Category: Words To Live By

Have you ever prayed about a difficult situation that either you or someone else was going through and asked for a specific outcome to happen with it all? I used to do that quite regularly in almost every one of my prayers, until I began to understand that maybe those difficult things that were happening were actually meant to help whoever was going through them spiritually grow.

There are quite a number of examples I could provide in my own life of difficult things I’ve gone through where I really tried to tell my Higher Power how they should be resolved. From the loss of intimate relationships, close friendships, jobs, and a business I owned, to the decline of my physical health, many of the prayers I’ve said for these things have ended up going in exact opposite direction of what my ego had wanted. But in the long run, I’ve consistently seen that it’s been for the better because I’ve learned very valuable lessons with the outcomes I received.

Take the loss of my bed and breakfast for example. As it headed towards financial ruin in its last few years of operation under my ownership, I prayed day in and day out for a buyer to come in and at least purchase it for a price that would pay me back the $600,000 I had personally invested into it. Eventually when it sold as a short-sale with me losing everything but the shirt on my back, I became quite angry with God for that outcome. But through my 12 Step recovery work, I ultimately saw how it brought me more humility in life by totally losing that investment. That loss actually taught me how much money had been ruling my life. Now I live a much humbler existence that isn’t being controlled by money like it used to be. I fully believe that if my original prayer had been answered in the way I wanted, I’d probably still have money controlling my life more than not.

Now, I do my best to pray for my Higher Power’s will in every difficult situation I go through. Currently, it’s my physical health issues that are definitely the most challenging thing I’m facing. All I ask in my prayers these days in dealing with them is for the strength to get through each 24 hours and for “Thy will, not mine” to be done. While my ego may not like the physical uncomfortableness I go through on on most days, I’ve become a lot more more compassionate, selfless, and humble having endured it as long as I have. That’s why I continue to ask for Thy will and not my own because maybe this is just part of some higher purpose that will become even more clear at a later date.

When it comes to everyone and everything else that I pray for nowadays, I also ask for God’s will and not for any particular outcome as well. Take for example a friend of mine who recently has been very fearful about becoming homeless due to his landlord ending his rental agreement. While I want to pray for my Higher Power to quickly fix his situation and find him an easy resolution, there may be some wonderful spiritual work manifesting within my friend’s life by going through this. Thus the only thing I’m praying for is God’s will in the whole matter.

The reality is that I’ve continued to observe over time in both others, and in myself, leaps in spiritual growth by going through any arduous time in life. While the ego may want to pray for a specific outcome time and time again when they’re occurring, I’ve found that in asking for Thy will and not mine, that the end result is far better than anything the ego could ever have imagined.

So if you happen to be facing something very difficult right now in life, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and ask for your Higher Power’s will, and not your own. I truly believe that you will grow exponentially on a spiritual level in doing so. But even better, there’s a good chance you’ll also end up with an outcome that will make you much happier in the long run, than anything your ego might have ever conceived of in the first place…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

What do you think happens after you die?

This is a question I have pondered so many times throughout my life and my answer has definitely ranged from one extreme to another.

The first belief I ever had about what happens after I die was definitely taught to me by the United Methodist Church I attended as a kid. There, I was told that if I believed enough in Jesus Christ and confessed all my sins to his Father that I would go to Heaven and be able to enter its pearly white gates.

For years I strived to serve Jesus, as it was imparted upon me at this church and in the Bible I read. I also did my best to live this “sin free” life because I wanted that reward of going to a great resting place that would last for eternity. But somewhere along the lines I stopped believing in this and started going in the exact opposite direction. If I were to pinpoint where that most likely started to happen, it was probably when a revival church I had joined told me that I wouldn’t go to Heaven if I continued to live a life of homosexuality.

It was hard for me to believe that all gay men and women were sinners and that God would send every homosexual to some place other than Heaven when they died. That revival church told me it was Hell I would go to if I didn’t repent and stop living my “lifestyle”. But frankly me trying to accept what they told me was putting me there already. That’s most likely why I didn’t think twice when I went to more of a hedonistic way of living for a number of years after that.

Addictions would become the thing that mostly consumed me during those hedonistic years. While they did, I floated to the opposite extreme in what I believed would happen to me after I die. I began to assume that this was the only life I had and that I needed to make the best of it. What that translated into for me was living selfishly more than not. Unfortunately, that only led me to having a lot of anxiety, depression, and other health issues. And in all honestly, all of that only grew worse as I continued to believe there was nothing beyond this life. That’s only because that belief gave me a serious lack of hope and without that quality, which I think is essential for each of us, all I wanted to do was numb myself with addictions. Thankfully the pain of me living this way long enough eventually lead me to my discovery of meditation and it was through meditation that my belief in some type of an afterlife returned, along with renewed hope.

My meditations revealed to me the possibility of reincarnation and having lived multiple lives. I proceeded to read more and more on this subject until I became convinced that there must be something more than just this single blip on the radar of life. In recent years, this feeling has only continued to intensify and nowadays what I believe will happen after I die is a combination of Christian and Buddhist philosophies.

So do I still believe that I’m going to become a pile of bones or ashes in a grave one day? Or do I still believe that I will spend the rest of my life in some eternal place of ecstasy?

The answer is no to both.

What I actually believe now will happen after I die is that my energy (or my soul if you wish) will go to some temporary place of rest where I can reflect upon the lessons I learned, and didn’t learn, in this life. And when that period of reflection is over, I also believe I’ll have the ability to come back and live another life with different conditions, so that I may learn new lessons, or even master any old ones I hadn’t fully grasped yet.

Who knows, maybe I’m way off from what truly happens after I die. Regardless, I’m just glad I still have hope that there’s at least something beyond this life, because without that, I know my life would be quite miserable. Thank God I don’t feel that way anymore…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I used to believe that losing a pet was no big deal. When friends or acquaintances would mourn one of their own passing away, I rarely had much sympathy at all and usually just told them to get over it. But as my heart has become more open to seeing the love and light from my Higher Power in everyone and everything, this has definitely improved and so has my level of compassion when it happens.

My shift in empathy for when any pet leaves this world was clearly evident to me recently when my sister let me know her favorite cat was in the final stages of renal failure. A loyal, faithful, and unconditionally loving companion to my sister for around 17 years, Boo-Bear’s life was almost complete and I too was going to miss her. She was one of those cats who purred all the time and truly liked to cuddle up and have you constantly pet her. She gave light meows all the time as well that could soften your heart pretty quickly. But it wasn’t that long ago that I remember visiting my sister and pushing this cat away because I found it very annoying. I now know why that was. The simple answer is that I didn’t know how to receive any unconditional love from anyone or anything, including from a cat named Boo-Bear.

Growing up in a family where love was more conditional-based, I spent many years only being comfortable receiving that type of love from everything around me. My heart was truly jaded to feeling unconditional love because of how my parents were towards me. Love normally came with a price back then and for the few times it didn’t, it felt foreign and uncomfortable, so I usually ran from it. That pattern became routine for me for several decades until I drew closer to my Higher Power. Through a lot of hard work, my Higher Power has helped me to drop a ton of the walls around my heart that have always prevented me from enjoying any absolute love that comes my way.

I’m a firm believer that most cats and dogs are God’s instruments for showing us what absolute love looks like and Boo-Bear was a perfect example of that, especially to my sister. Many of us can easily forget what unconditional love looks like in a world that is filled with so much selfishness these days. Thankfully, there are wonderful pets like Boo-Bear who are sent her to be great reminders of a quality that is already innate within each and every one of our souls.

My partner’s cat Driggs is another example of a pet I believe has been a great reminder from my Higher Power to help me be more loving. I’ve grown to love and feel quite close to her over time. While initially I kept my walls up and didn’t like her at all, she’s become a staple in my life, as well as in my heart. The idea of her passing away one day is a thought I don’t like to think about because she in her own unique way has taught me a thing or two about what unconditional love should look like. My friend Mat would probably agree about this type of unrequited love that pets bring, as he too experienced it from his dog Jake who sadly, just recently passed away after many devoted years.

I’m just grateful that my heart is a lot more open today to grieving alongside people like my sister and Mat, as each lament the loss of something that gave them such beautiful unconditional love for so long. So I send my own love and compassion out to the both of you, as I know Boo-Bear and Jake were members of your family and will always remain a part of your hearts and souls. May they each be with you now God, eternally watching over Laura and Mat, just as they always did when they were here…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson