Category: Words To Live By

I’ve never really been a big fan of the taste of a fortune cookie but I have always enjoyed looking at those little slogans that come within them. Sometimes much to my dismay though I’ve gotten one with no fortune inside. Ironically, there have been other times I’ve gotten a cookie with two stuffed inside where they both were blank. But in most cases, there’s usually just one waiting for me that has some corny saying I generally laugh at.

Back in my fraternity days, my brothers and I would dine at a local Chinese buffet where we would read those corny fortunes aloud to each other but add the words “…. in bed” at the end of it. Often it proved to bring about quite a number of laughs amongst all of us especially when someone would get a fortune that said something like “You are talented in many ways (in bed)”. But over the years with my many visits to Chinese establishments, there have been a few slogans I’ve read, which I’ve tucked away in my spiritual locker because they inspired me. Just the other day at my most recent visit to the Asian fusion restaurant chain named PF Changs, my partner got one of these that I felt was worth writing about. It read as follows:

“Love is a present that can be given every single day you live…”

Many people often think that the types of presents that come out of feeling “love” are things such as flowers or chocolates. Some also think it’s just a verbal gift that’s used towards a partner, especially during sex and intimacy. But there is another type of love that I have been coming to understand much more about in recent times and that’s one I feel towards every single soul and living thing on this planet. And that love is really all about caring passionately and deeply for everyone and everything in this world. The more that I have worked on myself and grown closer to God through my healing and recovery, the more I’ve seen that this type of love is something I can offer as a present every single day in infinite ways.

Here are just some of those ways I’ve been trying to do just that…

1. Holding a door for a stranger

2. Buying a coffee for a stranger

3. Telling a friend how much they mean to me

4. Taking someone out to a restaurant who can’t afford to do so on their own

5. Tipping a server an amount equal to the bill itself at a restaurant just dined at

6. Preparing someone their favorite home cooked meal

7. Praying for healing for the world

8. Praying for only good things to come to those who I know really don’t like me

9. Doing a random act of kindness for someone who doesn’t like me

10. Taking care of someone else’s chores that I wasn’t asked to do

11. Donating money to a charity like the Jimmy Fund during a visit to the movie theater

12. Volunteering my free time to help inspire those who are trying to recover from addictions

13. Asking in prayer every day for all my thoughts, words, and actions to follow God’s will

14. Doing my best to embrace and never take the life away from any living creature

15. Talking to a random stranger who is ailing in any way with the desire to lift them up

There are many other ways than just these to gift love in some way to this world. I continue to find more of them as I work on deepening my relationship with God. I’ve learned that love is not just about kisses and hugs and intense passion for someone. It is so much more than that and can be a way of being throughout all of my life. And it’s one where I know now that love really can be a present in any moment of any day as long as I’m still alive and breathing.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I’ve often wanted to go out into the world and randomly do a survey of 100 people where I ask each to describe God using different adjectives. That’s only because I feel it would be interesting to see just how different everyone views God.

Throughout my life, the adjectives that I would have used have changed over time. There were moments I despised even the concept of God because I blamed everything bad that happened in my life on God. So any adjectives I might have used during those times probably would have sounded very negative. I’ve also experienced times where I was having a very deep connection to God through long sessions of meditation and prayer. During those periods of my life, the words would have changed to ones of great praise. Lately, with all the work I’ve done in recovery through the 12 Steps, I’ve come to realize that God really can be summed up with just one word, “Love”.

I’m convinced all of us were brought here to love each other unconditionally and in doing so, we would draw closer back to God. Unfortunately, much of the opposite occurs daily on this planet and instead people are experiencing things such as guilt, shame, doubt, fear, remorse, anger, rage, and greed to name a bunch. One of the things that I have struggled with in many organized religions and people who are part of them is that much of the feelings I get from their energy are often those opposites of “love”. I’ve been around many of those people and they have quite often attempted to make me feel guilty or ashamed of who I am. They have tried to create doubt and fear within me as well. And I don’t believe that is God at all.

I don’t think that God guilts or shames people into doing anything. People do that to each other. I also don’t believe that God has a desire to make people doubt or be in fear. I’m inclined today to think we do that to each other as well. Regardless, people often judge each other and do the exact opposite of love when they fear what someone else is doing, especially when it’s unlike what they believe or feel or are accustomed to in their own lives. Churches for example often only use certain texts as their means of preaching and there is no room for any other teachings or lessons outside of it. Thus when someone is doing something different than what’s in those texts, the judgements begin and people move away from unconditional love.

While I can’t speak on God’s behalf, I do believe that God would be in agreement that we should all be focusing solely on loving each other more on this planet and nothing else. So that is the only adjective that I am sticking with today for my description of God. But if I was to expand beyond that word, the only ones I would ever use would be those that come out of acts of love such as kindness, generosity, and selflessness. As for any other words that aren’t synonymous with “love” today, I would tell everyone that they just aren’t God.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Being a jovial person who talks with great conviction can seem pretty convincing to bystanders that they have it all together and that their life is pretty good. It can often lead those bystanders to even want what those people have. Unfortunately, all of that can also be an illusion and that was a hard lesson I had to learn when I began to follow those types of people in my life and place them up on pedestals.

Placing a person up on a pedestal essentially means that one is going to be looking at a person at a loftier level then themselves. That’s a dangerous place to be especially when those people don’t have it all together even though they may be leading everyone to believe they do. In the AA world, I’ve done this a few times when I saw people who spoke with fire and were able to move a whole room of listeners. When I followed some of those people more closely, thinking I wanted what those people had, the illusion that they had it so great in life, often unravelled the closer I got to them. Some were adulterers while others had road rage and major anger issues. There were those who gossiped, judged, and backstabbed at the drop of a dime. Quite a few spent their evenings looking at porn. A large number had massive financial debt issues. And many had just substituted their alcohol and drug addictions with other ones such as caffeine, cigarettes, gambling, or sex. Yet all of them always appeared as happy go lucky people at the meetings and were able to speak with such moving testimony. And this would result in many deluded listeners asking for those people’s phone numbers. The sad part about this is that I was once guilty of this.

God gave me in this lifetime a pretty good ability to speak and write eloquently. Smiling and making other people laugh with my own antics are also two assets I was given. And for years I was able to convince many that my life was the one they should want and all too often I was placed up on a pedestal where the legs should have been kicked out from under me. While I may have appeared like my life was grand, what most never saw was the massive addiction based life I was still living. People were oblivious to the fact that I was sleeping around with newcomers and those still addicted to alcohol or drugs. They didn’t know that I spent hours on the Internet living out my sex and love addiction. They didn’t see how I was often rude and mean to those who were trying to love and care about me. Essentially I created an illusion that people saw what I wanted them to see. Living this way and having people place me up on pedestals only led me down darker paths in life. And for those who I was placing on pedestals, many have since relapsed. Thankfully my pain got great enough before I did too. It was my pain that led me to the decision to turn my entire will over to God to remove all the toxic elements out of my life. This has led me to being a much healthier person inside and out. While in the past, my ego liked people putting me on pedestal, I don’t want that anymore because it just separates me more from God. And while I may still be a good writer and speaker, my thanks for those gifts only goes to God now for the words that come out of me. I’m not a toxic person anymore nor am I telling the world that my life is one that everyone should want. I’ve found over the years that most people who do that are usually pretty messed up like I was.

I still hear great speakers all the time both in meetings and in life in general but I’m not following them anymore or saying I want what they have. I’m not placing them up on pedestals or trying to be like them. The only thing I really am trying to follow now is God and the more I live on that path, the more I’m finding that everything is coming together all on its own.

While some people have begun to approach me lately and indicate they want what it is they feel I have, I am only redirecting them to what I really believe they are seeking, which is a deeper relationship with God. I truly believe that for anyone we see on any given day who is smiling, happy, loving, caring, and kind, that the only reason we may want to be like them is because those are the traits within God. So it really is not any of those people that we should be wanting to be like, following, or placing up on some pedestal now is it?

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson