Month: July 2014

Focusing On A Happy Memory To Heal The Past

When I lead any student in guided meditation, one of the first things I have them do is go back in time to their childhood to locate a happy memory. Many of those I’ve guided though have often reported that this was one of the hardest things to visualize during it. The common culprit amongst all of them has always been that they each grew up in a dysfunctional home. I can totally identify, but I realized over the years how important it was to find at least one happy memory and then focus on it instead of all the painful ones.

In a dysfunctional home where some type of addiction, mental illness, or abuse is regularly present, there is often a lot of tragic drama present. For a kid growing up in that type of environment, any happiness they ever have is often snuffed out and quickly overshadowed by that tragic drama. As those children grow up having gone through that process again and again of watching their happiness flicker away, the only memories retained are usually negative ones. I can safely say this because I spent years in therapy trying desperately to remember the positive things that happened during my younger years. There was one though that I consistently remembered and it became the anchor I needed to locate the rest of them. It was my family’s annual two-week summer vacation.

From my elementary school years till the beginning of my high school ones, my family always travelled on the first Saturday after the school year ended to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The two weeks that would follow still hold many of my happiest moments from childhood, even to this day.

Our vacation always began in our driveway at 4 Frederick Drive, Poughkeepsie, NY where the car was fully loaded up from top to bottom, several hours prior to dawn. Over the course of the next two days, I entertained myself in the car with some “Yes & Know” games, “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, and various other things that kept my short attention span occupied for the 14 hours I’d be in the car. During the drive, I also treasured those morning donuts, the afternoon lunches of cheese and crackers, Slim Jims, and vegetables and dip we’d have at the rest areas, and the evening swim at the motel we’d stay at the halfway point. When we finally arrived in Myrtle Beach, the next two weeks were always filled with building sandcastles, body surfing in the ocean, digging for treasure, collecting shells, playing miniature golf, riding amusement park rides, making huge gooey ice cream sundaes, and stuffing my face with hush puppies at every single restaurant I went to.

For whatever the reason, the drama in my dysfunctional family completely disappeared on most of those annual summer vacations. I’m not actually sure why that was, but I’m grateful for it because the happy memories of those trips truly helped me to get through the many years I held onto all that anger and resentment from my childhood. Once I did the work in Alcoholics Anonymous utilizing the 12 Steps, I became free of all of that. That’s when many other happy memories began to surface such as taking hikes and eating homemade Italian Ice with my father, and playing cards and cooking Chicken Marsala with my mother. The key to remembering each of these new memories though started with me focusing on just one happy one. That was my annual vacation to Myrtle Beach and today it’s still the first one I think when it comes to my childhood.

Now I choose to focus on all of the positive memories I have from my childhood rather than any of the negative ones I used to dwell upon regularly. I’ve definitely become a much happier person because of it. The fact is it’s not healthy to focus on anything negative, especially painful childhood memories. Doing so day after day will only turn someone into a very miserable person like it did to me. When I ultimately chose to begin healing from those dysfunctional years, I shifted my focus to the only positive memory I could think of, which was my Myrtle Beach annual summer vacation. Eventually that helped me to find many others and be thankful for so much more of my childhood.

So if you are someone who grew up in dysfunctional family and can only seem to remember painful memories from your childhood, try to meditate a few minutes each day solely to locate at least one happy memory from back then. As soon as you find one, start focusing on it every time you think of your younger years and I can promise you that it will eventually help you heal your past and even better, find all the others that may have been buried long ago…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Mantra For The Day – For Developing Your Spiritual Gifts

All of us are born with spiritual gifts unique to each of us. Unfortunately, we may not always see what they are or even know how to develop them. For the longest time, I’ve was one of those who was not actually sure what my spiritual gifts were meant to be, so I began doing something to gain that knowledge. I’ve starting utilizing a mantra each and every day to help myself see what my unique spiritual gifts were and I’m finally starting to understand that I’ve actually been using some of them for quite awhile without even knowing it. If you want to gain the same awareness of your own spiritual gifts, I encourage you to try using the following mantra, as I know it will help on that journey.

“My eyes are completely unblocked and unobstructed and I’m able to see and utilize all of my spiritual gifts.”

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

What Does Sobriety Mean To You?

In recovery, when someone mentions their “sobriety date”, it usually represents the first day they became clean and sober from whatever the substance of their addiction was. I’ve learned over time though, especially in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), that the word “sobriety” itself actually means something different for each and every individual.

In AA, the general consensus as to what “sobriety” means seems to be that of when a person is free of all alcohol and drugs (unless prescribed and taken as instructed). There are those in recovery though who believe all we have is today because it’s a “one-day at a time” based program and many of them choose to never disclose the last time they drank or used a drug because of it. But there are others who follow this same mindset because they continue to relapse again and again. On the one hand that can help prevent putting themselves down each time they relapse, it can also become a way to avoid reaching any type of sobriety.

There’s another set of people I’ve met in AA who define their “sobriety” by breaking it down to each individual substance. In the meeting rooms I once attended in the Boston area, this was commonly known as “The Marijuana Maintenance Program”. That name was derived by the many individuals who came to meetings and shared they had been sober for years, yet they regularly still smoked pot. And while pot is just one of those substances this happened with, there were many others who remained totally free of alcohol but still abused their prescriptions or justified taking a medication they weren’t prescribed. To them, their sobriety date represented their freedom from alcohol only. The reverse has been just as true of “The Marijuana Maintenance Program”. Many have ceased taking all drugs (unless prescribed and taken as indicated), but still go on drinking alcohol occasionally because it was never a problem for them. To them, their sobriety date becomes the last time they got high only. Sadly, I’ve never heard of anyone having success with “sobriety” in either of these situations. One of them has ALWAYS led them back to their original poison and addiction.

For me, my first definition of sobriety began on June 11th, 1995. That was the first day my system became free of all booze and drugs (that weren’t prescribed and taken as indicated), as well as nicotine. For the longest time, I shared that date out of pride and ego and not for the good it could do. I often wanted to make myself look better than others simply by sharing the number of years I had sober because they were greater than another. Through my spiritual work and walk with God, I’ve learned the importance of my sobriety date is only to show others that long-term sobriety can exist, even through the most difficult of life’s unfortunate circumstances.

But today, I have a new definition of “sobriety”, as it means something so much bigger than it ever used to for me. It has a lot to do with the intensive spiritual journey I’ve been on for the past few years. Now, “sobriety” means being free of all the things I once used to do to keep myself numb from any pain that came from living life. Initially that was only defined as alcohol, drugs, and nicotine, but today it also covers the addictions I had with sex and love, codependency, gambling, overeating, shopping, caffeine, and more.

I’m starting to believe now from my own experience that how one ends up defining their “sobriety” really depends on where they are on their spiritual journey and in their recovery. From observation only, the less I’ve seen someone be guided by a Higher Power, the more loosely they’ve seemed to define their sobriety. But the more I’ve seen someone be guided by a Higher Power, the more it seems they do their best to become free of all addictions. I realize though it’s not my place to judge how one ends up defining “sobriety”, but it is my hope that one day all of us will become free of all addictions and have our Higher Power guiding our ENTIRE lives.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson