Category: Soul journey

Remembering

Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
We humans forget all the time. We forget we are human, and we forget we are spirit. Then we remember. And then we forget again. Then we remember again. And each remembering is a blessing. These are incredible times we are living in. It is a time of remembering. Not long ago in human history, people lived entire lifetimes without realizing that they were really spiritual beings having a human experience. That awareness is now infusing the collective consciousness. We are remembering who we are. It may be happening in fits and starts, but it is happening. The planet is shifting, right before our very eyes.

In being human, we may not consistently live out attributes that we wish to embody: patience, compassion, unconditional love, peacefulness, generosity. We forget. We get angry. We say something thoughtless or unkind. Or we lose touch with others because we are lost in our own pain or sorrow. Yet anger, fear, and sadness are part of the human experience. If we judge ourselves harshly, we are distancing ourselves from the spiritual power of compassion and unconditional love. For self as well as for others.

I am learning, slowly but with increasing awareness, to let go of self-judgment when I lose patience or inner peace. Instead, I center myself in gratitude for having remembered that there is a different way and that I can always begin again with each deep breath, with each moment of conscious awareness. Yes, I want to be open-hearted and joyful, and I am that. But there are also times when I am shut down or sad. Recalling the existence of the full spectrum of human experience shifts the energy for me. Each time I remember is an opportunity to live deeper into my humanity and access the love that is at the core of my being. In the midst of dismay at not always living up to how I wish to be in the world, I am learning to trust in my own evolution and growth within the collective planetary expansion. One by one, we are all opening our hearts to embrace everything in life as both human and divine.

My soul is at peace with whatever occurs. It is here to experience all of life through me. If I see from my soul’s point of view, I trust in the ultimate perfection of all things. I trust in the beauty and love and infinite possibility of each moment. I begin to flow with the rhythm of the expansion and contraction of life. The in-breath and out-breath of the universe, of spirit, which is expressing itself through me, through all of us. We are each musical instruments opening to the wonder and beauty of our own music. When we remember that, life becomes a blessing instead of a disappointment. So when I forget and then I remember, I am grateful. Grateful for the chance to know I am both human and spirit, a physical being and a soul. I am one cell in a universe of evolving cells of light and love. What a tremendous miracle that is.

Only Child, Only Parents

Photograph © Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © Peggy Kornegger
My parents were both born in the month of October. My mother would have been 100 years old this year, my father, 105. I was their only child, born nine years after they met and married, one of the baby-boomer generation. Although they have been gone for a long time (my mother died 19 years ago; my dad, 10), I still miss them. As an only child, I dreaded their deaths, fearing I would lose my mind without them. Of course I did not. In fact, their transitions were profoundly loving and spiritually uplifting experiences, partly because I was able to be with each of them as they passed. Sitting by their sides, I felt connected to them and to the spiritual realm beyond and intersecting this one. That connection was a great comfort to me for months and years afterward.

It was during those years that my spiritual journey and quest for the meaning of life (and death) began in earnest. My exploration was intentionally eclectic, and I worked with many different teachers. Perhaps I inherited that tendency from my parents, both of whom were also eclectic and nonaligned religiously. They were free thinkers who read widely and attended philosophical discussion groups that pondered the mysteries of life. They encouraged me to make my own choices with regard to religion and spirituality. Over and over throughout my life, they gave me that gift of freedom and unconditional, uncritical love in every area. Whatever paths I took (and I took many—personally, politically, spiritually), they loved me without question.

Their love—for me and for life—is what has stayed with me beyond their lifetimes. It is interwoven with all that I am. As I searched for my own “meaning of life,” my evolving beliefs have always been grounded in love, as were theirs. I can still hear my dad reading aloud a poem by William Blake and choking up at the beautiful words: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.” Reading those lines now makes me cry too, recalling that shared moment of love and gratitude for life. It was music that touched my mother’s heart, the voices as well as the lyrics: Italian tenors, Paul Robeson, Willie Nelson, Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland—she loved them all. We used to listen to all kinds of music together (including birdsong), often with tears in our eyes at some particularly moving musical expression. I am so grateful that my parents passed on their emotional openness to me. As my friends and my partner well know, I cry all the time at life’s beauty and poignancy.

An only child experiences the loss of parents a bit differently because there are no siblings with which to share family memories. No one alive today remembers my parents in all the ways I do. Consequently, I carry their lives within me, where they are present in spite of absence. My backyard flower garden is one of the places I feel them most strongly. They were both gardeners—my dad, vegetables, bushes, and trees; my mother, flowers. I grew up on five acres in rural Illinois, so living with this small piece of nature right outside my door now has been like “coming home” for me—to my childhood home, to myself, and to my parents. Along with so much else, my mother and father gave me a deep appreciation for nature’s miracles. Each time I stand in awe, gazing into the delicate heart of a flower or at a sleeping bee or dancing butterfly, they are with me. They live on within the love in my heart.

Life’s Mystery

Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

Some Native Americans use the term “The Great Mystery” to refer to the concept of God or Source energy. It’s such a wonderful usage because within it, humans step back and allow the unknown to be just that—unknown. Many religions spell out the specific attributes of God, the heavenly realm, and its relation to living beings on Earth, including sets of rigid moral codes, laws, and commandments. How much more open-ended is the idea of a mystery that we will never understand with the human mind? Our hearts can experience God or the Divine, but we cannot solve the enigma of existence. Perhaps the greatest wisdom lies in acknowledging that and allowing the Mystery to live within and through us without trying to understand it.

To live in alignment with this mystery involves dissolving identification with thoughts and ideas; then awareness flows freely without conceptual distortion. Buddha mind. Baby mind. The innocent eye. At the beginning of life, we see the world this way—pure perception with no distorting language filters. Toward the end of our lives, words and memories may begin to fall away as we prepare to return to the oneness of pure divine consciousness, in which human language plays no part. In the middle years, we struggle to understand the seeming contradictions and unfairness of life—and the inevitability of death.

Not all of us are driven to figure out the meaning of life and death. I am one of those who has always tried to do so, from early childhood on. Only in recent years have I found my spiritual journey less burdened by inquiry and more open to possibility. This past summer, in particular, I began to let go into “not knowing.” This came out of a weeklong program with Panache Desai in which he challenged me to drop my questions and live from a place of experiencing instead of trying to understand everything. For someone who has perpetually had cosmic questions spinning around in her head, this was indeed difficult, even painful. Finally, though, in the weeks after the program, something in me opened to not knowing as the most peaceful way to go through my daily life. Basically, I surrendered to the Mystery.

I have surrendered in the past, of course, but there are layers to letting go, and humans are never finished with it. We have to keep being reminded, again and again: Relax your fingers; stop clutching. Relax the mind; stop questing. The wider, higher perspective opens up when we allow everything to unfold with awe and wonderment instead of “What’s going on? Why is this happening? How can I change it?” The “control” trap keeps us stuck on a hamster wheel of trying/failing/trying again. Ultimately, surrendering to mystery may be the wisest and least painful path to take in life. Human existence can be miraculous or a curse. We can suffer or we can celebrate. Celebration involves embracing everything, the sadness as well as the joy. We don’t know the meaning or the outcome, but we can fully experience every incredible moment of the journey.

Looking Back Looking Forward

Photo Courtesy of Mike Dubrovich
Photo Courtesy of Mike Dubrovich
Recently, a childhood friend posted on Facebook a vintage black-and-white photograph of our first grade class. What a strange experience to look at that picture of unfamiliar school children and slowly begin to see familiarity in their faces. Names from the past popped up out of distant memory. I did not, however, recognize myself. I told my friend that I must have been out sick the day the photo was taken. He wrote back, “Isn’t that you on the far left end of the second row?” I peered at the picture more closely and realized in amazement that he was right. Fascinated, I stared at that blondish little girl with big dark eyes, gazing out into her own future. My future. I looked through her eyes and saw myself looking back. Time ceased to exist in that moment of backward-forward perception.

How often do we stumble across those flashes of memory that stop us in our tracks momentarily, lost somewhere between the past and the present? Some say human life is a series of beginnings and endings out of which we fashion our remembered sense of self in the world. Yet we are so much more than our memories, which are really just a long parade of Instagram photographs that we identify as our personal history, our life’s story. Beyond the mental perceptions of time and our place in it, however, is consciousness itself—an awareness that is greater than any one life. In those brief moments of backward/forward memory jumps, we are given an opportunity to see our life from the soul’s point of view, wherein all time is simultaneous, and everything is occurring now. There is no real distinction between a past, present, or future self. The soul sees one being, experiencing time but not defined by it.

Why would we want to see things from the soul’s perspective? Well, if we completely open to soul vision, we see everything is of a piece, whole. We perceive the oneness at the core of all life. Conflicts, comparisons, and judgments fall away. We can never fail our childhood selves and the dreams they had for the future, because we are those children and we are living those dreams now. We are not lost, nor have we taken a wrong path or made a wrong decision. Everything is unfolding in a way that is perfect for our soul’s growth and evolution.

When I looked back at my childhood self in that photo, I wondered, Where is the “I” that is all of me, girl and woman? My soul answered: I am no where. I am now here. I am present. I AM. Taking a long, deep breath, I felt the wholeness of that “I AM,” a timeless soul presence beyond “where.” No separation—the adult and the child are one. If we open our hearts to the soul’s vision of oneness, we can embrace all possibilities and all selves, and life begins to flow in a less fragmented, graceful way. We are able to see the perfection that is at the heart of our own infinitely expansive lives. Within that perfection, there is no backward or forward; there is just fluid, unbroken, loving presence.

Simply Being

Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger

As I meditate for longer and longer periods of time (1­–2 hours) at daybreak each morning, I am finding complexity and simplicity are merging into one flowing experience. Seems contradictory, I know, but only because of the constraints of language. Put another way, layer upon layer of awareness is opening up within me, yet all the layers are part of one whole, one seamless state of being. I’m discovering it is possible to feel inner peace at the same time that I’m feeling sadness or distraction. I am aware of silence at the heart of all sound, of light at the center of darkness. Beyond the illusion of separation, there is wholeness. Within complexity itself is infinite simplicity. Perhaps the best way to describe all of this is oneness, feeling one with everything, at times just resting without thought in simply being, in simply breathing.

Various spiritual traditions speak of such moments. The Sanskrit word samadhi refers to union or merging with God or the Divine, and the Hebrew word devekut describes intense melding or deep communion with God in prayer or meditation. Humans have tried with words to approximate an experience of Divine union or universal oneness that really defies description. Yet we try.

Because I am a writer, I have always felt a deep compelling urge to describe my own spiritual journeys. Yet, the deeper I dive, the harder it is to find the exact words to replicate what I am feeling. Indeed, during one of my deepest inner experiences of infinity (in a session with Panache Desai), I completely lost the desire to write or describe at all. For several hours, I remained in a state of infinite peace. My journal lay untouched nearby. Lately, as I spend longer periods of time in meditation, this same experience is recurring. Words are unnecessary within pure being, the soul silently witnessing. Language arises from thought, and when thoughts float by without attachment or disappear, there is no need to speak or write. Only, later, as I come to the surface from these depths, do I reach for my pen.

This is not to say that the goal of life is to give up speaking or writing. I guess that what I am getting at here is that the experience of peaceful oneness without words changes you. I perceive the world a little differently. The need for constant intervention and effort diminishes. Events seem to flow of their own accord without my monitoring them. There is a recognition of a higher intelligence at work, an intricate tapestry of which I am but one fiber. And my purpose, as that fiber, is to simply be myself, not orchestrate the entire universe. There is a humility in this, a letting go. It doesn’t mean lack of doing; it means doing that arises from being—a softer, less frenetic approach to life. When I write, the words flow from my soul more than my mind.

Am I in this space all the time? No, of course not. I am human. My mind gets busy, and I start to make lists, feel rushed, etc. But those experiences are becoming more transitory, less all-consuming. My soul self knows better, and that connection grows ever stronger. All of us have that connection, and we are gradually learning its importance. There truly is an inner core of peace. When we open to that peace, one breath at a time, it simplifies everything.