks him up, and taps his little legs for being “rude.” The Lord knows how many children “lose heart” because their fathers have “hard days.” Life is sometimes like the cartoon where the boss is grouchy toward a worker; his employee, in turn, comes home and is irritable with the children; his son then kicks the dog; the dog runs down the street and bites the first person he sees—the boss! We fathers must never let our pressures drive us into this unhappy cycle. The costs are too high. Some say you treat your fellow humans on the level. However, when you are home with the wife and kids, are you as mean as the Devil? Your kids know. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves,” reports St. Matthew 7.15. Few things will exasperate a child more than inconsistency. Pity the horse that has a rider who gives it mixed signals, digging his heels into its side and pulling the reins at the same time. Pity the child even more who has the rules changed by a capricious father, and who is always exasperated because of the conflicting messages one receives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Fathers, you may forgive yourself by saying, “I am so busy…Memory is not my thing…I am just a spontaneous person!” However, your children will not. Be consistent. Never ever make a promise to your children you do not keep! Do any unfulfilled promises come to mind? Horseback riding that never happened? Trips to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop, Winchell’s Donut, New Lai Wah Chinese food, of Giant Burgers, or to watch a Golden State Warrior’s Game on an A’s baseball game? You may forget, but you have a little boy or a girl who will remember it eighty years from now. One of the most exasperating and damning sins a father can commit against his children is favourtism. I say this despite being the last one who would suggest you should treat all your children alike. Some children need more discipline, some need more independence. Some need more structure, some need less. Some need more holding than others. Some need more encouragement. However, no child should be favoured over another. Favouritism was the damning sin of Isaac, who favoured Esau over Jacob. Ironically, it was also the damning sin of Jacob, who favoured Joseph over his brothers. Like favouring father, like rejected son! How crushing, how disheartening to know that you are less favoured—less loved. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Men, the great “do not” of fatherhood is, “Do not exasperate your children”—and life tells us what the resulting “do nots” of this are: Do not be critical, do not be over strict, do not be irritable, do not be inconsistent, do not show favouritism. God has created our children with their hearts turned toward ours. Our power is awesome! We must take God’s Word to heart. We can select those persons who are easily persuaded, who will conform to group pressures, or those who will not yield. Two separate but compatible studies (15, 16) show that individuals who exhibit certain dependency themes in their responses to the pictures of the Thematic Apperception Test, or who, on another test, show evidence of feelings of social inadequacy, inhibition of aggression, and depressive tendencies, will be easily persuaded, or will yield to group pressures. These small studies are by no means definitive, but there is every reason to suppose that their basic hypothesis is correct and that these or other more refined measures will accurately predict which member of a group will be easily persuaded, and which will be unyielding even to fairly strong group pressures. We can predict, from the way individual perceive the movement of a spot of light in a dark room, whether they tend to be prejudiced or unprejudiced. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
There has been much study of ethnocentrism, the tendency toward a pervasive and rigid distinction between ingroups and outgroups, with hostility toward outgroups, and a submissive attitude toward, and belief in the rightness of, ingroups. One of the theories which has developed is that the more ethnocentric person is unable to tolerate ambiguity or uncertainty in a situation. Operating on this theory Block and Block (5) has subjects report on the degree of movement they perceived in a dim spot of light in a completely dark room. (Actually no movement occurs, but almost all individuals perceive movement in this situation.) They also gave these same subjects a test of ethnocentrism. It was found, as predicted, that those who, in successive trials, quickly established a norm or the amount of movement they perceived, tended to e more ethnocentric than those whose estimates of movement continued to show variety. This study was repeated, with slight variation, in Australia (28), and the findings were confirmed and enlarged. It was found that the more ethnocentric individuals were less able to tolerate ambiguity, and saw less movement than the unprejudiced. They also were more dependent on others and when making their estimates in the company of another person, tended to conform to the judgment of that person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Hence it is not too much to ay that by studying the way the individual perceives the movement of a dim light in a dark room, we can tell a good deal about the degree to which one is a rigid, prejudiced, ethnocentric person. This hodgepodge of illustrations of the ability of the behavioural sciences to predict behaviour,and hence to select individuals who will exhibit certain behaviours, may be seen simply as the burgeoning applications of a growing field of science. However, what these illustrations suggest can also cause a cold chill of apprehension. The thoughtful person cannot help but recognize that these developments I have described are but the beginning. One cannot fail to see that if more highly developed tools were in the hands of an individual or group, together with the power to use them, the social and philosophical implications are awesome. One can begin to see why a scientist like von Bertalanffy warns, “Besides the menace of physical technology, the dangers of psychological technology are often overlooked.” Why then do we not experience more of this endless supply of God’s grace? Why do we do often seem to live in spiritual poverty instead of experiencing life to the full as Jesus promised (John 10.10)? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
There are several reasons that may or may not apply to a particular believer, but for the purposes of our study on grace, I would like to look at two that probably apply to most of us. First, is our frequent misperception of God as the divine equivalent of Ebeneezer Scrooge; the God who demands the last ounce of work out of His people and then pays them poorly. That may sound like an overstatement of our perception of God, but I believe it is a fairly accurate representation of how many Christians think. Consider the following words from one of John Newton’s hymns: Come, my soul, thy suit prepare: Jesus loves to answer prayer; he himself has bid thee pray, therefore will not say thee nay. Thou art coming to a King, Large petitions with thee bring; for his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much. How many Christians really believe those words? How many of us really believe Jesus loves to answer prayer? How many of us believe His grace and power are such that we can never ask too much? Rather, we tend in the direction of believing God is reluctant to answer prayers and His grace and power are not sufficient to fulfill our needs, let along our requests. We should not forget that Satan’s very first temptation of humankind was based on questioning the goodness and generosity of God (see Genesis 3.1-5). #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
And this vicious attack on the patriarch Job was designed to cause Job to question God’s goodness so that he would then curse God (see Job 1.16-11). Satan has not changed his strategy today. This perception of God as the reluctant giver comes right from Satan and must be resisted by us if we are to experience the fullness of God grace. “Remember this. Talk to God. No matter how you are feeling, no matter what you are facing, no matter what happens to hurt you or disappoint you or confuse you. Talk to God. And never stop talking to Him. You understand me? Talk to Him. Realize that because things go bad in this World, because they go well, because they come easy or they come with difficulty, well, it does not mean that He is not here. I do not mean here in this chapel. I mean here everywhere. Talk to Him. No mater how many years pass, no matter what happens, always talk to Him. Would you try to remember to do that? Anytime you want. You start now with or without words, and you just keep talking and you never never let anything come between you and talking to God,” Page 27, Of Love and Evil by Anne Rice. Many believers do not comprehend the superabundance of God’s grace and generosity, we ask Him for paltry blessings, when we could be drawing on the abundance of His riches. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The apostle Paul told us that God “has blessed us in the Heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ,” and “[He] will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” reports Ephesians 1.3, Philippians 4.19. Within the scope of these two scriptures, God promises to meet every one of our needs, both spiritual and temporal. The God who was gracious to Adam and Eve both before and after the Fall, who rejoiced in doing good to the Jewish nation in captivity, who was the “God of all grace” to Peter, is the same gracious and generous God today. Grace is part of the very nature of God, and He cannot change. He is indeed the generous landowner of the parable, continually going to the marketplace of life to find those in need of “a day’s wages” so that He can bring them into His vineyard and then reward them out of all proportion to their labors. Perhaps the larger reason why we do not experience more of God’s grace is our misconception that, having been saved by grace, we must now, at least to some degree, “pay our own way” and earn God’s blessings in our daily lives. An accepted maxim among people today, “there is no such thing as a free lunch” (which may be true in our society), is carried by us into our relationship with God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
In fact this misconception that we must pay our own way is more than a mistaken theological notion. It actually springs from the perverse disposition of our hearts—the disposition of pride. Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We do not want to live by a Heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there. When considering the subject of the grace of God in salvation, the problem of pride described is applicable to living the Christian life. Not only do we think we must pay our own way, at least to some degree, we subtly insist on paying our own way. Grace is for other people—for beggars, but not for us. Let me illustrate from my own experience. After the death of my first wife, Eleanor, God very soon brought into my life another charming and Godly lady whom Eleanor and I had known for a number of years. Just over a year Eleanor’s death, Jane and I were married. A few months later I began to realize I was experiencing a vague sense of guilt despite confidence that God had guided in our marriage. One day I realized my sense of guilt was due to the feeling that I had not “paid my dues” in long months of grief and loneliness unlike some of my friends who have lost their spouses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
I felt I did not “deserve” such a tremendous blessing from God so soon after Eleanor’s death. In fact, I discovered I was unconsciously not allowing myself to enjoy the full riches of the blessing God had so obviously given me. I had lapsed into the World’s way of thinking that we somehow must earn God’s blessings through our suffering or sacrifice or hard work. It can be humbling, sometimes humiliating, to realize we have not paid our own way. Think of the workers in the parable who worked only one hour. How did they feel when they realized they had received as much pay as those who had worked twelve long hours through the heat of the day? Did they feel grateful for the generous gift they had received, or guilty that they had not earned their pay? If they were living by a philosophy of works as we so often do, they would have felt guilty. They would have experienced the gracious generosity of the landowner, but they would not have enjoyed it. You and I actually experience the grace of God in our lives far more than we realize. However, all too often we do not enjoy His grace because we are trying to live by merit, not by grace. In looking for our own goodness by which we hope to earn the blessing of God, we fail to see the superabundance of the goodness and grace of God in our lives. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
O God, Who wast pleased to send Thy disciples the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, in the burning fire of Thy love, grant to Thy people to be fervent in the unity of faith; that evermore abiding in Thee, they may be found both stedfast in faith and active in work; through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the Spirit, the Paraclete, O Lord, Who proceedeth from Thee, illuminate our minds, and, as Thy Son hath promised, lead us into all truth; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ. May the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, O Lord, cleanse our hearts, and make them fruitful with its plenteous dew; through our Lord Jesus Christ. “And God also declared unto prophets, by his own mouth, that Christ should come. And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest things unto the children of humans, which were good; and al things which are good cometh of Christ; otherwise humans were fallen, and there could no good thing come unto them. Wherefore, by the ministering of Angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, humans began to exercise faith in Christ; and thus by faith, they did lay hold upon every good thing; and thus it was until the coming of Christ,” reports Moroni 7.23-25. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Blessed Lord Jesus, before thy cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity that caused thee to be “made a curse,” the evil that excites the severity of divine wrath. Show me the enormity of my guilt by the crowns of thorns, the pierced hands and feet, the bruised body, the dying cries. Thy blood is the blood of incarnate God, its worth infinite, its value beyond all thought. Infinite must be the evil and guilt that demands such a price. Sin is my malady, my monster, my foe, my viper, born in my birth, alive in my life, strong in my character, dominating my faculties, following me as a shadow, intermingling with my every thought, my chain that holds me captive in the empire of my soul. Sinner that I am, why should the Sun give me light, the air supply breath, the Earth bear my tread, its fruits nourish me, its creatures subserve my ends? Yet thy compassions yearn over me, thy heart hastens to my rescue, thy love endured my curse, thy mercy bore my deserved stripes. Let me walk humbly in the lowest depths of humiliation, bathed in thy blood, tender of conscience, triumphing gloriously as an heir of salvation. “And after that he came humans also were saved by faith in his name; and by faith, they become the sons of God. And as surely as Christ liveth he spake these words unto our fathers, saying: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is good, in faith believing that ye shall receive, behold, it shall be done unto you,” reports Moroni 7.26. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The readiness with which one once plunged into other people’s affairs to help the, as one believed, will dissolve and disappears. One knows now that their real troubles remain unaffected by this surface acid, that meddling in their problems is not the right way. One is surrounded by an aura which makes one a crowd of fawning disciples and flattering admirers. However, one could not accept such a role because one knows that they will refuse to let one be oneself and will expect one to be different from what one really is. One does not care to face an attitude which is hostile or indifferent; one does not even need to talk to beings who begin by disbelieving one. No self-actualized person looks down on others from one’s pedestal, but that does not alter the distancer that extends from their ignorance to one’s knowledge. One does not require idolatrous homage from them and indeed shrinks from it. One unaffected nature renders one desirous of being treated no better than others. One passes among others a hidden existence, a secret inner life. The conventional World is so tied to, and therefore so deceived by appearances, that it is only a tiny handful of people who meet such a being with the understanding and sympathy one deserves. It is not personal desire which makes one refrain from communicating oneself to others, but public circumstances. In this one obeys the Greek verse, “When to be wise is all in vain, be not wise at all.” Why should one communicate the oracles of Heaven to those whose minds run only to trivialities? #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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My Heart is a Lonely Hunter that Hunts on a Lonely Hill!
The workers have nothing to lose but their chairs. They have a World to gain. Worrying is like a rocking chair—it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself,” reports St. Matthew 6.34. There are … Continue reading
Such a Prophet is Like a Bell, Calling its Hearers to Attend the True Church Within themselves!
If you do not think that everyday is a great day, try going without one. Absence from who we love is worse than death. God moves in mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm. “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” reports Micah 6.8. What are the conditions within the individual which are most closely associated with a potentially constructive creative act? I see these as possibilities. Openness to experiences: Extensionality. This is the opposite of psychological defensiveness, when to protect the organization of the self, certain experiences are prevented from coming into awareness except in distorted fashion. In a person who is open to experiences each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system without being distorted by any process of defensiveness. Whether the stimulus originates in the environment, in the impact of form, colour, or as a memory trace in the central nervous system, it is available to awareness. This means that instead of perceiving in predetermined categories (“trees are green,” “college education is good,” “modern art is silly”) the individual is aware of this existential moment as it is, thus being alive to many experiences which fall outside the usual categories (this tree is lavender; this college education is damaging; this modern sculpture has a powerful effect on me). #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
This last suggests another way of describing openness to experience. It means lack of rigidity and permeability of boundaries in concepts, beliefs, perceptions, and hypotheses. It means a tolerance for ambiguity where ambiguity exists. It means the ability to receive much conflicting information without forcing closure upon the situation. It means what the general semanticist calls the “extensional orientation.” This complete openness of awareness to what exists at this moment is, I believe, an important condition of constructive creativity. In an equally intense but more narrowly limited fashion it is no doubt present in all creativity. The deeply maladjusted artist who cannot recognize or be aware of the sources of unhappiness in oneself, my nevertheless be sharply and sensitively aware of form and colour in one’s experience. The tyrant (whether on a petty or grand scale) who cannot face the weakness in oneself may nevertheless be completely alive to and aware of the areas that still need to be adjusted in the psychological armour of those with whim one deals. Because there is the openness to one phase of experience, creativity is possible; because the openness is only to one phase of experience, he product of this creativity may be potentially destructive of social values. The more the individual has available to oneself a sensitive awareness of all phases of one’s experience, the more sure we can be that one’s creativity will be personally and socially constructive. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
An internal locus of evaluation: perhaps the most fundamental condition of creativity is that the source or locus of evaluative judgment is internal. The value of one’s product is, for the creative person, established not by the praise or criticism of others, but by oneself. Have I created something satisfying to me? Does it express a part of me—my feeling or my thought, my pain or my ecstasy? When one is being creative, these are the only questions which really matter to the creative person, or to any person. This does not mean that one is oblivious to, or unwilling to be aware of, the judgments of others. It is simply that the basis of evaluation is possessed within oneself, in one’s own organismic reaction to and appraisal of one’s products. If to the person it has the “feel” of being “me in action,” of being an actualization of potentialities in oneself which heretofore have not existed and are not emerging into existence, then it is satisfying and creative, and no outside evaluation can change that fundamental fact. The ability to toy with elements and concepts is probably less important than openness to experience and an internal locus of evaluation, it seems to be a condition of creativity. Occasionally one feels one is not worthy enough to contact a spiritual teacher because one does not have a “clean heart.” This is a wrong mental attitude. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
One needs assistance in getting this “clean heart” and there is nothing wrong in seeking such help. Associated with the openness and lack of rigidity described in the section about openness to experience is the ability to play spontaneously with ideas, colours, shapes, relationships—to juggle elements into impossible juxtapositions, to shape wild hypotheses, to make the given problematic, to express the ridiculous, to translate from one form to another, to transform into improbable equivalents. It is as though out of the wasteful spawning of thousands of possibilities there emerges one or two evolutionary forms with the qualities which give them a more permanent value. When these three conditions obtain, constructive creativity will occur. However, we cannot expect an accurate description of the creative act, for by its very nature it is indescribable. This is the unknown which we must recognize as unknowable until it occurs. This is the improbably that become probable. Only in a very general way can we say that a creative act is the natural behavior of an organism which has a tendency to arise when that organism is open to all of its inner and outer experiencing, and when it is free to try out in flexible fashion all manner of relationships. It is a grave mistake for one to eject what a favourable destiny thus offers one. However, sinful one be, there is also a fact that one aspires to rise above one’s sins, else one would not feel sorry for them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Out of this multitude of half-formed possibilities the organism, like a great computing machine, selects this one which most effectively meets an inner need, or that one which forms a more effective relationship with the environment, or this other one which discovers a more simple and satisfying order in which life may be perceived. There is one quality of the creative act which may, however, be described. In almost all the products of creation we note a selectivity, or emphasis, an evidence of discipline, an attempt to bring out existence. The artist paints surfaces or textures in simplified form, ignoring the minute variations which exist in reality. The scientist formulates a basic law of relationships, brushing aside all the particular events or circumstances which might conceal its unveiled beauty. The writer selects those words and phrases which give unity to one’s expression. We may say that this is the influence of the specific person, of the “I.” Reality exists in a multiplicity of confusing facts, but “I” bring a structure to my relationship to reality; I have “my” way of perceiving reality, and it is the (unconsciously?) discipline personal selectivity or abstraction which gives to creative products their esthetic quality. It needs some humility and more discernment to approach this benefit of knowledge, insight, experience, and wisdom—all of which are unusual and rare. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Though this is as far as we can go in describing any aspect of the creative act, there are certain of its concomitants in the individual which may be mentioned. The first is what we may call the Eureka feeling—“That is it!” “I have discovered!” “This is what I wanted to express!” Another concomitant is the anxiety of separateness. I do not believe that many significantly creative products are formed without the feeling, “I am alone. No one has ever done just this before. I have ventured into territory where no one has been. Perhaps I am foolish, or wrong, or lost, or abnormal.” You will walk a long time or visit many cities before you find another illuminate. Greet one well, therefore, and think of one well, that you may make something of this fortunate meeting. Still another experience which usually accompanies creativity is the desire to communicate. It is doubtful whether a human being can create, without wishing to share one’s creation. It is the only way one can assuage the anxiety of separateness and assure oneself that one belongs to the group. One may confide one’s theories only to one’s private diary. One may put one’s discoveries in some cryptic code. One may conceal one’s poems in a locked drawer. One may put away one’s paintings in a closet. Yet one’s desires to communicate with a group which will understand one, even if one must imagine such a group. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
One does not create in order to communicate, but once having created one desires to share this new aspect of oneself-in-relation-to-one’s-environment with others. If such a being’s presence, face, bearing, and teaching show something Godlike in one, we should not hesitate to give one the benefit of recognition as being inspired, even if we are not willing to give more. From the very nature of the inner conditions of creativity it is clear that they cannot be forced, but must be permitted to emerge. The farmer cannot make the germ develop and sprout from the seed; one can only supply the nurturing conditions which will permit the seed to develop its own potentialities. So it is with creativity. How can we establish the external conditions which will foster and nourish the internal conditions descried above My experience in psychotherapy leads me to believe that by setting conditions of psychological safety and freedom, we maximize the likelihood of an emergence of constructive creativity Let me spell out these conditions in some detail, labelling them as X and Y. X. Psychological safety. This may be established by three associated processes. Accepting the individual as unconditional worth. Whenever a teacher, parent, therapist, or other person with a facilitating function feels basically that this individual is of worthy in one’s own right and in one’s unfolding, no matter what one’s present condition or behavior, one is fostering creativity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
This attitude can probably be genuine only when the teacher, parents, ex cetera, senses the potentialities of the individual and this is able to have an unconditional faith in one, no matter what one’s present state. Among living mortals there is one with whom one may find this link, one whom one may never meet in the flesh but only through a photo, a work of art, a name uttered by someone, or perhaps through a piece of published writing. Among those who no longer live in the body, but with whom the link was made in former births, the echo will return and the idea itself will suffice. We can hope to find today is no longer a teacher to instruct our minds nor a master to guide our steps but an inspirer to set us aflame, to show us the World as God see it. There is for each seeker only one being in the whole World who can do that. One and one alone can work this miracle. It is a strange mystery why destiny has decreed that these seekers after God should have to depend on this one being’s lit mind and strong heart for the help they need more than on any other being’s. Strange, because until they find one their search seems to have a great lack in it which almost brings one to anguish. The attraction which makes a being select someone as one’s master and makes the master willing to help one is analogous to chemical affinity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
It is not that they deliberately and consciously choose one another, but that they cannot help doing so. The master knows, automatically and immediately by one’s own intuition, whether a candidate for discipleship is in affinity with one or not, and hence whether to accept or reject the being or not. If one is sensitive and aspiring, and if there is any real spiritual power in the other being, one will feel involuntarily an internal excitement and intuitive expectancy almost from the first minute of their meeting. However, if one is also at sufficient degree of readiness and longing to learn, and if there is personal affinity with this other being, then one will feel shaken to the depths of one’s being, capture in mind and heart. For one will feel the beginnings of discipleship. With the meeting, the aspirant’s supreme chance has come. When an aspirant comes into contact with an advanced soul, one’s own longing is like a magnet which itself spontaneously attracts spiritual force and thought from the other being. Thereupon one experiences an uplift and an enlightenment. If the meeting is a personal one this result is at its fullest. If through a book or letter written by the other being, it is still present but in a weaker degree. Providing a climate in which external evaluation is absent—when we cease to form judgments of the other individua from our own locus of evaluation, we are fostering creativity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
For the individual to find oneself in an atmosphere where one is not being evaluated, not being measured by some external standard, is enormously freeing. Evaluation is always a threat, always creates a need for defensiveness, always means that some portion of experience must be denied to awareness. If this product is evaluated as good by external standards, then I must admit my own dislike of it. If what I am doing is bad by external standards, then I must not be aware of the fact that it seems to be me, to be part of myself. However, if judgments based on external standards are not being made then I can be more open to my experience, can recognize my own likings and dislikings, the nature of the materials and of my reaction to them, more sharply and more sensitively. I can begin to recognize the locus of evaluation within myself. Hence I am moving toward creativity. To allay some possible doubts and fears in the reader, it should be pointed out that to cease evaluating another is not to cease having reactions. It may, as a matter of fact, free one to react. “I do not like your idea” (or painting, or invention, or writing), is not an evaluation, but a reaction. It is subtly but sharply different from a judgment which says, “What you are doing is bad (or good), and this quality is assigned to you from some external source.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The first statement permits the individual to maintain one’s own locus of evaluation. It holds the possibility that I am unable to appreciate something which is actually very good. The second statement, whether it praises or condemns, tends to put the person at the mercy of outside forces. One is being told that one cannot simply ask oneself whether this product is a valid expression of oneself; one must be concerned with what others thing. One is being led away from creativity. Understanding empathically—it is this which provides the ultimate in psychological safety, when added to the other two. If I say that I “accept” you, but know nothing of you, this is a shallow acceptance indeed, and you realize that it may change if I actually come to know you. However, if I understand you empathically, see you and what you are feeling and doing from your point of view, enter your private World and see it as it appears to you—and still accept you—then this safety is indeed. In this climate you can permit your real self to emerge, and to express itself in varied and novel formings as it relates to the World. This is a basic fostering of creativity. Y. Psychological freedom—when a teacher, parent, therapist, or other facilitating person permits the individual a complete freedom of symbolic expression, creativity is fostered. This permissiveness gives the individual complete freedom to think, to feel, to be, whatever is most inward within oneself. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
It fosters the openness, and the playful and spontaneous juggling of precepts, concepts, and meanings, which is a part of creativity. Note that t is complete freedom of symbolic expression which is described. To express in behavior all feelings, impulses, and formings may not in all instances be freeing. Behaviour may in some instances be limited by society, and this is as it should be. However, symbolic expression need not be limited. Thus to destroy a hated object (whether one’s mother or a rococo building) by destroying a symbol of it, is freeing. To attack it in reality may create guilt and narrow the psychological freedom which is experienced. (I feel unsure of this paragraph, but it is the best formulation I can give at the moment which seems to square with my experience.) The permissiveness which is being described is not softness or indulgence or encouragement. It is permission to be free, which also means that one is responsible. The individual is as free to be afraid of a new venture as to be eager for it; free to bear the consequences of one’s mistakes as well as of one’s achievements. It is this type of freedom responsibly to be oneself which fosters the development of a secure locus of evaluation within oneself, and hence tends to bring about the inner conditions of constructive creativity. The goodwill which one shows to all people is devoid of any self-seeking motive, is a natural expression of the love which one finds in the innermost chambers of one’s soul. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
I have endeavoured to present an orderly way of thinking about the creative process, in order that some of these ideas might be put to a rigorous and objective test. My justification for formulating this theory, and my reason for hoping that such research may be carried out is that the present development of the physical sciences is making an imperative demand upon us, as individuals and as a culture, for creative behavior in adapting ourselves to our new World if we are to survive. I have a deep concern that the developing behavioral sciences may be used to control the individual and to rob one of one’s personhood. I believe, however, that these sciences might be used to enhance the person. The function of theology, Catholic or Protestant, is to purify the faith of believers through an enlightened criticism of empirical Christianity. Catholic theology achieves this—or should achieve it were theologians always conscious of their function—through a self-criticism whereby the theologian brings one’s own Christianity as thought and experience in line with the requirements of the Word of God spoken in Scripture and echoed in the Church of yesterday and today. Thence, from human to human, from teacher to student, from lecturer to listener, from writer to reader, a continuous self-reformation tends to spread abroad. This is why all great theology is prophetic. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Announcing the Word of God, it prepares the members of the Church to receive it in its pureness, as the Baptist prepared one’s disciples for the coming of Christ While never speaking in the name of the Church, a prophetic theology gives the lead to the Church of tomorrow by helping beings to welcome the hierarchical teaching into a fully scriptural and traditional background. It is perfectly true that method and system determine each other and that no method can be developed without a prior knowledge of the object to which it is applied. Neither the prophets of whom I speak, nor any of the others stood in the substance or essence of God, as the Scriptures testify; they did not see or explain the nature of God. The norm of theology is then the cloud that enshrounds God’s glory. Guided by the Spirit the believer seeks “theo-logy,” knowledge of God, intimacy with him, inside faith and its darkness. Theological contemplation is a symposium of knowledge and no-knowledge. Speaking generally, the medieval theologians shifted the norm of theology from the level of an anagogical awareness of the presence of God in his absence to the level of a sacramental experience of creation. Everything is then reduced to the sacramentalism of creation, of which the Christian sacrament form the acme. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
All things, whether natural or supernatural, are images of God, mirrors wherefrom the face of the Christ beckons to beings to take up their cross and follow him. Temporality is a prism through which eternity is seen. God is Light of the intellect. The apostle John wrote that Jesus was “full of grace and truth,” and “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another,” reports John 1.14-16. The idea portrayed in verse 16 is analogous to the ocean waves crashing upon the beach. One wave has hardly disappeared before another arrives. They just keep coming from an inexhaustible supply. So it is with the grace of God through Christ. He is full of grace and truth, and it is from His inexhaustible fullness that we receive one blessing after another. We have translated verse 16 as follow: “For out of his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” Notice we did not receive just grace, but grace upon grace. The meaning of verse 16 is that believers are constantly receiving grace in the place of grace. One manifestation of the unmerited favour of God in Christ is hardly gone when another arrives; hence grace upon grace. The concept grace upon grace, an incessant supply of grace, harmonizes better with the idea from one’s fullness than does the simple term grace. The limitless supply or reservoir indicated by the words his fullness would seem to suggest a limitless outflow: grace upon grace. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The human body becomes the primary area of pleasure for the person who does not live honestly and interactively with God, and also the primary source of terror, torture, and death. So it is an obvious thing to turn to for those who worship and serve “the creature rather than the Creator,” reports Romans 1.25. And because bodily enjoyments is what they want, what they choose to pursue, God abandons them to their pursuit of every pleasurable sensation they can wring out of the body—primarily pleasures of the flesh, for that usually gives the greatest kick, but bodily violence is a close second. This is the spiritual room of obsession with the pleasures of the flesh and violence in decadent societies, whether our own or those of other times and place. “Free love,” as it is euphemistically but falsely called, along with various forms of perversion, are simply an extension of body worship (verses 26-27)—even the worship of female private parts and the male phallus witnessed to by both archeology and modern life (and the “abs” and “buns” of today). As logic teaches us, everything logically follows from a falsehood. If what is false is true, then everything is. So anything goes. However, then it turns out that sensuality cannot be satisfied. It is not self-limiting. That is partly because the effect of engaging in the practices of sensuality is to deaden feeling. Then awakens the relentless drive, the desperate need, simply to feel something. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
This drive is rooted in basic human nature. We have to have feeling, and it needs to be deep and sustained. However, if we are not living the great drama of goodness in God’s kingdom, sensuality through the body is all that is left under our “kingdom.” Paul observes to the Ephesians that the Gentiles [those not knowing God] also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, exclude from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness (Ephesians 4.17-19). This is the natural progression in the flight from God. The drive to self-gratification opens up into a life without boundaries, where nothing is forbidden—if one can get away with it. Why is replaced with Why not? And because this is what these gods want—total license—God abandons them to a worthless or nonfunctional (adokimon) mind—that is, a mind that simply does not work. “As they did not see fit to center their knowledge upon God, God released them into the grip of a non-functional mind, to do what is indecent,” reports Romans 1.28. The outcome is a humanity “filled with unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
And although they still know of the condemnation of Go on such things, “they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them,” reports Romans 1.29-32. O Lord, Who hast borne our weak flesh to be glorified with Thee in Heavenly places, take away the foulness of our sins, and restore to us the dignity of our first estate; that by believing in Thee we may be able thither to ascend, wither we now believe Thee to have really ascended. “And now, my brethren, seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which light is the light of Christ, see that ye do not judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge ye shall also be judged. Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly be a child of Christ,” reports Moroni 7.18-19. Lord God Almighty, thy understanding is unsearchable and infinite, thy arm cannot be stayed, thy agency extends through limitless space, all works hang on thy care, with three time is a present now. Holy is thy wisdom, power, mercy, ways, works. How can I stand before thee with my numberless and aggravated offences? I have often loved darkness, observed lying vanities, forsaken thy given mercies, trampled underfoot thy beloved Son, mocked thy providences, flattered thee with my lips, broken thy covenant. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
It is of thy compassion that I am not consumed. Lead me to repentance, and save me from despair; let me come to thee renouncing, condemning, loathing myself, but hoping in the grace that flows even to the chief of sinners. At the cross my I contemplate the evil of sin, and abhor it, look on one whom I pierced, as one slain for me, and my me. May I never despise his death by fearing its efficacy for my salvation. And whatever cross I am required to bear, let me see him carrying a heavier. Teach me in health to think of sickness, in the brightest hours to be ready for darkness; in life prepare me for death. Thus may my soul rest in thee, O immortal and transcendent one, revealed as thou art in the Person and work of thy Son, the friend of sinners. Saviour and Lord, Who, ascending into Heaven, wast pleased to show Thyself in glory to the eyes of beholders, while Thou didst promise to come as our Judge in like manner as Thou hadst ascended; make us to welcome this feast-day of Thine Ascension with pure and devout hearts; that we may in such wise ascend continually in Thee to a better life, that when Thou comest to the judgment, we may see Thy face and not be confounded. O God, Who hast gone up on high, leading captivity captive, bestow on beings the gifts of eternal peace: and as by ascending into Heaven Thou hast withdrawn Thyself corporeally from human eyesight, be Thou graciously pleased to enter our hearts. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Experience is something you do not get until just after you need it. “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the Heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted,” reports Ecclesiastes 3.1. It is not import for people to spill their guts in relationship, but to be accessible, capable of being known. When the invitation to pray, experiment, or encounter is repeatedly declined by people, then the delicate problem of resistance must be considered. Resistances are blockages to that which is palpably relevant (for instance, threatening, anxiety-provoking). Resistances are not to be taken lightly, from the experiential standpoint. To the contrary, they are viewed as vital methods of self-preservation. Although such methods may at first seem crude, crippling, or even life-denying, to mist people they are starkly preferable to the alternatives. Individuals invested in smallness, for example, may perceive their only option to be obliteration. With choices like these, it is no wonder beings sabotage their own growth. Accordingly, I always try to be respectful of resistances, acknowledging both their life-giving and their life-taking qualities. I also try to be cognizant of the problems of prematurely challenging peoples’ resistance, which can often end up exacerbating their conditions rather than alleviating them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
If ignorance is bliss, why are not more people happy? There are two additional point to beat in mind about the experiential approach to resistance. First, it may be overly intense for given clients. To the extent that this is the case, semi- or nonexperiential alternative approaches may be in order. Second, although experiential approaches to resistance are cultivated throughout the treatment process, they are particularly relied upon in the closing stages of therapy—when people face the greatest pressure to change. Now let us focus on two important experiential tools for handling resistances—therapeutic vivification and confrontation. There are many times when it is better to indirectly, rather than directly, confront resistance. This is so, not only because direct confrontation can therapeutically backfire, but also because it can convey the wrong message to people—that the power of transformation is possessed by the therapist. However, from the experiential standpoint, this is a deception. For it is the client who must discover that power, and it is the client who must grapple with its consequences. Vivifying resistance, accordingly, is one way to empower clients to transform. How does vivification proceed? By gradually and methodically “holding a mirror up” to people—helping them to see that kinds of World they have constructed, the kinds of compromises they have made to maintain those World, and the degree of courage necessary to overcome their situations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
While these means may seem simplistic at first—for what the people would deny such knowledge about one’s World—they are eminently sensible to those who know how deeply one must plumb to risk the anxieties of growth. Put another way, vivification helps clients to—supportively and productively—“hit bottom” in their lives and then mobilizes their commitment to change. It is obvious that the tendency to deprive or exploit, like all the other hostile tendencies we have discussed, not only arises from impaired personal relations but results in further impairment. Particularly if this tendency is more or less unconscious, as is usually the case, it necessarily renders the person self-conscious or even timid toward others. One may behave and feel free and natural toward persons from whom one does not expect anything, but one will become self-conscious as soon as there is any possibility of getting any advantage from someone. The advantage may concern tangible things, such as information or a recommendation, or it may concern something much less tangible, such as the mere possibility of future favours. A neurotic of this type may be frank and natural with people for whom one does not care, but feel embarrassed and constrained toward a being whom one wants to like one, because, for one, obtaining one’s affection is identified with getting something out of one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Person of this type may have an exceptionally good earning capacity, thus leading their impulses into profitable channels. More often, they will develop inhibitions concerning the earning of money, so that they will hesitate to ask for pay or will do a great deal of work without getting an adequate reward, thus appearing to behave more generously than is really the case. They are likely then to become discontented at their inadequate earnings, often without knowing the reason for the discontentment. If the neurotic’s inhibitions become so ramified that they pervade one’s whole personality the result will be a general incapacity to stand on one’s own feet, and one will have to be supported by others. One will then lead a parasitic kind of existence, thus satisfying one’s exploiting tendencies. This parasitic attitude will not necessarily appear in the gross form of “the World owes me a living,” but may take the more subtle form of expecting others to do one favours, to take the initiative, to give one ideas for one’s work, in short, expecting others to take the responsibility for one’s life. The result is an odd attitude toward life in general: one has no clear conception that this is one’s own life, and that it is up to one to make something out of it or to spoil it, but one lives as if what happens to one were no concern of one’s own, as if good and evil came from the outside without one’s having anything to do about it, as if one had a right to expect the good things from others and to blame them for all bad things. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Since in these circumstances usually more bad than good is produced, a growing embitterment against the World is almost inevitable. This parasitic attitude can be found also in the neurotic need for affection, especially when the need for affection takes the form of a craving for material favours. Another frequent outcome of the neurotic’s tendency to deprive or exploit is an anxiety that one will be cheated or exploited by others. One may live in a perpetual fear that someone will take advantage of one, that money or ideas will be stolen from one, and one will react to every person one meets with the fear that the person might want something from one. A seemingly disproportionate amount of anger is discharged if one is really cheated, if, for example, an Uber or Lyft driver does not take the shortest route, or if a cashier overcharged one. The psychic value of protecting one’s own abusing tendencies on others is obvious. It is far more pleasant to feel a righteous indignation at others than to face a problem of one’s own. Moreover, hysterical persons often use accusations as a means of intimidation, or bullying the other into feeling guilty and thus letting oneself be abused. The aims and functions of the neurotics striving for power, prestige and possession can be very roughly schematized as follows: #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
It is an achievement to see and emphasize the importance of these strivings, the role they play in neurotic manifestations and the disguises in which they appear. It is, however, often assumed these strivings are the foremost trend in human nature, not in themselves requiring any explanation; their intensification in neurotics can be traced back to feelings of inferiority and to physical in adequacies. Dr. Freud has also seen many of the implications of these strivings, but he does not regard them as belonging together. The striving for prestige he considers an expression of narcissistic tendencies. He would originally have considered the strivings for power and possession, and the hostility involved in them, as derivatives of the “anal-sadistic stage.” Later, however, he recognizes that such hostilities could not be reduced to a sexual basis, and assumed them to be an expression of a “death instinct,” thus remaining faithful to one’s biological orientation. Many psychiatrists have recognized the role that anxiety plays in bringing about such drives, not has either of them seen the cultural implications in the forms in which they are expressed. The ways of obtaining power, prestige, and possession differ in different cultures. They may come by right of inheritance or they may come from the individual’s possession of certain qualities appreciated by one’s cultural group, such as courage, cunning, capacity to cure the sick or communicate with supernatural powers, mental instability, and the like. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Some people claim to be “baby gods,” as a way of expression their superiority over other humans, and it also indicates their inability to take responsibility for their actions. It is just another justification for mentally ill assuming they are all powerful and above the law, and I suppose their cult leader is their god. It is the same attitude displayed by the followers of Charles Manson. These types of ideas may be acquired also by extraordinary or successful activities, achieved on the basis of given qualities or through the favor of fortuitous circumstances. In our culture inheritance of passion and wealth certainly plays a role. If, however, power, prestige, and possession have to be acquired by the individual’s own efforts one is compelled to enter into competitive struggles with others. From its economic center competition is a problem for everyone in our culture, and it is not at all surprising to find it an unfailing center of neurotic conflicts. In our culture neurotic competitiveness differs from the normal in three respects. First, the neurotic constantly measures oneself against others, even in situations which do not call for it. Although striving to surpass others is essential in all competitive situation, the neurotic measures oneself against persons who are in no way potential competitors and who have no goal in common with one. The question as to who is the more intelligent, attractive, popular, is indiscriminately applied to everyone. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
One’s feeling toward life can be compared to that of a jockey in a race, for whom only one thing matters—whether one is ahead of others. This attitude leads necessarily to a loss of impairment of real interest in any cause. It is not the content of what one is doing that matters so much as the question of how much success, impression, prestige will be gained by it. The neurotic may be aware of this attitude of measuring oneself against others, or one may do it automatically without being aware of doing it. One is scarcely ever fully aware of the role it plays for one. Another difference from normal competitiveness is that the neurotic’s ambition is not only to accomplish more than others, or to have greater success that they, but to be unique and exceptional. While one may think in the comparative one’s aims are always in the superlative. One may be perfectly aware of being driven by relentless ambition. More frequently, however, one either represses one’s ambition entirely or partly covers it. In the latter case one may believe, for example, that one cares not for success, but only for the cause one is working for; or one may believe that one does not want to be in the limelight. One’s feeling may be described as an articulate conviction that “only one can succeed,” which is only another way of expressing the idea that “no one but I shall succeed.” There may be an enormous amount of emotional intensity behind one’s destructive impulses. For example, a being who was writing a play was thrown into a blind fury when one heard that a friend of his was working on a play. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
This impulse to defeat or frustrate the efforts of others may be seen in many relationships. A child with excessive ambition may become impelled by a wish to defeat all one’s parents efforts on one’s behalf. If the parents press one in matters of deportment and social success one will develop a kind of behavior which is socially scandalous. If they concentrate their efforts on one’s intellectual development one may develop such strong inhibitions toward learning that one appears to be feebleminded. I recall two young patents brought to me who were suspected of being feebleminded, although later they proved to be very capable and intelligent. Because of its destructive character competitiveness in neurotic persons gives rise to a huge amount of anxiety, and consequently leads to a recoiling from competition. The question now is, Whence comes this anxiety? It is understandable without any difficulty that one source is a fear of retaliation for the ruthless pursuit of ambition. One who steps on all others, humiliates and crushes them as soon as they have or want to have success, must have the fear that they will want just as intensely to defeat one. However, such a retaliation fear, although it will be active in everyone who achieves success at the expense of others, is scarcely the whole reason for the neurotic’s increased anxiety and one’s consequent inhibition toward competition. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Experience shows that retaliation fear alone does not necessarily lead to inhibitions. On the contrary, it may result merely in a cold-blooded reckoning with the imaginary or real envy, rivalry or malice of others, or in an attempt to expand one’s power in order to be protected from any defeat. A certain type of successful person has only one goal, the acquisition of power and wealth. However, if the structure of such personalities is compared with that of definitely neurotic persons there is one striking difference. The ruthless success-hunter does not care for the affection of others, neither help nor any kind of generosity. One knows that one can reach what one wants by one’s own strength and efforts alone. One will, of course, make use of people, but one care for their good opinion only in so far as it is useful in attaining one own goals. Affection for its own sake means nothing to one. One’s desires and one’s defenses go along one straight line: power, prestige, possession. Even one who is driven to this kind of behaviour by internal conflicts will not develop the usual neurotic characteristics if there is nothing within one to interfere with one’s strivings. Fear will only push one into enhanced efforts to be more successful and more invincible. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
If one is at all aware of one’s exaggerated self-valuation one’s conscious reaction to it is rather like that of a healthy person. If in dreams one appears as royalty in disguise one may find such dreams funny. However, one’s grandiose fantasies, although consciously one discards them as unreal, have for one an emotional reality-value similar to the value they have for a psychotic. In both cases the reason is the same: they have an important function. Although slender and shaky, they are the pillar on which one’s self-esteem rests, and therefore one has to cling to them. The danger that lies in this function manifests itself in situations in which some blow is dealt the self-esteem. Then the pillar tumbles, one falls, and cannot recover from one’s fall. For example, a girl who had good reasons to believe that she was loved realized that the man was hesitating to marry her. In a talk he told her that he felt to young, too inexperienced to marry, and that he thought it wiser to know other girls before he tied himself definitely. She could not recover from this blow, became depressed, began to feel insecure in her work, developed an enormous fear of failure, with a subsequent desire to withdraw from everything, from people as well as work. This fear was so overwhelming that even encouraging events, such as the man’s later decision that he wished to marry her, and the offer of a better job with much flattering appreciation of her abilities did not reassure her. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
As we have already indicated, eros (the sum of life-preserving instincts that are manifested as impulses to gratify basic needs, as sublimated impulses, and as impulses to protect and preserve the body and mind) as well as philia (friendly feeling toward) contains an element of epithymia (a longing, especially for what is forbidden; concupiscence, desire, lust). This is most obvious in those cases in which a philia and eros relation is untied with an attraction or fulfilment of pleasures of the flesh. However, it is true not only in these cases. It is always true. In this respect depth psychology has discovered a side of human existence which should not be covered again by idealistic or moralistic fears and postulates. The appetitus (natural/instinctive desire) of every being to fulfill itself through union with other beings is universal and underlies the eros as well as the philia quality of love. There is an element of libido even in the most spiritualized friendship and in the most ascetic mysticism. A saint without libido would cease to be a creature. However, there is no such saint. Up to this point the quality of love which dominates the New Testament, the agape (the highest form of love, charity) quality, has been disregarded. This has been done not because agape is the last and highest form of love, but because agape enters from another dimension into the whole of life and into all qualities of love. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
One could call agape the depth of love or love in relation to the ground of life. One could say that in agape ultimate reality manifests itself and transforms life and love. Agape is love cutting into love, just as revelation is reason cutting into reason and the Word of God is the Word cutting into all words. If love is the drive towards the reunion of the separated, it is hard to speak meaningfully of self-love. For within the unity of self-consciousness there is no real separation, comparable to the separation of a self-centered being from all others beings. Certainly the completely self-centered beings, humans, are self-centered only because one’s self is split into a self which is subject and a self which is object. However, there is neither separation in this structure, nor the desire for reunion. Self-love is a metaphor, and it should not be treated as a concept. The lack of conceptual clarity in the concept of self-love is manifest in the fact that the term is used in three different and partly contradictory sense. It is used in the sense of natural self-affirmation (for instance loving one’s neighbour as oneself). It is used in the sense of selfishness (for instance, the desire to draw all things into oneself). It is used in the sense of self-acceptance (for further illustration, the affirmation of oneself in the way which one is affirmed by God). It would be an important step towards semantic clarification if the term “self-love” were completely removed and replaced by self-affirmation, selfishness, and self-acceptance according to the context. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Living on the boundary between home and international land is to leave one’s own country over and over again, and to go into a land that is shown unto one, and to trust the promise which for one is purely transcendent. This conviction will draw us beyond the narrow confines of nationalism. Humankind as such is a symbol for that which lies beyond history, the Kingdom of God, in which the border between home and international land has ceased to be a border. Facing the Unconditional, all life is lived on a border-line. In unity with the Unconditional, all boundary situations are ultimate. To stand on many borderlines means to experience in many forms the unrest, insecurity and inner limitation of existence, and to know that inability of attaining serenity, security and perfection. That is true of life as well as of thought. However, there is a boundary of human activity which is no longer the dividing line between two possibilities—the Good and the True. In its presence, even the very centre of our being is only a boundary, and our utmost perfection only a fragment. “And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense [apologia] to everyone who asks you to give an account [logos] for the hope that is in your, yet with gentleness and reverence reports 1 Peter 3.14-15. Two key words are central to Peter’s meaning: apologia and logos. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The word apologia means to defend something, for example, offering absolute arguments for and responding to negative arguments against your position in a courtroom. It is important to recognize that this is exactly how the apostle Paul did evangelism (Acts 14.15-17, 17.2,4,17-34; 18.4; 19.8). One persuaded people to become Christians by offering rational arguments on behalf of the truth of the gospel. He even cited approvingly two pagan philosophers, Epimenides and Aratus (acts 17.28), as part of his case for the gospel. In 1 Peter 3.15, the apostle does not suggest that we be prepared to do this, he commands it. The word logos means “evidence or argument which provides rational justification for some belief.” If you know something, what you know must at least be true and you must believe it. If you said you knew it was raining outside, but either it was not raining outside or you did not even believe it was, others would rightly be puzzled at your claim to knowledge. However, knowledge is more than just true beliefs. We all have many true beliefs that do not count as knowledge. IF someone hits you on the head and, as a result, somehow you form the true belief that a methane molecule has four carbon atoms in it, no one would claim that you knew this to be the case, especially compared to a scientist who had spent five years studying methane. You and the scientist both have true beliefs about methane, but one has knowledge and you do not. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
What is the difference? The scientist has a true belief plus logos (evidence) and you fail to have logos. He scientist has good reasons that justify his true belief, you have blind faith that just happens to be true. Applied to our passage, Peter is saying that we are to be prepared to give rational arguments and good reasons for why we believe what we believe, and this involves the mind. Peter’s reference to gentleness and reverence implies that we are to argue but not be argumentative. Have you ever been afraid to stand up for Christ when the opportunity presented itself? Or when you have done so, have you come off as shallow, reactionary, and defensive? If so, there is nothing magical about changing your life in this area. First, as with every other area of life, you have to study hard and gain an intellectual grasp of the issues so you can be confident and courageous. Second, you need to be sure that Jesus Christ is the Lord believers being intimidated by powerful forces outside the church. “Whatsoever thing persuadth people to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no being to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves into him,” reports Moroni 7.17. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Thou righteous and holy Sovereign, in whose hand is my life and whose are all my ways, keep me from fluttering about religion; fix me firm in it, for I am irresolute; my decisions are smoke and vapour, and I do not glorify thee, or behave accordingly to thy will; cut me not off before my thoughts grow to responses and the budding of my soul into full flower, for thou art forbearing and good, patient and kind. Save me from myself, form the artifices and deceits of sin, from the treachery of my perverse nature from denying thy charge against my offences, from a life of continual rebellion against thee, from wrong principles, views, and ends; for I know that all my thoughts, affections, desires and pursuits are alienated from thee. I have acted as if I hated thee, although thou art love itself; have contrived to tempt thee to the uttermost, to wear out thy patience; have lived evilly in word and action. Had I been a prince I would long ago have crushed such a rebel; had I been a prince I would long ago have crushed such a rebel; had I been a father I would long since have rejected my child. O, thou Father of my spirit, thou King of my life, cast me not into destruction drive me not from thy presence, but wound my heart that it may be healed; break it that thine own hand may make it whole. And we forget because we must and not because we will. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Watch and Pray that Ye Enter Not into Temptation: that Spirit Indeed is Willing, but the Flesh is Weak!
Plots, true are false are necessary things, to raise up commonwealths, and ruin kings. One’s power of keeping one’s knowledge a secret from those who are unready for or uninterested in it is perfect. Nothing in one’s words or manner may lead them to think that the self-actualized knows immensely more than one tells them. One knows how to protect one’s status well. In the presence of sceptics and scoffers, or the unevolved and unready, neither one’s outward manner nor one’s uttered talk will give any hint of it. With all one’s reclusive habits, the self-actualized is compassionate in temperament, benevolent in personality. Even when one avoids people, one does not hate them. They feel tense, uneasy, and unsure in the presence of a superior class of beings. This one knows by experience and this is one reason why one keeps apart and alone; yet paradoxically it is also why one is kinder to them than a situation calls for, why one then behaves as if one were an equal and not on a different level. In one sense, the self-actualized consciousness is insulated by its own superior quality from that of others, but in another sense it fleetingly registers or lengthily holds their states through one’s compassion, sympathy, or understanding. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The self-actualized has no intention of meddling in other people’s personal lives, no conceit that one’s duty is to change them, no willingness to take on responsibility for them. One commits them to God and commends them to it. However this it done, if intuitively or rationally one is led to suggest a purpose or remind them of a truth or point to a beneficial course or utter a warning, one will bey the leading—but always in response to their approach. If fate will let the self-actualized being, one is happier to move through this World incognito, than celebrated. Most people are always more impressed by outward show than by inner worth. However, when the show is philanthropic service and benevolent activity dramatically performed, they are even more impressed. The recognition and appreciation are immediate. The being whose inner stillness admit spiritual forces into one’s surroundings remains unnoticed. Nor is the people’s judgment always true; the most may err as grossly as the few. Beware the fury of a patient person. Experience is something you do not get until just after you need it. I maintain that there is a desperate social need for the creative behavior of creative individuals. It is this which justifies the setting forth of a tentative theory of creativity—the nature of the creative act, the conditions under which it occurs, and the manner in which it may constructively be fostered. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Such a theory of creativity may serve as a stimulus and guide to research studies in this field of therapy. Many of the serious criticisms of our culture and its trend may best be formulated in terms of a dearth of creativity. Let us state some of these briefly: In education we tend to turn out conformists, stereotypes, individuals whose educations is “completed,” rather than freely creative and original thinkers. In our leisure time activities, passive entertainment and regimented group action are overwhelmingly predominant while creative activities are much less in evidence. In the sciences, there is an ample supply of technicians, but the number who can creatively formulate fruitful hypotheses and theories is small indeed. In industry, creation is reserved for the few—the manager, the designer, the head of the research department—while for the many life is devoid of original or creative endeavor. In individual and family life the same picture holds true. In the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the books we read, and the idea we hold, there is a strong tendency toward conformity, toward stereotypy. To be original, or different, is felt to be “dangerous.” Why be concerned over this? If, as a people, we enjoy conformity rather than creativity, shall we not be permitted this choice? In my estimation such a choice would be entirely reasonable were it not for one great shadow which hangs over all of us. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In a time when knowledge, constructive and destructive, is advancing by the most incredible leaps and bounds into a fantastic atomic age, genuinely creative adaptation seems to represent the only possibility that beings can keep abreast of the kaleidoscopic change in the World. With scientific discovery and invention proceeding, we are told, at the rate of geometric progression, a generally passive and culture-bound people cannot cope with the multiplying issues and problems. Unless individuals, groups, and nations can imagine, construct, and creatively revise new ways of relating to these complex changes, the lights will go out. Unless beings can make new and original adaptations to one’s environments as rapidly as one’s science can change the environment, our culture will perish. Not only individual maladjustment and group tensions, but international annihilation will be the price we pay for a lack of creativity. Consequently it would seem to me that investigations of the process of creativity, the conditions under which this process occurs, and the ways in which it may be facilitated, are of the utmost importance. It is in the hope of suggestion a conceptual structure under which such investigations might go forward will help facilitate necessary changes. “Be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love,” reports 1 Corinthians 16.13-14. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Out of this well-known passage, I chose two word on which I want you to center your attention in this hour—be strong! They are surrounded in our text by other qualities that makes strength possible—watchfulness, faith, courage, love. All together, they describe the strong Christian personality. How can we attain strength? This is a question asked in all ages of a being’s life and in all periods of human history. It is a question asked with passion and despair in our time, and most impatiently by those who are no longer children and not yet adults. In our texts Paul uses the word “be” several times: “be strong,” he says to the Corinthians. We easily slip over it. However, it should arrest our attention as fully as, and perhaps even more than, the main words of our text. Fore the word “be” contains in its two letters the whole riddle of the relation of beings to God. Paul does not ask of the Christians in Corinth something that is strange to them. He asks them to be what they are, Christian personalities. All the imperatives he uses are descriptions of something that is, before they are demands for what ought to be. Be what you are—that is the only thing one can ask of any being. One cannot ask of a being to be something it was not before. It is as if life in all its forms desires to be asked, to receive demands. However, no life can receive demands for something which it is not. It wants to be asked to become what it is and nothing else. This seems surprising, but a little thought shows us that it is true. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
We know that one cannot ask fruits from thorns, or grain from weeds, or water from a dry fountain, or love from a cold heart, or courage from a cowardly mind, or strength from a weak life. If we ask such things from beings who do not have them, we are foolish; and either they will laugh at us or condemn us as unjust and hostile towards them. We can ask of anything or anyone only to bring forth what one has, to become what one is. Out of what is given to us, we can act. Receiving precedes acting. “Be strong,” says Paul. He says it to those who have received strength as he himself received strength when the power of a new reality grasped him. Now some of us will ask—“what about us who feel that we have not received, and that we do not have faith and courage and strength and love? We are wanting in all these, so the commanding ‘be’ of Paul is not said to us. Or if it is said to us we remain unconcerned or become hostile towards one who says it. We are not strong, so nobody should ask us to be strong! We are weak. Shall we remain weak? Shall we fall into resignation, and become cynical about your demands? They may be for others. They are not for us.” I hear many people, more than we imagine, saying this. I hear whole classes of young people speaking thus. I hear many individuals in older generation repeating these words. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
And I do not find any consolation in the Bible There is the parable of the different soils on which the seed of the divine message falls and of which only one brings fruit. There is the word of the many who are called and few who are elected. There is the terrifying, realistic statement of Jesus that those whom much is given will receive more, and that from those who little is given, even this will be taken away. There is the contrast between those who are born of light and have become its children and those who are born out of darkness and have become its children. There is the parable of the man as clay which cannot revolt against God the potter, no matter what the potter does to the clay. We would like to revolt, when we hear this. However, if we look around us into the lives of beings we are forced to say—“So it is, the Bible is right!” We would like to say in a god democratic phrasing—“Everyone has a God-given chance to reach fulfillment, but not everybody uses it. Some do, some do not. Both have their ultimate destiny in their own hands.” We would like that to be so. However, we cannot escape the truth that it is not so. The changes are not even. There is only a limited number of human beings to whom we can say—“Be strong,” because they are strong already. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
And the only honest thing I could say to the others, to whom many of us belong, is—“Accept that you are weak. Do not pretend that you are strong. And perhaps if you dare to be what you are, your weakness will become your strength. Accept that you are weak”—that is what we should say to those who are weak. “Accept that you are a coward”—that is what we should say to those who are cowardly. “Accept that you are wavering in the faith—that is what we should say to those who are not firm in it. And to those who do not love, we should say—“Accept that you are not able to love.” This sounds strange! However, everyone who knows the human soul, and knows one’s own soul above all, will understand what is meant. One will understand that the first step in becoming strong is to acknowledge and accept one’s weakness. One who does so will cease to deceive oneself by saying to oneself—“I have at least something of what the apostle demands. One can demand it from me, for somehow I have it.” There are people who could rightly speak so to themselves. Yet there are others for whom such a judgment would be a self-deception. To them we must say—“Accept that you are weak; be honest towards yourselves.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Let me say to those who are responsible for others, as parents, teachers, ministers, counselors, friends: do not say the demanding “be” to anybody without fear and hesitation. If you use it, you approach the mystery of the divine election and you may destroy a life by demanding something of a person that one is not! There are various ways of defining creativity. In order to make more clear the meaning of what is to follow, let me present the elements which, for me, are part of the creative process, and then attempt a definition. In the first place, for me as a scientist, there must be something observable, some product of creation. Though my fantasies may be extremely novel, they cannot usefully be defined as creative unless they eventuate in some observable product—unless they are symbolized in words, or written in a poem, or translated into a work of art, or fashioned into an invention. These products must be novel constructions. This novelty grows out of the unique qualities of the individual in one’s interaction with the materials of experience. Creativity always has the stamp of the individual upon its product, but the product is not the individual, nor one’s materials, but partakes of the relationship between the two. Creativity is not, in my judgment, restricted to some particular content. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
I am assuming that there is no fundamental difference in the creative process as it is evidenced in painting a picture, composing a symphony, devising new instruments of killing, developing a scientific theory, discovering new procedures in human relationships, or creating new formings of one’s own personality at in psychotherapy. (Indeed it is my experience in this last field, rather than in one of the arts, which has given me special interest in creativity and its facilitation. Intimate knowledge of the way in which the individual remolds oneself in the therapeutic relationship, with originality and effective skill, gives one confidence in the creative potential of all individuals.) My definition, then, of the creative process is that it is the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of one’s life on the other. Let me append some negative footnotes to this definition. It makes no distinction between “good” and “bad” creativity. One being may be discovering a way of relieving pain, while another is devising a new and more subtle form of torture for political prisoners. Both these actions seem to me creative, even though their social value is very different. Though I shall comment on these social valuations later, I have avoided putting them in my definition because they are so fluctuating. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Galileo and Copernicus made creative discoveries which in their own day were evaluated as blasphemous and wicked, and in our day as basic and constructive. We do no want to cloud our definition with terms which rest in subjectivity. Another way of looking at this same issue is to note that to be regarded historically as representing creativity, the product must be acceptable to some group at some point of time. This fact is not helpful to our definition, however, both because of the fluctuating valuations already mentioned, and also because many creative products have undoubtedly never been socially noticed, but have disappeared without ever having been evaluated. So this concept of group acceptance is also omitted from our definition. In addition, it should be pointed out that our definition makes no distinction regarding the degree of creativity, since this too is a value judgment extremely variable in nature. The action of the child inventing a new game with one’s playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat; a young author writing one’s first novel; all of these are, in terms of our definition, creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less creative. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The motivation for creativity—the mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy –human’s tendency to actualize oneself, to become one’s potentialities. By this I mean the directional trend which is evident in all organic and human life—the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature—the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, or the self. This tendency may become deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defenses; it may be hidden behind elaborate facades which deny its existence; it is my belief however, based on my experience, that it exists in every individual, and waits only the proper conditions to be released and expressed. It is this tendency which is the primary motivation for creativity as the organism forms new relationships to the environment in its endeavour most fully to be itself. Let us now attempt to deal directly with this puzzling issue of the social value of a creative act. Presumably few of us are interested in facilitating creativity which is socially destructive. We do not wish, knowingly, to lend our efforts to developing individuals whose creative genius works itself out in new and better ways of robbing, exploiting, torturing, killing, other individuals. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Nor do we wish to lend our efforts to developing individuals whose forms of political organization or art forms which lead humanity into paths of physical or psychological self-destruction. Yet how is it possible to make the necessary discriminations such that we may encourage a constructive creativity and not a destructive? The distinction cannot be made by examining the product. The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it. Indeed history points up the fact that the more original the product, and the more far-reaching its implications, the more likely it is to be judged by contemporaries as evil. The genuinely significant creation, whether an idea, or a work of art, or a scientific discovery, is more likely to be seen at first as erroneous, bad, or foolish. Later it may be seen as obvious, something self-evident to all. Only still later does it receive its final evaluation as a creative contribution. It seems clear that no contemporary mortal can satisfactorily evaluate a creative product at the time that it is formed, and this statement is increasingly true the greater the novelty of the creation. Nor is it of any help to examine the purposes of the individual participating in the creative process. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are the Caesar’s; and into God the things that are God’s,” reports St. Matthew 22.21. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Many, perhaps most, of the creations and discoveries which have proved to have great social value, have been motivated by purposes having more to do with personal interest than with social value, while on the other had history records a somewhat sorry outcome for many of those creations (various Utopias, Prohibitions, and so forth) which has as their avowed purpose the achievement of the social good. No, we must face the fact that the individual creates primarily because it is satisfying to one, because this behavior is felt to be self-actualizing, and we get nowhere by trying to differentiate “good” and “bad” purposes in the creative process. Must we then give over any attempt to discriminate between creativity which is potentially constructive, and that which is potentially destructive? I do not believe this pessimistic conclusion is justified. It is here that recent clinical findings from the field of psychotherapy give us hope. It has been found that when the individual is “open” to all of one’s experience (a phrase which will be defined more fully), then one’s behavior will be creative, and one’s creativity may be trusted to be essentially constructive. The differentiation may be put very briefly as follows. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
To the extent that the individual is denying to awareness (or repressing, if you prefer the term) large areas of one’s experience, then one’s creative formings may be pathological, or socially evil, or both. To the degree that the individual is open to all aspects of one’s experience, and has available to one’s awareness all the varied sensings and perceivings which are going on within one’s organism, then the novel products of one’s interaction with one’s environment will tend to be constructive both for oneself and others. To illustrate, an individual with paranoid tendencies may creatively develop a most novel theory of the relationship between oneself and one’s environment, seeing evidence for one’s theory in all sorts of minute clues. One’s theory has little social value, perhaps because there is an enormous range of experience which this individual cannot permit in one’s awareness. Sokrates, on developed novel ideas which have proven to be socially constructive. Very possibly this was because he was notably nondefensive and open to one’s experience. The reasoning behind this will perhaps become more clear in the remaining sections of this paper. Primarily however it is based upon the discovery in psychotherapy, that as the individual becomes more open to, more aware of, all aspects of one’s experience, one is increasingly likely to act in a manner we would term socialized. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
If one can be aware of one’s hostile impulses, but also of one’s desire for friendship and acceptance; aware of the expectations of one’s culture, but equally aware of one’s own purposes; aware of one’s selfish desires, but also aware of one’s tender and sensitive concern for another; then one behaves in a fashion which is harmonious, integrated, constructive. The more one is open to one’s experience, the more one’s behavior makes it evident that the nature of the human species tends in the direction of constructively social living. The eros quality of love is in a polar way related to what could be called the philia quality of love. While eros represents the transpersonal pole, philia represents the personal pole. Neither of them is possible without the other. There is eros quality in philia. And there is philia quality in eros. They are in a polar way interdependent. This implies that without the radical separation of the self-centered self neither the creative nor the religious eros is possible. Beings without a personal centre are without eros, although they are not without epithymia. One cannot relate oneself as an “I” to a “thou” cannot relate oneself to the true and the good and to the ground being in which they are rooted. One who cannot love the friend cannot love the artistic expression of ultimate reality. Stages of the aesthetical and the ethical and the religious are not stages but qualities which appear in structural interdependence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Conversely, philia is dependent on eros. Concepts like participation and communion point to the eros quality in every philia relation. It is the desire to unite with a power of being which is both most separated and mist understandable and which radiates possibilities and realities of good and the true in the manifestation of its incomparable individuality. However, eros and philia are not only united in the individual relation. They are also united in the communion of social groups. In families, and national groups, the desire for participation is directed towards the power of being which is embodied in the group, even if special relations of the philia type are lacking. The very fact that such groups consist of individual with whom an I-thou relation is potentially given, distinguishes the eros within a group from the eros which is effective, for instance, in artistic creations. Love as a philia presupposes some amount of familiarity with the object of love. For this reason Aristotle asserted that philia is possible only between equals. This is true if “equal” is defined in a sufficiently large way and not in terms of an esoteric group. “For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every being, that one may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge of it is of God,” reports Moroni 7.16. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Be present, O Lord, to our supplications; that as we trust that the Saviour of humankind is seated with Thee in Thy Majesty, so we may feel that, according to His promise, He abideth with us unto the end of the World; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God vouchsafe unto us, by the gift of this day’s festival, that the aims of Thy children may thither be directed, where our substance, in Thine Only-begotten Son, is with Thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Thou blessed spirit, author of all grace and comfort, come, work repentance in my soul; represent sin to me in its odious colours that I may hate it; melt my heart by the majesty and mercy of God; show me my ruined self and the help there is in Him; teach me to behold my Creator, His ability to save, His arms outstretched, His heart big for me. May I confide in His power and love, commit my soul to Him without reserve, bear His image, observe His laws, pursue His service, and be through time and eternity a monument to the efficacy of His grace, a trophy of His victory. Make me willing to be saved in His way, perceiving nothing in myself, but all in Jesus: Help me not only to receive Him but to walk in Him, depend upon Him, commune with Him, be conformed to Him, follow Him, imperfect, but still pressing forward, not complaining of labour, but valuing rest, not murmuring under trials, but thankful for my state. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Give me that faith which is the means of salvation, and the principle and medium of all Godliness; may I be saved by grace through faith, live by faith, feel the joy of faith, do the work of faith. Perceiving nothing in myself, my I find in Christ wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption. Hear us, O merciful God, and grant our minds to be lifted up, whither our Redeemer hath ascended; that at the second coming of the Mediator we may receive from Thy manifested bounty what we now venture to hope for as promised gift; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the faithful members of Thy Son may tither follow, whither our Head and Chief has gone before, Who with Thee, we shall be blessed with eternal life and everlasting grace. O God, Who, to show forth the wonders of Thy Majesty, didst after Thy Resurrection from the dead ascend this day into Heaven, in the presence of Thine Apostles, grant us the assistance of Thy loving kindness; that according to Thy promise Thou mayest ever dwell with us on Earth, and we with Thee in Heaven; where with the Father, we shall live in his mansions and have an abundance of blessings. “Though I speak with the tongues of humans and of Angles, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal,” Reports 1 Corinthians 13.1. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Cresleigh Homes
Plumas Ranch is your next home! 🏡 Pricing is now available for the Riverside and Meadows communities. Check out more info at the link in bio! 👉 https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/