To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering. As much as we in the Western culture revere the strong, so do we protect and care and perpetuate the weak. For the person prone to weakness, it becomes an easy, comfortable trap. However, it soon becomes a miserable one. If you are stuck on the weakness polarity, you are a particularly hard-to-handle manipulator. You tend to depend upon others for everything, and when they try to get away, you play weak or helpless, thus sucking them in again. You are an excellent role player. You apologize a lot for everything, using pleas of ignorance or incompetence to avoid responsibility. To reassure yourself, you constantly ask others if you are okay. Unfortunately for you, you are so busy looking into the faces of others for expressions of approval, you never look inside yourself. Your inner self is thus a vast, unexplored territory. In spite of all your admission of weakness and incompetence, you have refused to truly examine those feelings of weakness. Your emotional life has thus remained a shallow one. If you are a master, however, you do not play the helpless role; you have the courage to really face your limitations and define them as your body and emotions guide you. You trust yourself and look inside, appealing to you “inner Supreme Court” for answers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The weakness you find within is real, not a manipulative game—and not a mask. When you are able to face your limitations inside, you are also able to find strength and competence there. As a master, you know you can look within to find all the answers and all the guidance you need. Having mastered, not exaggerated, your weakness, you improve your physical health. You attend to clues your body gives you as to its condition, rather than allowing them to develop into vague, nagging aches. Among others, you stand on your own feet and are free to relate to others as an equal. You carry your own weight of responsibility in the World. Mustering the strength to shoulder this weight can be a long and difficult process. Some people have been afraid all of their lives. Some infants are afraid of the wind. It howls menacingly across the open fields, then darts through the cracks in the floorboards of their farmhouse, which startles the baby with a sudden chill. On blustery nights, it makes the house shiver with what a baby might imagine is a fear like his own. Next, some children learn to fear their father. He is a stern, brittle man who works his farm from before sunrise until after sunset every day of the year. He seems to be at constant war with the farm and the farm seems to constantly fight back. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The struggle might make a father mean, and he may vent his meanness on everything around him: the land, the animals, his wife and children. As a result, some children learn to never talk back to their father. Breaking one of his rules, even a little, means feeling the awful whack of his hand across the face, neck, shoulders, back. And when he begins to hit, he seldom stops until his hand is too sore to hit anymore. This causes some wives to become just like one of the children. She does her chores, obeys her husband unquestioningly and when she breaks one of his rules, even a little, is whacked just as hard and long. The only time the father did not hit his wife is when she was sick. Growing up in the isolation of a farmhouse, some children also come to fear the outside World, the World of the unknown and unknowable people beyond the wide fields which stretch in ever direction. A child may try a few, tentative friendships in school, but sometime the youth is never able to spend enough time with their peers to get comfortable and familiar the way real friends do. This child’s World is the farm and family and the fear which pervades everything. When abused children turn eighteen, it is often demanded that they get a job. Some youths are not willing to put up with the hard work pay, and constant crude advances of the customers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Abused youth often enjoy the work—not because it is easy, but because for twelve hours a day it allows the youth to be out of the house, out of the reach of his father’s stinging hand. When he serves someone particularly well, an extra dollar or two appears under the plate. Although these paychecks are sometimes all surrendered to the father, he is able to keep the tips for himself, his private treasure. As an adult, when people live with fear, it can cause pain and sickness. And often, nothing seems to help. Not the medicines, not talking about it, not anything. There will be times in our lives when we find ourselves on an unexpected path, facing severe circumstances. When events, often out of our control, alter the life we had planned or hoped for, how do we respond? No amount of change, trial, or opposition can alter our eternal course. We are God’s spirit sons and daughters, and we accepted his plan by which we could obtain a physical body and gain Earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize our divine destiny as heirs of eternal life. The changes, and resulting challenges, that we encounter in mortality come in a variety of shapes and sizes and impact each of us in unique ways. Although each change may be unique to your individual circumstances, there is a common element in the resulting trial or challenge—hope and peace are always available through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

The Atonement of Jesus Christ provides the ultimate corrective and healing measures to every wounded body, damaged spirit, and broken heart. Jesus Christ knows, in a way that no one else can understand, what it is that we need, individually, in order to move forward in the midst of change. Unlike friends and loved ones, the Saviour not only sympathizes with us, but He can empathize perfectly because He has been where we are. In addition to paying the price and suffering for our sins, Jesus Christ also walked every path, dealt with every challenge, faced every hurt—physical, emotional, or spiritual—that we will ever encounter in mortality. In this mortal experience, we cannot control all that happens to us, but we have absolute control over how we respond to the changes in our lives. This does not imply that the challenges and trials we face are of no consequence and easily handled or dealt with. It does not imply that we will be free from pain or heartache. Helpless is a place—a place that is real. However, it is important that we do not let ourselves play helpless. Do not give in to it. There is cause for hope and that is due to the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can move forward and find better days—even days full of joy, light, and happiness. Healing blessings come in many ways, each suited to our individual needs, as known to Him who loves us best. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Sometimes a “healing” cures our illness or lifts our burden. However, sometimes we are “healed” by being given strength to understanding or patience to bear the burdens placed upon us. In the first year that I knew my wife, we played Russian Bank quite often. She had been winning but then she began losing, and one evening she threw her head and arms on the table and sobbed, as though she had lost not a game of cards but everything in the World. That was what I noticed at the time. Instead of letting that thought itself be said, the spontaneous noticing, matter-of-fact, without opinion, neither tender with pain nor hard with accusation, I let myself be scared by seeing this “strong” woman fall apart “over a game of cards,” by seeing her little rib cage heave like a child’s. It was cultural conditioning that made me view this as “weak” or “helplessness”—something that “should not happen” and so must be stopped. In losing my neutrality, I wanted to put her back together. I put a hand on her shoulder. I bent and kissed the back of her neck. She pulled together and smiled at me, her eyes saying thank you. And I thought that I had helped her, too. There were these moments, brief and rare, when my wife’s guard was down, when she was cracking. I had botched them. I did just what she did—tried to put “her” back together, not knowing that this was not her. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

If I had not done this, just possibly she might not have done it herself. There might have been the of an opening. All those years of reassurance were crutch-type helping, and all the times when I prevented her suicide never really saved her life, because her life was what she never lived. If I had said my own thought as simply as I felt it, as it came into my head, my first thought that was my own direct and immediate response and really me, is it not possible that she might have told me what “losing” meant to her? And if I had accepted that (not saying that it was not so, that there were many ways in which she won, was running ahead of others—which was true in the view of the society of which we both were a part, but not in the view of all societies) might she not have been able to speak what she never could say to anyone and so could not hear properly herself? Suppose, that morning after the Japanese attack, I had said, “You sound as though you feel this really is the end for you. I hope it is not.” Those were my true thoughts, my own thoughts at the time, that I let get blacked by what I saw as my World and what I thought that his should be. My World at that time in fact was not superior: it required that she be in it with me. My World did not see that she was in it only more so, and blocked my own immediate and direct response to her. My tenderness for human suffering did not include her. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Some people do not believe that mental illness exists. The phenomena now called mental illnesses [should be] looked at afresh and more simply, be regarded as the expressions of man’s struggle with the problem of how he should live. How do we fit ourselves in a society that gives us so much trouble? That is the wrong question. It is possible to lose all awareness of ourselves as an active participant. In the year before I left my wise, she had almost totally convinced me that I was “insane,” unfit to be a father. “No judge would let you have him (our son).” In fighting not to blame my wife for my hurt and confusion, because I could not bear to have my love change to hate, I arrived at knowing my own part in it, and told a doctor what was true: “I watched her dig the pit, and obligingly fell in.” However, I could not see that clearly while I was under fire. Each time that I almost grasped it, my wife’s words—or even the way she looked at me—threw me into a chaos of uncertainty again—the doubting of myself. No one else seemed to find her behaviour odd, so was it all in me? I had to be away from her, away from everyone with opinions, to find out. It gives me the creeps that children who are told they are “wrong,” “no good,” “worthless,” cannot get away, and that our young people are required to fit into a society which does not fit them. When we require always more doctors, more psychotherapists, more jailers, more police, who is at fault? #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

There are some people who have been in prison for twenty years straight and they talk to themselves. There is no one that they can call on. Their New York lawyers cannot do anything for them. There is no appeal from a .30 caliber summons. Some wonder if Sade is an atheist? He says so, and we believe him, before going to prison, in his Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man; and from then on, we are dumbfounded by his passion for sacrilege. One of his cruelest characters, Saint-Fond, does not in any sense deny God. He is content to develop a gnostic theory of a wicked demiurge and to draw the proper conclusions from it. Saint-Fond, it is said, is not Sade. No, of course not. A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously. Now, all Sade’s atheists suppose, in principle, the nonexistence of God for the obvious reason that He existence would imply that He was indifferent, wicked, or cruel. Sade’s greatest work ends with a demonstration of the stupidity and spite of the divinity. The innocent Justine runs through the storm and the wicked Noirceuil swears that he will be converted if divine retribution consents to spare her life. Justine is struck by lightning, Noirceuil triumphs, and human crime continues to be man’s answer to divine crime. Thus there is a freethinker wager that is the answer to the Pascalian wager. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The idea of God which Sade conceives for himself is, therefore, of a criminal divinity who oppresses and denies mankind. That murder is an attribute of the divinity is quite evident, according to Sade, from the history of religions. Why, then, should man be virtuous? Sade’s first step as a prisoner is to jump to the most extreme conclusions. If God kills and repudiates mankind, there is nothing to stop one from killing and repudiating one’s fellow men. This irritable challenge in no way resembles the tranquil negation that is still to be found in the Dialogue of 1782. The man who exclaims: “I have nothing, I give nothing,” and who concludes: “Virtue and vice are indistinguishable in the tomb,” is neither happy nor tranquil. The concept of God is the only thing, according to him, “which he cannot forgive man.” The word forgive is already rather strange in the mouth of this expert in torture. However, it is himself whom he cannot forgive for an idea that his desperate view of the World, and his condition as a prisoner, completely refute. A double rebellion—against the order of the Universe and against himself—is henceforth going to be the guiding principle of Sade’s reasoning. In that these two forms of rebellion are contradictory except in the disturbed mind of a victim of persecution, his reasoning is always either ambiguous or legitimate according to whether it is considered in the light of logic or in an attempt at compassion. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

It is true that thought precedes action, that actions express thoughts, and that to rule mind is to rule the entire life. However, it is also true that man’s battles with himself proceed by progressive stages, that he exerts will more easily than he changes feeling. Therefore, the discipline of inward thinking should follow after—and no before—it. To counsel him to take care of his inner life and that then the outer life will take care of itself, as so many mystics do, is to be plausible but also to show a lack of practicality. Man’s heart will feel no peace as his mind will know no poise until he abandons the lower instincts and gives himself up to this unearthly call. First, he must abandon them outwardly in deeds; later he must do it inwardly even in thoughts. This will inevitably bring him into inner struggle, into oscillation between victories and defeats, elations and despairs. The way up is long, hard, rugged, and slow to tread. It is always a stage for complaints and outcries, battles and falls. Only time—the master power—can bring him to its lofty end. Only when the lessons of birth after birth etch themselves deeply and unmistakably into his conscious mind through dreadful repetition can he accept them co-operatively, resignedly, and this put a stop to the needless sufferings of desire, passion, and attachment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

When a man’s desire and yearnings, thirst and longings are so strong as to upset his reasoning power and block his intuitive capacity, he is stopped from finding the truth. In this condition, he shuts his eyes to those facts which are displeasing or which are contrary to his desires and opens them only to those which are pleasing or agreeable to his wishes. Thinking bends easily to desires, so that the satisfaction of personal interest rather than the quest of universal truth becomes its real object. Reforms that begin with the lowest in man lead the way to the highest in him. The mastery of terrestrial passion opens the door to the birth of the spiritual intuition. Whether the cage be made of gold or the net fabricated from silk, the reality of their inner captivity still remains. A discipline which is not stern but gentle and easy is best suited to modern man. The astrological Zodiac which has continued to attract the attentions of intelligent people for five thousand years must have some caste-type meaning—and this significance must be explained by the theories which improve it. New theories can improve, can explain, but not reject, the Zodiac. The Genesis version of Creation obviously must have had profound survival validity even through it obviously fails to take into account the newer evidence from Darwinian, Mendelian, DNA, sociobiological and Behaviour genetics. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Correspondence Theory is a “magic stick” for searching out new laws, because it sets formal constraints on new mathematics. As Morrison emphasizes, the Correspondence Principle secures science against the loss of achievements of the past. For innovators it is a warning like Hippocratic maxim for physicians—above all do no harm! Classical mechanics is not a mere blunder that was repudiated in 1905, as the headlines imply. This affectionate maxim holds even more strongly for human ethology—id est, philosophy. All the theological and philosophical systems of the past must be seen as attempts, valid at the preceding, more primitive stage of neurotechnology, to explain the inner-outer (CNS-DNA) reality paradox. Thus the concern in the Starseed Transmissions to trace correspondences among the many occult theories of the past, including Christianity and Buddhism, and the new sciences. Each past philosophy, far from being repudiated, or rejected, joyously fits into an evolving, stage-by-stage theory. Medieval alchemy and astrology were not blunders repudiated by Dow Chemical and Dr. Freud. The demon is the jester in human existence, and the joker in psychotherapy. No matter how well a man lays his plans, the demon can come in at the critical moment and upset them all, usually with a smile and a ha ha. And no matter how well the therapist plans his psychotherapy, the patient always has the upper hand. At the point when the therapist thinks he has four aces, the man plays his joker, and his demon wins the pot. Then he skips merrily off, leaving the doctor to lead through the deck trying to figure out what happened. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Even if he is ready for it, there may be little he can do. The doctor may know ahead of time that just as the man gets his stone rolled up to the brow of the hill, the demon will distract his attention, and it will roll all the way down again. There may be others who know about it, too, but the demon is already at work, and sees to it that the man keeps away from anyone who would interfere. So the patient starts to miss appointments, or drifts away, and if anyone pressures him he just plain quits. He may return after he has Sisyphused out, sadder, but not much wiser, nor even aware of his glee. The demon first appears in the higher, when the man scatters his food on the floor with a merry glint, waiting to see what his parents will do. If they make friends with it, it will go on to later mischief, and then perhaps into humorous fun and jokes. If they beat it down, it will lurk surly in the background, ready to leap out at an unguarded moment and scramble his life as it originally scrambled his food. A substantial proportion of the World’s population lives in cities where trees and grass are seldom seen, where the sounds of birds and babbling streams are not heard. The air they breathe is either filtered through air-conditioning units or heavily polluted with smog. Such persons adapt to the milieu within which they live, but it is an unnatural environment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Contact with the physical World, with seaside, forests, and parks, with fields and animals, gives persons a sense of rhythm that contrasts with the rhythms of industrialized urban life. These experiences remind the person that he or she does not simply have a body, but that the person is a body, an embodied being who is in and of nature. Chronic physical and muscular tension, accelerated rhythms of speech and movement, are common to people who live apart from their own nature and the nature around us all. Just as a person may suffer from estrangement from the rest of nature, the person may also suffer a kind of alienation and distance from the body. From infancy, the human needs physical contact with the other human beings and with the World. Infants and grownups alike need handshakes, hugs, enjoyable exercise, and dance in order to feel the vitality of their bodies. As Reich, Lowen, and Rolf have pointed out, growing up leaves a person with many muscular systems chronically tensed, as part of an overall defense against danger and pain. This “muscular armour” interferes with fullest respiration, with proper poster, with sleep and rest; it often requires specialized massage and manipulation before the muscular system is restored to the pliability most compatible with a health-giving life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Reich especially pointed out that a chronically defensive attitude reduces a person’s capacity for the fullest intimacy. Of course, intimacy is also an exquisite experience. Our culture, with its puritan heritage, has encouraged people to repress pleasures of the flesh, perhaps because it interferes with compulsive work. Recent counterculture developments have introduced a variety of approaches to a reengagement with nature and with one’s own body that seem compatible with healthier personality. The year 2024 is important for many people and the American movement in many ways. We have seen the cause and effect of not having a balanced system. One nail drives another deeper still. Even new obligation that America assumes, as a result of its criminal mis-handling of foreign American interests, creates a stronger blow which falls on the states. When the democratic party intentionally allowed border security to fail, it gave the revolutionary uprising of an acceptance of criminal behaviour and the appearance of a spear point aimed at the American Christian family, they did not do this from the standpoint of American interest, but only as a commissioner of widespread illegal activity, corruption, and a general disregard for national security. It is obvious that this “valuable gem,” who had been constantly wandered around American political centers as the journalists’ rabble, should have been the last person called upon as a protector of American interests and he was completely indifferent whether America was even part of God’s wide World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The Sacramento Fire Department has to avert dangers to public safety caused by fires, explosions, accidents and similar events. Technical assistance and firefighting tasks play an important role in this. They also provide medical assistance for people who are in life-threatening condition. The aim is to preserve life or health. This includes initial medical care and, if necessary, the establishment of transportation to the hospital. The tasks assigned by law include, among other things, statements in the context of building permit procedures, fire safety inspections or contract procedures for fire alarm systems and fire brigade key depots. “It was a bitterly cold night, maybe twenty or twenty-five degrees (Fahrenheit). The was a farmhouse, heavily involved, and there were kids trapped in it. We got out there, and the house was cooking. There was heavy smoke coming out of the windows; since the fire hadn’t gone through the roof, it was bending out all the windows. This was the first time any of us young guys had a situation where we knew someone was trapped. We started stretching an inch-and-a-half because that’s what we always did, and out chief said, “The heck with the inch-and-a-half. The kids are trapped up there, and we’ve got to get up.” None of the guys from the other department had air packs on, and we were all masked up. They pointed to the back of the house, which wasn’t so involved with flames. The kids’ bedroom was there. We put a ladder up to the little roof over one of the side doors and went up. I looked inside the window, and the whole quarter of the house was going, trapping the kids. These were farm kids, and they had already been up doing their chores. Now they couldn’t get out. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“We tried to get in this window. I could see down the hall, I could see a crib. It was at the point where the flame is so intense that you can see again, when it’s really lit up, before you deal the water. I tried to get in the window and I got blown right back. I kept trying to reach for the crib, and I kept getting burned back, because the whole damn fire was venting this way. Two other guys were trying the next window, meeting the same thing—getting blown back. There was just heat coming at us. I lost my helmet, my New Yorker, in there. Then our bells went off, and we were called down. I was so man, I said, ‘Dang, we couldn’t get to them, we couldn’t get to them.’ And one of the guys I had never given much of a thought to slammed me against the side of a wall, and said, ‘That’s it. It’s done.’ Apparently I was sufficiently obnoxious about my frustration that somebody felt it necessary to snap me back. Meanwhile, a booster line, a high-pressure beam gun, was working on the fire. I had to change air packs because the face piece on my mask was burned so that I couldn’t see out of it. We went back up and made an entrance through the second window. We knew it was too late in the firs for the kids to be alive. I went in and started searching the room. The far corner of it had burned through to the first floor. I started crawling and found one of the kids practically underneath the window. It turned out to be a fourteen-year-old girl. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“I took off a glove and felt for a pulse, but I could see by the way everything was burned there that there was nothing I could do and I should just report it. She had probably gotten to the window and opened it, and then probably got sucked back in. The room has flashed. I don’t know why it flashed. I searched further, and I came across a lot of stuffed toys, and there was a little girl with a ponytail, all charred and black and very brittle. I remember reaching out to that. It was the little girl’s room I was in. Further on, across the hallway, there was a body strewn there, with a nose falling down across the face. It was absolutely gruesome. I came back and reported the fatalities to the chief. You think about scenarios. The older sister must have gone into the little girl’s room to try to save her and gotten trapped and just passed away. The chief and I were standing in that room, waiting for the medical examiner to come and talking about it. The little girl was the child of a poor farm family, but she had books and today and stuffed dollars and everything she could want. It was striking. The parents got out, and they were an absolute mess, the thought of their kids trapped upstairs and them getting out because their bedroom was downstairs. But the worst thing for them must have been the knowledge that they fire had started in a faultily installed wood stove, which they had twice been warned about by the fire company when they had been there earlier on less serious fires. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

“Up until then I had been a young snot who really thought he could knock the tar out of any fire. I had been in real hot fires and gone through it and really had done my job, and I would have sworn that I could have gone through anything to have gotten to the kids. That is just not the way it is. The thing is, you think you’re invincible, that you can get through any smoke or anything. I mean, the fire was horrible, four kids died in it. It was physically impossible to get through the window. I did everything I could, and I know I did. I went up to the house a couple of day later. I wanted to find my fire helmet, which was still in there somewhere. There was a lot of clutter all around. I looked up and saw my helmet inside the crib that I had been trying to reach into. I took it back, cleaned it up.” With empathy and understanding, the Sacramento Fire Department protects life, property, and the environment in their community through an all-hazards approach to fire protection, emergency medical services, community risk reduction and education. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. In an effort to keep the country cohesive, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ and buy American cars and other American goods and services. Also, please respect law and order, and treat others with kindness and respect. To ensure that you have a bright future, please take your education seriously, and be sure to actually read your books. And remember to “Just Say ‘No’ to Drugs.” Even marijuana can be deadly. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

The Winchester Mystery House

he ghosts are The Winchester Mystery House and are treated like members of the family. They are greeted and wished a Merry Christmas and asked to protect that house. The caretakers strive to create a home that is welcoming to everyone. The goal is to make guests feel comfortable and safe. There are a variety of tours, some for those who love theme parks and others for children and families and those who love more historic tours.

Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

Some people are raised in vicious crumbling corners of the city, where their chances of survival are only as good as the strength in their muscles of the quick wits in their head. Those who have both—physical strength and size are lucky. However, it also helps to have calculating intelligence. It is also important not to get caught in the syndrome of unemployment, drugs, and despair. When live in an age when, as the Lord foretold, men’s hearts are failing them, not only physically but in spirit. Many are giving up heart for the battle of life. Death by suicide ranks as a major cause of deaths to college students. As the showdown between good and evil approaches with its accompanying trials and tribulations, the adversaries are increasingly striving to overcome the Saints with despair, discouragement, despondency, and depression. Sometimes this happens when a person’s spouse leaves them, the paychecks stop coming in, and the payments on the Corvette fall months behind. This is when it is most important to remember God and have assurance that he is directing us through the troubled times ahead. “He that remaineth steadfast and is not overcome, the same shall be saved,” reports Matthew 1.11. Also, never forget your intelligence, your education, and your competitiveness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

Even people who are successful and feel like they own the World fell like something very important is missing. Some fell alone, like a spaceship rocketing to the stars with nothing but emptiness all around them. They may also feel out of touch with themselves, with who they are. It is often times like a spaceship that has no pilot, no crew—just an engine driving it mindlessly ever upward to nowhere. Many people are, as always, a success. They have energy, style, charisma. They seem to have it “all together.” And they fool everyone but themselves. On top of that, they carry a deep, gnawing guilt. In the rise to the top, one must often leave many people behind: their friends from poor neighbourhoods, their spouse, and sometimes even their families. These individuals know something is wrong with them personally. They want to relax, but cannot. They want to be loved, but have no idea how a person goes about doing that. They get sick and tired of competing, keeping up, looking good, winning for the sake of winning alone. “Wickedness never was happiness,” reports Alma 41.10. Sin creates disharmony with God and is depressing to the spirit. Therefore, a man would do well to examine himself to see that he is in harmony with all of God’s laws. Every law kept brings a particular blessing. Every law broken brings a particular blight. Those who are heavy laden with despair should come unto the Lord, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Strong. You want to know that you are strong all the time. Not just when things are going smoothly. However, if you tell yourself—all the time—that you are strong, then after a while you will believe it. You will really know it. So when something unfortunate happens, you will know you can handle it. However, no one is strong all the time. There are times when you will be weak. Look man, not everyone has the luxury of being weak. Weak, for some, is like one step from being dead, you understand? You will be weak one minute, and you will be dead the next. However, prayer in the hour of need is a great boon. From simple trials to our Gethsemanes, prayer can put us in touch with God, our greatest source of comfort and counsel. “Pray always that you may come off conqueror,” Doctrine and Covenants 10.5. This is also a key to use in keeping depression from destroying us. In the lives of some people, there are a number of direct polarities, that is, opposites which are independent, but at the same time complementary. With regard to their outside World, there are the polarities of their two cultures: one, the poverty-ridden low-income neighbourhood and the other, the World of business. They know their roots are in one culture, but their everyday life is in the other. Their inability to be in both of these Worlds, alternately, as the situation might demand, is a source of great conflict, guilt and embarrassment to them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

The other polarity exists in their own perception of themselves: the polarity of strength and weakness. Having grown up in an environment where strength was equated with survival, some come to see weakness as something to be avoided at all costs. Thus they will deny their own weakness and set about structing their lives such that one could demonstrate only strength to oneself and others. To understand this, we have to focus on the exact meaning of the word polarity, which is different from the concept of duality. Polarities exist at either end of a continuum. One such continuum might have “yes” at one end and “no” at the other, with degrees of “maybes” in between. Another continuum might have strength at one end and weakness at the other. (There is a zero point in the center and the intensity of the strength and weakness increases as each moves away from the other. Differences exist only in degree. On the other hand, a duality is a complete separation of two entities into mutually exclusive or contradictory conditions such as: Alive of Dead.) These are related by their oppositeness—an oppositeness which is independent, but not complementary. Also, there cannot be degrees of deadness. Something is either dead, or alive. It cannot be a “little bit” dead. Many people often mistake polarities for dualities. In the minds of some, there are two kind of people “ghetto” and successful businessmen. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

Since some people view themselves as successful businessmen, they cannot allow themselves to be viewed as “ghetto,” as they perceive the people left in the less affluent hometowns. To these successful men, it is necessary to embrace one and reject the other. Some cannot see that one does not have to do that. Rather, one can hold the two polarities in tension, appreciating both Worlds. One can be human and ambitions, cool and successful. One can speak in slang dialect to their friends and family and slide into their university English when he is in the executive suite. He can be both at the same time without guilt. Recognizing that he need not constantly fight the situation as a duality, but allow both to exist in creative tension, will lead to a dissolving of what could become a neurotic conflict. The Universe is literally held together by such dynamic tension. For every positive charge in a molecule, there is an equal and opposite negative one. For every planet that is spinning wildly, straining to hurtle off into space, there is another planet holding it to its orbit. The positive does not reject the existence of the negative. It uses the negative to hold itself in place. The Universe uses both the positive and the negative to accomplish a variety of useful tasks. The result of this dynamic tension between polarities is balance and balance is literally “what makes the World go ‘round.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

If everything exists in a state of dynamic tension, then why not out inner life, our own being? Should not out being also thrive best in a condition of dynamic tension on a nurturing continuum of feeling and growth, rather than at a rigidly fixed position which seeks to deny the existence of another, opposite position? In that the children of Cain have triumphed, increasingly, throughout the centuries, the God of the Old Testament can be said to have been incredibly successful. Paradoxically, the blasphemers have injected new life into the jealous God whom Christianity wished to banish from history. One of their most profoundly audacious acts was to recruit Christ into their camp by making His story end on the Cross and on the bitter note of the cry that precedes His agony. By this means it was possible to preserve the implacable face of a God of hate—which coincided far better with creation as the rebels conceived it. Until Dostoievsky and Nietzsche, rebellion is directed only against a cruel and capricious divinity—a divinity who prefers, without any convincing motive, Abel’s sacrifice to Cain’s and, by so doing, provokes the first murder. Dostoievsky, in the realm of imagination, and Nietzsche, in the realm of fact, enormously increase the field of rebellious thought and demand an accounting from the God of love. Himself. Nietzsche believes that God is dead in the souls of his contemporaries. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Because Nietzsche believes that God is dead in the souls of his contemporaries, he attacks, like his predecessor Stirner, the illusion of God that lingers, under guise of morality, in the thought of his times. However, until they appear upon the scene, the freethinkers, for example, were content to deny the truth of the history of Christ (“that dull story,” in Sade’s words) and to maintain, by their denials, the tradition of an avenging god. On the other hand, for as long as the Western World has been Christian, the Gospels have been the interpreter between Heaven and Earth. Each time a solitary cry of rebellion was uttered, the answer came in the form of an even more terrible suffering. In that Christ had suffered, and had suffered voluntarily, suffering was no longer unjust and all pain was necessary. In one sense, Christianity’s bitter intuition and legitimate pessimism concerning human behaviour is based on the assumption that overall injustice is as satisfying to man as total justice. Only the sacrifice of an innocent god could justify the endless and universal torture of innocence. Only the most abject suffering by God could assuage man’s agony. If everything, without exception, in Heaven and Eart is doomed to pain and suffering, then a strange form of happiness is possible. However, from the moment when Christianity, emerging from its period of triumph, found itself submitted to the critical eye of reason—to the point where the divinity of Christ was denied—suffering once more became the lot of man. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Jesus Christ profaned is no more than just one more innocent man who the representatives of the God of Abraham tortured in a spectacular manner. The abyss that separates the master from the slaves opens again and the cry of revolt falls on the deaf ears of a jealous God. The freethinkers have prepared the way for this new dichotomy by attacking, with all the usual precautions, the morality and divinity of Christ. Callot’s Universe sums up quite satisfactorily this World of hallucination and wretchedness whose inhabitants begin by giggling up their sleeves and end—with Moliere’s Don Juan—by laughing to high Heaven. During the two centuries which prepare the way for the upheavals, both revolutionary and sacrilegious, of the eighteenth century, all the efforts of the freethinkers are bent on making Christ an innocent, or a simpleton, so as to annex Him to the World of man, endowed with all the noble or derisory qualities of man. Thus the ground will be prepared for the great offensive against a hostile Heaven. The adept who attains perfect inner serenity can do so only by paying the price of forgoing the emotional agitations, attractions, and repulsions which constitute much of the inner life of most people. Having attained it himself, he can lead other to it only by pointing towards it as a reachable goal for them, too. He may not yield to personal favouritism or egotistic caprice based on likes and dislikes in selecting those whom he is to help. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

Indeed, because of this it is said that he is not more interested in mankind collectively rather than as individuals. Now if he had to commit emotional suicide to reach his present height, it is unreasonable to expect that he should flatter or encourage those who, although seeking the same height, seek also to preserve or nourish their egoistic emotions. The latter are nearly always closely linked to egoistic desires. An inward detachment from all eagerness for Earthly life is the grim price that must be paid before entry into the kingdom of Heaven can be got. Such detachment requires soft sentimentality to yield to hard recognition must assuredly lead the seeker far away from conventional points of view concerning his personal duties, his family relations, and his social behaviour. It is not that he will not feel desires and aversions, attractions and repulsions, but that he will not be moved by them. They will be under control, not only of the ego but of a power higher than the ego. Thus the tensions which animate him, will not be present. It is an error to regard him as inhuman, as lacking in feeling. What he rejects is negative feeling: what he seeks to overcome is animal wrath, lust, hatred; what he affirms is positive feeling of the best kind—delicate, sensitive, aesthetic, compassionate, and refined. Thus his stoic imperturbability is not rigor mortis. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

To talk of his condition as simply being one of controlled emotion is not quite correct; much rather it is one of balanced emotion—which is markedly different. The idea of a philosopher being an utterly aloof person, coldly indifferent and quite unapproachable, a man who restricts his human feelings to the degree that hardly any are left, is applicable only to those who follow narrow, rigid, and incomplete systems. The notion that a philosopher is melancholy is arguable: there is no reason why he should not show joy and appreciate humour. However, since he is a balanced person, he will put the governor of deep seriousness to control these qualities. If a human price has to be paid for such emotionless behaviour, let us remember that it must also be paid for too emotional behaviour. A portentous gravity is not at all a hallmark of the self-actualized Christian. Is mental tranquility indistinguishable from emotional death? Is it not better to guide feelings, educate desires, and uplift emotions into the proper channels than to kill them? Such questions show a confused comprehension of the philosophic discipline. The latter’s aim is not to produce an insensible human stone but a true human being. If a child is boxed in by contradictory controls, there may be only one way out which allows him some measure of self-expression. He is then forced into that kind of activity or response no matter how inappropriate it may be. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

In such a case, it is often evident to the people around him that he is responding to what is in his head rather than to the external situation, and he is then said to be in a bag. If his bag is backed up by some talent or ability, and by a winning payoff command, it may be a winner’s bag, but in most cases people in a bag are losers because their behaviour is nonadaptive. A person who breaks out of a bag (or “container,” as it sometimes called) will immediately proceed to do his thing, that is, whatever he has always wanted most to do. If that happens to be adaptive and is controlled with some Adult rationality, he may turn out to be a winner, but if he indulges too often and too well, he will end up being a loser. In fact, when a person starts to do his thing, after he break out of his bag, his payoff command will determine whether he does it judiciously so as to be a winner, or overdoes it like a loser. In some cases, however, he may be able to leave his payoff command in the bag along with the rest of his parentally programmed script apparatus, and then he is really his own man and can decide his own destiny. However, it is difficult to know, without the appraisal of an objective outsider, whether he is really a maverick of liberated person, or is only an angry rebel, or maybe even a schizophrenic who has jumped out of his bag and into a bottle, with or without pulling the cork in after him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

To ask about the purpose of human life is to raise an existential question, rather than one answerable through experiment or logic. Existential questions are answered by the way one lives. Every person’s life, and the daily actions and decisions that comprise it, represent that person’s answer to the question, “How, then, shall I live?” These answers are almost by definition the embodiment of a person’s religion. The chief function of religion is to provide ultimate answers to the questions that existence pose. In the absence of credible and lifegiving answers to the questions, “How shall I live, and why?” a person enters the state called noogenic neurosis—a kind of despair or cynicism. Much depression and neurotic suffering stem from a failure to find meaning in life or to find new meaning when old goals have been consummated or have lost their inspiriting power. Fromm regards “a frame of orientation and devotion” to be as essential to healthy personality as food. The process of self-actualizing, of which Maslow wrote, and the achievement of selfhood (in Jung’s sense) appear to be impossible without such a religious orientation. Of course, it does not matter whether the religion is theistic, and it is possible to judge whether or not a person’s objects and ways of worshiping are life-giving. However, life for human beings is impossible without something to live for. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to serve the community by protecting lives, property, and the environment in a safe, efficient, and professional manner. The Sacramento Fire Department also insures to provide timely, effective and efficient fire protection, suppression, prevention, education, and investigation services to the citizens of Sacramento. “It was a fire in a high school at two o’ clock on a Monday morning, and one of our rescue crews was coming back from the hospital, where they had a job. They smelled smoke. They drove all around looking for the fire, but they just couldn’t find it. The trouble was that this school, like many buildings in South Sacrament, was completely windowless, for reasons of vandalism and air-conditioning. So they couldn’t see the fire. At six in the morning we got the run. This fire had been burning in a windowless structure for twelve hours. We felt the door, and it was hotter than hell itself. We stretched our preconnected line, a long stretch, and we put it into position. Then we forced open the door and felt the air rush in. Right there, I knew that was the closet we had ever come to blowing ourselves to kingdom come. Why that building didn’t backdraft, I don’t know. We crawled in with the line, and the smoke was real black, almost to the floor. We were in the library learning center. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

“I got close to the wall, and there was a telephone on one of the desks, just above the level of our heads. It was melted to a blob. Now our ears were burning, really tingling, because we weren’t using helmets with earflaps and we didn’t have any ventilation. We went along way in, thinking, cover your ears, cover them up and push the line along. By this time everything was in a smoldering state and picking up. We stretched that thing, we must have stretched it a hundred feet. This other guy and I were up front, and the rest of the guys were twenty or thirty feet back. We cracked that line, and the water upset the thermal balance. The stream came down, and we couldn’t see a damn thing. The steam rolled down, and I told the guy, ‘I got to leave, I’m burning up.’ He didn’t get the burns I did. I said, ‘I got to go, I’m burning up.’ I turned around and tried to follow the hose line out, but it was all tangled around a chair we had knocked over on the way in. It was being a receptionist’s desk, and I remember going there. In retrospect you say, ‘Feel the male and female coupling, and you know you’re heading in the right direction.’ When you’re burning up, you don’t feel anything. I started to stand up, and I was telling myself to get back down. This was the closet I have ever come to losing control of myself because I was burning up. I finally did get outside. To be honest, I had left that guy on the line. I had told him, ‘Come on, come on, come on.’ He came out a minute later and was okay. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

“They worked on me in the emergency room at the hospital, and they put ice packs on my ears. They were second-degree burns. Why we didn’t kill ourselves by forcing that door and letting that air in, I don’t know. I think it was just God saying, ‘Hey, it’s not your time to get killed.’ There are always other times, though. Like, we had a sire in another of those Sacramento Country houses, where a lady and a baby were trapped inside. So the guys pulled the line, they were good firemen, but they were attacking the fire at the front. It’s hard to make yourself go around back of the fire when the fire’s in the front. I said, ‘Hey, X, if there is anybody alive, they’re in the back of the house. Go there.’ Well, anyway, the firemen went in the back and found the lady while I was getting my self-contained mask on. They came out and they were burned. They were helping the lady, but the baby was still in there because I could hear it crying. I went in with a line. The fire was one of those where it was burning up over your head. I intentionally didn’t open the line, because I knew that steam would come down and I wouldn’t be able to see the kid. Also, I would steam the hell out of myself. This time I did have my earflaps down. I could hear the baby crying and I said, ‘Oh, man.’ I jumped through doorways, and I melted the eye shield on my helmet. I found the baby. It was in the back bathroom. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

“I got burned, but I eventually found the baby. That was the first experience in which I heard a baby crying, and I thought, ‘Well, you just better stay in here, and you just better suffer until you find the baby.’”  Not only does the fire department save lives and reduce property loss, but they also prevent harm. Public education and prevention is of equal importance to fire suppression in the role of the fire service in the community. You can help the Sacramento Fire Department’s mission by making a donation. Americans love to see America prosper. Please remember to raise your children to love America, love God and Jesus Christ and to be patriotic. Also, to keep America strong, it is important to buy American cars and other goods and services produced by Americans, such as American beef, poultry, dairy, produce and other products. In order to keep our city streets safe, remember to respect law and order, and always treat your elders with dignity and reverence. Getting an education will help you maintain stability as an adult, and you can and will use everything you learn in school. Reading your assigned textbooks before class will help your grades improve, help you to understand the material, teach you critical thinking skills and make class more interesting because you will be able to engage with the teach and other students and the time will fly by. As always, remember to be thankful for being an America and never forget how armed forces have made it possible to live in peace. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

The Winchester Mystery House

The nearer one gets to visit a haunted place, the more frantic do the restless ones become, to make sure, perhaps, that you do not overlook them!

Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/