Category: Inner peace

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.

Another Day in Paradise

Photograph © Copyright 2018 Peggy Kornegger

When I used to take walks at my favorite nature sanctuary, Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I often thought to myself, “This is paradise,” as I gazed up at the towering oak and maple trees and listened to the varied birdsongs. Now that I live in Florida, I find myself feeling much the same way. Each morning after sunrise, I walk the nature trail that encircles the perimeter of the community where we live, enjoying the palm trees and flowering bushes and the calls of birds that make Florida home. This morning at the end of my walk, another walker passed me, said “Good morning,” and commented, “Another day in paradise.” I laughed and agreed with him. Most people I pass on my walks make some similar comment about the beauty of the day.

I know the stereotype of tropical climes like Florida is a paradise with warm weather and easier day-to-day living. That vision is not entirely fantasy, in spite of an extremely challenged ecosystem and ongoing political polarities.* Florida is living its own variation of what is happening in so many places in the U.S. Still, I do see paradise here, as well as up north in Massachusetts. In fact, everywhere. It’s all about how you frame life as you look out at the world around you. If I see only environmental loss and breaks in human connection, I miss the larger picture, which includes the possibility of change and transformation. If I consciously “reboot” to a wider perspective, I see every seemingly divergent detail as sacred and integral to the evolution of life on Earth.

Is “reality” as malleable as all that? Well, to me, it’s more like shifting into seeing the truth behind the facade, the inextinguishable light beneath the tarnish, wear, and tear of human existence. Life can be hard, no doubt about it. But there are always those who seem to be able to perceive hope and possibilities in all people and events. They intuitively understand that everything is part of a greater expansion and growth that we on this planet are now experiencing. Solutions arise out of the problems themselves. Life unfolds on so many levels and in so many uniquely diverse human hearts and souls. Yet at the deepest level, we are all One.

If I open my heart, I see this oneness, and the beauty of it, everywhere I go. It becomes a daily practice. I take a deep breath, as I sit in meditation or walk outdoors, and consciously bring myself back to the peace that lives inside me. From this space, nothing is dissonant or out of place. In spite of broken glass, broken promises, and broken hearts in the world at large, I can feel our collective heart beating as one, reaching out for a common vision that will uplift and sustain us. This is not an impossible dream or an insubstantial, unrealistic desire for change. Whatever is within each of us that keeps us moving forward on our life paths is what makes up that connection—to one another and to something greater.

Photograph © Copyright 2018 Peggy Kornegger

The universe is not an accident. Pause and look carefully, and you can see the intricate interweavings that constitute our lives and our world. The key is to stop periodically, step back, and allow the larger picture to fill your consciousness. This is not something we are taught to do in our society, but sometimes we stumble upon it by accident or through someone else’s help, and it begins to sustain us. I hold to this awareness in my own life in order to remain centered in what some call universal wisdom, or God.

We are not alone and we are not lost. In spite of what seems to be catastrophe and conflict on a global level, something else is occurring. We are evolving and expanding with the universe itself. It is my deep trust in this that helps me to walk through my front door each day and experience paradise, wherever I happen to be. To see paradise in the eyes of those around me and to hear it in their voices. Visible or invisible, we all hold paradise in our hearts; it lives in our souls. We have but to shift our vision slightly to see it everywhere, every day. And live it, going forward.
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*e.g., toxic red tide on the Gulf Coast from pollution flowing out of Lake Okeechobee;
on gun control, immigration, environmental protection, etc.

 

Celebrating Solitude

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger
Even though I’ve been in a couple for 35 years, I love being alone. It’s been a part of my life since childhood. I grew up as an only child on five acres in rural Illinois, where I spent a good portion of my childhood playing outdoors alone (or with my dog) and sitting in trees reading. I don’t ever remember feeling lonely. My parents and I were close, so I was with them a lot too, and I had school friends who came to visit, but at the core of my life was time spent in solitude. It became the peaceful center from which I lived outward into the world. As an adult, I always relied on time alone to come back to myself, away from jobs and social situations. Don’t get me wrong—I loved my friends, but there was a certain point at which I had to step away and be alone. It was like breathing to me.

I have so many memories that involve finding joy in being by myself. One of the most vivid was when I worked for a senator as a student intern in Washington, DC, in college. One lunch hour I wandered around outside the Capitol Building alone and then sat in the sun in a quiet spot where no one else was walking. I can remember having a sudden flash of absolute exhilaration when the thought crossed my mind, “No one else on Earth knows where I am right now.” There was something incredibly exciting about that to a 19-year-old living in a new city, trying out grown-up life on her own. I’ve never forgotten that feeling—of being an alive, independent, free spirit in the world.

When I took up bird-watching many years later, I felt a similar thrill being alone in nature: a magical aura that surrounded a sudden encounter with a migrating bird in a bush or tree. If I were absolutely still and silent, the birds came closer and continued with their bird lives as if I weren’t there. It was a precious gift. There were even times when a wood thrush or warbler would land in a branch close to me and sing its heart out. Some kind of special connection occurred then—a living awareness that passed between us. I treasured those moments. It was perhaps my first conscious experience of the spirit of life that is in all beings.

After I embarked on a spiritual path in my 30s, time spent alone in meditation or contemplation became central to my journey. I found it absolutely key to have those daily periods of solitude in order to connect with my own soul and with God. In solitary silence, “stillness speaks,” as Eckhart Tolle has written. Divine connection is an inner experience that comes only when we set aside all external distractions and open our hearts and souls to something greater, beyond the material world.

These quiet moments are extremely precious to me. They are at the core of my life as a human/spirit on this Earth. Ultimately, too, they bring me closer to those around me. I am fortunate in having a life partner who understands and supports my wish to have alone time. She too needs time to herself. When we come together from our separate solitudes, our connection is even deeper and more loving.

Words are often unnecessary with friends and family who share this kind of connection. Something beyond verbal language is passing between us. We recognize and celebrate one another’s souls when we are together and carry our heart connection with us when we are apart. This is life on Earth at its most expansive and wonderful. To me, time spent alone is an essential part of being human, of being conscious spirit in physical form, which is why we incarnated at this particular time on this particular planet. The world is full of so many distractions. It is only in stepping aside and looking inward that we find the true nature of who we are in this extraordinary universe. Every day I say a prayer of gratitude for the solitude that is a sanctuary of peace in my life.

 

Peace Is Everywhere

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger
Beneath the noisy thoughts in your head, there is peace. Underneath the emotional upset, there is peace. Behind every human action and reaction, there is an unwavering core of peace. It may be hard to perceive at times, but if you take a deep breath and allow everything to just be as it is, you are immediately brought to the peace that always lives within. I have learned the truth of this over time and through experience. That one breath changes everything, and I am centered in absolute stillness and peace, no matter what else is going on around me.

The world we experience every day is full of excitement and drama, all of it compelling. We are here on Earth to immerse ourselves in those diverse experiences and emerge on the other side with new awareness and wisdom. We may not know it consciously, but our souls are guiding us on our earthly journey. It is a journey through the polarities and extremes of life back to the center of all creation, which is infinite peace and oneness, which is God. To know peace in the midst of every experience—chaos or celebration—is to live in alignment with divine Source energy. It is why we are here (and where we came from), all of us in our uniquely diverse lives: to come back home to peace and radiate it out from the core of our being. More and more, we are coming into conscious realization of this extraordinary process and the transformative power it holds.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, antiwar activists used to chant “Peace Now” and “Give Peace a Chance.” (I was there; I remember.) John Lennon wrote: “War is over, if you want it. War is over now.” Beneath the slogans and lyrics was a truth that we have gradually come to see in the years since then: peace is present now, within each of us, and we can live it individually and collectively when we breathe it into the world with conscious awareness. It’s not about forcing anything to happen. It’s about allowing the peace of the universe to fully emerge from our souls and guide our daily lives, moment to moment.

That may sound “woo woo” and weird, but it’s actually grounded in the here and now. When you take a deep breath (which is spirit infusing human form) in the present moment, you align with the silent power of a “peace that surpasses all understanding” and are centered in the ground of all being. It can shift everything in a nanosecond. Within that living breathing inner peace, there is only love, compassion, and connection. Connection to God; connection to our fellow beings on the planet. When we pause and become fully aware of our breathing and the stillness at our core, struggle, judgment, and the need to build walls against everything and everyone falls away, dissolves. War, within and without, is over in that moment of completely conscious loving awareness.

This is where we are now on the planet, moving toward fully embodying that truth, that destiny. I feel it more and more powerfully every day in my own life and in the lives of people around me. But don’t take my word for it. As you move through your day and life starts to “get to you,” pause and take a deep breath, feel the sweet stillness at your center. Gradually you will begin to realize that peace is everywhere; it lives inside each and every one of us.