Month: May 2014

What Inspires You?

“What inspires you?”

That’s a question and a homework assignment I received recently from my spiritual teacher. What’s ironic with this question is how different my answers are to it today, as compared to what they were in all the previous years of my life.

As a young kid, the things that inspired me the most were reading, hiking, and probably math. Sadly, on some level, I guess you could say I was also inspired at that time to constantly please my dysfunctional family. By the time I left home and went off to college, the main things that inspired me for the next five years were alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. When I finally came clean and found sobriety, I found other addiction-based inspirations to occupy my life for at least fifteen more years. Gambling, shopping, sex, and various other things were just some of them. Occasionally, I went through spiritual experiences though during some of those years where I was inspired to be less self-centered and more loving in life. During those brief moments, I discovered that meditation, numerology, seeking God on a much deeper level, and trying to help others were more of my inspiration than seeking any of those addictions. Unfortunately, none of them ever lasted because I always allowed my addictions to draw me back in.

For the last bunch of years though, all that has changed, and now I find myself navigating through uncharted territory and visiting places within me that I never knew existed. It’s led me to be inspired by many things that are vastly different than anything I could have ever imagined earlier in life. The following list shows all the ones I could think of when I sat down and pondered that initial question of what inspires me…

  • Seeking God
  • Learning from my spiritual teacher
  • Writing daily about all of my life experiences in an uplifting way
  • Motivationally speaking about all of my life experiences in an uplifting way
  • Leading people to find their own connection to a Higher Power
  • Doing my 12th Step work with those still suffering from addictions
  • Being a spiritual teacher by example
  • Guiding people through meditation
  • Healing naturally
  • Empowering others to believe in themselves
  • Lifting people up when they are down
  • Completing complex puzzles
  • Anything that deals with superheroes who use their powers to help people every day
  • Beautifying an outdoor garden
  • Studying something new such as what I’m doing currently with Tarot reading
  • Being out in some part of nature
  • Showing compassion and understanding to everyone
  • Watching movies and television shows where good triumphs over evil
  • New Age and Ambient House music
  • Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Ellen DeGeneres, and any other famous figure who has ever taken a stand for creating more equality, peace, love, and light on this plane

As I sit here and reflect on upon each of the things I’ve listed here, I realize that all of them are really just about creating more love both within and around me. It’s my hope that each of you has your own list though of things you find inspiring in life. If you don’t, then I encourage taking a moment, breathing, and spending some time to go inside to discover what they are. Hopefully you will find that your inspirations don’t revolve around any addictions or unhealthy behaviors and instead are just the many unique ways you bring your own love and light onto this planet.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

And A Little More On The 9th Step Too…

I wrote in yesterday’s posting about several important things to consider when one begins working on their 8th Step. I decided after posting it, that it might be best to add a few more words on the 9th Step as well. For those who don’t know what the 9th Step is, it reads as follows:

“Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

As I mentioned back in a much earlier posting, making an amends is not about saying “I’m sorry” and moving on. It’s also not really about you at all. What the 9th Step is truly about is the addict humbling themselves as they own where they were selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, and afraid in front of whoever it was they harmed. It’s about helping those we harmed to find healing from the pain we caused them.

As also previously mentioned in an earlier posting, there are times when it’s actually not healthy to make a direct amends. Using an example from my own life, I had an affair with a married man many years ago. His wife never knew about any of what when on between him and I. She was never of his “extra-curricular” activities with me, as he liked to once call them. Through much prayer and reflection, I realized it would have caused her great harm and pain if I had made an amends to her, even though I was definitely willing to make it. Sometimes, there are situations like this where it’s best to just let the direct amends go for good and perform a “living amends” instead.

A “living amends” is simply when a person begins to live their life in a way where they’re not repeating the same harmful behaviors that once affected others on a daily basis. In the case of this affair I once had with that man, I no longer live my life to where behaviors such as that are acceptable on any level. Regardless of the fact that I’m currently in a relationship, my belief system today would never support an affair with a married man, even if I were single. Thankfully, my hard work in recovery has gotten me to this point and it’s involved a lot of “living amends”, as well as a large number of direct ones too. Making some of them weren’t easy, especially when I had caused someone great harm during my active addiction-based years.

Many recovering addicts like myself frequently experience less-than-welcomed gestures during our attempts to make some direct amends. This is all part of the process and is really quite a humbling experience. It is extremely important to note that I never argued back at someone who showed their anger or hatred towards me, because my only job on this step was to own the harm I had done. I learned that the more humble I made myself during each of these amends, the greater the peace I would experience later. The less humbling I made myself, the more my ego took over control and all that did was lead me to avoid making those amends at all.

The ego is a funny thing in that it really doesn’t want to be humbled…ever. It also likes to try to convince a person that an amends doesn’t have to be made when a person can’t be found. But in today’s day in age with the Internet, many of those people that are owed an amends can be found quite easy actually. In those few cases when someone truly seems to be off the grid, a little prayer to one’s Higher Power can often help to locate that person. There was a time when I prayed to mine to find someone so that I could make my amends to them, and not too long after, I ran into that person on a commercial street one day and got the opportunity to do so.

There are a few final points I’d like to make on the 9th Step. It’s important to note that making a direct amends should not take place over a phone, and definitely not through an e-mail or text message either. None of those are all that humbling and they definitely don’t help to smash the ego of the addict. And if one of those amends is with a deceased person, that doesn’t mean the person can avoid making it either. The amends I made with my mother came long after her death and it was done on a beach after I had written a letter to her. I burned that letter that day and felt so much better after completing that amends. Even though my mother wasn’t alive for me to humble myself in front of her, my action of doing the amends anyway was critical to my recovery. It showed my willingness and it showed my ego that it wasn’t in charge anymore.

So if you happen to be someone who’s on your 9th Step and is beginning to make those amends, please remember that this step is far greater than just saying I’m sorry and moving on. It’s a lot more about humbling yourself and it’s definitely about living a new life where the ego is no longer in charge. It involves searching as hard as possible to locate all of those you caused pain and it’s truly about having enough willingness to make an amends, even when a person isn’t alive anymore. And please remember one final thing.

The 9th Step isn’t as much about healing you…

It’s really more about healing everyone else that you hurt, as they deserve that as much as a healthier you…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

More On The 8th Step

When people talk about the 8th Step in the 12 Step recovery world, it frequently brings up more of a discussion on making an amends, then on what this step literarily requires. As written, the 8th Step states:

“Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.”

As you can see in the wording of this step, it doesn’t require a person to make an actual amends at all. It only asks to make a list and be willing to do those amends later in the 9th Step. There’s a good reason why these two actions are separated out. Usually there’s a lot of fear that can come up for a person in recovery when they ponder all the people they harmed along the way during their active addiction days. Writing down a list of each of them is going to be tough enough and an ego-bruiser, so a person generally needs some time before proceeding on to making any of those amends.

Speaking of one’s ego, it’s very important to not allow it to drive the work on this step either. If it gets in charge, it often tries to rationalize who is put down on that list. It will drive a person to assume that a person who is no longer alive or cannot be found is not important for this step. It can also convince an individual that the harm done for some things is long ago and probably long forgotten. In either case, these ego actions will lead a person to the exact opposite of what this step is trying to achieve. Instead, the ego ends up creating a scanty list of easy amends. But the truth is that amends aren’t always easy, in fact, they frequently can be quite difficult. Thus, the reason why the only actions on this step are to simply write a list, and then be willing to make the amends sometime later.

It may help a person when doing this step to separate out their list into three different columns. The first being the amends they are willing to make right now. The second being the amends they are willing to make in the near future. And the third, being the amends that are the most difficult and might require a person to pray for more courage to write them down.

When I did my second 8th Step, I prayed to my Higher Power for the courage to remember all those I had harmed. When the answers came, I didn’t hold back from writing down anyone or anything and I realized how easy it is to forget about those I had harmed. Many of them were still there below my normal levels of consciousness; I just had to ask for the guidance and direction to see them. That wasn’t the case though when I did my first 8th Step. At that point in time, I was still running on more of my self-will versus my Higher Power’s will. My ego was a lot more in charge and substitute addictions still ruled a good portion of my life. Thus the list I produced was not in alignment will the second portion of the 8th Step, on “being willing to make amends to them all.” Thankfully, that wasn’t the case though in my second go around of this step.

All of what I’ve just mentioned are only suggestions for you when you get to working on the 8th Step. Just know if you happen to be there already; please don’t allow your ego to tell you how to do complete it. Pray instead for the courage and direction to do the work, as it will guide you to having much more thorough results. Know that while it may bring up a lot of fear as you do so, you only have to make a list and becoming willing to make each of those amends sometime later. And remembering that will make this step so much easier…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson