Month: July 2013

God Works In Mysterious Ways…

Have you ever had one of those days where you woke up and just felt like putting the covers over your head and not going anywhere for the rest of the day? Unfortunately, with the level of physical pain I am currently having to endure, I often experience days like that. But on some of them, God seems to work in strange ways to keep me going on this path of healing and recovery from the toxic life I once lived.

A few days ago, I awoke with such a severity of bodily pain that I spent that entire morning and a good part of the afternoon in incredible anguish and despair. Even after doing my normal spiritual maintenance routines, I felt no better. After a lengthy conversation with my spiritual teacher, I was given a few exercises to try that she hoped might help reduce some of the pain levels I was going through that day. One of which dealt with communicating to my parents through prayer (given they were no longer alive) and letting them know I wouldn’t accept anymore the low vibration patterns of living and behaviors they passed onto me. The other homework assignment was simply just to do some deep breath work in silence.

While both seemed to help reduce some of that anguish, especially with the tears that came up in my conversation with my parents, I still felt like Gloomy Gus and decided to get out of the house. I went first to a local coffee shop where I got myself something to drink and worked on my blog site. Upon leaving, I had already decided to go to a random local meeting that I had never been to before. While I was walking to my car, two young gentlemen at a table propped outside asked if I would help them with a donation to the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program they were part of. I gave them my support without hesitation and took a few minutes to tell them that I was actually heading to an AA meeting myself having been in recovery for eighteen years now.

By the time I got into my car, I already noticed I was feeling a slight bit better emotionally. Once I got to the meeting, I introduced myself to a few people that were already there and found myself a seat. When the coffee was ready, I approached the table where it was at and grabbed myself a cup of decaf. A nice woman introduced herself to me as the coffee maker and asked if I was new to AA. I promptly responded to her that I had been around for a while having just celebrated my 18th year of sobriety but that I was new to her meeting. What happened next I could only say must be God.

She shyly asked if I was willing to lead the meeting for that day because she had not found a speaker. My first sponsor always told me to never turn down a request such as that because it may be God working in my life, so I didn’t. And just over an hour later, after I had shared my journey to recovery and listened to all the people who had raised their hands during the open discussion, I felt amazingly better, as compared to how I started the day. Many people in that meeting room had approached me after it had ended to let me know how much they had connected to my story and thanked me for showing up and giving them my service. Some said it was exactly what they needed to hear with what was going on in their life lately.

Between my conversation with those two young gentlemen who were just beginning their journey of recovery and my being asked to lead a meeting I had never been to before, my attitude had completely changed for the better. While the level of my physical pain may not have reduced from both of those things, I had developed an attitude of gratitude which hadn’t been present for most of the day up until then.

Often I don’t truly understand much of what is going on in my life lately with all these levels of pain I continue to go through on most days. But there is one thing I do understand, and that is sometimes God has mysterious ways of helping us to keep going, especially when we think we’re down and out for the count. I’m grateful for each of those mysterious ways when they happen and will continue to do my best to realize that God may not be helping me in the way I think I should be helped, but God sure is helping me in the way I probably need to be helped.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Love Begins Within…

A few nights ago I went out to dinner after an AA meeting with a couple of friends. Another person from that meeting also joined us and ended up sitting next to me. I listened intently to him throughout the evening as he spoke of a lonely life he was living every day, which was greatly reminiscent of how I once felt.

He talked of how he’s spent the past six years being single during which he resorted to occasional quick hook ups and watching pornographic material on the Internet to deal with his loneliness. Upon hearing this, I shared with him about all the same unhealthy things I did to keep myself from feeling those very same emotions and how it destroyed my mind, body, and soul in doing so. I mentioned specifically about my affairs with married and partnered men, and the damage those relationships did to me, and all he could say was that he wished he could have those same experiences because something was better than nothing.

When I asked if he’d be willing to go through a period of sexual refrain so that he could work on loving, healing, and embracing himself a little more, he indicated he felt he had done enough through his state of being single for so many years. What’s ironic about that statement is that it’s one I used to say quite often to myself. For many years, I too was single and felt that being in that state was enough for me to learn to love myself. But during that time, I never totally faced being fully alone and instead occupied most of it with watching porn, chasing after unavailable and unhealthy people, and living in other addiction based behaviors.

I’m firmly convinced today that it is inherent to have a good capacity of love for oneself before any successful long-term intimate relationship can ever develop. To put it in another way, how could I ever have loved anyone else unconditionally, if I couldn’t look in the mirror on any given day and say I truly loved myself?

During all those years where I refused to work on finding that love for myself, I brought all sorts of people into my life that were just like me who didn’t love themselves either. Each and every one of those relationships was a just a mirror for myself to see more clearly who I really was inside. So when I was with dominant, controlling, and abusive men, it’s because I was also the same. And when I was with mentally and emotionally imbalanced as well as codependent men, it’s because that was I as well. Until I began spending that quality time with me and only me, I continued to find other broken men who forced me to see those areas of my life that needed to be healed the most, or I kept myself numb with various addictions such as watching porn.

After a period of celibacy and spending a lot of time alone to get to know myself much better, the healing of those broken parts within me began occurring and my love for myself started growing much greater. It was then that God saw fit to bring into my life a partner who was much healthier than just about everyone else I’ve ever been in a relationship with. While my partner does still mirror parts of me that I need to continue to work on, our relationship is not toxic like all my previous ones were. And I think it’s important to note that those previous ones were only toxic because I was, but without consciously knowing that, I sought others that were just like me to teach me that lesson.

It’s my hope and prayer that the man I had dinner with the other night, who could have been a snapshot of me several years ago, will take the time to work on loving himself a little more than he currently does. Until then, sadly, he’ll most likely stay in those same toxic patterns where his loneliness will continue to persist.

While I do still deal with loneliness, it’s not because of how I’m living my life anymore. It’s not because I don’t love myself enough. And it’s not because I’ve surrounded myself with toxic relationships and addictions. It’s only because I long for a closer relationship with God and it’s my daily prayer that it develops more and more as I continue to work on loving and healing myself daily.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

A Movie Preview Or A Trailer For My Future Life

Have you ever wished you could see a preview of how your life is going to be down the road, somewhere in the future? This is a question I have often pondered with much introspection over the past few years. For the longest time, it was something I really wanted, but that was until my recent movie going experiences changed my viewpoint.

For anyone that knows me, it is a well known fact that I head to the local multiplex at least once or twice a week to see the latest films that have been released. But there is one very disappointing trend happening lately that has started to ruin many of the films I go see and it has to do with those trailers that come out weeks, months, and sometimes even a year ahead of its release.

When I was a kid, I got very excited when I would see a 30 second preview of an upcoming movie that was only a few months away from being in the theater. Normally I might only catch that preview a few times and most of the best parts weren’t given away during it. Unfortunately, I can’t say that’s true anymore for the films of today. Many big budget movies have trailers for it now that are several minutes long in length and sometimes even up to ten minutes long when a portion of the film is shown during a special television show. While it may be exciting to see some of those really cool special effects, or those moments of gut busting humor during all those minutes of previews, there is a downside to it as well. It takes away from the excitement I might normally get from seeing them when I watch the entire film the first time.

I have already seen most of this summer’s tent pole movies up to this point and sadly, because of all the trailers I have seen ahead of time, many of them haven’t been as fun to go see because they spoiled most of the surprises. I didn’t laugh as much at the jokes during The Internship for this reason. I wasn’t scared as much with those zombie ant hills and zombie swarms in World War Z because of it. I wasn’t as excited about the big airplane takedown scene in The Fast and The Furious 6 due to it. And well, this list could go on with how I’ve felt about other movies such as White House Down, This Is The End, and others. Now, I’m leaving the theater feeling more let down then not because of these previews spoiling too much of the film’s fun. Also just as noticeable is that I am starting to skip a lot more films now which is not like it used to be for me. Previews show so much now that I often will not go see a film because too much of it has been revealed, thus making it unattractive to go see. A good example of this is with the movie The Purge. Many years ago, I might have gone to see this film by reading up on its description alone, but this year’s trailer depicted so much that I felt I had already seen the majority of what the movie was about, so I didn’t go see it at all.

If you’re wondering how all of this compares to the original question I posed about wishing to see a preview of one’s life in the future, it’s pretty simple. If any of us were given a several minute long preview of our coming life, there’s a good chance it might spoil any excitement we would experience when that future actually happens thus making life appear very boring as it occurs. And if that preview of our future showed too much, including things that might not be so alluring, there’s a good chance we’d probably do everything we could to change it, or avoid it altogether. Because of this, I came to the conclusion I’d rather not ever see any preview of my future life.

I hope at some point that the film industry might develop the same conclusion with previews and trailers as I have come to with not wanting to see parts of my own future. While that may never happen, I guess you can say that I’m glad at least that the technology hasn’t been created yet for me to see what’s coming down the road in my life. For now at least, I will continue to be able to enjoy a spoil free future when those wonderful things happen and also just as important, I won’t be trying to skip my attending any part of it either.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson