Category: Soul journey

A Conscious Reset

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger
There are times in life when you may feel as if you’re running backward down a dark alley that has no outlet. Kind of like a bad dream. When you finally realize you’re backing yourself into a dead end, there’s nothing to do but stop, take a deep breath, and look honestly at where you are. In fact, you are being given a precious opportunity to fully awaken and live with greater awareness. It’s what I call a conscious reset. And it’s what I’m experiencing right now.

This past year, a series of losses and life-direction changes hit me hard with their collective force. I couldn’t understand why, if I was following clear divine guidance, things were not unfolding divinely. They were just plain painful. It was one of those “God, why hast thou forsaken me?” moments. Yet deep inside, my soul knew exactly what was going on. It took me a while to re-align with that wisdom, but I learned a lot in the process. I had to consciously, intentionally, raise my head above the onslaught and see with God’s eyes.

When I was able to look at things more clearly, more “soulfully,” I came to realize an important truth: It’s easy to believe that I am being divinely guided when everything is going well and I am surrounded by synchronicities and miracles. The real challenge is to trust that I am also being guided when nothing makes sense, and everything appears to be falling apart. To have faith that even the seeming setbacks are happening for my evolution as a soul within a complex cosmic plan that includes all souls and all of the universe. I am one thread in the divine tapestry, as are we all, and we each play a key part.

Even in difficult circumstances and events, there is a greater purpose. The razor edge of pain can pierce our armor of assumption and habit and make us more acutely aware of the sweet grace of everyday life. For there are synchronicities and miracles in loss, sadness, and struggle, but we don’t always have the clarity of vision to perceive them. The more we are awakened by life’s events, the more we can see that God is in everything, without exception. Confusion and crisis come to us to encourage trust and surrender, the gateway to peace at the deepest level.

A conscious reset, then, does not mean you have brought disaster upon yourself through failure or negligence. It doesn’t mean blaming yourself or trying to erase the past. A conscious reset involves the way you look at things; it means seeing life positively, not negatively. Some call that the “silver lining” or “rose-colored glasses.” But it’s not a false happiness that ignores difficult emotions. A positive worldview accepts everything as part of the human evolution on this planet. One that trends to love instead of fear or doubt. You can emerge from even the darkest alley into the sunlight.

For me, a conscious reset meant stepping out of complaining and criticizing, either situations or people. One way to support that is a “negativity fast.” My partner and I agreed to do that last month. We made a sign that said “No Criticism. No Judgment. No Complaining. No Irritation,” and we placed it where we would consistently notice it. We gently (or humorously) reminded each other if one of us slipped into a negative outlook. It helped. What also helped was thinking of one thing to be grateful for each morning and holding that in my consciousness throughout the day. And taking walks in which I silently expressed gratitude for everything I saw. It is a heart-opening practice.

You or I may still find ourselves in an experience that triggers sadness, fear, or upset, but if we have consciously committed to feeling those emotions in a larger context of trust, then we can return to a more peaceful state of mind. We let life just flow as it’s meant to without trying to control the outcome. This is the soul’s greatest wisdom, which it is perfectly willing to share if we just pause and listen. What better way to begin a new year?

Smackdown

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger

Life has a way of smacking us down, hard, sometimes repeatedly, when we least expect it. Things can be going along smoothly, and then out of the blue: wham! You are knocked off your feet by a sudden turn of events or twist of fate. It can be a minor passing upset or a major trauma. Life doesn’t tell you ahead of time what’s coming up around the next corner. Each day can be really wonder-full or really challenging. This is how I would describe my life over the past year.

In July 2018, I moved from one part of the country to another, diving excitedly into a new adventure. Massachusetts to Florida—what could be a greater jump into exploring differences and new horizons? So, all went beautifully the first six months or so. New home, new surroundings, new friendships, new possibilities. Then gradually everything started to dissolve around me, and I began to experience emptying out, loss, closed doors, lack of possibilities. It all seemed strange and unexpected. I had been so open and optimistic, centered in a positive outlook and certain I was living my best life, stepping into even more expansion. When it all started to fall apart, I began to seriously question whether I should be in Florida at all (even though divine guidance for the move had been unmistakable).

Over the months, I tried to view each change with acceptance, continuing to trust that it was all part of my soul’s evolutionary path. Yet the challenges seemed to get bigger and the losses deeper. I felt as if I had signed up for a master class in spiritual surrender. Every time I brought myself back into balance after some unforeseen occurrence, something else would arise. Finally, one night last month, I had the wind completely knocked out of me, literally, by an actual physical smackdown.

In the middle of the night, in the dark, I tripped over a new living-room hassock and fell flat on my face, teeth first. Teeth cracking, bloody gums, pain radiating out to my jaw and head. The shock shook me to my core, and the trauma of that facedown impact stayed with me for days. I relived that split-second in tears and disbelief again and again, each time longing to rewind and erase what had happened. The next day, I could hardly move because of pain in my arms, legs, neck, and head. My brain felt dazed, my teeth ached and throbbed, and in the mirror I saw the reflection of a distraught woman with swollen, black-and-blue cheeks and haunted eyes. Inconsolable, I wanted to cancel every external-world plan I had made for the future and just curl up in a ball under the covers. Used to moving unhesitatingly through the world, I found myself instead extremely cautious when I walked down stairs or got out of the shower.

Post-traumatic fear affected my thinking as well: I suspected that the energy of Florida was kicking me out, that clearly I didn’t belong here. I also envisioned losing all my front teeth, roots included. When I did have x-rays done, it looked like the roots had not broken in spite of the strength of the impact. The dentist said I would need veneers replaced on a couple teeth and perhaps a root canal, but she wanted to see if the one loose tooth would stabilize on its own. So we are waiting to see how my mouth heals before any decision about restorative work is made. The kindness of the dentist (who took my emergency call early on a Sunday morning), as well as my partner’s, were huge factors in my gradually feeling more like myself in a few days.

Still, I kept wondering why I had to experience this particular trauma on my soul journey. What is its meaning in my life as it is now unfolding in all its complicated contradictions and direction switches? Unanswerable questions. There is a thread of ultimate meaning and connection in every event in life, but we often don’t know them at the moment of occurrence (or in this case, impact). Once again, I am being asked to trust…and continue with a faith and an inner peace that “passes all understanding.” This is the master class we all are a part of at this time on planet Earth.

The external world can look like a senseless madhouse with no possibility for hope or renewal. Yet, in the midst of that, someone reaches out a hand with kindness, and your heart opens in gratitude. Trust and love again seem possible. This is our journey now; this is our assignment. To stand back up when we have fallen and to use our pain as a way to shorten the distance between ourselves and others. Together, we humans are experiencing the birth trauma of a new consciousness, a new planet. It sometimes hurts terribly, but just look at what is on the horizon.

No Visible Trace: Vanishing of the Past

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger

I seem to be living through a time in which everything previously experienced in my life is falling away. In the midst of these changes, I find myself standing face to face with a truth that has always existed but is now front and center in my consciousness: There is no past. When we have lived an experience, it disappears from this dimension. It may continue in another dimension, but here, now, in the present, it quite literally no longer exists. In our memories, it shape-shifts and eventually fades as well. We are left with this moment, nothing else.

What has brought me to this seemingly stark conclusion, which is actually quite liberating? Well, in the past month (and after I wrote my last blog, “Resignation or Surrender?”), I experienced the definitive “loss” of two homes that I felt great emotional attachment to: one in Illinois, the other in Massachusetts. The first was my childhood home (on five acres in the country), the second, the house I lived in before recently moving (where I had an extensive flower garden). No actual visits took place; this was a long-distance visual vanishing, via photographs and Google maps. But no less shocking.

The people who bought the house where we rented an apartment in Massachusetts quickly began to renovate the interior last fall. Then, this past spring, our neighbor told us of exterior changes: the new owners had ripped out all my carefully planted and lovingly cared for flowers and replaced them with a rather bare, professionally landscaped lawn and a few meager plantings. The photographs she sent were heartbreaking.

Since our move to Florida last year, I have missed my garden most of all. I had spent eleven years partnering with Mother Earth in creating a diverse mixture of flowers and bushes that bloomed at different times of the year. I knew every plant as if they were my own “children,” and I felt that they knew me. I celebrated each leaf and blossom, each visit by a bee, butterfly, or hummingbird. Sometimes I just stood in silent appreciation and love for the beauty all around me. To see all that destroyed was painful to assimilate. Yet, on another level, I knew it to be another sign that that time in Massachusetts was done. I could not go back to the home I once knew.

Over the next few weeks, I realized that I was being given a deeper understanding of life’s greatest wisdom: impermanence. It allowed me to see the impermanent in all parts of life—and to accept it. My spiritual journey had become about learning to let go in an ongoing way so that I could be fully present in the moment. Then God raised the bar even higher.

For some reason, I decided to Google-search for my Illinois hometown and the country road I had lived on. It has been decades since I have been back there, so it took me a while to find the area where my parents had built their home in the shade of a group of old oak trees. I switched to satellite mode and began to slowly trace the route from the turnoff onto our road, now widened.

Then, unexpectedly, I noticed that there was a very large highway where there had only been farmhouses and cornfields. I zoomed in and saw it was an Illinois tollway with on and off ramps and barren landscapes surrounding it. My heart beating, I backtracked to where I could see some houses and land still intact. I located the houses on either side of our home, but there in the middle was nothing but wild abandoned land. No driveway, nothing visible but underbrush and trees. I zoomed closer, and then I saw a bare space where our house should have been. Closer still, and I was able to make out what appeared to be remnants of a basement. That’s all that remained of my childhood home.

I felt a knot in my stomach and sat staring in stunned silence. It didn’t seem real. My memories of that house and of the trees, flowers, orchards, and vegetable gardens my father and mother had planted were vivid and alive. I lived my entire childhood and adolescence there—with a deep connection to nature and to them. Yet this was the current “reality.” Anything else no longer existed. Of course I knew this, but seeing a visual representation was different.

After my parents’ deaths, I had stopped visiting Illinois but always held it in my heart. Christmas carols evoked visual memories of the holidays I shared with them over the years. And the land itself was in my blood; I had run across the fields and climbed every tree. Years later, when I planted a garden in Massachusetts, I felt most at home there because that connection was born in my childhood. Now, every visible trace of any of those gardens had disappeared. My childhood and my recent past had both vanished.

I sensed my physical body slowly processing this and my soul’s presence rising to the fore. I felt a clearing within to match the clearing without. For the first time, I was fully embodying the present moment with a crystal clear understanding that there really is nothing else. Oddly enough, it felt freeing. It was like decluttering my consciousness: dropping Google and opting for Soul. In truth, I hadn’t lost anything. I had gained greater awareness of the simplicity and power of my lifetime upon this Earth. At the deepest level, my soul (and yours) lives within the Great Mystery of impermanence and eternity, each precious moment experienced and then released with love.

 

Resignation or Surrender?

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger

What’s the difference between resignation and surrender? To me, resignation seems to have a hopeless aspect to it, giving up on possibility. Surrender doesn’t have that flavor. It’s more a letting go of control, so that life can bring possibility to you instead of your clutching at it. Yet, perhaps there is more to resignation than first meets the eye. What if you have to go through resignation to get to surrender? What if in resigning yourself to life not turning out the way you thought it would, you let go at such a deep level that complete surrender is at last possible? In expecting nothing, you open the door to everything.

I recently experienced something like this as I continue to integrate living in a new state after more than 30 years in another part of the country. Massachusetts and Florida could not be more different. In order to make the transition, I had to embrace those differences, which has been very challenging at times. I have surrendered again and again. Yet I still felt stuck in some indefinable way. Basically, I don’t feel at home here, at least in the way I had previously defined it. When I accepted that I may never feel that way, something started to change.

It was a book that brought about this perceptual shift: Braiding Sweetgrass by Potawatomi naturalist Robin Wall Kimmerer. In early chapters, she writes of her people losing their traditional home and being forced to walk the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. With that background, she also writes of her family’s ties to New York State and how “home” has been defined in her life, usually through a deep connection to Mother Earth. Her stories and descriptions are so vivid that at one point I just sat and cried, feeling all the past homes in my own life and how nature was an integral part of each of them.

I have lived many places, north, south, east, and west, but my childhood home in Illinois and my recent home in Massachusetts tug at my heart most. As I allowed myself the thought that I may never see either of those places again in this lifetime, something in me let go, into grief, into resignation—and then, gradually, a release into a deeper surrender. I had no expectations anymore about anything. I was just present in my life as it was, with no attachments to past or future. The sadness and loss broke my heart, but in the breaking, spirit poured in, as it always does, and left me washed clean.

Life brings us so much, realities arising from possibilities, again and again. Each reality, beginning and ending, is the doorway to another possibility, another reality. Our lives are forever shifting from one dimension into another wider dimension. Right now at this moment, we, as individuals and as a planet, are being asked to let go of everything that came before and move forward in our lives, through resignation to surrender and ultimately to infinite possibility. Our feelings are passing signposts. Where we are going, there are no parameters really.

As I look out my window today, there is only the living presence of Mother Earth in all directions, filling my heart and soul with a greater sense of home than any one particular place. Each of us has a soul window that opens out to that same view. Each of us is finding our way home.

 

Who Would You Be Without Identity?

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger
Can you imagine yourself without a gender, a role, a story, a sense of self that precedes you into the world? No mental concepts that define how you see everything? No language to structure the formless into form and separate you from others? This is how you were born. This is how you entered life on Earth (and how you will leave it), a divine soul without human definitions to shape it. And this is who you still are, deep within. No matter what words were spoken or names were given to you, your soul remains intact. Your soul is always connected to the Source from which it came, regardless of what separation is experienced by your personality or ego in the course of a lifetime.

The question for so many people at this time of awakening on our planet is: How do we get back there? How do we return to the child’s wide-eyed wonder and love of the world? Newborn babies are pure awareness, pure being. No language blocks or distorts that essential life force energy that flows through. As our human minds learn to name and categorize, that energy remains but goes underground. Our souls are disguised by the “personalities” that overlay our essential Self. Gradually we forget our divine connection, and our minds, supported by external social norms, define our daily experience. We don’t realize that our physical bodies are merely costumes that we are wearing for this particular lifetime. Consequently, we lose our sense of oneness with others and with all that is.

It takes ongoing intention and practice (or sometimes an identity-shattering experience) to return to conscious awareness of our soul’s presence. Habit and external distractions can often be impediments in this process, but the strength and power of the spirit within moves us forward even when we feel most lost or disconnected. I believe this because I have experienced it myself. The personality self I learned to navigate the world with carried me through my childhood and young adult life—until one day, at age 18, I met a new friend, a kindred spirit, who opened my eyes to the limitations of that self. I started to seek something greater and embarked on a decades-long journey into awakening and self-awareness. Not unlike many other seekers at this time. Ultimately, we are all meant to take this journey back to soul, back to Self.

As I learned meditation, yoga, and self-exploration, the doors to my inner being gradually opened. I experienced divine connection, or soul presence, through a variety of experiences with many spiritual teachers over many years. All of it led to the present moment, wherein the journey is deepening and in many ways becoming solitary. The final path back to God, to complete awareness and soul embodiment, often has to be walked alone because there really is no intermediary between your soul and its Source. They are actually one and the same, and this is a realization that occurs deep within your consciousness. It cannot be imposed from without.

So, at some point, you and I (and all of us) realize the oneness of all of life. We begin to see clearly how language was just an attempt by the human mind to explain a Mystery that cannot be solved or even translated into words and concepts. Only at the soul level do we “see” the connections and feel the power of Being itself. There are times when, as a writer, I try to express my own soul’s awareness, but I know it is an approximation of something vastly beyond my ability to describe it. It resides at the place beyond language, roles, and all other human designations.

This is the place without identity. It is the place we experience every time we are fully present in our lives. When we take a deep breath and feel the peace at our core, when we open our hearts to unconditional love of self and others. These are the moments when our soul awareness expands, and we know ourselves to be eternal and infinite, a divine presence that came to Earth to experience itself as human, awaken to its own divinity, and then return to the sacred Source from which it arose.