Category: Soul journey

Moving On and Letting Go of Everything Past

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger
Last fall, the house where my partner Anne and I lived in Massachusetts went up for sale. We knew immediately that that For Sale sign was also a sign from God: Time to move on! A door was closing, but another was so clearly being opened. Fortunately, we had a lease that allowed us to remain in our apartment for several months after the house was sold. We had plenty of time to make decisions and then step through that open door into new possibilities. As events unfolded, we felt guided to move to Florida, where we had a number of friends, and the winters did not include snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. Also (and this was key), we discovered that buying a condo there was less expensive than the rent we were currently paying in Boston. Neon signs pointing south…

So we were excited about this brand new adventure. We flew to Florida for a visit, looked at potential places to live but didn’t find exactly what we wanted. After deciding to rent for a year and keep looking, we returned home. Then, out of the blue, our realtor called us with news that a condo we had looked at that was above our price range had come down in price and she thought we could get it for even less. Long story short: we made an offer, and it was accepted. For the first time in our lives, at retirement age, we found ourselves potential homeowners.

Thus began an intense month of letting go of everything past in our lives. It was like jumping off a cliff into the unknown. Anne had lived in Boston her entire life, and although I had moved back and forth coast to coast many times, I had been in the Boston area for more than 30 years years. Time to move on. We felt some apprehension, but mostly we were excited. We felt supported by old and new friends alike in our decision. It was both energizing and at times overwhelming, but synchronicities and good fortune kept leading us forward. There was never any doubt for either of us that this was the right path.

As the date of the condo closing drew nearer, we organized a yard sale and called local groups to donate to, clearing out piles of old books, clothing, etc. Then it got down to the hard stuff—the really old memorabilia that we still had in drawers and boxes (and we are not really savers). I had one drawer and one box that condensed many years of my life. One Saturday, I spent several hours throwing out booklets, programs, articles, letters, etc. from my 20s and 30s, all of it awash with memories of a past self that was distantly familiar but not really part of my present life.

Then I opened the box that held childhood photos, report cards, high school yearbooks, and letters from my mom and dad and many dear old friends. I pitched almost everything, except a few of my parents’ letters. I probably would never look at or read all these things again, so why keep them? It was like holding onto a memory of my former self. The love in those relationships was within me. Time to let go of the external.

Just as I was tearing up the last set of letters, it hit me—a dull pain in my left side. It remained for a while and then eased. At 2 a.m., however, extreme pain and nausea woke me from a sound sleep, and Anne drove me to the ER. Hours of tests and strong pain medication, and the diagnosis was a kidney stone that should pass in 48 hours. It did not.

For a week, I juggled pain and medication, trying to continue to function as we prepared for the closing. And, in the midst of it all, it suddenly dawned on me that the stone could be seen as a physical manifestation of everything past in my life that I was letting go. That insight did little to alleviate the pain I was feeling, though, or the fear that the stone would never pass. Then, after 8 days, the pain stopped. The past passed through me the day before the condo closing—perfect timing.

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger

Sometimes life is literal and sometimes it’s symbolic and sometimes it’s both. We come to this Earth for life experiences, soul growth, and shared evolution, and boy are we getting them! There is no one among us that is immune to the jolts and jumps that this particular time span on the planet is rich with. We are all being jettisoned into a new future, which is actually the Present in disguise. We are being asked to leave behind the memory of our selves in favor of a present-moment awareness that includes all time and timelessness.

When Anne and I stepped out of our past—through the looking glass—the entire world around us accelerated and renewed itself in magical ways. It’s still happening. We have no idea what’s coming next, but that’s part of the magic. When you let go of everything past, you are carried forward by life force, by spirit, to a destiny that only your soul and God understand fully. That is life’s greatest mystery—and sweetest grace.

Your Crowning Glory

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Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
Okay, can we take a look at the elephant in the room, the one we avoid, the one we pretend isn’t there? Specifically, the white-haired elephant, otherwise known as ageism. Ageism affects us all at one time or another in Western culture. Women get hit by it around 35 or 40 when the first white/gray hairs appear, and we are encouraged to run for the hair dye. Around the same time, makeup ads advise treating those new wrinkle lines with cover-ups, serums, and lotions so they don’t become permanent. Later, Botox is the treatment of choice.

Men get the wakeup call if they begin to bald early. Ads urge them to get hair transplants, or the trend now is to shave their heads. If their hair starts to lose color instead, they may receive a few years of deferment with the “distinguished gray” perception. However, eventually they too are faced with the white-hair stigma. The idea of just allowing our physical bodies to age gracefully and naturally—with a healthy diet, exercise, and a stress-free lifestyle instead of some kind of intervention—still remains on the outskirts of the collective consciousness. We live in a culture that promotes “youth” relentlessly.

I wore makeup in my early 20s, but when I came to see the underlying sexism and ageism in it, I stopped. I’ve never dyed my hair for the same reason. It’s all just costuming anyway. If we could see it as play, it might be fun, but when it’s tied to tight social expectations and judgments, it becomes an impediment to self-acceptance. Women are habitually trained to wear masks to alter their appearance and disguise their age. And one white hair can give you away. So I have had various reactions over the years to my gradually whitening hair.

What I’ve discovered is that there are three kinds of assumptions people may unconsciously make when they see someone with white hair:
1) The person is old, frail, and physically weak.
2) The person is mentally slow-witted and forgetful.
3) The person is just plain invisible.

I’ve occasionally had one of the above directed at me (or one of my parents), such as someone offering a bus seat or a salesclerk over-explaining in a condescending way. When my father was still alive, I habitually had doctors or salespeople talk only to me even when my father was asking the question. Your individuality and your humanity often become invisible because of white hair or wrinkles. Not to everyone, but to some. Many people respond with an open generous heart, regardless of age, sex, or physical appearance. Others get lost in their own preconceptions.

I’m certainly not criticizing people for offering seats; really that’s a kindness we should extend to everyone. It’s the socially created assumptions behind certain behaviors that are annoying. A receptionist at my eye doctor’s office recently said to me in a somewhat snotty tone, “Do you realize you’re a half hour early for your appointment?” I replied, “Yes, of course. I always arrive early. Better than being late.” It took me a minute to realize that she would never have said that to someone younger. My white hair made her think I needed some kind of wake-up call.

Isn’t it about time that we see aging as a journey into wisdom and well-being instead of decline and stupidity? We expand into more awareness, empathy, and generosity as we age (if our hearts remain open). Many cultures honor their elders as the most valued citizens of the community. They don’t ignore, shun, or discard them as we do in Western society because they no longer bring in “a capital wage.” So many broken paradigms are falling away—this one needs to as well.

Let’s look at white hair as natural and beautiful instead of something we have to hide or deny. Don’t let anyone else’s perceptions define and limit you. Be your own unique soul self throughout your life. As you stretch and grow with each year of your time here on Earth, think of that shining white light at the crown of your head as a sacred gift: God’s blessing for a magnificent, expansive, fully lived life.

The Experience of God

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
God is everything. Yet within that everything, God has many aspects of being, from formlessness to form. At the center of the universe (actually before the universe became the universe) is just Source energy, pure potential. In some teachings, this is called the absolute, or “I.” It is the precursor to the Big Bang: out of nothing came something, out of absolute being arose relative being, or “I Am,” wherein God becomes relatable, experiential, as love, as consciousness. When we on the spiritual path feel divine love, when we expand into conscious awareness of something greater in our lives, we are experiencing the “I Am” at the soul level.

The next aspect is “I Am That,” in which we as humans identify completely with our physical forms, personality selves, or egos, and forget our divine connection. Forgetfulness is the common state for humanity at this time. In forgetfulness, we get caught up in all the polarities and dramas of human physical life on Earth. Our minds, emotions, and bodies are our primary experience, and the soul takes a backseat, often completely overlooked. This also is God, but it is God forgetting that it is God—something we all experience before we awaken again into the “I Am,” the love we came from.

In the collective awakening that is happening more and more on this planet, we reconnect with our souls, with the God within. This is the primary experiential focus for many of us who have incarnated at this time—to expand in awareness from “I Am That” to “I Am” and finally to “I.”

My own life has taken me through all three aspects at different times. Most of my early life was spent in “I Am That.” I dropped much of my socially created personality when I left my small-town home at 18 and went away to college to “find myself.” I spent years exploring “who am I?” and “why am I here?” I often felt lost and in despair during this self-exploration because I couldn’t really see beyond the Earth plane. I was on a spiritual quest, but I didn’t know it as such. I found meaning and a new kind of self-identification within the breakthrough experiences of my generation in the late 1960s and 1970s—flower-child consciousness and political activism. Belief in Love defined my life and informed all the experiences I had at that time. It was a period of awakening, but at a beginning level.

Many years later, I began a conscious spiritual journey, which eventually took me to “I Am,” experiencing God, or universal consciousness. This occurred in my own spiritual practices (meditation, yoga, programs with inspiring teachers), in Nature, and eventually I found that divine connection existed within me at all times. These were powerful moments of bliss and joy, when tears streamed down my face at the all-encompassing loving Godness that filled me. I began to live more and more from my soul (and my heart which is the entry point to the soul) instead of my personality or ego. My fears around infinity and death gradually began to be replaced by trust and surrender to something greater than my single human life. Yet, there was more.

I am only now beginning to touch into “I,” or the absolute. I experienced it once years ago at the very start of my work with Panache Desai, when in an individual session, he took me there. More accurately, he accessed that state within himself, which opened the door for me to access it within myself. It was a completely emotionless state of peace beyond peace. This was infinity, on the other side of any fears my mind could invent about it—because there was no mind, no me. There was nothing. I remained in that state for hours, with no desire to do anything but rest in the experience. It made a huge crack in my previous level of consciousness, and deeper awareness began to trickle, and then gradually stream, in. Because of this crack, I was able to experience God in ways I never had previously.

The door is opening wider now to that fathomless, directionless, experience of absolute potential, where God is not even a definable entity. In a recent immersion retreat with Panache, I found myself “lifting off” into that state, like a hummingbird spiraling upward into invisibility. Here there is no language, no recognizable signposts to point to, so when I “return” (actually, there is no return because it is ever-present, the source of everything), I can find no words to describe it. A woman at our retreat called it the place of “no God”—in other words, God before God is seen by us as God. And it’s not frightening because fear doesn’t exist. As I said, indescribable.

These are the states that great masters throughout time have spoken of and, seeing into the future, told us: “All this you will experience, and more.” I have no idea where I am going on this journey; every bit of it is beyond my human “understanding.” It’s a Great Mystery that I am here to experience in its eternal expansion through formlessness and form, emptiness and fullness, potential and presence. In all honesty, the “I Am That” in me at times still fears the nothingness of the “I” and wants only the loving comfort of the “I Am.” Yet my soul knows they are all God, all one unified ocean of energy and light within me and all around me. Separation and fear only exist in my mind.

Your Soul’s Awareness

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
Live as your soul, and trust in God. Live as God, and trust in your soul. One and the same. Your soul is God here on Earth within a physical form. God is in every physical form on the planet—every human being, every animal, every butterfly, every tree, every stone, every tiny grain of sand. There is absolutely nothing that is not Source energy. When we come to this greater awareness, we can be free of separation on every level. Separation from God, separation from others, and separation within ourselves. My mind, body, emotions, and spirit are all one. I am one with all beings everywhere.

Separateness is just an illusion that God/dess put in place so that we could experience our unique individual forms and then come back into conscious awareness of the oneness of all things. Earth is a playground of expanding consciousness. We see one another as different and separate, but when we begin to align more fully with our soul’s awareness, we remember the oneness from which we were created and to which we will return after death. Life allows the experience of separation and the blissful reunion after separation. On this planet of polarities, we come to know all extremes, and God knows them through us, experiences life as we experience it. We are human emissaries who enable God to explore constantly evolving realms of beingness.

So if you thought that you came to Earth only to suffer, think again. Better yet, drop down out of your mind into your heart. Within the heart is where we are closest to the Divine because God is love, and our hearts are love transmitters. When we feel pure unconditional love for another being, we break through the illusion of separateness and experience our own divinity. We love as God loves, and in doing so, we fulfill our purpose for being here. We came to this planet to reach full awareness of who we are and to live as God in human form, loving all that we see as God, including ourselves. Sounds simple, but we have to live the complications to reach simplicity.

I have lived through layer after layer of complicated experiencing in my life, all of it eventually bringing me back home to my own soul, to the God within, which so many spiritual masters have pointed to for thousands of years. We were born wise, fully conscious of our divine connection. Then our clear vision gets blurred by the illusions of the world we are taught is real. All my life experiences are meant to awaken me from that illusion. We who are alive at this time have incarnated specifically to reach collective soul awareness. Each of us is here to know and love one another as God. That is heaven on Earth, and that is the grace-filled destiny that is yours.

What’s in a Name?

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
My aversion to the word God began in childhood because of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who regularly showed up at our door to convert us to Christianity. My father used to try to argue them out of their stance that only they knew who or what God is. They, of course, saw my dad as one of the lost who needed to be saved. This was my first experience with proselytizing. As adults, my parents had moved away from their Christian roots to a more “free-thinking” approach to religion. They felt that humans can never really “know” if God exists; it is a personal belief. So I was raised entirely outside of traditional religion. My parents took me to a Unitarian church once, but I wasn’t really interested. They always allowed me my own choices with regard to religious beliefs or practices.

So I had no spiritual framework other than Nature and my parents’ unconditional love, which I eventually recognized as God in its purest form. I remained suspicious of the rigidity of religion, as well as its patriarchal structure, for many years. The word God to me exemplified all of that. It wasn’t until I read Mary Daly’s book Beyond God the Father in my 20s that I began to open to a spirituality beyond religion. Mary asked her readers to imagine God as a verb not a noun—an active verb, neither male nor female. That fascinated me and enabled me to break through to infinite possibilities around the idea of God. The words Source, Divine, Goddess, Great Mystery, Universal Consciousness, Spirit all held meaning for me. I liked having many names for God, which is really unnamed energy anyway. It’s humans who want to name it.

As I began to follow my own spiritual path, I found that everything held a beauty of its own in the human quest to find and understand God. Even traditional religions, before they became distorted by human attempts to concretize and contain spirit, held many eternal truths at their core. I came to my own open-ended spirituality and no longer cringed at the word God. It’s just a word after all. Now I embrace God as the sacred living energy in all things and all beings, even those Jehovah’s Witnesses who believed that their God was the only one. They too are playing a role on the Earth at this time in the greater evolution from separation and “rightness” to oneness and non-judgment.

In truth, we are all God’s witnesses in this world, every one of us a precious being with the ability to recognize divinity everywhere, inside us and outside us. In the deepest sense, there is no inside or outside, only seamless infinite love that connects us all. That is God, beyond words, beyond definitions. You can’t explain, argue about, or understand God with the mind. You can only experience that blessed spirit, that love, as it flows through you and from you into the world.

Shakespeare wrote: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” It doesn’t matter whether you give God a name or definition or even if you believe God exists. The sweetness of that sacred presence is at the heart of your existence as a soul on this planet. And it continues beyond earthly life into infinity. Nameless or named, the universal consciousness that we call God or Goddess is an integral part of our lives. And s/he doesn’t care what term we use. When I let go of my past perceptions of the word God, I came to see that loving divine connection in every single aspect of my life.