by Berenice Andrews
AAA from the Outside
During a friendship of over 60 years, my cousin Beverly and I have shared some amazing life experiences, and they have accumulated into a rich history. When I look back on those years, I can see and relish the development of both rich memories and a life plan that was to be given to each of us. Here it was, Spirit-in-action providing all that was really necessary.
One especially memorable moment came when we were very young mothers, whose children—my twin daughters, age 2, and her two daughters and son, ages 5, 4, and 3—had enjoyed a wonderful late Easter weekend together at Beverly and her husband Howard’s farm. It was (and still is) a country estate complete with farm animals, huge barn and farmhouse (built in 1878), acres of playing space and a small lake where children could safely splash.
It had been a farm-filled weekend. With the girls tucked safely in the back seat, along with the dog, my husband and I were driving home at dusk. As we rounded the curve, a doe, heavy with her unborn fawn, leaped into our path. She almost made it, but her hoof struck the hood of the car and she went down. Damage to the car stalled the engine, but left us intact.
Within moments, a farmer came rushing to the scene and immediately tried to save the unborn fawn. Despite a Caesarian section, both animals died, and I will never forget the grief on that man’s face. Meanwhile, his wife had called AAA. How relieved I was that we had signed up for the service and that it was available at such a time and place! We were towed to the nearest service station, where my brother-in-law was waiting to rescue us.
And we finally got home. I can still clearly relive the mixed feelings of thankfulness for our own safety and deep sadness for the events of that evening. Every time I do, I feel deep gratitude for AAA and how well we were treated.
That “outside help” that many of us take so much for granted seems to have become part of our ordinary modern life. Still, many drive around without roadside assistance and, when a crisis hits, they respond with deep uncertainty, shifting into fear and then survival mode.
Meanwhile, many decades after that night, my cousin and I have maintained a close and loving friendship. Yet we have made our life’s journey quite differently. She stayed on the farm and raised all of her children, while I went down the road of deep self-exploration.
AAA on the Inside
On that inner journey, I discovered AAA on the inside, which is a way of seeing how Spirit-in-Action has been orchestrating my life plan and constantly showing me my path. It is the slow recognition that, as spiritual seekers, we need to acknowledge, allow and accept.
1. Acknowledging. I began to see that I was being fed/nourished. First were my energies of cognition; I began to put better words to the reality that was both in me and around me. During this process, there came an increasing awareness that there was a spiritual undercurrent always present. It became such a reality that it provided an environment for what was unfolding inside me. As this continued, I was able to go deeper within myself and to understand better the memories that I carried and why they were there. As that process went on, there was an increasing realization that I had grown out of being a person making her way on a very small planet and working hard just to survive. In short, I was becoming a multidimensional being.
When my “work” of acknowledging progressed, I began to realize that intelligence was only part of a very big story. The other part was heart. It’s a piece of us that we seldom find without some help (especially in Western culture). It’s the part that helps us find wisdom. And so along came the combination of “brain mind” and “heart mind” as part of the entire expanding journey of Acknowledgement.
2. Acceptance. The next part of “AAA” came along slightly later, and it was acceptance. In that unfolding, Acceptance became a combination of intent and trust. There came the slow awareness of the power of the human emotional body. It’s the part of us that comes from past lives, and we come into this lifetime with a life plan to deal with it. But we have to choose to do so. Sometimes that does not happen. Yet on the path of “AAA,” that emotional body “work” requires a lot of attention.
When I started practicing trust, I discovered that there were no accidents, that—despite my reluctance to go where Spirit was guiding me—I was becoming more aware, not only of what was in me, but of what was around me. At that point, there came the next teaching.
3. Allow. With increasing clarity I learned to Allow the power of my third eye and its ability to see with trust. The result was that I realized that things can happen without my being in control. As this type of allowing went on, I was increasingly able to see that Spirit at work was working in me, as me and through me.
With that kind of realization, I was better able to tune into what the way showers of the past had been teaching for centuries. The lesson is that by allowing a life plan to express, I could walk even a difficult path with both confidence and joy.
In Reflection
As an octogenarian, I can look back on an amazing adventure that seemed pretty haphazard at times when it was unfolding. But from this perspective, I can clearly see an undercurrent of pre-planning. It was part of a divine plan that each one of us has as a gift in the ongoing development of life, and mine has been particularly interesting!
In this 21st century, there are more people than ever, especially in this Western world, who are beginning to realize that prosperity means more than just having a nice place to live and lots of good things to own. In the context of “New Thought” there have been centuries of preparation that some of us can see culminating in a somewhat chaotic world. [As an aside: We can even start to understand what Jesus might have meant when he told people that his teachings would bring chaos because they would create an an upheaval of centuries of established comfortable beliefs. Well, he was right.]
There is nothing like living through the experience of “AAA” to force a person into becoming somewhat of a paradox. That’s what happened to me. Still a work in progress, I am probably becoming the creative being that was my destiny from the beginning.
Berenice Andrews is a shamanic teacher/healer. For more details about the healing practices mentioned above, see her book Rebirthing Into Androgyny: Your Quest for Wholeness…And Afterward. See also her articles “Finding Your True Self: A (Sort of) Socratic Dialog,” September, 2014, and “Understanding the Human Energy Being,” June, July and August, 2015 in Transformation Magazine. If you are interested in reading more and/or becoming her student, see her web site: thestonecircleclassroom.com.