Category: Inner peace

Light

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger

“This is not a journey of understanding; it’s a journey of trust. It’s a journey of surrendering every aspect of you over to the light.”—Panache Desai

My life is so different than it was two years ago, even two months ago. Perhaps not noticeable to others, but distinctly noticeable to me. The intensive spiritual journey that I have been on for almost twenty years (my entire lifetime really) has become more and more expansive, to the point that boundaries often completely vanish from my perception. Limitations, too, are fading to invisibility, and mental preconceptions are rapidly dissolving. This is at least partially due to facing a lifetime fear of infinity that I had always run from (see previous blog post “Free Fall to Infinity”).

What has occurred is an opening around something that had always seemed rock-solid and impenetrable. Thin beams of light began to filter through what had been a frightening gray mass of emotional density locked into my consciousness since I was five years old. I thought I had been accurately perceiving a basic terrifying aspect of life and death: endless eternity. I came to realize that it was my mind, not my soul, that feared infinity. Beneath the mind’s fright, at my core resided profound peace. Experiencing my soul’s infinite peaceful nature, the light-filled universe within, shifted everything for me (with a little help from my friends, Panache Desai and William Blake).

Now, when I look up and sense the infinite cosmos that both the sky and I are part of, I am filled with amazement instead of fear. The very quality of the light has become infinite to me, a translucent golden that is beyond the color spectrum as we now perceive it.  The doors of my perception have opened, and I have experienced the power and beauty of something greater than my own three-dimensional mind. Sounds like a 1960s acid trip, but I assure you it is not.

I believe what is happening is I am opening to the light within me and within all of us, the radiant light that is the living vibrating essence of the cosmos. One by one, and thousands by thousands, worldwide, we are opening to this light now. It is the light of awareness, it is the light of love, it is the light of infinity. Gradually, we are becoming less attached to this physical reality that we were always told was fixed and immutable. We are beginning to see the deeper truths of what many Native Americans referred to as “the Great Mystery.” We cannot understand the secrets of the universe with our minds; we can only feel their sacredness and infinite miraculous nature in our hearts. We can be in continuous awe before the wonders of the world, including our own ephemeral presence on Earth and our eternal presence within the light.

 

Making Space for Spirit

© 2012 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2012 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
People have gone on retreats within various spiritual traditions for hundreds of years. The definition of the verb retreat is to “withdraw” or “move back.” In a spiritual context, an individual usually withdraws from the world and goes within, seeking a deeper connection to self, to spirit, or both. Today, many people go on retreats that provide time and space apart from day-to-day life in order to renew their physical body and inner spirit. Both yoga and meditation are frequently offered for week-long retreats in peaceful locations where participants can relax into being instead of doing.

My first retreat was a 10-day trip to Tulum, Mexico, with Brooke Medicine Eagle and Angeles Arrien in 1997. Fifty of us stayed in palapas (stone structures with thatched roofs) next to the Caribbean and met daily for shamanic journeys and sharing in small groups. We visited Maya temples and also spent 24 hours in silence at the end of the retreat. That day/night was the most powerful part of the trip for me because I felt deeply aligned with something greater than my own life as I walked and sat alone in silent meditation. Upon returning home, I decided I would find a way to include retreats in my life regularly.

Since then, whether on a longer trip to a sacred site outside the United States or more locally at New England centers such as Kripalu, Omega, or Rowe, I have periodically stepped away from my life and gone inward to connect with spirit. Last month, however, my time/space apart took the form of an at-home retreat in combination with one of Panache’s Desai’s online programs. I found that if I formed the intention of “retreat,” I actually didn’t need to leave my home or travel great distances to get away. Instead, I limited social and online activities and spent longer periods of time in meditation and silence. Retreat became an inner place of the soul that I could access any time I took a deep breath, relaxed, and tuned in. The key was making space for that experience.

In our busy, multi-tasking lives, we often run from one activity to another and then fall into bed exhausted. We think we don’t have time for anything else, and certainly not a retreat, of any kind. Yet, it is possible to step back, even for a moment, and experience a quieter, unhurried part of ourselves. Your spirit is always waiting for you to connect with it. Find a quiet corner, close your eyes, breathe deeply, and you are there. The mind will try to keep you spinning along on a high-speed wheel of mental activity, but the breath can sidestep that compulsive tendency. View thoughts as passing clouds in the sky, or passing waves in the ocean, and gradually, with each deep breath, you will be able to rest in the space beyond thought—soul as silent witness.

Of course, the goal is not to abolish thinking entirely (unrealistic for most of us) but to become aware of it. In so doing, you are seamlessly connected to the part of you that is witnessing your life peacefully and without judgment. That experience alone, whether a minute, an hour, or a week, can provide you with a renewed inner spirit and refreshed physical body. Suddenly, the need to rush through every task on your to-do list seems less urgent, and you begin to allow other possibilities to arise. One or two consciously centered deep breaths can make that inner space available. A retreat is as close as your next inhalation. Give it a try, and the edges of your life may begin to expand in all directions. Make space for the infinite within and without, and your spirit will be forever grateful.

Field of Dreams

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
The Republicans hate the Democrats, and the Democrats hate the Republicans. There are divisions within both political parties. The American people blame one side or the other, or they blame the President. Or the immigrants. Someone is always blaming someone else for something. There are real injustices and inequities that need to be addressed and resolved in this country—can’t it be done without hatred and name-calling?

We are living through Judgment Day. Not God’s judgment of us, but our own judgments of one another. What can possibly come of judgment except more judgment? Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we are lost, wandering through the forest of our own separation. There is no wizard or wicked witch or emerald city, and the flying monkeys and munchkins are our brothers and sisters. Close your eyes, click your heals together, and the illusion disappears. There is no place like home, and this planet is our home. This universe is our home. And every person we meet is family.

Can we open our hearts and surrender our judgments to that profound realization? Maybe the key is to look inside ourselves to where we are judging ourselves. Love and acceptance of others begins with loving and accepting our own humanness. What parts of our identity are warring against other parts of our identity, angry and abusive? Are we turning our inner turmoil outward? At the deepest level, our souls see no separation, within or without. All is infinite spirit, existing in spacious loving acceptance. Individuals who have journeyed beyond this lifetime to death and returned to tell about it (Eben Alexander, Anita Moorjani) confirm this truth. Though not in a near-death experience, I too have been to that place of infinite love, without separation. No you or I, just oneness.

Perhaps we are here on Earth to have the experience of separation, realize it, and then consciously return to oneness. Perhaps the tipping point is closer than we think. In times of great fear or disaster (hurricanes, bombings, mass shootings), people drop their otherness and reach out to one another with compassion and love. Isn’t it possible to live like that every day? How many crises do we have to endure before we recognize our common humanity?

The other day, as I was walking down a Boston street on my way to the dentist, I passed a homeless woman holding out a styrofoam cup for change. Her oversize sweatshirt read “Field of Dreams.” I went by her, thought twice, and then reached into my pocket for my wallet. Turning back around, I saw her also turning and walking toward me, as if she knew my thoughts. As I placed a dollar bill in her cup, our eyes met and she said, “Bless you. May it return to you a thousandfold.” I smiled and blew her a kiss as I walked away. That 30-second exchange opened my heart completely and lifted my spirits for the entire day. For a moment, we both stood in that field of dreams together, no separation. May I remember, may we all remember, that that field is always present. We need only open our hearts to see it.

Free Fall to Infinity

Grand Canyon, NPS
Grand Canyon © National Park Service
Some of you may recall a blog article I wrote last year called “Infinity.” In it, I described my lifelong fear of infinity/eternity and my first individual session with Panache Desai in which he took me to infinity. Unlike the mind-freezing terror I had experienced late at night at the thought of a never-ending universe, what I felt with Panache was free-floating peace and calm. No real sense of time or space; no thoughts, no emotion. Yet a comforting soft energy surrounded me. I remained in that state for hours, and the experience shifted my consciousness profoundly. The late-night fear did not occur for more than a year and a half.

This past summer, however, the terror-infinity thoughts began to recur, more and more frequently. I gradually realized that I was being prepared for the next phase in the evolution of this deep-seated fear. Consequently, I decided to take part in Panache’s 21-day program of “vibrational activation,” which consisted of daily meditations and energetic transmissions, interactive telephone sessions, and online group support. Each participant wrote an intention for the 21 days, and mine was to walk through my fear to freedom. A friend had recently told me that “terror is the final barrier to merging with God,” which actually helped give me a positive incentive for the journey.

How to explain an inner process that practically defies language? I will try. The first thing I experienced was a subtle shift in the energy around the terror, which allowed me to get closer to it than I ever had before. Usually panic took hold of me completely, and I froze. But one night I was able to access what was an integral part of the terror: overwhelming grief. Was this the sum total of life—a universe without end and an equally endless state of being or nonbeing? The despair I felt was so strong that I shut down entirely. But in a phone session, Panache sent me energy for the grief, and I was able to feel it through completely—days and days of crying at the “painful beauty” of life, then anger at the unfairness, and finally emotional neutrality and an inability to access the terror at all. I was in a holding pattern, wondering what would come next. I wrote online: “I feel as if I’m sitting on the edge of something HUGE—like the Grand Canyon with God in the middle of it. If only I could find a way to free fall into that vastness—or get someone to push me!”

Around the same time, another group member posted this quote by William Blake: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.” I have always loved those lines, but that evening I read them as if for the first time. The words infinity and eternity leapt out at me. World upon world opened up inside me. I realized that I had held Infinite Spirit in the pulsing palms of my hands during sessions with Panache. And I had experienced the Eternal Now in meditation, with my soul as silent witness. What we call God, or Spirit, exists as infinity and eternity and loving presence within each moment. Now is all there is, ever, and my soul doesn’t fear infinity because it is infinity. Only the mind is terrified of something that is beyond parameters, beyond thought really.

The next morning, during meditation in my back yard, I sat silently observing all the dimensions of the universe playing out magnificently within me. Opening my eyes and looking up at the infinite eternal peaceful blue sky, I felt my heart and soul as one with everything. No separation, no duality. I am the Grand Canyon and God. And life is a free fall that includes it all.

Present-Time Paradise

Photograph © 2012 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2012 Peggy Kornegger
Years ago, Stevie Wonder wrote a song called “Pastime Paradise,” which described people who lived their lives glorifying the past or longing for a different future. We all have that tendency because our society fosters dissatisfaction and discontent. The advertising industry feeds on it, as do our social and political institutions. Yet, the quieter voices that whisper “live in the moment” and “count your blessings” are growing stronger and more widespread. If we shift our focus to the present and look at what we do have instead of what we don’t, life is suddenly full and abundant beyond measure.

Personally, I have no doubt that I live in paradise. I love my life. My partner and I live in an apartment in a two-family home with a yard, front and back. Our small-town neighborhood is friendly and quiet. We like our neighbors, and our landlord is kind and responsive. I have freedom to grow flowers, plants, and bushes in the yard, and this is my greatest joy. I spend hours in my garden every day, sometimes working, sometimes just drinking in the colors and light. Hummingbirds visit the red tubular flowers of the native honeysuckle, goldfinches cluster about the hanging thistle feeder, and butterflies and bees fill the air around the large purple flowers of the butterfly bush. What more could one ask of life than moments like these?

Don’t get me wrong. I have experienced my share of life’s heartaches too—the death of loved ones, the end of relationships, loss of jobs, physical pain, etc. But all of it has been part of life and has brought me to where I am today. If I step back and look at my life as a whole, the miracles outnumber the tragedies, and even the tragedies had hidden miracles within them. Events that I feared all my life such as my parents’ deaths ended up being extraordinary spiritual experiences because I was fully present with them as they transitioned. Losing my job late in my editorial career allowed me to step into the freelance world for a couple of years and then gradually move into full retirement. I now have the time and freedom to write and garden whenever I want instead of squeezing it in on the side.

What I have discovered is that paradise is a state of presence, not an aspiration. I truly believe that I came to this planet to have all the experiences I could possibly pack in and that each one allows me to expand more and more as both a spiritual and a human being. Everything that has occurred has enabled me to become more fully myself, my soul self. And I am grateful for every single bit of it, the tears as well as the laughter. It’s a miracle to just be alive. Really. Look at your physical body—how did that happen? You can’t help but be in awe of the infinite complexity of the tiniest aspect of every part of life. Or at least I am. And I think that’s where we’re all heading. Collectively, we are shifting from suffering to celebration, from dismay to full-hearted appreciation for the gifts each day brings. Paradise is with us, within us—now. It really is.