Category: Spiritual

Poignancy and Gratitude

When you are in your teens and 20s, life seems to extend into the future like an endless expanse of potential experiences. You can’t imagine not having the opportunity to visit places you love again or see friends and family regularly. As you grow older and encounter both loss and change, life takes on a quality of uncertainty, sweetness tinged with sorrow. A favorite uncle or a parent dies, friends move away, you yourself may move multiple times. The tapestry of life is always shifting, and we too shift with the changes. At a certain point, you may realize that the years ahead are possibly fewer than those behind. It may awaken a deep sense of appreciation for every moment you are given. This is how our lives teach us gratitude. Yet now, at this time on the planet, that lesson is coming up in unexpected ways.

We are living through a period of heightened sensitivity to life and death. The global COVID pandemic has made everything seem tenuous at times, transitory. The ancient Buddhist wisdom of “impermanence” is suddenly front and center in our daily lives. Will we get beyond the losses and emptiness, the holes in the infrastructure we took for granted? And what about health and life itself? There is a kind of poignancy in every memory and every present interaction. But there is also—if we are open to it—gratitude.

Toward the end of 2020, my partner Anne and I moved from Florida back to Massachusetts. We had spent two and a half years in Florida, but in considering where we wanted to be in the future, the choice became clear: where we felt most at home. And that would be Massachusetts. COVID intensified those feelings. As the years go by, and as I live through this pandemic, the assumption that I will do things an infinite number of times seems to fall away. I wonder: “Will I ever see that person or place again? Will I have that experience once more?” Every single day becomes extremely precious, never to be taken for granted.

So perhaps all of us now on this planet are being given the gift of treasuring each moment of life and each relationship, wherever we are and whomever we are with. When I wake up on a cold winter’s morning in New England, I can either question leaving the warmth of Florida behind, or I can look out the window at the scarlet sunrise and the wild geese flying overhead and smile in gratitude for another day of life. Timeless moments in which to experience the love of friends/family and the natural beauty in the world around me. Cardinals and chickadees calling. Tree silhouettes with tiny buds on the branches. Bulbs pushing up through the earth as spring approaches. Rebirth is a part of the cycle of life too, and in spite of our losses and tears, there is always a spark of life renewed.

All that we are experiencing now, whatever our age, can be challenging and cause us to dig deep within for inner stamina and courage. But we have those. Our strong hearts embody love. Our souls are a reservoir of peace and wisdom. We are nourished by the connections between us. What if loss is ultimately just change, renewal—the rebirth of our lives and our planet? No matter what is happening, we can feel grateful for the poignantly beautiful blessing of life itself.

Your Soul Knows Best

Sometimes it seems as if life is random, crazy, a mistake of cosmic proportions. It isn’t. There is intent and purpose woven into the fabric of the universe. And your soul knows this. Your soul chose this lifetime for its own evolution, for humanity’s evolution. We humans are on a collective journey through diverse Earth experiences to integrate polarities and find our way back to balance, peace, and harmony. The soul is our guide.

The challenge for the soul-as-human is to reach peaceful harmony within a physical form with its complex emotions, thoughts, and anatomical circuitry. At times it can seem overwhelming. However, if you remind yourself that your soul chose the scenarios and experiences of your lifetime for its own growth and expansion, then perhaps you can come to acceptance and even gratitude. It’s not necessarily something that will make sense to the mind, but your heart naturally allows life to flow through it. If you remain centered in your heart, life will feel more whole and less fragmented.

In truth, we are each one cell within a greater whole that includes the entire cosmos, every part connected to every other part. There are no mistakes at the level of universal consciousness. Everything is unfolding perfectly for our evolution. This is probably the greatest lesson of my lifetime. When I can view all of my life—both the joy and the pain—as a symphony written and orchestrated long before I was born, then I can let go of the need to control and relax into just being. The music of the spheres plays itself unassisted, and I begin to see the miracles. I realize that I am living out a beautiful divine design.

Every morning is a fresh opportunity to remember these truths and live in awakened consciousness. Not always easy, because my mind gets distracted and forgets. My breath is the built-in reminder that I am spirit beyond form. If I begin each day with quiet conscious breathing in meditation, my thoughts slow down and fade to the background. I settle into a deeper awareness that God is breathing life into my physical body in every moment. Taking a deep breath periodically throughout the day (ongoing meditation) returns me to that focus. It aligns me with my soul and with Presence.

God’s presence on Earth is experienced through the soul. When you let your mind’s filter become transparent, your soul’s light can shine fully, and divine Presence is known. This is soul vision and soul awareness. Live life for the experience, not the results. Immerse yourself in the present moment, and you forget about past/future and cause/effect. You are limitless and free. The wonder of the Now is all-encompassing. It’s why we came here. To move through what appear to be challenges and finally see everything as grace. To live the infinite in a finite world. To recognize God in yourself, in others, and in everything. And to understand finally that your soul and your heart are your wisest guides, always.

Whatever You Don’t Want

Consider this possibility: Everything you don’t want in your life (pain, loss, difficult relationships, fear) could be there as a catalyst for you on your soul journey in this lifetime. What you resist or reject may be your greatest teacher. We come to Earth to have experiences, the full spectrum, not just the “good stuff.” That’s what being human is all about. And what is “good” anyway? The viewpoints of today can be completely reversed tomorrow. What you grieve over losing may later be shown to be a huge blessing. So what if everything is a blessing, no matter what it looks like?

Over time, I finally began to see the full truth of that bit of wisdom. I realized that the challenges I’ve faced in my life were in fact huge catalysts for me on my soul journey. Many years ago, chronic headaches and neck pain from a muscle injury led me to explore alternative healing (acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, meditation), which in turn led me to spiritual teachings. And my lifelong fear of infinity/eternity pushed me to go even further with those spiritual teachings. A few weeks ago, during an expansive meditation, I was shown an overview of my lifetime in which so many connections were clear. I could see that the pain and fear were actually my soul guides on this life journey. Suddenly, my wise friend Panache Desai’s words made complete sense: “No matter what shows up, it’s there to take you deeper.”

I can’t tell you how much that insight, that overview, has changed how I feel day to day. I no longer get so caught up in complaining and bemoaning the difficulties of life. I am grateful that I was led to spiritual teachers who helped me reframe the fear and to health practices that helped lesson the pain. And along the way, I have been given the gift of greater compassion for others and greater connection to Spirit. I feel empathy for friends and strangers alike in navigating the challenges of being human. I no longer perceive God as distant or unattainable but instead as an integral part of who I am and all that I experience. There is an Infinite Consciousness that I am aware of all the time now. Its very infinity, what has been my greatest fear, is also the source of my most profound and treasured experiences of the “Great Mystery” that is God. Ultimately, you discover that love is at the center of everything, and only that love is real. The rest are just passing signposts.

So before you react with anger or dismay at some aspect of your daily life experience, pause for a moment and consider that something more could be at play than just unfairness and bad luck. What if the luck is in just being alive? In having such a wide spectrum of human experiences? Souls line up in other dimensions to get the chance to come to Earth for this, both the woe and the wonder. Because within that diverse dance of emotions and reactions is a soul’s opportunity to expand and grow and become a brighter light in the cosmos. Did you think the entire universe was an accident? Look carefully at your life as a whole. Every detail is perfectly designed. You are a human angel, sent here to experience everything, see it all as love, and shine that love outward, across all dimensions.

Masks

Photograph © 2021 Peggy Kornegger
This blog article is not about the pros and cons of mask-wearing. Instead, I’d like to suggest a possible deeper meaning for this whole phenomenon. All around the world, people are wearing masks, for mutual protection and individual/collective health. When I pass someone on the street here in Massachusetts in winter, I see eyes and a mask—and lots of clothing. COVID has made us almost unrecognizable, one from the other. Sometimes it seems eerie or surreal—a science fiction scenario. Yet people often wave or gesture in a friendly way as they go by, bridging the social distance between us. In our anonymity, we are still human. And maybe, ultimately, that may be the gift of COVID: to show us in an unforgettable ongoing visual that we are really all the same. The masks hide our differences, and our common humanity is clearly visible in our eyes.

Over the past year, I have had vast stretches of time to ponder the greater significance of this pandemic in our lives. From the beginning, it seemed clear that there was a multi-faceted divine understory to what felt so overwhelmingly catastrophic and tragic. God had given us a timeout, a reset. Yes, we faced severe illness, suffering, and death on a global scale. Still, as the world shut down, and we sheltered in place, distanced from one another physically, the human spirit somehow found ways to reach into the emptiness with hope. People sang from their balconies and windows. They flooded the Internet with photographs of clear unpolluted skies, newly visible mountains, and wildlife returning. In looking into the distance and listening into the stillness, we realized how much we had been missing in our busy, noisy lives. Awareness arose in individual after individual. We could perceive the world and each other with greater clarity.

Simultaneously, the more clearly we saw, the more political conflict arose. People voiced their outrage at years of racist violence and oppression. Many listened while others refused to hear. Versions of opposing “truths” played out everywhere. Some viewed this ongoing turmoil as apocalyptic. To me, it was birth pains, the emergence of new possibilities as the destructive and unworkable fell away. My entire lifetime has pointed me in that direction. Countless prophecies of indigenous peoples and spiritual masters have envisioned this time. We are not destroying the Earth and humanity; we are being offered the gift of awakening, revitalization. What has been called the New Earth is now emerging.

On the New Earth, we embrace difference as part of Oneness, diversity as divine. In each other’s eyes, we see commonality and love, not opposition and hatred. We work together to create communities that circle the globe in peace and sister/brotherhood. No one ahead or above, all moving together as equals with unique gifts to share. This is the vision, and it is beginning to come into being now. So, perhaps those sometimes cumbersome and inconvenient masks are actually a blessing. In a world of multicolored masks, who is the enemy? Masks direct us to the eyes, which are the windows to the soul. And that’s who we are ultimately: souls on a fantastic journey on a wondrous blue planet, here to expand and evolve. When we look into one another’s eyes, we see the Soul, unified and infinite. That’s who we are, with or without masks.

 

Heart Memory

Photograph © 2021 Peggy Kornegger
I once read about an injured hawk that was rescued and taken to a raptor rehabilitation center. The hawk, after recovering from its injuries, was driven back to the location where it had been found, many miles away. At a certain point in the trip, the hawk suddenly became more alert. It lifted its head and looked around sharply; it moved its wings with anticipation. It sensed in the deepest part of its being that its home was near. Such behavior can’t be logically explained by science because it has to do with the things we know without physical evidence to prove it. Awareness beyond the five senses. Author Rupert Sheldrake called it “morphic resonance” in explaining how a dog would know its human companion, a hundred miles away, had started to return home. We living beings, animal or human, feel presence and remember home from great distances. Our heart has an intelligence even deeper and wider than the brain’s.

I have experienced this time and again in my life. It is a powerful connection to the world around me. I can literally feel my awareness extend beyond time and space to people and events at great distances or in the past. Like the hawk, I have recognized “home” in my cells and in my heart. Most recently, on the return flight moving back to Boston from Florida, I visually tracked the plane’s movement up the coast, passing through state after state. I could feel my heart begin to beat faster as we neared New England. When the edge of Massachusetts appeared on the flight map, I looked out the window at the Earth below. I felt the familiarity deep within me. Then, as the plane touched down, tears filled my eyes. Anne, who had lived in the Boston area all her life, was sniffling beside me. We squeezed each other’s hands as the flight attendant’s voice came over the PA: “Welcome Home.” Yes.

A couple of weeks after arriving and settling in to our new apartment, Anne and I drove to the neighborhood where we had lived before moving to Florida. As we passed through the familiar streets and turned down ours, once again I cried. Eleven years of memories flashed through my mind: summer gardens, autumn leaves, winter blizzards, spring awakenings, sunrises and sunsets, full moons, screech owls calling at dusk, mockingbirds singing at dawn, goldfinches feeding, squirrels chasing each other, neighbors bringing banana bread and kindness. It all was alive within me. My heart remembered every moment.

Immediately I thought of the hawk and connected to its experience from within my own. We creatures of Earth are here but a short time; yet each second is imprinted on our consciousness and carried within us. Our souls know the brevity of our stay, which gives us an intensity of experience that continues throughout our lives. The homes we have here are but a reflection of the greater Home that we come from and to which we return beyond lifetimes. Perhaps in remembering our Earth homes with such emotion we are also remembering our heavenly Home. It is a mystery, this life. Still, in moments of deep connection to the present and past as one, we, hawk or human, experience the far-reaching power of the heart’s memory. And of a greater Intelligence that holds us all in its Universal Heart.