Tag: faith

What The Hell…

C.L. Harmon

For me, writing a blog with Mindsets and other bits of knowledge and wisdom gained throughout my life is about several things. One of these is helping others find answers or peace. Others include discovery, pursuing understanding about the human condition and helping people to connect with other people among other objectives. My favorite part about writing anything though is that I can do it while hiding away from the world. It’s safe and it’s private. I have become introverted over the years and spend much of my time in thought and alone. Because of this, much of what I write has hidden meanings and twisted definitions with the purpose of making those who read them to think deeper than they are accustomed to as I do.

I like knowing that I can affect you or impact your life without probably ever meeting you. The only problem with this is that I cannot be affected by you, learn from you. This, what I am doing now, is how I cope without outside help. I write. I share. Having written that, I am just going to talk this time without a point or lesson. I had a very, very bad week. The particulars or causes won’t change anything and so there is no need to write them here. But how certain words and actions made me feel this week, those I will share.

These negatives felt as though I had been hit so hard that my breath couldn’t return to my lungs. Adrenaline, anger, shock and confusion overwhelmed me to the point where my perceived clarity was no longer focused. This is the first time in my life that this has ever happened. Dealing with numerous career disappointments, clinical depression, hardships of many sorts and feeling alone even in a crowd for most of my life has hardened me to the point that feeling is more of a practiced response than an actual expression of true emotion. That certainly changed this week. Damn sure sent me reeling!

So now I am in territory that I have not been in since I was 19. It’s strange and I am still reeling from this burst of real emotion. I don’t know what the hell I am supposed to with this. I am breathing again, but cautiously and very slowly. Is this the way that most people live? If so, it seems like an intense way of living. Of course, I assume most people probably express a little at a time and so maybe the intensity is not that overwhelming as in my case. Still, how does anyone stay sane? Hell, maybe their emotions are what keeps them sane and I am the insane one. As I said, things don’t make a lot of sense to me right now. So I guess it’s possible.

At any rate, there has been something that has come out of this that seems almost out of context in this whole scenario.

I now feel as though I have been looking at life through a dirty window pane for so long that what I have been seeing is not actually what has been going on outside, but illusions made from the images out of the dust on the window. Now that the glass has been shattered, nothing looks familiar. It’s frightening and hopefully enlightening at some point. It’s so bizarre. I have never been stopped dead in my tracks like I was this week. I don’t know how to feel. I have nothing to teach and nothing to give in this writing except personal honesty. But I am writing anyway. Who knows, maybe there is a message even in this rambling. Then again…maybe not. For those of you who read me faithfully and take my writings as messages as to how to cope with life and find peace, please accept my apologies this time. I am only human…as I rediscovered this week.

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In A New Light: Does God Ever Leave Us?

In A New Light: Does God Ever Leave Us?

C.L. Harmon

Many times while watching documentaries, I have heard Jewish survivors say that God was no there during that evil period we know as the Holocaust. Each time I would hear one of them say it, an uneasy feeling would pulse through me. I guess as a Christian who has been taught that God is always with me, it gave me pause and challenged my traditional beliefs. To have endured such evil, perhaps I too would feel the same way as these people. I don’t know. But I do know it bothered me. Is God sometimes absent from our lives? For people raised in Christianity, it must seem almost as blasphemy to think such a thought. But I want to know.

I am not sure that the question has an answer. At least not a complete answer we are privy to in this realm of existence. It is intriguing to me though that it’s possible humanity is sometimes responsible for dealing with its own messes. There must have been many people in the world at that time who knew that an evil regime was in power, yet only a few ever tried to stop it. Most in the Axis countries did nothing. Maybe God felt like that He had given enough. Maybe He thought that so much had been given to humanity already and that it was time for us to learn a lesson.

Although those persecuted by the Nazis suffered the greatest as a whole without a doubt, everyone involved in a war suffers to some extent. Each country and each person suffers during conflicts. Perhaps He did step back and expect humanity to step up and finally learn the words by Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”. Maybe this was God’s way of saying that He did not allow this, but humanity allowed it by doing nothing when something had to be done.

If this were true, it would certainly explain a great deal about the miseries we suffer in our own lives. Perhaps free will carries a much greater meaning than we are willing to accept and thus accept its responsibility. As parents, do we not know that by allowing our children to make mistakes, we teach them? Does not requiring them to pay for those mistakes not teach them about the consequences of their actions or failure to act? I do not believe God punishes us for using our free will in poor judgment. I do, however, believe that he allows the consequences from it to serve as life lessons.

I further don’t believe that God ever abandons us entirely at any time. I believe He is always with us but remains silent and inactive while giving humanity the opportunity and the time to do what is right and noble. Perhaps those who believe God was absent in the concentration camps and occupied territories feel that way because God was silent just as he had been the 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament (Malachi’s Warning to the Jewish people). God did not abandon His children then; He remained silent while they found their way back to Him in their practices. Had He decided to abandon them, then what would have been the point of sending Malachi in 430 BC and Christ 430 years later?

These are simply my thoughts, nothing more. I find that writing allows me to explore the questions this life offers me. These writings are not proclamations of truth, but simply investigative writings which help me understand my world. It is always my hope to open up my mind and others’ as to new ways of seeing the world so that we may all have a better understanding of life and the role we play in it.

Thanks for Reading!

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Happiness Is A Journey

Happiness Is A Journey

C.L. Harmon

Happiness is not a choice but a journey. We tend to believe that choices dictate the outcomes of our lives. This is only true to a point. Certainly, there is the cause and effect. But this is only a teacher to help us along as we travel on this journey.

We must learn to love. Then we must learn how to lose that love. Everyone experiences this at least once in their lives. We must learn how to accept that loss and to accept that we must live without it. We must come to the understanding that moving forward opens up new opportunities for us. We cannot simply state that we are happy despite the loss, pain, and misery. We must travel through it and gain insight from the experience.

With each loss, failure, and setback, we are expected to soldier on by our Creator. But more than this, we are required to grow out of the ashes into someone who can open up again knowing the pain of a broken heart or a shattered dream. We must learn to count our blessings knowing even this does not bring instant happiness in the wake of a tragedy.

The key to happiness is gaining the wisdom to understand that learning how to be happy is a journey. We must learn to forgive those who wrong us because what we hold onto, holds onto us. If we do not learn to forgive, then we must suffer the pain of that trespass each day. This is not a wisdom that can be gained without experience. It is, however, knowledge, that can be shared to enlighten us when we finally choose to release the negative we are grasping.

Happiness is not a product we purchase. It is not a word or a gesture or even a belief that can erase that which causes us sadness and depression. It is a journey where we learn patience, acceptance, forgiveness, empathy, and kindness. Life’s experiences culminate in this wisdom which teaches us that without our choice to learn these lessons, we are choosing not to be happy.

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Mindset: Free Will Is A Choice

Mindset: Free Will Is A Choice

The concept of free will is simple in its definition, but baffling to many of us since the choices we make do not always lead us to the outcomes for which we hoped and believed. How is it that some make choices to pursue specific goals and make similar choices as others to attain those goals, but do not the achieve the goals while others do.

I believe this is because of the choices we make with the actual freewill we are given. One of the greatest gifts we can give our Creator, who gave us free will, is to trust him so much that we give it back to Him. This action tells Him that we believe so much that His choices for us will be greater than any we could have chosen for ourselves.

However, as a result of this, we are led on a journey that is often blind and appears to make no sense. Others who choose to keep their free will and guide themselves often do reach their goals, but will not attain the greater gifts and understanding in this life He had set aside for them.

It is our choice to trust in our Creator or to only trust in ourselves. This is true free will. However, we cannot serve ourselves and the Creator too. Perhaps the greatest gift He gave us was the opportunity to give our destinies back to him, instead of leaving us to battle the world without His guidance.

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Mindset: Happiness Is A State Of Acceptance

Mindset: Happiness Is A State Of Acceptance

It’s often said that we are responsible for our own happiness and that we simply choose our internal strength and will of mind to help us find comfort and joy. I don’t believe this to be completely accurate.
Although I do believe that we are responsible for our own happiness to a degree and that choice is a contributing factor in our happiness, I also believe that others play a key role in how we feel as well.
Human beings were not created to be alone or to exist in solitude. We are created to learn, live and love with others. Though it is true that we experience love from our Creator, it is only through others that we can experience intimate love with another, trusting love with a friend or the pure love that is raising a child.
Each one of these types of loves brings happiness and a sense of joy that is unmatched anywhere else in creation. The absence of them will most certainly cause us to feel sadness, depression, and pain. We can only learn to accept this absence with grace and a belief that there is a purpose in that absence. But true happiness only comes through our connections to each other, our will to seek happiness and the choice to make them one.

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Lost Meaning to the World

Mindset

When we think of our lives, our place in humanity and our world, we tend to think of it on a broad scale that encompasses all that we do and experience as an ordinary ritual of sorts. But what if that world we focus so heavily on each day causes us to lose sight of so much more.

Consider that all life, each individual entity, is a world all its own, made up of countless functions and processes in constant motion. We must realize that life is happening in each ability, every talent, each characteristic—every second. Examine them as though they are the only thing in your world. See them as a sole entity, full of energy and vitality and become enlightened as to the extraordinary genius of your creation.

Within each thought that becomes an idea, every ability that becomes a creation and each characteristic that brings interaction with others, there is an opportunity to discover that perhaps the meaning of life is simply that life has meaning. The hours we are given to live are our opportunity to find that meaning in each and every aspect of our lives.

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The Lost Forgotten

Nothing has ever been destroyed by peace, lost through understanding, burdened by compassion or stolen through honesty. These are lessons that have slipped from the human conscience as we have grown older and grown apart.

We have become a people that has forgotten to raise our nations in simplicity, thus we have become a race lost unto itself.

We have forgotten to teach honesty to our children so they will be become adults with integrity. We have forgotten to teach that we all must accept responsibility for our actions and learn to apologize so we can understand that the true meaning of respect is earned not self-proclaimed.

We have forgotten to live with understanding so that new generations discover fairness and compromise and that one only works when applied to the other. We have forgotten to express compassion to friend and enemy alike and so our world has suffered the tragedies of indifference and not the benefit of charity.

We have simply forgotten to be who we should be. If we continue to allow these lessons to slip away from our lives, then eventually they will be beyond our reach. A people who can no longer learn the simple lessons of life are a people who lose themselves and ultimately become lost to history.

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Mindset: The Journey Into A Dream

Mindset: The Journey Into A Dream

Every destination is the beginning of a new journey just as every thought can the beginning of a new dream. Upon arrival, if we step back for a moment then we see where it all began. We further see why we started, how we have traveled and where we have been. And mostly we see where we are now and this is a must in order to move to other places we wish to go.

Stepping back in our lives does not make us weak, misguided or hinder us from moving forward. It gives us perspective and the tools such as humility and patience that we often find so difficult to use in everyday life, to strengthen our will as we dream. It is in the rare moments in which we reflect upon the rough road behind that we are allowed the opportunity of seeking the smoothest highway ahead to reach our next destination.

Taking a pause from the chaos of everyday life and after the moments of victory, even for only a moment, can sometimes be our only window in which to view the map of that long and narrow path that leads to the ultimate ends of our dreams.

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Mindset: Perfect For The Job

Mindset: Perfect For The Job

At times throughout our existence, we find ourselves in positions or situations that seem to go against our natural character. We are forced to act and make decisions that make us feel uncomfortable and sometimes even guilty for our lack of knowledge, experience, or natural ability
It would seem as though this is a contradiction in how we are designed. Why would we be created to be a certain way only to be thrust into situations where we feel we are not equipped with the tools necessary to perform the task? Could it be the fact that we know we are lacking makes us perfect for the job?
Our Creator wants us to move beyond what we only believe we can do and into what He knows we can do. Every tool to succeed in every endeavor is within reach be it faith, confidence or knowledge once we choose to accept life’s challenges. The answer to the question lies in the idea that without the challenges in our lives we would never reach beyond what was given to us at creation to grow into the vision of greatness our Creator has seen all along.

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Mindset: Building Bridges

Mindset: Building Bridges

Why is it that we fear those who seem foreign to us? What is it about us that allows our differences to bridge distances between us when that very bridge could be keeping us from reaching that which we need the most?
Overt actions of contempt or the intentional act of ignoring someone simply because that person is different is a grave injustice to ourselves. We are all born with messages to share that develop as we grow. These insights are sent to us by our Creator with the notion that some will be given to individuals and others to the masses to help us in times of need and to become the people we should be.
Those messages are not always sent in packages that make us at ease and without fear because in the Creator’s eye, the package is as much a message as the actual message inside. Once we overcome our fear and close the distance, we have not only learned the insight of others but the fact that it was never difference that separated us but simply what we had not yet learned from others.

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