Category: Inner peace

Infinite Inner Space

© 2007 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2007 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist

“Your soul is the silent witness of your life.”
—Panache Desai

That one sentence changed everything for me. Yes, I had heard about the “witness” before, but it was an idea in my head that I could never access within my own experience. After years and years of meditation practice, I continued to be lost in my thoughts. Then, during a webcast, I listened to Panache talk about dropping into present-moment awareness by simply taking a deep breath and repeating, “Here I am.” And here I am. And here I am. Now. And now. And now. Something shifted within me, and I was there, or rather here, in presence. The next morning at sunrise, during meditation, I was able to step back from my mind’s mental chatter into a silent inner space of awareness, of peace. When thoughts arose, I could observe them without losing consciousness. If I drifted into my thoughts momentarily, I found I could bring my self back to witnessing from the soul’s point of view: “Here I AM…now.”

That I AM that lives within each breath is greater than the personality self connected to the mind. It is a pure state of being, of infinite consciousness, which links all beings on the planet, actually in the cosmos. When I access that inner silent space, I am in the same place that you are when you access it. Within that living awareness, we are in complete and utter oneness. Within that space is the deepest peace and calm I have ever known. Infinite, with no fear attached to the endless being-ness. Some call this place Heaven, or Home. It is the source from which we all arise into human form and into which we dissolve at the end of our lives. It is God or Goddess; it is Great Spirit. It is Om.

And immersion in this profound state of consciousness is not limited to human beings. Animals experience their own contemplative moments. My dear cat Lily in her elder years used to sit on the back of the couch by the window, facing west at sunset, eyes closed in deep meditation. In the tall oak tree in my neighbor’s back yard, leafless now in the winter months, birds gather each evening, all facing west, their breasts shining red-gold in the setting sun.

We creatures living on Planet Earth find connection and comfort in the profound sacred silence that occurs at moments like sunrise and sunset. It reminds us of something beyond our lifetimes, something eternal and infinite at the heart of the universe—and within our own hearts. It reminds us that even when we feel most alone, there is always the loving presence of a greater consciousness of which we are part.

Surrender, Dorothy!

In The Wizard of Oz, there is a classic moment when the Wicked Witch of the West sky-writes a warning to the little girl from Kansas: Surrender, Dorothy! Most of us have always thought of that as an ominous threat. What if we look at it instead as wise and magical advice: surrender. Dorothy doesn’t surrender to the witch, but she does surrender to the power of her own journey, which finally brings her back home. Don’t all of us who are on life journeys come up against that ultimate challenge—letting go and trusting in something greater than our own individual lives? A surrender that will bring us “home,” to ourselves and to the heart of the universe.

“Dorothy and Alice” © 1995 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist

In the past year, I have faced this in my own life. Never having been raised in a religious tradition of any kind, surrender was a foreign concept to me. Yet, the deeper I went within my own uniquely eclectic spiritual journey, the more I found surrender to be the key to opening the door to a greater expansiveness in myself and a profound connection to the cosmos. Not to mention, the key to a greater ease in living life.

Synchronistically, messages to that effect began to appear everywhere in my life. On an Oprah show that I tuned in to, Shirley MacLaine offered one piece of advice: “Surrender to a highly sophisticated Divinity.” A friend of mine described a comic strip with the punch line: “Resign as general manager of the universe.” It was Panache Desai’s ideas about “allowing and receiving,” however, that really struck a chord within me: in essence, flowing with everything that comes into your experience.

I’ve discovered that for me surrender isn’t a mental decision or a set of prescribed steps. It’s an ongoing process of emotionally letting go and embracing all of life, over and over. Part of me wants to hold on, wants to be in control, and it gets scared if I consider releasing that tight grip. Gradually, though, I’ve learned to relax and open to a wider vision of my life and my place on Earth. Like Alice, who discovers another world “through the looking glass,” I too have found that this physical reality is only one piece of the multilayered dream we call life. And it’s nothing I have to “control.” It involves trusting that my life as it is unfolding is exactly what I need in order to grow/evolve and that all that I perceive is part of an intricate tapestry of universal meaning and infinite love. As I have more and more experiences (within the physical realm and beyond) of the web of connection that we are all a part of, my trust grows, and I allow my life to flow with greater ease.

Surrender, then, is ultimately an opening of the heart: surrender in joy, surrender with tears and laughter. Fall in love with the world! Surrender to the dance of life. Step through the looking glass, put on those outrageous, sparkling ruby slippers, and click your heels together! You’ll be home in no time.

 

Fear Less

In Jan Frazier’s book When Fear Falls Away, she describes a sudden falling away of fear, just before having a repeat mammogram. The subsequent awakening she experienced changed her life. It is something we all dream of: to live with unshakable trust in the universe. I believe that we are now entering a period in the Earth’s evolution in which that is possible, not just for yogis or shamans, but for every person on the planet. Individual processes may not be as instantaneous as Jan Frazier’s, but I think the ultimate experience of trust in something greater will be very similar. I believe this because I feel it happening to me.

Recently, after intentionally stepping away from external busyness in the “real” world (see blog post “Unplugged and Reconnected”), I found that a door opened within me through which life poured through in boundless exuberance. The perfect books and spiritual workshops presented themselves to me with free-flowing synchronicity. In addition to these, the time that I sat alone in silent meditation and contemplation in my backyard was deeply transformative. I spent hours there each day, sometimes working in my garden, sometimes meditating, sometimes just breathing in the beauty all around me—the flowers, the trees, the sky, the clouds, the birds. A tiger swallowtail butterfly floating into the yard would make my heart catch in my throat at the miracle of its very existence. A single ray of sun penetrating the dense green shrubbery to form a patch of shimmering golden light on the grass would fill my eyes with tears. It was if I were absorbing the magnificence of the world through my very pores.

Gradually, as these magic moments continued, a deep loving connection to something larger than my own life became my prevailing experience. I have had such moments frequently in recent years, but something new was beginning to shift within me now. The connection to Source or Spirit was less fleeting, more a part of me. As the external world continued to be rocked by the changes inherent in 2012 and the Great Shift, I found that, within me, everything that was not trust in the presence of Spirit in all things began to dissolve. Old rigid ways of perceiving the world fell away. As did fear. I was not completely fearless (impossible—I am human), but I feared less.

Months later, after continued inner journeying on my own and at various spiritual gatherings, I find that this opening/shedding process has continued. I am no longer run by fear. Instead, at any given moment, I can connect to a spacious silent place within where peace and a trusting calm exist (see previous post “Infinity”). And I truly believe that now is the time when we all can find that inner space and open our hearts to a greater trust, a greater love.

 

Unplugged and Reconnected

Not long ago, I decided to unplug myself from technology for a month. I took a mini-sabbatical from computers (including all email and editorial work), TV, and radio (I don’t own a cell phone). It was with a huge sigh of relief that I did this. My days had begun to be filled with such constant busyness that even finding time to meditate or take long walks seemed difficult. When I stopped sitting for hours in front of the computer, my life opened up all around me.

At the same time that I closed the technology door, I opened another door—to the natural world outdoors and the world of spirit present everywhere. Outside in my backyard, I gardened, read, meditated, or just gazed at passing clouds in the sky or the sun on the flowers in my garden. I often felt transported to another dimension where only infinite variations of light were real. Life seemed as fragile and precious as a flower petal or an inhaled breath. There were moments when all I felt was gratitude for the gift of being alive.

In my journal I wrote: “We have this one lifetime to live in a human body, to look through human eyes and see the beauty of the world. I just want to drink in the wonders all around me, to feel in my heart each exquisite detail of flower, leaf, and cloud. I could look at the sky forever and never come to the end of its magnificence. Every bird and butterfly and bee is a tiny miracle. In the swirling center of each flower is a sacred universe. I am so blessed to have this life on Earth. I don’t want to miss a thing. I don’t want to lose a second looking at a computer or TV when the world and all its breathtaking beauty is just outside the door.”

Along with the wonder and awe came a deep connection to the living spirit that existed in the natural world all around me. The spirit within me embraced the spirit everywhere outside of me, and I stepped into a profound experience of oneness that expanded with each passing day. I found that within each exquisite detail of the universe that I perceived with my physical eyes was an invisible thread that led to the infinite Source of all things. William Blake described this perfectly: “To See a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wildflower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.”

So did I renounce all technology for the rest of my life after discovering “God in the details”? No, of course not. We live in a human world that has manifested global communication via the Internet. If it doesn’t overtake your life, it can be a wonderful vehicle for experiencing worldwide interconnections. The key is balance, as in all things. I still check my email, visit favorite websites, and even listen to spiritual webcasts, but I’m now more in touch with when it’s time to turn off the computer and walk out the door into nature’s paradise.

Wake-up Call

For years now, I have been awakened at 3 a.m. by neck pain that often culminates in a migraine headache. Lying down seems to make the pain worse, so I usually get out of bed and sit in the living room. Often, I have taken strong medication to get rid of the pain, not always successfully. Headaches of one kind or another have plagued me since I was a teenager. Tension morphed into migraine in midlife. Having tried every possible traditional and nontraditional remedy, with little success, I had almost resigned myself to always living with chronic pain. It was a never-ending drain on my life energy. That is, until recently.

During a weeklong retreat in Costa Rica with Panache Desai (see recent posts: “The Silence Within” and “Infinity”), I learned how to rid myself of the pain through a deep meditation of “allowing and receiving.” When I returned home, I was initially nervous that I would not be able to repeat the miraculous releases from pain I had experienced on retreat. Admittedly, my apartment is not tropical, nor does it have a view of the Pacific Ocean! Thankfully, I was still able to get rid of the headaches most of the time, partially because of a shift in my own perception: I finally recognized that Spirit, or my Higher Self, wanted me up at 3 a.m. for a reason, and neck pain was an effective way to get me out of bed and into the receptive meditation mode.

As I sat meditating in the predawn hours, breathing deeply and letting go into “allowing and receiving” (and sometimes listening to Panache’s meditation CDs), I found that the pain would slightly abate but not disappear entirely until I had passed the three-hour mark. At that point, I could begin my day, not only pain-free but also filled with a deep joy and love for the world around me. I saw only blessings everywhere I looked. It was just amazing.

Clearly, then, I was supposed to practice allowing and receiving for three solid hours on a daily basis. (One morning, when I slept through the usual 3 a.m. time, a loud voice in my head shouting my name woke me up with a start at 4:30. No sleeping in!) After several days, it occurred to me that I was being firmly guided to follow this regimen not just to get rid of pain but also to learn how to allow and receive everything: anger, sadness, and fear as well as beauty, joy, and love. Challenging events, emotional reactions, stunning sunsets, loving friendships—they are all part of the human experience on Earth, and it is impossible to have one aspect and not the others. They are the intricately interwoven blessings of being alive. That perspective alone has completely changed how I experience life on a daily basis.

Through this meditation, I practiced how to live from a place of receptivity instead of resistance, gradually learning how to be in the flow of the energy of life, however it showed up. Allowing and receiving has seeped into my moment-to-moment experience. Each day, I open more and resist less. My inner default setting has shifted from defense to gratitude, from worry to trust. The accompanying insight for me is that physical pain is not inevitable. I discovered that it was the voice of Spirit within my body persistently trying to get my attention. At long last, I woke up and listened.