Month: March 2015

Vacation Part 2 – The Acceptance

You would think that being in an exotic locale, having come from subzero temperatures, would have lifted my soul and catapulted me into a state of bliss upon arrival in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico for my annual vacation. But it didn’t, mostly because upon that arrival, the health issues I’ve been facing quite severely in recent months didn’t subside one bit, at least not that I could tell. The only solution I knew of for this onset frustration was one I learned in recovery and that was to practice acceptance, except it took a couple of negative-filled vacation days for me to get there.

To be perfectly frank, it’s one thing to be in one’s own home dealing with health issues, but it’s another thing altogether to be away on vacation still having to deal with them, especially when I spend a large amount of money for it. You see I can withdraw much easier from the world into the safe confines of my own when I’m having really difficult days with pain. But the idea of spending a bunch of money and having to deal with those kinds of high pain-filled days amongst countless other vacationers isn’t as easy for me.

I realized this almost immediately after checking in at the resort, because I found myself getting irritated at the slightest of things. First it was with the man behind the front desk who didn’t have any knowledge of the room we had reserved. Then it was with the room I was in because my balcony didn’t have a full panoramic view of the entire beach and ocean. Later it was due to the throngs of people that were around me at the pool. And as the evening was coming to a close, I even got irritated at all those in the buffet line I had to wait on.

My irritability continued into the second day where I most definitely still wasn’t practicing acceptance or having much gratitude at all. I complained about the lack of swimming area in the ocean in front of the resort, was bothered by the amount of seaweed present there as well, and even scoffed at the resort’s huge swimming pool for various reasons. As my health issues continued to plague and frustrate me, I began to recognize how I wasn’t having much of an appreciation for anything. That’s when I decided I needed to get to an AA meeting and fast, which thankfully one was taking place at a local English-speaking clubhouse at 5:30pm.

I’m actually not sure why getting to a meeting helped, but it did. Maybe going to one was the first part of practicing acceptance. Regardless, by the time the meeting ended, I felt much better, at least on a mental and emotional level and decided I needed to do exactly as the AA acceptance prayer said:

“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes.”

So I did exactly that. I started to accept my health issues as being exactly the way it was supposed to be at that moment and began to concentrate more on changing my attitude and having more gratitude. While that didn’t necessarily take away the pain levels I’ve been going through quite a bit in recent months, it did take away a huge chunk of that negative outlook I was initially having on my vacation, which allowed for plenty of enjoyable experiences to come.

It seems as if acceptance truly was the answer to finding a little peace and serenity during my vacation in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Vacation Part 1 – The Ring

Over the next few days I’ll be taking a spiritual look at various things that transpired during my vacation from February 26th to March 9th in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. My initial entry in this foray is titled “The Ring” because it deals with what transpired on the morning my vacation began.

It must have been about 5:15am when I noticed my partner was roaming around the bedroom while I listed to one of my spiritual attunements in my headphones. My friend was coming to pick us up at 6:00am to take us to the airport in Detroit because our flight was leaving for Mexico at 8:50am. I’m really not a morning person so as I watched my partner frantically search our room again and again, I paused my attunement in irritation and asked what was going on. His response was that he couldn’t find his ring, which was the same one I had signifying our commitment to each other. Initially I passed it off assuming he would find it shortly and proceeded to finish up my morning spiritual routine.

By the time I was done and stepping into the shower, he was still madly searching the house, tearing through his suitcase and various other places looking for where it could be. The clock ticked away getting closer and closer to when my friend was picking us up and I began to wonder if this was some sort of a sign about my partner’s commitment to the relationship.

Yes, I’m one of those people who really do pay attention to things like this and believe in all sorts of spiritual signs. I’ve had a lot of examples of this happening in my life and in the long run, each have always had some sort of a spiritual lesson. In the case of this one, I continued to maintain the focus on my partner, believing it was his lesson and started to wonder if I should even take my own ring on the trip. My ego kept telling me why bother if he wasn’t going to be wearing his.

Soon my friend arrived and my partner had to give up the search for his ring while I made the decision to still bring mine. I spent the majority of the car ride up to the airport in my head thinking about what this meant for him, for us, for our relationship and the like. In all truthfulness, I became downright obsessive about the whole matter and overly frustrated.

Once we cleared security in the airport and were waiting for our flight to take off, I was so deep in my head about the loss of my partner’s ring that I knew I needed to call someone for assistance. I chose to call my new recovery friend Steve who always seems to have a knack at helping me to see things from a different perspective. And he did. He truly only had to say one thing that got my attention. He said, “What if the lesson here with the ring isn’t about your partner at all? What if it’s about where you are at in the relationship?”

I knew immediately he was right because I began crying right there in the middle of the terminal. I suddenly realized I hadn’t been accepting my partner in recent months for who he is. In other words, I had been trying to change him a lot, to fit what my ego thought he should be. Many times, I have found myself verbally disciplining him when he didn’t meet my expectations and that’s not being unconditionally loving at all. All of this inner reflection just seemed to come to me once he said those words.

I thanked Steve for his aid and went back to sit down with my partner. It was there I made some amends and apologized for how I’d been lately with him. I told him I was going to work harder on accepting him for who he is and not for who I want him to be, which has been an ongoing pattern in my life with so many others.

So as not to drag out this story much longer, I felt far better after that amends and I’m sure my partner did as well. When we finally arrived at our hotel and began to unpack, there was his ring sitting on top of his clothes in plain sight. It was then I knew the lesson had always been for me and not for him. It definitely got my attention and probably was the only way it could have.

It goes to show that sometimes when we truly think the spiritual lesson is about someone else, it really is about ourselves. Thank goodness I was able to figure out this one before my ego got to run away with it and potentially ruin the vacation…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Kryptonite To My Recovery And Spirituality

Every superhero in the comics usually has some sort of a weakness. For Superman, it’s Kryptonite. Anytime he’s ever exposed to it, he completely loses his powers and starts getting very sick. While I may not be Superman, not by a long shot, I will say that if living a full life of recovery and spirituality is what makes me a superhero of sorts, I too have my very own form of Kryptonite that affects me detrimentally anytime I’m ever exposed to it.

I know this may sound crazy in saying so, but this Kryptonite I’m speaking of comes in the unique form of an individual I find very physically attractive that holds strong sexual energy and acts upon it in various ways on a regular basis. Those various ways often include daily watching of pornographic material, habitual masturbating, constant sex talk, or being promiscuous in life, but are not specifically limited to those alone. Anytime I’ve become exposed to even one of these types of people and begun spending considerable time around them, all of my healthy spiritual and recovery-based behaviors were generally thrown out the door and replaced with more deviant ones in nature.

I can’t honestly say I understand why this happens. I can’t say I exactly get why being around someone who is so physically alluring to me and who holds such strong sexual behaviors affects me so greatly, other than it just does. The fact of the matter is that I’ve just come to accept that these types of individuals are my Kryptonite because anytime I’ve ever become involved with them on any level, I’ve eventually thrown my spiritual practices and my work in the 12 Steps totally out the window.

The last time this happened was in 2011 where it almost led me to relapse on alcohol and drugs and attempt suicide. Prior to that, there’s a long list of people I grew quite attached to who always seemed to undermine my recovery and spirituality in every way the more I spent time around them. The truth is, I always began caring far less about nourishing my recovery or spiritualty and far more about the sexual excitement of these people anytime I came around them.

You may be wondering right now how did I know when I got around one of these types of people? An even more important question than this is how do I know when this happens nowadays? It’s easy, as I commence to forget about everything else important to me going on in all the moments I’m around them. I forget about the friends I’m spending time with, the meetings I’m at, the plans I’ve made, or any number of other things. None of that ends up mattering to me anytime I get around even one of these types of individuals. Case in point, I was at a meeting recently where one of them was in the same room as me and I could barely focus on anything except for them the entire time I was there. It’s almost as if I get in a trance. Multiply that feeling by a thousand and you will begin to understand what happens to me if I start spending time with them on a regular basis.

So I’ve come to accept that I do have my own unique form of Kryptonite in life, which consistently seems to work against me trying to live fully in my recovery and spirituality. It comes in the form of someone I find very physically attractive that’s harboring some seriously strong sexual energy. And the stronger that energy and the more they act upon it regularly in life, the weaker I appear to become the more I remain around them. That’s why I will keep on doing what Superman does in the comics by staying as far away from my form of Kryptonite as possible, because in the long run, being around it is only going to make me sick…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson