Many Lives, Many Spiritual Lessons

There are many things we place trust in to continue functioning every day. From cell phones to the Internet, we use things like this daily, except most of us don’t even know how any of them really work. The fact is we maintain some sort of blind faith in them working. But when it comes to having the same blind faith in things that we can’t see work with our very own eyes, our minds starts shutting down to the idea of them. One of those things that seem to consistently do that for many people is when I talk about reincarnation.

The idea of reincarnation begins with a belief that each and every individual on this planet has a soul within himself or herself. This immediately closes the door for most atheist and agnostic people who believe that this is the only life we have and when we die, that’s it. But the next part about reincarnation is where the majority of others begin to shut down to the idea of its existence.

What if this life was just one of hundreds, or maybe even thousands, that our soul has already lived? And what if there were various life lessons our soul was meant to learn in each of them? This is reincarnation and in the Christian religion, the idea of it is considered heresy. For the longest time, I felt the same way given my upbringing in the United Methodist Church. I guess you could say I initially denied it’s existence because of that and also because I had no proof. But the truth was, deep down I was afraid to believe in the idea of it existing. That’s because I often felt my life was like living in hell and I didn’t want to come back and ever have to do any of this again.

When I was massively addicted to alcohol and drugs, my life really was hell. To even have pondered the idea of having to go through that again scared the crap out of me. But as the years began to pass, I started learning a great number of spiritual lessons that cumulated when I found sobriety from those addictions. Once my mind, body, and soul became a much clearer channel to understand a lot more spiritual things in life, the idea of reincarnation didn’t scare me as much. And that’s when something happened to me, which blew the door wide open onto the truth that reincarnation really does exist.

I’m going to share that experience with all of you now and I know that many might say it is just fiction. I don’t believe it’s my place in life to convince you of its validity, as I feel that should be left for individuals to discover for themselves. It’s my only hope you’ll try to keep an open mind as read about what happened to me in the early 2000’s.

Back then; I had been regularly going to see a friend in Richmond, VA about once a month. He was a fantastic masseuse who was also a person that practiced alternative healing modalities. One day on his table, I went into a deep state of meditation during the session. In it, I saw myself floating in the middle of an ocean when suddenly a vortex of pure white light came down through the clouds and went right through me. Circling around that vortex were three angel-like beings who brought this great sense of peace to me. At that point on the table, my whole body had this incredible electrified feeling that went through me from head to toe. It was the most peaceful feeling I had ever felt up to that point in my life. When the session ended, my friend suggested I go to one of the several local gem stores to get a crystal he felt would help me on my journey.

Upon calling the first store, I had a strong vibe inside that it wasn’t going to have what I needed. But when I contacted the second one, I got this overwhelming sense that I needed to look no further. Even stranger was when I walked in its front door some thirty minutes later, as a person greeted me and said that I must be the one who called about getting a crystal. Ironically, I had not spoken a single word at that point. After he helped me to find what I needed, I headed to the counter where a smiling woman named Susan intently stared as me as she rang up my purchase. Suddenly she muttered, “Three times angels” and was silent again.

I was quite curious as to why she said that so I asked. She quickly responded, “Never mind.” Upon pursuing the matter further, she relented and told me she saw three angels floating around me. Given I had just seen this in my mediation during the massage, I told her I believed her. She then began to speak at length about my spiritual journey in life and told me I had a great calling to help others. It was what she said next though, that took me totally by surprise.

“Don’t be scared when I say this, but we knew each other in a past life and were quite close if you know what I mean…”

Interestingly enough, I wasn’t afraid and I wanted to know more. She said that I needed to meditate that weekend so that I could find my own answers. I thanked her and left in somewhat of a surreal state. That night I spent four hours sitting in complete silence and meditating, but nothing happened. I thought about giving up, but decided to try again the next evening. Somewhere in the middle of that meditation, I was suddenly thrust into a deeper state of calmness where it was almost as if everything was in slow motion. That same blissful feeling that happened to me on the massage table was occurring again. I was so ecstatic to be feeling that way again, so I silently thanked God for meeting Susan, except I said “Sandra” instead.

When I thought about why I was saying that name, I heard this voice within tell me that was Susan’s name in a prior life when I knew her. Then I saw an image of me kissing a woman at the top of the Eiffel Tower just after it’s opening back in the late 1800’s.

I immediately snapped out of the mediation at that point and picked up the phone to call Susan around 2am. When she answered, I said “Hi Sandra” and told her about the Eiffel Tower kiss. She said she was wondering how long it would take me to figure it out and went on to say that we were lovers in the late 19th century. She went on to say that I had been a servant in her household in Paris and had seduced her out of her marriage. That lasted until her husband in that life found out and murdered me.

Since that day, I have had a few other experiences that have further confirmed the existence of reincarnation. Even better, I read some Eastern scriptures and writings sometime later that said Jesus had studied Buddhism and accepted the practice of reincarnation during his teenage years in life. I learned in those studies that the Catholic church covered all of this up because of the fear that people would stop supporting the church and become more sinful if they knew their soul would go through many more lives.

While many Christians might claim all of this as heresy, I cannot deny anymore that I’ve lived multiple lives. While I can’t say I know how many, what I do know reincarnation exists and it’s nothing to be afraid of. I don’t want to “sin” more either. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I want to learn the spiritual lessons I’m meant to learn in this life so that I don’t have to repeat it again in some other life.

Do I still believe in Heaven? Absolutely. But today, I regard Heaven as a resting place before I head into the next life with another set of spiritual lessons to learn.

I’m not sure whether you will ever believe any of what I’m saying or not. Hopefully though you too one day will have your own experience that will allow you to place as much faith in reincarnation as you do in those things like your cell phone and the Internet…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Finding Moderation In Life

“Give it your all!” was a statement I often heard throughout life. While I generally always did that in whatever people were referring to, I often took that statement way too far by going to the extreme. What I’ve come to understand these days though is that life is a lot more about learning something called moderation.

For a person like me, who once regularly indulged in quite a number of addictions, moderating anything was next to impossible. Instead, my normal way of thinking was that more alcohol, more drugs, more cigarettes, more porn, more sex, more spending, more traveling, or more anything, would make me feel better. But in the long run, it never did and yet I kept on doing it. By the time I found sobriety from alcohol and drugs, that pattern was well established within me in just about every aspect of my life. I didn’t begin to notice this though until meditation helped me to slow down my thinking and see things a little clearer.

That was when I started to see those extremes in various areas of my life such as working out at the gym several times a day, for hours at a time. Or instead of taking a leisurely bike ride, I would go out full force biking 10 to 15mph for over 27 miles. One very good example of this was when I used to live on an island that was close to a beach. There was a remote area on that beach that was about a 6 to 7 mile walk from the closest parking lot. It essentially was the tip of the island and the only way most people got there was by a 4×4 vehicle that can operate on the sand. One day I decided I was going to be one of the few who has walked that entire way. So I set out doing just that with just a few bottles of water in my hand. By the time I reached that point, I was out of water, exhausted, my legs were shot, and I knew there was no way I was going to make it back on foot. Thankfully, God brought someone to my rescue in the form of a fisherman who drove me back in his Jeep.

Sadly, that was the pattern I was doing in everything in my life. While meditation helped me to see this and temporarily find moderation with things, at some point I got away from doing it and that pattern quickly returned. That’s when I started pushing myself to the limits again and where I returned to my addictive behaviors. Unfortunately, all of that eventually ended up making me sick, actually very sick, when one day my body began developing one physical pain after another.

Over these past few years, my physical limitations have actually become a blessing in disguise. They have really helped me to learn how to do things in moderation. I can’t walk for long distances right now and sometimes a walk is for just a few minutes. Yesterday, I walked back out onto Lake Erie by myself as it’s still frozen over quite solid, In the distance was this island that was a good mile and a half, which normally you could only access by boat. On that particular day, my pain levels were drastically less than usual and I felt pretty good. I began walking towards that island and by the time I had gone about half way to it, this small voice within me said not to go any further. And you know what? I didn’t. The old me would have though. Instead, I lay down on the ice, with not a person in sight, and looked up in the sky and thanked God for that experience. It was breathtaking. But the best part about it? I was able to walk back home without needing any help!

The moral of this story is pretty simple. The life of an addict is one of extremes, whereas the life of a person on a spiritual journey is one of moderation. Thank God, I have learned this lesson and been able to rewire my thinking to allow for it. I know at some point my chronic pain is going to end, and when it does, I know I’ll be able to moderate myself much better in everything I do.

So if you happen to be someone like I once was, who’s known for going to the extreme, you may want to take a moment, breathe, and really try to start cutting back from that and slowing yourself down a little. Because if you don’t, at some later point, either your mind, body, or soul is going to fight back and force you to learn how to find moderation in things. While there is no moderation with addictions, there is with just about everything else in life. Try practicing it, and you’ll probably find yourself becoming a lot healthier in life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Happy Valentine’s Day 2014

Every year a number of holidays come and go where I always stop and wonder for a few moments during that day how each of them originated. But most of the time I have never done any research into it and the day passes by as quick as it arrived. This year though, I decided to do a little digging on the origins of Valentines Day.

What I immediately found most interesting about this holiday, which is best known these days for giving Hallmark greeting cards, red roses, and chocolates to a loved one, is what transpired around this same time back in ancient Rome. In that time period, Lupercalia was observed February 13-15, and was a Pagan festival connected to fertility. It involved sacrificing a goat, where it’s hide would be turned into strips that were dipped into its sacrificial blood. Each were then gently slapped on both women and crop fields during the festival because it was believed it would make them more fertile in the coming year.

This festival survived through the initial rise of Christianity, but was eventually outlawed and deemed “un-Christian” by the end of the 5th century. At that time, it was Pope Gelasius who declared February 14th to then be St. Valentine’s Day instead. He stated it would be a day to remember several Christian saints who were named Valentinus. Each had legends surrounding them of martyrdom. In one of them, it was said that a priest named Valentine was imprisoned for performing marriages to Christian soldiers that had been prohibited from tying the knot. During his imprisonment, it was also said that Valentine fell in love with a young girl who visited him and that he would send her love letters that ended with “From Your Valentine.” This is how his name began to be associated to romance.

By the middle ages, Valentine had become one of the most popular saints in England and France. The oldest known “Valentine greeting” that’s still in existence, dates back to this day in 1415. It was then when Charles, Duke of Orleans, wrote a poem of love to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. As the centuries passed, more of those types of “paper valentines” began to be sent to various loved ones on that day. And by the middle of the 18th century, it had become common for people of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes of love on this holiday. By the time the 1900’s arrived, the hand-written Valentines were already beginning to be replaced by the printed ones. This was partially due to the fact that direct expression of one’s feelings was being discouraged back then and postage rates were also becoming cheaper.

Today, many refer to this day as a Hallmark holiday because of the amount of those printed valentine cards that are bought and exchanged. Currently over 150 million of them are purchased specifically for this holiday, but when all types of Valentine’s Day cards are factored in, it is said that more than 1 billion are being sent each year. And as we all know, red roses, jewelry, chocolate, teddy bears, and various other gifts have become just as popular to exchange for this holiday now too.

What I find most fascinating though after doing all this research on the history of Valentine’s Day, is that I still stand by what I said last year when I wrote my first ever entry about it. February 14th is only one day of the year that love can be offered. But there are 364 other days that God gives us all the opportunity to show it as well. Showing our love for someone else, whether romantic based or not, really should be taking place on every day, of every week, of each and every year.

While St. Valentine may receive the credit today for how this holiday began, and while today also covers up a Pagan festival once celebrated long ago at this time, just know that showing love is a lot more than what February 14th has become like these days. So no matter what you choose to give to a loved one today, it’s my hope you will continue to do the same every other day of the year too.

May all of you have a Happy Valentine’s Day today…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson