By Berenice Andrews
“Why was I born?” has been asked for millennia by the countless people who have felt beaten-up, beaten-down, or (occasionally) curious.
In these modern “interesting times,” that question has been enough to launch many seekers on their spiritual journey. They have become soul searchers—seeking after something that they often couldn’t name. On that quest they have looked for and found (and were found) by the teachers, ideas, and situations that were there to give them their openings-of-the-way.
Life Plan in Essence
Those “openings” involved the realizations that:
1) People, as souls, have always been in-formed by a Life Plan, present from their very beginnings;
2) because they had helped to formulate it in the first place, their Life Plan has always been known by them, but not consciously;
3) spiritual evolution (the purpose of the Life Plan) required that their repeatedly reincarnating emotional body consciousness energies would in-form what and who they were as “animal” souls;
4) an intense, healing involvement with those energies, would transmute them into greater humanness;
5) this, in turn, would bring those seekers into a better knowing of their Life Plan and, thereby, into a higher level of spiritual evolution; and
6) this was why the soul searchers had chosen to be born now.
Frank McCourt
To illustrate this process, these ideas can be applied to Frank McCourt, the author of Angela’s Ashes and its sequels. The writing has been described as “luminous.” And it is. It carries a glowing undercurrent that constantly tells us that the Spirit can be in action even in the most unspeakable conditions, because they are part of a Life Plan.
[If you haven’t read McCourt’s books, you probably should before continuing, because this is not a book review. It’s a metaphysical discussion about one person’s spiritual evolution and what his life could teach us. Judging by the immense response to his autobiographical memoirs, they likely inspired a considerable number of soul searchers.]
Frank’s Formative Years, Stage One
From his conception (in a casual coupling that brought about his parents’ forced marriage) until his late teens, Frank was immersed in physical, emotional, and intellectual impoverishment. Abusive beliefs and substance addictions prevailed in both his home and his immediate slum culture. As a result, Frank’s emotional consciousness energies could be described as essentially destructive—especially of himself. Then, why was his life so inspiring?
He had been born to actualize an amazing Life Plan.
And he did.
Frank’s Parents
Right from the beginning, the parents he had chosen for this lifetime and who shaped his formative years were, despite all appearances to the contrary, spiritually guided.
Although Frank’s mother, Angela, was uneducated and unskilled (she was just a girl herself when she birthed him), she had survival (root chakra) energies that for at least his first 12 years were sufficient to maintain him and his surviving siblings. Her struggles to feed, clothe, and educate her children and to foster their moral values were truly heroic.
Although the succession of “homes” that his mother could provide during those years would become increasingly uninhabitable yet, for Frank, they were magical places. And Angela was always there for him. Her courage, determination, persistence, hopefulness, and inner strength (“toughness”) were immense, Spirit-generated qualities. Thus, despite the many ways in which she became beaten down, Angela was exactly the mother necessary for the formative years segment of Frank McCourt’s Life Plan.
And Frank’s father, Malachy, who could be described as a hopeless drunk, faithless husband and utterly irresponsible father, also provided an essential segment of that Plan. On the one hand, his actions forced Frank to fall back on his own great strengths; mainly courage, willpower, endurance, and humor. At the same time, profligate Malachy inadvertently ensured that his son would receive assistance from a variety of people, including relatives, religious leaders and neighbors, who taught him by fair means and foul.
On the other hand, his father gave Frank the gift of an Irish heritage that overflowed with stories about mythological heroes told in the language of magical and wonderful adventures. It was a glorious inheritance that could be deemed an amazing spiritual gift, despite being bestowed only during periods of drunken ranting and weeping.
Frank’s Animal Soul Chakras
Frank’s Life Plan had also provided him with root, sacral, and solar plexus chakras that were much more evolved than those of most of the people around him. In his formative years, this advantage was indicated by his incredible stamina and the survival skills that helped him to “bounce back.” In short, those chakras were huge spiritual gifts that helped to prevent Frank from being beaten down.
Herein was also an indication of Frank’s own inherent spirituality, one that gave him the “angel on the seventh step” of his squalid childhood home. That angel augmented the love that he received even from those who appeared to be loveless. And slowly there developed in him another great love that drove him to read voraciously, because he “wanted to know everything about everything.”
Yet, this was a far-from-obvious spiritual presence. Indeed, Frank often barely made it until he got to be 18 years old. At that point, he was without either formal schooling (he had dropped out at age 12) or contact with his parents. By then, Angela had collapsed into illness and hopeless addictions. Malachy had long-since vanished.
And all Frank “knew” was that he had to escape to the United States. How he accomplished that by age 19 is yet another indication of a Life Plan orchestrated by the Spirit.
Frank’s Formative Years, Stage Two
For the next five years, the forces swirling around Frank almost swept him away. Culturally and psychologically unprepared for living in the United States, he struggled to make his way. It was especially difficult to earn enough to support himself and to scrape together a few dollars to send back to his mother and remaining siblings. Yet even in the blackest days, there was help from the Spirit in the form of people and situations that entered his life.
When Frank was 25, his greatest opportunity came in the form of a war. Despite his extremely poor eyesight (he had suffered debilitating eye infections in early childhood), Frank was drafted into the U.S. army and sent to Korea. There he worked in an office and rose to the rank of corporal. It was a blessing. His service entitled him to receive funds for an education under the G.I. Bill. Here again was assistance from the Spirit! And there was more…
Despite his lack of even elementary education, Frank was accepted into New York University, where he earned a teaching degree. Here, at last, was a turning point in his Life Plan into something better and bigger. It was…but it wasn’t.
There were 15 more years of intense emotional struggles. During this time, Frank kept trying to find his niche, while he kept losing his footing. He was an unconventional teacher (little wonder, given his early formative years!) who frequently ran afoul of his supervisors and was dismissed. And, by his own admission, he was driven by feelings of inadequacy that often left him totally unable to deal with his life, especially with his students.
What was in-forming Frank has been described as a “poverty consciousness.” It’s a fear-based orientation towards life that focuses on lack and limitation: the often overwhelming energies of an emotional body consciousness that deeply expresses as feelings of being beaten-up and beaten-down.
This consciousness was also evident in Frank’s marriage to a woman with whom he was completely incompatible and in his alcoholic tendencies that emulated his father. But even here there were spiritual blessings shifting him. In short, he was being healed into humanness.
He fathered his beloved daughter, Maggie, named after his only sister, dead in infancy. And he started to bring forth his inherent story-telling abilities; a rebirthing (but in a different form) of the magical stories that Malachy had given to him in his childhood.
Thus, Frank’s own fullness of being was emerging. An unconventional teacher began finding his voice and his teaching became both creative and evocative. His students started to love him, and he them. Soon, he obtained a position in an upper echelon New York school, whose administrators trusted and appreciated his gifts. And his enthusiastic students filled every class to overflowing. Having started, he continued to actualize his inner abundance—the spiritual gifts that made him a “Teacher Man.”
Twenty-one years later, this segment of Frank McCourt’s Life Plan was complete. Then, he left behind his students and some other aspects of his biography. And he went on to write what have been regarded as masterpieces. Indeed, he has been credited with inventing a new genre of writing.
What else but the Spirit could have made this possible?
Yet, the question also arises; did Frank realize that he had been living a Spirit-guided Life Plan?
And the answer is “how many people, even soul searchers, really do?” For Frank, it was “doggedness” that had kept him trying and moving forward. But is not doggedness often the way the Spirit works in, as, and through people?
And was not writing and publishing his memoirs the grand culmination of his Life Plan? Indeed, one reviewer suggested that he had produced “a tale of redemption in which storytelling is the source of salvation.”
Frank McCourt put it this way: “find what you love and do it”—truly an amazing Life Plan!
Berenice Andrews is a shamanic teacher/healer and a regular contributor to this magazine. To explore the ideas presented above in greater detail, please refer to her articles in back issues of Transformation Magazine and to her book: Rebirthing Into Androgyny: Your Quest for Wholeness…And Afterward. If you are interested in becoming her student, see her website: thestonecircleclassroom.com.