Author: Andrew Arthur Dawson

A teacher of meditation, a motivational speaker, a reader of numerology, and a writer by trade, Andrew Arthur Dawson is a spiritual man devoted to serving his Higher Power and bringing a lot more light and love into this world. This blog, www.thetwelfthstep.com is just one of those ways...

Waiting For Conditions To Change Yourself Doesn’t Work…

Why is it that certain conditions often have to be met for many of us to be motivated to change a toxic part of ourselves? Often, those parts of ourselves that we want to change would benefit our lives greatly if we made them all on our own without waiting for those certain conditions to be met.

A friend of mine in the AA recovery circles told me the other day that they would walk out of a job that is extremely toxic for them if they met someone special and developed a romantic relationship. Knowing their job situation, which indeed is quite unhealthy for their spirit, I asked them why it wouldn’t be something they would want to do as an act of loving themselves a little better. I never did get their answer, but from my own experience, many of those conditions that I waited for never happened, and for those that did, any changes I made in my life were only temporary until at some point circumstances led me right back to doing those toxic things. The best example I can give out of my own life for how I learned this is what transpired back in 2000 when I met my last partner.

During the summer of 2000, like many other addiction based periods of my life, I used sex and porn to numb the mental and emotional pains I had inside. On most evenings I spent hours on the Internet engaging in visual stimulation that did nothing but pass the hours by. When I wasn’t doing that, I’d set up random “dates” with people that were really nothing more than attempts to have sex. In either case, I used the excuse that I was single and that I would change those behaviors if one of those “dates” ever turned into a real relationship. Deep down I knew that neither behavior was healthy for my mind, body, or soul but I kept doing them under the premise that I’d change when the condition of me getting into a relationship was met. And in August of 2000, that condition did occur. I met someone who I fell in love with and sure enough, I made those changes. First, I let go of all the people in my life that I was “playing around” with on any level. I stopped looking at all pornographic material. I even stopped making sexual innuendoes and doing occasional flirtatious comments. All of my focus was on the new relationship. And for awhile, it worked. I stayed healthy and away from all those toxic behaviors. But when then newness wore off of that relationship and that person moved in with me, I no longer got as excited over the connection. And one day, just like that, something stimulated me from my past. Whether it was something that someone sent me in e-mail, something that popped up on my computer, something that was said to me, or something altogether different, I can’t remember anymore. Either way, something triggered me with a quick high and a memory of how good those old behaviors used to temporarily make me feel. Within a short period of time after that, I was back to spending hours and hours looking at porn, fantasizing about other people, and hanging out with many toxic people who wanted to see me out of that relationship. And eventually, that happened and the relationship ended.

There have been other cases in my life where I told myself I would change certain things when other conditions were met. As I mentioned before, many of them never came to fruition and I usually lived with various excuses that kept me staying in states of toxicity. What wasn’t changing was what was driving me to doing all of those toxic behaviors in the first place. But there came a day when I began realizing all of this and started seeing I was just going around in circles. It was then I decided to work on removing all of the toxicity permanently in my life regardless of any outside conditions being met. Not only has it brought greater peace in my life, but it also has landed me in a relationship that is spiritually growing and healthy for me. While the highs are gone now in that relationship, I have experienced quite a number of temptations recently, that in the past would have derailed me and led me back to toxic living. But with all the work I’ve done and a deeper relationship with God, they have remained just that, temptations that I have never acted upon. Not even once.

Waiting for certain conditions to be met to make a healthy change in a person’s life doesn’t work. Often those conditions are never actualized and even when they do, it only temporarily leads that person to a healthier state. If you know of certain parts of your life that really do need to change because they are seriously toxic, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and ask God for the strength to make those changes now. Do the work necessary to making them permanent and I can assure you, your life will get a lot better and a whole heck of a lot healthier.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Hollywood’s Fact And Fiction – Lee Daniels The Butler

Eugene Allen was an African American man who worked at the White House for 34 years under eight different Presidents. And just over a week ago, a movie entitled “Lee Daniels The Butler” was released into theaters portraying his life. Unfortunately, the movie I got to see in the theater was only loosely based upon it.

I’m not sure if I’m just becoming a tougher critic on the films that I’m watching these days in theaters or if my need for “factual movies” to be actually factual is changing my tastes. Either way, this summer has had such movies as The Conjuring and now The Butler that have really taken liberty with true-to-life information and stretched it rather thin. Don’t get me wrong, I felt the movie was done incredibly well in so many different elements. And if I were to base this movie completely on the acting alone, I’d give it five stars. Forest Whitaker, who played Cecil Gaines (the name given to the Eugene Allen character) even well deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, as does Oprah Winfrey who played his wife in the movie. But while the acting was even of that higher caliber for many of the other actors and actresses as well, it was the fictionalized parts of the plot that gave me a less than ecstatic feeling I was hoping for when the movie ended.

The premise of this film does indeed surround the 34 years Eugene Allen served under eight different Presidents. But the beginning of the film that involved a tragic childhood was not factual and neither was the whole storyline about the son named Lewis who was part of the civil rights based movement. And those were only two of the many discrepancies I discovered when I did my research surrounding the real life of Eugene Allen. Ironically, I probably would have gotten that ecstatic feeling I was hoping for if this movie had been a completely fictionalized story. In that case, I would have said it really was a well written script.

I often wonder if Hollywood over fictionalizes these real life stories of people like Eugene Allen because they feel it wouldn’t be interesting enough to make a film be completely or almost completely factual. Would that type of movie have been totally boring and uninteresting if it had been done with Eugene Allen’s life? I don’t think so. I’m sure there are many elements of his life that could have been portrayed accurately and kept the viewers captivated. But sadly, it wasn’t and The Butler was only loosely based on bits and pieces of it.

Thankfully, there are plenty of other movies that have come and gone in the theaters over the years that have been based more upon their factual events in history. _Gandhi, a film based upon parts of the life of Mahatma Gandi, was an example of that. Most of that movie was historically accurate except for a few minor Hollywood differences. And that film is in my collection of movies at home and actually does give me that ecstatic feeling every time I watch it. Even more recent was the release of Fruitvale Station this summer, which portrayed with almost complete accuracy, the last day in the life of Oscar Grant before he was innocently murdered by a transit station officer. It too moved me greatly, but in a different way, and will become one I purchase when it’s released on DVD.

While I am definitely inspired by the life that Eugene Allen lived, I only wish the movie had done a better job revealing his real life events. Regardless, the movie in itself is inspiring in the way his life is portrayed which stands to reason why the theater I saw the film at erupted in applause at the end. I can only hope that Hollywood will make factual films be more factual in the future and a lot less fiction. But if they stay on their current course, then maybe they should make a film based around my life. I’m sure the Hollywood version of my life would have a lot of good drama, and more than the type I ever was known to create…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Detaching With Love

All too often I hear people share in meetings about how one of their loved ones is actively suffering from the throngs of some type of addiction. Many of them talk about how they have tried everything to help those addicts and that it’s tearing their lives apart. Yet none of them realize that the best thing they can do to help those addicts is to stop enabling them and instead to begin the path of detaching with love…

So what does detaching with love look like? It means:

  • Holding back from the need to rescue, save or fix the addict from being sick, dysfunctional or irrational
  • Disengaging from an over-enmeshed or dependent relationship with the addict
  • Accepting that one cannot change or control the addict
  • Developing and maintaining a safe, emotional distance from the addict whom one has previously given a lot of power to affect their emotional outlook on life
  • Establishing emotional boundaries with the addict that one has become overly enmeshed or dependent with in order to develop one’s own sense of autonomy and independence
  • Not allowing oneself to be led into guilt or feeling responsible for the addict’s failures or falterings
  • Letting the addict that one loves and cares for accept personal responsibility for their own actions and to practice tough love by not bailing them out from their troubles

As soon as a person begins the path of detaching with love, an addict often attempts to dominate, manipulate, and control them a lot more to prevent them from doing so. My mother was the first example of an addict in my life that I experienced this first hand. There were many others I brought into my life after her that repeated these same lessons. What I had to learn how to do was emotionally detach from all of them but to do so meant changing many of my own behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes. For the longest time, I thought what this meant was to change the way I was acting so that I didn’t “trigger” them into doing more of their addict based behaviors. That is NOT what detachment means at all. Trying to change certain behaviors so as not to “trigger” an addict is actually enabling them further into their disease.

My path of successfully detaching with love from all those unhealthy and toxic addicts throughout my whole life began with me learning a set of principles that came from therapy, reading self-help books, and Al-Anon. They are:

  • I couldn’t fix, save, or rescue the addict
  • I was giving my power away every time I tried to fix, save, or rescue the addict
  • I was not responsible for the addict’s happiness, failures, shortcomings, or bad behaviors
  • Every time I had hope that things would change with the addict, I was living in an illusion and setting myself up for more pain
  • I was the one who was allowing the addict to convince me I was helpless, powerless, and incompetent
  • I could survive and thrive without the relationship with the addict, that life would go on, and that I wasn’t a bad person for doing so
  • There was no shame in walking away from a relationship that was destructive and toxic

The most important thing though, that I learned was critical if I wanted to detach with love, was the fact that I had to learn how to love myself a lot more so that I could see I deserved better. Once that began to happen, I began detaching with love from all of those toxic relationships with addicts by walking out of all of their lives.

If you are feeling at your wits end with someone you love who is suffering from any type of addiction, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and realize you will never be able to make that person become healthy regardless of how many acts of love you offer them. No matter what you ever do, you will never be able to save, fix, or rescue them. Detaching with love means loving yourself a lot more and reminding yourself that you deserve better. Pray to God to help you with this and know that if you end up walking out of that addict’s life, you don’t need to feel guilty. Not only is it going to be healthier for you, it will be just as healthy for them because it often become’s a great catalyst to driving them into recovery.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson