Category: Inner peace

Living with the Unknown

Nothing is definitively known, ever. That’s why Native Americans, in their timeless wisdom, have called life the “Great Mystery.” No matter what scientists do to try to break the code—send vehicles to Mars, create life in a test tube, photograph black holes in space—the puzzle of human existence and life and death is never really solved. Any “knowledge” we come to as a species is a shifting illusion that changes with the years and with those who are “knowing.” That’s the realm of science and the mind—and belief systems.

Then there’s religion and spirituality. Many traditional religions have explained life’s mysteries with teachings about God, each of them claiming truth and revelation. Yet those too are based in belief. Spirituality extends the parameters a bit to a wide array of perspectives and possibilities about the nature of life and Spirit. If we remain open, we enter the realm of the heart. Therein, it becomes clearer that we can never fully understand life or God; we can only experience them. Which means letting go of interpretations and searches and just living in the mystery as it unfolds.

I’ve found this to be a guiding truth over the past month on my journey with breast cancer. Each day, new information comes up to be processed, or there is a new test result to be waited for. If I try to figure it all out ahead of time or mentally project myself into all the possibilities, I get lost in the “what ifs.” And fear. Instead, I focus on the experience of each moment. That returns me to my heart. My decisions and direction arise organically from there.

My years of meditation practice have prepared me for this time. It becomes an intensive immersion in present-moment awareness. Breath by breath. And I find I don’t have to remind myself to do it. At this point in my life—and perhaps because of the nature of what I am going through—I seem to automatically remain centered in today’s experience. Tomorrow is a question mark, but today the sky is clear, the birds are singing, and I am alive. That’s all I “know.” Perhaps that’s the gift of facing a disease that is full of unknowns and can be so frightening. In order to remain centered in the calm at my center, the peace of my soul, my entire being brings me back to the present moment.

So how do you and I retain this wisdom, this calming approach, in our day-to-day lives, beyond crisis situations? Here, I think it once again becomes a practice of consciously calling yourself back to the present moment, with each breath you take. The more you do it, the more ingrained it becomes in your consciousness. Gradually, you release your hold on the need to know outcomes and relax into living with the unknown, accepting each experience as it arises and letting go into the next one. This is the natural flow of spirit in life. If you allow it, it will carry you effortlessly through the endless vacillations of life. You feel every emotion as it arises but never lose your connection to the inner peace that lives at your core. In this way, the unknown becomes your faithful companion, instead of your adversary, on life’s journey.

Stillness of the Heart and Soul

The nonstop noise of the external world often keeps us from experiencing the quiet at the core of our being. There, a timeless eternal presence without sound or language awaits us, a connection to something greater than our individual, seemingly short lives. Outer distractions, both audio and visual, continuously surround us from our TVs, laptops, and cell phones and prevent a deeper relationship to all of life. Traffic sounds, machinery, and loud voices in nonstop conversation interrupt our peace of mind, even if we don’t consciously recognize the dissonance. Yet, something within each of us does know something is amiss and longs for an absence of sound within which we can feel calmer, more centered. How do we get there?

Many people have turned to meditation and yoga or quiet solitary walks in Nature for just this reason. It connects them to that inner space of quiet within. Once accessed, you may realize it is never absent, even in the noisiest surroundings. At least, that is what I have discovered over the years. There is silence beneath every sound, even the loudest, because sound arises from silence and falls back into it. There is silence between every note of music, every spoken word, and every birdcall. There is silence in my heart. If I pause, that silence rises to the surface, and I become silence itself, just peaceful presence. My soul holds the stillness of the universe and divine connection, and it is always available to me as I awaken more fully and deepen my awareness.

You and I are on this path together, this opening to the eternal stillness of all being. Every human is. It is the collective destiny of humanity, and the individual journey of each soul. The return Home after life on Earth…and a realization that Home is within us now. In silence we find it, and gradually it becomes so compelling that we choose to live the rest of our lives in conscious awareness of that divine stillness within. Sometimes world events, like a global pandemic that shuts everything down, become the catalyst for awakening to this deeper awareness. What appears on the surface to be crisis may open the doors of perception to untold universes within. In the absence of activity and noise, we find peace.

I grew up in the Midwestern countryside, an only child who spent most of my time outdoors. Nature’s quiet is part of me, and I reach out for it in my daily life. Even a small park with trees and flowers in an urban setting is enough to call me back to that inner silence of the heart and soul. I believe we all need this connection, especially now. If you feel distant from stillness in your life, it is not as far away as you may think. Don’t wait until life overwhelms you and crisis stops you to rediscover the essence of your being. Every day, take a few minutes alone to access that place of internal peace and quiet. Pause, close your eyes, breathe deeply—and there you are. As simple as that…

Internal Weather

What if the weather outside your window is actually a reflection of the weather conditions inside you? What if your perceptional framework for viewing life shapes everything, including how you see physical conditions such as rain, snow, clouds, and sunshine that appear to be outside you? What if nothing is quite as it seems to be to the mind? What if the world is as you are?

Ever since I was a small child, I have carried within me an at-times-overwhelming grief about the nature of life, death, and eternity. The “human condition” terrified me; infinity terrified me. Late at night, I described my fear to my mother as “the world goes on forever and ever.” She comforted me and tried to help me learn to distract myself with happier thoughts. But the core unease never really disappeared. In college, I found infinity hiding inside my astronomy and philosophy textbooks. Fear of death and whatever came after was always hovering in the back of my consciousness. In my 30s, I turned to a spiritual quest to try to resolve it. That was the beginning of a shift in my perception.

Over the years, I came to a much broader view of life and of God’s presence in the universe. I have experienced a vast inner peace arising from my soul. At times, when I am completely immersed in it, the peace is as infinite and all-consuming as the fear once was. I “know” with every fiber of my being that infinity is actually divine love, which permeates every aspect of life. There is nothing but infinite consciousness expressing, always, everywhere in the cosmos. It is inside me and outside me, and actually there is no inside and outside. There is a seamless Oneness to all Being. This is what I experience, and within that is peace.

Yet there are still moments, usually late at night, when the fear arises, and a tremendous grief accompanies it. Some people are comforted by the idea of eternity; I am terrified by it. Now, however, I have come to see it as a catalyst for my soul’s evolution in this lifetime. It propels me ever deeper within and connects me to divine Presence, which lives as peace in my soul. My human grief also lives inside me. Depending on my state of mind, I can see that grief as separate from and larger than the peace or as only a small part of it. I realize that my humanity is actually how my divinity experiences itself on Earth. My human life pushes me further and deeper on my soul journey, until I completely merge with God consciousness.

Meanwhile, there are times on this path, this journey, that the catalyst of fear awakens me to a new level of awareness about the nature of reality and my life in it. I begin to understand that my perceptual framework (which interprets the world around me, and how and what I see) is dependent on whether I am in human fear or divine peace. And the seeming separation and polarity is actually for my own expansion and growth. Eventually, I will abide in peace without the interruption of fear or grief. The wisdom deep in my soul tells me this, and I trust it as the expanses of peace in my daily life become more and more seamless. When the old grief or fear arises, it is clear to me now how they can shape my perceptions. Rain and snow are just experiences; life and death are just experiences—all of them part of the soul’s journey in this world. If I see them as miracles, that is what they are in my experience. And grief gradually dissolves within Presence.

The Disappearance of “I”

Photograph © 2020 Peggy Kornegger
What would my life be like without me? Well, for one thing, it wouldn’t be “my life.” It would just be life—being, expanding, evolving. Exactly what it is without the filter I apply to it with “my.” As I continue along the path my soul has chosen for this lifetime, I see more clearly the limitations of language. “My” is a convenience for conversation, but the possessiveness we feel about so much in life is reinforced by that simple two-letter designation. In fact, nothing is mine. Even my soul is not really mine, nor is God. There is a limitless universal Spirit that we are one with, beyond description or possession. Caught up in “me,” “I,” and “mine,” our vision is restricted, dead-ended. Many times, our identity is so busy defending itself and its viewpoint that we can’t see the beauty and wonder around us or the love in the hearts of those closest to us. We lose friendships in arguments and misunderstandings.

Humanity seems to endlessly struggle to come to a peaceful resolution of conflicts everywhere in the world, especially now. Perhaps the greatest wisdom is that peace can only be found within, which is where it begins. Without inner peace, world peace is unreachable. In my own life, I am most at peace when “I” disappears. That occurs in stillness, in Nature, in empty spaces with no busyness. A global pandemic has provided us with those opportunities, if we recognize and explore them. Try living life without the distraction of possessive labels and perceptions. Walk through your day as if you had no ego, seeing everything without pronouns, maybe even without nouns. Empty of self. In peace.

The whole world is born in emptiness. From formlessness: form. The infinite potential of Source energy created a visible universe within which we find our way back to our beginnings. Every part of the material world is a form of living light that fills our human experience with richness and radiance. We too are light, and we are now awakening to that awareness. Many people discover a connection to their own inner light when they face the disappearance of the familiar and predictable in life, something we are now seeing on our planet. Within that opening, the soul’s presence is often revealed, and the self begins to fade.

When “I” disappears, there is only light, the light of Universal Soul that infuses our lives. That is our Home. Is it possible for us to experience each moment of our lives as that light? To see the light of Home everywhere and in everyone? I believe it is. In the past few months as so much has fallen away in my life, I have known moments of peaceful soul presence that flood my entire consciousness, becoming more frequent and lasting longer. I am not alone in this; it is a collective deepening and expansion. Soon we will meet one another as light beings (the truth of who we are) in all parts of our lives. This is our destiny, we divine/human souls on an evolving blue planet slowly spinning in the cosmos. When “I” and “my” fade into the background, peace arises, love arises. And we are Home, together, as one.

Nothing and Everything

Photograph © 2020 Peggy Kornegger
Sometimes the twists and turns of life on Earth can feel like loss or emptiness, especially now. Yet the greater significance of our experiences may not be completely understood when they occur. Time brings perspective. There are no mistakes, and we are never really lost. Everything we experience provides an opening into greater awareness and an opportunity to grow and trust in the trajectory of our own lives.

Two years ago I moved from Boston to Florida, primarily to live closer to several friends. Within a matter of months, the friends unexpectedly began to move to other states. The ostensible “reasons” for my divinely guided move (and it did feel that way) evaporated into thin air, and I searched for another reason to be here. Things that I tried just didn’t feel right. I spent more than a year watching parts of my life fall away to nothing all around me. What remained were my spiritual practice, my writing, my dear partner Anne, and my deep connection to Nature. The essence of my life really, and I appreciated them more than ever.

Still, I felt lost and “homesick” a lot of the time. By year’s end, I had become closed and cranky, feeling let down by friends, life, and God. Why was I brought here in order to lose so much? Ah, that was the key question that unlocked the closed door of my heart. Because as long as I saw only loss, letdown, and emptiness, that was my experience. As 2020 began, I intentionally “reset” my consciousness to accept all that had happened as part of my soul’s journey in this lifetime. I let go of expectation and disappointment and chose to trust that everything was unfolding perfectly, even if it didn’t look that way on the surface. Gradually I re-centered. Then came COVID-19.

What might have been yet another setback and reason to fall into despair actually became a catalyst for me to surrender at an even deeper level. I gave up every illusion of egoic control or planning in my life. As the world completely shut down in fear and uncertainty, I realized that something “greater” had put humanity in a timeout. There were divine forces at work on the planet that were more powerful than human “will power.” And my own life was part of the same cosmic flow. As I came to this awareness, a tremendous peace came over me. I settled into my soul’s perspective, my soul’s peace. And I have not left, even when I feel uncertainty or sadness about world events. Inner peace is always present in the midst of whatever else is occurring, and a broader understanding will eventually arise.

Over the past few months, as I’ve followed a daily meditation practice* and taken long walks in Nature, my feelings of peace and spiritual connection have deepened. I can see that these extraordinary global circumstances are part of an acceleration of planetary shifts in consciousness. It is time to let go of our mind-oriented, will-driven, egocentric ways and open to heart-centered, flowing cooperation and compassion. Our Earth home cannot survive unless we come back into harmony with our hearts and souls—and with one another, across differences in race, nationality, gender, age, and beliefs. We are being called to awaken to our own inner soul potential and create an entirely new paradigm of living on this planet.

The vast emptiness that many of us have been staring into in our lives is exactly like the infinite cosmos—full of possibility. Out of emptiness arises the entire universe, filled with energy and light. The mind fears infinity, but the soul is completely at home there. When we shift to soul vision, we see that within the “nothing” of infinity is a Presence that holds everything in loving awareness, and we too feel at home. Emptiness is full, ever-unfolding. We ourselves are ever-unfolding. Only when nothing opens up in our lives can we truly see that inside it is everything. And we begin to live from the infinite potential within us, which is our soul’s gift of love to the world.
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*Gratitude to Panache Desai for his online morning meditations and to Deva Premal & Miten for their afternoon meditations/music during this time.