Month: August 2013

The Best Gift that AA Gave To Me

There are many gifts that Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) can offer someone who seeks its fellowship. But there is only one gift that it gave me which transformed my life permanently for the better and that is a relationship to a Higher Power.

As a kid, the only relationship I had to any Higher Power was the one I was introduced to through the church my family went to and the prayers I said to that Higher Power there or at meals and bedtime. All of it was part of daily routines and none of it held any real connection to my heart. In fact, I never really liked doing any of it, especially going to church. I had to wear my dress up clothes on Sunday mornings and go to another version of school after sitting through a small amount of time listening to the pastor drone on about things that never made much sense. All of those prayers I said there or at home were just formulaic and felt purposeless. The only image of a Higher Power I had back then was of a man with a very long beard who sat on some golden throne. And I was taught back then that this Higher Power didn’t like sinful behavior and would get angry if I didn’t obey all the rules. So I began to fear and avoid this Higher Power instead.

By the time I left home at the age of eighteen to head off to college, I only talked to that Higher Power in those 911 situations or the ones where that Higher Power became my genie. In the 911 calls to that Higher Power, I’d say things such as “Please get me out of this jam!” or “Please fix this mess for me!” As for being a genie, I’d call upon that Higher Power and wish for things such as “Will you help me get an A on the final exam I have tomorrow?” or “Can you make so and so like me more romantically?” But never was there any Higher Power or God at that time in my life who I prayed sincerely towards in the hopes to become a better, more kind, and loving person on this planet.

Even after I quit drinking and drugging in June of 1995, I continued this life of self-will run riot. During the next ten years of my life, I lost both my father and mother tragically and became very angry with this Higher Power for letting their deaths happen. I didn’t understand how bad things could happen under that Higher Power’s watch with all the infiniteness power I was told that Higher Power had. I grew angrier and angrier which in turn caused me to distance myself from people that were healthy. My addictions grew stronger and the miles between that Higher power and I became greater. Except for a brief few months here and there over the years when I had some spiritual experiences through meditation, I rarely had any relationship to that Higher Power.

In September of 2007, all of that began to change when I hit an even lower rock bottom than I had on the day I first got sober some twelve years earlier. Without feeling I had any where else to turn, I walked into one of the rooms of AA on a Friday night and reached out for help. There I got a sponsor who began to teach me that their Higher Power loved me just as I was, had always loved me, and had long ago forgiven me for all those things I had done that were so selfish and self-centered. I had a hard time believing that and how AA could even help me when nothing else ever did. That sponsor told me to “believe that they believed” that AA could help me and that it would help me find a close relationship to my own Higher Power. So I started my journey in AA by believing that my sponsor believed and began doing my work in the 12 Steps accordingly.

I can honestly say that somewhere along the way, as I began to turn my entire will over to this Higher Power that my sponsor told me existed, something started to change within me. Whether it was my thinking being expanded or my heart softening, or possibly something altogether different than both, the day did come when AA and the 12 Steps helped me to discover my own Higher Power who has since become my best friend, my true Father and Mother, and my teacher of unconditional love.

Today, I refer to this Higher Power as God. And while all the other measures I took in my life to find happiness and joy failed miserably, the God that I have in my life now has not. Each day, the God that I found through my hard work in AA has kept me going, even in the hardest of times, even in the darkest of times, and somehow, someway, I know there will come a day when I will be able to thank God in person for saving me from the life of hell I lived for way too long. That, to me, is the best gift that AA has ever given me.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Are You Really That Busy That You Don’t Have Five Minutes To Call A Loved One?

How often do you find yourself letting too much time pass by without connecting to a loved one? Is it days, weeks, months, or even years that time eludes you until one day you begin to wonder how long it’s been since you talked to your brother, sister, mother, father, relative, friend, or some other loved one?

We all live in a busy world with busy schedules and have busy lives right? Well that’s at least what we tell ourselves. But what if that day comes when we are notified a person we love dearly but hadn’t reached out to for some time has passed away suddenly? How then do we feel about all that busyness?

I’ve lost my mother, father, and a few close friends very unexpectedly in my life. Prior to their deaths, I had all the excuses in the world on why I couldn’t make the time to reach out, say hello, and spend even five minutes talking with them. After each of their passings, I held immense guilt on the many times that I made excuses to picking up that phone and calling any of them.

Look, there are 24 hours in a day. That’s 1440 minutes that each of us find ways to occupy. And sadly, many of us, like I once did, fail to take even five minutes out of that to contact a loved one we don’t get to see all that often.

My sister is a good example of this and it saddens me that she hasn’t fully grasped this concept yet. I have often struggled to get a hold of her and am normally the one doing the work to set up a time to talk. What many people like her forget about is that all we really have is today and none of us know whether it could be the last day we breathe life into ourselves. After losing enough people so suddenly in my life, I have learned this lesson and realized that life is way too short. When I think about someone today who I haven’t reached out and contacted in awhile, I don’t put that action off any longer. Even if that’s taking a few minutes away from “the busyness” of my life.

In my most “busiest” moments of my life when I was consulting full time in the computer world or running a bed and breakfast that I once owned, there were still plenty of moments I could have found the time to reach out to a loved one. But what happened back then for me was I very selfish and placed my own priorities ahead of doing something selfless like contacting a loved one just to say hi. So after an exhausting day I usually convinced myself I was too tired to call and instead watched television. And for all those times during the day when I was in my car commuting anywhere, I either listened to music or dialed the people I placed as “more important”, which ironically were just people that fed my ego. The long and short of it really came down to my selfishness and self-centeredness. I’m not sure if I can say that’s the case for everyone though, such as my sister.

Some people, like my sister, really just have hectic schedules throughout every day. In her case, not only does she have three children to take care of, one of which is under one year old, she also holds down a full time computer consulting job. Finding any free time throughout the day often proves to be very difficult for her because of this. And when she does find a moment free, often the only thing she really wants to do is rest. I do have compassion for this, but I also know that it’s just as important to work into a schedule a few minutes to reach out to those that one loves. Isn’t it better to do that, then never to do so at all and then one day find out that person you kept putting off contacting is now deceased?

Please don’t get me wrong. I know people like my sister are busy. I can be busy. Life can be busy. But really, is our lives that busy to spare just a few minutes of it on any given day to do such a simple task of dialing a loved one?

I encourage each of you today to take a moment, breathe, and think about all those people you really love and haven’t talked to in awhile. Visualize yourself getting a phone call from someone tomorrow telling you that one of those loved ones has passed away. Feel in your heart what that would be like and I’m sure it will be enough to convince you to take five minutes out of your busy life to reach out to them right now.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Conjuring of Hollywood

I doubted that paranormal activity existed for a very long time until I experienced my own real taste of it, but more on that in a moment. Many movies have been released lately that are depicting this genre. One of them is The Conjuring, which since it’s release a bunch of weeks ago, has made a ton of money and built a lot of hype surrounding it. I finally decided to go see it because of this. As it began, words were placed on the screen that said the movie was based upon the true case files of the Warren’s, who were a paranormal investigative team that accumulated over 10,000-plus haunting cases dating as far back as 1952.

While the movie did its best to scare me, which at times it did, I began to wonder as it ended just how much of it was factual. After doing a little research on the internet to find out more details on the actual case file for which the movie was based upon, I found some serious discrepancies. So as not to ruin anyone else’s experience from watching this movie as it was entertaining, let me just say that Hollywood took a considerable amount of leeway in making the film. What really happened to the Perron family at their farmhouse in 1971 was noticeably different as compared to what the family experienced throughout the movie.

In doing this research, I also discovered other horror movies that were based upon factual events had similar exaggerations in their films. Some of those included The Devil Inside, The Haunting In Connecticut, Amityville Horror, and The Exorcist to name just a few.

Hollywood has done a great job today making scary movies even scarier, especially for those based upon true events. And while I’m not denying that those events didn’t happen, it’s the way they are being portrayed that has me appreciating what I’m seeing as pure art and and not reality.

Are there things that go bump in the night? Are there ghosts? Are their malevolent spirits? My belief is that the answers to each of those questions is yes. But that’s only because I’ve had my own paranormal experience, that changed my doubting mind.

I once owned a bed and breakfast named the Island Manor House that was operating in a home built around 1848. The home held much history from it’s conception and often guests would report seeing various ghostly apparitions. Two of those included a little girl who always seemed ready to play or a woman in an old nurse’s uniform that checked in on guests in their rooms in the middle of the night. After doing some research into these events, the other owner and I learned the original family who owned the home had a girl who died at a young age. In addition, we found out that part of the home was once used as a Civil War hospital for soldiers who were wounded. Even with hearing similar stories over time from random guests, I never saw any of what they had reported and remained skeptical. But one morning, I noticed something odd that began to change my view surrounding all of it.

In the center of the B&B, there was a common room that I called the Game Room. It had a fireplace, a chest of games, and a table that had a built in chess set on top of it that I had purchased for the room when I had moved in. Every night when turning in, after all the guests had already done so, I always moved the chess pieces back to their starting positions for a new game. But on this one morning, I noticed a single pawn had taken it’s opening move while the rest of the pieces were as I had left them the night before. I moved it back and went on with my day thinking nothing of it. Morning after morning as guests checked in and out, this continued to happen. I thought my business partner was just playing a joke on me, but when I asked, he had no idea what I was talking about. A number of weeks continued with this single pawn moving forward and it really began to bug me until I finally decided to take the matter a little further on one specific morning. When I emerged that day, every single guest in the house was in the dining room having breakfast, and the other owner was cooking. I spoke into the empty air and said “if there is a ghost in this house, show me in a more direct way that you are real…” I laughed off my insanity and went into the dining room for a minute just to check in with the other owner and say hello to all the guests. When I came back through that common room with the chess set, all of its pieces were moved around the board as if a whole game had been played. It was then that I knew and really began to believe that ghosts do exist and that there was some truth to paranormal activity.

So while I’ve come to accept that there is some truth to those questions I posed earlier, I’ve also come to understand that Hollywood takes a lot of their own liberties when making any film based upon factual events, especially those which are paranormal based. I’m sure if they were to portray my ghost story, it probably would be turned into the table levitating or the chess pieces flying around the room, neither of which happened. Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoyed watching The Conjuring. But I decided the next time I see any movie like this that states it’s content is based upon factual events, I’m going to take it with a grain of salt, sit back, relax, and be entertained by that Hollywood magic.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson