Month: April 2015

April’s Questions For You To Ponder

I wanted to make sure I didn’t wait until the final day of April to post my monthly spiritual questions for everyone to ponder. So here they are and it’s my ongoing hope you will take the time to mull them over and maybe even share a few of your responses when you’re done. And as always, my own answers are listed below as well.

  1. What was the hardest lesson you’ve learned in life so far?
  2. What hobby brings you great joy and do you still make time for it nowadays?
  3. What is challenging you most in life right now and causing you the greatest stress?
  4. What is the first thing you turn to when you’re having a really difficult day?
  5. Of everyone currently a part of your life, whom do you relate to the most?
  6. What is the number one thing you want to do (or see) before you die?
  7. What was your most favorite childhood activity?
  8. What was your favorite thing to do with your father growing up?
  9. What was your favorite thing to do with your mother growing up?
  10. What is your dream job?

And one more for good measure:

  1. If you could invent one thing by just thinking it right now, what would it be and why?

My answers:

  1. Pursuing someone else’s dream that wasn’t part of my own. (Losing $650,000 of cash investments to a Bed & Breakfast I bought for an ex-partner)
  2. Writing or doing jigsaw puzzles and yes to both.
  3. My health issues.
  4. When I’m in good headspace – Prayer, meditation, and my hobbies. But when I’m in bad headspace – dark chocolate (lots of it).
  5. My spiritual teacher – Manin.
  6. Visit Bodhgaya in India, the place where the original Buddha became enlightened under the Bodhi tree after intense meditation.
  7. Playing on those metal merry-go-rounds at the playground where people pushed each other on it super fast.
  8. Go hiking up a mountain, having lunch at the top, and then getting a dessert treat after coming down.
  9. Playing card games like Gin Rummy, Crazy 8’s, and Kings In the Corner.
  10. Becoming both a paid motivational speaker and professional writer.
  11. A teleportation device so that I could travel anywhere in the world whenever I wanted.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Have You Ever Had To Face Your Biggest Fear?

What is your biggest fear in life? That’s a question I find very easy to answer lately, solely because it’s been the same one I’ve been facing ever since my health began a sharp decline one evening almost five years ago now.

That evening was on April 27th, 2010, a mere few weeks after I had muttered a prayer to God asking to go through whatever I needed to become free of all my addictions and toxic behaviors in life. At the time I said it, I was deeply engrossed in an extremely toxic intimate relationship and saw no way of ever breaking free from it. What I didn’t know when I said that prayer out of sheer hopelessness though was how it would soon put me on a path where I’d face my deepest fear in life, which was to have severe physical health issues that grossly limited my day-to-day functioning. And since this day five years ago, when the first of many aches, pains, and ailments kicked off within me, I’ve been doing everything I can to not let this fear rule my life, but sometimes it has and still does like today, much to my dismay.

As I sit here and type this, I’m struggling to get comfortable and have honestly spent the entire day in the same way. At various times throughout today, as well as many prior days in recent months, I’ve thought that death or going back to addictions would be a far better path than the one I’m currently on. Frankly, I don’t understand the path I’m on anymore, probably because of how long these health issues have lasted.

The good news though is that all these health issues led me to explore avenues I probably never would have given how preoccupied I was with my addictions. The not so good news though is the price that came along with discovering those avenues, which was to become riddled with myofascial pain. My muscles feel constantly tight and sore these days and I hurt in more places than not. I’ve totally done what I can to treat this condition both medicinally and holistically over the years and am now at a stage where neither brings me any relief. Trust me, I exhausted ridiculous amounts of time, energy, and money exploring every avenue of healing until I realized that the rest of this process was going to be in God’s hands. Now I do my best to remain healthy on every level, mind, body, and soul, but on days like today, when I can’t think straight because of the pain I’m feeling, I question my sanity and occasionally allow my fear of having chronic health issues plague me.

I so long for the days when I could walk for miles, hike up huge mountains, play exceedingly aggressive sports, and was an all around overly active individual. Nowadays, I’m lucky if I even have enough stamina to stand for a few minutes without aching and it often feels like I’m 80 years old. I even use a bench in the shower because it hurts to stand when I take one.

Frankly, I’m really not sure what God has in store for me, but I’ve definitely been facing my ultimate fear in life for almost five years now since I prayed for that great change to happen. Well that change definitely happened, just not in the way I thought it would. But I continue to tell myself over and over again that God isn’t going to leave me in this state. And people remind me quite often that God wouldn’t bring me down this path this far only to leave me feeling like this. I’m doing my very best to believe that to be true, but I know that I feel like I’m hanging on for dear life lately and am constantly trying to prevent my brain from convincing me to follow in either of my parents’ tragic footsteps.

So I’m not sure how much longer this is going to last, but I know I’m doing my absolute best to keep the faith, to stay positive, and to not give up. I’m also doing my absolute best to trust in God and remain as healthy as humanly possible. I do hope all of you who end up reading this will pray for me. Pray for me to make it to the other side of this. Because I do believe I’m going to witness the return of my good health soon and when I do, you can be sure I’ll be writing an uplifting post expressing my gratitude to God, to all of you, and to myself, for finally overcoming the biggest fear I’ve ever had in my entire life…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Do You Often Get Angry At Other’s Actions?

Do you ever find yourself getting angry at other people’s actions, often labeling them as ignorant, stupid, or ridiculous? The interesting thing I’ve learned on my spiritual journey in life is whenever I’ve done that, my anger’s not been about any of those people, it’s been about something within myself that I wasn’t wanting to look at.

The most common example I can think of here is the words I’ve used in the past at drivers I’ve deemed as “bad”. I’m sure you know what I mean because it happens all the time to most of us. Take for example when someone races out in front of us, almost sideswipes us, cuts us off, or tails us too closely. I used to scream and swear at drivers like that from the safe confines of my own car’s cabin. But the funny thing is I was just as much of the same type of driver as they were, having done each of those actions and then some regularly. But it sure was easier yelling at them and looking at their reckless actions rather than my own.

You see that’s the problem with anger. It’s so easy to be that way when someone else is doing something our ego doesn’t like, because the focus is then on them, rather than us. I spent years of my life acting like this, getting angry again and again at plenty of things that others did, but rarely taking a long, hard look at my own actions.

In all honesty, I quite regularly thought of others as ignorant, stupid, or ridiculous because of the things they were doing, but the reality is I was really the one being each of those things. The common misconception I often fell into is that if everyone would just act more sensibly, that my life and this world would fare far better. That was an illusion though, because even when everyone did exactly as I thought they should, I just created a mirror image around me of my own flaws and character defects, which still left me feeling angry.

And the only person who truly suffers from being angry all the time at others is the actual person who’s angry. More than not, they find it easier to place their anger and blame on someone else, instead of figuring out within themselves why they’re always getting angry in the first place.

That’s why I really try hard nowadays to look within myself anytime I find myself getting angry with another. And whenever I start thinking that someone else is being ignorant, stupid, or ridiculous, I take it as an opportunity to look inside at my own flaws and character defects, because I know I still have them, and maybe always will to some extent.

But I know the more I look at my flaws and character defects and the more I work through them, the less I find myself getting angry at others and the more patient and compassionate I feel with everyone and everything. The bottom line is that I’d rather have those qualities, than be constantly walking around with a chip on my shoulder because of how everyone else is acting…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson