Category: Inner peace

Unsubscribe and Live Peacefully

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger
“Subscription” once referred mainly to printed magazines and newspapers (“Your subscription is about to expire—please renew”). Now it’s the backbone of online communication. If you ask a question or sign a petition online, you automatically get subscribed to a barrage of ongoing emails. Subscription has become a cyber activity, distanced from anything real or living. We don’t subscribe to, or unsubscribe from, life. It’s just there, always supporting us. We can, however, lose touch with the essential simplicity of life. We can get entrapped in excess minutia—like too many emails.

A few weeks ago, I reached critical overload with the number of non-personal emails flooding my inbox. Political and environmental groups, spiritual programs and teachers, doctors and alternative healthcare practitioners, bookstores and theaters, online businesses. What a waste of time just to delete them multiple times a day! I went through and unsubscribed from virtually everything except a few key ones. At the same time, I decided to cut back on social media, visiting only occasionally. It was a relief. I felt as if I had lifted the heavy weight of contemporary social busyness and distractions off my shoulders. At least one day a week now I don’t even turn on my computer or phone. Wow, what freedom!

In unsubscribing there was also surrender, letting go into the natural flow of daily life, unmanipulated by technology. I was once again the 9-year-old girl who spent summers running through the fields with my dog or sitting up in a tree reading mysteries. Life was rich, full, perfect. It was a simpler time then, both in my life and on the planet. Now we have to filter out unnecessary complexities in order to live a simple life, one dedicated to what’s really important: connection to the spirit within us and all around us.

Spirit has become the focus of my life in recent years. The idea of unsubscribing as surrender somehow fits with that. As my soul’s wisdom moves to the forefront of my consciousness, I make choices that are more in alignment with a loving beingness in the world. Heart more than head. Social media engages the mind for the most part. What we want is to engage the heart, with the mind giving quiet feedback but not dominating. This is the way to balance, to harmony. The heart is directly connected to our soul’s purpose, and when we live a simple heart-centered life, we are living the “why” of our presence on this planet, in this lifetime.

If I remember each day to choose love and appreciation over distraction and dissatisfaction, then I am connected to the natural flow of spirit everywhere in the universe. Even disliking social media or emails can take you to a place of judgment and negativity. The key is to calmly “unsubscribe” from anything that is not positive and uplifting, anything that locks you into busyness instead of beingness. It’s not as hard as it may seem. Allow your computer or cell phone to be an occasional tool for information or connection. Visit now and then, not continuously. Life is not “virtual.” It expresses itself everywhere in extraordinary bursts of color and light. When your awareness expands and your heart opens, life becomes both richer and simpler. Within that is peace—of mind, of body, of soul.

 

A Path with No Steps

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger

If you pick up a magazine or scroll through the internet these days, it’s likely you’ll encounter some kind of self-help article or program that features 4 Steps, 6 Ways, or 7 Secrets to magically make your life “work.” Instant wealth, health, peace of mind, and the perfect soul mate are yours if you just follow the streamlined advice provided. Even experiencing God can be reduced to a checklist of actions or strategies. Like this recent article I ran across online: “How to Find God: The Five Ways.” Really? God? Aren’t we losing something in this pared-down process?

The deepest experiences of life and God can’t be translated into short summation paragraphs. There is no Dummy’s Guide to the Cosmos (or if there is, there shouldn’t be). No fast lane to divine connection or a peaceful life. It is within awareness itself that God and peace are found. And awareness arises from slowing down and being present in each moment. The only action necessary is breathing consciously. When you pause and relax into the slow eternal rhythm of your own breath, you align perfectly with the center of your being, where peace and spirit always reside. And where the answer to every life question you could possibly ask resides.

It’s true that there are wise spiritual teachers who can share their insights and inspire and support you on your life journey. Ultimately, however, we ourselves hold the key to our enlightenment, our own magnificent and unique lives. The light of divine connection and truth shines in our hearts; we just haven’t opened to fully and continuously experiencing it yet. But that day is dawning. In fact, it is already here. We are more ready than we have ever been to recognize and honor our own inner guidance, flowing with infinite possibilities. You can sometimes jump-start your evolution and growth with a self-help agenda or teacher, but going forward, rely on yourself—your soul self—for the full expansive flowering of your life on Earth. Only you can realize and live that completely.

So don’t look outside yourself for ways or steps to find God, peace of mind, or fulfillment in your life. Look within. It can’t be found in a list of how-to tips. It’s encoded in your genes; it lives inside your soul. You have wisdom beyond your wildest dreams at your very core. You came into this life with a blueprint that wordlessly guides you even when you think you have no idea what is going on. It can even take you to self-help articles just to show you that ultimately you know better than anyone else how your life is meant to unfold and how to open your heart to God. Trust your intuition and the spirit that lives within you. That is the path with no steps.

Practice…and Beyond

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger

Remember the old joke about the tourist asking directions in New York? “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, practice, practice.” That answer could also be given to the spiritual question “How do I get to the enlightened state?” Practice—a lifelong commitment to finding peace of mind and God. Your practice becomes your life, and vice versa. And yet it is not until the practice softens and becomes a relaxed inner flowering rather than a rigid outer striving that everything shifts. The virtuoso pianist and the devoted meditator discover the sound and light within them, not on an external stage or altar. Carnegie Hall and enlightenment are not destinations; they are experiences.

Only when we let go of the need to arrive somewhere do we find that what we were looking for existed already, right in front of us. Dorothy traveled over the rainbow to Oz only to realize that “Home” was in the faces of those she loved…and in her own heart. The enlightened state, too, appears to be over some distant rainbow, yet what if it exists inside us? We only have to deepen our awareness to feel its expansive presence. This deepening is the softer sense of practice, the spiritual sense.

Growing up, we are taught that if we practice enough, we will achieve whatever we focus on with intent and purpose. Practice is seen as a repetitive routine that leads to a specific goal, like playing a musical instrument well. This meaning has a certain truth; if we practice anything diligently enough, we can achieve proficiency. But there is a step beyond proficiency that can only be reached by an almost indescribable surrender wherein we become the music (or the meditation) itself. In spirituality, diligent meditating does not necessarily lead to enlightenment. Ultimately we have to let go of trying and open to something greater than ourselves. In this opening, practice falls away, and there is only spirit. The experience and the experiencer are one.

When you come to realize that God is within you, then that awareness literally opens your eyes to the truth of who you are. Beyond practice is grace, in music or in spirituality. You become one with the flow of life, and you begin to flow yourself, whatever you are doing. You see the divine light within you that is reflected in the world around you. In every person and in every thing. This is enlightenment. A state of being, not a state of practicing.

Master musicians and spiritual masters share one attribute: connection. They are connected to something greater than themselves, and that is what lifts them into a state of pure being—oneness with music or oneness with God. This is the future of all of us who were born on the planet at this time. Our destiny is to softly step beyond the edges of practice into a life of awakened presence: spirit embodied in form, fully aware of both our humanity and our divinity. In any given moment, we can shift our awareness into this peaceful space of expansive perception. It’s not as difficult as it may seem. It just takes practice…and then letting go of practice.

The Unbusy Life

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger

When Mary Oliver died last month, I felt I had lost a kindred spirit from this world. Someone who lived a life of deep connection to, and quiet contemplation of, nature’s never-ending miracles. All my life I have been drawn to quiet contemplative moments more than busy social activities. Even as a child, although I loved playing with my friends at school, something in me craved the experiences I had in my own backyard alone with nature.

I grew up an only child on five acres in the Illinois countryside, and I always felt most content outdoors by myself, sometimes reading in the branches of my favorite climbing tree, sometimes sitting in the grass watching ants or birds or clouds in the sky. Mother Nature nurtured my sense of the beautiful and miraculous in the world. In truth, this was my first experience of God. Beyond religious parameters and beyond words. In the silent language of the natural world, I found my spiritual home. And it has never left me.

In my adult life, when I worked at various editorial jobs and became active in feminist groups, I needed time alone in order to feel restored and whole. I took long walks in parks and nature sanctuaries and went on hiking trips to immerse myself in the natural world. And I wrote poetry and prose that arose from that silent inner space. The poet in me was always craving times of quietude and peace. To just be instead of do.

Through the years, I have found those moments of just being absolutely essential and nonnegotiable. They are the deepest form of life enhancement and spiritual connection for me. My sacred temple is nature. My form of prayer is standing with open arms, contemplating the cosmos, in a grain of sand or in a galaxy. Mary Oliver always spoke to my heart when she wrote of her solitary and transcendent experiences in nature. To me, she epitomized being supremely engaged with all aspects of life as she observed the world around her with a loving poet’s eye:

Mary knew the truth of life, what was really meaningful, not superficially so. Her writing, which came from her heart, touched readers’ souls, and many other hearts were awakened through the beauty of her poetry and prose. When I reread her work, I am always uplifted, always validated in my desire to connect deeply with nature on a daily basis, for my need to regularly step away from activities to be “not busy.” To hold within me a holy space where I can just love the world, as is, beautiful in all its exquisite details. Thank you, Mary Oliver, for the gift of your voice and your presence on this Earth.
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In memory of Mary Oliver, 1935-2019

Life’s Essential Truth: Impermanence

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger

Recently, a dear friend told me that he is moving back to California, which he had left two years before for Florida, where we both live now. (This, only a few months after I moved here myself from Massachusetts.) A week later, I received news that a long-time friend in Boston had died of cancer. Hellos and goodbyes fill my life these days. Friends and family passing to and fro in my experience and my memory like vivid but ephemeral spirits. And I myself am moving with the flow of my own life’s journey, loving and letting go again and again.

Through the years, as I live through cycles of beginnings and endings repeatedly, I am discovering that one of the deepest truths in life is impermanence. Everything is born, and everything dies: experiences, thoughts, emotions, flowers, trees, birds, stars—each breath we take and we ourselves. Humans embody impermanence within their very existence here on Earth. We are born and we die, just like everything else we experience within our lifetimes. That can feel like both a curse and a blessing, but it is the basis of our very humanity, our evolution as individual souls.

My own experiences of joy and connection followed by sorrow and seeming loss have over time shown me that it’s all in how you perceive it. And our perceptions are always changing. What remains unchanging is change. Kind of a paradox, but it will guide you to inner peace and acceptance at the deepest level if you allow it to. At least that’s what I am finding. It is what my passage through life has given me, and I am grateful. I am learning, gradually, to let go of attachment to outcomes of any kind. That is freedom; that is how your soul experiences your life.

The idea of impermanence can at first feel frightening, but over the space of a lifetime’s experiences, it begins to feel like the key to all wisdom. Let go of expectations, attachments, plans, wishes, wants, mental machinations and emotional grasping. Let go of everything and just BE in each precious moment, free of everything that holds you to one particular outcome. Experience what is unfolding before you with an open heart and soul. This is what it’s like to live limitless possibility, to “hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour” (William Blake). Many, like Blake, who have traveled this path before us have reached this moment of illumination that takes them beyond one lifetime into the timeless expanse of being, which is soul, which is God. We are here to do the same.

As I live my life, as I grow older year by year, I find that deepening awareness and wisdom rise from my soul like mist in an open field on a summer’s morning. And I see it happening to others all around me. I feel blessed to live at an extraordinary time of collective spiritual expansion and expression, foreseen for millennia. As we come to recognize that we ourselves are God in human form, we realize that we carry divine wisdom within us. When we see the transitory experiences of life as the gifts that they are and receive and release them without attachment, we begin to love each day and everyone in our lives completely and whole-heartedly. We are no longer held back by regret or fear. We are fully present, fully alive. We are living the wisdom of impermanence.