Not with a Club the Heart is Broken, Nor with a Stone—I think that Earth Seems so to those in Heaven!

Oh, and it is the same old beat with you, Erich, you Devil, you want to do it, you want to, you want to see it, you greedy little beast, you cannot give her over to the Angels and you know they are waiting! You know the God who can sanctify her suffering has purified her an will forgive her last cries. Mental health is to be determined objectively and society has both a furthering and a distorting influence on mortals, contradicts not only the relativistic view, discussed in the past, but two other views which I want to discuss now. One, decidedly the most popular one today, wants to make us believe that contemporary Western society and more especially, the American way of life corresponds to the deepest needs of human nature and that adjustments to this way of life means mental health and maturity. Social psychology, instead of being a tool for the criticism of society, thus becomes the apologist for the status quo. The concept of maturity and mental health in this view, corresponds to the desirable attitude of a worker or employee in industry or business. Maturity is the ability to stick to a job, the capacity to give more on any job than is asked for, reliability, persistence to carry out a plan regardless of the difficulties, the ability to work with other people under organization and authority, the ability to make decisions, a will to life, flexibility, independence, and tolerance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

Maturity is the virtues of a good worker, employee or soldier in the big social organizations of our time; they are the qualities which are usually mentioned in advertisements for a junior executive. To one, and many others who think like one, maturity is the same as adjustment to our society, without ever raising the question whether this adjustment is to a healthy or a pathological way of conducting one’s life. “And now my beloved beings, I had said these things unto you that I might awaken you to a sense of your duty to God, that ye may walk blameless before him, that ye may walk after the holy order of God, after which you have been received,” reports Alma 7.22. If you remain true, you will get the sign that God is with you. When you come to your wits’ end and feel inclined to panic—do not! Stand true to God, and he will bring out his truth in a way that will make your life an expression of worship. Put into practice what you have learned. Make a determination to trust in God. “The house of the LORD God is to be here,” reports 1 Chronicles 22.1. If you have always prided yourself on your sensitivity to the needs of others, you may find resistance when you adopt toughness. Sometimes when people look at it, it is like someone turned on the Christmas lights, it makes them giddy and full of joy. Will you be accepted? #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

Maturity is the same as adjustment to our society, without ever raising the question whether this adjustment is to a healthy or a pathological way of conducting one’s life. However, in contrast to this view is the one which runs from Dr. Freud, and which assumes a basic and unalterable contradiction between human nature and society, a contradiction between human nature and society, a contradiction which follows from the alleged asocial nature of mortals. For Dr. Freud, mortals are driven by two biologically rooted impulses: the craving for sexual pleasure, and for destruction. The aim of one’s sexual desire is complete sexual freedom, that is, unlimited access to all women and men one might find desirable. Some mortals discovered by experience that sexual (genital) love affords them their greatest gratification, so that it becomes in affect the prototype of all happiness to him or her. These types of people must have been impelled to seek their happiness further along the path of sexual relations, to make genital erotism the central point of one’s life. Primitive humans have yet to cope with no, or exceedingly few restrictions to the satisfaction of those basic desires. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

Primitive mortals can give vent to their aggression, and there are few limitations to the satisfaction of one’s sexual impulses. In actual fact, most primitive mortals knew nothing of any restrictions on their instincts, some do not even “feel” that they have instincts. Civilized humans have exchanged some part of their changes of happiness for a measure of security. The happy savage’s aggressiveness has two sources: one, the innate striving for destruction (death instinct) and the other the frustration of one’s instinctual desires, imposed upon him or her by society. While mortals may channel part of one’s aggression against oneself, through the Super-Ego, and while a minority can sublimate their sexual desire into love of humanity, aggressiveness remains ineradicable. Mortals will always compete with, and attack each other, if not for material things, then for the prerogatives in sexual relationships, which must arouse the strongest rancor and most violent enmity among men and women who are otherwise equal. Let us suppose this were also to be removed by instituting complete liberty in sexual life, so that the family, the germ-cell of culture, ceased to exist; one could not, it is true, foresee the new paths on which cultural development might then proceed, but one thing one would be bound to expect and that the ineffable feature of human nature would follow wherever it led. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

Since for Dr. Freud love is in its essence sexual desire, he is compelled to assume a contradiction between love and social cohesion. Love, according to him, is by its very nature egotistical and antisocial, and the sense of solidarity and humanly love are not primary feelings rooted in mortal’s nature, but aim-inhibited sexual desires. One the basis of his concept of mortals, that of their inherent wish for unlimited sexual satisfaction, and of his destructiveness, Dr. Freud must arrive at a picture of the necessary conflict between civilization and mental health and happiness. Primitive mortals are healthy and happy because one is not frustrated in one’s basic instincts, but one lacks the blessings of culture. Civilized humans are more secure, enjoy art and science, but they are bound to be neurotic because of the continued frustration of one’s instincts, enforced by civilization. For Dr. Freud, social life and civilization are essentially in contrast to the needs of human nature as he sees it, and mortals are confronted with the tragic alternative between happiness based on the unrestricted satisfaction of one’s instincts, and security and cultural achievements based on instinctual frustration, hence conducive to neurosis and all other forms of mental sickness. Civilization, to Dr. Freud, is the product of instinctual frustration and thus the cause of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

Dr. Freud’s concept of human nature as being essentially competitive (and asocial) is the same as we find it in most authors who believe that the characteristics. Dr. Freud’s theory of the competitive struggles for survival. It can also be translated into the sphere of economy. There are basically two types of people, the homo sexual is and the homo economicus. One is after sex, the other is after money. Both the economic mortal and the sexual mortal are convenient fabrications whose alleged nature—isolated, asocial, greedy and competitive—makes Capitalism appear as the system which corresponds perfectly to human nature, and places it beyond the reach of criticism. The necessary conflict between human nature and society, imply the defense of contemporary society and they both are one-sided distortions. Furthermore, most ignore the fact that society is only in conflict with the asocial aspects of mortals, partly produced by itself, but often also with one’s most valuable human qualities, which is suppresses rather than furthers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

An objective examination of the relation between society and human nature must consider both the furthering and the inhibiting impact of society on humans, taking into account the nature of mortals and the needs stemming from it. The neglected pathogenic function of modern society needs to be highlighted. Many of the self-defeating behaviors are motivated by conscious needs. For instance, there appear to be people all around us who have a strong dislike for themselves. In each of us there may be a tinge of dislike for some aspect of our self: freckles, hair, teeth, vocabulary, color, accent. However,most of us manage to combine our dislike of parts of ourselves with very good feelings about the rest of the package. A few people, though, manage to reach a point where they entertain active hatred for their entire beings. They manage to pull off some of the greatest self-defeating stunts since the six hundred marched into the Valley of Death in the Crimean War! Some of these people do it with alcohol, using it precisely because they know it will put them into a state in which they will commit self-defeating or losing behavior. They drink to get courage or strength enough to hurt themselves. There are many who do the same with drugs of various kinds. Again, this is not to dispute the physiological factors of addiction or habituation. It is simply to emphasize that even before the physiological hook gets into some people, they hook themselves onto a drug or habit that will inevitably bring them down. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

An example of the conscious needs that motivate self-defeating behavior is dependency. Some people refuse to take their medicine because they like or need to be dependent on their doctors or they need their family’s concerns. Others get themselves in trouble with authorities because they need to keep themselves tied to their parents or spouses; they build a bond of trouble-rescue-restriction-release-trouble, a cycle that repeats itself week after month after year in some cases. Why? It is a bit too simple to say that the needs are always entirely conscious or even always entirely unconscious.Just as our physiques are three-dimensional, our complexities encompass behaviors that have horizontal, vertical, and depth dimensions as well. Add to this the dimensions that we call time and space and you have a model of human behavior that cannot be sketched on a flat piece of paper. Therefore, we must keep in mind the person, who will play more roles in one’s life, but—like an actor—the mortal is one person and all one’s roles are the individual, too. This multi-dimensioned person is each of us. Mixed in with all the motivations we have described as being universal are the ones that are unique to each of us. There is, therefore, no one answer to the “why?” of the behavior, whether it is the behavior of one or many. It may be instructive, but only instructive, to see what may cause actions in particular cases. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

If a mortal has a strong need to enter into complicated situations from which one cannot extricate oneself, we may uncover some of the reasons why, but only some of them. If you do something, even after an authority figure has told you to stop, changes are that among your individually unique needs is the need to engage in whatever destructive behavior you have been warned to stop, apparently this need is stronger than your need to stay out of danger. Some people engage in bad behavior because they feel a strong need to be punished. They feel that they can only be satisfied or happy when they are being pushed out or put into a situation where they are in some sort of danger of losing out. When these types of people win or achieve something, they feel and empty, hollow sort of triumph. Only when these individuals have guilt so ingrained in their being are punishing themselves or being punished can they admit to feelings of satisfaction. It is hard for guilt given people to admit this to friends. Not even their wives or husbands have ever heard them say these things, but their spouses notice over the years that they only seem completely happy and at ease when they are being pressured, when they are driving themselves to take on unnecessary extra work. It seemed to one woman that her husband was “trying to kill himself,” with his overly emotional and wild criminal behaviors. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

Dr. Freud thought we each have an instinctive death wish. We do not find the evidence for this to be either conclusive or impressive. However, we know that many people learn to deal with their guilt feelings or their negative self-concepts by punishing themselves or by being punished. Without using the term as a diagnosis, this behavior is often called masochism. A person who is still doing something dangerous, even after being warned not to, is a symbol of all the things one does that one has been told one should not do. One is almost totally absorbed by and concerned with guilt. The diagnosis of potential death and danger us almost like a priestly issue of penance: this is what one must undergo to purge oneself of one’s guilt. Some people are begging to be punished because they want to get their just desserts, which could even be death, for being the bad person they are. “No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing,” reports 1 Chronicles 21.24. This long example, we repeat, deals only with one person. It is not meant to explain all people who engage in risky behaviors or careers, all compulsive people, or to condemn all teachings about guilt. It is, however, instructive. Guilt, as experienced by most of us, is the feeling we have when we have let ourselves down, when we have not lived up to our own expectations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

As such, it is a good motivator: guilt enables us to shift our gears and try a different speed or direction in our behavior. We should feel guilt for committing certain social indiscretions or violations of necessary and expected behaviors. If I step on the foot a woman by accident, both my love for people and my social responsibility will produce guilt feelings. Hopefully, I will be a more careful walker in the future. However, if I tore up my feet, sold my shoes, and swore never to go near people again, I would probably be labeled neurotic—given to extreme guilt reactions. When anxiety and other strong emotions produce fears or self-defeating responses in us, we are experiencing a form of neurosis. This particular problem in living is quite common in the lives of most of us. Each of us at times, precisely because we view our many facets as separate, lets this imagined separateness become virtually real. As the gaps in our thinking about our selves grow, so the gaps and distortions really grow in our everyday behavior. It we imagine that we have a good self and a bad self, any attempt to emphasize the one we want or need to emphasize exaggerates our behaviors in that direction, almost as if we were to say: “See? That other part of me does not even exist!” #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

Of course it exists, It is just as real and as important apart of your total self as any other part. However, it is only a part. However,it is only a part. It is so interwoven and inextricably tied in with all the other facets that often you do not know which one is which. That in itself is not bad, either. Rather than trying to single out which part is which, one would be much better off simply accepting and living with the entire package. However, this is so simple to say and so difficult to do. We are encouraged by our society’s values, by its mores, by so many things, to live only partially. Some of the negative consequences of such splitting up are separateness, marginality, and alienation. “There is a God, and he created all things, both the Heavens and the Earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon,” reports 2 Nephi 2.14. As children of our Heavenly Father, we have been blessed with the gift of moral agency, the capacity and power of independent action. Endowed with agency, we are agents, and we primarily are to act and not merely be acted upon—especially as we seek learning by study and also by faith. As gospel learners, we should be doers of the word, and not just hearers only. Our hearts are open to the influence of the Holy Ghost as we properly exercise agency and act in accordance with correct principles—and we thereby invite God’s teachings and testifying power. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12

December 3, 2018 3:19 am

Sun Goes Down and Her Voice Among the Aisles Incites Timid Prayer Willing Silence Everywhere

You are a mocking little thing. Do you like to fight? Fighting with mortals is no fun because it is no fair. The concepts of carousel of mental health follows from the very conditions of human existence and it is the same for mortals in all ages and all cultures. Mental health is characterized by the ability to love and to create, by the emergence from incestuous ties to clan and soil, by a sense of identity based on one’s experience of self as the subject and agent of one’s powers, by the grasp of reality inside and outside of ourselves, that is, by the development of objectivity and reason. This concept of mental health coincides essentially with the norms postulated by the great spiritual teachers of the human race. This coincidence appears to some modern psychologists to be proof that our psychological premises are not scientific but philosophic or religious ideals. They find it difficult, apparently, to draw the conclusion that the great teachings of all cultures were based on rational insight into the nature of mortals, on the conditions for one’s full development. This latter conclusion seems also to be more in line with the face that in the most diverse places of this globe, at different periods of history, the awakened ones have preached the same norms, with none, or with little influence from one upon another. Ikhnaton, Moses, Confucius, Lao-tse, Buddha, Isaiah, Socrates, Jesus have postulated the same norms for human life, with only small and insignificant differences. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

Mental health is not physical, but it is about the total human personality in its interaction with the World, nature and morals; it is the human practice of life as it results from the conditions of human existence. To understand a living being, one has to take the action of mortals and their interaction with their fellow humans and wit nature as the basic empirical datum for the study of a real being. Our concept of mental health leads into a theoretical difficulty if we consider the concept of human evolution. There is reason to assume that the history of mortals, hundreds of thousands of years ago, starts out with a truly primitive culture, where mortal’s reason has not developed beyond the most rudimentary beginnings, where one’s frame of orientation as little relation to reality and truth as we now know it. However, should we speak of these primitive mortals as lacking in mental health, when they are simply lacking in qualities which only further evolution could give them? Indeed, one answer could be given to this question which open up an easy solution; this answer is based in the obvious analogy between the evolution of the human race, and the evolution of the individual. “Now these mysteries are not yet fully made known unto me; therefore I shall forbear,” reports Alma 37. 11. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

If an adult had the attitude and orientation of a one-moth-old child, we would certainly classify that individual as unusual. For the one-month-old baby, however, the same attitude of sleeping all day, laughing and acting cute, crying at night when they want attention, food, or a nappy change is normal and healthy, because it corresponds to the stage of psychic development for the point in life. The mental sickness of the adult, then, can be characterized as a fixation or regression to an orientation which belongs to a former evolutionary state, and which is not adequate any more, considering the state of development the person should have reached. And when someone is in a state of regression, there is no question to it. It is similar, for example, to a girl sixteen years of age, who suddenly starts acting and talking like she is possessed by a five-year-old girl and doing things like having a tea party with a set of dolls and speaking like she is younger than she is. However, in regression, she has no idea of her age because of her mind trying to protect itself by taking her to another era, she is basically unconscious and unaware of her biological age. And until she is able to work through the trauma, she will not return to he normal state of development. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

In the same way one could say that the human race, like the infant, starts out with a primitive orientation, which correspond to the adequate state of human evolution; while one would call sick those fixations or regressions which represent earlier states of development after the human race has already passed through them. Attractive as such a solution is, it does not take into account one fact. The child one-month-of age has not yet the basis for a completely mature attitude. Therefore, one may not under normal circumstances think, feel or act like a mature adult. Mortals, on the contrary, for hundreds of thousands of years, have had all the organic equipment for maturity; their brain, bodily co-ordination, physical strength have not changed in all that time. One’s evolution depended entirely on one’s ability to transmit knowledge to future generations, and thus to accumulate it. Human evolution is the result of cultural development, and not of an organic change. The infant of the most primitive culture, put into a highly developed culture, would develop like other children in this culture, because the only factor determining one’s development is the cultural factor. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

In other words, while the child who is one month of age may not have spiritual maturity of an adult—whatever the cultural conditions are—any mortal from the primitive stage on, could have the perfection of mortals at the peak of one’s evolution provided one was given the cultural conditions for such maturity. It follows that to speak of primitive, incestuous, unreasonable mortals, as being in a normal evolutionary phase is different from making the same statement about the infant. Yet, on the other hand, the development of culture is a necessary condition for human development. Thus, there does not seem to be a completely satisfactory answer to this problem; from one standpoint we may speak of a lack in mental health; from another standpoint we may speak of an early phase in development. However, the difficulty is great only if we deal with the problem in its most general form; as soon as we come to the more concrete problems of our time, we find the problem much less complicated. We have reached a state of individuation in which only the fully developed mature personality can make fruitful use of freedom; if the individual has not developed one’s reason and one’s capacity for love, one is incapable of bearing the burden of freedom and individuality, and tries to escape into artificial ties which give one a sense of belonging and rootedness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

Any regression today from freedom into artificial rootedness in state of race is a sign of mental illness, since such regression does not correspond to the state of evolution already reached and results in unquestionably pathological phenomena. However, the unconscious mechanisms for protecting personality are essential; they help maintain a balance that enables us to make a sane way through life. Yet, sometimes the mechanism is weighty enough to upset the balance in unusual ways. Consider the follow case: A student enters a psychology class, consciously setting out to do a good job,learn a lot, and get a very good grade in the course. He has the tools: a good head (brain), lots of motivation, and a fair background. He gets good grades in classroom discussion and on his papers. However, on exams, he constantly gets F’s (denotes failure to comprehend the material). In his consternation, he comes to visit the professor. “What is this?” He asks both himself and the instructor. “I knew this stuff. I understand everything you are talking about. Your lectures are clear and understandable. The book is no problem. I can read and write well. I do not do this in other classes. What gives?” #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

The instructor and the student begin talking about the student’s home life, his motivations, his goals, and dreams. After a few weeks, a startling thing is unveiled: the student admits that he really dislikes his father. The father is a tyrant, unyielding and unresponsive to the student. The instructor tries something risky: he asks the student if there is anything about him—the instructor—that reminds the boy of his father. “No, of course not!” the boy begins. Then, he smiles. “Except….He is about the same height. He is very self-confident, like you are. Hey! There is a hecka lot about you that reminds me of my old man!” The young man has acquired a rather strong dislike for all authority figure because of the strong negative feelings he has for his father. He goes on to admit that he hates policemen and judges, he hated his commanding officer in the Army, and he has generalized this dislike to some of his male teachers. As it turns out, the young man continued to do poorly in this particular class. At the suggestion of the instructor, he entered into psychotherapy with a psychologist in his home country. Though he continued to have trouble with exams in this professor’s class, he managed to work out an arrangement with the teacher whereby exams were done in a different matter. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

After working with the professors, the student got better grades than he might have otherwise. However, what particular problem did the exam represent? The student later told the instructor that he felt the exams represented a power struggle between the students and the instructors. His hostility toward his father was such a source of concern and guilt to him that he did everything he could to minimize competition. He felt that if he lost the competition in exam-taking to the instructor, he would be doing some sort of penance for his hostility. Regardless of whether we speak of mental health or of the mature development of the human race, the concept of mental health or of maturity is an objective one, arrived at by the examination of the human situation and the human necessities and needs stemming from it. It follows that mental health cannot be defined in terms of the adjustments of the individual to one’s society, but, on the contrary, that it must be defined in terms of the adjustment of society to the needs of mortals, of its role in furthering or hindering the development of mental health. Whether or not the individual is healthy, is primarily not an individual matter, but depends on the structure of society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

A healthy society furthers mortal’s capacity to love their fellow living beings and other organic and inorganic life. Another goal for a healthy society is to work creatively, to develop one’s reason and objectivity, to have a sense of self which is based on the experience of one’s own personal powers. An unhealthy society is one which creates mutual hostility, distrust, which transforms mortals into an instrument of use and exploitation for others, which deprives one of a sense of self, except inasmuch as one submits to others or becomes an automation. Society can have both functions; it can further mortal’s healthy development, and it can hinder it; in fact most societies do both, and the question is only to what degree and in what direction their beneficial and negative influence is exercised. Two things happened in the ancient World which separate medieval collectivism definitively from primitive collectivism. One was the discovery of personal guilt—called by the prophets guilt before God: the decisive step to the personalization of religion and culture. The other was the beginning of autonomous questions-asking in Greek philosophy, the decisive step to the problematization of culture and religion. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

Both elements, culture and religion, were transmitted to the medieval nations by the Church. With them went the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness. As in later antiquity could have led to a situation in which the courage to be as oneself was necessary. However, the Church gave an antidote against the threat of anxiety and despair, namely itself, its traditions, its sacraments, its education, and its authority. The anxiety of guilt was taken into the courage to be as part of the sacramental community. The anxiety of doubt was taken into the courage to be as a part of the community in which revelation and reason are united. In this way the medieval courage to be was, in spite of its difference from primitive collectivism, the courage to be as a part in the powerful participation of the universal. Some people believed in the self-respect of the individual as self-affirmation as the follower of a feudal lord or a member of guild or as the student in an academic corporation or as a bearer of a special function like that of a craft or a trade or a profession. The tension created by this situation is theoretically expressed in the attack of nominalism on medieval realism and the permanent conflict between them. Nominalism attributes ultimate reality to the individual and would have much earlier than it actually did to a dissolution of the medieval system of participation if the immensely strengthened authority of the Church had not delayed it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

In religious practice the same tension was expressed in the duality of the sacraments of the mass and of penance. The former mediated the objective power of salvation in which everybody was supposed to participate, if possible by being present at its daily performance. In consequence of this universal participation guilt and grace were felt not only as personal but also as communal. The punishment of the sinner had representative character representative character in such a way that the whole community suffered with one. And the liberation of the sinner from punishment on Earth and in purgatory was partly dependent on the representative holiness of the saints and the love of those who made sacrifices for one’s liberation. Nothing is more characteristic of the medieval system of participation than this mutual representation. The courage to be as a part and to take upon oneself the anxieties of nonbeing is embodied in medieval institutions as it was in primitive forms of life. However, medieval semi collectivism came to an end when the anticollectivist pole, represented by the sacrament of penance, came to the fore. The principle that only contrition, the personal and total acceptance of judgment and grace, can make the objective sacraments effective was impelling toward reduction and even exclusion of the objective element, of representation and participation. “And now, it has hitherto been wisdom in God that these things should be preserved; for behold, they have enlarged the memory of his people,” reports Alma 37.8 #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

In the act of contrition everybody stands alone before God; and it was hard for the Church to mediate this element with the objective one. Finally it proved impossible and the system disintegrated. At the same time the nominalistic tradition became powerful and liberated itself from the heteronomy of the Church. In Reformation and Renaissance the medieval courage to be as apart, its semicollectvist system, came to an end, and developments started which brought the question of the courage to be as oneself to the fore. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the Heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. When feelings of anxiety and inferiority surface, we can get at the roots of the problems, not just the symptoms. Hearing and understanding the feelings of those we love makes them feel loved. It helps us as parents adjust our behavior to deal with them more effectively. “And we never took the time to see where we were going. We were only passing by and we never questioned why; the river keeps flowing; the beauty of the ride. If I could all you for a day just to hear the words you would, I would,” Colours by Emma Hewitt. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12

December 1, 2018 11:07 pm

After a Hundred Years Great Streets of Silence Led Away as the Bells at Distance Called

It occurred to me with uncommon strength that I had grown too fond of all these people, and I was impressed that the Japanese invented ice cream that can stand at room temperature for an hour without melting. I hear it is popular and gorgeous treat. The concept of mental health depends on our concept of the nature of mortals. The needs and passions of mortals stem from the peculiar condition of their existence. Those needs which mortals shares with the animals—hunger, thirst, need for sleep and physical intimacy—are important, being rooted in the inner chemistry of the body, and when they remain unsatisfied, they can become all powerful. (This holds true, of course, more of the need for food and sleep than of physical intimacy, which is not satisfied never assumes the power of the other needs, at least not for physiological reasons.) However, even their complete satisfaction is not a sufficient condition for sanity and mental health. These depend on the satisfaction of those needs and passions which are specifically human, and which stem from the conditions of the human situation: the need for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, the need for a sense of identity and the need for a frame of orientation and devotion. The great passions of mortals, their lust for power, their vanity, their search for truth, their passion for love and fellowship, their destructiveness as well as their creativeness, every powerful desire which motivates mortal’s actions, is rooted in their specific human source, not in the various stages of their libido. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

Mortal’s solution to their physiological needs are, psychologically speaking, utterly simple; the difficulty here is a purely sociological and economic one. Human’s solution to their mortal needs are exceedingly complex, it depends on many factors and last, not least, on the way one’s society is organized and how this organization determines the human relations within it. The basic psychic needs stemming from the peculiarities of human existence must be satisfied in one form or other, unless mortals are to become insane, just as one’s physiological needs must be satisfied lest one die. However, the way in which the psychic needs can be satisfied are manifold, and difference between various ways of satisfaction is tantamount to the differences between various degrees of mental health. If one of the basic necessities has found no fulfillment, insanity is the result; if it is satisfied but in an unsatisfactory way—considering the nature of human existence—considering the nature of human existence—neurosis (either manifest or in the form of a socially patterned defect) is the consequence. Mortals have to relate themselves to others; but if they do it in a symbiotic or alienated way, they lose their independence and integrity; they are weak, suffers, become hostile, or apathetic; only if one can relate oneself to others in loving ways does one feel one with them and at the same time preserve their integrity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

Only by productive work does one relate oneself to nature, becoming one with her, and yet not submerging in her. As long as mortals remain rooted incestuously in nature, family, clan, one is blocked from developing one’s individuality, one’s reason; one remains the helpless prey of nature, and yet one can never feel one with her. Only if one develops one’s reason and one’s love, if one can experience the natural and the social World in a human way, can one feel at home, secure in oneself, and the master of one’s life. It is hardly necessary to point out that of two possible forms of transcendence,destructiveness is conducive to suffering, creativeness to happiness. It is also easy to see that only a sense of identity based on the experience of one’s own powers can give strength, while all forms of identity experience based on the group, leave people dependent, hence weak. Eventually, only to the extent to which one grasps reality, can one make this World one’s own possession; if one lives in illusions, one never changes the conditions which necessitate these illusions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

Critical has to do with a crisis. The Chinese characters for the word “crisis” are actually made up of the pictograms for two works, “dangerous”and “opportunity.” A crisis, in the Eastern perspective, is a dangerous opportunity. It may be that we can find some useful insight here as we assess the matter of crises. For instance, a critical conflict situation may be that moment in time, full of threat, full of risk, yet full of potential, that provides a turning point, a crossroad encounter, a chance to try something new or untried. Some of the conflict we encounter are strong reminders that parts of the self are not working harmoniously, that we are not together. One of the things we humans often do, mostly because we do have choices in so many things, is to get ourselves into messed-up situations. In our attempts to give meaning and significance to our lives, we often do things that are at cross-purposes. We make two dates or appointments for the same times, often for places that are miles apart! Say for the same one thing (“I am going to stay home and catch upon my work.”) and do another (“Well, okay, I will meet you for just one Harvey Wall Banger.”). We have a strong urge to commit an act (tell a person off) and we do the opposite (nod agreement). These are some of the things we do that illustrate what we call “self-defeating actions.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

What happens, of course, is that our motivations run headlong into each other or into something else. “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley,..” Scottish poet Robert Burns tells us, and how right he is. Our plans, no matter how well-planned, often go “a-gley” or fall flat on their faces. The conflict that described for us are partly to blame. Yet, we find too many people who enter into self-defeating situations for reasons. Some of these are unconscious. Now, as much choice-making as any of us can do, there are still some decisions that seem to make themselves, or get made for us by others or by circumstances. Though we have much control, there is still a lot of chance or circumstance at work. Things happen, people change, and times change. Circumstantial conflicts are all about. At the unconscious level there are many motivations working that a person may be unaware of. We have to acknowledge that things like Repression do operate. Repression is one of those unconscious operations that Dr. Freud and his followers called defense mechanism. The purpose of these mechanisms is to guard the fragile personality from ideas, thoughts, experiences and behaviors that might to damage. Sleep is sometimes considered a defense against conflict. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

Amnesia is also another way people defend against conflict, as any soap operas like Criminal Minds, Dynasty, All American, Law and Order SVU, Supernatural, S.W.A.T, Manifest, Midnight Texas, Blue Bloods, Chicago P.D., Chicago Fire, Poldark, New Amsterdam, Black Lighting, Big Little Lies, All in the Family and many others will attempt to show. Common forgetfulness is often a repression of an experience that is threatening or beyond control at the time it occurs. Placing blame outside oneself, various compulsions—defense mechanisms come in many forms. Nonebeing in the form of the threat of loss of self in the group has not yet appeared. Self-affirmation within a group includes the courage to accept guilt and its loss of self in the group includes the courage to accept guilt and its consequences as public guilt, whether one is oneself responsible or whether somebody else is. It is a problem of the group which has to be expiated for the sake of the group, and the methods of punishment and satisfaction requested by the group are accepted by the individual. Individual guilt consciousness exists only as the consciousness of a deviation from the institutions and rules of the collective. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Truth and meaning are embodied in the traditions and symbols of the group, and there is no autonomous asking and doubt. However, even in a primitive collective, as in every human community, there are outstanding members, the bearers of the traditions and leaders of the future. They must have sufficient distance in order to judge and to change. They must take responsibility and ask questions. This unavoidably produces individual doubt and personal guilt. Nevertheless, the predominant pattern is the courage to be as a part in all members of the primitive group. “For since the beginning of the World have not mortal heard nor perceived by the ear, neither hath any eye seen, O God, besides thee, how great things thou hast prepared for one that waiteth for thee,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 133.45. God is in his work to being pass the salvation and exaltation of his children. Our desire is that faith in the Heavenly Father’s plan and in the Savior’s redeeming mission might increase the Earth and that God’s everlasting covenant might be established. Our only objectives are to facilitate continuing conversation to the Lord and to love more completely and serve more effectively our human, plant, animal, and others beings in our family. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

The purpose and purification, the happiness and joy, and the continuing conversion and protection that come from yielding our hearts unto God and receiving his image in our countenances cannot be obtained merely by performing and checking off all the spiritual things we are supposed to do. Rather, the power of the Savior’s gospel to transform and bless us flows from discerning and applying the interrelatedness of its doctrine, principles, and practices. Only as we gather together in one all things Christ, with firm focus on him, can gospel truths synergistically enable us to become what God desires us to become and endure valiantly to the end. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a magnificent tapestry of truthfully framed and woven together. As we learn and link together revealed gospel truths, we are blessed to receive precious perspective and increased spiritual capacity through eyes that can see the Lord’s influence in our lives and ears that can see the Lord’s influence in our lives and ears that can hear his voice. And the principle of gathering together in one—even in him—can assist us in changing the traditional checklists into a unified, integrated, and complete whole. “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing,” Zephaniah 3.17. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8

December 1, 2018 12:52 am

I Felt a Clearing in My Mind as if My Brain Had Split—God’s Residence is Next to Mine!

The fact that mortals have reason and imagination leads not only to the necessity for having a sense of one’s own identity, but also for orienting oneself in the World intellectually. This need can be compared when the child can walk by oneself, touch and handle things, knowing what they are. However, when the ability to walk and to speak has been acquired, only the first step in the direction of orientation has been taken. Mortals find themselves surrounded by many puzzling phenomena and, having reason, one has to make sense of them, has to put them in some context which one can understand and which permits one to deal with them in one’s thoughts. The further one’s reason develops, the more adequate becomes one’s system of orientation, that is, the more it approximates reality. However, even if a person’s frame of orientation is utterly illusory, it satisfies one’s need for some picture which is meaningful to one. Whether one believes in the power of a totem animal, in a rain god, or in the superiority and destiny of one’s own race, one’s need for some frame of orientation is satisfied. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

Quite obviously, the picture of the World which one has depends on the development of one’s reason and of one’s knowledge. Although biologically the brain capacity of the human race has remained the same for thousands of generations, it takes a long evolutionary process to arrive at objectivity, that is, to acquire the faculty to see the World, nature, other persons and oneself as they are, and not distorted by desires and fears. The more mortals develop this objectivity, the more one is in touch with reality, the more one matures, the better can one can create a human World in which one is at home. Reason is mortal’s faculty for grasping the World by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is mortal’s ability to manipulate the World with the help of thought. Reason is mortal’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is mortal’s instrument for manipulating the World more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the terrestrial aspect of mortal. Reason is a faculty which must be practiced, in order to develop, and it is indivisible. By this I mean that the faculty for objectivity refers to the knowledge of nature as well as to the knowledge of mortals, of society and of oneself. If one lives in illusions about one sector of life, one’s capacity for reason is restricted or damaged, and this the use of reason is inhibited with regard to all other sectors. #RandolpHarris 2 of 8

Reason in this respect is like love. Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the World with which humans are confronted. The need for a frame of orientation exists on two levels; the first and the more fundamental need is to have some frame or orientation, regardless of whether it is true or false. Unless mortal have such a subjectively satisfactory frame of orientation, one cannot live sanely. On the second level the need is to be in touch with reality by reason, to grasp the World objectively. However, the necessity to develop one’s reason is not as immediate as that to develop some frame of orientation, since what is at stake for mortals in the latter case is one’s happiness and serenity, and not one’s sanity. This become very clear if we study the function of rationalization. However unreasonable or immoral an action may be, mortals have an insuperable urge to rationalize it, this is, to prove to oneself and to others that one’s action is determined by reason, common sense, or at least conventional morality. One has little more difficulty in acting irrationally, but it is almost impossible for one not to give one’s action the appearance of reasonable motivation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

If mortals were only a disembodied intellect, one’s aim would be achieved by a comprehensive thought system. However, since one is an entity endowed with a body as well as a mind, one has to react to the dichotomy of one’s existence not only in thinking but in the total process of living, in one’s feelings and actions. Hence any satisfying system of orientation contains not only intellectual elements but elements of feeling and sensing which are expressed in the relationship to an object of devotion. The answers given to mortal’s need for a system of orientation and an object of devotion differ widely both in content and in form. There are primitive systems such as animals and totemism in which natural objects or ancestors represent answers to mortal’s quest for meaning. There are nontheistic systems like Buddhism, which are usually called religion although in their original form there is no concept of God. There are purely philosophical systems, like Stoicism, and there are monotheistic religious systems which give an answer to mortal’s quest for meaning in reference to this concept of God. However, whatever their contents, they all respond to mortal’s need to have not only some thought system, but also an object of devotion which gives meaning to one’s existence and to one’s position in the World. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Only the analysis of the various forms of religion can show which answers are better and which are worse solutions to mortal’s quest for meaning and devotion, better or worse always considered from the standpoint of mortal’s nature and one’s development. Th courage to be as a part is the courage to affirm one’s own being by participation. One participates in the World to which one belongs and from which one is at the same time separated. However, participating in the World becomes real through participation in those sections are actual with which one is partially identical. The more self-relatedness a being has the more it is able, according to the polar structure of reality, to participate. Mortals as the completely centered being or as a person can participate in everything, but one participates through that section of the World which makes one a person. Only in the continuous encounters with other persons does the person become and remain a person. The place of this encounter is the community. Mortal’s participation in nature is direct, insofar as one is a definite part of nature through one’s bodily existence. One’s participation in nature is indirect and mediate through the community insofar as one transcends nature by knowing and shaping it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

Without language there are no universals; without universals no transcending of nature and no relation to it as nature. However, language is communal, not individual. The section of reality in which one participates immediately is the community to which one participates immediately is the community to which one belongs. Though it and only through it participation in the World as a whole and in all its parts is mediated. Therefore, one who has the courage to be as a part has the courage to affirm oneself as a part of the community to which one participates. One’s self-affirmation is a part of the self-affirmation of the social groups which constitute the society to which one belongs. This seems to imply that there is a collective and not only an individual self-affirmation, and that the collective self-affirmation is threatened by nonbeing, producing collective anxiety, which is met by collective courage. One could say that the subject of this anxiety and this courage is a we-self as against the egoselves who parts of it are. However, such an enlargement of the meaning of “self” must be rejected. Self-hood is self-centeredness. Yet there is no center in a group in the sense in which exists in a person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

There may be a central power, a king, a queen, a president, an emperor, an empress, or a dictator. One may be able to impose his or her will on the group. However, it is not the group which decides if he or she decides, though the group may follow. Therefore it is neither adequate to speak of a we-self nor useful to employ the terms collective anxiety and collective courage. When describing the three periods of anxiety, we pointed out that masses of people were overtaken by a special type of anxiety-producing situation and because outbreaks of anxiety are always contagious. There is no collective anxiety save an anxiety which has been overtaken many or all members of a group and has been intensified or changed by becoming universal. The same is true of what is wrongly called collective courage. There is no entity we-self as the subject of courage. There are selves who participate in a group and whose character is partly determined by this participation. The assumed we-self is a common quality of ego-selves within a group. The courage to be as a part is like all forms of courage, a quality of individual selves. A collectivist society is one in which the existence and life of the individual are determined by the existence and institutions of the group. In collectivist societies the courage of the individua is the courage to be as a part. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Looking at so-collective primitive societies one finds typical forms of anxiety and typical institutions in which courage expresses itself. The individual members of the group develop equal anxieties and fears. And they use the same methods of developing courage and fortitude which are prescribed by traditions and institutions. This courage is the courage which every member of the group is supposed to have. In many tribes the courage to take pain upon oneself is the test of full membership in the group, and the courage to take death upon oneself is a lasting test in the life of most groups. The courage of one who stands these tests is the courage to be as a part. One affirms oneself through the group in which one participates. The potential anxiety of losing oneself in the group is not actualizes, because the identification with the group is complete. I wish I was one of those saints. Maybe that is why I had to write this chapter. However, I am not a saint. And that did not even take five minutes for you to know it, so do not complain. It is just that I cannot forget my passion to be officially canonized. “My God hath been support; he hath led me through mine afflictions s in the wilderness; and he hath prescribed me upon the water of the great deep. He hath filled me with his love, even consuming my flesh. He hath confounded mine enemies, unto the causing them to quake before me,” reports 2 Nephi. 420-23. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8

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November 30, 2018 2:31 am

After Dinner Light for Flowers and Let the Music Go to Sweeten Your Heart

There are so many things I am not free to tell. Mortals were not the Virgin; they were alone, facing a severe and strict God whose mercy one could obtain only by an act of complete surrender. The beneficial aspect showed itself in the increasing spirit of rationality and objectivity and in the growth of individual and social conscience. The flowering of science in our day is one of the most impressive manifestations of rational thought thee human race has ever produced. Chinese scientist He Jiankui delivered the World’s first genetically edited babies. The twin girls have been born with deoxyribonucleic acid (a self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information) altered to make them resistant to human immunodeficiency virus. This is a groundbreaking move because these are the first so-called designer babies. Human equality, of the sacredness of life, of all mortal’s right to share in the fruits of nature, found expression in the ideas of natural law, humanism, enlightenment philosophy and the objectives of forming a perfection Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings to Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Common to all these ideas is the concept that all mortals are children of Mother Earth and have a right to be nourished by her, and to enjoy happiness without having to prove this right by the achievement of any particular status. The humanity of all people implies that they are all the sons and daughters of the same mother, who have an unalienable right to love and happiness. However, the average person today obtains one’s sense of identity from belonging to a nation, rather than from being the son or daughter of man. Many people think that this fixation is warped, while others understand it. These people judge others from other lands with different criteria than the member of their own clan. Their feelings toward the stranger are not considered fair by all. Those who are not familiar by bonds and soil (expressed by common language, customs, food, song, etc.) are looked upon with suspicion, and paranoid delusions about them can spring up at the slightest provocation. The person who has not freed oneself from the oaths to blood and soil is not yet fully born as a human being; one’s capacity for love and reason are not fully developed; one does not experience one’s self nor one’s fellow mortals in their—and one’s own—human reality. However, expecting people to obey the laws is totally reasonable. “Perceive the words of understanding,” reports Proverbs 1.2. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Nationalism and Patriotism is considered a cult because people put their own nation above others, and base this foundation on truth and justice with a loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare—never with its power over other nations. The national feeling can be seen in the reaction to the violations of clan symbols, a reaction which is very different from that to the violation of religious or moral symbols. Let us picture a person who takes the flag of one’s country to a street of one of the cities of the Western World, and tramples on it in view of other people. One would be lucky not to be lynched. Almost everybody would feel a sense of furious indignation, which hardly permits of any objective thought. The person who desecrated the flag would have done something unspeakable; one would have committed a crime which is not one crime among others, but the crime, the one unforgivable and unpardonable. Not quite as drastic, but nevertheless qualitatively the same would be the reason of the person who says, “I do not love my country,” or, in the case of war, “I do not care for my country’s victory.” Such a sentence is areal sacrilege, and a person saying it becomes a monster, an outlaw in the feelings of one’s fellow people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

In order to understand the particular quality of the feeling aroused by people not being loyal to their country, we may compare this reaction to one which would occur if a person got up and said, “I am in favor of killing all mentally ill people, or all poor people; I am in favor of starting a war in order to conquer South America.” Indeed, most people would feel that this was an unethical, inhuman opinion. However, the crucial point is that the particular feeling of an uncontrollable deep-seated indignation and rage would not occur. Such an opinion is just bad, but it is not a sacrilege, it is not an attack against the sacred. Even if a person should not speak disparagingly of God, one would hardly arouse the same feeling of indignation as against the crime, against the sacrilege which is the violation of the symbols of the country. It is easy to rationalize the reaction to a violation of the national symbols by saying that a person who does not respect one’s country shows a lack of human solidarity and of social feeling; but is this not also true of the person who advocates war, or the killing of innocent people, or who exploits others of one’s own advantage? Undoubtedly, lack of social responsibility and of human solidarity, as are the other acts mentioned here, but the reaction to the violation of the flag is fundamentally different from the reaction to the denial of social responsibility in all other aspects. The one object is sacred, a symbol of clan worship; the others are not. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Only when humans succeed in developing one’s reason and love further than one has done so far, only when one can build a World based on human solidarity and justice, only when one can feel rooted in the experience of universal humanity, will one have found a new, human form of rootedness, will one have transformed this World into a truly human home. Ontological principles have a polar character according to the basic polar structure of being, that of self and World. The first polar elements in individualization and participation. Their bearing on the problem of courage is obvious, if courage is defined as self-affirmation age is obvious, if courage is defined as the self-affirmation of being in spite of nonbeing. If we ask: What is the subject of this self-affirmation, we must answer: the individual self which participates in the World, i.e. the structural Universe of being. Mortal’s self-affirmation has two sides which are distinguishable but not separable: one is the affirmation of the self as a self; that is of separated, self-centered,individualized, incomparable, free, self-determining self. This is what one affirms in every act of self-affirmation. This is what one defends against nonbeing and affirms courageously by taking nonbeing upon oneself. The threatened loss of its is the essence of anxiety, and the awareness of concrete threats to it is the essence of fear. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Ontological self-affirmation precedes all differences of metaphysical, ethical, or religious definition of the self. Ontological self-affirmation is neither natural nor spiritual, neither good nor evil, neither immanent nor transcendent. These differences are possible only because of the underlying ontological self-affirmation of the self as self. In the same way the concepts which characterize the individual self are possessed below the differences of valuation: separation is not estrangement, self-centeredness is not selfishness, self-determination is not sinfulness. They are structural descriptions and the condition of both love and hate, condemnation and salvation. It is time to end the bad theological usage of jumping with moral indignation om every work in which the syllable “self” appears. Even moral indignation would not exist without a centered self and ontological self-affirmation. The subject of self-affirmation is the centered self. As centered self it is an individualized self. It can be destroyed but it cannot be divided: each of its parts has the mark of this and no other self. Nor can it be exchanged: its self-affirmation is directed to itself as this unique,unrepeatable, and irreplaceable individual. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

The theological assertion that every human soul has an infinite value is a consequence of the ontological self-affirmation as an indivisible, unexchangeable self. It can be called the courage to be oneself. However, the self is self only because it as a World, a structured Universe, to which it belongs and from which it is separated at the same time. Self and the World are correlated, and so are individualization and participation. For this is just what participation means: being part of something from which one is, at the same time, separated. Literally, participation means taking part. This can be used in a threefold sense. It can be used in the sense of sharing, as for instance, sharing a room; or in the sense of having in common, the participation of the individual in the universal; or it can be used in the sense of being a part, for instance of a political movement. In all these cases participation is a partial identity and a partial non-identity. A part of a whole is not identical with the whole to which it belongs. However, the whole is what it is only with the part. The relation of the body and its limbs is the most obvious example. The self is part of the World which it has as its World. The World would not be what it is without this individual self. One says that somebody is identified with a moment. This participation makes one’s being and the being of the movement partly the same. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

To understand the highly dialectical nature of participation it is necessary to think in terms of power instead of in terms of things. The partial identity of definitely separated things cannot be shared by all its citizens, and in an outstanding way by its rulers. Its power is partly their power, although its power transcends their power and their power transcends its power. The identity of participation is an identity in the power of being. In this sense the power of being of the individual self is partly identical with the power of beings of one’s World, and conversely. For the concepts of self-affirmation and courage this means that the self-affirmation of the self as an individual self always includes the affirmation of the self as an individual self always includes the affirmation of the power of being in which the self participates. The self affirms itself as participant in the power of a group, of a movement, of essences, of power of being as such. Self-affirmation, if it is done in spite of the threat of nonbeing, is the courage to be. However, it is not the courage to be as oneself, it is the courage to be as a part. The phrase “courage to be as a part” presents a difficulty. While it obviously demands courage to be as oneself, the will to be as a part seems to express the lack of courage, namely the desire to live under the protection of a larger whole. Not courage but weakness seems to induce us to affirm our selves as a part. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

However, being as a part points to the fact that self-affirmation necessarily includes the affirmation of oneself as participant, and that this side of our self-affirmation is threatened by nonbeing as much as the other side, the affirmation of the self as an individual self. We are threatened not only with losing our individual selves but also with losing participation in our World. Therefore self-affirmation as a part requires courage as much as does self-affirmation as oneself. It is one courage which takes a double threat of nonbeing into itself. The courage to be is essentially always the courage to be as a part and the courage to be as oneself, in interdependence. The courage to be as a part is an integral element of the courage to be as oneself, and the courage to be as oneself is an integral element of the courage to be as a part. However, under the conditions of human finitude and estrangement that which is essentially united becomes existentially split. The courage to be as a part separates itself from unity with the courage to be as oneself, and conversely; and both disintegrate in their isolation. The anxiety they had taken into themselves is unloosed and becomes destructive. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

Our perception of a situation determines the feeling we experience. “This day we perceive that the Lord is among us,” reports Josh 22.31. Competing needs, feelings, hungers, attitudes, and ideas fill our life’s experiences with conflicts. These add to both the grandeur and the misery of human life. One day you may experience enough of these conflicts, piled on top of each other to make you shout out: “Enough! I have had enough. I want to simplify! I must clear away the cobwebs, the entanglements, the complexities. I must get back to a simple, easily lived existence.” So you will stop doing certain things, resign from a few responsibilities, drop out of a few entanglement, give up a few unnecessary friends, enemies, tasks, pleasures. The pity is that this scarcely untangles or simplifies the picture. Your life is all the things you have experienced and will usually continue to be all these things, plus the decision you make to simplify! Take the following situation as an example: Randy, 20, earns a better-than-comfortable income, has been married eight years, has two healthy children. He likes his work, though it does not excite, stimulate, or satisfy him. He keeps to it because he needs the money, the security, and the idea that he is steadily employed and rising. However, he feels gnawing frustrations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

Randy decides one day to quit the job, take his family to a simpler part of the country, where job pressures and societal pressures are reduced. He moved from the hustle-and-bustle of Manhattan to the relative leisure of a small farming town in Sacramento. His skills get him a job, though the salary is one third that of his Manhattan salary. His home is smaller, and is wife, Erin, must take on new skills. His children have some difficulty adjusting to the new climate, social and cultural pattern, and a school where both are in the same classroom, with children younger and older. The new job is less challenging, but Randy is determined to believe that he has at last found “Utopia.” He refuses to complain and chides his wife and children when they grumble or long for their previous life. After six months, the family moves back to Manhattan.When asked by his friends to explain his moves, Randy chuckles and says he guesses he is not cut out for rural life. Randy had come to accept, at leas to feel “at home” in a very complex urban environment. He had a job that suited his aptitudes, but it failed to meet some of his other needs. His restlessness was a byproduct of his feeling that something was missing from his life. The decision to move was based on several things, particularly a desire to get un-stuck from what he perceived to be an entangling lifestyle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Randy also found that he had rather enjoyed the urban entanglements, or at least that he had had some part to play in these patterns.In the Sacramento rural community he felt very unimportant, unneeded. Add tot his the strain on his family which was relayed back to him and you see some of the difficulty in his situation. Randy had the objectivity to see that maybe the restlessness and dissatisfaction were in him, not in the home or job. He sought vocational guidance and together he and the counselor looked at the various needs he had and found a job better suited to meet those needs. Do you remember how good it felt the last time you were recognized for your work? Research proves that appreciation is not only the number one thing employees declare their boss could do t inspire great work from them, but it also shows that is must be given in timely fashion. However, receiving praise for your hard work long after the result of your work can be considered offensive by many employees. Yes, this means that when we do something great at work, we expect a timely response. It is important to understand that you hold the power, the words, and the giddy-up to cheer people up along the way—by giving them instant gratification. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

We also live in a society where too many people are trying to combat bullying and bad vibes by being nice to people and paying compliments that they do not really mean. For example, people often say, “I appreciate you,” just for you someone saying hello, thanking them or following the rules, but it is kind of an empty comment because these are things we are meant to do. So, if you have people in your life who are going out of their way for you, be sure to show them that they really are appreciated. And also, be willing to accept gifts, it is a way of bonding and showing people who much you care. They want you to have things that you will cherish and when you look at them you will be filled with good memories. When people are gone,they want you to have something to remember them by. “No power of influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness,and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.41-42. We always know when Jesus is at work because he produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

Everyone faces hard things: the death of a loved one,divorce, a wayward child, illness, trials of faith, a lost job, or any other difficulty. To help us travel and triumph over our hard times with such glimpses of eternity, we must face hard things, first, by forgiving others and, second, by giving ourselves to Heavenly Father. Forgiving those who may have caused our hard things and reconciling ourselves to the will of God can be very difficult. It can hurt must when our hard thing is caused by a family member, a close friend, or even ourselves. The Lord needs you to look like, sound like a true disciple of Jesus Christ. That can be a hard thing, yet, we can do it—with joy. As we face hard things in the Lord’s way, may we lift up our heads and rejoice. At this sacred opportunity to testify to the World, our Savior lives and guides us. Lesson taught through the traditions we establish in our homes, though small and simple, are increasingly important in today’s World. We are urged to make our home sanctuaries of faith. It is an effort driven by our faith—our belief that one day the seeds sown in their youth will take root and begin to sprout and grow. The power of the Savior’s gospel to transform and bless us flows from discerning and applying the interrelatedness of its doctrine, principles, and practices. The Holy Ghost will enlighten each of us as we consider our increased responsibilities as individuals and families to our time and enhance our lives. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

November 28, 2018 10:49 pm

One Blessing I had So Large to My Eyes is a Soul I Forgot!

A significant and vital movement occurring in our society, and in most societies the World over, it the emergence of the young. In the past, young people have merely been tolerated; now they are beginning to feel personal significance. Also in the past, young people were expected to patter themselves after their parents and come out much like those role models. However, a new mood has come on the young people. Though the old-timers will scoff and say that youth has always been in revolt, they have failed to consider the expanded mobility and the communication facilities that have produced not only quantitative differences but qualitative ones too. For instance, 40 percent of young adults, ages 18 to 29 year of age, motivated by social issues turned out to vote in the 2018 midterm elections. That is compared with 26 percent in 2014. And as of 2016, there are a record of nearly 11 millionaires nationwide. That is more than ever before and marks a 400,000 person increase from the previous year. Many of the youth no longer fit into stereotypical roles because there are too many individuals with too many different characteristics to make the kinds of generalization many people want. These people do not know what it is like to have only one TV in this house, or be without TV. They have the internet, have never suffered an economic depression, have mobile phones, and self-propelled skateboards. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

Most of the youth have never known real hardships, at least not economic ones. The young of today are in many ways putting their parents’teachings to the test. If parents and authorities are going to talk about freedom, equality, fair play, sharing, love, and peace, then many people are going to have to see to it that they can follow through on such teachings. Confusion reigns. Truth and honesty are at a premium. Certainly this is one of the most exciting periods of history, with all kinds of changes being the norm. None of us will ever be the same as we once were, nor should we wish it. None of us can ever return to a previous period of life or history. However, many people today, viewing the disorder in the streets and on the campuses, wish it were over and we could get back to business as usual. This is unrealistic. Change is the name of the game. Many of the youth today will join the Establishment; many will not. We have a lot of confidence in the sense of idealism and promise shown by many of the new youth. In each of us are many varied facets of our integrated, holistic self. Notice we do not say “varied selves.” One of our earnest goals is to get away from the analytic, pluralistic way of thinking that so many of us have developed. We are not many selves. We are human beings with emerging concepts of selfhood. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

In the selfhood of any one of us, multiple images or pictures or representations pop up. No one of them alone is all that we are. A whole diamond cannot be experienced by studying or seeing only one facet of that diamond; we must view the entire gem. Now, of course, we cannot. We cannot see all the facets of a diamond at one time, nor can we see or experience or know all aspects of selfhood at one time. Year or lifetimes many be required to experience all of the self of any one person. That includes our own self. None of us is completely aware of all that we are. None of us knows the complete answer to the question, Who am I? Part of the self is submerged beneath layers of time, experiences, feelings, and defenses, and even if some know-it-all machine or technique were devised, it is unlikely that everything could be uncovered. Furthermore, it may not be advisable to know the whole thing—if it were possible to encompass the whole thing in any one time sequence. We have buried some parts of ourselves for very good reasons. Considering all the complexities that have gone into our personalities, to know them all at once would be similar to perceiving all of history in one complete picture. How, then, are we to understand and actualize our fullest selfhood? What are the things that make it difficult? #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

A life process which shows balance and with it power of being has, in biological terms, vitality, i.e. life power. The right courage therefore must, like the right fear, be understood as the expression of perfect vitality. The courage to be is a function of vitality. Diminishing vitality consequently entails diminishing courage. To strengthen vitality means to strengthen the courage to be. Neurotic individual and neurotic periods are lacking in vitality. Their biological substance has disintegrated. They have lost the power of full self-affirmation, of the courage to be. Whether this happens or not is the result of biological processes, it is biological fate. The periods of a diminished courage to be are periods of biological weakness in the individual and in history. The three main periods of unbalance are periods of reduced vitality;they are ends of an era and could be overcome only by the rise of vitality powerful groups that replaced the vitally disintegrated groups. Biologically speaking, anxiety is more destructive than protective. While fear can lead to measures that deal with the objects of fear, anxiety cannot do so because it has no objects. The fact, already referred to, that life tries to transform anxiety into fear shows that anxiety is biologically useless and cannot be explained in terms of life protection. It produces self-defying forms of behavior. Anxiety therefore by its very nature transcends the biological argument. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

Vitality, power of life, is correlated to the kind of life to which it gives power. Vitality is the power of creating beyond oneself without losing oneself. The more power of creating beyond itself a being has the more vitality it has. We have defined intentionality as being directed toward meaningful contents. Mortals live in meanings, in that which is valid logically, esthetically, ethically, religiously. In the development of the human race the degree to which mortals are aware of oneself as a separate self depends on the extent to which one has emerged from the clan and the extend to which the process of individuation has developed. The development of Western culture went in the direction of creating the basis for the full experience of individuality. By making the individual free politically and economically, by teaching one to think for oneself and freeing one to feel “I” in the sense that one is the center and active subject of one’s powers and experienced oneself as such. For the majority, individualism was not much more than a façade behind which was hidden the failure to acquire an individual sense of identity. Many substitutes for a truly individual sense of identity were sought for, and found. Nation, religion, class and occupation serve to furnish a sense of identity. “I am an American,” “I am a Protestant,” “I am a business person,” are the formulae which help a person experience a sense of identity after the original clan identity has disappeared and before a truly individual sense of identity has been acquired. #RandolpHarris 5 of 10

These different identifications are, in contemporary society, usually employed together. They are in a broad sense status identifications,and they are more efficient if blended with older feudal remnants, as in European counties. In the United States, in which so little is left of feudal relics, and in which there is so much social mobility, these status identifications are naturally less efficient, and the sense of identity is shifted more and more to the experience of conformity. Inasmuch as I am not different, inasmuch as I am like the others, and recognized by them as a regular fellow, I can sense myself as “I.” I am—“as you desire me”—as of the pre-individualistic clan identity, a new herd identity develops, in which the sense of identity, a new herd identity develops, in which the sense of identity rests on the sense of an unquestionable belonging to the crowd. That this uniformity and conformity are often not recognized as such, and are covered by the illusions of individuality, does not alter the fact. The problem of the sense of identity is not, as it usually understood merely a philosophical problem, or problem only concerning our mind and thought. The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence, and it is the source of the most intense strivings. Since I cannot remain sane without this sense of “I,” I am driven to do almost anything to acquire this sense. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

Behind the intense passion for status and conformity is this very need, and it is sometimes stronger than the need for physical survival. What could be more obvious than the fact that people are willing to risk their lives,to give up their love, to surrender their freedom to sacrifice their own thoughts, for the sake of being one of the herd, of conforming, and thus of acquiring a sense of identity, even though it is an illusory one. To be loved means to be alive, to be rooted, to be at home. Every adult is in need of help,of warmth, of protection, in many ways differing and yet in many ways similar to the needs of the child. It is surprising to find in the average adult a deep longing for the security and rootedness of a loving home? The person who does not belong to the same clan is considered as alien and dangerous—as not sharing in the same human qualities which only the clan can possess. We either approach or are attracted to those things we life, or we avoid or are repelled by those things we dislike. You are a child of your parents, the sibling of your sibling, the friend of so-and-so, the enemy of such-and-such, and you perceive yourself and your World in terms of these various people and experiences. You may have fond memories of an old house, the family homestead, or a broken-down shanty, in which you spent your younger days. That house, or your experience of it, has become part of you. If the memories are somewhat less than fond, they still have developed something in you. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

The memories we have are the part of us that comes to life when we think or hear of houses, homes, or dwellings. We have pictures or images o these experiences and they have much to do with our present perceptions and thoughts and with how we will react to things. As a complex and highly variable individual we have a multiplicity of motivations, things that push or pull you to behave the ways you do. If someone insists he or she knows the things that makes all human begins tick, be charitable; that person is well-meaning, but misguided! No one experience or thing causes all behavior, nor is it even likely to be the most influential thing in the total life of large groups of people. Human’s behavior is multi-determined, caused by a whole smorgasbord off actors. First of all, of course, we have to look at the importance of our physiological motives. These needs, usually involving some kind of tissue lack or tension, are vital for physical survival or well-being. We develop attitudes and emotional reactions to these needs that become definite part of the composite self. We then have the acquired or secondary motives, usually social in nature, involving other people in some way. We develop feelings and attitudes about these as well, and another set of facets is added to the gem of selfhood. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

One might think that all we are doing is taking flat experiences or attitude and pasting them on a raw, blank personality, and in the end coming up wit a gem or mosaic of human selfhood. In fullest terms, the analogy is pitifully inadequate. Humans are much more than a surface covered with mosaic. These varying aspects of selfhood run throughout the person’s being, connecting and interconnecting with each other. There are organic as well as functional connections. Some go together structurally as part of the system or systems. Others go together functionally, meaning that they work together or on each other or as part of a larger and more complex system or process. The complexity can never be fully or meaningfully depicted in any graphic forms. Some people distort their own great discoveries because they may have some unsolved problems. Certainly courage is a function of vitality, but vitality is not something which can be separated from the totality of mortal’s being, language, creativity,spiritual life, and ultimate concern. One of the unfortunate consequences of the intellectualization of human’s spiritual life was that the word spirit was lost and replaced by mind or intellect, and that the element of vitality which is present in spirit was separated and interpreted as an independent biological force. Mortals were divided into bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality.#RandolphHarris 9 of 10

The middle ground between them, the spiritual soul in which vitality and intentionality are united, was dropped. At the end of this development it was easy for a reductive naturalism to derive self-affirmation and courage from a merely biological vitality. However, in mortal nothing is merely biological as nothing is merely spiritual. Every cell of the mortal body participates in one’s freedom and spirituality, and every act of one’s spiritual creativity is nourished by one’s vital dynamics. Unity is a virtue that combines strength and value, the power of being and the fulfillment of meaning. Vitality and intentionality are united in this ideal of human perfection, which is equally removed from barbarism and moralism. Pure vitality in humans is never pure but always distorted, because human’s power of life is one’s freedom and the spirituality in which vitality and intentionality are united.The biological interpretation of courage is a matter of fate. It is the power of self-affirmation. One cannot command courage to be and one cannot gain it by obeying command. Religiously speaking, it is a matter of grace. Humans are in the likeness of God; hence all people are equal—equal in their common spiritual qualities, in their common reasons, and in their capacity of love for humanity. We have no other source of knowledge than that which the Lord himself feels it is important to give to us in our Earthly condition. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10

November 28, 2018 1:46 am

Stars Amid Profound Galaxies–Those Who Read the Revelations Must Not Criticize

We are all American by virtue of our location of birth, but our parents and language and food and lifestyle may differ. We want the right to life as full human beings, which means we will not be separated from our past and present. We can acknowledge only a fractional part of the time in which Black Americas have actually been shown any kind of equality of rights and opportunity. Many Black Americans are discovering a sense of appreciation for their heritage and they are attempting to identify with their American citizenship. There are many African Americans who are living fully in American society, and who are middle-class and upper-middle class and wealthy. There is an increasing tendency in the Black community to display cultural pluralism, which means to be as American as possible, but to identify and retain pride in the heritage of being African American. Many Blacks see their own identity is far more important than either accepting or rejecting somebody’s stereotyped identity. So, they are taking pride in their heritage, finding some satisfaction in greater acceptance of things labelled soul. Black is Beautiful means to honor your features and accept who you are as a person so that you can see how beautiful you are, and it does not mean that any other culture or race is less attractive. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

Black is beautiful also means of many: I am a human being, real and alive, and only recently aware of myself as a person with unlimited potential. I like who and what I am. I can be real now. I am a human being and my identity is something I can develop and feel good about. Self-acceptance and self-appreciation are definitely part of what self-actualization as a process is all about. Knowing your part inhumanity is a vital concept in self-actualization. This may mean coming to a fuller, deeper, more holistic appreciation of all that you are: body, color, heritage, intellect, and certainly emotions. This is also a current definition of together. Much like other Americans, Black want full acceptance of their status as human beings who happen to have a special ancestry and heritage. The drastic change or destruction of stereotypes upsets or upends our comfortable ways of handling our environment. We are challenged to react in ways in which we have little or no experience. However, it is an important transition stage for any person undergoing the emergence of one’s fullest identity. It is our hope that enough Americans can learn to accept and like and experience their own self-identities that they can also enjoy and appreciate this in people who may differ in pigmentation and heritage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

Anxiety and courage have a psychosomatic character. They are biological as well as psychological. From the biological point of view one would say that fear and anxiety are the guardians, indicating the threat of nonbeing to a living being and producing movements of protection and resistance to this threat. Fear and anxiety must be considered as expressions of what one could call self-affirmation on its guard. Without the anticipating fear and the compelling anxiety no finite being would be able to exist. Courage, in this view, is the readiness to take upon oneself negatives, anticipated by fear, for the sake of a fuller positivity. Biological self-affirmation implies the acceptance of want, toil, insecurity, pain, possible destruction. Without this self-affirmation life could not be preserved or increased. The more vital strength a being has the more it is able to affirm itself in spite of the dangers announced by fear and anxiety. However, it would contradict their biological function if courage disregarded their warnings and prompted actions a directly self-destructive character. There is a right mean between cowardice and temerity.# RandolphHarris 3 of 11

Biological self-affirmation needs a balance between courage and fear. Such a balance is present in all living beings which are able to preserve and increase their being. If the warnings of fear no longer have an effect or if the dynamics of courage have lost their power, life vanishes. The drive for security, perfection, and certitude to which we have referred is biologically necessary. However, it becomes biologically destructive if the risk of insecurity, imperfection, and uncertainty is avoided. Conversely, a risk which has a realistic foundation in our self and our World is biologically demanded,while it is self-destructive without such a foundation. Life, in consequence, includes both fear and courage as elements of a life process in a changing but essentially established balance. As long as life has such a balance it is able to resist nonbeing. Unbalanced fear and unbalanced courage to destroy the life whose preservation and increase are the function of the balance of fear and courage. Humans are thrown into this World without their knowledge, consent, or will. Or they simply do not remember these things after soul amnesia. In respect, humans are not different from the animals, from the plants, or from inorganic matter. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

However, mortals are endowed with reason and imagination,and cannot be content with the passive role of a creature, with the role of dice cast out of cup. Mortals are driven by the urge to transcend the role ofthe creature, the accidentalness and passivity of their existence. Mortals can create life. This is the miraculous quality which they indeed share with all living beings, but with difference the one alone is aware of being created and of being a creator. Mortals can create life, or rather, women can create life, by giving birth to a child, and by caring for the child until it is sufficiently grown to take care of his or her own needs. Man—man and woman—can create by planting seeds, by producing material objects, by creating art, by creating ideas, by loving one another. In the act of creation mortals transcend themselves as a creature, raises oneself beyond the passivity and accidentalness of their existence into the realm of purposefulness and freedom. In human’s need for transcendence is possessed one of the foundations for love, as well as for art, religion and material production. “And they were also distinguished for their zeal towards God, and also towards mortals; for they were perfectly honest and upright in all things; and they were firm in the faith of Christ,” reports Alma 27.27. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

To create presupposes activity and care. It presupposes love for that which one creates. How then do mortals solve the problem of transcending oneself, if one is not capable of creating, if one cannot love? There is another answer to this need for transcendence: if I cannot create life, I can destroy it. To destroy life makes me also transcend it. Large sections of mortal’s civilization serve the purpose of giving one safety against the attack of fate and death. One realizes that life demands again and again the courage to surrender some or even all security for the sake of self-affirmation. Nevertheless, mortals try to reduce the power of fate and the threat of death as much as possible. Pathological anxiety about fate and death impels toward a security which is comparable to the security of a prison. One who lives in this prison is unable to leave the security given to one by one’s self-imposed limitations. However, these limitations are not based on a full awareness of reality. Therefore the security of the neurotic is unrealistic. The individual fears what is not to be feared and one feels to be safe what is not safe. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

Indeed, that mortals can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that mortals can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, mortals set themselves above life; they transcend oneself as a creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for mortals, inasmuch as one is driven to transcend oneself is to create or destroy, to love or to hate. The anxiety which humans are not able to take upon themselves produces images of having no basis in reality, but it recedes in the face of things which should be feared. That is, one avoids particular dangers, although they are hardly real, and suppresses the awareness of having to die although this is an ever-present reality. Misplaced fear is a consequence of the pathological form of the anxiety of fate and death. The same structure can be observed in the pathological forms of the anxiety of guilt drives the person towards attempts to avoid this anxiety (usually called the uneasy conscience) by avoiding guilt. Moral self-discipline and habits will produce moral perfection although one remains aware that one cannot remove the imperfection which is implied in human’s existential situation, one’s estrangement from one’s true being. Neurotic anxiety does the same thing but in a limited, fixed, and unrealistic way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

To say that mortals are capable of developing their primary potentiality for love and reason does not imply naïve belief in mortal’s goodness. Destructiveness is secondary potentiality, rooted in the very existence of mortals, and having the same intensity and power as any passion can have. However—and this is the essential point of my argument—it is only the alternative to creativeness. Creation and destruction, love and hate, are not two instincts which exist independently. They are both answers to the same need for transcendence, and the will to destroy must rise when the will to create cannot be satisfied. However, the satisfaction of the need to create leads to happiness; destructiveness to suffering, most of all, for the destroyer him or herself. The anxiety of becoming guilty, the horror of feeling condemned, are so strong that they make responsible decision and any kind of moral action almost impossible. However, since decision and actions cannot be avoided they are reduced to a minimum which, however, is considered absolutely perfect; and the sphere were they take place is defended against any provocation to transcend it. Here also the separation from reality has the consequence that the consciousness of guilt is misplaced. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

The moralistic self-defense of the neurotic makes one see guilt where there is no guilt or where one is guilty only in a very indirect way. Yet the awareness of real guilt and the self-condemnation which is identical with mortal’s existential self-estrangement are repressed, because the courage which could take them into itself is lacking. The pathological forms of the anxiety of the emptiness and meaninglessness show similar characteristics.Existential anxiety of doubt drives the person toward the creation of certitude in systems of meaning, which are supported by tradition and authority. In spite of the element of doubt which is implied in mortal’s finite spirituality, and in spite of the threat of meaninglessness implied in a mortal’s estrangement,anxiety is reduced by these ways of producing and preserving certitude.Neurotic anxiety builds a narrow castle of certitude which can be defended and is defended with the utmost tenacity. Mortal’s power of asking is prevented from becoming actual in this sphere, and if there is a danger of its becoming actualized by questions asked from the outside one reacts with fanatical rejection. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

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However, the castle of undoubted certitude is not built on the rock of reality. The inability of the neurotic to have a full encounter with reality makes one’s doubts as well as one certitude unrealistic. One puts both in the wrong place. One doubts what is practically about doubt and one is certain where doubt is adequate. Above all, one does not admit the question of meaning in its universal and radical sense. The question is in the individual, as it is in every person as mortal under the conditions of existential estrangement. However, one cannot admit it because one is without the courage to take the anxiety of emptiness or doubt and meaninglessness upon oneself. Existential anxiety has an ontological character and cannot be removed but must be taken into the courage to be. Pathological anxiety is the consequence of the failure to take the anxiety upon itself. Pathological anxiety leads to self-affirmation on a limited, fixed, and unrealistic basis and to a compulsory defense of this basis. Pathological anxiety, in relation to the anxiety of fate and death, produces an unrealistic security; in relation to the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, an unrealistic perfection; in relation to the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness, an unrealistic certitude. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

Pathological anxiety, once established, is an object of medical healing. Existential anxiety is an object of priestly help. Neither the medical nor the priestly function is bound to its vocational representatives: the minister may be a healer and the psychotherapist a priest, and each human being may be both in relation to the neighbor. However, the function should not be confused and the representatives should not try to replace each other. The goal of both of them is helping mortal to reach full-self affirmation, to attain the courage to be. We want to realize and appreciate the position we occupy before God and the great blessings and privileges that are within our reach. We have just commenced, as it were, it the great work. We do not always comprehend these things, and hence we labor under difficulties pertaining to this matter, because we do not see, we do not comprehend the position and relationship that subsists between us and our God. God is our Father; we are his children. God has brought us into his covenant, and it is our privilege to go on from wisdom to wisdom, from intelligence to intelligence, from understanding of one principle to that of another, to go forward and progress in the development of truth until we can completely comprehend God. “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” reports Matthew 6.9-10. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11

November 27, 2018 1:15 am

At Such a Curious Earth Love is Supposed to be for the Souls of Sanity—I am Glad they Did Believe it!

Success without integrity is nothing. Productive love always implies a syndrome of attitude that care of, responsibility, respect and knowledge. If love, I care—that is, I am actively concerned with the other person’s growth and happiness; I am not a spectator. I am responsible, that is, I respond to the other individual’s needs, to those this person can express and more so to those one cannot or does not express. I respect the other individual, that is (according to the original meaning of re-spicere) I look at this person as if one is, objectively and not distorted by my wishes and fears. I know this individual, I have penetrated through this person’s surface to the more of this individual’s being and related myself to this being from my core, from the center, as against the periphery, of my being. Care of the soul asks us to observe its needs continually, to give them our wholehearted attention. Imagine advising someone with many signs of neglect of soul to build an annex on one’s house for soul work. It may seem strange or even unusual to do something so expensive and so external to deal with our psychological complaints. Yet it is obvious that soul is not going to be healed solely by means of one hour of interior retreat in the midst of an active modern life. Our retreat from the World may have to be more serious and more constantly present in out lives than a weekly counseling visit or an occasional day spa and massage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Today we find a radical situation occurring as women beg into discover that they are much more than they or the men in their lives have known or been willing to admit. Women’s role in life, in this country, has been drastically limited to a few portrayals or dimensions. However, in the past few years, a developing, revolutionary, self-emergence program is shaking the foundations of society and is certainly giving a lot of people reason to lose sleep. This country has been the inheritor of an Antiquated World attitude toward women. Even in the Bible, women were portrayed as having the very important roles of wife, mother, and homemaker, rarely anything else. Oh, there were always spots for dancing girls, servants, comfort women, slaves, and craftswomen. However, the life of the typical woman in the Old World was very clearly marked out for her. If she were fortunate, attractive, and/or from a wealthy family, a girl could look forward to getting married, raising children, building a household, and gaining respect by doing a creditable job in these limited areas. One of the classical descriptions of the ideal wife comes from the Old Testament of the Bible and has been used to shape the life of women ever since: A good wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and she will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm all the days of her life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

A productive wife seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. She like the ships of the merchant, she brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and tasks for her maidens. She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp does not go out at night. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise he in the gates. God does not make us holy in the sense that he makes our character holy. He makes us holy in the sense that he has made us innocent before him. And then we have to turn that innocence into holy character through the moral choices we make. These choices are continually opposed and hostile to the things of our natural life which we have become so deeply entrenched. We can either turn back, making ourselves if no value to the kingdom of God, or we can determinedly demolish things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

That is a full-time and not unimportant job, living up to those expectations! In the Old World, it was probably all a woman could handle. However, in those times, there must have been occasions when the woman could have participated in decision-making and some of the other ongoing life of the town or country. Yet, there was no opportunity for her. Medicine, above all psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, often claims that healing anxiety is its task because all anxiety altogether, for anxiety is sickness, mostly in a psychosomatic, sometimes only in a psychological sense. All forms of anxiety can be healed, and since there is no ontological root of anxiety there is no existential anxiety. Medical insight and medical help—this is the conclusion—are the way to the courage to be; the medical profession is the only healing profession. Although this extreme position is taken by an ever-decreasing number of physicians and psychotherapists it remains important from the theoretical point of view. It includes a decision about the nature of mortals which must be made explicit, in spite of the positivistic resistance to ontology. The psychiatrist who asserts that anxiety is always pathological cannot deny the potentiality of illness in human nature, and one must account for the facts of finitude, doubt, and guilt in every human being; one must, in terms of one’s own presupposition, account for the universality of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

One cannot avoid the question of the human nature since in practicing one’s profession one cannot avoid the distinction between health and illness, existential and pathological anxiety. This is why more and more representatives of medicine generally and psychotherapy specifically ask for the cooperation with the philosophers and theologians. And it is why through this cooperation a practice of counseling has developed which is, like every attempted synthesis, dangerous as well as significant for the future. The medical faculty needs a doctrine of mortals in order to fulfill its theoretical task; and it cannot have a doctrine of mortal without the permanent cooperation of all those faculties whose central object is human beings. The medical profession has the purpose of helping mortal in some of their existential problems, those which usually are called diseases. However, it cannot help a person without the permanent cooperation of all other professions whose purpose is to help mortals as mortals. Both the doctrines about mortals and the help given to mortal are a matter of cooperation from many points of view. Only in this way is it possible to understand and to actualize mortal’s power of being, one’s essential self-affirmation, one’s courage to be. In our present day, women have been relieved of much of the drudgery of homemaking. It is still a very hard job and one filled with great responsibility, especially the role of mothering. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Productive love when directed toward equals may be called brotherly love. In motherly love the relationship between the two persons involved is one of inequality; the child is helpless and dependent on the mother. In order to grow, the baby must become more and ore independent, until the child does not need all of its support from the mother. Thus the mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother’s side, and yet this very love must help the child to grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent. It is easy for any mother to love her child before this process of separation has begun—but it is the task in which most fail, to love the child and at the same time to let it go—and to want to let it go. Many men, not understanding the intricacies of home economics, grumble and growl about their workaday World and tell their wives that homemaking is a snap! Yet, if they have to take over the chores fora day when their wives are sick or out of town, they frequently find out just how difficult it all is. However, what with modern appliances and good planning,many women are finding time left over after housework and child-care is done. Keeping busy and out of mischief by devotion to creative or domestic chores was the Old World solution to free hours. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and t work with your hands, just as you were told,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.11. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Women began discovering the fuller nature of their beings along time ago, but were more or less resigned to their limited existence until,with dramatic results, men began to put them to work outside of the home. The tragic story of labor’s abuses and the subsequent involvement of women in there form movements is but a short chapter in the history of womankind’s growing awareness of its greater potentials. In erotic love, another drive is involved:that for fusion and union with another person. While brotherly love refers to all mortals and motherly love to the child and all those who are in need of our help, erotic love is directed to one person, normally of the opposite gender, with whom fusion and oneness is desired. Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness. Motherly love begins with oneness, and leads to separateness. If the need for fusion were realized in motherly love, it would mean destruction of the child as an independent being, since the child needs to emerge from one’smother, rather than remained dependent on her. If erotic love lacks brotherly love and is only motivated by the wish for fusion, it is sexual desire without love, or the perversion of love as we find it in the sadistic and masochistic forms of love. “People that had been wrought upon by the Spirit of God, and had been healed; and they did show forth signs also and did some miracles among the people,” reports 3 Nephi 7.22. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Critics of women’s rights should remember that women have been very instrumental in bringing about social changes. Women played a significant part in protecting the abuses of drinking, and had much pressure brought to bear on the legislation for Prohibition. Not that this was necessarily the best legislation we could have had! Nevertheless, the economic and political power of women was felt. Then, in their insistence on equal treatment, women demanded the right to vote and today are very instrumental in legislation and their force is felt all across the World today. Also, in recent years, mothers have become an important force for peace. Women have demonstrated abilities in every field of endeavor formerly thought to be beyond their talents and capabilities.They can run congress, lathes, computer, the senate, be presidents of corporations and of countries; they write, edit, and publish books; they paint prize-winning paintings, drives buses and trucks, repair TV’s and telephone lines, perform surgery, pull teeth, preach, teach, practice law, and administer educational institutions. Without doubt, the high degree of skills demonstrated by many of them is destroying old concepts as effectively as it is damaging the egos of some males. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

However, do not be offended by this, but I do not think anyone can run a house as well as a woman. It takes a certainly kind of womanly love to cook, clean, do laundry, iron, organize, look good, sew, deal with business people and keep the house peaceful while standing sane. Reese Witherspoon’s Whiskey in a Tea Cup is a New York Times Best Seller and one of the most influential books to come to public attention in recent times. Without putting down the important dimensions of wife, mother, actress, business woman, singer, model and homemaker, Mrs. Witherspoon urges women to actualize their natural fourth dimensions: creative and productive talents. She also shares some personal stories, wives tales, recipes, and lets other women that the career can be just as important as her housewifely roles, which gives many women the incentive to declare themselves as full-fledged human beings. One understands fully mortal’s need to be related only if one considers the outcome of the failure of any kind of relatedness, if one appreciates the meaning of narcissism. The only reality the infant can experience is one’s own body and affection. The baby has not yet the experience of “I” as separate from “thou.” The precocious darling is still in a state of oneness with the World, but a oneness before the awakening of his or her sense of individual reality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

The World outside, for the baby, exists only as so much food, or so much warmth to be used for the satisfaction of one’s own needs, but not as something or somebody who is recognized realistically and objectively. This orientation has been named primary narcissism, and it is not a bad thing. In normal development, children are often treated as the are deities or prized possession, and this is important for their safety, security, and confidence. This state of narcissism is slowly overcome by a growing awareness of reality outside, and by a correspondingly growing sense of “I” as differentiated from “thou.”This change occurs at first on the level of sensory perception, when things and people are perceived as different and specific entities, a recognition which lays the foundation for the possibility of speech; to name things pre-supposes recognizing them as individual and separate entities. It takes much longer until the narcissistic state is overcome emotionally; for the child up to the age of seven or eight years, other people still exist mainly as means for the satisfaction of one’s needs. They are exchangeable inasmuch as they fulfill the function of satisfying these needs, and it is only around the ages between eight and nine years that another person is experienced in such a way that the child can begin to love, that is to say, to feel that the needs of another person are as important as their own. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

However, that may not necessarily be the full story. Babies smile at only a few weeks old to bond with their parents and make them happy, as they know how powerful being cute is because it will compel people to want to take care of them and love them. Many parents also have their pleasure of knowing that they are their child’s first real love, in a platonic sense, of course. The fact that utter failure to relate oneself to the World is insanity, points to the other fact: that some form of relatedness is the condition for any kind of sane living. However, among the various forms of relatedness, only the productive one, freedom and integrity while being, at the same time, untied with one’s fellow mortals. “Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again,” reports 3 Nephi 17.3. In the interpretation of human existence theology and medicine unavoidably joined philosophy, whether they were conscious of it our not. And in joining philosophy they joined each other even if their understanding of mortals went toward opposite directions. This is why theologians and ministers eagerly seek collaboration with medical professional, and many forms of occasional institutionalized cooperation result. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

One of the very first patients monitored was a woman 72 years of age who was in the coronary care unit because she had what is known as 2:1 heart block; that is, the upper portion of her heart (called the atrium) would begin the beat, but only every other beat would cause the remainder of her heart (the ventricles) to beat. During the pulse taking, a patient’s heart rate began to vary from its pattern of 2:1 block, changing back and forth from 2 degrees to 1 degree block. In essence, her heart began to change from 30 up to 60 beats per minute. During two other episodes of pulse taking and one episode of blood pressure measurement, very similar cardiac reactions occurred. While this patient was still in heart block, however, there was one other episode of pulse taking during which there were no heart rate or hearty rhythm changes. For three minutes prior to a sequence in which a nurse came to this patient’s bedside simply to give her a pill, the patient’s heart rate had been a regular 2:1 heart block rate of 35 beats per minute. However, during the entire one minute the nurse was at her bedside, the patient’s heart rate abruptly changed to a different mode of conduction and her heart rate was 70-75 beats per minute, only to change back abruptly to a rate of 35 beats per minute and 2:1 heart block for the three minutes after the nurse left the patient’s bedside. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

A similar reaction occurred when the nurse brought this patient lunch. Later that same day, the medicine (atropine) the cardiologist had prescribed took effect, and the patient was no longer in continuous 2:1 block. During this period we again monitored an episode of pulse taking. This time the beat-to-beat heart rate both before and after pulse taking was approximately 70-75 beats per minute, with only periodic episodes of heart block occurring. However, when the nurse took the patient’s pulse, the heart rate was slightly elevated, the beat became quite rhythmic,and the periodic pattern of heart block was completely abolished. In the light of the type of cardiac problems experienced by this patient and the medication she was given, it was not difficult for us to deduce the changes in the patient’s nervous system that were producing these reactions. Understanding those physiological mechanisms suggests that bedside matter of human compassion, medication and religious could be an effective three-fold method to help heal patients and keep them alive. Research indicates the prayer can extend a person’s life by four years. Evidence is causing more and more people to believe that there is metaphysical forces beyond science at work in the World and human beings are conduits of this spiritual power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Religious doctrines typically include prescriptions for taking care of one’s own body (e.g., your body is a temple), and support psychological traits that are associated with self-control, such as humility, patience, mindfulness, and compassion. In addition, religious doctrines offer behavioral techniques, including mediation and prayer, that can help people regulate their emotions and actions. When people are exposed to religious themes or call to mind their religious beliefs, they are better able to endure discomfort, delay gratification, and follow through on challenging tasks. Religious people learn through training to control their emotions, particularly the negative emotions of fear, anger, and hatred, as these can push them towards a darkness they do not want to access. These beings are mindful of their thoughts and intentions and meditate and pray about their choices. However, the physician must be fully aware of the treatment to make sure the patient is receiving adequate medical care. And as a minister, one may radiate healing power for mind and body and help to remove symptoms and neurotic anxiety. The anxiety of fate and death produces nonpathological strivings for security. Large sections of mortal’s civilization serve the purpose of giving people safety against the attacks of fate and death. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Mortals realize that no absolute and no final security is possible; mortals also realize that life demands again and again the courage to surrender some or even all security for the sake of full self-affirmation. Nevertheless,mortal reduce the power of fate and the threat of death as much as possible. Pathological anxiety about fate and death impels toward a security which is comparable to the security of a prison. One who lives in this prison is unable to leave the security given to one by one’s self-imposed limitations. However, these limitations are not based on a full awareness of reality. Therefore, they security of the neurotic is unrealistic. One fears what is not to be feared and one feels to be safe what is not safe. The anxiety which one is not able to take upon oneself produces images having no basis in reality, but it recedes in the face of things which should be feared. That is, one avoids particular dangers, although they are hardly real, and suppress the awareness of having to die although this is an ever-present reality. Misplaced fear is a consequence of the pathological form of the anxiety of fate and death. “And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise. And they arose from the Earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full,” reports 3 Nephi 17.19-20. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

In the last two years, the Women’s Liberation Movement, Time’s Up, and the Daughters of Sappho have been actively promoting a campaign for women’s full rights. Many of their tactics are alarming to men, to say the least! Men refuse women their full rights for a number of reasons. Tradition is an important obstacle, and the simple fact that women have always played a more or less passive, subservient role to men still looms large in the forefront of the conflict. Some men do not know how to relate to a woman who does not conform to what they think is a man’s inherent right of dominance and leadership. Nearly all of our social custom and a large percentage of our speech phrases contain an unconscious assumption that women are secondary in importance to men—are subservient to them, are to be protected by them, are pitifully incapable of matching their mental powers. The man is always the head of the household, even though today it is the women who actually manages and cares for the ongoing activities of the typical American home. Interestingly enough, the history of the word man means human being and mind; the word woman is a combination of two words meaning wife of a human being. And in Mandarin Chinese woman means we. Little wonder that males and females raised by the same mental set: a woman is a being that evolves with times and culture and becomes fully accepted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Except for the definitely generic roles of fathering and mothering, the physical structure of men’s and women’s roles of fathering and mothering, the physical structure of men’s and women’s bodies plays very little part in determining fitness and aptitude for most jobs. There is nothing biologically determining in the roles of physician, surgeon, teacher, therapist, preacher, bookkeeper, computer programmer, or the thousands of other jobs in the nation today. Furthermore, biologist tell us that in terms of real endurance women are superior to men! Typically, men have larger skeletal and muscular structures, but that is really unimportant in terms of the stresses of modern living. Ananalogy can be drawn in terms of Sequoia sempervirens and a Syagrus romanzoffiana. Men are taught in most of the World, but especially America, to be strong and rugged, to use all stresses as building blocks against other stresses—as when an athlete strains and exercises one’s muscles in order to build stronger ones. Men are taught to compress their emotions into rigid anti-emotional-stress walls. Thus, internally and externally, men build themselves to withstand pressures, much like a Sequoia sempervirens. Women are typically taught to experience their emotions, to display them, to let them out, and even to utilize them to advantage. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Without pressure build-ups on the inside, they remain supple, and when tensions arise from outside come at them, women are able to be more flexible with stress and life situations, much like the Syagrus romanzoffiana. It is not the unyielding Sequoia sempervirens that stands after the hurricane has blown past; it is the flexible and resilient Syagrus romanzoffiana. However, you also notice, although men and women are similar, their brains are different. Men and women usually attack different types of attention. You do not usually have a bunch of females jealous of a man, and you do not usually have a bunch of men jealous of a woman, but with gender bending and confusion growing larger in society, men and women are going to have to learn how to deal with different kinds of stressors to weather the storms. Another factor that interfere with acceptance by men of the equal rights and qualities of women is fear, but most men will neither accept nor acknowledge this reason. Also a product of the conditioning process is men’s unwillingness to understand their own needs for competence and ego integrity. Yet it is a false competence and a phony integrity that cannot stand up to testing, and the real test in this case is the ability and willingness to share a place in the Sun with other. Not your place or his place or my place or her place, but our place. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

The concept of sharing obviates the concept of competition between the genders and all of its conceits and manifestations. Yet, became we have grown up with the myth of male dominance, most of us (women included) are unprepared or unequipped to have it challenged. Women have demonstrated their capabilities in far too many ways for them to not be fully accepted as human beings; yet, as we have said many times, there are real lags between our intellectual understanding of reality and the changes in our institutions ordinary behavior that show our understanding. “If all pathways just led to now, then all I have been through was worth it somehow. For every treasure that is lost and found,through open doorways, when the lights have burned out, all I want is to be with you and feel like I am someone new. I could breathe if we just play down here tonight. All I want is to be with you. I feel you close in all I do. I can see; you light my way so clear tonight,” reports Tonight by Emma Hewitt and Cosmic Gate. And instead of being subject to death, when that last enemy shall be destroyed, and death be swallowed up in victory, through that atonement they can become the fathers and mothers of lives, and be capable of perpetual and eternal progression. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

November 26, 2018 3:36 am

Green Bean Casserole Recipe

Preheat oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit

Use a 9 x 13 in (22.5 x 33 cm) pan

Get two pounds of green beans (fresh or frozen or even from a can). If frozen defrost first. Be sure to wash the green beans if fresh or frozen

Also get season whole wheat bread crumbs

A 26 ounce can of Cream of Mushroom Condensed Soup (1 pound 10 ounces) or (737 grams)

Mozzarella cheese low-moisture Part-skim

¼ red onion

½ yellow bell pepper

½ pack of Hillshire Farm Beef Smoked sausage diced

½ potato diced

½ pound of shredded turkey (precooked)

A few light dashes of Chef Merito Sal de Ajo (Garlic salt)

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Preparation:

Lightly sprinkle bread crumbs at the bottom of the casserole dish

Shred about ¼ a cup of mozzarella cheese and sprinkle it over the bread crumbs

Evenly apply the green beans to the casserole dish

Next add sprinkle the bell pepper, onion and meats over the green beans

Then add the 26 ounce can of Cream of Mushroom Condensed Soup and evenly spread it over the casserole mixture (do NOT dilute)

Add more bread crumbs on top as you desire (lightly and evenly over the top)

Sheard more mozzarella cheese as you desire (lightly and evenly over the top)

Then bake for about 15 to 25 minutes (make sure to set a timer so not to overcook. I would look in every 10 minutes).

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For a beverage I paired mine with a Beringe Main and Wine California White Merlot (chilled)

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And for music I listened to Artento Divini Featuring Bengaluru [Who’s Afraid of 138?!] Future Favor

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November 25, 2018 6:59 am

A Precious Mouldering Pleasure it is to for the Soul to Select its Own Society

If they take you into their trust, tell you things that even most people do not know, there will be a bond, and maybe a bond that can somehow save us all. Many of us do not wish to settle for knowing just a little bit of other people, especially those we care about. So, we must find ways of opening up avenues of approach. By experimenting, we can invite these people to come out into the Sunlight and experience as much of life as possible. Why should we? If a person is happy being a Bluffer or an Expert or a Life of the Party, is it our business to take on the role of disturbing that individual? A fair question. First of all, it is not for anybody to say whether a person is truly happy or not. However, it is a peculiar and interesting fact that a self-actualizing person often attracts people who are only living partially. They may see the individual as a happy, effective, comfortable human being and come to that individual, associate with the person, in an effort to discover one’s secrets. Without ever admitting they want to be more than they are, they may show it or hint at it through their valuing or seeking after associations with certain people. Complementary and supplementary relationships are as common as male-female liaisons. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Often the more fully functioning partner blazes the trail.They shy and fumbling English person was often invited by the confident Zorbato jump in and play, or dance, or go after the woman: “Boss,” he said, “this is where I count on you. Now, don’t dishonor the male species! The god-devil sends you this choice morsel [a beautiful widow]. You’ve got teeth. All right, get ‘em into it. Stretch out your arm and take her! What did the Creator give us hands for?” “I don’t want any trouble!” I replied angrily. It is clear to see that the actualizer suggests, not to taunt or torment but to dare the other person to become more fully what he or she is. Often the half-person will come out and ask about oneself. Then the actualizer has some decisions to make. Will what he or she says make the person feel better or worse? If what must be said is hurtful, can the person take it? Will this interchange drastically affect the kind of relationship they have? Does one really want reality of is one asking for reassurance that one is likeable? If a person with insights into happier more effective living can communicate, the other person may be able to get the factual information one needs to begin working on oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

However, some people may not want to hear the truth about themselves, especially if it is painful. Anybody who has ever been asked to judge a friend’s work knows well the implication of that statement: If friendship or business relations are important to you, do not be negative. It is the rare individual who can objectively take criticism without some twinge of self-righteousness or resentment. Even well-meant, constructive criticism will wound creative people, who live with it and often because of it all their productive lives. A self-actualizing person generally has the peculiar knack of presenting criticism indirectly and one’s suggestions take on the nature of gifts, which tot he partially functioning individual they are. Some people like their coworkers,in the work place, to loosen up and play around sometimes to show that they are fully human. Yet, there are people who want to go to work, excel at their jobs and keep their person lives and business to themselves. It can make people uncomfortable when one of their employees or coworkers seems like a well adjusted superhuman. “I am not shrink, but I get the feeling you are embarrassed to let people see the…oh, the human side of you. Everybody sees Bud Jones, the super-efficient worker. No mistakes, no sloppiness, no margin for error.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Some people keep their human side to themselves because they have been taught people knowing too much about you and your family life can get you into trouble. “Bud, you are a guy who only let us see the perfect side. We are all human, Bud. It would make some of the newer people feel better about their chances if they could see that you really are flesh and blood. You are a nice and friendly guy, but it does not always show in public. More important than what it did for them, it would do them a lot of good. You do not always need to be person. Nobody expects as much as you do out of yourself. I would like to have you find out that being a human being can be enjoyable, too!” Some self-actualizing people have a trait called the older brother attitude. That is a healthy personality, which includes a high social interest. The older brother type cares about other people and want them to be fully human and to enjoy living rather than merely existing. Self-actualizing people are not running about with signs proclaiming their “Care for Sale,” but they are usually concerned about people and situations. They have enough good will in their beings to let it spill over and help people who really need it. And there are a lot more people living blindly, ignoring human needs, than there are those who care and can share that concern meaningfully and helpfully. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Though it is idealistic, one of the goals we have is the people,though discovering their own person significance, may want to help others discover theirs. Should this happen, a chain-reaction of fuller and more effective humanness might happen, too. If people got more out of living and took an interest in seeing to it that others got a chance to live more fully as well, we cannot help but feel that things might be a lot easier. The forward-going life instinct is stronger and increases in relative strength the more it grows. As it stands, human’s life is determined by the inescapable alternative between regression and progression, between return to a primal existence and arrival at human existence. Any attempt to return is painful, it inevitably leads to suffering and mental sickness, to death either physiologically or mentally (insanity). Every step forward is frightening and painful too, until a certain point has been reaches where fear and doubt have only minor proportions. Aside from the physiological nourished cravings (hunger, thirst, intimacy), all essential human cravings are determined by this polarity of the forward-going and the retrogressive impulse, which do not have the same biological strength. Humans have to solve a problem, one can never rest in the given situation of a passive adaption to nature. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Even the most complete satisfaction of all one’s instinctive needs does not solve one’s human problem; one’s most intensive passions and needs are not those rooted in one’s body, but those rooted in the very peculiarity of one’s existence. There lies also the key to humanistic psychoanalysis. As it turns out, the basic force which motivates human passions and desires are not the libido. As powerful as the sexual drive and all its derivations are, they are by no means the most powerful forces within humans and their frustration is not the cause of mental disturbance. The most powerful forces motivating human’s behavior stem from the condition of one’s existence, the human situation. Human cannot like statically because of their inner contradictions drive them to seek for an equilibrium, for a new harmony instead of the lost soul harmony with nature. After one has satisfied their basic needs, one is drive by the human needs. Human behavior is governed by a large number of types of motives, some that are physiological, but many more that are acquired and learned through social interaction, personal experience, and growth experiences. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

While our bodies tell humans what to eat and what to avoid—one conscious ought to tell one which needs to cultivate and satisfy, and which needs to let wither and starve out. However, hunger and appetite are functions of the body with which people are born—conscience, while potentially present,requires the guidance of people and principles which develop only during the growth of culture. All passions and strivings of humans are attempts to find an answer to one’s existence or, as we may also say, they are an attempt to avoid insanity. (It may be said in passing that the real problem of mental life is not why some people become insane, but rather why most avoid insanity.) Both the mentally healthy and the neurotic are driven by the need to find an answer, the only difference being that one answer corresponds more to the total needs of humans, and hence is more conducive to the unfolding of one’s powers and to one’s happiness than the other. All cultures provide for a patterned system in which certain solutions are predominant, hence certain strivings and satisfactions. Whether we deal with primitive religions, with theistic or non-theistic religions, they are all attempts to give an answer to human’s existential problem. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The finest, as well as the most barbaric cultures have the same function and that is to answer the human existential problem—the difference is only whether the answer given is better or worse. The deviate from the cultural pattern is just as much in search of an answer as one’s more well-adjusted brother. One’s answer may be better or worse than the one given by one’s culture—it is always another answer to the same fundamental question raised by human existence. In this sense all cultures are religious and every neurosis is a private form of religion, provided we mean religion an attempt to answer the problem of human existence. Indeed, the tremendous energy in the forces producing mental illness, as well as those behind art and religion, could never be understood as an outcome of frustrated or sublimated physiological needs; they are attempts to solve the problem of being born human. All people are idealist and cannot help being idealists, provided we mean by idealism the striving for the satisfaction of needs which are specifically human and transcend the physiological needs of the organism. The difference is only that one idealism is a good and adequate solution, the other a bad and destructive one. The decision as to what is good and bad has to be made on the basis of our knowledge of human’s nature and the laws which govern its growth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

The distinction of the three types of anxiety is supported by the history of Western civilization. We find that at the end of ancient civilization ontic anxiety is predominant, at the end of the Middle Ages moral anxiety, and at the end of the modern period spiritual anxiety. However, in spite of the predominance of one type the others are also present and effective. Enough has been said about the end of the ancient period and its anxiety of fate and death in connection with an analysis of Stoic courage. As Stoics, we learn to focus on what is in our power. We ask ourselves what can we do to create a good life,no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in and what is required of us as human beings and what prevents us from living out to our full potential? Consistent stoic practice increasing our resilience, contentment, joy, and gives us the boldness necessary to tackle the tasks presented to us in life. We believe that we all have the ability to live artfully, and that requires effort. Living naturally means to take actions that we allow us to flourish. We are looking for our best possible selves. Humans are rational, social being. Therefore, there nature is to use their rational mind for the benefit of oneself and their society. Virtuous life is fully sufficient for happiness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

The sociological background is well known: the conflict of the imperial powers, Alexander’s conquest of the East, the war between his follower, the conquest of West and East by republic Rome, the transformation of republican into imperial Rome through Caesar and Augusts, the tyranny of the post-Augustan emperors, the destruction of the independent city and nation states,the eradication of the former bearers of the aristocratic-democratic structure of society, the individual’s feeling of being in the hands of powers, natural as well as political, which are completely beyond his control and calculation—all this produced a tremendous anxiety and the quest for courage to meet the threat of fate and death. At the same time the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness made it impossible for many people, especially of the educated classes, to find a basis for such courage. Ancient Skepticism from its very beginning in the Sophists united scholarly and existential elements. Skepticism in its late ancient form was despair about the possibility of right acting as well as right thinking. It drove people into the desert where the necessity for decisions, theoretical and practical, is reduced to a minimum. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

However, most of those who experienced the anxiety of emptiness and the despair of meaninglessness tried to meet them with a cynical contempt of spiritual self-affirmation. Yet they could not hide the anxiety under skeptical arrogance. The anxiety of guilt and condemnation was effective in the groups who gathered in the mystery of cult with their rites of expiation and purification. Sociologically these circles of the initiated were rather indefinite. In most of them even slaves were admitted.In them, however, as in the whole non-Jewish ancient World more the tragic than the personal guilt was experiences. Guilt is the pollution of the soul by the material realm or by demonic powers. Therefore the anxiety of emptiness, within the dominating anxiety of fate and death. Only the impact of the Jewish-Christian message changed this situation, and so radically that toward the end of the Middle Ages the anxiety of guilt and condemnation was decisive.If one period deserves the name of the age of anxiety it is the pre-Reformation and Reformation. The anxiety of condemnation symbolized as the wrath of God and intensified by the imagery of hell and purgatory drove people of the late Middle Ages to try various means of assuaging their anxiety. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

To escape anxiety, people took pilgrimages to holy places,of possible to Rome; ascetic exercises, sometimes of an extreme character; devotion to relics, often brought together in mass collections; acceptance of ecclesiastical punishments and the desire for indulgences; exaggerated participation in masses and penance, increase in prayers and alms. In short they asked ceaselessly: How can I appease the wrath of God, how can I attain divine mercy, the forgives of sin? This predominant form of anxiety embraces the other two forms. The personified figure of death appeared in painting, poetry, and preaching. However, it was death and guilt together. Death and the devil were allied in the anxious imagination of the period. The anxiety of fate returned with the invasion of late antiquity. Fortuna became a preferred symbol in the art of the Renaissance, and even the Reformers were not free from astrological beliefs and fears. And the anxiety of fate was intensified by fear of demonic powers acting directly or through other human beings to cause illness, death, and all kinds of destruction. At the same time, fate was extended beyond death into the pre-ultimate state of purgatory and the ultimate state of Hell of Heaven. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

The darkness of destiny could not be removed; not even the Reformers were able to remove it, as their doctrine of predestination shows. In all these expressions the anxiety of fate appears as an element within the all-embracing anxiety of guilt and in the permanent awareness of the threat of condemnation. The late Middle Ages was not a period of doubt; and the anxiety of emptiness and loss of meaning appeared only twice, both remarkable occasions,however, and important for the future. One was the Renaissance, when theoretical skepticism was renewed and the question of meaning haunted some of the most sensitive minds. In Michelangelo’s prophets and sibyls and in Shakespeare’s Hamlet there are indications of a potential anxiety of meaninglessness. The other was in the demonic assaults that Martin Luther experienced, which were neither temptations in the moral sense nor moments of despair about threatening condemnation, but moments when belief in his work and message disappeared and no meaning remained. Similar experiences of the desert or the night of the soul are frequent among mystics. It must be emphasized however that in all these cases the anxiety of guilt remained predominant, and that only after the victory of humanism and Enlightenment as the religious foundation of Western society could anxiety about spiritual nonbeing become dominant. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The sociological cause of the anxiety of guilt and condemnation that arose at the end of the Middle Ages is not difficult to identify. In general one can say it was the dissolution of the protective unit of the religiously guided medieval culture. More specifically there must be emphasized the rise of an educated middle class in the larger cities, people who tried to have as their own experience what had been merely an objective, hierarchically controlled system of doctrines and sacraments. In this attempt, however, they were driven to hidden or open conflict with the Church, whose authority they still acknowledged. There must be emphasized the concentration of political power in the princes and their bureaucratic-military administration, which eliminated the independence of those lower in the feudal system. There must be emphasized the state absolutism which transformed the masses in city and country into subjects whose only duty was to work and obey, without any power to resist the arbitrariness of the absolute rulers. There must be emphasized the economic catastrophes connected with early capitalism, such as the importation of gold from the New World, expropriation of the less affluent and so on. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

In all these often described changes it is the conflict between the appearance of independent tendencies in all groups of society, on the one and,and the rise of an absolutist concentration of power on the other that is largely responsible for the predominance of the anxiety of guilt. Their rational, commanding, absolute God of nominalism and the Reformation is partly shaped by the social, political, and spiritual absolutism of the period;and the anxiety created in turn by one’s image is partly an expression of the anxiety produced by the basic social conflict of the disintegrating Middle Ages. The breakdown of absolutism, the development of liberalism and democracy, the rise of a technical civilization with its victory over all enemies and its own beginning disintegration—these are the sociological presupposition for the third main period of anxiety. In this anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness is dominant. We are under the threat of spiritual nonbeing. The threats of moral and ontic nonbeing are, of course, present, but they are not independent and not controlling. This situation is so fundamental to the question raised in this book that it requires fuller analysis than the two earlier periods, and the analysis must be correlated with the constructive solution. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

It is significant that the three main periods of anxiety appear at the end of an era. The anxiety which, in its different forms, is potentially present in every individual becomes general if the accustomed structures of meaning, power, belief, and order disintegrate. These structures, as long as they are in force, keep anxiety bound within a protective system of courage by participation. The individual who participates in the institutions and ways of life of such a system is not liberated from one’s personal anxieties but one has means of overcoming them with well known methods no longer work. Conflict between the old, which tries to maintain itself, often with new means, and the new, which deprives the old, which tries to maintain itself, often with new means, and the new, which deprives the old of its intrinsic power, produce anxiety in all directions. Nonbeing, in such a situation, has a double face, resembling two types of nightmare (which are perhaps, expressions of an awareness of these two faces). The one type is the anxiety of annihilating narrowness, of the impossibility of escape and the horror of being trapped. The other is the anxiety of annihilating openness, of infinite, formless space into which one falls without a place to fall upon. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Social situation like those described have the character both of a trap without exist and of an empty, dark, and unknown void. Both faces of the same reality arouse the latent anxiety of every individual who looks at them. Today most of us do not look at them. “And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. And we, ourselves, also, though the infinite goodness of God, and the manifestations of his Spirit, have great views of that which is to come; and were it expedient, we could prophesy of all things. And it is the faith which we have had on the things which our king has spoken unto us that has brought us to this great knowledge, whereby we do rejoice with such exceedingly great joy,” Mosiah 5.2-4. Keep your eyes on God, not on people. “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,” reports Acts 1.7. Spiritual programs are filled with concerns for individual progress, acceptance by authorities, and the wish for sainthood or some other high position. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

November 24, 2018 2:45 am

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