Category: Words To Live By

A few months ago I was doing a lead at a local AA meeting when an interesting girl walked up to me after I was finished and told me she had been able to pay attention for the entire time I spoke. She then showed me a book, said it was an adult coloring one, and explained it was normally what kept her attention deficit disorder at bay during most meetings. While I was grateful for her compliment and gave that credit to my Higher Power, I was actually more interested in talking about the book she had just showed me, which was titled “Color Me Calm, 100 Coloring Templates for Meditation and Relaxation.”

She explained that somehow coloring helped her to focus, as well as keep her relatively still for long periods of time. At first, I couldn’t imagine how something as simple as coloring could do that, but then I thought about the complex puzzles I do from time to time and how that achieves the very same thing for me. I asked to look through her book, saw how it wasn’t just basic pictures, and it began to make sense. There were intricate mandalas, waterscapes, wooded scenes, geometric patterns, and much more spread throughout the book, each having very precise areas to color. As I drove home from the meeting after that, I remembered my childhood coloring days when I would take crayons and try to stay within the borders of whatever picture I was working on, even ones that should have been extremely simple, except they never were for me. Usually I just got frustrated and smeared the entire page with a big mess of colored scribbles. After recollecting those not so pleasant memories of my earliest attempts at being an artist, I put the entire adult coloring book thing behind me, that was until I got on the phone with my sister a day or so later.

When I asked what she was up to during my call to her, she said she was working on a picture in her adult coloring book and all I could say was, “Really?” She wasn’t kidding and told me it was truly helping her in the same ways it had helped that girl from the meeting I did my lead at. It was then I knew I didn’t need a third reminder to come my way, as that regularly seems to be what happens when my Higher Power wants me to pursue something that would help me on my spiritual journey. Within a day or so after that phone call, I ordered that Color Me Calm book, two sets of artists colored stencils, and a manual sharpener. And wouldn’t you know, once I received it and began doing some of my own coloring again after decades of not doing so, I actually found great joy and peace in it.

While I can’t really say I understand why coloring helps me these days rather than aggravate me like it always used to, I’m just grateful I’ve found yet another way to slow down, meditate, and relax in a world that often seems so darn filled with too much hustle and bustle. And now it seems as if everyone else is finding this out as well, because everyone I end up talking to about this says they too are getting into the adult coloring book craze.

So if you happen to be someone who’s trying to find a way to create a little more peace in your life, I suggest trying this route, as you may soon discover just like I and so many others already have, how it can come from something as simple as coloring…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Have you ever called someone multiple times, left multiple messages, and never even got a single call back from them? I most certainly have, especially lately it seems. While I have struggled quite a bit with trying to understand and figure out why each time it’s happened, my spiritual teacher has said this is totally due to my spiritual vibration. But before I go into what she means by this, let me first take a few steps back and explain something.

Prior to 2012, before I even began turning my entire will and life over to my Higher Power, I had plenty of friends. And rarely were any of my phone calls not returned from them or anyone for that matter. I was also regularly being invited more than not to parties, social get-togethers, random game nights, and so much more.

So what’s different between the person I am now and the person I was back then? Well, the truth of the matter is that back then I used to gossip, judge, constantly say sexual innuendos, was promiscuous, make jokes at other people’s expenses, and be extremely manipulative in most of my day-to-day behaviors. And for some reason, the majority of the people I hung out with during those periods of my life seemed to like much of that about me.

Yet when I finally started on a much healthier spiritual path and began removing all of these toxic behaviors, one by one I started seeing most of those people drop out of my life. I started getting those unreturned phone calls. I started having plenty of evenings with nothing to do because my phone wasn’t ringing. It was also then I began hearing of people talking about me behind my back saying I was fake, that I thought I was better than everyone else, and that I placed myself on a pedestal. And sadly, I was none of those things. I was just trying to be a better and much healthier spiritual person, which I still am these days as well.

But for whatever the reason, the majority of the people I meet nowadays don’t seem to like this. They don’t seem to like my personality and they usually find me threatening on some level, even though I do my absolute best to accept each and every one of them just as they are.

Thus this brings me back to what my spiritual teacher has been saying about why my phone calls are not being returned. She says that the greater one’s spiritual vibration is (i.e., the more one is not regularly engaging in low vibrational behaviors such as gossip or judging for example), the less those people who are still regularly doing those behaviors are going to want to be around them.

So maybe this really is the reason why I’ve seen plenty of my phone calls not get returned lately?

Regardless of whether this is actually true or not, I’m a good guy with a good heart and I really do try my best to love everyone unconditionally. But I don’t like to make fun of people anymore, especially when it comes at someone else’s expense and I definitely detest gossip and harsh judgments about others. And most importantly, I also am doing everything I can to remain free of all addictions in life.

So if my phone calls are going unanswered because of this, because of this change in my spiritual vibration, so be it. The fact is I actually like who I am today far better than who I used to be. And if the sacrifice for being this way is having many unreturned phone calls these days, then I will accept that and continue to remain grateful to my Higher Power for each of those who do choose to call me back…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Well another Black Friday is upon us. For some that will mean racing out at some point to possibly wait in line for hours, deal with big crowds, all in the hopes to get the best deals being offered by various retail stores. But for others like me, it doesn’t mean anything of the sort.

The simple truth is that I don’t buy any gifts during the holiday season anymore, which means it makes it really easy when I see all those deals happening on and around Thanksgiving. You see I’ve come to believe that buying a holiday gift for someone is not necessarily the best way to show my unconditional love for them. Instead, I have found that I can do that throughout the year in my everyday thoughts, words, and actions. What I mean by this is that I try to be the most loving and compassionate person to everyone, 365 days of the year.

In the past though, to be honest, I was a mostly selfish person who usually only thought of himself until the holiday shopping season arrived with Black Friday. And that’s when I began to go buy tons of presents for others, thinking each would excuse how I acted the rest of the year towards them. Sadly, this was no different with when I was growing up, as my parents acted similarly by showering my sister and I with so many gifts, yet the ones we both truly wanted from them was unconditional love, compassion, and positive attention throughout the year. This is why I decided a few years ago that I didn’t want to keep following in their footsteps so I stopped buying gifts for everyone around the holidays and instead began offering them the ones I always wanted from my parents. I find I have a lot more peace in my life now because of this, especially when this holiday shopping season arrives. But please don’t take me wrong though in that I do think buying a gift here and there for someone can come out of unconditional love, except I find that I can do that at any time of the year, rather than when there is this frantic rush on retail stores.

So however you choose to spend Black Friday this year, remember one thing if you can. The best gifts you can ever offer someone is your unconditional love, compassion, and positive attention, which are the things you might not necessarily find in all those festively wrapped items you end up buying.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson