Category: Soul journey

Ask Yourself…

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Growing up in a top-down society like ours, we learn very early to look to others for answers. Parents, teachers, bosses, presidents, religious leaders—we are taught that they have the answers, and we should follow their direction. God too is often presented to us as an external figure, a man sitting up in the sky somewhere who knows everything and whose commandments we should follow. Yet, so many of those directives and rules are man-made, created to keep people in line, keep them from questioning authority of any kind, so that the top-heavy status quo remains in place. But what if there is no authority higher than you? What if God, or infinite divine wisdom, lives inside you, inside all of us?

Gradually, cracks in the old infrastructure are appearing. As humans begin to awaken, they are realizing that they don’t want to be told what to do in every part of their lives. They want a responsive and interactive social structure. They want freedom and equality, not just lip service to it. In truth, genuine freedom and equality come into being when each person lives a life centered in authenticity, inner soul wisdom, and deep regard for and love of others. This is the world we are stepping into. These are the shifts in collective consciousness that are occurring on our planet. We are learning to look within for answers, share our insights with one another, and then create together a society that is based on egalitarian values and open-hearted kindness: each individual in balance with the whole, no one person more important or powerful than another.

How do we begin to live this day-to-day? How do we unlearn dependency on everything outside of us? I would suggest that it starts with a regular practice of looking inside ourselves for guidance. You probably have heard of the “higher self,” that entity that is connected to Source or Spirit. The higher self—or soul self, as I call it—is not just a new age concept. It is the part of you that is eternal, and more open and wise than the ego/mind, which tries so hard to figure everything out logically. The rational mind likes to organize, label, follow the rules; the soul exists in a place of pure being and divine connection. When we look to our soul selves—and in conjunction, our hearts—we are guided to the most expansive and loving responses to life and living.

In my own life, I am finding that soul guidance and heart wisdom are ever-present touchstones for living with integrity, joy, and deep regard for others and our beautiful planet. Lately, when challenges or conflicts arise in my internal or external life, I sometimes ask myself two key questions:

  • Do you want to live in fear or do you want to live in love?
  • Do you want to live in judgment or do you want to live in gratitude?

My soul’s answers to these questions are always quite clear and unequivocal. There is no doubt that the part of me that is infinite, eternal, and connected to All That Is wants to live from a place of love and gratitude. That doesn’t mean that I never experience fear or judgment; it just means they don’t predominate and crowd everything else out. When I remember to ask these questions (and it is a practice), I re-center myself in what is really important in life, in that which brings us all together rather than separates us. From the perspective of the heart and soul, there is nothing but oneness always; it is just our perceptions, our mental machinations, that tell us otherwise.

So, if you find yourself mentally spinning or emotionally off-kilter, at odds with life, take a deep breath and ask yourself, your soul self, for the answers. Come home to the deepest part of you. Whatever arises from that place is your own inner wisdom. It is uniquely yours, connected to the greater spirit of all things, and it will guide you perfectly throughout your life.

We Are Infinity

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
“You are here to demonstrate what infinity looks like.”—Panache Desai

I have carried a fear of infinity within me my entire life. Fear isn’t even the most accurate description. It was mind-freezing terror that kept me awake at night as a five-year-old child, imagining a universe that went on “forever and ever.” Religion can sometimes provide comfort to those fearing death, but I was not raised within that structure, and actually, death was not exactly the issue. As I grew up, the “answers” of traditional religion (eternal life) and atheism (eternal nonbeing) were equally frightening to me because they were both eternal. Yes, of course, death was scary, but it was what came after death that was terrifying to me. Eternity. Infinity.

I learned to distract myself from the fear as I grew older, but it never really disappeared. It just lurked in the background, making an appearance at unpredictable times, like when I took an astronomy class in college (which gave me actual visuals of infinity!). Sometime prehistory could set it off too. No one I knew quite understood what I was talking about, so I felt very alone with this extreme awareness of eternity and the accompanying extreme fear. I carried it inside me like an unwelcome guest. Many years later, when I was in my 40s and embarking on a spiritual path, I would ask various teachers about it but never received guidance that was particularly helpful. They too looked at me with lack of understanding. That is, until I met Panache Desai.

Panache, who has been my teacher and friend for several years now, has the uncanny ability to feel what others are feeling, from the inside. He never questioned my fear or its hold on me. In my first individual session with him, he just took me to infinity—a place of utter peace and divine tranquility. Thus began a timeless journey to embrace something I had held at bay all my life. It has been a gradual process: a letting go or surrender to a power much greater than the mental fear in which I had been trapped.

My first epiphany, after turning around to face what I had run from for so long, was that it was my mind that was terrified. My soul has no fear of infinity, because it is infinity. What a realization that was! Actually, it was Panache’s teachings about infinity and divinity as one and the same that helped me realize this. Through my work with him as well as my own experiences, I came to see the Infinite and the Divine in all things everywhere, in the world as well as within myself—my core essence or soul. My conscious awareness that “everything is God” has deepened and expanded, especially this past year when I took part in a yearlong acceleration program with him. That program culminated in a transformative weekend event, Global Gathering 2015 (see my last blog article, “Soul Reunion”).

At GG15, any remaining distinction between infinity and divinity that my brain held onto was washed away in a wave of divine energy that carried the codes for awakening and embodiment of spirit within it. As the energy coursed through my physical body (transmitted vibrationally via Panache in sessions), every separation fell away, every fear fell away. All that existed was beingness, oneness. I was simultaneously empty and filled. The transmission was so powerful that there was a paradigm shift within me: my soul took the lead, and my mind stepped into a support role. What I had been moving toward for years came into full presence in a nanosecond. Afterward, I could barely speak coherently, let alone write, but gradually I was able to articulate the essence of what I had experienced: I am infinite. I am divine. Infinity is divinity. On this rapidly evolving planet of ours, we are now beginning to fully and fearlessly live the truth of that. We are human beings with infinite souls. We are infinity.

Soul Reunion

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

Last month I attended my fourth Global Gathering with Panache Desai in Orlando, Florida. At these events, hundreds of people from around the world gather for what is in essence a reunion, even though many have not yet met one another in person. Some individuals know each other from Facebook, others from past gatherings; still others have had no previous contact at all. Yet the one thing that becomes clear very quickly is that every single person there is a member of a greater soul family who is reuniting. This year’s gathering, “The Power of Community—Coming Together as One,” was the most profound and transformational of any I have attended, and that’s saying quite a lot.

Panache’s view of the current shifts and changes on Earth, which is at the core of his gatherings, is far beyond mere speculation or forecasting. The divine wisdom that flows through him opens into an expansive perspective that is grounded in oneness and community. Basically, we are human souls here to evolve, and the exquisitely woven tapestry within which that occurs provides the context for our constantly shifting lives. Everything is unfolding perfectly for our souls’ and the planet’s greater evolution. Beautiful words, you may say, but are they true? As I live that truth more and more each day, I can only answer, “Yes.”

Over the past four years, my own personal journey has been one of opening to all that I am, all that I came here to be, expressed uniquely in the world. As I share my inner soul self through my writing and in my life, I am one voice, one starburst of life energy, within a continuously evolving collective consciousness. Each of us is integral to this process; each of us has a part to play—really an essence to BE. For more than doing, it is about being. At this year’s Global Gathering, there were artists, musicians, writers, dancers, teachers, tech experts, scholars, financial planners, energy workers, nurses, performance artists, activists, poets, singers, retirees. Parents, grandparents, children. It didn’t really matter what job title or role the world had assigned us. In truth, our lives, fully lived, are the heart of who we are. We were born at this time to love those around us and to be a loving presence in a world often fraught with division, polarity, and fear. Our hearts guide us as we navigate the birthing pains of a new way of being human on Earth.

At GG15, we came together in community for a completely experiential weekend of deep meditation journeys; full-out rave dancing to every kind of music from rap to rock to Disney; intense heart-to-heart interactions; and nonstop “vibrational transformation,” as Panache calls it. Change at the cellular level. Throughout it all, our souls were in silent communion with one another. Oneness and unconditional love permeated everything, even painful breakthroughs and emotional releases. There seemed to be no closed doors within our consciousness. All separation fell away. Language itself fell away. We were emptied out of everything that had come before and filled with infinite divine awareness. From that space, each human face was beautiful, eyes radiating love, no words necessary.

Synchronicities led us from one miraculous moment to the next. Those whom we encountered outside our program seemed to step into their own inner radiance, reflecting back to us all that we were experiencing ourselves. I found this to be true on my return to Boston as well, making soul connections with friends and strangers at unexpected moments. My heart was filled with tearful gratitude and appreciation for every person and every aspect of life, even the upcoming winter and longer hours of darkness. Each morning I awoke in awe at the miracle of being alive. Sounds like a cliché, but that’s exactly what I felt.

This is what we are all living into. Not vacuous bliss without any sadness or fear, but the full spectrum of human emotion and experience, held in our collective hearts as precious and unrepeatable. When we come together and meet at the level of our souls, the reunion and communion that arises carries us forward into our individual lives embodying a greater spirit of oneness and community. We are no longer separate and alone, pitted against one another and alienated. Looking into each other’s eyes, we see our common humanity and divinity. Heart to heart, we are connected; we are in harmony. We are One. This is what I experienced at Global Gathering 2015, and this is the wave of inclusiveness and love that is now emerging planet-wide from countless sources. We are not alone. We never were.

 

 

Good Vibrations

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
No, not the song—we’ve moved beyond the Beach Boys now. It’s not about “good vibes” in the 1960s sense. Vibration today has taken on a much more expansive meaning. As the collective consciousness evolves, more and more individuals are recognizing vibration, or energy, as the basis of everything in the universe, including people. This “truth” comes from modern science as well as ancient spiritual traditions. We humans are high-vibration light beings at the level of spirit, slowed down to inhabit denser physical forms. As our spiritual awareness expands, we become more luminous and free. We are stepping away from density and into being conscious spirit in physical bodies. As we do so, we begin to experience our own soul’s vibration, as well as those of others.

I first became aware of my own vibration at a global gathering with Panache Desai in 2011. He was guiding us in a deep meditation, and after a time, my sense of my physical body faded, and what I experienced was an almost electric pulsing at my center, near my solar plexus—a vibration so strong that it radiated out through my entire being. And the feeling accompanying it was a profound peace that I didn’t want to come back from. I lay there for a long time, just floating in that space. My only conscious thought was that I was experiencing my soul, a vibrating essence that had preceded my physical body and would continue after its death. An extremely powerful experience, unlike any I had ever had. It changed everything for me in ways I can’t even describe. Put simply, my experience allowed me to see that the physical world was only the surface manifestation of a much deeper and limitless “reality”—one made up of vibration.

As I continued to take part in programs and sessions with Panache, I had further experiences of my own inner vibration, as well as a growing recognition of that core essence in others. My sense is that when two people connect at the soul level, they begin to vibrate in tandem with one another, feeling one another’s essence at the level of pure vibrating energy. Panache holds this space for everyone he comes in contact with. He is like a tuning fork, accelerating people into a higher vibrational resonance through the powerful energetic frequency he embodies: unconditional love. I believe this is where we are all headed. That is why we are here on Earth at this key transitional time: to vibrate our soul’s loving light in the world.

We are each becoming embodiments of love energy, and that love vibrates out from us to all those whose paths cross ours. Our open hearts open the hearts of others, without a word being spoken. This is what the Great Shift in Consciousness is all about. Consciousness—which is everywhere, which is shared—opens into its greater unlimited being when it is touched by love. Narrow perceptions fall away, and we are One, beyond thought and individuation. In the presence of pure love, people become that love and begin to shine it from their own hearts.

Each day now, I feel the light within me more, and I see it shining out from others. Love, the highest vibration there is, is transforming the planet from hard rock to golden light. We are each becoming luminous energy fields, vibrating light and love, and awakening others to the beauty of their own inner vibration. One by one, many by many, everything and everyone will shift. Our little blue planet will become a golden shining vibrating star. This is the true meaning of “good vibrations.”

The Silent Nature of All Things

Haleakala photograph © Peggy Kornegger
Haleakala photograph © Peggy Kornegger

I spend countless hours outdoors in my yard every day in the spring- and summertime. It is a deep inner calling that brings me peace of mind, heart connection, and balance between being and doing. Nature in its silent presence teaches me stillness and reminds me of that same place inside myself. When I stand quietly within the natural world at my doorstep, I am a part of all that I see, and I feel the stillness at the heart of everything, whether stone, tree, bird, bee, butterfly, human, cloud, rain, wind, star, or planet.

Indeed, the universe itself is complete stillness at its core. I experienced this primordial silence in a very powerful and unforgettable way once when I was hiking into the dormant volcano Haleakala on Maui. If you walk a ways down the trail that winds gradually to the bottom of the crater and then pause to listen, you hear absolutely nothing. No sound at all—no wind, no birds, no human activity. Nothing. I felt as if I were present at the birth of the planet, before anything existed except sandy red lava fragments, ocean, and sky. I’ve never forgotten that profound sense of eternity in the silence, and now I recognize it within all things, everywhere—if I pause long enough to feel it within myself, in my own breath.

That inner stillness is the spirit of life, our soul’s home. It is what calms and soothes us on our human journey. In silence, the soul witnesses our actions, thoughts, experiences, and emotions; our challenges and celebrations; our pain and joy. When we become lost in stress or suffering, often some mysterious force leads us to turn inward, to seek the silent solace of the soul. The human soul or the soul of nature, one and the same. We live at a time in which an increasing number of us are hearing the call to connect with our innermost being, a part of All That Is. A shift in consciousness is occurring, an awareness that opens us to choosing harmony and balance in our lives. I find it a hopeful sign that people are evolving to the tipping point of remembering the being part of human being.

I sense that thread of hope and remembering within my own life. When I balance activity or action with timeless time in nature or meditation, then I begin to live a seamless oneness of being and doing that are not in opposition to each other but exist naturally side by side. Doing that arises from being, not imposed by the mind’s tendency to overthink and plan, but organically part of the creative flow of all life, within and without. I experience internal harmony when I include moments of silent connection and presence continually throughout my day.

In fact, continual (“intermittent”) is gradually becoming continuous (“ongoing”). As my awareness expands and evolves, along with everyone else’s, the separations and distinctions of a world based in polarity and duality are fading into the background. Life becomes a divinely inspired stream instead of an on/off spigot that we think we control. And the source of it all is a peaceful stillness that we can access in each moment of our lives just by taking a deep breath and observing the true nature of what is right in front of us.