Category: Words To Live By

I’m sure many have probably heard this inspirational short story before somewhere else, but I decided to include it anyway as a reminder for all those like myself who occasionally long for a quick and easy fix for the struggles we’re currently facing in life.

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Until it suddenly stopped making any progress, and looked like it was stuck. So, the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily, although it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man didn’t think anything of it, and sat there waiting for the wings to enlarge to support the butterfly. But that didn’t happen. The butterfly spent the rest of its life unable to fly, crawling around with tiny wings and a swollen body. Despite the kind heart of the man, he didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle needed by the butterfly to get itself through the small opening, were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings, solely to prepare itself for flying once it got itself fully emerged.

I love this story because of the spiritual message behind it. In all my struggles with my health and healing these past few years, I have longed for someone or something to make the hole a little bigger in my own cocoon so that I could emerge much easier and hopefully put an end to all this suffering. Yet, somehow, I know that everything I continue to endure is all part of my own journey to become the butterfly I’ve always wanted to become and was meant to become in this life. And the last thing I’d ever want to happen, is for me to emerge from my cocoon too early solely because I sought that quick and easy solution that only left me with my own set of shriveled wings and an inability to ever fly.

So, even though this process of breaking through my own cocoon has been arduous more than not these past few years, I know that in the end, when I finally do emerge from it, every bit of pain, hardship, struggle, and tears will have been far worth it, as my colors are able to finally shine for the glory of God while I soar through the air with beauty and ease…

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

Some might say that all the hurricanes and earthquakes and other tragic weather we’ve been experiencing lately on our planet is all relatively normal in the grand scheme of things. While plenty of others fall on the polar opposite side of the spectrum in saying each are signs of end times coming. I, on the other hand, am in line with something that feels a lot more grounded in reality, that being they’re a result of global warming.

I must admit that I never cared much to learn more about the effects of global warming until I watched Al Gore talk about it in his 2006 Oscar-winning documentary titled “An Inconvenient Truth”. During it he spoke of all the harm we’re doing to our planet because of the greenhouse gases still being created by various corporations. Ironically, a mere 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of the world’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions, such as from BP, Chevron, Exxon/Mobile, and Shell. And he theorized that if those companies didn’t reduce their emissions soon that major superstorms and other serious climatic events would be the future result.

Oddly enough, at the time of this movie being released, many just scoffed it all off and said Gore had no proof to back his broad claims. Yet, since then, Hurricane Katrina came and went, causing incredible devastation, along with Hurricane Harvey and Irma this year as well. Add in severe earthquakes, major coral reef depletion, serious glacial melting, terrible droughts, and much more, and personally, I’m not doubting Gore anymore. The sad thing though is that there’s still many who do and they continue to claim there’s not enough hardcore proof to believe these huge climatic events are of our own doing.

So, as the devastation continues to rack up around the planet due to these overwhelming climatic occurrences, instead of looking at how we might be able to reverse this trend, I see to many simply shaking their heads and claiming it was just a bad year for the weather, while others keep looking to God as the cause and saying it’s out of their control.

But what if it isn’t? And what if even beyond those greenhouse gas emissions, that the rising negativity and anger on our planet is also a cause of these severe weather patterns? I know that might sound preposterous to some, but it’s something I’ve thought about quite a bit in recent times and my truth is this.

I actually believe that the more we spread anger and negativity on our planet, the more it affects our planet in adverse ways. And while that may never be proven in my lifetime either, I ask you to consider, what if things like earthquakes are actually releases of all the anger we keep expelling? And what if all our wars and violence are only creating energetic rifts in our planet that eventually lead to things like these superstorms?

Regardless of whether any of that may be true, and regardless of whether global warming is actually a cause to any of these major weather events or not, the fact remains that superstorms and major climatic events are happening everywhere around the globe now on a regular basis. And, while I may not be able to personally reduce gaseous emissions coming from companies that are potentially contributing to these climatic issues, I can at least do my part to protect the Earth by loving it a lot more through all of my actions.

The bottom line though that I’m trying to say here is that maybe if we all just stop blaming these major climatic events on things like God or a bad year for weather, and instead begin loving both the planet we walk on every day and each other a lot more, we might actually start seeing a reverse in this downward trend and far less nature-based destruction and devastation…

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

I saw something recently in myself that made me understand why so many throughout the centuries have done terrible things all for the sake of defending their religion.

I was in the middle of a book study with my best friend where the conversation turned to the life of Jesus. My friend made mention during it, that he truly felt that God had sent Himself to Earth and birthed Himself through Mary as Jesus. And that the Christ we see in the Bible through all His living and teaching years was actually God. I, on the other hand, told him that I have felt for some time that Christ was an ascendant spirit who had learned to completely turn His will and life over to God. And through spiritual practices He learned during his teenage years that the Bible doesn’t cover, He became one with God and felt His presence all the time.

So, for what started out as a simple discussion and a difference of opinion, I found my words shifting to ones that were leading my friend and I to defend our beliefs. As I threw out philosophical questions like “If Jesus was actually God, why did He call out to God on the cross and ask why He had forsaken Him?” and “If Jesus truly was God hanging out on Earth, why did Jesus feel so sad in the Garden of Gethsemane?”, I began to witness a change within myself that didn’t feel very spiritual at all. Instead, I felt irritable and wasn’t connecting with my heart anymore. That’s when I immediately stopped my line of questioning and said to my friend that it was pointless to keep going down this path, because ultimately, wasn’t the more important thing that we both loved the beautiful teachings of Christ? He agreed, and immediately the conversation moved back into one where I felt my heart again and the love I have for not only my friend, but also for my Higher Power.

After we had long finished our book study that day, I pondered what had transpired between my best friend and I. Was this how all religious wars began? Did most of them start with a small group of people vehemently defending semantics on what actually took place in the Bible? I can’t say for sure, but I do know how I felt when I travelled down that defensive path during my book study and that part didn’t feel good at all.

So often, I see people of all religions doing the very same thing these days, defending their interpretations of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, and plenty of other religious books too. But when they do so, it always seems to take them out of their hearts and into their heads, which is the exact opposite direction I believe God wants us all to be going in. Could this be the reason why so many religious wars began and why so many got hurt or killed throughout the centuries, all because people were defending their religious viewpoints?

Regardless of the answer, I have found one positive commonality amongst all the major religions in my studies of them and that’s to be unconditionally loving to each other. Yet somehow, we keep moving away from that in this world and instead, get ourselves involved in defending rules, semantics, practices, and interpretations of religious stuff that happened eons ago.

Thankfully, I was able to catch myself doing this during my book study with my best friend and stopped myself from go any further down that negative path. Thankfully, my love for him and my Higher Power was far more important than trying to prove some religious point that I honestly have no idea whether it was actually true or not. And thankfully, I felt a lot more peace afterward because of it. So, maybe if we all just stop trying to defend our religious and spiritual beliefs and instead start loving each other a lot more, our world might finally come together in a peace that transcends all understanding…

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