Category: Words To Live By

I’m all for spiritual attraction and not promotion, and this correlates directly to why I don’t like organized religion and am not a member of any church. This became even more clear to me during a recent vacation to see my best friend when I went to a living nativity event at his place of worship one evening during my visit.

While I support everyone on their own individual spiritual paths, including if they choose to be a member of a place of worship or follow some organized religion, the main reason I do not have either in my life is related to my dislike of being proselytized to, which is the very thing that happened to me while I was trying to warm myself up inside during this church event.

As I sat in a room set aside for prayer that evening, trying to heat up my hands, and doing my own form of spiritual connection with God, a man walked in and asked me point blank, “So, have you found Jesus and declared him your Lord and Savior?” As he waited for me to answer, he smiled in a way that made me feel so extremely awkward that honestly, I felt creeped out by it all. Even so, I told him my truth in that I had found a relationship with Jesus after a suicide attempt in 2011 and have been on a path with him strongly ever since. What I didn’t tell him though was how I am also a strong blend of other spiritualities as well, including some Buddhism and other energy practices. I knew telling him those things wouldn’t bode well if I did, especially when he said he had been on his path for over 50 years and went on to discuss things I didn’t really feel comfortable talking about with him.

Honestly, I don’t understand why people must throw their religion and their beliefs upon another who isn’t asking for it. I’ve come to learn in my life that everyone has their own unique tailored approach when it comes to spirituality, which is why I simply let people find their own way with it all. Sometimes people ask me about my own spiritual practices, and I’ll tell them what I do on my own path, but I also tell them as well that they don’t have to follow any of it if they don’t want to. And never do I tell anyone that they need to be saved and declare anyone or anything as their Lord and Savior, because for me, doing so is judging another’s spiritual walk in life and me claiming to know what God wants for them.

Frankly, I don’t even know if I buy into the concept of being saved as anything but something humans created. I feel it’s become a lot more about what man believes must happen than what God desires for someone. What I do buy into is that there is Something up there, out there, around here, and in me, that continues to guide me. There is some Higher force, some Being of Light, one that I choose to call God, and It has been the closest thing I’ve come to know in my life thus far by practicing the main principle of what Christ represents, which is simply to just love God and others unconditionally and nothing more.

While I follow the love of Christ, I also have passion for other spiritual teachings as well, all of which continue to lead me to become more of my Higher Self. But that is my spiritual journey, and not anyone else’s, and one I would never place upon another. So, having anyone approach me and try to “save me” only turns me off from wanting to even connect with that person or their place of worship for that matter.  The fact is, if I had never found or been introduced to God at the very point where that man had approached me, I wouldn’t have pursued God any further there, that’s for sure. I do not say this with anger or hate, I only say this with love in that it’s not my place to push my spiritual path upon another like this man tried to do with me.

As for the rest of my experience that evening at this living nativity event, I also observed two members of the church angrily discussing the current political administration of our country, talking quite negatively about “all the bleeding-heart liberals who are making our country a total mess”. I was so turned off by overhearing their conversation about this, I went down a quiet hallway, planning to go into a family restroom where I could lock the door and find some private serenity for a few moments. But before I could, I also overheard two other individuals nearby discussing a third individual who wasn’t present, a person who apparently was going through some struggles with addiction. One of them was quite heatedly bashing this individual behind their back which brought me great sadness to hear.

While I know there are no perfect people, and there is no perfect place of worship, for someone who might be looking to become more spiritual, I can assure you that after all these things happening to me, I had no desire to be a part of what was being offered at this church. Sadly, this is what I’ve come to know from many people in this world who have left religion and organized places of worship, all due to experiencing things like this.

What I am attracted to when it comes to spirituality and religion is full acceptance of everyone, full unconditional love, and full embracement of each person’s walk. I accept each and every person on their own individual path, even if it isn’t one that’s spiritual at all. Because I believe that deep down in every single individual on this planet is a soul worthy of being loved, which is the very thing I work on daily rather than proselytizing someone or talking in a way that might create polarization and make me appear to be self-righteous.

Ultimately, at my core, I simply believe in spiritual attraction and not promotion, which is something I often find doesn’t exist when it comes to organized religion and its various places of worship and that is the very reason why I stay clear of it all now. Because the closest I ever feel to God is never at a church, or with religious people, or in trying to convert anyone to my own spiritual path. Rather, it’s always when I am showing someone that God loves them just as they are, by simply loving them unconditionally.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

The In-Between Place. I know today’s title sounds a lot like it’s taken straight from the pages of Netflix’s Stranger Things, except in that show it’s actually called The Upside-Down place, but I digress from what today’s article is ultimately about.

Here’s a question for all of you to kick the real purpose of today’s article off. Have you ever felt like you were stuck in some in-between place in life, where your past self no longer works, but your future self is one that’s still being written and extremely unclear? That’s what this In-Between Place feels like to me and precisely where I find myself living in presently. It’s like living in limbo, one that no matter what I’ve tried to do, I can’t seem to make it change.

I often compare this in-between place, this limbo, to that of being on a plane on a runway, waiting to take off. But for some reason, the plane just sits there for minutes that eventually turns into hours, where you can’t do anything but remain in your seat? I actually had this happen to me once, where I remained on a plane on a runway for 3 hours and couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom! Thankfully, FAA laws have changed to prevent this from happening anymore, but once again I digress.

Ok, so here’s the thing. This plane I’m on can’t return to its gate because the person I was before I boarded it was one that relied upon countless lower vibrational patterns to exist, none of which work for me anymore. I see that so clearly now with the countless individuals I had been surrounding myself with, all who I relied upon to feel better and ended up becoming overly needy and dependent upon somewhere along the way. With each of them, the very thing I sought from them was never fulfilled, that being a desire to build a connection of the heart, where instead sexual innuendos and banter became my everyday language with them instead. I don’t want connections like this anymore. But, at the same time, now that my 10-year relationship is in shambles and nothing to keep me in this city I moved to solely for him, my plane feels like it’s readying for takeoff, but to where, I don’t know. What that translates to is a feeling like I’m on that plane, sitting on some random runaway, waiting.

I believe waiting is one of the most difficult places an individual will ever experience on a spiritual journey to find themselves. I now find myself in that very place, waiting on God for answers as to where this plane is heading next and it’s something that is requiring me to bear a lot of uncertainty and do a lot of prayer. My heart seems to ache all the time now bearing the brunt of this waiting, where loneliness feels like my constant companion. But I’m going through it this time with something different as compared to the last time I faced it, and that’s in how I’m handling it. Because what I’m doing now is that I’m not trying to numb myself from feeling any of it. I’m choosing to sit in all this emptiness instead of filling it with yet another aimless addiction. I’m simply allowing myself to feel it in all its entirety, which often feels so very painful and one I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.

I don’t think there’s a single day over the past six weeks where I haven’t sobbed incredibly in whatever seat I’ve been sitting on in this plane. But, the fact remains, I’m allowing myself to remain on it, to wherever it’s heading, rather than trying to force it to head back to its former gate or busting through the pilot’s door to make it takeoff immediately to where I want. Instead, I’m fully trusting in God now, that my plane is headed to somewhere pretty amazing. I only have to wait a little longer.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Pretty soon I’ll be coming up to the 10-year anniversary mark since I began writing for this site, TheTwelfthStep.com. Presently, I’ve written well over 2000 original articles for it, but I find myself now at a crossroads with it wondering if I really want to keep it going.

One thing I have the ability with when it comes to this blog, is to see how many are actually reading it daily. It has a tool built into it behind the scenes on WordPress that shows me the level of traffic hitting my site each day, including where that traffic originates from and any specific terms searched for within it. For the longest time I was averaging between 50 and 100 readers a day, which in all honesty I was thankful for. I know that those numbers are pretty minuscule when it comes to social media presence, but I was thankful for each of my daily readers nonetheless. I also learned to not care about having more of an Internet presence because I enjoyed writing about my life and sharing my experiences transparently with the rest of the world.

When I got on Facebook and Twitter years ago, I found they were a great way to increase my site’s traffic by reposting links to each of my blog entries. I became thankful for every time a reader who reached out publicly or behind the scenes to tell me how much my words affected them. Unfortunately, my site’s traffic and visibility on Facebook and Twitter have been reduced to a mere handful of people checking it out now on a daily basis, mainly due to social media changing their formulas for what they feel deserves to show up everyone’s individual’s newsfeeds. Sadly, Facebook’s and Twitter’s formulas don’t find what I write to be important enough for the world to see anymore, so when I repost my excerpts on either, they get completely suppressed now. Most of my friends have told me they never see my articles showing up on their timelines anymore. So, in all reality, I am simply writing for myself these days, making this blog mainly an online journal or diary of sorts and nothing more. It’s why I find I am questioning my motive lately whether I want to keep this going. Because I don’t find that I am feeling fed anymore by all the work I keep putting into it and that’s something I’m not taking lightly.

To keep this blog going actually costs me about $700 a year and takes about 6 to 7 hours of my time every week. In the grand scheme of things that’s not much of a commitment either financially or with my time, but for me, it does add a lot of stress. While I originally began this blog as a cathartic way to work through my own inner demons of my life, I had always hoped it would grow in size and gain better readership along the way. It hasn’t and in fact is now losing most of my original readership, all because of what social media considers important these days. Writing about self-healing, life experiences, and the spiritual journey I’ve been on, which is quite unique in of itself, seems like it’s not that important as far as where the rest of the world is concerned.

While I haven’t made a final decision yet whether to close this site down or continue keeping it up and running, me writing this very article is simply putting it out there to the Universe, or God if you may, asking for some sort of sign whether I’m meant to keep doing this. Look, I love writing, truly I do, but I feel I’ve exhausted most of my life’s experiences in here and have been re-sharing things in recent years that I know I’ve already shared before in some fashion. It almost feels as if I’m just repeating and rehashing the same material now again and again, simply for the sake of producing yet another article. I find this isn’t being productive anymore for my spiritual journey and I am praying for guidance from God surrounding this.

I don’t know if this article will even be read by more than a dozen people or less, but if somehow even one person responds to me and asks to keep it going because it’s helped their life somehow, then I’m going to take that as a sign from God to not give up. But if no one responds to these very words I write from my fragile heart, then I plan to take it as a sign it may just be time to call it a day and shut this site down, once and for all. It’s in Your court God now. I leave this with You…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson