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...

Spiritually Growing Through Reciting And Repetition

Some time ago I wrote about part of my morning spiritual routine which includes reciting mantras. At first when I started this almost a year ago, my list of mantras was quite small. I kind of felt silly doing them too. My brain continuously told me, “Is this really doing anything?” But ironically it was.

Fighting against my brain’s natural recourse for wanting a quick fix with everything, I spend around 35 minutes every morning with my list of mantras these days. They have evolved over the past year since I started them. I originally started with approximately twelve or so and since then the list has grown to almost thirty now.

It has amazed me that many of the original mantras I started with have been rewritten several times. When I first began this, most of the mantras I recited came from a place of wanting things to release or change in my life. Today, all of them come from a place of believing I already have received them. I have found this to be more successful and more powerful in my using them.

I don’t believe that mantras are something I could have recited just once or twice and received benefit. The mind and body is like a computer which has a hard drive. Much of the programming has been in place on that hard drive for many years. I have come to accept that it takes time to rewire and reprogram all of those old tapes, messages, and programs that have kept me in much of my unhealthiness over the years.

Below is a list of just some of the mantras that I recite every day at least ten times. This list has been tooled by many of my holistic practitioners who know my history. I know that over time, it will continue to change and grow as I do with God.

 I am handsome and I am beautiful on every level and in every way.

  I am not a burden on any level and in any way to myself or anyone else.

I forgive myself on every level and in every way for all things I’ve done not of love and light.

I am free of all pain, negativity, toxicity, and self-pity in every area of my life.

 I am free of all addictions and obsessions in every area of my life.

 I am free all jealousy, judgments, envy, and lust in every area of my life.

 I am free of all greed, gluttony, false pride, and laziness in every area of my life.

I am free of all anger and resentments in every area of my life.

 I am free of all shame, guilt, doubt, worry, and fear in every area of my life.

I am free of all trapped emotions in every area of my life.

 I am free of all burdens from my past.

I love my mind, body, and soul unconditionally and trust all of their wisdom.

I walk forward in faith and trust, and have acceptance that all is in my greatest highest good.

I move into my greater good, which is everywhere. I am safe and secure in this greater good.

I love, embrace, and rejoice in all of my sexuality unconditionally.

I love and accept myself unconditionally. I deserve love and respect and accept nothing less.

In every single area of my life, I am serving my greatest highest good, which is God.

I feel fantastic right now in every area of my life.

I am healthy and well in every area of my life. I am fully healed.

I am filled with an abundance of God’s health, healing, and well being in every area of my life.

I am filled with an abundance of God’s peace, love, happiness, and joy in every area of my life.

 God, I am open to receiving all of Your love that You have for me.

God, I have complete faith, trust, and acceptance of You working within me in every area of my life. 

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Finding Faith Through Hope…

There are days that I really have to try hard to maintain hope through what I go through mentally, emotionally, and especially physically. I continue to hold the belief that the majority of the pain I feel on any level is coming from a toxic clearing process from the life that I once lived as well as an ascension process to become a higher and more enlightened spiritual being.

It isn’t easy.

After spending much of the better part of a year or more trying to find medical answers and relief and getting none, I came to the acceptance that the only thing that would get me through all of this is to maintain hope in God that what I have been feeling is just temporary. I also find that I have to remind myself quite often that for two decades or so, I lived toxically and only began healing from all of it about a year ago. I have to admit though, it’s tough not being on medications and drugs to numb much of what I feel every day. Many people who experience pain will do whatever they can to band-aid it until it goes away. Unfortunately, that path doesn’t work for me as I seem to be detrimentally sensitive and side effect prone to just about every prescription I’ve ever been on.

My path to healing has felt long and arduous because of this. The only thing that has kept me going is clinging to hope. Hope for me doesn’t come from taking a drug or a pill. It doesn’t come from drinking alcohol. It doesn’t come from smoking a cigarette. It doesn’t come from gambling. It doesn’t come from overeating. It doesn’t come from a sexual act. It doesn’t come from buying something.

So where does hope come from for me then?

It comes from an inner belief and from things truly unseen and unknown.

My hope comes from a belief that an unconditionally loving God exists. It comes from a belief that God sees how hard I am trying to cleanse and purify my life from the darkness that I once lived regularly in. It comes from a belief that God is already healing me and that the pain is the result of the removal of all the blockages and junk I put into myself for all those years. And it comes from a belief that God has a calling and a plan for me beyond this clearing phase of my life.

I know that many people might be more of a realist on healing then I. My roommate is one of them. He relies upon science and medicine and believes most often that all pain can be fixed through some avenue of it. While I respect how he feels, I haven’t experienced much hope on that path if any at all. Instead I have experienced more setbacks, greater pain, and a lot of false promises.

Through daily prayer, meditation, mantras, writing, speaking at recovery meetings, eating healthier, and light exercising, I continue to create a foundation for God to work within me. By creating a foundation for God to work within me, I believe I am going to heal holistically and be cleansed by God from all of the impurities I placed within me. By believing I am going to heal holistically and be cleansed by God from all the impurities I placed within me, I am living with hope in my Higher Power. By living with hope in my Higher Power, I have developed a level of faith in God that everything will work out as it’s meant to. By having developed a level of faith in God that everything will work out as it’s meant to, I have been able to keep going each and every day in all the pain with just my hope.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Saying I’m Sorry – Part II

“I’m sorry!”

My previous entry spoke about my learning to not say those words and not taking ownership of all the bad things that happen around me. Well, there’s another side of this coin too where the phrase was overused in my life. For years I suffered at the hands of several addictions. No matter which one I was at the mercy of, there were many, many incidents where I created mishaps, pain, hardships, and wounds in others and felt the words “I’m sorry!” were enough. Sadly, they didn’t hold much weight when I continued to remain an active addict and live in toxic patterns over and over again.

Being at the mercy of any addiction, a person’s only focus is on getting a fix and staying “high”. All too often though, life comes in between them and their seeking of that fix and that’s when the addict will lash out most and create suffering for others. There were so many times that I had plans that I cancelled because it was more important for me to go get my fix. My only response in each of those times was to say “I’m sorry” to the people I was canceling out on. In my past, I stole, cheated, and lied to get my fix and if I was caught, the only thing I knew how to say was those words. They don’t hold much weight though when they’re said all the time.

If a drug addict steals from a friend or family repeatedly to get their drugs, is saying “I’m sorry” really going to hold any weight?

If an alcoholic has a terrible binge and is verbally or physically abusive to someone close to them one night, is saying “I’m sorry” the next morning when they are a little more sober enough?

If a gambler goes out and spends all their wife’s and his money that was set aside for a mortgage payment, is saying “I’m sorry” going to make her feel any better?

If a sex addict goes out and cheats for one night on their partner, is saying “I’m sorry” going to take the sting away from the infidelity?

All of those answers can be said with a resounding “No!”

Making amends to all the people that an addict has harmed isn’t as easy as saying “I’m sorry” and moving on. It begins first with recovery and becoming clean from the addiction. Then it involves prayer and finding a Higher Power who can help the person become less selfish and more selfless in their life. And finally, it leads that person through their new God centered life to making a true amends to the people they have harmed. To make an amends is not just to go to those that were harmed and say “I’m sorry.” It involves a lot more. It means being honest to those people the addict has harmed telling them where they were selfish, self-centered, dishonest, and afraid. Even more importantly, it involves asking those people that were harmed how they felt and what they need to truly heal from what happened.

I always thought that saying “I’m sorry” for all my bad behaviors would be enough. It wasn’t. Until I began living a life that was centered with God, I didn’t know that. Today I do my best to live my life with a Higher Power guiding it. I don’t just say those words anymore for something where I did cause suffering to someone else. I work on changing the behaviors that caused it in the first place, and I do everything I can to offer restitution to those that I’ve harmed. And even better, I’ve found that the more that I seek out God’s will in my life, the less I even have situations arise anymore where I might have once just said the words “I’m sorry!” to deal with it.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson