Andrew's Story

Sometimes even the briefest of encounters lead up to something amazing. It was a beautiful sunny day as I was giving my friend a tour of my college campus. For some reason he wanted to be spontaneous and started asking random people if they'd want to trade shirts with him. I was intrigued by the idea and how most people thought he was crazy for asking. Yet one individual wearing a tie-die shirt decided to take him up on the offer. This is how I met Andrew Accornero.

His dream is to be completely free from his internal world and achieve complete acceptance of the self. Like most men, he just wants to live a simple and quiet life: married, with two kids (a boy and a girl), and working as a counselor somewhere in a capacity he's yet to discover. Although he struggles to see reality and and himself clearly, he envisions as described in the books of Isaiah 65:17-25 and Revelation 21-22:5: a world without war war, death, and striving.  

Andrew, a deeply religious man, would sum up his core philosophy as follows: "you don't have to do anything". This came to him while he would attend a Tuesday night worship service called "The 242" during his Freshman year at Western Washington University. 

"One night, while experiencing some intense internal turmoil, I mentally cried out, 'WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO?!?' Essentially, asking God what I have to do in order to be with Him. A voice, to this day I believe was God, gently replied, "You don't have to DO anything," causing me to collapse into my chair with tears rushing down my cheeks. This experience has been monumental in my spiritual development as it has become a reoccurring theme during all my spiritual disciplines and even bleeds into my daily life of dishes, eating, and work."

Upon this realization, there were two major experiences later on that have influenced his perspective today.

The most intense experience of his life took place during his junior year of college. For a while he had been experiencing "what could be called a psychotic break, a schizophrenic episode, or demonic voices on a daily basis". With all of his friends graduating before him and a recent breakup, he felt completely alone on the deepest of levels. This was accompanied by an intense intellectual search for God. 

"I wanted to KNOW who God was. Because of this, I was barely sleeping three hours a night, forgetting to eat as well, scouring ancient texts and the writings of famous religious figures. It only made me more confused on where to look. All of this, along with contracting Mononucleosis and Strep Throat definitely added to the breakdown. It had gotten to the point where I wanted so badly for everything to end. I had no idea what was going on except that I wanted to find God. My seeking increased my stress tenfold and most likely added to my mental woes."

It was during an English class that he defiantly wrote in his notebook to God, "If you died to save me, then save me!", demanding that God do what everyone in his past had told him was true. On his walk home, he experienced auditory voices screaming at me him. Having collapsed on my bed, he decided he wouldn't move until he died. 

"Right after doing this, a very calm and quiet voice spoke into what I have termed the internal silence with a power much greater than the loud and angry external voices. This voice said, 'Go to Ekklesia...*pause*...something crazy will happen'. This voice was the same voice I had heard two years previous at The 242. Because I had decided my life didn't matter anymore, I decided to do what the voice suggested. I ended up going to Ekklesia, a worship service in downtown Bellingham.

After walking in the doors and positioning myself in the back, the music began. The first word spoken by the lead singer, "Jesus", sent me into violent convulsions as the voices got unbearably loud. I shakily stumbled towards the back room screaming, 'MAKE THEM STOP, MAKE THEM STOP' as I threw myself into the Pastors' hands. All the while 'seeing' a darkness above me deeper than anything I had ever seen. It was angry. So angry. The voices were scared of it. I was scared of it. It was terrifying. At this point the voices took on form as small black 'beings'. Every cell in my body was burning, everything was burning. This burning, while it hurt, it felt like it was 'knowing' me, intimately. I 'saw' fire below and on all sides with the darkness still above me.

As this was happening, the Pastor was praying the name of Jesus over me, and my physiology started to change, what had begun as burning changed to vibrations. Every cell hummed starting near my pelvis. The voices didn't want him to continue, they got louder and louder. It felt like my head was going to explode as the the burning moved up towards my head. As the burning rose, I began to see a white sphere move into the darkness. It started absorbing the anger of the darkness and the voices got louder still. The voices screamed for it to STOP."

At this point, he had been identifying with those voices and was sure they were part of his consciousness. When he opened his mouth he was convinced he was going to say, "STOP", but what came out of my mouth was, "I want you Jesus. I want you Jesus". As he said this the voices and their respective forms burned away, the burning shot out of the crown of my head, and his entire body "vibrated with the most intense energy" he has ever felt for hours afterwards. Imagine a bad trip on LSD, but more intense. That's how it felt to him. 

The second most life-changing experience of his life occurred in August 2015. In "The Gospel of John", the author shares a story of Jesus talking about rivers of living water that flow out of him and if anyone thirsts, they should come to him and drink. He wanted to experience what he was talking about, so he prayed for two weeks straight about nothing else. 

"I was sure he was going to give me an experience of that reality. One night about two weeks later in Bellingham, I sat at the foot of my bed and prayed. In an instant I was caught up into a room filled with light. It was perfectly square and intensely bright, but rather than blinding it was illuminating. It felt as if I was surrounded by a person yet at the same time it was all happening inside me.

I was sure, that in that presence, anything I asked I would receive. Nothing was impossible there. Rather than fill that space of light with many words, I remember saying "thank you, thank you, thank you". I honestly don't remember what else I said during that experience but I do remember that everything seemed to be happening extremely slow. I was hyper-aware of my arms and legs and the words that left my mouth seemed to be filled with the very same presence."

He learned two things from these experiences:  
1) "it is better to be known than to know"
2) We can all attain a state of complete gratitude even if, like him, it is something we struggle with
   
He practices something called "Interactive Gratitude", where at the end of the day you silently thank Jesus for specific events or feelings that arise during the day and listen to his responses. 

For example: 
You: "Jesus, thank you for that woman who came into my store today. She made me feel so loved."
Jesus: "You're welcome. I brought her to your store for this very reason, that you would feel loved."

If he could give some advice to anyone struggling to find their own path, he echoed a story from the life of Rabia al-Basri:

"One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a pot of fire in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said, 'I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to Allah. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of Allah.'"

In other words: live life, be open to whatever comes to you, and learn to let go of all attachment to the self. To not destroy the self or seek to escape it, but to let it go, "completely absorbed in the love of the creation and through it the Creator Himself". 

Despite having briefly met that day I felt connected and drawn to him as if we had already known each other and since then have stayed in touch. A few years later we're both writing our own blogs in order to further our growth and do what only we can do. It's interesting how life works out sometimes, yeah?

I encourage everyone to check out his blog to better understand his point of view and learn from what he has come to find from his experiences. Through it, he puts into practice "the art of being known", where he can share my personal thoughts, ideas, emotions, and about his past. Like me, it's his way of sharing to the world while exploring himself through writing for anyone to come and see (and hopefully gain something from).

We all have something to share from our life. What's your story?

                                                                                                                  Peace

"The End of the World" - artwork done by Andrew himself.