The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. Love would conquer all, of course, but one has to know when it is there first. Glaucus was a fisherman. One day he had drawn his nets to land and had taken a great many fishes of various kinds. So he emptied his nets and proceeded to sort the fishes on the grass. The place where he stood was a beautiful island in the river, a solitary spot, uninhabited, and not used for pasturage of cattle, not visited by anyone but himself. On a sudden, the fishes, which had been laid on the grass, began to revive and move their fins as if they were in the water; and while he looked on astonished, they one and all moved off to the water, plunged in, and swam away. He did not know what to make of this, whether some god had done it, or some secret power in the herbage. “What herb has such a power?” he exclaimed; and gathering some of it, he tasted it. Scarce had the juices of the plant reached his palate when he found himself agitated with a longing desire for the water. Glaucus could no longer restrain himself, but bidding farewell to Earth, he plunged into the stream. The gods of the water received him graciously and admitted hi to the honour of their society. They obtained the consent of Oceanus and Tethys, the sovereign of the sea, that all that was mortal in him should be washed away. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
A hundred rivers poured their waters over Glaucus and then he lost all sense of his former nature and all consciousness. When he recovered, he found himself changed in form and mind. His hair was sea-green, and trailed behind him on the water; his shoulders grew broad, and what had been thighs and legs assumed the form of a fish’s tail. The sea-gods complimented him on the change of his appearance, and Glaucus fancied himself rather a good-looking personage. One day, Glaucus saw a beautiful maiden Scylla, the favourite of the water-nymphs, rambling on the shore, and when she had found a sheltered nook, laving her limbs on the clear water, he fell in live with her. Glaucus showed himself on the surface, spoke to the maiden, saying such things as he thought most likely to win her to stay; for she turned to run immediately on sight of him, and ran till she had gained a cliff overlooking the sea. Here she stopped and turned round to see whether it was a god or s sea animal, and observed with wonder his shape and colour. Glaucus, partly emerging from the water and supporting himself against a rock, said, “Maiden, I am not monster, nor sea animal, but a god; and neither Proteus nor Triton ranks higher than I. Once I was a mortal, and followed the sea for a living; but now I belong wholly to it.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Then he told the story of his metamorphosis, and how he had been promoted to his present dignity, and added, “But what avails all this if it fails to move your heart?” Glaucus was going on in this strain, but the maiden, Scylla, turned and hastened away. Glaucus was in despair, but it occurred to him to consult the enchantress, Circe. Accordingly he repaired to her island. After mutual salutations, Glaucus said, “Goddess, I entreat your pity; you alone can relieve the pain I suffer. The power of the herbs I know as well as any one, for it is to them I owe my change of form. I love Scylla. I am ashamed to tell you how I have sued and promised to her, and how scornfully she has treated me. I beseech you to use your incantations, or potent herbs, if they are more prevailing, not to cure me of my love—for that I do not wish—but to make Scylla share it and yield me a like return.” To which Circe replied, for she was not insensible to the attractions of the sea-green deity, “You had better pursue a willing object; you are worthy to be sought, instead of having to seek in vain. Be not different, know your own worth. I protest to you that even I, goddess though I be, and learned in the virtue of plants and spells, should not know how to refuse you. If Scylla scorns you, scorn her; meet one who is ready to meet you half way, and thus make a due return to both at once.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
However, Glaucus replied, “Sooner shall trees grow at the bottom of the ocean, and seaweed on the top of the mountains, than I will cease to love Scylla, and her alone.” The goddess Circe was indignant, but she could not punish him, neither did she wish to do so, for she liked him too well; so she turned all her wrath against her rival, poor Scylla. She took her plants of poisonous powers and mixed them together, with incantations and charms. Then she passed through the crowd of gamboling beasts, the victims of her art, and proceeded to the coast of Sicily, where Scylla lived. There was a little bay on the shore to which Scylla used to resort, in the heat of the day, to breathe their air of the sea, and to bathe in its waters. Here the goddess poured her poisonous mixture, and muttered over it incantations of mighty power. Scylla came as usual and plunged into the water up to her waist. What was her horror to perceive a brood of serpents and barking monsters surrounding her! At first she could not imagine they were a part of herself, and tried to run from them and to drive them away; but as she ran she carried them with her, and when she tried to touch her limbs, she found her hands touch only the yawning jaws of monsters. Scylla remained rooted to the spot. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Scylla’s temper grew as ugly as her form, and she took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came within her grasp. Thus she destroyed six of the companions of Ulysses, and tried to wreck the ships of Aeneas, till at least she was turned into a rock, and as such still continues to be a terror to mariners. Mistakes are a deliberately wrong choice in the contest between what is clearly good and what is clearly bad is sin. We all want a partner, but some want one to the point of it being a pathology. Many people knowingly or unknowingly force a relationship due to an addiction of love. If one is honest with oneself, and know that one has nothing in common with their focus of their intertest, such as different goals, different lifestyles, and different hobbies, and the person is not attracted to the individual pursing a relationship, this is a clear indication that they do not like you in a romantic way, much like how Scylla was not in the least bit interested in Glaucus. Yet, Glaucus could not take no for an answer and ended up running her like, and the rage she experienced ruined the lives of others. Absolutely imagine if you had people dragging you into things you did not want to be part of, and you will understand why this is not a healthy thing to do. It is never a healthy thing to do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
People who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistake than people who think intelligence is fixed. One major difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how one responds to mistake. When one makes a mistake, the best thing to do is to try to learn from it and figure it out. Conversely, some people who think they cannot gain intelligence will not take the opportunities to learn from their mistakes, and they usually employ defense mechanisms to justify their behaviour so they do not feel guilt or remourse. Defense mechanisms are psychological maneuvers that operate below the surface of one’s awareness (they are unconscious) to protect one from emotional pain or distress. The most familiar one is probably denial. Denial allows one to dismiss a painful reality so that one can go on acting as if a situation or event is not true—because one does not want to admit it is true. Transgression is different from being overtaken in a fault. Both sins and mistakes can hurt us and both require attention. People who try to force relations, often end up feeling insecure, hurt, and betrayed for no reason. Then these individuals start questioning themselves as to why they are never good enough for the person they are interested in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand and hand with reproof. Though it may be hard to admit, there comes a time when one just needs to cut their losses and leave a person alone. The progression of a romantic relationship cannot be formed. It must evolve naturally, over time. Impatient, insecure, or damaged people try to force relationships. Mortal make these kinds of mistakes all the times. However, these things are on an essentially predetermined course. A fool is a person lacking judgment or prudence. The Saviour used the term fool to characterize the lesson in this parable about the rich man who built greater barns to store his abundant fruits and goods and then said to his soul, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” reports Luke 12.19. The distinction between sins and mistakes is important to our actions. We have seen some very bitter finger pointing. All of us make mistakes, and some of us very serious ones. Any thoughtful person feels a kind of failure because one’s sins or moral failure. One does not get clean by rolling in the mire. One does not get clean and whole by brooding unduly over the past, although we can certainly learn from our mistake. There is no strength in weakness; there is no strength in sin; and we do not overcome our mistake and our sins by fighting them directly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
If people dwell upon them too much, they may succumb to their sins. The avoidance of guilt can be addictive, too. Guilt-avoidance has become a drug of choice for many people, because it is so pleasurable, almost intoxicating, to think of oneself as morally pure. Those who are addicted to guilt-avoidance are usually a bit inconsistent. They avoid the guilt themselves, but they do not mind imposing a bit of it—maybe even a lot of it—on others. It can be immensely pleasurable to notice the flaws of others while ignoring your own. However, that is a sin, too. All things considered, we are on a safer ground when we focus on our own sins, not those of others. At least this is how we process theologians see things. We believe that when we harm others, or fail to act in ways that prevent them from being harmed, we violated something deep within the nature of nature. We have violated an Eros toward life’s flourishing that is divine. In sinning against others, we sin against God. It takes courage to stand up. The freedom to be different. The freedom to take guilt and make something beautiful of it. Humans have the freedom to turn guilt into love. Few gifts are more desirable than a clear conscience—a soul at peace with itself. Only God can heal a troubled soul. However, if we want God to forgive us, we must follow the procedure he has given to us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Confession is a necessary requirement for complete forgiveness. It is an indication of true Godly sorrow. It is part of the cleansing process—the starting anew requires a clean page in the diary of our conscience. Confessions should be made to the appropriate person who has been wronged by us and to the Lord also. In addition, the nature of our transgression may be serious enough to require a confession to God in prayer. “Therefore I say unto you, Go; and whoever transgressed against me, him shall you judge according to the sins which he or she has committed; and if he or she confess his or her sins before thee and me, and repents in the sincerity of one’s heart, that person one shall forgive, and I will also forgive that individual,” reports Mosiah 26.29. Remember, it is complete deliverance from the tortures of a guilt-ridden soul that we seek. Repentance is not easy. Godly sorrow brings one to the depth of humility. This is why the gift of forgiveness is so sweet and draws the transgressor so close to the Saviour with a special bond of affection. Full repentance liberates the individual with joy unspeakable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Any type of open and truthful disclosure reduces stress and helps individuals come to terms with their behaviour. It is not coincidental that some of the most powerful people or institutions in may cultures encourage people to confess their transgressions. And there is strong evidence that writing about upsetting experiences or dark secrets can benefit your mental and physical well-being. Similar to religious confessions, expressive writing encouraged individuals to explore their deepest thoughts and feelings about upsetting experiences. For such emotional purges to work, people must be completely honest with themselves. Putting emotional turmoil into words changes how we think about it. Giving concrete form to secret experiences can help categorize them in new ways. Talking or writing about a disturbing event helps us to understand it better. And things we do not understand cause greater anxiety. Once we are able to express our upheavals, we tend to ruminate about them less, freeing us up to focus on others thing. Dozens of studies have also shown that expression is linked to less stress and improved sleep and cardiovascular function. Also, better sleep is associated with enhanced immune function and better general health—which correlates with better mental health, too. Confession can help people get through difficult times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind, thy windy will to bear! When humans reflect on their freedom, they experience it as a gift; many dimly knows that one does not stand alone. That gift, in turn, points vaguely to an ultimate horizon as its source and foundation. Awareness of transcendence also originates in the consciousness of our finitude: through our boundaries we recognize the infinite possibilities within us. In general, the World itself points to a region beyond. Transcendence is thus experiences as the intimation of a power by virtue of which humans themselves exists. Confronted with these clues, humans are free to pursue or to ignore them. Eternal life can already be present in the center of Earthly and temporal life when, through grace, the soul is encompassed to God, its ultimate foundation. Everything asses, only God does not change. “My flesh and my heart diminish; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever,” reports Psalm 73.26. The term encompassing (das Umgreifende) designates the ultimate and indefinite limits of being as we experience it in all its fullness and richness, limits which surround, envelop, and suffuse all thee is. It is the ultimate experienceable horizon. Being-as-such means the encompassing or the totality of being as it is thought, conceived or conceptualized, while transcendence means a person’s personal, devoted, and committed effort to each the encompassing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
God is encompassing. A miracle is produced only by the effectiveness of redemption, not by impressive speech, nor by wooing and persuading, but only by the sheer unassisted power of God. We must fill our minds with the thought that God is there. The encompassing manifests itself in at least three modes: the total encompassing of the World, the encompassing that is the empirical World of ordinary and scientific experience, and the encompassing that is the empirical World of ordinary and scientific experience, and the encompassing that is one’s own self. God besets us behind and before and has laid his hand on us is the crowning glory, as it is also the perpetual mystery, of human life. In the light of this truth nothing seems small or negligible. Every incident and every association of our lot takes on a new meaning. The stars have a fresh message for us; the flowers look up to us with intelligent faces; God walks in his garden still, and his voice calls for our recognition. Nothing becomes impossible for us; our strength is sufficient for our day, and new ideals press upon us for acceptance as soon as we have faithfully doe the work of the immediate present. Although we are at a loss to describe its essence, we an say of the encompassing that it is. In a sense, I and the World are identical with the encompassing. In it, the severance between the subject and object disappears, since both are the manifestations of the same encompassing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Having the vision of God is the source of enlightenment because it gives us God’s true and proper inspiration. A person who have the vision of God is not devoted to a cause or to any particular issue—he or she is devoted to God. Therefore, God, the unthinkable (das Undenkbare), becomes wholly other. I cannot grasp conceptually the encompassing that I am; similarly, the World is not exactly an illusion, since it is the only language through which the encompassing can reach me. The ultimate encompassing envelops both the I-pole and the object-pole of experience. The view we have before us is simply one microscopic snapshot—part of an infinitely vast forest of fascinating knowledge. Humans can search for transcendence by various means. We can explore the World, as science does. In that way one achieves a World view. Or one can search for it by examining the relations between oneself and the World, as we find it in epistemology, ethics, and psychology. One thereby achieves illumination of Existenz. We can also search for God, in which case we deal directly with the problem of penetrating being itself. However, we must never succumb to the error of identifying the encompassing with a particular substance or substratum of the World. We are here, not as immature Angels, but as men and women, to do the work of this World. And we are to do it with an infinitely greater power to withstand the struggle because we have been born from above. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
The encompassing manifests itself through the footsteps of God, through analogical predication, through symbols, through ciphers (Chiffren). So much becomes clear from the vantage point of the encompassing as it is like the horizon that is the perennial goal of the sailor: it always shows itself and yet is forever inaccessible. The major purpose of metaphysics is the disclosure of the ciphers that manifest encompassing, but in the end, metaphysical elucidation of the ciphers is a highly personal undertaking. Ciphers may appear suddenly and spontaneously in the presence of empirical facts, for example, and overwhelming mountain. They may appear in art forms, in religious myth and doctrines, and in theological disputations; they may become manifest in the symbolism of history of philosophy and its metaphysical systems; and finally, they may appear through reflection on the mystery of being as well as on the death that, at this point, awaits every human being. The gospel of Christ encompasses not only the truth of what was and what is but also the truth of what can and will be. It is the most practical of all truths. It teaches the way of the disciple—a path that can take ordinary, flawed mortals and transform them into glorious, immortal, and limitless beings whose divine potential is beyond our present capacity to imagine. Now, that is practical truth. It is priceless beyond imagination. It is the truth of the highest order. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
The pursuit, discovery, and application of truth are what we are on this Earth to discover. The gospel of Christ encompasses all truth, and it also specializes in the knowledge that will be of greatest worth to us in this life and throughout the eternities to come. Religious prescription is called a philosophic faith (philosophische Glaube). It consists of the convictions that humans are open to transcendence and consequently wills infinity; that there is in fact a transcendence to the ordinary World; that personal freedom is to be maintained and respected; that humans, as one finds oneself, is inadequate; that one can reply on help from the transcendence; and that the World is grounded and supported. “We believe that all that God has revealed, all that he does now reveal, and we believe that God will reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God,” reports The Articles of Faith 1.9. As a result, we are humble about the truth we have. We understand our knowledge is a work in progress. To reject faith means to hold that the immediate World is all there is, that human’s destiny is fully determined, that humans are perfectible and alone, and that the World is self-supporting. Because of all the confusion in the World, knowing where to find the truth is vital when we have questions. “I know that God loves his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things,” 1 Nephi 11.17. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
It seems wise to accept, in deepest humility and with an aim towards a validating spiritual perfection at the onset. The Bible is a highly suggestive instrument for our philosophical faith, especially through its ciphers of one God and its emphasis on love, on choosing between good and evil, on the eternal in humans, on the ordered and yet contingent Universe, and on the image of God as the refuge. God loves all his children—his sons and his daughters alike. And the truth of his love is absolute. It is the truth upon which everything else is founded. The truth that holds the Universe together. Once we realise that God is in control we will feel peace. God expects us to trust him. In all of our truth-seeking, we have to remember who the source of all truth is. And we have to recognize that while we are deliberating over a single piece of the puzzle, God holds the pieces we cannot see. God sees the big picture—the biggest picture. And someday we will see it, too. We can sometimes be very slow to learn to draw on God’s grace through prayer, but wherever God sends us, he will guard our lives. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the Earth shall be full of knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea,” Isaiah 11.9. Sometimes the answers we seek are simple and somethings finding answers takes a journey. We must never give up on our quest to follow God’s truth. The Heavenly Father is with us every step of the way. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
In order to describe the empowering force of the divine influence the individual must have the proper outlook as the evidence of the deeply rooted belief in its energetic center is the overshadowing of God’s personal deliverance. The human mind is to be thought as being placed within a re-enchanted nature, which is giving reasons for seeing nature correctly. There is a wider or richer nature beyond the narrowness of seeing only the laws of nature and ignoring the values of nature, meaning the richer realm of the Universe. What is needed in order to become receptive to the stimulating power of the reasons working in the re-enchanted wider nature is the development of a second nature in which humans acquire in their reasonable ethical upbringing the model that explains that humans are living in two realms. Humans’ first nature is their terrestrial endowment, biologically seen, and open to become the object of sciences. Humans’ second nature is their openness to the space of reasons, the richer nature, and a part that is element grasped by the sciences. And there is nothing against bringing the richer reality under the rubric of nature too. The natural sciences do not have exclusive rights in that notion; and the added richness comes into view, not through the operations of some mysteriously extra-natural power, but because human beings come to possess a second nature. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Of course, trust, reliability, and the capability of one’s own principles to enable one to lead a life worth living, play an important if not central role in reality. God will reach to the very limits of the Universe to help us take the right road. Every God-given vision will become real as long as we will only have patience. It is the entirety of social bindings, obligations, and commitments, the norms and rules for life, the knowledge of relevant facts of the realities that is getting us to the point where God can trust us with the reality of the vision. God is getting us into the shape of the goal he has for us and this path is committed to the reality of life that has changed in a certain sense because of the inferences the believer has made in acting, in doing something in the World. If we seek for honour and every virtue, and long for noting more then the entire union of soul with God—then our love is noble. Yet, we are not to live with our feelings only, we have duties to perform, and to honour the many relations, in which we find ourselves. We pray about this reality with our soul turned toward our final definitive destiny, which gives meaning to the circumstances of our daily lives. Let us revive the joyous sentiment of the communion of saints and allow ourselves to be drawn by them to the goal of our existence: the face-to-face encounter with God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Law is made ridiculous when it is prostituted to the fashions of the hour. For example, “The Obscenity of today will be the propriety of tomorrow. It is impossible to estimate the social damage with has been done by the outworn taboos of obscenity. Today, if any harm is caused it is more likely to come from the news media and crudely exaggerated films of vice, presented by virtuous propagandists of social hygiene, which are to cause a painful shock to the virginal mind, just as the tender skin of the infant is injured by a hot bath of a temperature wholesomely stimulating to the adult. A revaluation of obscenity is very far from meaning a justification of the things that most reasonable people find ugly and unpleasant. However, it means a different attitude toward their suppression in practice. We know the results of the attitude which have prevailed in the past. We have all been victims of it. A premium is put on things that are dirty and worthless. It is our duty to protect the young from the awful dangers that threaten them in news, books, and cinemas. It would be wrong to believe that all the foul deeds in this World are caused by corruption, as if human baseness operated automatically with the insertion of a coin. “But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endures forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with one,” reports Moroni 7.47. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Humans are alienated from their World. They come from a dim past and go into an indefinite future. After considering or doing everything, we must have faith that eternal life with worth anything we might be required to endure to receive it. Life in a flux in which one seeks anchor. Existence is rich in mysterious paradoxes and antinomies, such as those of freedom coexisting with dependence, communication with solitude, good with evil, truth with falsehood, happiness with grief, life with death, and progress with destruction. Learning more about life, death and what happens after death should make quite an impact on how we live. That knowledge should make us pause and consider what use we are making of the precious gift of life and whether we are using it to prepare for the eternal life God offers us. Authentic Existenz is disclosed through reason (Vernunft), while intellect (Verstand) concerns itself wit the pragmatic management of existence. Out of the numerous species of life in the Universe, humans are the only species that contemplate the meaning, values, and goal of life. We are encouraged to find the answers to these questions by deep reflection upon human existence in order to create an authentic individual to avoid despair and possess a cognitive and elevating emotion. A defining characteristic of humanity is our finitude, which one experiences as the limits to our existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Authentic existence will push back our perceived limits on our humanity as far as possible and then accept them and bear them. Death is one of the most dramatic of these barriers. It is the source of anxiety, but it also elevates the spirit because it emphasizes the urgency of living authentically without postponement. Consciousness of the inevitable presence of death gives humans the courage and integrity: it gives people an authentic perspective on things that matter most. This awareness is not that of an object, but reflection on the subjective satiation of being. Thus existence is about reflection upon the horizon of life. By reflecting upon that course (the limitless horizon of reality) we ask about being itself, which always seems to recede from us, in the very manifestation of all the appearances we encounter. This being we call the encompassing. However, the encompassing is not the horizon of our knowledge at any particular moment. Rather, it is the source from which all new horizons emerge, without itself ever being visible even as a horizon. Guilt is another important boundary situation. Humans not only feel guilty but, because of their total freedom, is guilty. One always could have chosen otherwise. Ultimate guilt cannot be removed: it must be accepted and can thereby become constructive. Our guilt demonstrates the power that our freedom has over our destiny. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Constructive guilt is often a blessings from God. A collage of reflections on healthy feelings of guilt, or remorse for having said and done things we wish we had not or left things unsaid and undone we wish we had is why constructive guilt can be a blessing. Remorse is honest and it can catalyze creative transformation. It can assist once in standing up for justice and courage, for wisdom and love. Constructive guilt can help one overcome addictions to false gods, both inner and outer, so that we can become our better selves. Just as we can cultivate compassions, so we can cultivate courage. Sometimes it begins by remembering times when we did indeed stand up, in ways large or small, despite our inclination to the contrary. In many cases, our standing up is also the result of a feeling of constructive guilt: that is, the guilt that comes from recognizing we have harmed others and ourselves through sins of commission and omission, by our words and actions, or lack thereof. We live in a World where some people believe guilt has no place in a healthy spiritual life. A lot of people want guilt-free spirituality. However, if we do not reflect on our lives and the things we have done, the illusion of moral purity is just that, an illusion. Good guilt is grounded in empathy and respect. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
It is important to respect and be aware of the dignity, the intrinsic value of each and every human life, and non-human, on its own terms and for its own sake. Every living being with subjective aims, with a desire to find satisfaction, deserves respect and care. It is complemented by the idea that the mystery at the heart of the Universe, God, cares for us and is enriched by each living being in his or her own uniqueness. The differences make the whole richer: the whole of the Earth and the whole of God. God sees each soul as having a great value. Constructive guilt, then, is an enlightened activity. It is the sense of remorse that wells up in the individual’s psyche when one wakes up to the harm one has causes others, by commission or omission. Inwardly, this good guilt is a form of repentance, it is like saying that one is sorry and will never sin in that manner again. Repentance is a turning away from harmful ways and turning toward a more courageous and compassionate way of living. Repentance is the creative outcome of good guilt. It does not cling to the guilt, but is catalyzed by it to make a permanent change. The boundary of situationality is the fact that we are partially thrust and partially choose ourselves into a particular human condition. We can be inauthentic and inevitably fall into these situations or be authentic a make them happen. Other important boundaries are chance, suffering, and conflict. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Freedom is central to human beings; it leads to the overriding importance of choice, which becomes the problem of moral responsibility. Freedom is identified with choice, awareness, and selfhood. To choose means to be free, and human’s freedom is one’s being. I am only to the extent that I choose freely. To be is to be conscious that one is free. I do not choose life’s meanings, I do not define humans since I am limited by my historicity—my past choices bind me. However, within these confines my freedom is total. Freedom is experiences as both spontaneity and action; it is thus more important to act and be an homme engage than to observe and be a theoretician. To know and use my freedom is the raison detre of Existenzerhellung. Whenever I choose, I act, I am conscious of my actions, I am aware of the values involved, I take chances (since the consequences of my choice are often uncertain), and I realise that commitment to some values are unavoidable. However, it is important to toughen up. No one is looking for the eternal scum. Call them grim soulless mortals feeding off the downtrodden or the downtrodden feeing off each other. I always wonder—and never learn—whether or not the genuine Power Thugs ever stop to look at the violet evening sky or the overhead branches of an oak. Crack peddlers, executioners, teenage gangsters for a fatal fifteen minutes, the morgue’s never empty in the inner city, it is an eternal brew of calculated malice mixed with moral ignorance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
The presence of anguish adumbrates the sacred nature of my freedom. Since each choice carries with it the accumulated weight of previous decisions, the first choice overshadows all others. Consequently, guilt is the inevitable concomitant of my freedom. My original choice (Urentschluss) bears down on my subsequent existence and assumes the role of original sin. I am accountable for that first choice, so that to be responsible means to have accepted that guilt. In addition, I am ceaselessly confronted with the choice between sacrificing my integrity for the sake of a longer life or surrendering myself to my authentic existential possibilities. The inherent difficult of these choices leads to further guilt, which I may alleviate by imagining absolute standards and then approximating them. However, in my heart I know there are no fixed standards and that absolutism is therefore a renationalization: the boundary of guilt is indeed impenetrable. When I realise I may lose the promise of my possibilities, anguish also appears. However, that same anguish gives me the urgency and courage to choose with my full beings to implement the authentic potential of my Existenz. I reach this pedagogically expedient brink caused by anguish when I recognize the limits of scientific thought or when I am faced with critical decisions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Confronted with the abyss, I may accept a philosophic or religious orientation, I may act as if I did not recognize the existence of the abyss before which I stand, or I may adopt the nihilistic position that judges these problems to be meaningless. Subjectivity is essentially intersubjective. I am only to the extent that another Existenz reflects me. Regrettably, most people seem to notice that life is short only after much of it has slipped away. We must learn to number our days, keeping in mind that our time will pass and we must take care to make the most of it. Understanding the meaning of life, death, and what follows this physical life can give priceless comfort and hope in the face of death. It should also have a great impact on the kind of person one is, motiving individuals to live carefully and make wise choices. Knowing that the purpose of this life is to prepare us for our eternal life of power and ability beyond anything we can imagine should encourage us to turn to God so he can begin to fulfill his promise in us. True communication is the feeling that people have know each other since eternity. My own freedom is in essence the search for the loving strife of communication with another Existenz. In fact, the search cannot be accomplished in the abyss of absolute estrangement. Existential philosophy is self-disclosure through communication, even being itself, although it can be represented only in ciphers as symbols, is made transparent solely through authentic communication (Existenzursprung). #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Existential communication is neither friendship nor psychotherapy; it is not fusion, esteem, or unanimity; it is, strictly speaking, as with Existenz itself, ineffable. However, in the end, human existence is a failure. There is no escape from human’s limits (the limit of death in particular), yet humans are condemned to endless striving. In this dreadful paradox between finite existence and striving for infinity, humans finds the ultimate symbol of salvation, which is transcendence. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” reports Hebrews. Faith is an integral part of every Christian’s life. It is with faith that we overcome trials, it is with faith that we look ahead to our future, and it is with faith that we withstand our enemy. Following God’s plan for us is the surest way to find happiness and endure life’s challenges. Our lives will not end when we die. Our future lives are determined by the way we live now. There can be no repentance without recognition of wrong. Whether by provocation, introspection, or wrenching remembrance, denial must be dissolved. “The Spirit speaks the truth and lies not. Wherefore, it speaks of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls,” reports Jacob 4.13. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Recognition is a scared moment, often accompanied by the hot blush of shame. After recognition, real remorse floods the soul. This is a Godly sorrow, not merely the sorrow of the World, nor the sorrowing of the damned, when we can no longer take sin. “And wo is me because of their wickedness; for my heart has been filled with sorrow because of their wickedness, all my days; nevertheless, I know that I shall be lifted up at the last day,” reports Mormon 2.19. False remorse instead is like fondling our fallings. In ritual regret, we mourn our mistake but without mending them. There can be no real repentance without personal suffering and the passage of sufficient time for the needed cleansing and turning. This is much more then merely waiting until the feelings of remorse subside. Misery, like adversity, can have its special uses. No wonder chastening is often needed until the turning is really underway. Real remorse quickly brings forth beneficial indicator, products meet repentance. In times, these products become helpful and prosperous. One with a broken heart will not hold back. As confession lets the sickening sin empty out, then the Spirit which withdrew returns renew. Support from others is especially crucial. We must go to God as his child, because only a child gets his or her prayers answered. Prayer is a great work. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
The soul selects its own society, then shuts the door; on its divine majority obtrude no more. The grace of God helps us every day. However, God has not revealed everything that he has in mind for us, as we cannot yet fully conceive of what it means to be fully glorified. The immediate certainty of reality is present in our consciousness of God as it is present in our perception of objects. Through this belief we have the capacity of intuiting God. God reveals himself to us by grace and it draws us irresistibly, yet mysteriously towards him. This love for God is pure and noble. The purest love is the effect of the most perfect, internal beauty in union with the perfect internal beauty of the heart. The love of God calls forth noble and delightful feelings in ourselves, silences every desire, and renders us happy by its presence. It is a perfect union of the most beautiful in us with the miraculous nature of God. God’s grace removes a void in the heart, and is the bloom of our intellectual life and humanity, so love will render manifest the ideal of beauty and loveliness, and the kind of lid which a person expresses to others one comes in contact with. Such love excites us to virtuous and magnanimous actions, and many amiable qualities. It is the soul of fellowship that animates and redeems us, preparing that way for the reign of infinite Love. However, no one can return to the presence of God without divine grace. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
God strengthens us to do good works we could not do on our own. The Lord promised that if we humble ourselves before him and have faith in him, his grace will help us overcome all our personal weaknesses. Someday we will see clearly—just as clearly as God sees everything about us. It is worthy it to seek God’s Kingdom rather than sinful pleasures. God has assured us that his promise of eternal life is more than worth the effort, struggles, and disappointments we may face on our journey. Therefore, do not lose heart. Even when it seems we have given our all, our inner being is being renewed day by day. Everlasting life is, after all, a matter of faith. Faith is not just a warm, vague feeling. Faith is a frame of mind that is expressed by the kind of person one chooses to be, the actions that express what one believes. Just as we grown in our spiritual understanding of life, so we must grow in our spiritual understanding of grace. Scriptural statements about grace are clear and faith-promoting to those who understand the gospel. Grace is God’s love in action. It is his doing for what we cannot do ourselves. With God’s infinite wisdom, power, and love, God willingly condescends to extend that infinite wisdom, power, and love to bless and save his children. God’s grace consists in his love, mercy, and condescension toward his children. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
All things that exist are manifestations of the grace of God. The creation of the Earth, life itself, the plan of salvation, kingdoms of immortal glory hereafter, and the supreme gift of eternal life—all these things come by the grace of God. It is all part of the World’s concrete fulness. We are preparing ourselves for a World of pure experiences. Salvation means to be saved in the celestial kingdom. This context includes the collection of all our established truths as well as the exigencies of our affective and intellectual natures. Understanding should always know before the will decides. We must at least believe in our faith sufficiently to bestir ourselves to test it; without our active interest in and partisanship of belief the enterprise of God’s grace would come to a silent, ghostly end. The doctrine of the will to believe, with all its genial encouragement of risking belief, is balances. We cannot save ourselves by our own work. “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, least any person should boast,” reports Ephesians 2.8-9. Belief must continue to justify itself for it to be definitive, once and for all certification. We cannot save ourselves, we cannot resurrect ourselves. The resurrection comes by the grace of God; all people are resurrected, and in that sense, all are saved by grace alone. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
No human being can raise oneself unto eternal life; one cannot create a state of salvation and provide the means to obtain it. Humans cannot create the kingdom of God, nor can one save oneself in such a kingdom. If it were not for the grace of God, there would be no eternal life. There is a higher part of the Universe, which, though is beyond the immediate deliverance of the senses, is nevertheless effective in the World in a way that makes a noticeable difference. This assertion that the higher part makes concrete and local differences constitutes the famous piecemeal supernaturalism. This means that divine God—is not accessible in its entirety, but only piece by piece. This piecemeal ontology grants the varieties of religious experiences culminating in the experiences of being empowered and authorized from the divine to keep life worth living free from the abysses of the divided self. By means of making experiences to live a life worth living, each person has to access to a piece of the divine. Thinking and speaking about God implicitly is speaking and thinking about life worth living and capable actions worthy to be undertaken. Or, thinking and speaking about the value experiences of life implicitly is thinking and speaking about God. Drawing near God is a magnetic field of an empowering force of the divine influencing the individual in its energetic center. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
The higher part of this World is perhaps impossible to define given the present state of our knowledge. The subconscious must interpret the incursion of the divine into the self and moving the self in the direction of conversation. The magnetism is super-naturalistic proof that the divine is really working, and illustrating the higher part of the Universe. “Wherefore, redemption comes in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth,” reports 2 Nephi 2.4-6. Though salvation is free (fully available and not withheld from anyone because of time, location, or lineage), we must reconcile ourselves to God. “We labour diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do,” Reports 2 Nephi 25.23. Divine grace is needed by every soul because of our weaknesses and shortcomings. However, grace cannot suffice without total effort on the part of the recipient. Hence the explanation, “It is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” We are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all people, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the adversary,” reports 2 Nephi 2.27. We have the power to keep God’s commandments and must do so in order to be saved in his kingdom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Our personal, peculiar vision counts must in philosophy; not surprisingly, it is vision, not method, which is primary. Reality dictates the method by which it may be known. The gross encounter with the World is primary in the determination of what character the World will have for us. Theories of knowledge and method, existing at a high level of abstraction, are second to the ineluctable fact of experience breaking in upon us. Believing truly is the compulsion of fact or the unavoidability of a residual nonplastic pole in determination of what is true. It is here that we find truth’s authority and importance. Truth is what we must somehow take account of if we are not to perish. People cannot in the long run believe what is false not because truth extracts from the, a categorical imperative in its own behalf but because reality compels people in spite of themselves, and it is from this that the authority of truth is derived. Agreement with reality as a criterion of truth cannot be taken to indicate any fixed structural relation (such as copying relation). The truth relation is characterized not by stasis but by fluid resourcefulness of functional harmony. The character of the harmony itself may be anything that is compatible with survival. There is more than one way to survive as truth. We have the power to keep God’s commandments and must do so in order to be saved. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
God is willing to save us (which we cannot do for ourselves) if we are willing to do what we have to do, which is to receive Christ as our Saviour, repent of our sins, and continue in a life of righteousness and obedience to the end of our probation on Earth. However, God’s grace will not do for us what we can do for ourselves. Accountable people have the power to do what is right. Accountable people can endure to the end by living a life of righteousness and service. When we are willing to do all this, God’s grace cleanses us from our sins, gives us the gift of the Holy Ghost, and blesses us to enable us to dwell in peace and holiness in the celestial kingdom forever. Our future, though continuous with our past, is not determined by it. Just so the future World; although it grows out of the total past, it is not a mere result of the past. If I am creative—that is, if human freedom is effectual—then the World is creative, if for no other reason than that I am part of the World. What is constant in my behaviour is the result of habits which never entirely lose their flexibility. In the same way the constancies charted by the laws of science are only inveterate habits. After all of our efforts, after all of our struggles with sin and carnal aspects of the World, God, though his grace will bestow upon the faithful his divine nature. We have to keep the commandments and dwell with God. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Bad conscience is consciousness directed not unreflectingly forward but regretfully backward toward its own past, which is irremediable because time is irreversible. The problem posed is how to restore the flow of living that tends to be halted by retrospective brooding. How is consciousness freed and time unfrozen? A form not favoured detachment from one’s predicament is effected by irony, precisely because it intellectualizes and detemporalizes that predicament. Time alone, in its flow, frees us. Virtues of the interval, fidelity and justice—are inferior to the creative virtues of the instant, courage and charity. The nature of the self is discovered through illumination of existence (Existenzerhellung), which discloses the possibilities of humans, that is, the possibilities of an entity seeking understanding of self an of being. The real and valuable, that is, the authentic, in an individual is called Existenz. Existenze, the genuine self, is nonobjective and unique. It is infinitely open to new possibilities and inaccessible to traditional philosophical investigations. Although Existenz is that crucial aspect of human existence that cannot be conceptually delimited, it is nonetheless clearly experiences: It can be lived; it is illuminated through philosophical reflection; it can be communicated. Existenz is the experience of the total freedom that defines a person; it is the experience of the infinity possibilities for styles of life; it is, finally, the experience of loneliness that cries in the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
I have really hope you have found happiness, and if ever in need of something, like someone to love you, do not hesitate to call me. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears, but our intellect…must itself lack all those things which of its nature it understands. Since then it naturally understands all sensible and bodily things, it must be lacking in every bodily nature; just as the sense of sight, being able to know colour, lacks all colour. If sight itself had any particular colour, this colour would prevent it from seeing others colours, just as the tongue of a feverish person, being coated with bitter moisture, cannot taste anything sweet. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which not everything should be said. Maybe there is something divine in the bliss we feel. Love aims at transcending human existence, at connecting it with the eternal and infinite, and thereby at achieving the only aspect of immortality that is open to us as human beings. Because many people want both height and depth, spirituality strengthens and develops love and transforms it into a desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, others, and the Universe. When our eyes fall upon the beauty of the Earth, our soul is able to remember true love and reverences as it enjoys the expression of the divine—of temperance, justice, and knowledge of the absolute. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
The human being is a spiritual being at the core. We are the soul and have an existence beyond the physical. Our personality has, in fact, many sub-personalities or different, often conflicting, aspects. Some of these aspects can be very troublesome and sabotage our efforts at success and happiness. Magically, if we can observe some aspect of ourselves with detachment, then we can change that aspect or somewhat control it. The idea of aspects of personality and observing them is now part of our daily language (largely do the work of Psychosynthesis). We regularly hear people say, “There is a part of me that wants marry Walter, but the other part of me is says Sam Baldwin is my destiny.” Psychosynthesis work sets up a dialogue with the different aspects of self to try to find a way of balance and integration of these, often, conflicting, parts. People tend to be dominated by love, will, and intelligent activity. Love deals with matters of the heart, compassion, emotion, and sensitivity. The will is one’s drive, need to achieve, power to remove and overcome come obstacles. Intelligent activity is the capacity to actively plan, organize, construct mental schemes and models of things. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Psychosynthesis tries to identify the basic type and then attempt to bring in balance if necessary. For example, the love type may need to develop the will to be less vulnerable and more effective. The will type may need to develop emotional sensibility so as to learn to love and be loved. In the 1993 film, Sleepless in Seattle is a classic fairy tale which involves a love struck, beautiful, enchanted princess Anne Reed, and sleepless, pragmatic, handsome prince Sam Baldwin. After the death of his wife, Sam moved to Seattle with his son and is convinced he will never find love again, and he just focuses on his work in architecture and never sleeps. His son, Jonah calls a talk-radio program hosted by a psychiatrist and Johan tells the World how concerned he is about his dad, and then the father gets on the phone and talks about what love means to him. The World falls madly in love with him, and many women want to meet him, but he is not interested. Anne Reed hears the call, and although she is already engaged, she feels he is her destiny. Anne bases he love life on the 1957 film An Affair to Remember. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Psychosynthesis would have helped Anne balance her need for love, and would have helped Sam develop a less will driven and emotional aspect of his personality, which is a form of conscious balance and choice. It lets people know where they are lacking balance in their lives, and as you see it is not always a chemical imbalance, but a lack of development or personal understanding. However, fate brings the lovers together in hopes they can balance each other out. There are usually three levels of satisfaction: Happiness, joy, and bliss. Happiness is the goal for most people’s lives it is the arrangement of life events to bring about the desired end. Problem, it can be fleeting and may not last for long. Joy is the constant states of soul, and is the surest sign of the presence of the soul. Bliss is the condition of the spirit beyond all material limitations. The intellect here serves as a bridge. Because of the refinement of the matter composing it, the intellect is well adapted as a medium of consciousness—it is like a translucent substance through which the soul can shine. However, it is only in conjunction with a soul that the intellect and the whole psychophysical organism can have experiences. The soul can gain release through discriminatory knowledge (viveka), that is, by realizing the essential distinction between itself and nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Contemplative techniques induce a stilling and purification of the mind in which the essential nature of the soul is reflected clearly. Thereby the soul learns to recognize the repression of the sublime, which tend to lead to unhappy and neurotic states that are the result of failure to understand and admit the spiritual aspects in ourselves and others. We cannot base on life on films like Sleepless in Seattle because taking such a risk could turn out to be more like Sleeping with the Enemy. Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1991 film in which a character called Laura Burney lives in a beautiful home by the beach on Cape Cod with her husband, Martin, a charming, handsome and wealthy investment counselor. In reality, Martin is not charming at all. He is volatile and charged with energy. Martin is extremely obsessive and has control issues. Martin is also physically and emotionally abusive toward his wife, Laura, throughout their marriage. He makes her keep the house crystal clean, makes her pretend to be happy, tells her what she is allowed to wear, selects the music she can listen to, and even controls her social activities. Therefore, we need to teach our kids that life is not all about finding love, but more about finding a career that allows one to support oneself and becoming aware of the external World, since mental and physical entities evolve on a parallel and mutually adapted lines; thus, it opens the way to a correspondence theory of perception. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
According to the theory of perception, external happenings imprint themselves via the sense and the sensus communis, or mind organ (manas), on the intellect. These images are then illuminated by the soul. The mind is, so to say, a screen containing pictures of the outer World, and the soul lights these up. However, the soul itself cannot be illuminated and this perceived introspectively; therefore, its existence is known only by inference (or by a special state of consciousness). This is why religion and talk therapy have become some popular. Doctors realize a lot of people do not have chemical imbalances, but they are experiencing situations and conditions that they are not equipped to handle and need guidance of someone who can help them recognize there is nothing wrong with them, but they may be in a situation that is not conductive to their development. By medicating people who do not have chemical imbalances, we could be doing more damage than good because we are using a drug to control them and forcing them to adapt to situations, which may be unsafe. Conversely, some people do need medication because there is something wrong with their brain. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
While we are on the subject of mental health, there was this interesting study about a mental who was schizophrenic, he was a witness to a crime, and was arrested. He mother did not want him on medication because she believed it was dangerous for him. He was being assaulted in jail because he was not normal. The investigators forced him to take a shot of an antipsychotic that would last a month so he could clear his head up enough to see lucid and testify. After taking the medication, he hanged himself because he suffered from depression, as his friends, the voices in his head were gone, and he was lonely. Therefore, not everyone needs therapy and not everyone needs medication. As a society, we just have to understand there are different types of people and not everyone is typical and we cannot force them to adhere to our standards. Of course, we can never understand what life is like for some people, who have mental or physical impairments, or who have been sheltered and do not understand the World, because we have never been in their shoes. So, it is not our job to sit back and judge people who have learned to adapt as best to life as they can. Sometimes people are living unimaginable lives. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you,” reports Matthew 7.1-2. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
A layperson’s most natural way of defending belief in induction is that it has worked in the past. Concealed in this reply, of course, is the assumption that what has already worked will continue to do so. However, there is a lack of clarity about what counts as success in using the rule. Our society has much neglected the need for the development of the capacity for expression of love and beauty. Love is a basic soul quality. When unfolded, it enables the person to love and accept the people they encounter and find the good in all people. We have to identify our infinity of living Worlds in endless pace with the infinity of God. Knowledge therefore must begin not with sense experience but with a rational search for units of divine life. The atoms of the physical World are carried in the ether, which is the universal medium of the divine life and power. The conquest of the self, in which the intellect achieves mastery over the passions of humans and drives out the beast is were all the traditional virtues of moderation and self-control have place, and at this level we appear to have the choice between good and evil. However, when we use this freedom as reason dictates, we become aware that we are simply following the urge of our nature toward union with the divine; and the rational person burns with the heroic fury of an intellectual love of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
The mind senses the presence of God in the whole of his creation. Beauty is everywhere. We live in the beauty, but in reality everything is beautiful. We place immense trust in the analogical power of reason as a means of empathy with the universal of life of things. In mathematical reasoning, we possess the standard for God’s own knowledge, and whatever we can prove mathematically we know as surely and as perfectly as God does. Thus in the genuinely scientific investigation of nature we possess a revelation equal in authority, though not in importance, to the revelation concerning human’s moral duties and destiny that is contained in the Holy Scripture. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise person who built his or her house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. However, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish person who built his or her house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with great crash,” reports Matthew 7.24- 27. That is why God wants us to apply his ways in our lives now. What we can take with us for all eternity is our love and concern with one another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Time’s sublimest target is a soul I forgot. If we live in harmony with God’s eternal plan and if we have faith in his promises, then our future will shine. We have dreams and goals and that is good. If we work with all our heart to accomplish them, then the Lord will lead us where we cannot lead ourselves; God will make us into what we cannot make of ourselves. At all times, we have to accept God’s will, and become the men and women he is nurturing us to become. Take a guess as to how much you have changed over the last ten years on a scale of 1 to 10. Now, on the same scale, estimate how much one will change over the next decade. Consider how these ratings compare? Do you assess your past changes differently from how you predict your future ones? It turns out that most people do, and that the inconsistencies are glaring. Most people predicted significantly less change than they recalled experiencing, although the predictions improved slightly in older subjects. Many also reported that their personalities were starkly different ten years earlier, yet they foresaw little change ahead. People expect to change little in the future, despite changing a lot in the past. We create a sharp division between our present, fixed self, and our past, evolving selves. We always thing we have settled into ourselves, and we are always wrong. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
The most interesting finding is that at every age, we feel like we are done with our own evolution. It is like the present is what we have achieved after all those long years of changing. And now we are done. We should pray to feel the love of our Heavenly Father in our lives, so that we will know how to trust ourselves as he trusts us. Being faithful, at all times and in all places, will allow us to express our love and admiration and deep respect for God. This life is a wonderful moment of eternity. We are here with a glorious goal, that of preparing to meet God. Atonement is an infinite gift of love that opens the door to an eternal happiness. Atonement can be a flash of light which, to a person who has lost oneself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road that, whether it takes one straight home or not, certainly goes one’s way. Our task is to become members of the perfect City. The spirit progressively evolves from forms engaged in matter to forms that have been abstracted from it. Having then become intelligible in act, these forms there by attain the level of intellect in act, reaching the level of pure spiritual forms, those forms that, inasmuch as they exist for the Active Intellect, have not had to pass from power to act. We are inclined to conceive of the past as a story, as some plot that is heading inevitably in one direction. The problem is that thinking this way robs the past, present, and future of their mystery. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The old stories in our heads treats who we were ten years ago as evolving and who we are now as fully developed, and it loses sight of how wonderful and frightening both the present and future are in their potential. Our impulse to deny the unpredictability of the future favours neatening the past into a tidy narrative. Misconceptions and misunderstandings of this sort, stemming from aversion to uncertainty and our craving for order have occupied us throughout our lives. The desire to tie the local World of the everyday to the universal realm of religion, by uniting material reality and the spiritual has been a goal of sculpture from the earliest times. People want desperately to understand the World, connect with it and feel so significant and divineness so they feel grounded. In Egypt, for example, larger-than-life-size stone funerary figures were carved to bear the ka, or individual spirt, of the deceased into the eternity of the afterlife. The permanence of the stone was felt to guarantee the ka’s immortality. Ka embodies part of the human soul. The Ka came into existence at the precise moment a human was born and continued as the individual’s double throughout life and after death. The creator god Khnum, for example, was often depicted modeling both the physical body and the ka on his potter’s. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
After death, ka continued to live on and, like the deceased when he was alike, required food and drink. Food offerings, or depictions of them on tomb walls, sustained the ka, although he did not physically eat them, but absorbed their life-giving forces. For the Egyptians, the body was an essential element for the survival of the individual in the afterlife. This is why it was mummified and placed in an underground tomb for protection from grave robbers. Despite these precautions, it was not certain that the body could be preserved for ever. The Egyptians, therefore, sculpted statues of the deceased, ready to replace the body if it were to disappear. The statue could then support the deceased’s invisible elements, such as the ka. The Ka could be invested in the statue and continue to live on the food offerings made at the tomb, and to sustain the deceased in the afterlife. For the ancients Greeks, only the gods were immortal. What tied the World of the gods to the World of humanity was beauty itself, and the most beautiful thing of all was the perfectly proportioned, usually athletic male form. The essence of doctrines of personal survival (or immortality) is of great human interest as it asserts that after our deaths we shall continue to exist (forever). These logically unique expectations that we shall, to put it as noncommittally as possible, have experiences after death, that death will not be our terminus but the beginning of a new journey. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Many people want to have eternal life and believe that this is only possible through having faith in and worshiping God because souls, like everything else, are sustained by God and would be at once annihilated is he chose to withdraw his support. What is the work and glory of God? “To bring to pass immortality and eternal life of humans,” reports Moses 1.39. Bring to pass immortality is essentially a work of creation. God speaks, and World are formed. At the culmination of this work, humans are placed upon the Earth to learn, be tested, and gain experience. “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation,” reports St. John 5.28-29. The just as well as the unjust are given a priceless and incomprehensible gift; immortality. Because of the Saviour, we will live forever. We are immortal. “And, if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 14.7. Eternal life is the culmination of existence. Eventually, God’s plan will lead to death itself being destroyed in an awesome future almost beyond our comprehension! #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
God wants to give us an everlasting, eternal, immortal life. We are assured that it is more valuable than any physical treasure. God designed the Universe and devised his plan and our reward before he even started creating it. He is planning and preparing an infinitely more exciting and rewarding life for us in his divine family. God wants to give us an eternal life free from human limitations and disappointments, weaknesses and suffering. We must purge our hearts of evil and fill them with the desire to do good continually. Our Heavenly Father, with love that is scarcely within our power to comprehend, desires more than just our immortality. He desires each of us to partake of this greatest of all gifts: eternal life. That makes sense because with technology so advance on Earth, humans can eventually become immortal, but eternal life is something different. It is sharing in God’s reality and secrets being revealed to us. We will experience things that are beyond the pleasures of Earth without any pain or suffering. The life the Heavenly Father lives is eternal. Eternal life means being a god, being married, having spiritual child, and creating World. The highest division of the celestial kingdom is the home for such individuals. The Bible says we are pilgrims and strangers in a foreign land. This World is not our home; our citizenship is in Heaven. Everything that happens here on Earth is a preparation for the journey. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Our personality styles are not frozen as we might thing. Our faults tend to get worse before they can get better. If self-centered people do not change as they get older, the result is an increasing sense of vulnerability that transforms the normal losses and changes of aging into insults, outrages, and terrors. Through the ravages of dependence, many emerge transformed before they have no other choice. They reach the point where they are both appalled by themselves and afraid that they will be left along. Many people have undergone religious conversions, seeking clues as to the source of such deep transformations. There are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable affection. One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop—so we drop down, give up, and do not care any longer. Out of this emptiness, we derive a readiness for the arrival of a new self. After we come to know God and our spirituality develops, we begin to lighten up, becoming beautiful. Repentance is one of the first principles of he gospel and is essential to our temporal and eternal happiness. It is much more than acknowledging our wrongdoings. It is a change of mind and heart that gives us a fresh view about God, about ourselves and about the World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
When we turn away from sin and turn to God for forgiveness, this is a signed that we are being motivated by love for God and the sincere desire to obey his commandments. Repentance builds up a shell of protection. It is not enough to simply try to resist evil or empty our lives of sin. We must fill our lives with righteousness and engage in activities that bring spiritual power. We must immerse ourselves in the scriptures and pray daily for the Lord to give us strength beyond our own. Full obedience brings the complete power of the gospel into our lives, including increased strength to overcome our weaknesses. Our hope and happiness rest in knowing who we are, where we came from and where we can go. We are eternal beings, spirit children of an eternal God. Our lives can be compared to a three-act play: premortal life (before we came to Earth), mortal life (our time here on Earth), and postmortal life (where we go after life on Earth). God has had a plan for our lives since the beginning of the first act—a plan that, if followed, provides comfort and guidance now, as well as salvation an eternal happiness in our post moral life. God is the Farther of our spirits. We are created in his image. We have a divine nature and destiny. Our mortal life on Earth has purpose. Coming to Earth is part of God’s plan for us to gain a physical body and learn to choose between right and wrong. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Some know the measure of Celestial Forgiveness more than others truly do. It is well known that people who have been undergoing a strain will sometimes burst into laughter if the strain is suddenly removed. It has been argued that all laughter is of this type and that any joke will be found, in one way or another, to remove the restraints which society imposes on our natural impulses from social constraints, not of our intellects from too narrow a point of view, that is emphasized by relief theories. God may enter the picture indirectly by having endowed us with our moral faculty. And when it comes to picking out actual instances of virtue and vice, most agree about the value of benevolence and the wrongness of acts of violence against other persons. Moral sense is a determination of our minds to receive amiable or disagreeable ideas of actions. The amiable idea is our determination to be pleased, and it has two jobs. It is both our perception of the virtue of an action and our approval of it. It so happens that those actions which we discern to be virtuous are always benevolent actions, and we are necessarily determined to discern their virtue as soon as we observe them. There is a connection between virtue and benevolence and our necessary perception of the virtuousness of benevolence to arrangements superintended by God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Like sight, the moral sense is universal in humankind. However, just as some people are born visually impaired, and others have imperfections in their sight, some people have no moral sense at all and others have defective moral senses. The God who can sanctify our sufferings will purify us and will forgive our last cries. “I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, one will never see death,” reports John 9.51. The theory of moral sense rests in understanding how we know that benevolent actions are virtuous: they are virtuous because they please. We must also carefully observe that they please irrespective of any advantage they may have to ourselves. Most people do not like being different nor standing out. Of course, on occasion, we have the outgoing type like Paris Hilton who like attention, but generally most people do not want to be noticed. However, it is not as bad as one may think. In fact, when someone lives life as someone who is different, people tend to learn right away that it has its cool moments. These individuals get to meet amazing people and get in on special opportunities. Not surprisingly, these results led to heated and nationalistic debate over whether one group was superior to another. Some people actual become frustrated because they have never experienced that feeling even though they have prayed for long periods of time. #RandolpHarris 2 of 8
Surely, God does speak from Heaven, but he manifests, confirms, or gives direction in a variety of ways. It is very important to teach people that they have to learn to hear the Spirit of God in the way he speaks to them. Our people need all the strength and all the faith we can give them while they are around us. And they will also need a greater strength which comes of a higher power. Receiving guidance and direction from our Heavenly Father through the Holy Ghost is a great blessing in our lives. As we learn how to receive and pay attention to these promptings, feelings, and instructions, we will be able to gain personal testimonies that will give of the strength in the future. The Holy Ghost can be our constant companion, and we will be able to hear him more fully. Above all, prioritizing our health in life’s transitions means not being afraid to ask for help when we need it. Humans are social beings by nature, so we are not built to withstand every sudden event in life without the support of others. We cannot avoid change, but we live a life of resilience. We can embrace transition and see challenges as opportunities to thrive. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
When it comes to dealing with the people we care for, we must be able to look deeply enough at them to see more than their surface presentation. We have to recognize their vulnerability, wounds, uncertainty, and other subtle signs. Sometimes their facial expression and energy will not match their word and we have to sense what they might not be saying. Empathy and creativity spring from the same source: diversity. Empathy, after all, is a fundamentally creative act by which we connect previously unimagined lives to our own. The path to embracing other people and other cultures has to traverse the imagination. That is why studies have shown that a high need for closure hurts creativity. And it is why reading novels and watching television and movies—which puts us in other people’s shoes—can both lowers our need for closure and make us more empathetic. Spending time among diverse social groups has the same effect. Since people who naturally crave neatness tend to get nervous around unfamiliar others, good intergroup experiences help those with a high need for closure feel less anxious. In fact, intergroup experiences benefit these people the most. Cultivating ambiguity helps us keep an open mind and empathize with different viewpoints and how contradictions are a kind of fuel for human imagination. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
In creativity, we see things that define artistic genius more and more in terms of originality, the creation of things never before seen. Creativity is a fifth reason to contradictory, ambiguous experiences. Along with assimilation, accommodation, abstraction, affirmation and assembly. When we assemble, we take the uncertainties in our lives and create something out of them. It is no accident that periods of artistic production—in Hellenistic Greece or in New York City in the 1970s—occurs during eras of social upheaval. Art can be cathartic because the accurate depiction of irresolvable conflicts is itself a form of soothing truth-telling. When the ambiguity wins, creative often results. The Baroque style of art surfaced around 1600 and arose out of the challenge of Protestantism, which had grown steadily more powerful ever since Martin Luther’s first protects in 1517. The Vatican called together as many talents as it could muster with the clear intention of turning Rome into the most magnificent city in the World for the greater glory of God and the Church. At the heart of this effort was an ambitious building program. In 1603, Carlo Maderno was assigned the task of adding an enormous nave to Michelangelo’s central plan for St. Peter’s, converting it back into a giant basilica. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
It is supposed to express the omnipotence of God. Completed in 1615, the scale of the new basilica was even more dramatically emphasized when Gianlorenzo Bernini added a monumental oval piazza surrounded by colonnades to the front of the church. Bernini conceived of his colonnade as an architectural embrace, as if the church were reaching out its arms to gather the flock. The wings that connect the façade to the semicircular colonnade tend to diminish the horizontality of the façade and emphasize the vertical thrust of Michelangelo’s dome. The State Capitol Castle in Sacramento, California USA is designed similarly to St. Peter’s giant basilica and is one of the most significant architectural features in California and much of the World. These extravagant designs are very popular. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane was another struct built in Rome from 1665-1667, and was built with great pride. Nothing similar can be found anywhere in the World. The beauty of these architectural features makes clear that the virtues of the classical were continually upheld. One of the defining characteristics of the Baroque is its insistence on bringing together various media to achieve the most theatrical effects. Allowing the great, full life of God to invade us, penetrating every part. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Our part is to walk in the light and obey all God reveals to us. Bernini’s Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria is perhaps the most highly developed of the dynamic and theatrical spaces. The altarpiece depicts the ecstasy of St. Theresa. St. Theresa, a nun whose conversion took place after the death of her father, experienced visions, heard voices, and felt a persistent and piercing pain in her side. This was caused, she believed, by the flaming arrow of Divine Love, shot into her by an angel: “The pain was so great I screamed aloud, but at the same time I felt such infinite sweetness that I wished the pain to last forever. It was the sweetest caressing of the soul by God,” she wrote. The paradoxical nature of St. Theresa’s feelings is typical of the complexity of Baroque sentiment. Bernini fuses the angel’s joy and St. Theresa’s anguished joy. Even more of the Baroque sensibility is Bernini’s use of every device available to him to dramatize the scene. The sculpture of St. Theresa is illuminated by a hidden window above, so that the figures seem to glow in a magical white light. Gilded bronze rays of Heavenly light descend upon the scene as if from the burst of light painted high on the frescoed ceiling of the vault. To the left and right of the chapel are theater boxes containing marble spectators, like ourselves witnesses to this highly charged, operatic moment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Caring for the soul means respecting its emotions and fantasies and feeding it with things that enhance our spiritual nature. That is the reason why art is meant to be so powerful in the first place. Above all, it is supposed to help us acknowledge our dependence on the Lord. We have to let him help and heal us. Faith, the desire to believe, to chance, can be as a seed that will grow, sprout, and bear fruit. All can be well again. Rembrant van Rijn, the greatest master of light and dark of the age manipulated light across a full range of tones, changing its intensity and modulating its brilliance, so that one could feel in every beam and shadow a different emotional content in his Resurrection of Christ, circa 1635-1639. He contrasts the chaotic World of the Roman soldiers, sent reeling into a darkness symbolic of their own inexperience by the angel pulling open the lid of Christ’s sepulcher, with the quiet calm of Christ himself as he rises in a light symbolic of true knowledge. Light becomes, in Rembrant’s hands, an index to the psychological meaning of his subjects, often hiding as much as it reveals, endowing them with a sense of mystery even as it reveals their own souls. The idea of these works of art is blessed are they who are faithful and endure for they shall inherit eternal life. “Thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a moment,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.7. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Now, I will let you in on a little secret. Nothing seen telepathically is ever one tenth as vivid as what an immortal being sees with his or her own eyes. Telepathy is cool, no doubt about it, but the vision of an immortal is almost intolerably vivid. If asked to, a believer in God might justify his or her beliefs in several ways. One might offer an a priori argument—for instance, the Ontological Argument; one might offer a posteriori arguments, from the marvels of creation to a designing Mind; one might appeal to revelation and cite the miracles recorded in Scripture; one might say that, without an all-powerful Providence, human choices and endeavours are pointless; one might appeal to anthropology to show that it was unnatural for people to live without religion and attempt to find some converging direction in the development of particular faiths. The existence of God is a matter of fact. It cannot be proved by a priori, but only from experience by an argument from effect to cause. However, we have no experience of origins of the Worlds. We must therefore rely on analogy, comparing the World to things of whose origin we have experience. However, the World is as like an animal or vegetable as it is like a machine. So it arose as likely from insemination as from design. Could mortal lip divine the undeveloped freight of a delivered syllable, it would crumble with weight. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Moreover, if God is known only as the cause of the World, we can know nothing of hum expect that he is such as to create the World we find. We can draw no inferences from his existence except such as are already warranted by our knowledge of the World. He is an empty hypothesis. However, when humans look to God with their flawless eyes, their fierce intellect understands on some complete mystical level, quite truly beyond words, that a miracle must be a breach of a law of nature, a known miracle must be a breach of a known law. However, a known law of nature by definition carries the highest possible degree of probability, derived from extensive and uniform experience. A miracle can therefore only be accepted if the falsity of the testimony for it would be an even greater miracle, that is, a more glaring improbability than the miracle first alleged. There is no denial that this could ever happen. Laws of nature do have to be amended in the light of startling new experiments. We cannot deny that a miracle can ever be proved as a justifiable foundation for a system or religion. Yet, the record of known fabrications of marvels of this sort is so black that it is always more probable that a story of a miracle imputed to the action of a god has been made up than that it happened. Moreover, if not all religions are true and if all religions produce miracles, most miracles must be deceptions. All religions do produce miracles. There is, therefore, always a high probability that any one of the is a deception. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
Contracts and promises are not the foundation of human cooperation, but a special case of it. The use of such agreements to regulate the conjunction of forces, partition of tasks, and distributions of products is a lesson people learn in the natural society of the family and is a biological necessity for the survival and prevalence of the human species. Governments, laws, and institutions are useful to human society. Their justification is in their utility, which depends largely on the habitual trust people have in one another’s allegiance to them. Consequently, an established trusted government should never be overthrown on grounds of religion or hereditary claims to thrones or in other to experiment with utopian theories. Nor does the authority of the governments rest on a contract. Rather the authority of both governments and contracts rests on their utility (of the Original Contract). This only proves that property, promises, governments, laws, rules of games, and the like are useful devices, which no person is obliged to respect unless others do likewise. These, or the respect for them, is equated with justice. The idea of justice seems to be somehow connected with the fact that humankind lives by cooperation, by sharing tasks and exchanging products. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
There is no natural motive which always points to the just act. Justice does not necessarily conform to either the agent’s private interest, one personal friendships, or the public interest. It must therefore arise from some artifice whose merits we learn. The person who, or system which, allocates to one person fewer of the tasks or more of the products than it does to another—unless for some reason equally valid for and acceptable to all—is unjust, or as we more usually say, unfair. The willingness to be fair, the lack of which makes a person unit to participate in any form of cooperation and distribution, whether instinctive or devised, is no more an artificial virtue than courage. And being essentially concerned with distribution, not with aggregation, it cannot be justified by its utility, unless equality, as well as happiness, be admitted as an ultimate end. All human symptoms and problems, when they are taken to their depth and realized in a soulful way, find their ultimate solution in a religious sensibility. We always expect love to be healing and whole, and then are astonished to find that it can create hollow gaps and empty failures. God is the originator of our actions. (All events with causes trace their causal ancestry to him, and our actions have causes.) However, sublime mysteries are beyond the reach of unassisted reason and, therefore, of philosophy. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because you your evil behaviour,” reports Colossians 1.21. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Some races have no religion. In all known cases the earliest religions were polytheistic and idolatrous, with no notion whatever of an intelligent cause of the whole frame of nature. They were truly atheistic as would be the beliefs of a contemporary person who acknowledged elves and fairies but denied the existence of God. The polytheistic systems were not primitive systems of science. Primitive humans were not interested in accounting for the regular phenomena of nature; they took the familiar for granted, however marvelous. It was the bewildering succession of floods and droughts, sickness and health, calm and tempest, victory and defeat, birth and death, that alternately terrified and comforted, nourished and destroyed them; it was these contrary and diverse events which, by a natural tendency to see external things in one’s own likeness, one ascribed to diverse and warring invisible persons, amenable to flattery and bribes and even to threats and force of arms. It short, it was not God as the author of nature but God as a particular providence for which primitive religions were an origin and prototype. The only original instincts involved were the fear of death and pain and the desire for security and pleasure, together with a tendency to personify inanimate things. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Catastrophism is the belief that the Earth’s geological features are the result of sudden, Worldwide cataclysmic events like the Noah flood. Catastrophism suggested that a series or regional disasters had destroyed most or all of the plant and animal life in various places. These areas were then restocked with new, similar species that migrated in from unaffected regions. Moreover, the fact that forces as wind, water erosion, local flooding, frost, the decomposition of vegetable matter, volcanoes, earthquakes, and glacial movements have all contributed in the past to produce the geological landscape that exists in the present, some are now under the impression that these processes are now humanmade and not due to natural nature. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, is a scientific endeavour aimed at studying the properties and behaviour of the ionosphere. The HAARP has generated quite a bit of controversy overs it is alleged weather control capabilities. Some have speculated that facilities like HAARP are to blame for a number of weather-related disasters. A large number of people tend to believe that HAARP is the only facility of its kind. The program operates at a major sub-arctic facility, called the HAARP Research Station, on Air Force owned site near Gakona, Alaska USA. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
The most prominent instrument at the HAARP Station is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power radio frequency transmitter facility operating in the high frequency (HF) band. The IRI is used to temporarily to excite a limited area of the Ionosphere. The HAARP is facility, however, it not the only facility of its kind. There are quite a number of other ionospheric research facilities around the World such as the Mu Radar in Japan, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, Sura in central Russian, and EISCAT in Tromso, North Norway. However, because a large number of people tend to believe that HARRP is the only facility of its kind, many people jump to conclusions that the Untied States of America is to blame when an incident arises that could possibly be caused by facilities like HARRP. Nonetheless, weather modification is possible by altering upper atmosphere wind patterns or altering solar absorption patterns by constructing one or more plumes of atmospheric particles which will act as a lens or focusing device. If the ionosphere is greatly disturbed, the atmospheric conditions below are subsequently disturbed. The powerful radio waves of the HARRP can lift areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam and heating those areas of the ionosphere. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto Earth and penetrate everything, living and dead. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Due to the fact that disruptions in the ionosphere have the ability to alter atmospheric conditions, many researchers who study the science of the HARRP (the most powerful of its kind in the World) have come forward with concerns that the ionospheric related disruptions have had a role to play in weather related disasters. As a result, some consider the HAARP to be a new breed of weapon with the capability to alter jet stream routes along weather patterns. It does not stop there, some philosophers believe that Puerto Rico used the Arecibo Observatory to disrupt the ionosphere to create hurricane Maria, then did not use the $50 billion in federal assistance, and left the millions of gallons of bottle water on the runway to make President Trump look bad and blame him for a slow response. However, considering the democrats are trying to use some 36-year-old gossip to get Judge Brett Kavanugh banned from the supreme court, anything is possible when it comes to politics. Much like the primitive humans, many modern humans do not seem to believe in God, rules of nature, or the justice systems. Myths and gossips and superstitions are their gods. There are actually accurate reports that many of the geological scientist do not even speak to each other to share data on climate change, rain fall, and weather events. It may not be intentional, but they do not have a coordinated system. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
It is sincerely difficult to distinguish true or philosophical religion from superstition. However, the Universe is due to something remotely analogous to a designing mind. Still, the moral attributes of God, providence, immortality, and the Whole Christian story from the Fall to the Day of Judgment are things we should consider when it comes to life. Knowledge of causes and effects, whether purely qualitative or refined by measurement and calculations, only affects our actions if the objects so connected are some interest to us. Nothing can make them of interest to us but the pleasure and pain we expect from them. It is not the reasoning concerning causes and effects which moves us to action, but the desire of the pleasures and fear of the pains which we foresee by this reasoning. “For he will fulfill all his promises which he shall make unto you, for he has fulfilled his promises which he has made unto our fathers,” reports Alma 37.13,16-17. The fulfillment of God’s promises are always bonded to obedience to the laws attached to them. However, these promises do not ensure that everything that happens in our lives will be in accordance with our expectation and desires. Rather, God’s promises guarantee that what happens to us will be in accordance to his will. Sometimes unexpected trials will present themselves that we must overcome; sometimes promised blessings will be long delayed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
However, know that the time will come when we will know that these trials and these delays were for our good and our eternal progression. The greatest thing we can desire in life is to align our will to the will of the Lord—to accept his agenda for our lives. God knows everything from the beginning, has a perspective that we do not have, and love us with an infinite love. When I was young and decided to prepare of the entrance exam to the best business schools in France, this preparation was very challenging and required personal work every day. Unfortunately, an unexpected disaster happened and I was not able to make it to French Consulate in San Francisco, California USA. France is the World’s sixth-largest economy, and the third largest in Europe. To get an Executive Master of Business Administration from HEC Paris would have been amazing. I was totally distraught. How could the Lord have abandoned me when I had preserved in my faithfulness? However, I was able to stay in California and connect with the church and learn all these wonderful things about God. I was assured that it is best this way so that when it is my time to pass away, I would not do so as a lost soul, financially rich, but poor spiritually. I thanked the Lord for his goodness. It took me several years to understand the miraculous blessings that my failure to get into the college of my dreams has been. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
The Lord was guiding my steps with the foreknowledge of the mission he wants me to accomplish in my life. After we have done all in our power, and things do not workout the way we prayed for them to, we must be ready to accept that our Father in Heaven has another plan. The promises of the Lord assure us of our final destination. The itinerary for each of us will vary according to the foreknowledge of God. Our circumstances may change, unexpected events may occur, challenges may arise, but the promises of God to us are assured through our faithfulness. Faith in its full and pure form requires an unshakable assurance and absolutely confidence that God will hear our please and grant our petitions’ in his own due time. Believing that, we too can stand fast in the faith today and tomorrow. Sometimes God closes doors because something worse than we have experienced could happen on the other side. It matters not where we live nor what our individual circumstances may be. Each day our righteous living can demonstrate faith that sees beyond mortal heartaches, disappointments, and unfulfilled promises. It is a wonderful thing to possess a faith that enables us to look forward to that day when all that was promised the Saints will be given. “And as sure as the Lord lives, so sure as many as believed, or as many as were brought to the knowledge of the truth, through the preaching of Ammon and his brethren, according to the spirit of revelation and of prophecy, and the power of God working miracles in them,” Alma 23.6. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
It was easy enough for me to scan their minds and get a picture of it. The discovery of documentary falsifications and false attributions, the need to discover tests and revive them in authentic form by studying and collating codices, and the attempt to understand the personalities of the literary people and the philosophers of the past in their own Worlds are all indications of humanism’s fundamental concern for historicity. Doubtless in its results it realised the task of historical restoration only partially and imperfectly, but the task is never exhausted and is repeatedly proposed to historiographic endeavour. The humanists were aware of the value of this task, and they initiated it and insured its continuance by leaving it as a legacy to modern culture. Humanism does not have an antireligious or anti-Christian character. Its interest in defending the value and freedom of a person draws it into discussing the traditional problems of God and providence and of the soul, its immortality, and its freedom—discussions that were frequently concluded in much the same form as that accepted by the medieval tradition. However, in the context of humanism these discussions assume a new significance because they had the purpose of understanding and justifying the capacity for initiative of humans in the World. This capacity was defended even in the religious sphere, for the religious discussions of the humanists had two principal themes: the civil function of religion and religious tolerance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Among these mortals were Erin, the versatile Black lady, a stunner when it comes to looks, and Jamerson’s one-time lover; and their little son Ashton, of course, four years old and running up and down the stairs just for fun, his feet in white tennis shoes (even after Labour Day, you know what that indicates), a little too big for his body; and Professor Gwen, Erin’s grandmother, a regal Black lady with white hair in a bun, shaking her head, talking to nobody, in the kitchen cooking up supper for God knows who. Hovering about the back of the property were the Shed Men, Justin and Matthias, sitting in an open lighted portion of the shed, reading the Weekly World News and howling with laughter at it, while the television was blaring Football. There was a giant limousine in front of the house and one in the back. As for the Big House, by 
Interior? What Americans call giant rooms. Dustless, manicured. Full of mantel clocks, mirrors, portraits and Persian rugs, and the inevitable mélange of nineteenth-century mahogany furniture that people mix with new reproductions of classic Hepplewhite and Louis XIV styles to achieve the look they call Traditional or antique. Eh? And all pervaded by the inevitable drone of massive air-conditioning, which not only cooled the air magically but provided the Privacy of Sound, which has so transformed the South in this day and age. This all allowed the family to experience the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. After spending nearly twenty-five years in the United States Army and making fifteen moves; they completed the build and move into their forever home, built by 
My mind continued to wander. I reflected on the immensity of the Universe that presented itself before my eyes. The Universe is immense and infinite, yet, at the same time, each of us has unique worth, glorious and infinite in the eyes of our Creator. Our personal worth is of immeasurable importance to our Heavenly Fathers. “I have seen evil under the Sun, and it weighs heavily on people: God gives a person wealth, possessions and honour, so that one lacks nothing one’s heart desires, but God does not enable one to enjoy them, and a stranger enjoys them instead. This is meaningless, a grievous evil. A one may have a hundred children and live many years; yet no matter how long one lives, if one cannot enjoy one’s prosperity and does not receive proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better of than he. It comes without meaning, it departs in darkness, and in darkness its name is shrouded. Though it never saw the Sun or knew anything, it has more rest than does that man—even if he lives a thousand years twice over but fails to enjoy his prosperity. So not all go to the same place?” reports Ecclesiastes 6.1-6. Do you really want to steal another person’s soul out of the currents of human destiny? We are known and remembered by the most majestic, powerful, and glorious Being in the Universe! We are loved by the King of infinite space and everlasting time. Therefore, enjoy your time on this Earth and what God has blessed you with. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
The discovery of historical perspective is, with respect to time, what the discovery of optic perspective in Renaissance painting was with respect to space: the capacity to realize the distance of the objects from each other and from the viewer and therefore the capacity to understand them in their actual place and time and in their distinction from each other—in their individuality. In Europe, toward the end of the thirteenth century, a new kind of art began to appear, at first in the South, and somewhat later in the North. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, this new era, marked by a revival of interest in arts and sciences that had been lost since antiquity, was firmly established. We have come to call this revival the Renaissance, meaning rebirth. This was the beginnings of the spirit that would develop into the Renaissance sensibility. These figures are no longer archetypical and formulaic representations; they are almost real people, displaying real emotions. The Renaissance is, perhaps most of all, the era of the individual. As early as the 1330s, it was conceived of a new Humanism, a philosophy that emphasized the unique value of each person. There is a contemplation of beauty, which transforms its love into a purely spiritual love of God. The imagery and architecture of this time is a source of inspiration and love. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
The significance of human personality as an original and autonomous center organises the various aspects of life like they were in the ancient times. Perspective in this sense represents innocence itself, a divine beauty free of any hint of the physical and the sensual. It is this form of beauty that the soul, aspiring to salvation, is expected to contemplate. The importance that the modern World attaches to human personality is the consequence of an attitude made possible by Renaissance humanism. The civil function of religion is to recognize on the basis of the correspondence between the Heavenly and Earthly city. The Heavenly city is the norm or the ideal of human’s civil life; but precisely because it is such, its recognition means the commitment of men and of men and women to realise, as much as possible, its characteristics in the Earthly city. In the Bible is not only the proclamation of superterrestrial happiness, but also of Earthly happiness. Religion is the confidence in the value of human’s work, in the success of this work, and in the reward that humans will find in the future life. The fundamental function of religion is to support humans in the work of civil life, in political work and activity. The goals of truth and beauty of genius have to also rely on subjective and personal intuition to possess this divine frenzy of the creative act—to transcend the conditions of everyday life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
Spirituality can sometimes exceed reality, as it is a window, not upon nature, but upon divine inspiration itself. Archetypes are supposed to represent the four domains of knowledge—Theology, Law, Poetry, and Philosophy. Church is supposed to be a gathering of the greatest philosophers and scientists of the modern World. The concept of tolerance which has come to be affirmed in the modern World implies the possibility of peaceful coexistence between the various religious confessions which remain different from each other and are not reducible to a single confession. For humanists, additionally, the attitude of tolerance derives from their conviction of the fundamental unity of all the religious beliefs of humankind and therefore of the possibility of a universal religious peace. Moreover, religious peace also implies the essential identity between philosophy and religion. Christianity simply elaborates the mysterious glow of God that infuses our soul with sensuousness of light and colour and the pleasures of the sense, and brings about to fulfillment the wisdom that ancient philosophy has elaborated, because reason, which has supported and guided this philosophy, is the same which became incarnate in the Word (of God). The return to origins would be a return to the religious peace of the happy ancestors of the human race and the end of theological hatred and intolerance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
The broadening of our existence and of our knowledge asserts our sense of importance of the individual, especially the individual of genius and talent. The meaning is to evoke our own spirituality, presenting the Godlike aspects of our nature, which are discovered in the knowledge of the manifold intellectual, sentient, and moral human powers. The World is supposed to be like it was in the Hellenic times and return to unity of diverse forces, a cultural unity which millennial times somewhat lacks. We are in a search for the order and rhythms of nature. The condition of the soul which gives rise to the necessity of history (in the truest and highest sense of the word) is clearly manifested in the preserved human experience in the mind, which is why so many adults reflect on their childhood. A time when they were happy and protected and essentially worshipped by the family as a deity when they are first born into the World. Nonetheless, wherever we are, whatever our circumstances may be, we are not forgotten. No matter how dark our days may seem, no matter how insignificant we may feel, no matter how overshadowed we may be, our Heavenly Father has not forgotten us. In fact, God loves us with an infinite love. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Knowing that God knows us and loves us personally is like a light that illuminates our life and gives it meaning. The eternal original ideas of everything conceivable provides existence and value, beauty of all physical and spiritual forms, the truth in the unalterable working of every force according to its indwelling law, the justice in the inexorable course of events which are eternally regulated and meted their just reward. How can we help others know that their Heavenly Father loves them? Is that not the essential question? How can we know that God loves us? Often the feeling we have of our personal wort is based on the love and interest we receive from those around us. Yet this love is sometimes lacking. The love of people is often imperfect, incomplete, or selfish. The goal of life is the realization of the love of God, representing itself through humanity from all sides and in all forms in which the finite forms can be connected with the infinite. The task of us as human beings, therefore, is to represent this process of the love of God actualized in reality. The love of God is the most radiant sign and certain proof that humans are not intrinsically separate from the Lord. It implies a deep-rooted subjective view of the World, a spiritual attitude, that controls the formation of concepts. The love of God is perfect, complete, and selfless. Heavenly Fathers loves us and understands our needs and concerns. God is anxious to bless us. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
If we could see ourselves as God sees us, imagine what it would mean to us. What if we looked at ourselves with the same benevolence, love, and confidence that God does? Imagine the impact it would have on our lives to understand the eternal potential as God understands it. It is evident that the languages are not really means of representing the truth that has already been ascertained, but far more, means of discovering a truth not previously known. Their diversity is not a diversity of sounds, but of World outlook. If we could view ourselves through God’s eyes, what influence would that have on our lives? I promise you that God will send us tangible signs of his existence and his love for us. I felt a little like Socrates must have felt with all those gorgeous Greek young men coming to him for advice, that is, until somebody showed up with the Burning Hemlock (a burning stake usually a cross that is as tall as a house). Well, it is a mind reader, magnet for spirits and ghosts and a possessor of other occult talents. This is mystifying me, unless they are deliberately playing this one out solely for reasons that will soon become clear. He could have lived among them for quite a while. And as I have already explained, they thought I was human too, though I probably could not count on that for too long. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Skeptical arguments are logically unanswerable but powerless against the natural sentiments and convictions that govern our judgment in daily life. Witches detect all kinds of small thing about other creatures. It has to do with the lazy and constant exercise of their power. I as sensed that at the funeral Mass, just breathing the same air as Dr. Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach and his wife Berta Low. However, fortunately, they were distracted by a multitude of other stimuli, so I had not had to bolt. We shall never know what the new scene of though is. But we can identify the main currents in contemporary thought with which we are concerned with. We can, therefore, safely tease and use an antidote to dogmatism and over certainty of every kind. All our ideas are derived from impressions of sense or inner feeling. That is, we cannot even conceive of things different in kind from everything in our experience. A matter of fact can never be proved by reasoning a priori. It must be discovered in, or inferred from, experience. From these two propositions it follows that metaphysical systems telling us of the existence of God, the origin of the World, and other matters transcending human experience. Become who you are. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
The mind is pictured as an immaterial thing with the powers of receiving representations of things in the World which it inhabits, of reasoning about these representations, and of making decisions that are somehow translated into physical action by the body to which the mine is temporarily attached. These representations are usually called ideas. Art is a great representation, which makes good use of the mind’s power. In art, figures may be distorted or elongated to depict a feeling, as in Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time (The Exposure of Luxury), circa 1546, located in the National Gallery, London. The colours are often bright and clashing. At the upper right of Bronzino’s painting, Time, and, at the upper left, Truth, part a curtain to revel the shallow space in which Venus is fondled by her son Cupid. Folly is about to shower the pair in rose petals. Envy tears her hair out at center left. The Mannerist distortion of space is especially evident in the distance and separating Cupid’s shoulder and head. Shortly after the Spanish conquest of separatist States within Spain in 1519 and death of Raphael in 1520, many Italian painters embarked on a stylistic course that was highly individualistic and mannered, or consciously artificial. The call word of this Mannerist style was “invention,” and the technical and imaginative virtuosity of the artist become a paramount importance. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
Each Mannerist artist may, therefore, be identified by one’s own “signature” style. Where the art of the High Renaissance sought to create a feeling of balance and proportion, quite the opposite is the goal of Mannerist art. The Christian Platonist, disbelieving in the prenatal existence of the soul, substituted for the inborn memories of the archetypes, inborn representations of them, which they called “innate ideas.” It was from the possession of and by reflection on these innate ideas that we came by the knowledge of such necessary truths of metaphysics, mathematics, and morals as our Maker had thought it necessary for us to have and which could not be discovered from experience. In the late work of Michelangelo, for example, particularly the great fresco of The Last Judgment on the alter wall of the Sistine Chapel, executed in the years 1534-1541, we find figures of grotesque proportion arranged in an almost chaotic, certainly athletic swirl of line. Mannerist painters represented space in unpredictable and ambiguous ways, so that bodies sometimes seem to fall out of nowhere into the frame of the painting, as in Tintoretto’s The Miracle of the Slave. The drama of Tintoretto’s painting is heightened by the descent of the vastly foreshortened St. Mark, who hurtles in from above to save the slave from his executioner. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
The rising spiral line created by the three central figures—the slave, the executioner, holding up his shattered instruments of torture, and St. Mark—is characteristic of Mannerism, but the theatricality of the scene, heightened by its dramatic contrast of light and dark, anticipates the Baroque style, which soon followed. To examine and understand an idea, first reduce it to its simple constituent ideas. Then, if any one of these is still obscure, produce the impression from which it is derived. That means in your mind, arrange for the actual occurrence of the impression. It may not be what they artist intended to convey, but interpretation is subjective and it is your opinion of what you see expressed. Ideas of sensation come from our sense organ, ideas of reflection from our consciousnesses of our mental process. We are supposed to provide our own means of thinking, as mental images. “Now I have told you this once before, you cannot control me. If you try to take me down, you are going to break. I feel your every nothing that you are doing for me. I am picking you out of me, you run away. I stand alone inside. You are always hiding behind your so-called goddess. So what do you not think that we can see your face. Resurrected back before the final fallen. Now they have arrest until I can make my own way. I am not afraid of fading,” (I Stand Alone by Godsmack). #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Randolph Harris II International Institute 