For the longest time I can honestly say my priorities were all screwed up as I was only primarily concerned about my own needs, wants, and desires. Everything and everyone else always came second, third, fourth, and so on. I truly thought this was the way it was supposed to be until I started to figure out how selfish and self-centered that was. Today, my priorities have totally changed, but that’s only because I’m now trying to establish a life where I’m living spiritually.
In the recovery rooms from addictions, I learned the only way to leave behind my life of selfishness and self-centeredness was to seek a connection to a Higher Power. Through a lot of pain and growth, I was able to find my Higher Power, whom I refer to as God most often these days. Serving God has become the number one priority in my life now because of a sole reason. All those years where I served myself and my own needs consistently led me to only one thing, being miserable. During those miserable years, God was always on the back burner and I only went to God for essentially 911 calls. I rarely gave thanks for anything, and took everybody and everything for granted. In doing so, I lived with many active addictions just to have temporary happiness, which kept me in a state of being extremely unspiritual. I have found that my life has become a whole lot better with placing God first on my priority list.
This begins with me awaking in the morning each day, getting on my knees and welcoming God into all of my life. Through prayer, I ask God to guide all my thoughts, words, and actions for that day. I then ask God to remain at the center of my relationships, especially with my partner. I also make sure I let God know I’d like to be of service to God in any way I can during that day. And I always end by praying for love and light in this world, especially for all those people and areas where there still is great darkness. Placing God first doesn’t end there though, as I learned how easy it can be to take my will back and put God onto that back burner again. So throughout the day, I always make sure to pray, even in the oddest of places, if I should feel like I’m drifting from my path of living spiritually. I generally know when this happens because I find anger and frustration arising during those times.
When each day comes to an end, I continue to place God as the number one priority in my life by writing in my gratitude journal. There, I give thanks to God for at least nine things each day that I am grateful for. When that is done, I end my day as it started by praying to God on my knees where I give thanks for staying free from all addictions and for making it through another day of my life. I also ask for forgiveness for where I may have drifted off my path of spiritual living. And as I end my prayers, I once again send light and love out to all those people and areas of this world that are still living in darkness.
This may seem like a lot of work to some. To others, it may seem too religious. But to me, it just comes natural now because I’ve been doing this for so long and have seen a lot of spiritual growth within me because of it. It has also allowed me to see what should be the second most important priority in my life is and that’s taking care of my health and healing. You see if I’m not healthy and well, I’ll never be able to truly be there for anyone else. When I lived for a long time being toxic and addiction prone, every time I tried to be there for someone else, I just spread some of my toxicity to them in some way. By placing God first though, I started seeing those areas of my health and healing I needed to take care of before I did anything else. Through 12 Step work, recovery meetings, therapy, doctors, holistic practitioners, meditation, and mantras, I’ve worked diligently every single day to help heal a body, mind, and soul that I neglected for most of this life. There have been periods where I’ve definitely tried to place these things further down my priority list of living spiritually but the results of that have never been good. I found that skipping things such as meetings or meditations, or avoiding that step work have always led me back to my addictions and being toxic. I finally realized through trial and error that all the things I do for my health and healing had to take a higher priority than me being there for anyone else. The simple truth here is that a person can’t be there for anyone else unless they are healthy enough within themselves. This is the precise reason why all my former intimate relationships, friendships, and connections to family members always broke apart time and time again.To put in bluntly, I wasn’t able to care about any of them in the way they deserved because I wasn’t healthy and well enough inside. By placing God first and my health and healing second though, it has given me enough capacity to balance all the rest of my priorities appropriately these days.
Today, I can place my partner’s needs ahead of my own selfish interests more than not. I can work with a sponsee and truly listen to them instead of being focused on all the drama that once existed in my life. I can be in a recovery meeting and share about my experience, strength, and hope, and not the misery I once constantly went through. And I can be there for a friend when they really need me.
I am grateful to understand a little better these days about the priorities that need to be in place to have a life of living spiritually. If this is what you want as well, but your life currently is filled with a lot of drama and misery, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and look at what the priorities are in your life. By placing God first and your health and healing second, I can assure you that your life will get a lot better. Know in doing so that you’ll see how this will move you away from a life of selfishness and self-centeredness, to a life filled with a lot more love and light for everyone else.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson