Category: Words To Live By

There are many temptations that come at me all the time. I’m finding this Christmas holiday season to be presenting me with many of them. Sometimes I wonder if each are tests from the Universe to see if I’ve learned my lessons and grown. The biggest challenge I face to resisting any of them doesn’t seem to come when I’m feeling great and upbeat, instead it frequently happens when I’m feeling down and in despair, like I have been feeling as of late. Thankfully though, it does seems as if the spiritual work I’ve been doing to grow closer to my Higher Power has given me greater strength this year to resisting those temptations being thrown at me.

Before I talk about those temptations, let me first quickly explain the reason why I’ve not been feeling great and upbeat as of late. It’s pretty simple actually. The physical pains I continue to endure have increased in recent months making it hard to be in tune with that Christmas joy. Because of this, I’ve been finding it somewhat difficult to navigate with happiness through the holiday season this year. Honestly, it’s been quite hard not to notice the many people who are in the exact opposite place as me lately when I’m out and about, particularly in those shopping areas. But, I’ve still been doing the best I can to put a smile on my face and be grateful for what I still have. Unfortunately, feeling down and dealing with that despair inside is what puts me most at risk to succumbing to those temptations.

I don’t believe that anyone really enjoys feeling down or in despair, especially not one’s ego. In the past, it’s been relatively easy for my ego to convince me to give in to various temptations when I’m feeling this way. One of the biggest ones I’ve faced during the holiday season is the urge to buy presents for myself. In the past, I’ve spent incredible sums of money doing this hoping it would make me feel happier. While it might have brought a temporary form of it for a few weeks, it usually only lasted until the day after New Years arrived. I was given a pretty good reminder of how this old behavior begins for someone just a few days ago when I returned to my roommate’s house after several weeks away.

Upon walking into his house, he showed me his new MacBook Pro, his new Apple TV, and his new high resolution monitor. When I walked down into the basement, I saw a new snowblower that he had bought for himself as well. But there was something else I paid more attention to that showed my roommate wasn’t in the best state of mind. That was the fact that the house was somewhat in disarray, that he was rather negative when talking about himself, and that he told me he hadn’t been working out at the gym much at all lately. When I tried to be more upbeat and tell him I hope he enjoys his new gifts for himself, he became very defensive by saying how I was just assuming he was trying to buy his happiness. What’s ironic is that this wasn’t my intention when I said that, but somehow he already knew deep down that’s precisely what his gift buying was all about. I know this pattern so very well and can remember the thousands of dollars in credit card purchases I racked up during many holiday shopping seasons.

The other main temptation I’ve faced in previous Christmas holiday seasons deals with sex and love addiction. For many of those seasons, I was single or in relationships where I was miserable. During those times, I’d always be around many who weren’t single and who were happy in their relationships. Seeing them show their holiday joy and love through their sharing of hugs, kisses, and other forms of affection with each other often depressed me. I never liked feeling that way so I dealt with it by spending hours on the web during the holidays looking at porn, or I tried to have affairs under the radar with people who were either unavailable or totally toxic. Once again, doing this might have gotten me through the holiday season with some form of temporary happiness, but in the long run, I always crashed and burned from the behavior when the season was over.

While shopping and sex and love addiction are the primary things that have been trying to tempt me this holiday season, I think it’s important to note some other ones that occasionally manifest as well. Things such alcohol, drugs, gambling, and even thoughts of taking my own life have all been thrown my way. My ego continues to try to tell me that any one of these are a better option to choose than the one I’m currently taking with my Higher Power in charge. But it’s my Higher Power who has made me much stronger now to see through these illusions as I know the pain, misery, and suffering that would occur from giving into any one of those temptations.

I believe the best thing I’m doing this Christmas holiday season is to feel exactly how I feel and not mask those feelings in any way. Of course I’d like to feel a whole lot happier than I do at the moment, but I know I’m a lot happier right now than what I’d feel like in the long run if I was to act upon any of those temptations being thrown my way.

The Christmas holiday season can truly be a difficult time for the many who might not be feeling the holiday cheer for whatever the reason. If that happens to be you, then I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and ask your Higher power to help you resist any temptations you may face this season to masking how you feel inside. While you may feel that giving in to any of them will create at least some happiness for you, please realize the resistance to all of them will end up manifesting a much greater spiritual happiness for you in the long run.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Having spent much of the past six years in the Boston, MA area, I’ve had to face a lot of acceptance issues when it comes to the traffic here. USA Today recently ranked the Boston metropolitan area as the tenth worst congested city in the nation, but sometimes I feel it should be even higher than that. Ironically though, the thing I have found most difficult to accept with the traffic here does not actually deal with the length of time it takes to get anywhere. Instead, what truly has been my biggest challenge here on the roads is dealing with the incredible amount of drivers who routinely get irritated and angry at other drivers.

Let me first say right off the bat that I’m definitely a slow driver, more so than not, these days. Some have even referred to me as a “Granny Driver” solely because I always operate my vehicle around the speed limit and keep several car lengths between the car in front of me and my own car. Unfortunately, I found out in the first year I was in this area how many people were the complete opposite of that. My first experience of this happened during a major storm that suddenly hit one afternoon around 2pm. It seemed as if everyone poured out of their jobs that day and headed home at the same time as the ice and snow came down very quickly. Every road, including the highways, almost came to a near standstill because of it. As I drove less than 5mph, my windshield wipers abruptly froze up and I couldn’t see anything. Rather than risk hitting someone, I stopped my car for a mere minute to remove the ice off my wipers. As a car slowly rolled past me while I took care of this, a man looked over at me and shouted some terrible obscenities and continued on. I was horrified at his gesture and anger that was directed at me but was soon to find out that there were many others in this area just like him.

I find it sad to say this but the Boston drivers, like the man from that snowstorm, have proudly created a nickname for themselves to describe the attitude they have here on the roads. You can see this nickname on too many bumpers of cars and you’ll even hear many people joke about it regularly on how the nickname fits them quite suitably. I honestly can’t say I know who started this nickname, but seeing people show great pride in describing themselves as “Massholes” on their bumpers or directly in person has appalled me.

Around this area, it’s extremely common to see those people demonstrate acts of road rage. I knew of one person who was cut off by a car while riding on his motorcycle one day. He followed that car to a stop light and proceeded to bash out that car’s windows with children sitting in the backseat watching in horror. I’ve known of many others who have gotten out of their cars and pulled another driver out of theirs only to pummel them in anger. Recently, a person I knew got so angry when someone cut them off that he threw coins out his car window hoping to damage the other person’s car.

On a less aggressive level, I’ve lost count of the number of times where I’ve been sitting at a light that just turns green and someone starts laying on their horn because I’m not moving forward fast enough. I’ve also been flipped off many times and had a number of headlights flash on and off at me when I’m driving, all because I’m not going fast enough for them. Then there’s even those who purposely speed up when you’re trying to merge in, just to cut you off and prevent you from doing so. What’s really sad to say about all of this is that I’m starting to see this ego based driving in many other cities now too. And the irony in all of these crazy driving behaviors is that most of the people doing it are just taking out their frustrations in life on someone else.

I’ve been a passenger quite a bit in vehicles where a driver has started yelling at a car in front of them just because that car isn’t driving the way their ego thinks it should be driving. That’s a very selfish and self-centered perspective to take on the roads but I’ve found it serves one purpose for a driver that does this. It prevents them from looking in the mirror at why they are getting so angry in the first place about something so trivial. What they don’t see is that it’s merely a distraction their ego creates to avoid looking at what’s really going on inside themselves. I know this because I’ve been there. While I never had any serious road rage based behaviors, I was once guilty of many of those less aggressive tactics. The only reason why I ever did those things on the road was that I didn’t really like myself or my life. Doing this unspiritual behavior regularly helped me to temporarily blame someone else for all the misery I had in my life.

Thankfully, I have an incredible amount more of patience today when I’m on the road. Having God at the center of my life has given me a different perspective on things, especially when driving. So when I see people being erratic now on the roads in ways that seem too slow or too fast or too something that my ego tries to tell me, I just pray for them and keep my distance. I’m a lot calmer now because of it and thankfully I don’t fit that nickname anymore that Boston drivers love to call themselves.

Look, I don’t know if you’re someone who routinely finds yourself getting angry or irritated at other drivers on the road or not. But if you are, then I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and have a good look at yourself in the rear-view mirror the next time you’re in the car and feeling this way. You see, that’s the person you’re really irritated and angry with, except your ego keeps keeps trying to tell you otherwise. Start focusing on releasing all that anger you have within and you may find yourself feeling a lot more calm and peaceful on the roads.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

For the longest time I can honestly say my priorities were all screwed up as I was only primarily concerned about my own needs, wants, and desires. Everything and everyone else always came second, third, fourth, and so on. I truly thought this was the way it was supposed to be until I started to figure out how selfish and self-centered that was. Today, my priorities have totally changed, but that’s only because I’m now trying to establish a life where I’m living spiritually.

In the recovery rooms from addictions, I learned the only way to leave behind my life of selfishness and self-centeredness was to seek a connection to a Higher Power. Through a lot of pain and growth, I was able to find my Higher Power, whom I refer to as God most often these days. Serving God has become the number one priority in my life now because of a sole reason. All those years where I served myself and my own needs consistently led me to only one thing, being miserable. During those miserable years, God was always on the back burner and I only went to God for essentially 911 calls. I rarely gave thanks for anything, and took everybody and everything for granted. In doing so, I lived with many active addictions just to have temporary happiness, which kept me in a state of being extremely unspiritual. I have found that my life has become a whole lot better with placing God first on my priority list.

This begins with me awaking in the morning each day, getting on my knees and welcoming God into all of my life. Through prayer, I ask God to guide all my thoughts, words, and actions for that day. I then ask God to remain at the center of my relationships, especially with my partner. I also make sure I let God know I’d like to be of service to God in any way I can during that day. And I always end by praying for love and light in this world, especially for all those people and areas where there still is great darkness. Placing God first doesn’t end there though, as I learned how easy it can be to take my will back and put God onto that back burner again. So throughout the day, I always make sure to pray, even in the oddest of places, if I should feel like I’m drifting from my path of living spiritually. I generally know when this happens because I find anger and frustration arising during those times.

When each day comes to an end, I continue to place God as the number one priority in my life by writing in my gratitude journal. There, I give thanks to God for at least nine things each day that I am grateful for. When that is done, I end my day as it started by praying to God on my knees where I give thanks for staying free from all addictions and for making it through another day of my life. I also ask for forgiveness for where I may have drifted off my path of spiritual living. And as I end my prayers, I once again send light and love out to all those people and areas of this world that are still living in darkness.

This may seem like a lot of work to some. To others, it may seem too religious. But to me, it just comes natural now because I’ve been doing this for so long and have seen a lot of spiritual growth within me because of it. It has also allowed me to see what should be the second most important priority in my life is and that’s taking care of my health and healing. You see if I’m not healthy and well, I’ll never be able to truly be there for anyone else. When I lived for a long time being toxic and addiction prone, every time I tried to be there for someone else, I just spread some of my toxicity to them in some way. By placing God first though, I started seeing those areas of my health and healing I needed to take care of before I did anything else. Through 12 Step work, recovery meetings, therapy, doctors, holistic practitioners, meditation, and mantras, I’ve worked diligently every single day to help heal a body, mind, and soul that I neglected for most of this life. There have been periods where I’ve definitely tried to place these things further down my priority list of living spiritually but the results of that have never been good. I found that skipping things such as meetings or meditations, or avoiding that step work have always led me back to my addictions and being toxic. I finally realized through trial and error that all the things I do for my health and healing had to take a higher priority than me being there for anyone else. The simple truth here is that a person can’t be there for anyone else unless they are healthy enough within themselves. This is the precise reason why all my former intimate relationships, friendships, and connections to family members always broke apart time and time again.To put in bluntly, I wasn’t able to care about any of them in the way they deserved because I wasn’t healthy and well enough inside. By placing God first and my health and healing second though, it has given me enough capacity to balance all the rest of my priorities appropriately these days.

Today, I can place my partner’s needs ahead of my own selfish interests more than not. I can work with a sponsee and truly listen to them instead of being focused on all the drama that once existed in my life. I can be in a recovery meeting and share about my experience, strength, and hope, and not the misery I once constantly went through. And I can be there for a friend when they really need me.

I am grateful to understand a little better these days about the priorities that need to be in place to have a life of living spiritually. If this is what you want as well, but your life currently is filled with a lot of drama and misery, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and look at what the priorities are in your life. By placing God first and your health and healing second, I can assure you that your life will get a lot better. Know in doing so that you’ll see how this will move you away from a life of selfishness and self-centeredness, to a life filled with a lot more love and light for everyone else.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson