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Tag: understanding

Fear Not: For It Is Only Fear

C. L. Harmon
There has always been fear. For parents raising children, it is their responsibility to teach their children about fear and the influence it is supposed to have on them. For example, It’s wise to teach children not to antagonize bees because they sting. It is better to leave them alone as they are not aggressive creatures bent on stinging every human for which they come into contact. It is common sense to teach them not to kill bees because without them humans would cease to exist. The fact that they sting is not a weapon against humanity but for its protection. This dynamic is nature’s way of telling us that we must coexist. All fear should be co-mingled with common sense. Otherwise irrational thought takes the place of reason.
Bad things are going to happen. Disaster is always a possibility. But to live in fear without the sensibility to coexist with it is a tragedy unto itself. The acceptance that something sinister or tragic could happen is not proof that it will. We must always acknowledge that the same world which provides cures, pain relief and hope is the same world which provides disease, pain, and despair. They are one in the same and the very reason that we must walk the fine line between chaos and order.
Common sense is our control in an environment which offers very little control over anything else.
Fear, in essence, is not good or evil, but simply a natural tool that allows us to exist. It keeps us from destroying what we need while protecting us from potential harm and self-destruction. But if we allow it to consume us, it becomes an evil that destroys what it is meant to protect. When fear divides us, it undermines what we can accomplish. When it costs us liberties, it makes us prisoners. When it dictates policy, it makes us slaves. When it is taught without common sense, it costs us everything.

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Mindset: You Were Chosen To Choose Wisely

Mindset: You Were Chosen To Choose Wisely

Human beings have the capacity for incredible compassion and indescribable evil. Can one even fathom the amount of faith it must take to entrust such liberty with humanity? The very idea that a creation made out of love can destroy itself with hate or evil must show the incredible importance of love to the Creator.

To allow cruelty and injustice to prosper defines what the value of choice actually represents. The gift of choice does more than set a course for our lives; it represents the idea that what we choose as individuals matters most to the Creator. Obedience can be chosen or ordered, but love cannot be forced. It can only manifest through a conscious choice.

Our hearts beat because nature dictates them to do so. They provide compassion, forgiveness and understanding because we choose for them to. Freewill is not so much about us choosing paths in our lives, but about choosing the ideals and beliefs that clear paths to a greater understanding of the definition of love.

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Mindset: A Piece Of The Mind Is Not The Path To Peace

Mindset: A Piece Of The Mind Is Not The Path To Peace

Imagine knowing every aspect of creativity and that of logic as well. Which of the two would you choose as to how you live? How do you know the right path if they both make sense to you but for different reasons? Knowing all aspects means that they are equal in the mind, heart, and soul. Wouldn’t absolute knowledge be a curse that leaves us immobile? How does one choose between two rights when we can only follow one with true conviction? Do we follow a creative path or a reasonable and logical one? When there is no wrong choice then there is no direction.

Because we are not given absolute knowledge, we are allowed a path to choose, a destiny that has meaning and fulfillment. Each of us is given talents and intellect because it takes both to survive. But we are not given them equally. One is always stronger than the other. One offers a fulfillment that the other does not. There will be a moment in life when we will have to choose. Although neither choice offers a guarantee of monetary success, the right one does guarantee a degree of happiness that the other does not. That feeling is known as exultation.

Purpose is linked to contentment. We are not in harmony when we choose a path for safety, security or false desires. We may find elements such as monetary gain, recognition or power when we do, but those are empty idols with no fulfilling properties. As such, we continue chasing more of what we already have to fill the continuing void. Harmony rests only in our natural inclination to follow what we feel in our hearts be it logic or creativity and not what makes sense in our minds. Either way we choose, our soul will follow even in the absence of harmony.  But that harmony is our map to where we are to go. The idea of happiness may be in the mind, but the reality of it lies within our choice to follow the path that was laid out for us before we were even born.

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Mindset: Letting Go Of The Ghost

Mindset: Letting Go Of The Ghost

We lose parts of ourselves while traveling through this life. It’s probably one of the saddest realities that we must accept and certainly one for which we mourn the rest of our lives. These lost parts haunt us as a ghost who wishes to close the separation between us and what we’ve lost. But there is no unification, only the acceptance that our loss has forced us to become someone different and new.

Losing parts of ourselves, in essence, is the slow death of who we once were. Each new day we shed a bit of who we were to make room for who we are becoming. Our new experiences fill that void offering a new opportunity to be reborn and live with new perspectives. Each day new victories, losses and life experiences fill those voids and we slowly begin to live as a new people. It is because we are in a constant state of decay and regeneration that we are able to realize that growing and changing are the true miracles of life.

What we lose is never a complete end as remnants remain in our soul. Still, its overall absence pushes us into a new beginning of comprehension.  In order for us to ever live life as it was intended and understand our purpose within creation, we must experience loss. It moves us into new directions of opportunity that enlighten us and affords us a new beginning which proves we are greater than all the losses taken from us combined.

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Mindset: Treasure Is Buried Deep Within

Mindset: Treasure Is Buried Deep Within

Each of us seeks treasure. We work for it, sacrifice for it, even take risks for it. But have we ever actually defined what is treasure? What we desire is not necessarily treasure although it feels as though it should be or that it will be once we have obtained the desire. But what if the hunt for treasure is actually just a phantom we chase? Although treasure is real, it is not hidden in some distance destination or achieved dream. It is found in our perceptions and understandings.

We actually stumble over treasure in our attempts to find it. We occasionally experience treasure but rarely enjoy it for the riches it brings because we are stepping over what is valuable in order to dig in the dry sand. The truth is that each of us is born with treasure inside us. The search for what is valuable has never been about what we can find on the outside, but what we should discover on the inside.

Everything natural and man-made crumbles or rusts away in time but our essence, our energy, lives on indefinitely and with it is the treasure given to us by our Creator. We are tasked with finding those riches and sharing them with others before our existence here is returned to dust. Every experience in our lives are markings on an ancient map to the whereabouts of the treasure within us. We will never find that most valued of treasure in the earth beneath our feet because it only exists beneath the meaning of our very creation.

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Mindset: Escaping The Crushing Rubble

Mindset: Escaping The Crushing Rubble

We should never hold someone else to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. We should not expect more from them than we ourselves are willing to be, give or do. Sometimes that standard can come in the form of an example and often times in a word. Those simple gestures or words form building blocks which allow negativity to move forward and build foundations upon us.

It is imperative that we acknowledge our mistakes. Not just so we can learn from them but so we can forgive ourselves and be forgiving when others make their mistakes. There is no greater equality than that which is in forgiveness. It reminds us that we have all been, without exception, guilty of transgression and victims of its consequences.

Through forgiveness, we find that we do not have to endure a life of crushing rubble which keeps us down preventing us from rising above negativity. Instead, we can move forward and raise humanity’s standards by simply standing on the belief that our imperfect nature makes us perfectly equal.

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Mindset: Blessings In Wolves’ Clothing

Mindset: Blessings In Wolves’ Clothing

The truth is that there have been moments in my life when I have loved being depressed. I loved it with a passion that I will never be able to explain to anyone who has never known madness. It’s power, freedom clarity and safety beyond understanding. It is a blessing lost within a curse that dies in a hot breath and is reborn in a simple sigh. It’s life through a pouring rain of hot bullets and gentle cool drops.

Found means nothing without the experience of being lost. We only find what we all truly seek in the chaos that leads us through darkness. Reason emerges because of that chaos which we need to find for explanation and purpose. Once found, it can be accepted, understood and used. Misery and joy are both guides in this life. Each takes us to destinations which give us both power and vulnerability. They are not good or evil, but life tools.

Your chaos will come. It always comes. But when it does, realize it as the blessing within the curse that it is. Suffer from it what you can to extract the enlightenment which is at its core. It is your purposeful journey to reason; your cost for recognizing happiness. Allow it to strengthen, teach and become a part of you which you can then control. True happiness is forged in the dark. Without it, joy is simply a myth we chase never seeing that it is not that it doesn’t exist, but that we simply don’t know it when it comes to light.

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Mindset Origins: Grant Yourself A Pardon

Mindset Origins: Grant Yourself A Pardon

 I have been writing Mindsets for 25 years. I thought I might take some time to explain exactly what they are and how they originated. For most, if not all of us, we have defining moments or experiences which mold us into who we become. For me, that was a clinical depression in early adulthood. I began writing to help me express and understand that depression. Initially, most of it was dark poetry, but the more I wrote the less about expression and the more about understanding and finding hope it became. Within a few years, the dark poetry became more, eventually morphing into what would become Mindsets. I had chosen to focus on what could be as opposed to what was. I chose to understand instead of escape into a vice or become completely lost in misery. I needed to believe that everything has meaning and that life is not a cosmic roll of the dice without rhyme and reason. Writing Mindsets has helped me to answer many of my questions and hopefully answer a few for others as well. In addition, it has allowed me to write about subjects for which I am passionate. I will be publishing a series of my early Mindsets that I hope you will enjoy. Most of what I usually publish are new ones that I have written recently and so you will see subtle differences in styles and context as my style has evolved over the years, Below is the second Mindset in this series.

Grant Yourself A Pardon

Life leaves scars, regrets, and sorrows that grow and integrate into our daily experiences. Because of this, they eventually become more than feelings, developing into an integral part of who we are. As they grow, they begin to mislead us causing us to believe their hold on us is stronger than our gift of choice.

If we simply resist the deception and remember that who we are and where we are going is our choice, then we can choose for every day to be a new beginning. What has brought us contempt and unhappiness in the past can feel erased by the mere choice to be free of them.

What we hold on to, holds on to us be it positive or negative. If we choose to keep the negative then it chooses to keep us in that darkness. Circumstances are not punishments or rewards. They are, however, prisons or freedoms we either build or grant ourselves.

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What The Hell…

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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