“If You Have Nothing Nice To Say…”

“…Then Don’t Say Anything At All.”

I grew up in a time when parents seemed to quote this saying to their children a lot. But the ironic thing with my parents was how they struggled quite often to practice it themselves. In fact, I grew up watching them do the exact opposite of that more than not, which ultimately led to me becoming just like them as time passed. It took a long time for me to realize this, but thankfully I finally did. I have to say I’m a lot healthier these days because of it and really have to give this wise adage much of the credit.

The sad truth for most people who regularly say not so nice things about anything or anyone is that they aren’t really that happy within themselves. Placing a negative focus on someone or something else is their way of making sure the focus is never on them. Because if the focus was on them, their fear is that everyone would see just how miserable they are in life.

That’s definitely the pattern my parents lived while I was growing up and it’s definitely the one I did as well for far too many years. I failed to grasp just how unhealthy this behavior was for both this world and myself. Constantly saying not so nice things did nothing but add more negativity to a planet already filled with so much negativity. And the more I did it, the more my health seemed to take a toll. My Higher Power tried to warn me of this before I became as unhealthy as I did, because there were numerous friends, therapists, and holistic practitioners along the way who constantly gave me reminders of this old axiom. It wasn’t until I became as sick as I did mind, body, and soul though before I made any serious attempts to change this.

Nowadays, I do my best to remain positive and upbeat, not only to support my own health and healing, but also to support that in the world too. Interestingly enough, I should mention that I’ve gotten a taste of my own medicine in recent weeks of how I used to be in life. There have been a number of people who have had not so nice things to say of me on Facebook, on my blog, or in the recovery rooms. Being on the recipient end of each of them hasn’t felt so good, not one bit. In fact, it’s felt pretty bad causing me at times to want to give up.

I’m grateful to say I haven’t given up and don’t plan to. And as much as my parents never fully kept to that old adage that says, “If you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all”, I really am doing my best these days to follow it intrinsically. I honestly believe I’m far healthier because of it and hopefully on some level, I’m also helping to make the world far healthier as well…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

“Parallels”, A Great Mind-Bending Sci-Fi Pilot Movie

Imagine for a moment if there existed infinite Earth’s, where each was slightly different from each other. This was the basic storyline of a 2015 movie titled “Parallels” that I watched on Netflix the other day, which vaguely reminded me of a television show I once watched back in the 90’s named “Sliders”, as it had a similar premise. By the time the movie ended, my brain was left pondering one thought. If there really were other versions of each of us in alternate realities, what would they be like?

Parallels is definitely a mind-bending 90-minute film that ironically was originally created as a pilot for a new television show. As of the time of me writing this though, it appears the standalone movie on Netflix is all that exists, which seems to be a major disappointment for just about every user’s review of it that I saw on the Internet. Regardless, its concept is definitely geek material for a science-fiction fan like myself.

The movie begins with estranged brother and sister Ronan and Beatrix Carver (Mark Hapka and Jessica Rothe) receiving cryptic messages on their cell phones from their father. Upon returning home, they run into each other and have no idea why their father even summoned them home. After all attempts to locate him come back empty-handed, they head out to the garage where they find a backpack in the trunk of his car. Within it the only thing out of the norm that’s found is a strange metallic orb. Meanwhile one of their neighbors and long ago friend, Harold (Eric Jungmann), has joined them and it’s overly apparent he hasn’t connected with either of them in years. The three of them eventually decide to go to the address left to Ronan and Beatrix on those mysterious voicemails where they find nothing but an old rundown and abandoned building. Ronan, being the most rebellious of the three, quickly enters its dirty main glass door entrance and proceeds to call out for his father to no avail. The others follow him in where they soon see bizarre graffiti-based messages scribbled on just about every cement wall. A loud alarm then begins to sound, along with a flashing bright white light, causing Beatrix to panic. She immediately leaves the building, followed by Harold and Ronan, only to discover they’re now standing in the city they left, except this one is desolated and demolished, apparently having been wiped out by a nuclear bomb. Thus begins the real adventure of this mind-bending sci-fi pilot movie.

After Parallels ended, I yearned for more only to sadly learn it hadn’t been picked up to series yet. Nonetheless, it left me pondering this idea of the existence of infinite parallel Earth’s, where each was slightly different from the next. So what if my Higher Power really did create not just one Earth, but countless Earth’s with numerous versions of all of us. What would I be like in each of them? While the movie at one point demonstrates some of that concept, I thought about all the various incarnations my own personality has gone through so far in this lifetime.

I’ve been the heterosexual closeted guy, the alcoholic, the sex and love addict, the corporate greed-based jerk, the preaching deacon, the annoying sports jock, the silent monk, the controlling Bed and Breakfast owner, the gambler, the hoity-toity world traveler, and plenty of other negative personalities as well. I can’t imagine being any one of them now, especially not for an entire lifetime, yet that is precisely the idea Parallels hypothesizes. Frankly, I’m truly grateful I’m not any one of those personalities these days but in all honesty, I’m also unsure of exactly who God has me becoming nowadays either.

Nevertheless, I’m quite content with this unknowingness of my future, because I’ll probably change personalities a dozen more times before I die. So thankfully, I was able to appreciate the great mind-bending sci-fi storyline of Parallels, because I realized I don’t ever have to be any of my old spiritually unfulfilling alternate realities ever again…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

A Spiritual Lesson In Trust From “The Cloud”

I feel like God was really trying to get my attention recently when I became unable to access my main email due to a server issue on ICloud. At first, I assumed the issue was coincidental, but as I went through the period of outage, I wondered if there was a spiritual lesson in trust attached to it.

It began early on a Saturday morning when I awoke and rolled over to check my email’s inbox on my Iphone. As soon as I tried to enter the inbox though, a message immediately appeared that indicated there was an error retrieving my mail. After attempting to repeat the same action several times to no avail, I next went to my computer and opened up my mail client to see if I could do it there. That’s when I noticed a similar error message appear telling me what my Iphone already had. My next and final attempt to retrieve my email came when I went directly onto the Internet through ICloud itself. And that’s when I discovered the error was actually with the server where my mail account was on.

For the next two hours, I was on the phone with tech support from Apple, going through one action after another, until they came to the same conclusion I had before I even called, that there was a problem with one of their mail servers. A trouble ticket was then generated and I was told it would take at least two business days for their engineers to even look at the issue. With it being a Saturday, I knew what that meant. It meant it might not be until Wednesday before they even knew what was wrong with my email and this server. I was a little frustrated by this, especially when I was reminded by tech support that I was using one of ICloud’s free email accounts, making it of low priority. I wasn’t very happy to hear this, but thanked them nonetheless for their help and hung up the phone worrying about when or even if it would get fixed.

You see, technology-oriented people like myself usually have at least one email address they rely heavily upon for various operations in their life such as banking, insurance, and various other financial institutions. Add in my personal business, blog, website, and plenty of friends who all have this email address, and you have one contact method I’m overly tied to these days. Which is specifically why all of this led to having an overabundance of worry and trust issues with Apple as to whether they would even make the effort to correct this problem. I even found plenty of user forums online suggesting they might not given it was a free account.

I ended up spending the majority of Saturday obsessing about this. I even re-contacted the person I had spoken with earlier from the ICloud tech support, but they had no new information to tell me, other than the only server being affected in this outage was the one my main email account was on. After hanging up the phone with them for the second time, I pondered what I had just been told. It was then I began to wonder if maybe there was a spiritual lesson in trust with this. After all, the one server I was on was the only one being affected? Most people would probably say that was just coincidence or bad luck. Not me though. I have come to believe these days that God speaks to us in a multitude of ways, even through things that are modernized like email and servers. Unfortunately, I didn’t stick with this thought for very long, and instead went back into panic mode pretty quickly about how many emails I would be losing and whether I needed to start changing over everything to a new email address immediately.

Saturday then turned into Sunday and my thoughts weren’t getting any better, nor did my trust in Apple fixing this issue given my email was still very much down. But as the morning turned into the afternoon, the thought re-emerged of this maybe being a spiritual lesson in trust somehow. Just so you understand what I mean by this, take my health issues I’ve been enduring for a good while now. I’ve been praying to God diligently for guidance, doing everything I can to become healthy on every level and in every way, including getting out of myself and helping many others since it all started. Alas, I’ve had little relief, nor found much of that through any of my medicinal or holistic efforts. All of this has resulted in me having some serious trust issues with God. But recently I began praying to God to help my trust be restored, which made me wonder if this weird email issue was somehow God’s response to that prayer.

Could my trust in Apple not fixing the email problem be no different that my trust in God not fixing my chronic pain issues? Well as soon as I began accepting that idea and decided it wasn’t worth worrying about my email anymore; I started doing my daily affirmations early that Sunday evening. And that’s precisely when I heard a noise on my Iphone laying on the bed next to me, which upon closer inspection saw my mail email was back up and running again.

So it goes to show that maybe there was a spiritual lesson in trust with all this. Maybe God really was trying to get my attention by having something so silly happen as my main email server going down. Well it worked, because I feel that somehow God was able to answer my prayers through this experience. And as long as I continue to maintain my trust in Him, I truly believe I will be fixed just like “The Cloud” eventually did for my email.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson