What Do You Think Happens After You Die?

What do you think happens after you die?

This is a question I have pondered so many times throughout my life and my answer has definitely ranged from one extreme to another.

The first belief I ever had about what happens after I die was definitely taught to me by the United Methodist Church I attended as a kid. There, I was told that if I believed enough in Jesus Christ and confessed all my sins to his Father that I would go to Heaven and be able to enter its pearly white gates.

For years I strived to serve Jesus, as it was imparted upon me at this church and in the Bible I read. I also did my best to live this “sin free” life because I wanted that reward of going to a great resting place that would last for eternity. But somewhere along the lines I stopped believing in this and started going in the exact opposite direction. If I were to pinpoint where that most likely started to happen, it was probably when a revival church I had joined told me that I wouldn’t go to Heaven if I continued to live a life of homosexuality.

It was hard for me to believe that all gay men and women were sinners and that God would send every homosexual to some place other than Heaven when they died. That revival church told me it was Hell I would go to if I didn’t repent and stop living my “lifestyle”. But frankly me trying to accept what they told me was putting me there already. That’s most likely why I didn’t think twice when I went to more of a hedonistic way of living for a number of years after that.

Addictions would become the thing that mostly consumed me during those hedonistic years. While they did, I floated to the opposite extreme in what I believed would happen to me after I die. I began to assume that this was the only life I had and that I needed to make the best of it. What that translated into for me was living selfishly more than not. Unfortunately, that only led me to having a lot of anxiety, depression, and other health issues. And in all honestly, all of that only grew worse as I continued to believe there was nothing beyond this life. That’s only because that belief gave me a serious lack of hope and without that quality, which I think is essential for each of us, all I wanted to do was numb myself with addictions. Thankfully the pain of me living this way long enough eventually lead me to my discovery of meditation and it was through meditation that my belief in some type of an afterlife returned, along with renewed hope.

My meditations revealed to me the possibility of reincarnation and having lived multiple lives. I proceeded to read more and more on this subject until I became convinced that there must be something more than just this single blip on the radar of life. In recent years, this feeling has only continued to intensify and nowadays what I believe will happen after I die is a combination of Christian and Buddhist philosophies.

So do I still believe that I’m going to become a pile of bones or ashes in a grave one day? Or do I still believe that I will spend the rest of my life in some eternal place of ecstasy?

The answer is no to both.

What I actually believe now will happen after I die is that my energy (or my soul if you wish) will go to some temporary place of rest where I can reflect upon the lessons I learned, and didn’t learn, in this life. And when that period of reflection is over, I also believe I’ll have the ability to come back and live another life with different conditions, so that I may learn new lessons, or even master any old ones I hadn’t fully grasped yet.

Who knows, maybe I’m way off from what truly happens after I die. Regardless, I’m just glad I still have hope that there’s at least something beyond this life, because without that, I know my life would be quite miserable. Thank God I don’t feel that way anymore…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

How Any Addiction Is Just Like An Automobile…

My father once gave me this analogy about addictions and automobiles. He said that anytime we succumb to any addiction no matter what it is, we become just like an automobile. After suffering from many of my own addictions over the course of my life, I can safely say I now understand the parallel and agree with him.

Automobiles are completely dependent on gas to run, unless it happens to be an electric car, of which it then of course requires electricity to operate. But in the case of my father’s analogy, I’m going to use the ones that run solely on gasoline like my own. When I first acquired my Camry it had a full tank of gas in it. After driving that vehicle for the first week or so, my indicator light came on to let me know it was time for a fill-up. After doing that, I then drove again for a while until that light came back on again. How long I was able to go for until the next one, and all the subsequent others, became totally dependent on they way I was driving and the age of my vehicle. The worse I drove and the older my car got, the more I had to fill up more frequently. Nowadays I’m finding my car, as it continues to age, not only needs a fill-up on more occasions than it ever used to, it’s also starting to require greater repairs and maintenance. Eventually, I know my Camry is not going to work anymore and that I will need to get a new car.

The cycle of addiction is honestly no different than the life path of a vehicle like my Camry, except for the ending. Take one of the former ones I was addicted to for example such as alcohol. I began consuming it one night at the age of 17 and clearly remember how amazing I felt inside. All of my problems seemed to miraculously disappear during those moments I was drinking that night. The next day I was completely hung over though and vowed to never have a drink again. A few weeks would pass where I kept that vow until one evening I was feeling extremely stressed about some of my family’s dysfunctionality. Suddenly I saw a light indicator come on within me for the first time telling me I was near empty and needed a fill-up, in this case with booze. As soon as I put some booze quickly down within me that night, I noticed that light went off. I filled up with quite a bit more of it that night only to wake up the next day with yet another hangover and another vow to not drink again.

More weeks would pass before I ever saw that internal indicator light come back on again, but eventually it did, requiring me to fill up with alcohol once more just to make it disappear. Soon I noticed that indicator light was coming on within me with a lot more frequency and the time in between fill-ups was growing less and less. I also started experiencing health issues around that time such as having trouble breathing, digestive problems, weight gain, and more. Doctor visits became routine, as I began needing my own regular maintenance and repairs for the growing unhealthiness inside me. It was then I started seeing that internal indicator light up on most evenings reminding me it was time for another fill-up. When my body’s normal functions started shutting down completely, that was when I called it quits once and for all and became clean and sober. Unfortunately for some though, alcoholism can lead to the death of their body, except there’s no replacing it like you can when your car dies. I’m very grateful that I never went that far with my alcoholism, or any of my other addictions for that matter.

Thankfully, I don’t feel like I’m an automobile anymore because I do not need any of those constant external fill-ups of some type of an addiction nowadays. My Higher Power is generating that from within me now, and the 12 Steps definitely helped me to get there. I practice them daily and make sure I keep going to those meetings regularly, as this seems to be the only type of routine maintenance I need these days. I’m so glad I found recovery because all addictions are really just like an automobile. They will only lead you over time to needing more and more fill-ups and repairs, until you can’t be filled up or repaired anymore. I truly hope for your sake that you don’t wait until then because there’s no buying a new body, like you can a new car…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

An Introduction To Overeaters Anonymous (OA)

There’s an addiction I haven’t talked much about in my writing, mostly because I haven’t really had a problem with it like I did with so many other things in life, and that’s compulsive overeating. Thankfully, there’s a recovery program out to help those who do suffer from this addiction, and it’s called Overeaters Anonymous (OA).

Taken directly from OA’s website, “Overeaters Anonymous offers a program of recovery from compulsive eating using the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of OA. Worldwide meetings and other tools provide a fellowship of experience, strength and hope where members respect one another’s anonymity. OA charges no dues or fees; it is self-supporting through member contributions. OA is not just about weight loss, weight gain or maintenance, or obesity or diets. It addresses physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. It is not a religious organization and does not promote any particular diet. OA members differ in many ways, but we are united by our common disease and the solution we have found in the OA program. We practice unity with diversity, and we welcome everyone who wants to stop eating compulsively.”

While I may not have chronically suffered from this addiction so far in this life, I do know of many people who have. The hardest thing each have had to face in their recovery from it is that they can’t completely eliminate food from their life. This is the major difference from someone like myself who suffered from alcohol and drug addiction, as those substances aren’t necessary to sustain life. The closest comparison of what I could come up with in my own life to a compulsive overeater is the sex and love dependency I battled not too long ago.

I firmly believe that sex and love are innate to a human being just like eating is, so the idea of eliminating them completely from my life never felt right. So I was very grateful when I found Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) and Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA), as there in both programs I learned how to create a list for myself (called a bottom line) of the things I once did addictively such as watching porn, of which I could never do again at all. The same principle holds true for overeaters.

There are plenty of foods that many overeaters are unable to consume again without falling into their compulsive eating habits. So to prevent this from happening, they too create their own bottom line of these things that cannot ever consume again at all. Like all 12 Step programs, OA does work and can help a person find recovery from their addiction, as long as they want to stop eating compulsively. It’s really all about willingness. The truth is, until I found the willingness to stop drinking, drugging, smoking, or doing any of the others addictions I ever suffered from, I didn’t find recovery from them either.

With that being said, I’m ending this entry today with a prayer that came from an OA meeting, as I know it can help a person find that willingness if they’re currently seeking recovery from this addiction. There definitely is help out there for compulsive overeaters and hopefully this prayer can be but a beginning for their road to recovery…

“God, today is a new day for me, and with you I can handle anything. I ask for Your protection in case sometime during the day, my desire to eat compulsively becomes stronger than my desire to abstain. I also ask for Your protection today from anyone or anything that would interfere with my abstinence. I know I am powerless over food and that my life can become unmanageable again, but I do believe that You can relieve this compulsion and restore my sanity. Help me to know what Your will is for me today and give me the willingness to carry that out. And help me to turn my entire will and life over to You God so that you may guide me through another day of abstinence. Amen.”

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson