Randolph Harris II International Institute

Since God is in all things, all knowledge is partly knowledge of God. God is not an abstract being but an eternal process, eternally becoming. The sense most closely associated with memory is the sense of smell. This explains the many pleasing feelings that overtake people in the morning when they are able to step outdoors, for a few moments, and breathe in the fresh air. It may smell like butterscotch or vanilla, some many insist it smells more like coconut. Scientist say it is the pine trees being warmed by the Sun, which smells like baking cookies. The aroma arises from the product of the sap. And pine and other evergreen trees, as it turns out, have a variety of beneficial effects on the human body. Native Canadians knew all about those benefits as much as 500 years ago. French explorer, Jacques Cartier’s ship got stuck near the ice near Quebec. He and his crew faced sudden death from scurvy (a vitamin C deficiency) until a tribal chieftain brewed the sailors pine tea. It saved their lives and their explorations continued. The pine bark needles contain Vitamin C. The one trees are also loaded with other antioxidant compounds called flavanols and bioflavonoids. When the compounds are extracted and mixed with hot water and they are called pycnogenol—which has been used as a jet lag remedy, and has the ability to ease circulatory problems, knee pain, cramps; it may even improve memory in the elderly. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

A walk in the woods has also been known to ease stress and combat depression. According to researchers at the Kyoto University in Japan, when they sent 498 healthy volunteers on two 15-minute forest strolls one day, compared to a control day when they did not walk. Volunteers rated their mood on a standard psychological scale and their hostility and after walking in the pine forest, their depression scores decreased significantly. The smell of the pine forest can also limit climate change. Scientist have found a mechanism by which these sweet-scented vapors turn into aerosols above the boreal forests. These particles promote cooling by reflecting Sunlight back into space and helping clouds to form. These particles form clouds that block Sunlight as well as reflecting rays back into space. The smell of pine is made up of volatile organic compounds that react with oxygen in the forest canopy to form these aerosols. This is playing a significant role in reducing the impact of rising temperatures. And the effect of the pine trees is like to strengthen in the future. In a warmer World, photosynthesis will become faster with rising CO2, which will lead to more vegetation and more emission of these vapors. This should produce more cloud droplets and will then have a cooling impact, a damping effect. However, if they become too stress, the forests will stop emitting vapors due to the heat or lack of water. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

If you go into a pine forest and notice that pine forest smell, that could be the scent that actually limits climate change from reaching such levels that it could become really a problem it the World. Therefore, we need to water our trees, instead of placing water restriction, as the water restrictions will kill our trees and accelerate climate change. We actually need more reservoirs as the climate in the Sierra Mountains is changing and the snow melt is coming soon. Also, more snow will start falling as rain, so if we do not store it we will not have a water bank. More importantly, we need to start desalinating ocean water, as it is a reliable source which keeps growing with climate change. This is a marvelous Earth which we find ourselves on, and we should feel a deep gratitude to the Lord for the choice land and the people and institutions he has created. There is much that is good in this land, and much to love. The Lord gave us a choice World and expects righteousness and obedience to his commandments in return. However, when we review the performance of this people in comparisons with what is expected, we are appalled and frightened. Iniquity seems to be abound. The Destroyer seems to be taking full advantage of the time remaining to him in this, the great day of his power. Evil seems about to engulf us like a white squall, and we think we are living in conditions similar to those in the days of Noah before the flood. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

As God creates himself, he comes to know himself. The relation between his will and his self-conscious is the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is an eternal possibility in God and only becomes actual in nature, which is the principle of self-hood eternally produced by God. Nature is God alienated from himself—his shadow, his desire, his want. The purpose of the existence of nature is to afford an opportunity for the redemption of humanity. In working toward what is tended to be a comprehensive account of human’s actual and possible knowledge, we have to understand that part of our knowledge is supernatural in origin (it comes from God), while other parts of what we know are obtained through our experience. In Baconian psychology, a human being have two souls: one that is peculiar to human beings alone; the other, shared with animals. The study of human’s animal soul is part of science, but the higher soul is immaterial and cannot be investigated by the same techniques. We can enter the kingdom of nature, as we can the kingdom of Heaven, only be becoming honest, innocent, and righteous. Taking pride in what we (and others) have done can be a beautiful part of honoring ourselves and others. However, price can also be a far less honorable state, rooted in arrogance and a sense of superiority, existing mostly an antidote or solution to shame, exalting itself through diminishing or disrespecting others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

Morality is not a matter of inner law, but apprehension of, and obedience to, God’s will. Salvation depends on prayer, faith, and the sacraments as well as on morality and good works. “Inequality should be no more in land,” reports Mosiah 29.32. A majority of Americans base their beliefs and moral decision on feelings, and reject the idea of absolute truth. The Harris poll reported that 64 percent of adults and 83 percent of teenagers interviewed believed that the truth is always relative to the person and their situation. Adult respondents who called themselves born-again Christians were more likely to reject moral relativism, with 32 percent affirming their belief in moral absolutes. However, there was a little difference in the responses of Christian and non-Christian teenagers: only ten percent born-again teenagers accepted the idea of absolute moral truth, almost the same rate as their non-Christian peers. The research indicates that humans left to themselves are not able to find absolutes; they become their own standard of truth. Yet, social life is not harmonious unless there are absolutes acknowledged by those who are a part of it. Otherwise chaos will reign through selfishness. We need knowledge that is beyond our limited feelings and experiences, and that contributes to the development of characters that reflect high moral values. If the truth is relative, not absolute, people what do what feels right, not what is right. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

Humans are social beings under the law of the state, and the subject owes total subservience to one’s ruler, God. “God has created us and granted unto us our lives,” reports Mosiah 2.20-23. The state is under the law of the church. Any departure from this divinely ordained order leads to the twin modern evils of despotism and liberalism. We must reconcile nature and spirit, science and religion, the individual and society so people do not hunt after words more than matter. Our destiny is to make a decisive break with the negativity of the past. Many people are seeking knowledge, a couch whereon to rest a searching and restless spirit instead of a storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of human’s estate. “God reveals all things from foundation of the World to end,” reports 2 Nephi 27.10. The Lord know all things that are to come. The category of the supernatural plays a prominent part in the outline of knowledge that leads us to God. However, the research into final causes, like a virgin dedicated to God, is barren and produces nothing. There is no reason to expect God’s nature to conform to our own wishes or fancies, and the more preposterous a religious doctrine, the more merit there is in believing it—just as in the realm of morals, the more painful the duty, the more virtuous the execution of it. Whatever you want to believe in theology, the realm of faith, it is very important that we should not be deceived in science, the realm of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

If knowledge is to be advanced, when we discern certain general tendencies of the human mind that need to be corrected, we need to look beyond the defects of current learning. The false notions that many people form are called Idols, and there are four types. The first are Idols of the Tribe, so called because they are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of humans. We must put the Lord first and refrain from worshiping false gods. False gods are everything which entices a person away from duty, loyalty, and love for and service to God. Wholehearted commitment to the Lord is at the foundation of the lived of Christians. Few people have ever knowingly and deliberately chosen to reject God and his blessings. Rather, we learn from the scriptures that because the exercise of faith has always appeared to be more difficult than relying on things more immediately at hand, carnal beings have tended to transfer trust in God to material things. Therefore, in all ages when people have fallen under the power of the Destroyer and lost the faith, they have put in its place a hope in the arm of flesh and in gods of silver and gold, false notions. That is what is meant by false idols. Whatever a person set their heart on and one’s trust is most in is their god; and if this god does not also happen to be the true and living God, that person is laboring in idolatry. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people,” reports Proverbs 14.34.  #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

It is natural for people to suppose that their sense gives direct and veridical knowledge of reality. They forget that their sense perceptions often act like false mirrors, distorting what is received from outside. Our understanding imposes on the external World an order and regularity that comes from us and does not belong to reality itself. Furthermore, our judgments are colored by our feelings—we tend to believe what we want to believe. For example, if we have a dream that comes true, we jump to the conclusion that are dreams are prophetic, forgetting the numerous instances of dreams that have not come true. The only way to correct this tendency is to give as much attention to negative as to the encouraging instances of such seemingly connected sequences. Such are the ways in which all people tend to be deceived, and because they are common to the generality of people, they are the Idols of the Tribe. However, there are also defects that are peculiar to each individual; these are the Idols of the Den. By den, we are referring to the Platonic myth of people living in a cave, or den, and mistaking the shadows that pass before them as reality. Each person has one’s own private den or cavern, which intercepts and discolours the light of nature. A rule that might serve as a corrective to this tendency is whatever one’s mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

Idols of the Market Place are errors that arise from commerce and intercourse between people. People converse with one another in a language, by means of words, and words have two dangers: they are often ambiguous and they are apt to be taken for things. Two people use the same word with different meaning and do not realize what they are doing; they thin they are agreed when they are not agreed, and that they disagree when they do not disagree. Likewise, people treat those words which serve to name fictions as if they were the names of real entities. There are also Idols of the Theater, the errors which have crept into people’s minds from the various doctrines of systems of philosophy. These systems are really inventions, like stage plays; they do not give a picture of the Universe as it actually is. One type of philosophy is defective because it leads experience like a captive in a procession; another is worse because it has abandoned experience altogether. Yet another type passes hastily from a few obscure experiments to create a complete natural philosophy. Then there is the type that confuses philosophy with theology. Not only fantastical philosophy but heretical religions springs from an absurd mixture of matters divine and human. Some people in the church are really atheist who pay only lip service to religion, but their true religion is exchanging sleazy gossip, slander, and kabuki theater. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Every Christian should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love because current attitudes and practices in some segments of American life in such important areas as sex, marriage, money, and power reveal that American society is in moral decline and God judges or blesses nations based on their morality. God’s Word provides guidance for living a moral life that pleases God and beings the Lord’s blessings, and leaders in every walk of life in America, such as church, government, and business have destroyed their careers and brought shame to themselves, their families, and friend because of poor moral choices. Regardless of their political, social or economic status, our leaders should set a righteous example for every World citizen by living and serving according to the highest moral and ethical standards. The church has the responsibility in every season to proclaim to the culture the moral standards of God as reveled in the Lord’s Word, not as legalists, but as advocated of the Savior’s transformative grace. We express our appreciation to those leaders in all walks of life who have chosen to live according to God’s moral standards; and be it further. We express our gratitude and support for those public officials who have displayed consistent moral character and uncompromising commitment to biblical principles of right and wrong, resulting in blessings upon the people they serve; and be it further. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

We commend those leaders who choose not to meet privately with members of the opposite gender who are not their spouses in order to ensure that they leave no room for temptation to lead them astray and to avoid any suspicion of wrongdoing. We call on all leaders in every walk of life to conduct themselves, to the best of their ability, according to the moral standards set forth by God’s revealed truth. We commit to pray for our nation’s leader to be able to resist every temptation that would create a hinderance to the fulfillment of their calling in society. We pledge to hold ourselves to the same high moral standards that we require of our leaders. We commit to pray that God will help us and all our fellow citizen to embrace the biblical moral values that will honor our creation in God’s image and being God’s blessing on our nation. We endeavor to serve as examples to others of the blessings of living in accordance with God’s moral guidance. May God bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and fraternal love. We commit to be ready to work with all people of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising our loyalty to the Savior and the Lord’s truth. Means and methods used for this improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness among humanity can by truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

Baby, do you understand me now? Sometimes I feel a little mad, but do you not understand that no one alive can always be an angel. When things go wrong, I feel real bad. I am just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please do not let me be misunderstood. Baby, sometimes I am so carefree with a joy that is hard to hide and sometimes it seems that, all I have to do is worry and then you are bound to see my other side. If I seem edgy, I want you to know that I never meant to take it out on you. Life has its problems, and I get my share, and that is one thing I never mean to do because I love you. Oh, baby—do you not know I am human. I have thoughts like any other one. Sometimes I find myself, Lord, regretting some foolish things, some little simple thing I have done. Yes, I am just a soul whose intentions are good. We make up the environment in which our youth live. Whatever habits, good or bad, are observed in their conduct from day to day will eventually find expression in the conduct and lives of other youth. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance that our schools be so organized as to surround our youth with the richest and best influences. The way to overcome a bad environment is to substitute a good one. The way to break up a bad habit is to substitute a good habit. The way for the children to grow up to be good men and women is to live in a good environment and to be taught to cultivate the best habits. Not the least of these is the habit of caring for property. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

In our institutional society too much if often done for our youth which they might be taught to o for themselves, and they are fine too freely of the best things of the nation without even the price of such an appreciation as will insure he proper use and care. They, therefore, look lightly upon the destruction of a piece of property, thinking it can and will be replaced without any sacrifices upon their part. They, therefore, become careless of property, not understanding its value, and careless of clothes not bought by themselves. Would it not be better for these youth to be taught the meaning of the declaration, “By sweat of the brow shall people eat bread,” not in a way as to work unnecessary hardship, but in the spirit and degree that wen they have left school the habit of caring for property, by knowing its values, will be thoroughly fixed. Healthy pride celebrates what is best or most life-giving in our doings, without isolating us in our momentary specialness. Many become unnaturally humble in the face of this, self-consciously downplaying how well they have done, as if associating any display of pride with grandiosity. Yes, healthy pride often makes a noticeable splash, highlighting us for vivid moment, but does not go over the top. In it, we walk tall but do not strut; as big as we may feel at such time, we do not look down on others, and are open to celebrating their triumphs as we are our own. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13Deng shei? Wo by deng shei! Wo deng gongong qiche dao cheng-li qu mai piao. Zhei tiao lu zhen bu jin, zai huoche-shang de shijian name chang, ni dou xiang ganma? Kongpa dei dai jishiben xiaoshou ba?

July 29, 2018 8:21 pm

The soul is our spirit, our essence, who we are at our core, including our character. So, it is safe to say that our body is the vessel that houses our soul, and our mind deeply influences the strength of this connection. By paying attention to our body’s communication, we can strengthen our soul habits.  threefold mind-body-soul relationship is the foundational source for joy when are consciously engage it. The concept of the person has come to be intimately connected with questions about the value of life. It is applied to those sorts of being who have some special value or moral importance and where we need to prioritize the needs or claims of different sorts of individuals. Person is a concept designating individuals like us in some important respects, but possibly including individuals who are very unlike us in others respects. People are more than just a specific species with a genetic code that determines what it is to be an individual. A complex system of wills and desires is the differentiating cause. There are complex psychological differences that make up each and every human being. “Train a child in the way one should go and even when one is old, one will not depart from it,” reports Proverbs 22.6. This verse is a lucid statement of the psychology of habit. It is a complete grasp of the nature of good habits. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

To train a child means to instill regular habits, or modes of thought and action. Once these habits are implanted, they remain imbedded in the subconscious mind, which is the habit-mind. Such habits endure, ever ready to respond to the call of the conscious mind. Soul habits are the thing we automatically do to support an enhance our joy. Sometimes, though, we sabotage ourselves. Sabotage implies conscious action, but in this case, our actions are unconscious. We have developed a negative habit, so we are not consciously choosing. And while it may sound silly, many people are not even conscious about being unconscious. Whenever we are out of alignment with who we are at our soul level, we feel stressed, anxious, or off kilter. We may become short-tempered, blame others, and just are not pleasant to be around. When we become stressed or lash out at other, it is a symptom of acting unconsciously. We try to fix the symptom, but the problem s what requires our attention. Fixing the symptom, but not the problem is like propping a door up to the wall frame, but not attaching it to the hinges. It will not serve the true purpose. The beneficial side of anxiety and stress is that they are like the sensors in a car, warning us to pay attention; to consciously choose to support ourselves. If we do not take notice, we weaken our connection to the joy that is the soul’s desire. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

Habits are the acquired facility of thinking and doing as a result of persistent repetition or depth of impression. Good habits arise from definite suggestions we make. Thee suggestions should be carefully selected, so that they will lead to the proper and useful ways. On an episode of Ghost Whisperer, for instance, Ned was a young boy who had recently lost his father, and a teenage ghost attached himself to Ned. Ned started stealing these passes to rock ‘n roll shows and no one knew why. Later on, the lead character, Melinda, saw the ghost talking to Ned and questioned the ghost about what he was doing. She discovered the ghost had been whispering in Ned ear all night long telling him to steal the pass, which became a hypnotic suggestion that Ned acted on when he was conscious. This is just a fictional example, but as we know with manifestation, what we focus on is what we attract. So, by telling Ned to steal the passes, he eventually did. We can learn a great deal from experiments with hypnotism concerning forceful psychic forces. If people are given the right suggestions, affirm them steadily, and insist that the under mind incorporates them into their being, they will likely manifest. After all, success is a bundle of good habits, acquired gradually. The people who achieves has cultivated the talent that one needs for one’s purpose. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

From the trained civil engineer, who does the seemingly impossible, to the fine musician, all masters of arts have arrived at their power only by constant practice of definite habits. A habit is just so much mind-power, placed in the inner temple of life. It is a divine agency by which the sanctuary of the soul is gradually built. We can acquire any habit we please. There is no task that cannot be overcome. The goal is to get our soul to move. If we can do that, then the soul will find its own proper direction. It will seek whatever truth there is, whatever truth it need. That is the easy part. Defects can be overcome. The hard part, the part in which we all need assistance, is helping the soul to move, and having moved, to keep it moving. Some of the World’s greatest men and women started under the worst circumstances, but by building the right habits conquered every obstacle. Success is no mystery, but simply obeying the laws of mind. With faith in God, we can so arouse our energies that they will be utilized in the creation of good, strong habits. Step by step, we may link our habits into a fairy-like network that will form the chain of life, joy, and success. The curious nature of the soul, as that which moves itself becomes apparent in this endeavor, for the soul will find its proper peace in the realization of its own command. It will identify the rightness of the direction, and by that recognition it will know what is rightly ordered. The knowing and the being will be one and the same. No external criterion is necessary. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

Habit is one of the links in the golden chain that binds humans to God, and makes one a true child of the Most High, strong in body, clear in mind, pure in soul. Harmony affords exactly the kind of conception and language (or rhetoric) needed to describe the right ordering of the soul. Happiness is the privilege of every person. It is the normal state, ordained by God. This is the meaning of the Biblical verse, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” True happiness comes from the source of Infinite Supply. All around us are things that should make us rejoice. Therefore, it is important to get in touch with our essence. When we are peaceful and loving and engaging in activities that enhance our essence, we are being self-supportive and godlike. When we ask for support, take a break that we are due, eat a healthy meal, or take a personal day, we begin to honor what we need. We have to meet the needs of our mind, body, and soul. The opposite is also true. If we allow negativity into our lives, it affect us. It may not be possible to remove all negativity, but we can be conscious of it and minimize it as best we can. How we talk to ourselves, how we spend our time, what we listen to (radio, television, colleagues), and how we engage with the community, all has the potential to strengthen or weaken our soul habits. Our thought process—our mind—is the most powerful tool we have to create, nurture, and deepen our self-support. For soul habits to be developed or strengthened, we have to be in tune with our thoughts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

It is a long process to come out of unhealthy relationships our circumstances because some people, and often many of them, like to attach themselves to us and try to suck all the life out of us and bring us down to their level. As rock hardens about the fossil, so evil habits harden the soul. Sins repeated become habits, and the habits harden skin. The only way to victory is if the soul tears from itself the encoiling evil, and silence the passionate voices that cry, “Thou hast made us lord, and canst not put us down!” They must be put down, or there will be no throne for the soul, only the chains of sense. The soul, conquering in the crises of life, understands that working on oneself and becoming the best we can possibly be is what we need as motivation. We have to wake up early, set our goals and learn as much as possible about new skills and life each day. By doing this, we are hard wiring a series of beneficial unconscious actions that will eventually lead us to a life of multiple successes. 90 percent of entrepreneurs, authors, celebrities, coaches and multimillionaires credit their success to the persisting energy bolts of action that we call habits. These super-successful people practice some form of physical concentration time or health focused activity at some point in their day. Prayer seems to be a popular habit on the rise between the highly successful. It is also important to write down our goals, plans, and vision for success on the regular basis, usually in the morning to set our intentions and prime our mental state to prepare for them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

Creating habits requires repetition. Some people worship God everyday to get the negativity to flee from them. They focus on the Lord and his promise as a method of self-hypnosis. Essentially flooding their minds with the word of God so they can filter our harmful people and situations. This is their way of putting on the armor of God to protect their soul. And what we focus on, we tend to manifest in our lives. In the beginning, repetition is a conscious decision; in this case, a conscious decision to experience holy and peace in life. With more practice, the true blueprint of our soul starts to emerge. Strengthening our self-support and intentionally investigating what is joyful and loving, versus what is detrimental to our long-term well-being, over time, creates a habit. Slowly, we will shift our patterns and become accustomed to feelings of peace. And then, when circumstances are upsetting our stressful, our tendency to react or overreact shifts to simple awareness that we need to tap into greater internal strength. And we have been practicing, we can tap into our joy reserve and not deplete out bank. If our thoughts, words, and actions are strengthening the joy, peace, and kindness in others and ourselves, we are solidifying our soul habits. And the opposite is also true. We can weaken or reduce the joy, peace, and kindness we experience and bring to others. It is our choice. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

However, keep in mind, being more godlike is not a shift that will happen overnight. It is a gradual process that will happen in increments overtime. We must be kind, compassionate, and caring to ourselves in the process of creating joyous soul habits. Our network can sometimes determine our net worth. We have to make it a habit to work on building new bridges, collaborating, helping others, attending social events, getting back to people and being a person of our word. We mold or character and future by good thoughts. An ancient proverb states that good habits result from resisting temptation. Such resistance often takes form of a persevering struggle. If we earnestly call upon him, the Lord can and will make us equal to the task. Temptations lose their power when the Lord is near. When we faithfully keep his laws and commandments, we draw ourselves close to the savior. We have a gracious, kind, and loving Father in Heaven who stands ready to help us. Self-mastery, self-control, and self-discipline are requiring strengths that enable us to set aside temptations to do wrong. It is a wonderful feeling to conquer wrong practices and to be free and unencumbered from their detrimental effect, both physically and spiritually.  When we have conquered our bad habits and replaced them with good ones, living as we should, obedient and faithful, then we are on our way to the presence of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

We should become so involved in acquiring good quality traits and participating in character-building activities that there is no time to engage in anything worthless or harmful. Our habits should be those that make us susceptible to faith and testimony. One of the best habits to be cultivated is that of reading the scriptures to become knowledgeable of our responsibilities. By learning God’s commandments and keeping them, we develop the ways of righteousness that are an expression of our faith. With good habits we prepare ourselves for excellence. We need to ask our selves if our usual thoughts and present actions are worthy of eternal life? Happiness is an inward quality. It is the joy in God that gives ultimate delight. Such joy is the source of strength—the firm hold on life, in buoyancy of heart. We discover the foundation of happiness in abiding faith. We can revive the sense of life-joy by emphasizing the God-element in our nature. By rediscovering this fountain of perpetual youth, revitalizes our whole life. By making faith a real influence, establish now the reign of happiness. If we let our homes be re-theized, the God-presence will manifest itself in the power of regnant optimism. It is right to be happy. There is nothing better for one to do than rejoice and see good in all one’s work. Laughter is the rippling wave on the surface of infinite life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

To seek and express optimistic joy is the normal destiny of every human being. Build a happy mind by bring into one’s being every joyous element in the vast good that Creation afford. Why is the ultimate motivation for holiness just the reality of God himself? What motivates you to live a holy life? What does it mean that God is holy. Holiness describes the purity and moral perfection of God’s nature. God’s holiness means that he is perfectly good and completely free from evil. God’s holiness is the perfection of all his other attributes. God is the divine pattern of ethical conduct. God is the archetype of all moral and spiritual strivings. Faith in God may be translated into states of health, joy, and success. Likewise, belief in God may lead to increase moral qualities. Character is the flowering of religion. True faith must be expressed in right living. We can take the idea of holiness and by suggestion incarnate it in our everyday lives. In other word, we can reveal God in our though, speech, and conduct. We, too, can be holy like our Maker. We have the power to change our lives, and to determine consciously our act. It means that we can inspire the Holy or Superconscious Mind in us to influence the conscious and subconscious so that it will create only Godly states of being. “Follow peace with all people, and holiness, without which no person shall see the Lord,” reports Hebrews 12.14. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

No one who claims holiness is really holy. Those who are registered as holy in the books of Heaven are not aware of the fact, and are the last ones to boast of their own goodness. It is not a conclusive evidence that a person is Christian because one manifest spiritual ecstasy under extraordinary circumstances. Holiness is not rapture: it is an entire surrender of the will of God; it is living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God; it is doing the will of our Heavenly Father; it is trusting God in trial, in darkness as well as in the light; it is walking by faith and not by sight; it is relying on God with unquestioning confidence, and resting in his love. No one can be omnipotent, but all can cleanse themselves from filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. God requires every soul to be pure and holy. We have hereditary tendencies to do wrong. This is part of self that no one need carry about. It is a weakness of humanity to pet selfishness, because it is a natural trait of character. However, unless all selfishness is put away, unless selfishness if crucified, we can never be holy as God is holy. There is in humanity a tendency to suspicious imagining, which circumstances quicken into lively growth. If this trait is indulged, it spoils the character and ruins the soul. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

When greatly pursed, every calling is great. God requires moral perfection in all. Those who have been given light and opportunities should, as God’s stewards, aim for perfection, and never, never lower the standards of righteousness to accommodate inherited and cultivated tendencies to wrong. We ought to be holy even as God is holy; and when we comprehend the full significance of this statement, and set our heart to do the work of God, we shall approach the standards set for each individual. Harmony is the music of life perfectly adjusted to all ends. It is the result of the rhythmic response of outer life to an inner sense of serenity. The harmony within will be reflected in the harmony without. When the body performs all its function in ease, when the mind thinks clear and straight, when the soul is attuned to God, then only do we find the exquisite harmony of life. Think health, and the very idea will penetrate the human system, Command the under-mind to destroy the discords in the physical self, and to sound only the chords of vibrant healthy and joy. We must be a master of the wonderous organs of our being, with its various stops and keys and so play upon the strings that we will evoke the song of songs—the harmony of Joy, Life, Love and Wisdom. “The gracious hands of our God are on everyone who looks to him,” reports Ezra 8.22. We must claim God’s blessings instead of merely longings for them. God’s grace is given wonderfully. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12

July 28, 2018 7:36 pm

God brought time into existence and he holds it in existence everlastingly. As the First Intelligence, God provides through a subordinate level of intelligence—the celestial bodies, upon which the Lord exercises immediate control—activating power for the active intellect controlling human’s thoughts. The instant that a human heart surrenders to the love and Lordship of God, a magnificent, supernatural miracle takes place. They Holy Spirit of God, creates and transforms the human spirit by entering it and dwelling in that recreated spirit, completely encompassing it with the full measure of the unlimited power of God. Our brains have evolved and scientists are studying the architecture of the mind, by doing brain scans, to see how divine feelings and intensions are represented in the brain. They are interested to find where in the brain belief systems are represented. Scientist have long speculated that there must be a God spot in the human brain, a distinct area responsible for spirituality. Danish neuroscientists have reporting that talking to God is much like communicating with a friend or neighbour, neurologically speaking. When people pray, four regions in the brain lit up—those also active when we relate to other humans. They are the same regions of the brain which have evolved most recently, such as those involved in imagination, memory and theory of mind—the recognition that other people and living things can have their own thoughts and intentions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

The human brain has evolved to adapt to the challenges of the natural environment. However, the brain did not evolve to communicate with invisible supernatural beings. So when firm believers pray, the research indicates that their brains must first process God as a concrete person. If we accept the implied argument here that, as a function of our evolutionary heritage, our brains have evolved to respond to the presence of God as a real, concrete person, then many of those people struggling to believe in an abstract deity are working against their very natures. The evidence suggests that the more abstract the concept of God (the less faith people have), the more unreal the experience is to the human brain. That is why many have so much faith in God. They believe there can be a powerful intervention for those who have faith in the Lord. The God spot is thus a domain of reality which looks upward to God for its sustaining power and with which individual souls strive to fuse impersonally. God’s existence is established from the Physics, in that the eternity of motion demands an unmoved mover, which is in itself pure form. In addition to being the source of motion, such pure form is also Intelligence as such, operating not only as the source of the celestial bodies and all subordinate motions but also as the creative originator and sustaining force behind all mortal intelligences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

Wisdom is insight into the way life works:  proper understanding of the consequences of our thoughts, words and actions and an awareness of the true values of things. We should focus on the simple ways we can serve in the kingdom of God, always striving to change lives, including our own with all the energy of our soul. However, sometimes as a result of focusing too much time and energy on our Church service, eternal family relationships can deteriorate. Employment performance can suffer. This is not healthy, spiritually nor otherwise. While there may be times when our Church callings require more intense effort and unusual focus, we need to strive to keep things in proper balance. “We should never allow our service to replace the attention needed by other important priorities in our lives. We must see that all things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that one should run faster than one has strength,” Mosiah 4.27. One of the most important things we do through the gospel is to build people. Properly serving others requires effort to understand them as individual—their personalities, strengths, concerns, hopes and dreams—so that the correct help and support can be provided. Our goal should always be to lift, encourage, assist, teach, love, and perfect people. “Remember the worth of soul is great in the sight of God,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 18.10. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

Friendship is feeling comfortable in each other’s company, being able to share joys and sorrows are all features of friendship and these are things of immense value. True friendship enables each person to grow and ensures that the unique individuality of each person is recognized. When thinking about justice, some people think first about giving wrongdoers the punishment they deserve. Justice is also about acting out of concern for what is right and seeing right prevail. It is about social justice, especially for those who suffer most and are least able to protect themselves. Justice is not about a culture which encourages everyone to insist on their own rights at the expense of others. It is about a community that knows that everyone’s well-being is bound up with that of everyone else. As we work to magnify our callings, we should seek the inspiration of the Spirit to solve problems in ways that will best serve the people. Within that framework are substantial opportunities to think, be creative, and make use of individual talents. Hope generates energy and sustains people through difficult times. For some people, hope is so strong that it inspires altruism to turn hope into a reality. True hope is much more than a general idea that things will get better. It is more than a belief in progress, which sees the World and people as getting better all the time, going away from violence, ignorance and confusion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Christian hope means trusting that the foundations of the World are good because they spring from God. Because the eternal principle of agency gives us the freedom to choose and think for ourselves, we should become increasingly able to solve problems. We may make the occasional mistake, but as long as we are following gospel principles and guidelines, we can learn from those mistakes and become more understanding of others and more effective in serving them. Many people continue to misunderstand, neglect, or ignore what works and does not work relationally for the people in their lives (or the people they are considering being in a partnership with). No wonder some people are confusing to us. We have to listen to people without trying to figure out solutions for what is going on, and listen with our whole being. Our job is not to fix something, but to genuinely take in and resonate with what our friend or partner or employer is feeling. It is important to stay alive and fully present in our listening, doing so not as a duty, but as an act of intimate interest and care. And we cannot be passive in this! If our interest wanes, or it is not good timing, we must to pretend to listen. Either refocus, or let the individual know, in a non-shaming way, that we would like to continue the conversation later on when we can be more present, making sure we are not using this option as a way to avoid listening! It is also important that we give the people who matter more real and unsolicited appreciation, including for little things. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

We spend time with people because we love them and we want to watch over our Heavenly Father’s children. We must allow others to process and grow, even if it means we have to be more sensitive to their concerns and desires.  Keep in mind that guilt is not a proper motivational technique. We must always motivate through love and sincere appreciation, not by creating guilt. Catch others doing something right. Be trustworthy, which a safe place for the people we care about, protective but no possessive. This is not about being on our best behaviour, but about working on ourselves deeply enough to be incapable of betrayal or any sort of abuse. Still, some people experience some feelings of guilt as a consequence of their service in Church. These feelings come when our time and attention are being torn between competing demands and priorities. As mortals, we simply cannot do everything at once. Therefore, we must do all things in wisdom and order. Often that will mean temporarily postponing attention to one priority in order to take care of another. Sometimes family demands will require your full attention. Other times professional responsibilities will come first. And there will be times when the church callings come first. Good balance comes in doing things in a timely way and in not procrastinating our preparation or waiting to fulfill our responsibilities until the last minute. #RandolpHarris 6 of 8

We also may want to thoughtfully allocate our resources of time, income, and energy. It is important to cherish the people in our lives daily. This means, in part, not taking them for granted. No matter what our family needs are or our responsibilities in the Church are, there is no such thing as done. We have to keep our gratitude for our family and the church alive and well. And express appreciation. There will always be more we can do. There is always another family matter that needs attention, another lesson to prepare, another interview to conduct, another meeting to attend. We just need to be wise in protecting our health and following the counsel that is given to us the best that we can. And when people become upset, we cannot treat them like something to fix. We have to put away our repair tools and do whatever we can to be a compassionate and grounding presence for the people in our lives at such times, focusing not so much of their words as on their energy, keeping a solid but flexible boundary around them and ourselves as their feelings pour forth. Sometimes all the want is to be listened to. It also might be necessary to initiate the conversation when it comes to addressing relationship difficulties. It is part of our responsibility as competent human beings. If we are feeling cut off from the people in our lives, we cannot blame them for this, but instead share our feelings regarding being thus disconnected, and do so vulnerably. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

The key is to know and understand our own capabilities and limitations and then to pace ourselves, allocating and prioritizing our time, attention, and resources to wisely help others, including our family, in their quest for eternal life. As our core feelings emerge more openly and vulnerably, and transparency is allowed to play a more central role in our encounters, being right becomes less important to us than being connected and warm. Opening to and letting in others—emotionally, mentally, energetically—signals not a loss of power, but instead a freeing up of power. Love and humor return, along with greater clarity about mutual battles for power. The space then feels quitter, relaxing, more spacious, as it is no longer dominated by courtroom tactics and their corresponding thoughts. Our creator expects his children everywhere to educate themselves. “Seek diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; seek out the best books, words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 88.118. And he assures us that knowledge acquired here will be ours forever. Our goal is for communication to be at its best and communion and articulation functioning as one. It is the electricity and circuit board of relationship, optimally flowing when its emotional components are illuminated, respected, and fully connected. #RandolpHarris 8 of 8

July 27, 2018 8:54 pm

One of those most baffling aspects of the behavior of men and women in highly-responsible positions in some segments of our society, is their comparative lack of concern for—perhaps it is lack of awareness of—the factor of communication, as such, in the problems and situations in which they have to deal. It is communication that makes human society possible. While waiting for a Moses to lead us into the promised land, we have forgotten how to walk. Our own personal lives are in need of development just as much as our social lives. If privacy is eliminated, what happens to the interior World of each of us? What happen to meditation, introspection, self-study, to contact with oneself? These must not be lost in the patterns of growth and ever-increasing interinvolvment. Each of us must somehow find ways of developing one’s own life, gaining personal growth and depth, reaping advantages for oneself—while still cultivating a healthy, outgoing, cooperative, and caring relationship with other people. This is almost as difficult as running in two directions at the same time! However, the loss of privacy leaves one’s autonomy and sense of oneself as a person vulnerable, violating one’s human dignity and moral personality. The common conceptual thread linking diverse privacy cases prohibiting dissemination of confidential information, eavesdropping, surveillance, and wiretapping, to name a few, is the value of protection against injury to individual freedom and human dignity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

Intimacy and privacy are deeply related. On one account, privacy is valuable because intimacy would be impossible without it. Privacy is defined narrowly as control over information about oneself. Privacy has intrinsic value, and is necessarily related to and fundamental for one’s development as an individual with a moral and social personality able to form intimate relationships involving respect, love, friendship, and trust. . If a person’s assumptions about an individual are incorrect, they will continue to perceive that person in incorrect or incomplete ways. Through education, we are trying to bring about awareness of such problems. We become self-estranged from nature and society as a consequence of being when we cannot control our legal rights to secure our personal information, which is protected by law, which forces us to become a mechanistic part of a social class. This is the condition of which estranges a person from their humanity. Estrangement is rooted not only in the loss of the privacy of communication, but also in the loss of identity. Strained and broken relationships are also old as humankind itself. Ancient Cain was the first who allowed the cancer of bitterness and malice to canker his heart. He tilled the ground of his soul with envy and hatred and allowed these feelings to ripen until he did the unthinkable—murdering his own brother and becoming, in the process the father the adversary’s lies. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

Since those first days, the spirit of envy and hatred has led to some of the most tragic stories in history.  A lack of personal concern and will ultimately leads to alienation and can cause an individual to look down upon people violating their personal information, until the point that they want nothing to do with people who behave like rogue savages. For communication to take place, the receiver must also be receptive. That means more than just having one’s ears clean. One must also want or need to get the message and be willing to decode and fit in into one’s existing pattern of ideas or associations. However, when as a community, you violate a person’s right to privacy, they may want absolutely nothing to do with anyone in the community because they feel betrayed. Individual responsibility is the key. If I get ahead at the expense of another individual—or whole groups of people—that inequality pollutes society of which both you and I are a part, and I cannot be surprised at the violence that results. It is, in fact, partly my fault. Some violence is created by mental and emotional disorders, for which successful treatment is sometimes available. However, society needs to create and improved climate of acceptance for these programs of help and therapy that are available. Every person on Earth has been affected in some way by the destructive spirit of contention, resentment, and revenge. Perhaps there are even times when we recognize this spirit in ourselves. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

When we feel hurt, angry, or envious, it is quite easy to judge other people, often assigning dark motives to their actions in order to justify our own feelings of resentment. The stigma attached to mental illness must be eradicated, and so must be the feeling of shame or weakness that keeps many people from seeking available professional help when they need it. We still believe that people are really good at heart. We simply cannot build up our hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. We see the World around us gradually being turned into a wilderness. We think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. We all depend on the Savior; none of us can be saved without the Lord. The Atonement is infinite and eternal. Forgiveness for our sins comes with conditions. We must repent, and we must be willing to forgive others. We can so clearly see the harmful results that come when others judge and hold grudges. The problem of wars between nations is similar to, but different from that of person fighting person. Some of the same psychological principles that apply to interpersonal squabbling also fit international warfare, but of course the scale is fantastically enlarged. Humanity may not be terribly affected if you and I fight and hurt each other, but it is certainly harmed if huge groups go to war, especially in this nuclear age. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

What is learned about human behavior and aggression needs to be effectively shared with those who shape the international policies of nations. In the past, psychologists have often been drafted into devising new and more effective ways of demoralizing and punishing others humans. However, they have seldom been asked to help nations promote peace and understanding instead. And that, in fact, could be their most effective use. When it comes to our own prejudices and grievances, we too often justify our anger as righteous and our judgment as reliable and only appropriate. Though we cannot look into another’s heart, we assume that we know a bad motive or even a bad person when we see one. We make exceptions when it comes to our own bitterness because we feel that, in our case, we have all the information we need to hold someone else in contempt and sentence them to life in prison without a jury trial. However, the moment we judge someone else, we condemn ourselves, for none with out sin. Sometimes, of all the people in the World, the one who is the hardest to forgive—as well as perhaps the one who is most in need of our forgiveness—is the person looking back at us in the mirror. Time’s up! When it comes to hating, gossiping, ignoring, ridiculing, holding grudges, or wanting to cause harm, please apply the following: Stop it! It is that simple. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

Racism, sexism, elitism—all of these are increasingly bring brought to our collective attention. This is the era of consciousness-raising, when we are seeking to awaken our community members to the abuses of technology, government resources, and when women are trying to draw the attention of other women and men to the problem of sexual harassment and stereotyping and discrimination. However, raising consciousness within the oppressed group is one thing, and raising consciousness among the oppressors is quite another. It is an essential characteristic of finite mind to produce things, to express itself in objects, to objectify itself in physical things, social institutions, and cultural products; and every objectification is, of necessity, and instance of alienation: the produced objects become alien to the producer. Influence through mass communication need not be blatant—it can be very subtle indeed. Even when communicators are not making a direct attempt to sell us something, they can succeed in influencing the way we look at the World. Many people are all up in the personal lives of others because they are afraid to look at themselves and see what is going on inside of them. When the community begins not only to take note of the complaints of the oppressed, they will also see they, too, can benefit by making equality a fact rather than simply a phrase. This allows for the development of self-knowledge, and the finite mind becomes self-aware and returns to oneself from one’s self-alienation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

In the process of violating another individual’s rights to privacy and legal protection, not only are you alienating them from the community, but you are also creating self-estrangement. Because when you are breaking the laws and speaking badly about others, people are not going to want to do business with you, they will not want to be your friend, nor will they want you in their community because they fear that you may hurt them, and they know how it feels to be ostracized. Many individuals can empathize with the people you are hurting for entertainment. This is a problem that faces not only psychologists, but every human being everywhere. We, as a society, need to demonstrate ways in which aggression can be controlled and eliminated, and replaced by cooperation. Communication is about being brave enough to speak up even if the other person may get upset, controlling one’s temper so that the other person is not always feeling intimidated, and staying sane, keeping the conversation moving forwards towards a mutually agreeable situation. Cooperation, respect, appreciation, mutual interaction, and selflessness are often taught ineffectively, irrelevantly, or too late! Too, talking peace is not enough. Much violence is spawned by frustration. Frustration will always be found where people’s basic needs go unsatisfied. It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to act. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another. The most violent element in society is ignorance.  Alienation can be overcome only in the sense of being adequately known as a child of God. If love does no know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a person. Again, it is the vocation of the human as human to serve as the organon of the self-knowledge of the Absolute. To the extent that one does not perform this function, one does not fulfill one’s human essence and is merely a self-alienated individual. We become self-alienated from ourselves when we create and put ourselves above God, our Father in Heaven. People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take. We are a part of Nature, not apart from Nature.  It is not about who is right it is about healing your wounds and becoming less sensitive to these feelings by choosing a different response. When our hearts are filled with the love of God, we become kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving. The virtue of the word of God has more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than anything else. Because we are all depend on the mercy of God, how can we deny to others any measure of the grace we so desperately desire for ourselves? My beloved brothers and sisters, and cousins, should we not forgive as we wish to be forgiven? #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

Just as every part of your body is interrelated with every other part, so each of us is interrelated and integrated into the larger human system, the society of which we are a part. And, by extension, each society is directly related to every other one, as nation is to nation, continent to continent. The entire planet can be seen ultimately as a gigantic network or web of interwoven parts. One thing you learn when you study your first spider web is that a slight pressure on any single strand of that web is felt everywhere on it. That is how the spider uses his or her web: when a bit of food lands there and becomes stuck in the sticky coatings, vibrations travel all along the network, and wherever the spider lies in watchful waiting, he or she pick up these vibrations and gets the message. So it is in the network of human experiences: pressure on any part of it affect the rest of the wend. This network ties each particle of humankind to every other particle. There are virtually no dark or hidden groups of life on the globe, except in the Congo Basin, located in Africa, which covers 700 square miles (25 percent of Earth’s rainforest). The forest is so dense that much of it remains uncharted and, in some parts, only 1 percent of the Sunlight reaches ground. Other than that, the web ff interrelatedness has advantages and disadvantages. However, when our hearts are filled with the love of God, something good and pure happens to us. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

 When we keep God’s commandments: and his commandments are not grievous, nothing in us gets left out—it is all part of our relationship. This is more than possible when—through our work on ourselves—our relationship with God and humanity becomes both sanctuary and crucible, a place of deep healing, care, life-enhancing challenge, and a love that pervades all that we are. The deepest growth, healing, and awakening we will ever experience is in our relationship with God. Hence, we must wholeheartedly do whatever it takes to move into or to deepen our intimate relationship with God for whatsoever is born of God overcomes the World. The more we allow the love of God to govern our minds and emotions—the more we allow our love of our Heavenly Father to swell within our hearts—the easier it is to love others with the pure love of the Savior. As we open our hearts to the glowing dawn of the love of God, the darkness and cold of animosity and envy will eventually fade. When our hearts are filled with the love of God, we become kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving. The pure love of God can remove the scales of resentment and wrath from our eyes, allowing us to see others the way our Heavenly Father sees us. Because God loves us so much, we too must love and forgive each other. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10

July 24, 2018 8:58 pm

To confuse our own constructions and inventions with eternal laws or divine decrees is one of the most fatal delusions of humanity. The systematic examination of the relations of human beings to one another, the conceptions, interests and ideals from which human ways of treating one another, and the systems of value on which such ends of life are based, spring from beliefs about how life should be lived, what men and women should be and do. The fundamental sense of freedom is liberty from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor. Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human. Bringing to pass immortality is essentially a work of creation. God speaks, and Worlds are formed. We are already immortal because of our souls. However, at this time, the body is finite. Eternal life is something altogether different. Immortality is about quantity. Eternal life is about quality. Immortality is how long dinner lasts. Eternal life is what is on the menu and who is with us at the table. Eternal life is the great of all the gifts of God. Those, no doubt, who understand this doctrine, obey some ultimate principle before the bar of which all problems can be brought and solved. Single minded individuals, ruthless fanatics, people possessed by an all-embracing coherent vision do not know the doubts and agonies of those who cannot wholly blind themselves to reality. Eternal life is about the culmination of existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance—these may be cured by reform or revolution. However, people do not live only be fighting evils. They live by optimistic goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible. They can only be realized through faith. As spiritual children of God, we are heirs and heiresses to this priceless fortune, benefactors to a glorious future, recipients of grace. If immortality is God’s work, then eternal life is God’s glory. However, eternal life does not come automatically. 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. God desires each of us to partake of this greatest of all gifts: eternal life. The light of the Savior is available to everyone who will follow him. This divine light, through repentance, will remove darkness and sin from the soul. We can attain perfection by knowing and loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Perfection comes by seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Everything is what it is: liberty is freedom, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience. However, to manipulate people, to propel them towards goals which you—the social reformer—see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The structure of reality that parallels the order of thought: being is the first created and the first known. Being is first created in the sense that it is the proper effect of divine causality, an effect that, in the concrete, is determined by distinct intrinsic principles forming a composition in all created entities. Being is first known in the sense f the simplest concept from which no further abstraction can be made. The analyzing intellect (intellectus resolvens) stops at the notion of being because a nation of being only, not of this or that being, represents the limit of abstraction. However, this abstraction, because it concerns created being, still involves a twofold composition: being plus relation to creator; being plus relations of further determination to particular beings. Hence the only truly and purely simple notion of being lies beyond this abstraction being as its cause: the First Being, God. In God there is no composition, and that which is, essence, and whatever else may be said of God is identified within the Lord. Faith tells us, in the fullness of the reality of the Universe, things are sensible; there is order and not chaos in God is working out a deep purpose that we can only dimly perceived—a purpose that is healing the pain and bringing renewal and re-creation out of the eternity and into the portion of the Universe where there is time and in which we are born and live a finite life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

We have to always remember that God does not see us as a process that is unfolding, but God sees us as what we will become and what we once were. The distinction of agent and possible intellectual powers are not one for all people, but each has one’s own powers of one’s own soul; the effect is the only true separate agent intellect is God, whose light of understanding fortifies the human agent brainpower. Thus, intelligible species are the species of things that are the effects of Divine Ideas. There is a reason and purpose for everything that God does. However, it may be impossible to explain it to beings who cannot perceive the full reality and live within a shadow portion of the whole. God hides the truth from us and expects us to use our minds, the reason that God gifted us at our birth to uncover truth. We are confined to a store of conceptual tools that may be inadequate to the task of eternal comprehension, but we may even forge new conceptual tools and see the World in quite a different way—indeed, the World may be quite different. We have this desire within us to make sense of what is probably, ultimately, un-sensible. It is the pilgrimage, it is the struggled to understand, that transforms us. The whole Universe represents an ordered and hierarchical procession from God. The World is not eternal cannot be proven but is accepted as reveled by God in Genesis. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love and this is the foundation of the new system of reference which will enable us to comprehend the nature and essence of spiritual reality. We do not have to understand an all-seeing God with the creation of life and matter to suspect something wonderfully miraculous is going on in the dimension we call reality. Most of us living in it feel invested in a sense of purpose. God in reality responds redemptively to changing human needs and predicaments. Although the human body owes its production, ultimately, to the same universal causes operative in the whole of the Universe, the human soul is directly created by God. Essentially, the soul is an incorporeal substance: operationally, however, the soul function as the vivifying form of the body, which is accidental to that essence. Since the soul is a substance in itself, it is immortal, surviving the body because it is not dependent upon it. Rather than saying that the soul is in the body, we should say that the body is in (that is, participates in the existence of) the soul. Faith is not about the observation, explanation and prediction of reality. Faith is about vision, orientation and commitment. Faith is not about what once happened, what has now become, or what is going to become, but about what ought to become. Faith is the great nevertheless that flies in the face of experienced reality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

Faith is trust in the face of disappointment, hope against hope, a rebellious attitude, a defiant protest against the reality we experience and that the sciences explore, in the name of a God with benevolent intentions. God is love; God is light. The World we know is wonderful beyond measure. Life is great. Life is a most unlikely reality, the most unbelievable experience, the most precious gift. There is always a future ahead of us. And our mortal limitations are not the limitation of God. Faith enjoys the wonderful life in a brilliant World, a commitment that is capable of suffering and sacrifice, just as the God it believes in, is characterized by suffering and sacrifice. The fact that the World we know is constrained and that these limitations are built into the fabric of the creation of God does not discourage, but emboldens us to keep trying to open our minds and tap into ultimate reality. We live in a World that is open to growth and transformation, a World that we can impact with our visions, intentions, decisions and actions. Faith is commitment to God’s vision, a commitment that is entirely realistic concerning the ambiguous character and final outcome of the World process, yet it does not give in. With God, faith throws in its weight in the struggle of life against death, justice against injustice, loving concern against indifference and callousness. This is how the true future of faith moves against the real future predicted by science. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

Every human being yearns for meaning, orientation, belonging, participation and ultimate fulfilment. Reality, as we know it, is a relentless struggle against futility, suffering and death. It runs against a barrage of fateful casual networks. It may be tragic to its core, but that is the reality we have, and f which we are part of. However, God’s vision functions like a shifting horizon that constantly reveals new deficiencies in our thinking and concepts of life and reality. God opens up new vistas, challenges and opportunities. God’s perspective on life alerts us, involves us, enlightens us, empowers us and motivates us to reach beyond our World and grasp such concepts as the speed of light, soul, love, and eternity. This is the way God acts creatively and redemptively within a reality that is in flux. A reality in flux has not arrived. It is still on its way to being manifested. It has not yet reached perfection. Heaven is the self-made eternal bliss of realizing oneness with God. When our deepest desire is eternal life with Heavenly Father, we will achieve it by following his commandments and through the grace of our Savior. Only be losing ourselves in this kind of service of the Lord will we learn to know the love of God in its most exalted form. Knowing God means understanding the Lord as he is, his desires and his will and what he expects of us individual and as his covenant people. The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective Heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

July 21, 2018 11:34 pm

The human body is the best picture of the human soul. If there is one common across all cultures, it is the search for a meaningful life—to be able to feel like who we are and what we do matters. “Language skills are the keys to accessing foreign societies, understanding their governments, and decoding their secrets. Stronger language skills will give our officers enhanced access to the information our policy makers need to protect our nation,” reports Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon E. Panetta. Many people find solace in creating private languages. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) actually hires people and has a hiring bonus program of up to $35,000.00 per individual and that money is paid in a one-time, lump sum payment. The CIA also offers language incentive payments for people with superior language skills, and they are encouraged to maintain and use their proficiency in support of the mission. Some are successful, but it requires concrete definitions and for many users to understand the language. For example, most people cannot read computer coding, but a set group of computer science engineers are able to read it, like many of us read our native language. However, to the vast majority of us, computer coding is still a secrete language, and trying to read computer codes, for us who are illiterate in the code, would be like reading Colloquial Chinese. (Ta zhidao wo wanquan bu dong diannao, jui yong zui jiandain de shuxue gen wo jieshi diannao shi zenme yi hui shi, keshi ta shuo-le yi ge duo xiaoshi, chule ling gen yi yiwai, wo haishi shenme dou by dong, zuihou wo zhihao gen ta shuo: ) #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

The limits of our language means the limits of our World.  For the most part, the idea of private language has multiple problems. It is impossible for a person to use a word with a meaning that nobody else could, even in principle, understand. It is impossible for people to use words which refer to private objects, that is, objects which nobody else could—even in principle—know. It is impossible for a person who has always lived in isolation to possess a language, even if one’s sounds are understandable by another person. Private language allows that a person to refer to objects which, in fact, that individual alone knows, but again others must be capable of knowing them in appropriate circumstances. Some communities in America also speaking private languages. For instance, a person might say, “You was cookin’ fish last night and we wanted a sample plate. Matter fact, I want the recipe. That exact one.” That may have nothing to do with actually preparing a traditional meal for dinner. However, when you ask them about their private language, they may deny that they were using one, and that they were, in fact, speaking about the actual subject, but that may not be the case. When you ask questions about their private language, they know it may confuse you and so they will deny using it so they can run games on you. It is something people do in primitive societies. Another thing they do is mumble and speak under their breathe so they can get away with saying vulgar things. Then if you respond, they can say you have a problem. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. Sometimes large groups of people who may not be native to America, move to a region and start to dominate that area, and they many want to find a target to harass. So, they use these secret tactics to gang up on people and harass them day in and day out. It can be so subtle or so outrageous that no one believes what is going on until it becomes abundantly obvious that there is some kind of unusual cell in the community causing problems.  Private language allows a person, like Robinson Cursoe, to keep possession of a language he learned previously while living in a community of speakers. Many philosophers assume that it is conceptually impossible for two people to share one and the same immediate sensation. Many also hold that, in a strict sense of “know,” others do not really know whether one has certain immediate sensation or not, precisely because they cannot share it. A word might have a meaning understandable to only one person because the word itself is a private object in the sense that it is impossible for a person to use words which refer to private objects, which no one else could even know. For example, the words of a person’s language might all be mental images of German written words, so that all one’s thinking would be a sort of mental reading of German. In this case, the referents of the words would be public, but the words themselves would be private and hence unintelligible to others. All the World is a stage, but not for playacting!  #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done. All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console humankind. Supported by the holy scriptures, we are all in very deed brothers and sisters, children of the same Heavenly Father in the spirit. (Ta dui zhei ge gongzuo feichang you xingqu, yijng gan-le liu-qi nian le.) We are eternal beings. We lived as intelligent spirits before this mortal life. We are now living part of our eternity. Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language. We must free ourselves from the terror of the heart that seeks and hopes to find the essence of things. Our mortal birth was not the beginning; death, which faces all of us, is not the end. Our birth is but a sleep a forgetting; the soul that rises with us, our life’s star, has had elsewhere its setting. And comes from afar; not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory so we come from God, who is our home. Conquer the last, the greatest temptation of all; hope. As eternal beings, we each have in us a spark of divinity. And, as people who have traveled over much of this World, we should be convinced that our Father’s children are essentially good. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

We want to live in peace, be good neighbors, love our home and families, and we want to improve our standards of living, and we want to do this right. We are essentially good. And we know that God loves us. Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and we should rejoice in it all. We feel love, we feel pain, we struggle. The World seems to be wider than the mind, and our hearts are a dark and almighty mystery. May God bless us wherever we are and be close to us, as he can and will through his spirit. Gratitude for the assurance we have that life is eternal. Yes, life is eternal. We live on and on after Earth-life, even though we oftentimes lose sight of that great basic truth. The spirit World is not far away. Sometimes the veil between this life and the life beyond comes very thin. Our loved ones who have passed on are not far from us. They are brought forth upon this Earth, for the express purpose of inhabiting it to all eternity. When the spirits leave their bodies, they are in the presence of God; they are prepared then to see, hear, and understand spiritual things. If the Lord would permit it, and it was God’s will that is should be done, we could see the spirits that have departed from this World, as plainly as we now see living people with our natural eyes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

Some people erroneously think if they receive all the ordinances of the gospel, regardless of their transgressions, they will inherit the celestial mansions of our God. What a rude awakening awaits such false-thinking individuals. “For the Lord cannot look upon sin with the lest degree of allowance,” reports Alma 45.16. We must not fall to the misleading precepts of popular culture and foolishly break God’s laws and thus lose our opportunity for exaltation. The Constitution of the United States of America secures to every citizen the sacred right to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. A person earnestly seeking eternal life must avoid the traps of temptation and sin. We are never safe from committing sin unless we have fully prepared ourselves and decided on the course we will take before the temptation comes into our lives. Behind all appearances, is divine a struggling essence. We want to merge with it. We feel that behind appearances this struggling essence is also striving to merge with our hearts. However, the body stands between us separates us. The mind stands between us and separates us. Yet, everything is overflowing with God. We cannot accept boundaries; appearances cannot contain us. We choke! To bleed in this agony, and to live it profoundly, is the second duty. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

The mind is patient and adjusts itself, it likes to play; but the heart grows savage and will not condescend to play; it stifles and rushes to tear apart the net of necessity. God is the force and power to do good; to live righteously, to enjoy freedom of choice, and to be courageous and faithful. Life is a real challenge, but blessed with God-given powers, we can overcome every stratagem and obstacle placed in our paths. The path to eternal life may not be an easy one to follow with all the popular culture enticements about us, but when we consider the rewards and blessings we gather if we travel the narrow way, it is worth every sacrifice we make. Thus, even when we truly learn to love God, we must humbly acknowledge that the Lord loved us first. Longing for a Heavenly home is real, especially in view of how this life is designed. When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and fine music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time. It is possible to live as if everything is changed with eternity. We as believers have the calling to being eternity into time, of bringing the reality of Heaven down to Earth. Time was created along with the Heavens—meaning that at least that time is the measure of change, and perhaps that it is identical with the movement of the Heavenly bodies. Therefore, eternity is a timeless duration. Time is the moving image of eternity. (Nin bu duo zuo yihuir le ma? Zai he bei kafei ba.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

God, being necessary, is everlasting. It may be reported that the everlasting is not bound by time. The timeless eternity of God follows from God’s being that which nothing greater can be conceived. Grammar of the divine powers, which determines what it makes sense to say of the most perfect being, including that being’s timelessness. God’s timeless eternity is unending, lacking both beginning and end, and an instantaneous whole lacking succession. It is incapable of being defined or fully grasped by a human. Timeless eternity constitutes part of the grammar of talking about God. Since God is timelessly eternal it does not make any sense to ask how many years God has existed, or whether he is growing old, or what will he be doing later on in the year. God could be eternal, with a life that is not marked by temporal succession, while being located at every spacetime point. Conversely, God could be everlasting while not located in physical spacetime at all. Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of boundless life. Or again, eternity is the complete possession all at once of illimitable life. The life of a timeless being (of a non-biological kind) is alive. Therefore, God involves a special sort of, atemporal, duration. A timeless being possess its life all at once, completely. That is, it does not experience succession. That is what makes a timeless being outside of time.  #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

By contrast, a living biological being in time experiences succession, only ever possessing one moment of its life at a time. Not only does a timeless being not experience succession, but its life’s events do not involve succession. Since change requires succession, a timeless being does not change. However, a timeless being is still presently alive in some sense of presently. Moreover, the events in that being’s life are simultaneous in some sense, both with each other and with temporal items. An eternal present is infinitely extended, pastless, futureless duration (strictly speaking, on the terminology used here, it would be timeless present). When physicists announced that they had detected subatomic particles, called neutrinos, that appeared to be traveling faster than the speed of light (the speed of light travels 300 million meter per second or 186,000 miles per second), this was an exception to a cosmic speed limit set by Dr. Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity. And God said, “Let there be light,” reports Genesis 1.3. This proves that God is not controlled by laws. The temporal present is represented by light that moves steadily along the lower lines, while the eternal present is represented by the upper line being lit all at once. An infinite stretch or extension of some kind. “The Lord will be our light in the Wilderness,” reports 2 Nephi 10.14. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9

July 20, 2018 8:56 pm