Category: Words To Live By

There are many people in this world who believe that becoming involved in an intimate relationship will be the precise thing that will make their lives all the better. They begin to invest a good chunk of their energy looking for someone out there to complete them or spend their lives with. In doing so, they place various personal ads out there on the Internet and peruse the dating sites daily looking for and hoping to meet “the one”. They continue to maintain a belief that there are plenty of fish in the sea where one of them is going to be the prime catch for themselves. As one date after another fails, or they get stood up, or conversations started online end up going nowhere, they get frustrated. Unfortunately, what they don’t realize is that the one fish they should be seeking and the one relationship they should be working on, is with themselves.

For the longest time, while I represented one of those fish in the sea waiting to either catch another fish or be caught in someone else’s net, I didn’t realize how much I was turning into a carcass rotting from the inside out. I had failed to see how I was seriously neglecting taking care of myself and working through all of my addictions and obsessions and character defects. Although my Higher Power was trying to send me blatant messages indicating this, I ignored all of them and maintained my fervent search and desire to be in an intimate relationship with someone else. I refused to allow myself to see the common factor in all those bad dates I went on, all those boring conversations I had with others from the dating sites, and all those failed short-term relationships I landed in. That common factor was always me.

In every case, no matter who I was pursing, I always found something wrong with them. What I didn’t realize is that each of them were a mirror to all the things I felt about myself. When I met someone I thought was ugly, it’s because I believed I was ugly. When I met someone I felt was boring, it’s because I believed I was boring. And when I met someone I thought droned on and on too much about their life, it’s because I droned on an on about my life with everyone else. The hard core truth is that each thing I judged in all of those fishes of the sea I had met were really things I felt about myself. All of them were only mirrors for the things I should have been working on healing from within myself. The simple fact was that although I had found sobriety from alcohol and drugs, I was still an addiction prone person living out a life of misery, self-pity, selfishness, and self-centeredness. The bottom line was that I really didn’t love myself just as I was and because of that, I was never going to find any success with any of those fishes I met in the sea of life. By not loving myself, I was never going to be able to unconditionally love and accept anyone I met and instead I would only look at each of them with a tainted set of eyes.

This is precisely why 12 Step recovery programs recommend a person like I once was, stay out of intimate relationships (if they weren’t already in one at the time of becoming sober) for at least a year. That is only to help them develop time to work on healing and developing that better relationship with themselves. I didn’t do that so I spent many years going from person to person, having tumultuous dating experiences, and occasionally falling back into some addiction based behaviors because of it.

Just to be frank, I know not everyone is an addiction based person who needs a 12 Step recovery program. But what I’ve found is that most people, regardless of whether they are addiction based or not, go from one fish to another finding something wrong with each of them solely because they haven’t worked through enough of their own baggage in life and usually don’t love themselves. Instead, they chase one fish after another, judging each of them until they finally land in an intimate relationship with one of them whom they initially really like. The relationship starts off like a drug that makes them feel really good but as time moves forward, it no longer gives them that feel good feeling it once gave them and they begin to see all the things in the other partner that they don’t like about themselves. Or maybe they start to get afraid of all the good qualities the other person has that they don’t have. Either way, they begin sabotaging it until it ends with them being back in that pool with the plenty of other fish that exist, starting the cyclical process all over again. Until they become willing to look in the mirror, face their baggage, and begin to love themselves a lot more, they will continue to repeat this pattern of not liking something about every fish they meet. And sadly, some of those fish they meet are people they could spend the rest of their lives with, except they won’t see that because they’re blinded by their own disgust of themselves.

If you are relating to any of what I’ve been saying and have been finding no success in the dating realm, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and realize that maybe the Universe has been trying to send you a message. Are you able to go right now and look in a mirror and tell yourself that you like what your seeing? Have you worked through a lot of your own baggage and inner demons? Can you honestly say you truly love yourself unconditionally? If you answered “No” to any of these questions, there’s a good chance that while there are plenty of fish in the sea, none of them are ever going to suit your fancy because your fish of a life has been slowly turning into that carcass and rotting away for years. So maybe it’s best to take some time away from the dating realm and start working on being able to answer “Yes” to each of those questions. As maybe then, the Universe will guide you in a current straight towards another fish, who will end up being the one you mate with for the rest of your life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I’ve often wished that God would grant me superpowers, like those in the comic books, so that I could use them to help make this world a happier, healthier place to live in. It hasn’t happened yet, at least not that I’m aware of it. But it’s got me thinking lately that maybe the reason why has something due to the message behind what Uncle Ben was saying to Peter Parker in the Spider-Man comics when he said “With great power, comes great responsibility…”

Up until not too long ago, I wasn’t very good with responsibility. People couldn’t rely upon me as I was too deeply focused on my addictions and obsessions. I also had a tremendous ego and was completely selfish and self-centered. Everything I did for anyone usually had some type of price tag attached to it. I can only imagine what I would have done in those moments if I had some type of superpower given to me.

Take X-Ray vision for example. In those totally self-absorbed days, I would have used that power to enhance my sexual addiction with every person I found attractive in this world and ignored any type of responsibility with that type of gift.

How about super strength? In those days where I didn’t care about selflessness and only looked out for the accolades from others, I most likely would have used that power for hire or sought fame from using it. I also might have used it to bully some of those who were bullying me at the time and ended up seriously hurting them in the process.

Invisibility, super speed, mind-reading, it doesn’t really matter what the power would have been, I would have taken any of them in all those egocentric moments and either enhanced my addiction prone life or sought money and notoriety from using them.

A lot has changed for me in the past few years. And while I would still love to have superpowers these days, my use of them would be a lot different now. I could see myself being a lot more like those heroes in the comic books such as when Peter Parker became Spider-Man. He had to learn the hard way what his Uncle Ben was truly saying when he abused his abilities for ego based purposes and lost his uncle tragically because of it. I’ve always admired the hero he developed into after that tragic event, as it was never based upon his ego after that.

In the television show Heroes that came out a bunch of years ago, people started evolving and developing these superhuman abilities. The show portrayed how those people went in one of several directions upon finding out they had a unique gift. Some followed in Spider-Man’s footsteps and became silent heroes who never took the glory for anything. Others thought their gift was a curse and tried to avoid using it at all or looked constantly for its cure. And then there were those who became so ego-based with what they could do with their new ability, they caused more damage and destruction to the world when using it.

Given the state of our world today with how many tragedies occur every single moment that range from a minor to a major scale, the presence of superheroes, like in the comic books, could really help to reduce them. Unfortunately though, they could also end up increasing them just as much. As for every humble hero like Spider-Man or Superman who were examples of the true do-gooders, there were also those like the Dr. Octopus and General Zod who sought control of others and put themselves on raised pedestals because of their abilities.

Maybe this is why we haven’t evolved enough yet enough in our world to develop any of these enhanced super abilities. Because if we did, we might tear ourselves apart at the seams with the amount of self-centeredness that still is present in so many of us. I’m convinced that if life does exist outside this planet, which I believe it does, that there are worlds who do have people living actively with superpowers and handling them with great responsibility and humility. But in our world, granting the wrong person with powers such as what Superman has, could lead to even greater global catastrophes than what we already are having to deal with.

Hopefully one day, this planet will evolve to a level where EVERYONE is more concerned in helping each other out much more so than boosting their own egos, controlling others, and watching out for themselves. As when a day like that comes, maybe then God will open up those doorways within us for superhero like abilities to manifest…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

If you’ve read yesterday’s posting in my blog already, then you’ll know by now that I spent some time in it discussing a big part of my life where I blamed God and questioned why bad things had to happen to us. I realized though after completing that entry that I failed to mention something extremely important within it. And it comes down to this…Maybe God does prevent many bad things from happening, except we never even know about them because they never actually happen?

I know that’s a mouthful to take in, so let me put this into a very simple example for you. It’s a work day for a person and they awake in the morning only to notice their alarm clock never went off. They glance at the time and realize they’re going to be late for work no matter how fast they move. As they get ready as quick as possible, they start thinking how their day is already starting off on the wrong foot. They might even be doing what I might have been doing all those years ago when I would be blaming God for that alarm clock not going off. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, a major accident has occurred on the exact route at the precise time and location that person would normally be at while heading to work. So while they might be feeling that God was letting something bad happen to them with that alarm clock not going off, maybe God made that happen just to avoid having them be in that major accident.

While I know that story is purely hypothetical, I’d like now to personally share with you one from my own life. It’s one where I believe God was working in my life, even when I had believed that God had let something really bad happen to me. And while you may find the story I’m about to tell you hard to believe, I can promise you that every word of it is completely true.

At the end of August, 1991, I was only two weeks away from heading back to college for my sophomore year. I had spent the summer hanging around the inner-city of my hometown with a number of active drug dealers who I called my closest friends. On one particular evening, my phone rang and one of them was calling me to hang out for the evening. After much convincing I started to get dressed and saw all my gold rings (eight of them to be exact) sitting on my dresser. I kept feeling this serious urge that I needed to put them on for the night, even though I didn’t like wearing a lot of expensive jewelry when I went downtown. I gave into that urge and headed out sporting all those rings on my fingers anyway.

When I arrived downtown at the address my friend was supposed to meet me at, I was alone so I leaned on a railing outside a random apartment and waited for him. I opened a bottle of malt liquor I had, lit up a cigarette, and listened to some hip hop on my walkman. Shortly thereafter, a black BMW, with windows I couldn’t see in, pulled up on the street in front of me and several men hopped out of it. One of them approached me and asked if I knew a guy named “Tone”. I responded that I did but that I hadn’t seen him around in a while. The man turned around, walked back to his BMW, and started looking in its trunk. A few minutes later, I felt myself being lifted up over that railing I had been leaning on and the next thing I knew I was in the backseat of my car with my friend driving me to the hospital. There was blood all over me, I couldn’t see out of one of my eyes and barely out of the other. My walkman was gone and so were all those gold rings I had been wearing. I can still remember being in shock and when my head finally cleared in a hospital bed a little while later, the anger seethed forth from within me towards God for letting that terrible incident happen to me.

About a week later, I had recovered enough to head to another friend’s house who always knew about everything that ever went on in the city, as I wanted to know why I had been jumped. When he saw me, he shook his head, smiled, and said I was damn lucky. I scoffed at his comment and asked how it was lucky that I got seriously beat up and had thousands of dollars in gold rings stolen from me. He responded by asking why I ever admitted to knowing another drug dealer. Rule number one he said, is to never admit knowing anyone or anything when you hang out in the inner-city. He then asked if I remembered the guy looking in his trunk and when I said yes, the next words to come out of his mouth is how I know that God does prevent some really bad things from happening.

He told me that they had a sawed off shotgun in their trunk and were going to kill me because the guy I admitted knowing was a major rival drug dealer who had blown up their BMW in the previous week. But they didn’t do that for only one reason…because I was wearing all those gold rings worth so many thousands of dollars. And that they had decided beating the crap out of me and taking all of them was enough retribution. His final words to me that day sometimes still haunt me as he told me that I really should be dead.  I know today that it was God and not luck that saved me from that tragic event. I shudder at times when I think about that urge I felt to wear my rings and what would have happened if I hadn’t worn them that night.

I thank God today for being alive and able to tell this story because it has one very important message for the world to know. While we may think that God keeps letting bad things happen, I am convinced that God is actually constantly behind the scenes preventing the really bad things from happening, like the ones we wouldn’t ever be able to come back from. I’m alive today because of a forceful urge to wear some gold rings, and while you may say that it was all luck and chance, you might feel differently if you had walked in my shoes back then.

So the next time you are blaming God for something bad that’s happening in your life, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and realize that maybe the bad thing that’s happening, really isn’t so bad. And maybe, just maybe, that bad thing is really a good thing, because what you’ll not realizing is how God is actually shifting the course of events to prevent something truly bad from happening to you…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson