Month: August 2019

Saying Yes to Life

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger

Our minds have an annoying habit of continually warning us to watch out, be careful, stand back, or say no to any new situation. Perhaps left over from prehistoric times when humans often encountered oversized predatory beasts outside the safety of their caves. Not so helpful today though. Certainly there are things to be concerned or cautious about, but not every choice we make is fraught with danger. Over-cautiousness keeps us frozen in fear and inertia.

In his book The Surrender Experiment, Michael Singer writes about his decision to ignore his mind’s constant badgering and instead say yes to whatever life presented him with every day. Refusing to pay attention to negative mental opinions and fears took him on an incredible adventure of openhearted, expansive living. Perhaps this is exactly what we are all being called to do at this time on the planet: say yes to life instead of no. That is the next stage in our evolution.

When I read Michael’s book again recently, I was confronted with my own mental no’s, the closed doors in my mind that were locked with negative thoughts. In particular, about where I had moved a year ago, Florida. After a dear friend moved away last January, I felt so sad that I began to be hypercritical of aspects of life here: the car culture, strip malls, gun shows, red tide. The list got longer each day. What I initially viewed as an incredibly beautiful paradise I now found never-ending fault with. Until The Surrender Experiment jolted me into the realization of my own negativity. How could anything positive be experienced in my life if I spent every moment focused on what was wrong?

It was a wake-up call to remember who I am at the soul level (love) and why I am here. I didn’t come to this Earth to complain and criticize. I want to live my life saying yes, not no. In truth, life is how you frame it. Our lives our filled with challenges as well as celebrations. When you pause, take a deep breath, and remember to be grateful for everything in your life, it can shift you energetically. Gratitude (an inner Yes!) raises your vibration—and the vibration of whomever you come in contact with. Together you see possibilities instead of obstacles.

That energy will positively affect everyone in your life. A heartfelt smile and kind word can be the greatest gift of all for someone who is having a hard day. When you wake each morning and allow your heart, not your head, to lead the way, then you experience life’s wonders. If you let your mind constantly repeat warnings and tell you what is wrong with the world, then you are living in a prison and perpetuating negativity. Instead, break the lock. You can be free of your inner no’s by seeing them for what they are—the mind’s way of trying to protect you and control every unknown situation.

As soon as you recognize that and choose another way of seeing life, those thoughts will lose their power. They will just be passing blips in consciousness that you don’t have to pay attention to or impose on others (unless, of course, there is a large beast outside your door!). Instead, you can choose to say yes to the mystery and magic of each moment. Nothing is certain, but that is okay. I’ve found that the greatest surprises, joys, and connections await on the other side of the mind’s chattering.

Woodstock and Its Legacy

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger

Fifty years ago, in August 1969, nearly a half million young people gathered on a farm in rural New York for “three days of peace and music.” Contrary to warnings about how it would all go wrong, peace and music are exactly what occurred. In spite of the huge crowds, rain, mud, and countless challenges, love and community prevailed. The impact of that peaceful spirit was felt across the country and around the world. Woodstock Nation, whether you were there in person or not, defined a generation. Its legacy continues today.

In California, where I had moved from the Midwest, I was living out my own flower-child dreams in the late 1960s. The counterculture’s vision of peace, love, and flower power was everywhere, and the energy of Woodstock and Haight-Asbury linked both coasts. The music events and peace demonstrations I went to in San Francisco had a very similar high vibration. When I look at film of the Woodstock festival now, I feel it all again. So many iconic moments: Joan Baez’s unmistakable voice ringing out over the hillside, “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night…” Sly and the Family Stone singing “Wanna take you higher,” echoed by half a million people. And Richie Havens opening the festival with “Freedom”—a perfect description of the greater message of Woodstock.

In the many years since then, that message has been carried forward in the hearts of those who attended as well as those who read or heard about it. Woodstock showed that one generation’s dream of freedom, peace, love, and community is possible. It was made real at Woodstock. And it has continued to live in the consciousness of subsequent generations in spite of increasing challenges.

War, racism, and violence were predominant issues in the United States in the 1960s, and we continue to face them today. As racial hatred of immigrants, gun violence, and destruction of the environment escalate, the voices calling out for radical change also grow. More and more individuals and groups are speaking out for peace, social justice, diversity, and connection through community. Somewhere in the collective consciousness, we know it can be different. We remember Woodstock, despite many efforts over the years to dismiss it as a childish unrealistic dream that no longer exists.

The Woodstock legacy does exist. Every time someone speaks up for peace and freedom or acts with loving kindness, the dream is revived, and the memory is awakened. If complete strangers can love their neighbors—the people sitting right next to them in very crowded conditions—for several days, then we can love our local and global neighbors in the same way, for even longer periods of time. It takes open hearts and open minds to reach that critical mass. And that is the transformation that is now taking place beneath the turbulence of a world in transition.

If the Age of Aquarius first dawned in the 1960s, then its emergence continues today, and its full flowering is yet to come. At some point, the prophecy of universal peace and love will come to pass. You and I are here to assist in that birth. Woodstock was just the beginning.

You Can’t GPS God

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger
If you held a compass in your hand with the intention of locating God, you would see the needle spin in all directions. The GPS in your car could not come up with an exact position for God in its system either. That’s because (of course) God is everywhere at the same time. Its physical form in this dimension is us, our human bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, trees, birds, insects, fish, seashells, stones, etc.

From the nonphysical perspective, God is an experience not a visible object. On Earth, the experience of God is love. And love has no form, no language, no location. If you deepen your awareness of divine connection, you come to realize that you are always held in a love beyond any words to describe it. Peace fills your being and Presence fills your consciousness. I have been there. It’s a place to which I am always longing to return. But there is no compass or GPS to guide you to God. Only in the process of living and letting go do you suddenly turn up in that spaceless space that defies description.

Surrender, the message always reappears. As long as you hold on and try to make something happen and try with all your might to understand, you will spin in circles, like a malfunctioning compass. Control is an illusion that catches us all in its tangled web as we live our lives. Only when we open our hands and hearts completely, does the web disappear as if by magic. You and I have always been free. Our souls have always known the way back to God. The truth is that the soul is God, a living reminder from whence we came. So when we remember to align with it, we are already home.

Each morning, as soon as I get up, I take a 2-mile walk on a nearby nature trail. Some mornings I am immediately aware of God’s presence. A mockingbird singing its delightful medley of birdsongs. A snowy egret fishing along the edge of the lake. Red hibiscus flowers blooming. Love fills my heart. Other mornings, I am not fully awake—literally. I begin walking, only half-aware. Suddenly, beams of light radiate from the rising sun across my path. I am washed in a sea of golden light, and all my senses are wide-awake and smiling (if senses can smile, then mine definitely are!). I stop and stand in the sunlight, eyes closed, and the stillness at my core fills me. I am completely at peace, one with my soul.

Divine immersion. It can come upon you at any time. It can fill you for a moment, for an hour, for days, or for a lifetime. The secret, of course, is that it is always there, within you. When you surrender to the experience right in front of you, your awareness expands to include your soul’s presence. Sunlight or birdsong can open the door to this expansion. Consciously breathing and focusing on the peace that lives within you also opens the door. I find that if I pause, take a deep breath, and center myself in the inner stillness, everything around me becomes part of it. Even sound itself is one with that stillness. And therein is the experience of God, or the Divine. No “global position,” no form—just being itself.