Category: Words To Live By

As I sit here in Starbucks drinking my cold brew during what feels to have become the loneliest holiday season ever, I find myself pondering something I’ve realized I’ve let everyone else dictate for my entire life and that’s the type of love I truly deserve. Ever since I was a young kid, I’ve allowed myself to be told I’m being too needy. Having had alcoholic parents who couldn’t give me love freely or unconditionally is where this pattern began.

Here’s the thing, when you try to go to someone who’s broken and ask them for love, well you’re going to get a broken answer, which usually equates to being told you’re being too needy. Because in reality, they can’t offer you the very thing you deserve. You can ONLY get unconditional love from someone who knows how to love themselves unconditionally. My parents never loved themselves unconditionally so they couldn’t ever give me that type of love and neither could any of those I pledged my heart to afterwards for the same reason. And that was only made worse by the fact that I didn’t love myself unconditionally as well, mostly because I never learned how to.

I believe that like attracts like, which led me to attracting people who were only mirrors for all my brokenness stemming from my childhood. Everyone became mirrors of my dysfunctional parents and each reaffirmed the broken patterns I learned way back then from them, leading me again and again to the same conclusion in their minds, that I was too needy. When in reality, I only needed to learn how to unconditionally love myself for this pattern to finally end. And when I finally did learn how to do that over the past few years, I realized what I want now is someone I’ve never been with yet.

Honestly, it took me living an entirely broken childhood and five long term relationships to finally grasp the type of love I truly deserve and always have. And I know God wants this type of love for me now as well. I know now that I deserve to be in a relationship with someone who wants to grasp my heart and never let go of it, who wants to hold me and love every minute of that without counting the minutes of how long they have to do it, and who wants to embrace my lips with such passion that they feel my soul through them. Throughout my entire adult life thus far, I’ve chosen one person after another who has never been able to offer me love like this.

Instead, I’ve allowed myself to be embraced in worldly ways with mostly carnal expressions of love with those who always seem more concerned with my appendage size, what I look like without my clothes on, what type of body hair I have, what sexual positions I like best, and countless other lower vibrational things that honestly don’t matter if you want to have a relationship filled with unconditional love. But when you choose to live in a relationship with someone who begins it with carnal expressions of love, when their fantasy of you runs out, so does that type of love, and that’s precisely when you start getting told you’re being too needy each time you approach them for greater expressions of love.

I know what type of love I want now and I’m waiting for it. Because I truly deserve it. And always have…

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

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