Tag: understanding

Dreams Don’t Grow In The Dark

By C.L. Harmon

When we lose our direction, we lose more than just our way. We lose ourselves. We are tied to our dreams, and it is the part of which defines us internally. I believe the dream is who we are and not that we are someone with a dream. Our dreams are powerful when we are young. They still seem within reach, and the idea of those dreams becoming elusive has not yet become a reality.

Life, however, is a thief. As days go by, they blend into a period of time and then into a past time. Our dreams begin wandering aimlessly into our subconscious as they no longer have a place in our conscious thoughts. They are as a memory that never happened. They slip into the darkness of our psyches because we feel as though they ask too much from us.

They are in constant need of attention, never fulfilled. It becomes burdensome as it requires more and more to grow. And so we let go, but are left with this sense of abandonment that we cannot explain, yet know it’s real. We feel it always with us; something lost to us but not forgotten. Our dreams are roadmaps in life. They are the directions, not to the most wonderful experiences, but directions out of the chaos of the worst experiences.

Most of us do not think of our dreams in such a way. But do we not think of dreams as paths to betterment? Is not reaching for something out of reach just another way of removing us from the negativity that is ever close to us? We lose ourselves in the chaos because we have stopped moving away from it as it grows. Does it not seem logical that our Creator would give us a tool to escape that which destroys and consumes us? Without our dreams and the pursuit of them, we no longer define who we are but instead become the definition of those who left theirs in the dark recesses of their subconscious.

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Mindset: Patterns Are Us

Mindset: Patterns Are Us

C.L. Harmon

There have always been patterns in life that most never give a second thought. For those who do, they only see enough to know there are such patters and not the reasoning behind them. We even classify these patterns in terms such as love languages, personality types, body types, attitude dispositions, among many others.

But why are we given patterns when each of us is created to be unique? Perhaps it so we never feel alone. In a creation where each is unique, it stands to reason that we would often feel alone with no guides, teachers or examples to follow because of our individuality. But with our natural inclination to recognize and be drawn to what feels familiar, we are given the opportunity to learn from those before us who are in the same patterns we are.

Within this incredible existence we inhabit, we are all guides to others. When we experience loss, tragedy, heartbreak or any other suffering, we are given a light in the darkness that is built into our psyches. If we are weak in our faith and stumbling through misery and confusion, our Creator still gives us a map to bring us direction through our desires to identify with others who are familiar to us through these patterns.

As unique as we are and as lost as we can become, we are never left alone. We are all each other’s keepers and teachers. Our experiences are the messages of comfort we offer others who are wayward. What an incredible design that we are a part of. If patterns prove nothing else, they prove we are connected and instrumental in the cohesion that which connects an entirely unique creation into the purpose that we are actually one with eachother.

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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: Exit The Madness

Mindset: Exit The Madness

The heart does not lie, judge or justify action. It only asks for that which it desires and then leads us to those yearnings without fear and apprehension while offering us no control over where it chooses to lead. It is our minds which must follow our hearts and our will which must make them do so. Reason can destroy our dreams and squash our desires if we follow the mind, which is capable of judgment and justification.

The world in which we inhabit is often corrupt and embroiled in confusion. We think about methods to survive the madness allowing our thought processes to guide us through the chaos. We believe reason can free us from what we can’t control.
But in doing so we allow the part of us, which is capable of judgment, justification and even deceit to make some of the most important decisions in our lives.

Do we truly want to make those decisions without the benefit of complete truth?
When we follow our hearts, we are led to places that fulfill us and we are never led astray. In fact, we are actually led out of the madness which consumes our thoughts and into the safety of true understanding and reasoning.

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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.

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.

Mindset: Nice To Meet You

At times being ourselves can be the most difficult task in our lives. Because of prejudice, fear, lack of self-confidence or a desire for acceptance, we often conceal what is on the inside creating a persona that is safer or one we believe others will find more intriguing than our true identities. We seek those qualities that we do not possess or simply have not yet developed in hopes of gaining acceptance from others
What we accomplish though is not real acceptance because we have not accepted ourselves. As a result, we have only succeeded in mimicking those qualities we see in others and disguising those characteristics that make us different from every other person in the world. It is only through the discovery and then acceptance of ourselves that the world is given the opportunity to meet someone new, someone, who is truly a unique individual.

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Mindset: Master & Slave

Mindset: Master & Slave

We are an extension of everything we do. Our actions are a reflection of who we are in that moment and who we will become for the rest of our lives. A slave to evil or a warrior of the righteous is never very far from their master.

If we represent or act for those who prey on the weak or innocent through our words and actions, then we too are guilty of harboring darkness in our hearts and adding hatred and injury into the world.

There will always be those who serve themselves first and they do so by their own accord. But their ideas of greed, destruction, and hatred only become ours by choice. By serving them, we not only lose pride and self-respect but we lose the part of ourselves that makes us invaluable, our identity.

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Broken Dreams Make a Picture (written 10-11 years ago)

It seems we spend a great amount of our lives picking up the pieces of broken dreams; hearts and hopes that sometimes belong to us and other times belong to those we care about. It is as though we are all pieces of a puzzle that long to connect with each other in an effort to be completed or whole. I can think of no other definition that explains the internal unity we feel towards others. Perhaps it is out of this need that qualities like compassion and kindness toward others are born and hopefully from these we can truly become a million pieces of the same picture.

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