Category: Words To Live By

Have you ever noticed how being negative breeds only one thing, more negativity?!

Have you ever been around a negative person or a group of people long enough who were being so negative that you ended up becoming that way too?

Negativity is like a disease that spreads quite easily. I often compare being negative to that of drinking alcohol or taking illegal drugs while trying to get over the flu. I know that might sound like a drastic example to provide but there’s great truth to it. When a person has the flu, aren’t they normally advised to get bed rest and drink lots of clear fluids to help their body flush out their sickness? Would that happen if a person decides to consume alcohol or take illegal drugs while they are sick like that? Of course not. Doing either would only weaken their immune system, making it that much harder to fight off their flu. While I’m not sick right now with a diagnosed illness or disease, I am currently in the process of doing everything I can to heal my mind, body, and soul from all the toxic stuff I’ve done to them throughout this life and all previous lives. (Yes, I do believe in reincarnation, but more on that in a future posting.) Thus I know now that doing anything like drinking alcohol, taking illegal drugs, and even doing something like being habitually negative would jeopardize my healing process.

This is the main reason why I have been spending more time alone lately than not. Unfortunately though, it often seems as if there are a lot of negative people in this world who would rather focus on everything they perceive is going wrong in this world rather than on what actually might be going right. When I’ve spent time around any of those people, I have found myself becoming just like them. It may start out innocently with me joining in on a conversation that’s bashing someone or something in some way, but it always eventually leads to me looking at the rest of my life through a negative set of glasses. Ultimately, when I participate in that long enough, my life turns into one negative mess where I can’t see anything positively.

Doctors and scientists have proven that being positive leads to a healthier body. They’ve also proven that being negative can lead to further sickness in the body. I can’t handle anymore sickness in my body thus I am very cautions these days on who I spend time around. So when I happen to be around anyone these days who is becoming too negative, I always follow one of three paths.

I remain silent.

or

I try to change the topic.

or

I remove myself from the negative situation until it improves.

Some may feel that being negative with others feels good. It’s a common misbelief that can happen when people come together and find they share similar negative beliefs about things. Others may feel that being negative may feel good because it often invokes compassion and support from another. Then there’s those who may feel good being negative solely by themselves because they have found some level of comfort in being that way consistently. And while all of those people in each of those different situations may feel ok with being negative, all its doing in the long run is poisoning their bodies, their minds, and their souls. The healthiest thing though for each of them is to try to be as positive as possible in all things.

In my case, I have found it difficult to do at times lately because of the amount of physical pain I’ve been feeling. This has led me to occasionally veering off that path of positivity and spewing out a bunch of negativity instead. The down side of doing this has always been me feeling worse at some point later. While I don’t believe that it’s humanly possible to be perfectly positive all the time, I do believe that it’s important to strive for it as much as possible. For the moment, the best things I know I can do when it comes to my physical pain issues is to ignore my ego’s negative thoughts by telling myself I’m going to completely heal, and keeping myself away from negative people as much as possible.

The bottom line comes down to this with being negative. Whether it’s by myself or with others, it’s just not a healthy thing to do, especially given that I’m trying to heal so much of myself. Being negative works a lot like a disease and brings about nothing more than sickness, darkness and unspiritual-like behaviors. Thankfully, God is helping me to do what I can these days to remain positive, even in all the adversity I continue to go through. I encourage all of you to do the same and together I know we will all become so much brighter because of it.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

There are many temptations that come at me all the time. I’m finding this Christmas holiday season to be presenting me with many of them. Sometimes I wonder if each are tests from the Universe to see if I’ve learned my lessons and grown. The biggest challenge I face to resisting any of them doesn’t seem to come when I’m feeling great and upbeat, instead it frequently happens when I’m feeling down and in despair, like I have been feeling as of late. Thankfully though, it does seems as if the spiritual work I’ve been doing to grow closer to my Higher Power has given me greater strength this year to resisting those temptations being thrown at me.

Before I talk about those temptations, let me first quickly explain the reason why I’ve not been feeling great and upbeat as of late. It’s pretty simple actually. The physical pains I continue to endure have increased in recent months making it hard to be in tune with that Christmas joy. Because of this, I’ve been finding it somewhat difficult to navigate with happiness through the holiday season this year. Honestly, it’s been quite hard not to notice the many people who are in the exact opposite place as me lately when I’m out and about, particularly in those shopping areas. But, I’ve still been doing the best I can to put a smile on my face and be grateful for what I still have. Unfortunately, feeling down and dealing with that despair inside is what puts me most at risk to succumbing to those temptations.

I don’t believe that anyone really enjoys feeling down or in despair, especially not one’s ego. In the past, it’s been relatively easy for my ego to convince me to give in to various temptations when I’m feeling this way. One of the biggest ones I’ve faced during the holiday season is the urge to buy presents for myself. In the past, I’ve spent incredible sums of money doing this hoping it would make me feel happier. While it might have brought a temporary form of it for a few weeks, it usually only lasted until the day after New Years arrived. I was given a pretty good reminder of how this old behavior begins for someone just a few days ago when I returned to my roommate’s house after several weeks away.

Upon walking into his house, he showed me his new MacBook Pro, his new Apple TV, and his new high resolution monitor. When I walked down into the basement, I saw a new snowblower that he had bought for himself as well. But there was something else I paid more attention to that showed my roommate wasn’t in the best state of mind. That was the fact that the house was somewhat in disarray, that he was rather negative when talking about himself, and that he told me he hadn’t been working out at the gym much at all lately. When I tried to be more upbeat and tell him I hope he enjoys his new gifts for himself, he became very defensive by saying how I was just assuming he was trying to buy his happiness. What’s ironic is that this wasn’t my intention when I said that, but somehow he already knew deep down that’s precisely what his gift buying was all about. I know this pattern so very well and can remember the thousands of dollars in credit card purchases I racked up during many holiday shopping seasons.

The other main temptation I’ve faced in previous Christmas holiday seasons deals with sex and love addiction. For many of those seasons, I was single or in relationships where I was miserable. During those times, I’d always be around many who weren’t single and who were happy in their relationships. Seeing them show their holiday joy and love through their sharing of hugs, kisses, and other forms of affection with each other often depressed me. I never liked feeling that way so I dealt with it by spending hours on the web during the holidays looking at porn, or I tried to have affairs under the radar with people who were either unavailable or totally toxic. Once again, doing this might have gotten me through the holiday season with some form of temporary happiness, but in the long run, I always crashed and burned from the behavior when the season was over.

While shopping and sex and love addiction are the primary things that have been trying to tempt me this holiday season, I think it’s important to note some other ones that occasionally manifest as well. Things such alcohol, drugs, gambling, and even thoughts of taking my own life have all been thrown my way. My ego continues to try to tell me that any one of these are a better option to choose than the one I’m currently taking with my Higher Power in charge. But it’s my Higher Power who has made me much stronger now to see through these illusions as I know the pain, misery, and suffering that would occur from giving into any one of those temptations.

I believe the best thing I’m doing this Christmas holiday season is to feel exactly how I feel and not mask those feelings in any way. Of course I’d like to feel a whole lot happier than I do at the moment, but I know I’m a lot happier right now than what I’d feel like in the long run if I was to act upon any of those temptations being thrown my way.

The Christmas holiday season can truly be a difficult time for the many who might not be feeling the holiday cheer for whatever the reason. If that happens to be you, then I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and ask your Higher power to help you resist any temptations you may face this season to masking how you feel inside. While you may feel that giving in to any of them will create at least some happiness for you, please realize the resistance to all of them will end up manifesting a much greater spiritual happiness for you in the long run.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Having spent much of the past six years in the Boston, MA area, I’ve had to face a lot of acceptance issues when it comes to the traffic here. USA Today recently ranked the Boston metropolitan area as the tenth worst congested city in the nation, but sometimes I feel it should be even higher than that. Ironically though, the thing I have found most difficult to accept with the traffic here does not actually deal with the length of time it takes to get anywhere. Instead, what truly has been my biggest challenge here on the roads is dealing with the incredible amount of drivers who routinely get irritated and angry at other drivers.

Let me first say right off the bat that I’m definitely a slow driver, more so than not, these days. Some have even referred to me as a “Granny Driver” solely because I always operate my vehicle around the speed limit and keep several car lengths between the car in front of me and my own car. Unfortunately, I found out in the first year I was in this area how many people were the complete opposite of that. My first experience of this happened during a major storm that suddenly hit one afternoon around 2pm. It seemed as if everyone poured out of their jobs that day and headed home at the same time as the ice and snow came down very quickly. Every road, including the highways, almost came to a near standstill because of it. As I drove less than 5mph, my windshield wipers abruptly froze up and I couldn’t see anything. Rather than risk hitting someone, I stopped my car for a mere minute to remove the ice off my wipers. As a car slowly rolled past me while I took care of this, a man looked over at me and shouted some terrible obscenities and continued on. I was horrified at his gesture and anger that was directed at me but was soon to find out that there were many others in this area just like him.

I find it sad to say this but the Boston drivers, like the man from that snowstorm, have proudly created a nickname for themselves to describe the attitude they have here on the roads. You can see this nickname on too many bumpers of cars and you’ll even hear many people joke about it regularly on how the nickname fits them quite suitably. I honestly can’t say I know who started this nickname, but seeing people show great pride in describing themselves as “Massholes” on their bumpers or directly in person has appalled me.

Around this area, it’s extremely common to see those people demonstrate acts of road rage. I knew of one person who was cut off by a car while riding on his motorcycle one day. He followed that car to a stop light and proceeded to bash out that car’s windows with children sitting in the backseat watching in horror. I’ve known of many others who have gotten out of their cars and pulled another driver out of theirs only to pummel them in anger. Recently, a person I knew got so angry when someone cut them off that he threw coins out his car window hoping to damage the other person’s car.

On a less aggressive level, I’ve lost count of the number of times where I’ve been sitting at a light that just turns green and someone starts laying on their horn because I’m not moving forward fast enough. I’ve also been flipped off many times and had a number of headlights flash on and off at me when I’m driving, all because I’m not going fast enough for them. Then there’s even those who purposely speed up when you’re trying to merge in, just to cut you off and prevent you from doing so. What’s really sad to say about all of this is that I’m starting to see this ego based driving in many other cities now too. And the irony in all of these crazy driving behaviors is that most of the people doing it are just taking out their frustrations in life on someone else.

I’ve been a passenger quite a bit in vehicles where a driver has started yelling at a car in front of them just because that car isn’t driving the way their ego thinks it should be driving. That’s a very selfish and self-centered perspective to take on the roads but I’ve found it serves one purpose for a driver that does this. It prevents them from looking in the mirror at why they are getting so angry in the first place about something so trivial. What they don’t see is that it’s merely a distraction their ego creates to avoid looking at what’s really going on inside themselves. I know this because I’ve been there. While I never had any serious road rage based behaviors, I was once guilty of many of those less aggressive tactics. The only reason why I ever did those things on the road was that I didn’t really like myself or my life. Doing this unspiritual behavior regularly helped me to temporarily blame someone else for all the misery I had in my life.

Thankfully, I have an incredible amount more of patience today when I’m on the road. Having God at the center of my life has given me a different perspective on things, especially when driving. So when I see people being erratic now on the roads in ways that seem too slow or too fast or too something that my ego tries to tell me, I just pray for them and keep my distance. I’m a lot calmer now because of it and thankfully I don’t fit that nickname anymore that Boston drivers love to call themselves.

Look, I don’t know if you’re someone who routinely finds yourself getting angry or irritated at other drivers on the road or not. But if you are, then I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and have a good look at yourself in the rear-view mirror the next time you’re in the car and feeling this way. You see, that’s the person you’re really irritated and angry with, except your ego keeps keeps trying to tell you otherwise. Start focusing on releasing all that anger you have within and you may find yourself feeling a lot more calm and peaceful on the roads.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson