Daily Reflection

“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

What do you do when someone hurts you? Do you try and hurt them back? Take for example a time you find yourself driving on the road and a person purposely cuts you off. Do you speed up and try to do the same thing back to them? Or maybe you flip them off with your middle finger as they do it? Or do you try to do something else altogether just to get even? Hopefully it’s none of things because going tit for tat only leads in one direction and that’s to greater spiritual imbalance. While this is just a simple example of what an eye for an eye looks like, there are countless of other ways this happens all too often nowadays. Case in point, I’ve been a recent recipient of harsh judgments about various aspects of my life from several different individuals. But rather than allow my ego to send my own harsh judgments back onto them, I’ve refrained from responding at all. Why? Because I know that any time I’ve ever tried to get back at someone, wanting them to feel how I feel, it’s only resulted in me becoming even angrier and more unsettled. I believe this is precisely why there is as much senseless violence in the world these days as there is because so many continue to seek revenge hoping it will mend their pain. It never works though. The only solution I’ve found that ever does is to keep sending any person that hurts me three things, love, forgiveness, and peace, and I do that until the pain is gone. Trust me, it works, but an eye for an eye never does.

I pray to be free of any anger I hold towards ________ and I send them love, forgiveness, and peace.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Pixar’s “Inside Out”, A Delightful Film That’s All About Our Emotions

I’ve been a big fan of many of Disney’s Pixar movies over the years including all three of the Toy Story’s, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Up, The Incredibles, and Cars. The realistic animation and uplifting story lines of each even moved me enough to purchase them for my home DVD collection. But now I know I’ll need to add another one to that collection when it eventually arrives on DVD and that’s Pixar’s latest film, which is titled Inside Out.

Inside Out is an interesting tale about a girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) and the emotions that live within her, where each has their own unique personality: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). Residing in the headquarters of Riley’s mind, it is they who are responsible for handling every situation in her life and helping her to form her memories, of which are all stored in small spheres that produce a certain color depending on the emotion attached to the memory itself.

Joy’s sole duty is to make her happy, while Fear’s is to keep her safe. Anger’s main job is to help her stand up for herself, while Disgust’s is to steer her away from things she doesn’t like. And last, but definitely not least is Sadness, who’s actually totally unsure of her primary responsibility and instead feels the only thing she really does is make a mess of everything. But how each handles all the circumstances of Riley’s life becomes far more evident when her parents uproot her from their hometown of Minneapolis and move to San Francisco due to her father’s job. As it is there in San Francisco that Riley faces many of the pains we all face when growing up, including loneliness, rejection, embarrassment, and despair. Unfortunately, Joy does everything she can to take control of Riley’s life, trying to constantly keep her happy, which only leads to a mishap with core memories when Sadness touches one of them. The adventure the two emotions take deep into Riley’s inner world to correct the calamity they created is what makes this movie truly original and refreshing.

What I found most fascinating and ironic about Inside Out is how my own emotions ran the entire gamut alongside Riley’s. I found myself feeling her joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear and honestly, that’s precisely why I loved this film as much as I did. What’s funny is how my partner and I kept pointing the fingers at each other during the entire movie at some of the specific ways each individual emotion acted, because we clearly saw ourselves in so many of them.

The fact is I laughed, I cried, was occasionally irritated, at times nervous, and even became a little repulsed while watching Inside Out. But it wasn’t until afterwards did I realize that’s pretty much how my own life ultimately is, so maybe that’s why I absolutely treasured this priceless gem of a movie like I did.

Pixar truly outdid themselves this time and I without a doubt give this film my best rating of 5 stars. When an animated picture about emotions can produce the exact same ones within me that ranged from explosive laughter to profuse tears, it’s relatively easy for me to say there’s definitely a lot of that Disney magic imbedded within Inside Out…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

PS – And don’t forget to stay for the credits, as I’m sure you’ll be laughing out of your seat then too! My personal favorite was the final scene with the cat…

Daily Reflection

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” (Thomas Edison)

I’ve been going through the most difficult storm over the past few years of my life. This storm I speak of is a quest I embarked upon to heal holistically and allow my body to naturally rid itself of all the things that have ever kept me out of the light and away from God. There have been plenty of days though, especially recently, where I’ve truly felt like giving up. Sometimes that’s manifested through old addictions tempting me to return to them. Sometimes it’s manifested through friends or acquaintances telling me how ludicrous this quest is and encouraging me to go get on some medications. And sometimes it’s even manifested in a desire to take my life just like my parents did. Thankfully, I haven’t done any of these things because I’ve always been told that most people who end up quitting a difficult journey they undertook, usually occurs right before they were about to reach their goal. So I don’t plan on giving up, not this close to the end, and God willing, the treasure I’ve sought so determinedly is actually almost in my grasp.

I pray I remain steadfast on my path even while the winds of my storm continue to push me down. I pray that I never give up because my success totally depends on it.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson