Category: Inner peace

Let Life Live You

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
There’s a refrigerator magnet I’ve seen for sale in some stores that reads: “You make plans. God laughs.” I love that reminder to let go and allow life to unfold instead of constantly struggling to control it. It’s a reminder I need quite often, as most of us do, I would guess. Our educational institutions teach us very early that working hard and trying are rewardable attributes. “Going with the flow” or using intuitive insight to guide daily activities is just not acceptable behavior within a system geared to the future productivity of adults-in-the-making. In first grade, we even have “Think and Do” workbooks to teach us how to achieve control over our classroom studies. So, by the time we reach adulthood, we are thoroughly conditioned to think a lot and do a lot. We make “To Do” lists every day and try hard to keep life handleable. Never really works, does it?

Life has a way of being messy and out of our control. Plans are continually disrupted by the unexpected in one form or another. What if we could rewind our lives back to first grade and choose a different handbook for life, one called “Pause and Reflect” or “Breathe and Be”? Not completely impossible, if we think of time, and our selves, as infinitely flexible. We can choose to respond differently now and break the old conditioning with conscious awareness. What if you allow life to live you, rather than trying to make life play by your rules?

Lately, I have noticed that I am “allowing” with greater frequency. I watch my life take shape each day as both an observer and a participant. This means that my “soul as witness” is very much a part of my consciousness. From that perspective, I see how “I” fit into what is unfolding. If I look at everything as a divinely orchestrated stream of events, then my own place in it just seems to emerge organically. I don’t have to plan every detail ahead of time; I just respond with awareness to what is before me. I allow life to be a mystery that is opening up all around me. I don’t have to solve it; I just have to experience it. And in truth, that’s all I can ever do. Control is an illusion. We want to believe we have some control because we are frightened of the unknown.

But nothing is known for certain in our universe. Native Americans call it “the Great Mystery” for good reason. Yesterday’s “truths” are pushed aside by today’s “truths,” and tomorrow will debunk them all. What if we could live peacefully with that constant flux, letting every day be a mystery to step into with anticipation and excitement, as though we had front-row seats to a wonderfully innovative new play or film? What if we looked at our lives from that perspective, as both actors and audience? And God as improv coach.

It’s called surrender, a spiritual concept hard to swallow for most people. Yet, if we are to find peace, within ourselves and with one another, perhaps it is something we should consider. It’s not an instant solution to the challenges we all face; it takes practice, surrendering over and over. Still, the more I let go, the more I experience a profound freedom and calm. When you let life live you each day, you can gratefully set aside the endless list of tasks and just be present for it all.

Spring Forward: Defrosting in Boston

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

Spring is officially here, but in the Boston area, we are still defrosting. After a record-breaking winter of more than nine feet of snow (most within a month’s time), coupled with bone-chilling temperatures, we can hardly believe that the frozen tundra outside our doors has finally disappeared. This winter has been a lesson in accepting everything, especially Mother Nature’s unpredictable extremes. Again and again in life, we are called to navigate unexpected blizzards and ice storms—inner and outer, human and environmental. The seasonal weather variations teach us to let go of expectation and just live with what is. If we struggle, we suffer. If we learn to face each moment with acceptance, we can live in peace and equanimity.

In addition, each season serves a purpose. In winter, the weather can shut everything down, and we are often forced to stay inside. Sometimes inactivity, the restorative pause, is necessary. In fact, it always is. (Animals hibernate; perennials die to the ground.) It doesn’t always feel good or “right” to us. We think we should be doing something, anything, to move forward, progress. Yet non-doing is crucial to nature’s, and our, cycles of life. The slowing down and dying away in autumn and winter allow for the rebirth and resurgence in spring. In the midst of the expansiveness and warmth of summer, we forget that those days of growth and flowering occur because of the days of rest and restoration that winter insists all living beings observe.

That includes humans. Within the stillness and solitude of a heavy all-day snowfall, with work cancelled, we can find a kind of inner peace as we gaze at the falling snow from our windows. Later, of course, we have to shovel that snow! But afterward we can drink hot chocolate and rest again for a while. Winter moderates our activities for us. If we resent the orchestration, we spend the winter angry and cold. If we allow for nature’s wild variations and interruptions, we are less stressed and can look forward to spring with a rested outlook.

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

This past winter has been a real challenge for me. My soul knows the wisdom of cycles of rest and renewal, but my mind forgets at times during the seemingly endless months of icy cold and early darkness. As the days gradually lengthen and the light fills my consciousness each morning, I feel my physical body reaching out to spring, yearning for warm air, green trees, and blooming flowers. And when they finally appear, I am filled with such intense gratitude—especially this year! The colors seem extraordinarily vibrant, almost unreal, after so many days of winter grays and whites. Perhaps this is another gift that the change of seasons brings: deep appreciation for the beauty of rebirth in nature.

We live on a planet of polarities. Even the warmer climates have their own seasonal changes. When I lived in California, winter brought weeks of rain. Now, of course, the people there are living with a severe drought. The extremes of life on Earth are part of the experience of being alive. We came here for this roller coaster ride. If everything were always the same, we would not be stimulated to grow and evolve as human be-ings–or to dig deep and find the blessing and miracle in every single remarkable moment we are alive.

 

In Silence…

Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

We humans express our selves and our lives in words, language, and sound. It is a learned process, reinforced with every generation. We talk our way through each day, sometimes clamoring to be heard above the general din of daily life that seems to have increased over time. Not only human voices but cars, buses, planes, media, and machinery (leaf blowers, snow blowers, etc.) add to the mix that becomes the “noise” we have learned to acclimate ourselves to—more or less. But at what cost? Today, stillness and complete silence often seem like the dream of a long-gone world. Yet, it is only in silence that we can hear the voice of spirit within, our own soul’s wisdom and guidance. Without that compass, we flounder through our lives, stumbling along the ego’s path of alternating attachment and avoidance in relation to all things. We are never at peace, always running toward or away from something. Only in stillness and soul connection can we find respite from that hamster wheel of striving and suffering.

Silence has always been important to me. As an only child, I spent long hours outside quietly playing alone or reading books high up in the branches of my favorite climbing tree. School was a place for friends and social connections; home was where I decompressed and communed with my self, although I was too young to even articulate it that way. As an adult, I found work to also be a “social” experience; when I came home, I needed large expanses of quiet time alone to rebalance myself. At some point, I began to meditate to more easily access that inner harmony. Gradually, I discovered that the longer I spent in silence, the more peaceful I became—and the more I carried that inner peace with me everywhere I went in my life.

My partner and I recently made an agreement to remain silent each morning until we finish breakfast. We finally figured out—after more than 30 years together—that this is the most peaceful way to begin the day for each of us. We both feel less distracted and more centered. When I am talking, I am not listening, period—whether to the subtle sounds of nature outside the window at dawn or to my soul’s voice within. Once I spend time in that inner/outer silent space, I can truly listen to others, and to life, with presence and without restless distraction. My partner and I start our days in a much happier, more harmonious frame of mind because we have given ourselves this gift. Even in the frequently noisy external world we all inhabit, it is possible to find ways to bring more quiet, stillness, and calm to our lives—and thus to the lives of others. In silence is the deepest truth, the most profound peace.

 

Racing Mind, Resting Heart

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

So often in our busy lives, we are running from one activity to the next, checking off items on our to-do lists as we go. We can barely keep up with the thoughts that are racing through our overactive thinking minds. But those thoughts are endless; they will run our lives—literally—if we let them. The space that holds those thoughts, however, is open and nonattached (from a Buddhist perspective). If we allow these thoughts, and the inclination to fill our lives with constant busyness, to pass quietly through without grasping and holding them, we can access an entirely different way of being in the world. Spaciousness. Stillness. The resting heart.

The heart is the center of our feelings of love and peace. It also is connected to our soul, which is connected to Spirit. The soul is always at rest, always peaceful in its eternal divine presence within us. When the heart opens completely, the soul’s peace fills it, and it rests. When we drop down into the heart and allow ourselves to open to soulful connection, we too are at rest. The mind’s frantic, repetitive concerns fade to the background, and we can move through the day more peacefully, taking care of what needs to be taken care of but not spinning our mental wheels needlessly. The mind has an important function; it helps us to navigate the logistics of life. But its inclination to overdrive needs balancing by our softer, slower heart and soul.

Modern life, and its adjunct the racing mind, urges us to run. Our heart quietly suggests resting. “Here you will find peace, quiet, home,” it whispers. We can barely hear that whisper at times, but it is there. The key is to attune ourselves to the subtle voice of Spirit that lives within us. Therein lies the higher wisdom and the path to a balanced, fulfilled life—even in the midst of the external world’s frenetic, pressing concerns and demands. The inner voice is so much stronger, ultimately, than the outer shouting that tries to drown it out. It will carry you through life with your health and peaceful center intact. The resting heart soothes the racing mind and helps it to slow down and walk quietly.

Each day is an opportunity to balance head and heart in our lives. They both can live compatibly together if we remember to take a deep breath, pause, and let the mind take its cue from the heart. In my own life, my busy mind is gradually learning to rest in the spaciousness and peace of my heart. And it’s always the process of slowing down, relaxing, and breathing deeply that allows them to come into harmony. It becomes a real-world meditation that interrupts the nonstop frantic pace of daily life and brings me back to center.

 

Life’s Mystery

Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

Some Native Americans use the term “The Great Mystery” to refer to the concept of God or Source energy. It’s such a wonderful usage because within it, humans step back and allow the unknown to be just that—unknown. Many religions spell out the specific attributes of God, the heavenly realm, and its relation to living beings on Earth, including sets of rigid moral codes, laws, and commandments. How much more open-ended is the idea of a mystery that we will never understand with the human mind? Our hearts can experience God or the Divine, but we cannot solve the enigma of existence. Perhaps the greatest wisdom lies in acknowledging that and allowing the Mystery to live within and through us without trying to understand it.

To live in alignment with this mystery involves dissolving identification with thoughts and ideas; then awareness flows freely without conceptual distortion. Buddha mind. Baby mind. The innocent eye. At the beginning of life, we see the world this way—pure perception with no distorting language filters. Toward the end of our lives, words and memories may begin to fall away as we prepare to return to the oneness of pure divine consciousness, in which human language plays no part. In the middle years, we struggle to understand the seeming contradictions and unfairness of life—and the inevitability of death.

Not all of us are driven to figure out the meaning of life and death. I am one of those who has always tried to do so, from early childhood on. Only in recent years have I found my spiritual journey less burdened by inquiry and more open to possibility. This past summer, in particular, I began to let go into “not knowing.” This came out of a weeklong program with Panache Desai in which he challenged me to drop my questions and live from a place of experiencing instead of trying to understand everything. For someone who has perpetually had cosmic questions spinning around in her head, this was indeed difficult, even painful. Finally, though, in the weeks after the program, something in me opened to not knowing as the most peaceful way to go through my daily life. Basically, I surrendered to the Mystery.

I have surrendered in the past, of course, but there are layers to letting go, and humans are never finished with it. We have to keep being reminded, again and again: Relax your fingers; stop clutching. Relax the mind; stop questing. The wider, higher perspective opens up when we allow everything to unfold with awe and wonderment instead of “What’s going on? Why is this happening? How can I change it?” The “control” trap keeps us stuck on a hamster wheel of trying/failing/trying again. Ultimately, surrendering to mystery may be the wisest and least painful path to take in life. Human existence can be miraculous or a curse. We can suffer or we can celebrate. Celebration involves embracing everything, the sadness as well as the joy. We don’t know the meaning or the outcome, but we can fully experience every incredible moment of the journey.