Category: Words To Live By

In nature, there is a type of relationship called symbiosis where two organisms come together from different species to form a bond that is sometimes, but not always beneficial to both parties. This same principle can also hold true with human beings where two people come together and form a relationship for mutual benefit. Unfortunately, as in nature, there are many instances where those symbiotic relationships aren’t mutually beneficial.

One of the best occurrences of a positive nature based symbiotic connection is probably with a bee and a flower. In that connection, a bee will take its pollen from a flower to make honey, and at the same time, it will naturally spread some of that pollen back to that flower, which in turn helps that flower to reproduce. But then there’s that example of a negative nature based symbiotic connection such as when a tapeworm attaches itself to a host and feeds of it. This in turn deprives that host of some of its food and critical nourishment and can even eventually kill the host.

In the case of human beings, there are many great examples of positive symbiotic relationships. The one I like to refer to most is rather close to home for me as it deals with recovery from addictions. Case in point, take the relationship between a sponsor and a sponsee. In many cases, it is very healthy for a sponsor to focus in on helping a sponsee to walk through the 12 Steps. Not only does this help the sponsor to stay clean from their addiction by getting them out of self, it also helps the newcomer build a solid foundation for their own sobriety and recovery. Essentially it’s all about the positive relationship that can happen between a teacher and their student. But as in nature, there are examples of people who become part of a negative symbiotic relationship where it’s unhealthy for one or both of the parties involved. And sadly, I became involved in quite a few of them for much of my life.

The best example I can provide for one of the many negative symbiotic relationships I fell into is with someone I met back in the fall of 2007. For the sake of anonymity, I’ll refer to this person as John. When we first met, I was new to the Boston area in Massachusetts, I was a dry drunk not working much on my AA recovery, and I was still acting out in various substitute addictions. I befriended John at a random meeting that I had gone to, solely for the purpose of an initial physical attraction I thought I had to him. A week later, we met up for the first time at a restaurant where I learned that John was extremely lonely, that he dealt with a lot of depression, and that he had no real friends. By the end of that meal, while I didn’t feel attracted to him anymore on a physical level, I decided I would “take him on as a friend” in the attempt to try to fix him. At that point in my life, I often tried to fix everyone else because I didn’t want to do the work that was necessary to fix myself. As time moved forward, John allowed me to try to “fix” him and in the process developed a love for me that was both real and obsessive based to him. And the more I tried to fix him, the more he ended up developing that love obsession for me. At the same time, I avoided fixing me and grew more and more toxic because of it. And the more I grew toxic, the more I acted out in other addictions. And the more I acted out in other addictions, the more my life got out of control. And the more my life got out of control, the more I lost my friends and my health. Eventually the only thing that remained in my life was John and my dependency on him. So John fed off of me as he got to be around his love obsession, and I fed off of John as he became the only one who wanted to be around me and who would deal with my daily drama. But neither of us rarely got what we thought we wanted from each other and fights ensued because of it. People used to say we acted like an old married couple (this is a warning sign of a negative symbiotic relationship by the way) as we bickered, fought, argued, and went into anger and rage with each other all the time. After four years of this, and doing many toxic things with him to sustain that connection, I got strong enough in my relationship with God and walked away from it for good. The bottom line is that John and I fed off of each other symbiotically and negatively for way too long. It prevented the both of us from truly working on ourselves individually and growing spiritually. Thankfully, because of my closer relationship with God today, I am free from all of these negative symbiotic relationships. There are many others, especially in recovery, who aren’t though. Often, they stay in them out of some type of mutual gain or from fear of hurting the other person. Sometimes one is receiving “free things” like meals and gifts, while the other who’s giving them is getting the attention they want and avoiding the loneliness they don’t want. All of it really boils down to codependency, which in the long run, will doom any relationship based upon it.

So if you ever find yourself in one of these negative symbiotic relationships, I’d encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and start working on a better relationship with your Higher Power instead. It was my Higher Power that led me away from all of those toxic relationships and my life has become so much more healthier because of it. Know that yours too can follow a similar path as you focus less on feeding off of someone else symbiotically and alternatively start feeding more on what your Higher Power has to offer you…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Every day most people run through some type of routine maintenance in their lives. From the time one awakes to the time one goes to bed, a person goes through a gambit of things that might include waking up and stretching, showering, shaving, having coffee, heading to work, covering their responsibilities once there, having something to eat during the work day, going home, relaxing, watching television, eating dinner, reading something on the Internet, brushing their teeth, reading a little bit in bed, and eventually going to sleep. Of course, all of that would vary from person to person, depending on the day of the week and various other factors, but more than not, once that routine is established, it’s rarely changed. Unfortunately, there is a part of that routine maintenance though that many people irregularly do or never do at all and that’s a daily spiritual maintenance.

First off, let me explain what I mean by a daily spiritual maintenance by telling you what mine is. In my case, there are seven activities that I do each and every day to keep a solid foundation for my spirituality. In the morning, I always begin with some type of prayer on my knees, or if my pain is high, sitting somewhere with my head bowed. Next I move onto doing some type of silent meditation for at least thirty minutes. After that, I have a twenty minute audio attunement from one of my spiritual teachers that I listen to and repeat aloud alongside her voice. During some part of my day, I’ll take at least thirty minutes to recite a list of 29 positive mantras I created and will say them twelve time each. At another point in my day, I will sit at this computer for at least an hour or two and write another one of my daily spiritual entries for this blog. As I prepare for bed in the evening, I’ll write in a journal at least nine things that I’m grateful to God for from that day. When my day officially comes to an end, the last thing I do before I fall asleep is to pray as I did in the morning. And day after day, week after week, month after month, and now for almost a year, I have been completing this daily spiritual maintenance regardless of how I feel.

I’m sure there are some people who are going to think that my daily spiritual maintenance is rather extreme. But for a guy like me who lived in so many addictions throughout my life, where each contained their own toxic activities that I never missed a beat on any given day, doing all of these spiritual activities has become crucial to continue growing closer to my Higher Power. I’m convinced that it’s much easier to do the other daily activities of life such as showering, eating, going to work, etc, because all of them are required on some level to function and many of them even have an immediate payoff from doing them. So when one takes a shower, one usually feels better afterwards. When one eats some food, one usually feels better afterwards then too. And when one works at a job, one also get a paycheck that makes them feel better as well. But in the case of a daily spiritual maintenance, none of those activities appear to be necessary to function day to day, and often there is no immediate payoff from doing any of them. So for most people, the only time those activities seem to become necessary is when they hit a rough patch in life, and when the pain gets great enough. That’s when a daily spiritual maintenance is usually created and followed every day. That is until those rough patches begin to smooth out and the pain starts disappearing. And sadly, that’s when some of those daily spiritual activities begin to be skipped here and there until eventually, they are skipped altogether with excuses that there’s not enough time in the day to do them. I am telling you this because that is what I did for most of my life with any type of daily spiritual maintenance I tried to create. But thankfully, that’s not the case for me anymore.

Today, I do all of my daily spiritual activities regardless of how I feel on any given day. So whether I feel terrible or great, I consistently follow the same spiritual routine, even on those days, when my brain tries to tell me it’s ok to skip some of them. And what I have noticed from doing all of this every day now for almost 12 months is that even though I don’t normally get any immediate payoff from doing it, I have grown immensely on a spiritual level and am starting to see the long term benefits. A strong metaphor to something this compares to in life is when one plants a seed in a garden and then waters it every day. For awhile, they may wonder if anything is going to happen, but then one day, a little sprout pops out of the ground. If they stops watering that seed, there’s a good chance it will whither away and die. But if they continue to water, it sprouts a little more each day, until that moment comes when a beautiful blossom springs forth. I believe I am that seed and am watching myself grow now as I water myself every single day with my daily spiritual maintenance. And the best part about this is that I’m not sure if I’ve even blossomed yet.

So if you want to see your own life grow spiritually, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and ask yourself if you’ve been watering yourself every single day with any type of daily spiritual maintenance. If you haven’t, that might explain a lot of the unhappiness you’ll experience with life by not doing so. But if you have, know that all your watering is not in vain, as you too will soon begin to sprout into a beautiful blossom…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I am tending to believe lately that most people in this world have asked God at some point or another to give them a sign that everything is going to be ok when they’ve been going through an extremely difficult time in life. I also think that’s even true for people who declare themselves as atheist or agnostic when the pain becomes great enough in their lives. Just over a year ago, I watched my own roommate, who doesn’t believe in souls, heaven, or anything greater than himself, call upon God for a sign that he was going to get better when he was enduring severe mental and emotional upheavals. And ironically, shortly thereafter that request, he got the help he needed and those upheavals subsided. But like many people probably do, he labeled it not as a sign of God, but as a coincidence, and instead gave the credit to the doctors he saw and the medications he took.

A few months ago, I wrote about this very topic, but I felt it might be worth revisiting given something that happened in my life a few days ago, that I’ll be sharing with you in a moment. In that previous entry, I spoke of the biggest thing many people in this world often think of when it comes to a sign from God, and that’s the burning bush experience that Moses had thousands of years ago. But what if the signs from God these days are much more subtle than that? And because they are so subtle, what if it’s just our brains playing tricks on us by telling us that they aren’t signs at all and instead are just coincidences?

This is something as of late that I have been pondering a lot actually. To be perfectly honest with those who are reading this, I still cry out to God at least once or twice a week for a sign that my physical pain levels are going to reduce, and that everything is going to be much healthier for me again one day. Enduring high levels of physical pain for three years now that doctors, medical tests, and medications were unable to provide me any relief from, has taken its toll on me. There are days when I really just want to give up, but it’s on those days that I have ended up pleading with God instead to show me some sort of sign that I’m going to be ok.

In almost every case when I’ve asked for that sign from God, something positive has happened for me that my brain always tries to tell me, it was just a coincidence and wasn’t exactly what I was asking for. I have often wondered if this is the precise reason why God stopped providing those huge burning bush experiences a long time ago? Maybe God got really tired of demonstrating those signs because time and time again we just labeled them as a coincidences and wanted something bigger to essentially prove God’s presence during those difficult times? The only thing that I can say is true, is that I believe God still does provide signs when we ask for them, but they come more as gentle nudges rather than huge knock downs.

Case in point, as I mentioned earlier, I had one of these experiences a few days ago on a particularly rough morning. On that day, my first thoughts were of seriously questioning my sanity with my pain levels and how much longer I could continue to endure them like this. I thought about God and prayed for some type of sign to help me get through the day. Shortly thereafter, I looked at my e-mail and saw I had received communication from a friend who too has been struggling in life, but for other reasons. When I opened his e-mail, I expected to read about some of the struggles he has been facing in life, which I have been praying lately for him. Instead, I saw a very brief gratitude based letter that simply stated he was having a moment of serenity in his life and felt called to share with me a few words he heard from a speaker at a meeting recently. They were that “God didn’t bring me this far to let me fall…”

For someone like my roommate, who considers himself an atheist, I’m sure he would have labeled that e-mail as just a coincidence. But for someone like me, who has desperately been trying to grow closer to my Higher Power, I took it as an example of one of those subtle signs from God. And I believe that it was God’s way of telling me to hang in there for just a little while longer.

So whether you have a faith in something greater than yourself or not, if you should ever find yourself calling out to a Higher Power for a sign when you’re going through a rough patch in your life, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and remember my brief story I just shared with you. Signs from God can be so much more subtle than what our brains tend to want. But if you can accept that, then I can assure you that your Higher Power will give you that sign you’re asking for, it just may look a whole lot different than what your brain was hoping for…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson