Category: The Spiritual Side Of Sexuality

I’m always amazed how I usually seem to meet people at social gatherings who remind me so much of myself, either from my past or present. I had the pleasure of meeting one of them this past Saturday at a get together that was based around a meditation class I had taught earlier in the evening. During the potluck meal that followed afterwards, I got to know this 58 year old gentleman who said during one of our conversations, he only dated men that were 35 years old and younger. What I found ironic about his statement, is how much it reminded me of something I might have once said when I had a set of requirements for someone I would date.

For the longest time, I had a list of “things” that a person had to meet before I would even consider going out on a date with them, let alone making them a partner one day. While one of those was never an age requirement (other than over 18 of course), the list was quite specific about many other things such as a person’s religious background, their dimensions, their amount of body and facial hair, their financial status, whether they suffered from various addictions, and how masculine they were, just to name a few. To put it quite simply, this list did nothing more than prevent me in many, many ways from ever being opened to whomever the Universe could have been trying to send my way. What happened instead is that I ignored person after person who made an attempt to contact my personal ads as soon as I saw specific criteria that didn’t match my list. And I spent many years single because of this. Interestingly enough, when I did meet those few people who met most of that criteria on my list, we were never a good match for each other.

When I finally let go of that list and all the criteria on it, I essentially made the statement to the Universe that I was open to whomever would be considered a good mate for me. And shortly after that, my partner Chris appeared in my life. During our first conversation online, he said something had strongly compelled him to respond to my personal ad when he was perusing through some of the dating sites on the Internet. We’ve been together now for 18 months and in all honesty, it’s been the best relationship I have ever had.

In regards to my new friend’s “35 and younger” criteria that he spoke of often the other night, what I really saw in our conversation was a mirror reflecting back onto myself. This mirror reminded me of all those days where I thought many of my own criteria were so important for me to finding that perfect partner. But what I truly realized after so many years of holding onto my list of requirements for that future partner, is that it only blocked me from ever being able to meet someone like Chris, who honestly didn’t even fit some of them.

While I tried to explain this to my “35 and younger” friend the other night, he ended up maintaining his resistance for the entire evening to ever dating any man who was even just a few years older than that. Hopefully one day, he and all others who continue to hold onto some type of criteria for a potential partner, will realize the following truth my Higher Power helped me to see….The only thing that criteria is ever going to do is blind them from seeing a person the Universe knows they are meant to be with.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but as I wrote yesterday’s entry, I thought of a label that many people still use, especially in the gay community, which once fit me very well. It’s a term that is most often used to characterize those who respond to any of their life’s situations with complete melodrama. And regrettably, I must admit this was definitely me for many years as I played the role of being a “Drama Queen” very well.

According to what I read online, the term “Drama Queen” actually originated in the late 70’s and was used back then to describe the women who appeared in those overly dramatic soap operas. But somewhere along the way, drag queens (men who dress up as women) began to use the term with each other when one of them would get excessively reactive in a very dramatic way about something trivial they were going through. Ironically, it’s now become so widely used that I’ve even heard my 11 year old nephews use it with each other.

Unfortunately, for the longest time, I really was that drama queen. I had deep insecurities of feeling inadequate and unimportant so I always strived to be the center of everyone’s attention around me. This often led to me blowing just about everything out of proportion that happened to me. Thankfully when any of these meltdowns happened, I was never unreasonably animated with my hands or abundantly flamboyant in my speech like the performing drag queens usually are on stage. But the truth still remains that something as insignificant as spilling food on my shirt during a meal with others often became something I’d obsess and talk about incessantly until someone else forced a change in conversation.

I still remember many of my friends calling me a drag queen over the years where I usually just laughed it off and said something rhetorical back to them. But deep down I knew they were right and it was becoming harder and harder to deny that truth. Every time I showed up at a recovery meeting, had a social engagement with any friend, or went on a date, I took something that was going on in my life and spent the entire time talking about it. It really does boil down to the fact that in my childhood home, I was rarely the center of attention and my parents hardly ever listened with open ears to any of my troubles in life. As I grew older, this insecurity was a huge catalyst to dramatizing everything I went through so that I could garner some attention in my life for once. Albeit extremely unhealthy in how I went about doing it, becoming that drama queen achieved the attention my ego desperately sought day in and day out. Eventually though, everyone grew tired of my drama du jour and no longer found it funny to call me that drama queen. Instead, they started keeping their distance because my time with them was never about anything they were going through, it was always about some silly thing in my life that I was blowing out of proportion.

I’m grateful to say that my 4th Step work in AA has helped me to see this character defect very clearly now. And since becoming aware of it, I’ve made a concerted effort to shed that drama queen image by working on healing the sources of all of my insecurities. The more I’ve worked on healing those sources of all my insecurities, the more I’ve moved away from wanting to be the center of attention everywhere I went. And the more I’ve moved away form wanting to be the center of attention everywhere I went, the more I’ve wanted to listen to what others have going on in their lives when I’m with them. And the more I’ve wanted to listen to what others have going on in their lives when I’m with them, the more I’ve stopped focusing on all of those trivial things in my life that I always blew out of proportion. And the more I’ve stopped focusing on all of those trivial things in my life that I always blew out of proportion, the more I’m realizing I’m not being much of a drama queen anymore…

Thank God for that!!!

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

There was a time I considered myself a very staunch Christian who refused to be open to anything but the Bible and the Trinity. I lived in a box and anything that approached my box, but wasn’t already in it, I dismissed as blasphemy. Over time though, I came to learn that for as long as I stay in any type of box, my spirituality couldn’t grow beyond the walls of it.

The first time I started looking outside my initial Christian box in life was completely due to my sexuality. Up until the age of 23, I was basically asexual. While I had many thoughts about same-sex relations since puberty, I never acted upon any of them and instead drank and drugged those feelings away. That all began to change when I fell in love with one of my best male friends during my senior year of college. The difficulty that I faced with that was knowing the seven passages that existed between the Old and New Testament which spoke against homosexuality. Eventually I quit drinking and drugging because I honestly thought they were causing me to have those same sex feelings. Early on in sobriety, I spent quite a bit of time focusing on my sexuality because I was under such duress over it. After much deliberation, I came to the acceptance that I was born gay. The problem I still faced with that though, was knowing where Christianity stood on this subject.

Initially, I had one foot in a box and one foot out of it as I lived a double life. I went to a very right wing Christian church that was extremely family oriented. At the same time I fell for a man during my first year of sobriety who became my first long term monogamous relationship. I became very conflicted because of this. On the one hand, most gay people I was meeting had rejected God because of what Christians were constantly saying about them. But on the other hand, I loved reading and studying the Bible and felt that God loved me just as I was. When I finally decided to step fully outside of that first box I had created around me, I outed myself to that church I was going to. Sadly, they didn’t accept me so I put myself into another box, one that rejected God, like so many other gay people have done for the same reason.

I spent awhile in that second box until I discovered the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) of Washington, D.C. There I saw many gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered people following the Christian religion. Everyone always seemed so happy at those services I went to there. I began to get to know many of the attendees quite well, each who had good hearts and souls, and formed several close friendships because of it. I started having trouble understanding how God could send any of them to hell, as that is what many Christians had told me where I would go if I continued “practicing” being gay. I began to stop buying into the idea that God put millions of people on this earth to have these feelings only to want them to be celibate for their entire life or to force themselves to be with the opposite sex and be miserable. I also started to accept that while the Bible might have been inspired by God, it was also written by men (who were human and flawed like we all are) thousands of years ago in a time where things were very different. Some Christians would say that statement alone is blasphemy. I realize today that when I used to say that, it was only because I was in fear that maybe my truths weren’t the only truths, so that became my defense mechanism. In a short time after all this, I left that second box completely and began to question everything.

I started meeting wonderful Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and many other people who practiced religions other than Christianity. Sadly, most of the Christians I knew at the time told me that God would never allow any of those people into Heaven because they weren’t accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. I couldn’t buy into the idea that God would deny admission into Heaven all those millions and millions of people that were created by God just because they weren’t practicing one specific religion.

Today, through much research, meditation, prayer, and life lessons, I’ve come to a place where I can’t live in a box anymore that accepts any of those crazy notions. I’ve learned too much and have seen that there is a little bit of truth to everything out there but just as much misconceptions and lies surrounding it all as well. I still love the Christian religion, the Bible, and the Trinity. But I also love just as much studying Gautama Buddha and the Buddhism religion, Muhammad and the Muslim religion, anything to do with Hinduism, Wicca, or any other religion for that matter. I come to fully accept not only my homosexuality as God given, but also things such as karma, reincarnation, psychics, mediums, tarot cards, astrology, and numerology, solely because I’m no longer living in any box. All of these things can have inherent good in them if they are practiced that way. And I don’t believe that anyone who practices any of these things with unconditional love in their hearts is going to be denied admission into Heaven or sent to some type of hell.

Regardless, I once lived in several boxes that I didn’t want to see out of and I stayed in them with others who believed exactly as I believed. My spirituality and my understanding of life weren’t able to grow beyond the walls of those boxes as a result. By permanently stepping out of all of those boxes, I was able to start accepting everyone from all walks of life and have been able to see how we all are connected. While remaining in a box might have once felt safe to me, especially when so many others were there with me, staying in them prevented me from ever coming to believe in one very important truth.

God is love and loves everyone equally. Regardless of what one’s sexual preference is (whether they are practicing it or not), or what one’s religion is, or what one’s belief systems are, I believe that all that matters to God is to make sure we practice them with love and light, not just towards ourselves, but also towards each other, just like I’m sure God does with all of us…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson