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...

Pruning My Garden Of Spirituality

I don’t proclaim myself to be a great gardener but I certainly enjoy working in one. Over the years, I’ve come to learn that it’s important to prune many flowers, plants, and trees so that they can grow healthier, stronger, and a lot more lush. I’ve also come to learn more recently that this same principle holds true within the spiritual me as well.

As a gardener, pruning something normally requires some form of shears to get rid of the unwanted parts of vegetation being grown. But pruning oneself can be a little more complicated than that. To better understand what it involves, picture yourself as one of those flowers, plants or trees that has been growing for as long as you’ve been alive. For all those times that you have done kind and loving acts for not only yourself, but others too, and kept yourself in a healthy state of mind, body, and soul, those were the times where you were regularly pruning yourself. Now for all those moments in your life where you might have fallen into various addictions, or brought toxic people into your lives, or earned money in ways that produced mostly stress for yourself, or eaten totally unhealthy, those were the times where you weren’t pruning yourself.

So what happens for a gardener when they don’t prune their flowers, plants, or trees? I’ll take the petunias that have been growing all summer in my garden as an example. Having originally planted them in the late Spring, I left my petunias unattended for several months, except for making sure they stayed watered. The result was that they began to grow in various directions, looking oddly shaped, where parts of them even started to die off. This made all of them appear rather unattractive and unhealthy. So with each one of them, I took a pair of shears and cut them 3/4’s of the way back. To a passer by, this might have seemed drastic because I got rid of so much of the plants producing these flowers. But within a week or so, they had all grown mush bushier and more vibrant, and created many more flowers than what had even been there before I had done the pruning.

In my own life, to prune means to cut back the unwanted growth that came during all those periods where I wasn’t living in that good state of mind, body, and soul. Over the past few years, what that has entailed has been letting go and saying goodbye to those toxic people I brought into my life. It’s meant staying away from all the things that I got addicted to. It’s meant finding a job or work that brings me peace, happiness, and joy in doing it. And it’s meant eating a lot more healthier on a daily basis. All of these actions have pruned back that spiritual tree within me and as a result, spurred a lot of spiritual growth since.

Because of the regular pruning I continue to do in my spiritual life, I find I am becoming a lot more peaceful and content, and that my mind remains more clear than clogged up. I believe the writing I’ve been doing in this blog is the sole result of this spiritual pruning that I’ve been doing throughout my life. Prior to doing any pruning at all on myself, I couldn’t even spend a few moments writing anything at all. It was as if my mind was off in too many directions to get any type of focus and clarity. That is no different than taking a flowering plant and letting it grow unattended for years.

For a gardener, pruning is often a crucial step to maintaining beautiful flowers, plants, or trees. For a person that desires to become spiritual, pruning oneself is just as crucial to maintaing one’s brightness, beauty, and love. I encourage everyone today to take a moment, breathe, and look at the ares in your life that could use some pruning. Don’t be afraid to use those shears to prune out parts of your life. You might be surprised to see the spiritual growth you spur within yourself by doing so.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Best Gift that AA Gave To Me

There are many gifts that Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) can offer someone who seeks its fellowship. But there is only one gift that it gave me which transformed my life permanently for the better and that is a relationship to a Higher Power.

As a kid, the only relationship I had to any Higher Power was the one I was introduced to through the church my family went to and the prayers I said to that Higher Power there or at meals and bedtime. All of it was part of daily routines and none of it held any real connection to my heart. In fact, I never really liked doing any of it, especially going to church. I had to wear my dress up clothes on Sunday mornings and go to another version of school after sitting through a small amount of time listening to the pastor drone on about things that never made much sense. All of those prayers I said there or at home were just formulaic and felt purposeless. The only image of a Higher Power I had back then was of a man with a very long beard who sat on some golden throne. And I was taught back then that this Higher Power didn’t like sinful behavior and would get angry if I didn’t obey all the rules. So I began to fear and avoid this Higher Power instead.

By the time I left home at the age of eighteen to head off to college, I only talked to that Higher Power in those 911 situations or the ones where that Higher Power became my genie. In the 911 calls to that Higher Power, I’d say things such as “Please get me out of this jam!” or “Please fix this mess for me!” As for being a genie, I’d call upon that Higher Power and wish for things such as “Will you help me get an A on the final exam I have tomorrow?” or “Can you make so and so like me more romantically?” But never was there any Higher Power or God at that time in my life who I prayed sincerely towards in the hopes to become a better, more kind, and loving person on this planet.

Even after I quit drinking and drugging in June of 1995, I continued this life of self-will run riot. During the next ten years of my life, I lost both my father and mother tragically and became very angry with this Higher Power for letting their deaths happen. I didn’t understand how bad things could happen under that Higher Power’s watch with all the infiniteness power I was told that Higher Power had. I grew angrier and angrier which in turn caused me to distance myself from people that were healthy. My addictions grew stronger and the miles between that Higher power and I became greater. Except for a brief few months here and there over the years when I had some spiritual experiences through meditation, I rarely had any relationship to that Higher Power.

In September of 2007, all of that began to change when I hit an even lower rock bottom than I had on the day I first got sober some twelve years earlier. Without feeling I had any where else to turn, I walked into one of the rooms of AA on a Friday night and reached out for help. There I got a sponsor who began to teach me that their Higher Power loved me just as I was, had always loved me, and had long ago forgiven me for all those things I had done that were so selfish and self-centered. I had a hard time believing that and how AA could even help me when nothing else ever did. That sponsor told me to “believe that they believed” that AA could help me and that it would help me find a close relationship to my own Higher Power. So I started my journey in AA by believing that my sponsor believed and began doing my work in the 12 Steps accordingly.

I can honestly say that somewhere along the way, as I began to turn my entire will over to this Higher Power that my sponsor told me existed, something started to change within me. Whether it was my thinking being expanded or my heart softening, or possibly something altogether different than both, the day did come when AA and the 12 Steps helped me to discover my own Higher Power who has since become my best friend, my true Father and Mother, and my teacher of unconditional love.

Today, I refer to this Higher Power as God. And while all the other measures I took in my life to find happiness and joy failed miserably, the God that I have in my life now has not. Each day, the God that I found through my hard work in AA has kept me going, even in the hardest of times, even in the darkest of times, and somehow, someway, I know there will come a day when I will be able to thank God in person for saving me from the life of hell I lived for way too long. That, to me, is the best gift that AA has ever given me.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Are You Really That Busy That You Don’t Have Five Minutes To Call A Loved One?

How often do you find yourself letting too much time pass by without connecting to a loved one? Is it days, weeks, months, or even years that time eludes you until one day you begin to wonder how long it’s been since you talked to your brother, sister, mother, father, relative, friend, or some other loved one?

We all live in a busy world with busy schedules and have busy lives right? Well that’s at least what we tell ourselves. But what if that day comes when we are notified a person we love dearly but hadn’t reached out to for some time has passed away suddenly? How then do we feel about all that busyness?

I’ve lost my mother, father, and a few close friends very unexpectedly in my life. Prior to their deaths, I had all the excuses in the world on why I couldn’t make the time to reach out, say hello, and spend even five minutes talking with them. After each of their passings, I held immense guilt on the many times that I made excuses to picking up that phone and calling any of them.

Look, there are 24 hours in a day. That’s 1440 minutes that each of us find ways to occupy. And sadly, many of us, like I once did, fail to take even five minutes out of that to contact a loved one we don’t get to see all that often.

My sister is a good example of this and it saddens me that she hasn’t fully grasped this concept yet. I have often struggled to get a hold of her and am normally the one doing the work to set up a time to talk. What many people like her forget about is that all we really have is today and none of us know whether it could be the last day we breathe life into ourselves. After losing enough people so suddenly in my life, I have learned this lesson and realized that life is way too short. When I think about someone today who I haven’t reached out and contacted in awhile, I don’t put that action off any longer. Even if that’s taking a few minutes away from “the busyness” of my life.

In my most “busiest” moments of my life when I was consulting full time in the computer world or running a bed and breakfast that I once owned, there were still plenty of moments I could have found the time to reach out to a loved one. But what happened back then for me was I very selfish and placed my own priorities ahead of doing something selfless like contacting a loved one just to say hi. So after an exhausting day I usually convinced myself I was too tired to call and instead watched television. And for all those times during the day when I was in my car commuting anywhere, I either listened to music or dialed the people I placed as “more important”, which ironically were just people that fed my ego. The long and short of it really came down to my selfishness and self-centeredness. I’m not sure if I can say that’s the case for everyone though, such as my sister.

Some people, like my sister, really just have hectic schedules throughout every day. In her case, not only does she have three children to take care of, one of which is under one year old, she also holds down a full time computer consulting job. Finding any free time throughout the day often proves to be very difficult for her because of this. And when she does find a moment free, often the only thing she really wants to do is rest. I do have compassion for this, but I also know that it’s just as important to work into a schedule a few minutes to reach out to those that one loves. Isn’t it better to do that, then never to do so at all and then one day find out that person you kept putting off contacting is now deceased?

Please don’t get me wrong. I know people like my sister are busy. I can be busy. Life can be busy. But really, is our lives that busy to spare just a few minutes of it on any given day to do such a simple task of dialing a loved one?

I encourage each of you today to take a moment, breathe, and think about all those people you really love and haven’t talked to in awhile. Visualize yourself getting a phone call from someone tomorrow telling you that one of those loved ones has passed away. Feel in your heart what that would be like and I’m sure it will be enough to convince you to take five minutes out of your busy life to reach out to them right now.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson