Category: Spiritual

Hide-and-Seek with God

Photograph © 2020 Peggy Kornegger

Over the past decade, I have experienced divine connection in a variety of ways—in Nature, in solitary or group meditation, and with spiritual teachers who helped facilitate that falling away of form into formlessness. In spite of any longing on my part to hold onto it permanently, however, my experience of God came and went, arose and then receded. Repeatedly, I vacillated between the appearance and disappearance, almost as if I were playing hide-and-seek with God. Then Ram Dass died.

His longtime friend Krishna Das wrote a memorial tribute and mentioned Ram Dass’s mantra “I Am Loving Awareness.” He said that now Ram Dass would be found in that “loving presence” that lives within us all. Those words affected me profoundly. All day it was as if the mantra “I Am Loving Awareness” came to life within me. My mind’s filtering and perceptual judgments, pro and con, had dissolved, and there was just, well, awareness. Awareness that did nothing but receive the world around me with love. And gratitude. Tears ran down my cheeks. Yes, this was God, but it wasn’t a powerful rush; it was a quiet presence, a gradual awareness of awareness itself. And with that came the knowing that the rising and receding was only in my human perception, which had made divine presence seem as if it appeared and disappeared instead of being always at my core.

Now when I feel as if God has fallen silent and I am alone in the universe, there is a deeper loving awareness within me that reminds me that I am never alone and that God lives in the silence. It may take a few moments to come to the surface, but that awareness is my companion now. It has always been encoded in my very cells, but only my own soul’s journey could eventually bring me to the point of continuously recognizing the truth of God’s ever-Presence. We humans vacillate in our experiences and perceptions on Earth. God, however, remains constant, permeating the universe with divine light and love. When we pass from the Earthly plane, our souls will merge completely with that light.

Each day my experience of God/dess arises from the world around me, especially in Nature. The quality of the golden morning light, the vibrant colors of the flowers, the stunning blue of the sky–all of these awaken divine awareness in me. I remember who I am, who we all are, and everything around me seems to flow seamlessly in a sweet rhythm of being and becoming. We human souls are part of that. We came to Earth to embody divinity in physical form, to experience ourselves as God in the material world. We are God experiencing both Godness and humanness as one. It is a beautiful dance.

Ram Dass spent a lifetime coming into oneness with his mantra, the “loving awareness” that filled his soul. Just like all of us, he faced difficult human challenges, particularly the stroke that he learned to accept with such “fierce grace” over the last years of his life. In a photograph taken toward the end of his life, you can see the holy light of “loving awareness” shining from his eyes. Though I never met him in person, in the days following his death, I felt his presence in the sacred words of his mantra. It touched my heart and opened me to the loving awareness within myself. I stopped playing hide-and-seek and just rested in the infinite beingness that is God.

 

Open Heart, Open Soul

Photograph © 2020 Peggy KorneggerIf your heart opens completely, everything else within you also opens. Your heart becomes an expressway to your soul. And your soul is the designated navigator for this lifetime. Not your mind or your physical body. Before you were born, your soul was downloaded with the customized codes for this particular life journey. God’s cosmic plan is miniaturized within your cells. As soon as you open your heart completely, those soul codes light up and go into super-connectivity mode. Everything starts to flow seamlessly within your conscious awareness, within your physical form, and thus within your life.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that day-to-day life is without challenges or ups and downs. It means that no matter what happens, if the pathway between your heart and soul is wide-open, your consciousness will register peace and acceptance. That’s because you trust, at the deepest level, that everything is unfolding as it’s meant to for your soul’s evolution. The love that emanates from your open heart and soul guide you in all that you say and do. Your life begins to flow, your eyes to shine, and your connections with others and the world around you multiply and feed your soul’s further expansion.

This is life on Earth at its optimal best. It is why we incarnated at this time. Many of us are already having the above experience at certain accelerated moments in our lives. It is amazing, extraordinary. Then it fades, or disappears completely. We feel lost or confused. Yet we know that it happened, and we long to get back there. How? Well, the key is to repeatedly remind yourself to keep your heart open no matter what is happening in your life or in the external world. What does that feel like? It feels like accepting everything that arises and allowing any accompanying emotions to be experienced without getting lost in them. It feels like becoming a transparent window of glass that the world flows through. It feels like equilibrium, balance, peace.

It’s not magic; it’s a practice. A practice made up of an inner commitment to ongoing conscious awareness. A practice based on the core wisdom that whatever you or I are experiencing outside us is a reflection of our individual inner soul journey. And that journey is divinely guided. When we come to that realization, we no longer mistrust the people and events in our lives. We surrender to life, and in the process, our open hearts and souls become bridges of light, both for ourselves and for everyone around us.

Thus is the collective heart and soul of the world opened. We have entered a new decade, and now more than ever before, each fully aware divine/human being on this planet is contributing to the greater evolution of conscious awareness everywhere. It is a time foretold for millennia, and we have the great honor, gift, and responsibility of being among those who have incarnated to be part of it. So keep your heart open in every circumstance, and your soul will guide you perfectly into a world that is filled with openings.

 

Three Pelicans Circling

Photograph © 2020 Peggy Kornegger

Last week, on my morning walk, three brown pelicans flew overhead, high in the sky, as I tilted my head up to watch them. Slowly they turned in perfect unison and began to circle above me, directly above me. They circled three times, large sweeping circles of which I was the epicenter below them. Then they turned back the way they had originally come and flew off into the distance. As I watched them leave, my spirits uplifted by their brief aerial presence, I thought, “Why did they fly here, circle three times, and then return? Was my presence somehow connected to theirs?”

I am inclined to see the synchronicities of the universe, believing that everything is somehow connected in the greater tapestry of life. We are part of an energy dance, we living beings, and we all affect one another. The thread between us seems invisible, but it does exist. Their circling and my seeing happened simultaneously. No visible cause and effect, yet I felt as if my seeing reached out to them and drew them into a circle. Just as their circling reached out to me and drew me into heightened seeing. A bit like what physicists call quantum entanglement.

Humans on this planet are involved in a similar dance of circling and seeing, invisible much of the time but highlighted when synchronicities catch our attention and expand our awareness. A friend and I recently had a conversation about how everyone affects each other in the dramas of daily life. It became a wider discussion of the polarities of light and dark and the evolution of consciousness on Earth. We came to the mutual “conclusion” that every person and event plays a key role in the expansion of our collective consciousness. Nothing is just a disaster or a godsend. No one is just a hero or a villain. We all have bits of each of those extremes within us, and when we can embrace that polarity, we are free to live the nuances of life. Our life purpose is to accept what is challenging as well as what is inspiring, to come into harmony with everything.

It all gets down to something my friend/teacher Panache Desai has shared repeatedly: “Everything is perfect. Everything is God.” I receive that wisdom at deeper levels within me each day I live my life. This past week it filled me completely, permeating my cells like oxygen, like light. It was light. I saw that we are all here to come to that awareness, to embrace that full expression of compassion and love. We are here to embody divine Presence in the world. A Presence in which all polarities come into harmony within us and thus within the world. That is humanity’s role and destiny at this time.

The pelicans demonstrated that greater circling and surrendering to invisible energies that carry us to where we’re meant to be. Each detail of our flight is part of our soul’s journey, which we chose before birth. We are living our lives to align with our soul’s overview and to align with the love that connects all of our hearts—human, bird, animal, star. To live in loving awareness, with kindness and generosity of spirit, is the greatest gift we can give ourselves, each other, and the world. You and I are God meeting God everywhere every day of our lives. And it’s all perfect.

Does Nature Have Rights?

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger
Do birds have rights? What about bees, flowers, and trees? Or whales and giraffes? Rivers and lakes? These are profound questions that tap into the very nature of life on Earth. Currently, people around the world are focused on climate change: Does it exist, and if so, is it natural or unnatural? Yet, climate change is only one aspect of the larger issue of how human beings relate to the world in general. Do we see Nature as something to be used and then discarded, or do we see it as a living presence that we are part of, the heart and soul of life on Earth?

At the deepest level, it’s a spiritual, as much as a political, question: How do we live in relation to this planet, our “home” in the universe? Throughout the ages, Earth has been seen as a mother figure to the life forms she provides a home for. Mother Earth, or Gaia. Contemporary societies have forgotten this, or they disregard it as foolish fantasy. The corporate/political alliances that rule much of the modern world do not perceive our planet as alive and sentient. To them it is an object that brings them profit, to be used and used until there is nothing left. They don’t notice the invisible living connections that hold the living world together. To reduce everything to an argument about belief or disbelief in climate change is a distraction that keeps all of us from seeing something greater is at stake.

Ultimately, we need to enlarge the discussion to consider whether or not Earth and Nature have the same rights we claim for ourselves. Corporations are now seen as having the rights of a person because they have had the political clout to obtain that legal status. Mother Earth has never lobbied for her rights in the courtrooms and political arenas of this country. Her children, however, are now standing up for her as destruction of the natural world escalates everywhere. There are many grass-roots groups who have begun to work for the “Rights of Nature.”

In Toledo, Ohio, in 2014, the public water supply, sourced in Lake Erie, became so toxic (because of the lake’s high pollution from agricultural runoff and industrial waste) that residents were warned not to drink or even touch it. This crisis sparked a local movement to establish the rights of Lake Erie and the adjacent communities, which are being infringed upon by agribusiness and industries that pollute the lake. Voters passed an ordinance, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which is now being challenged by the state government. Rights-of-Nature groups are popping up in many places, including Pittsburgh (to stop fracking) and Oregon (to stop aerial pesticide spraying). In Southwest Florida, where I live, residents are organizing to establish rights for the Caloosahatchee River, polluted by algae flowing from Lake Okeechobee and contributing to red tide in the Gulf.

There is an awakening occurring across the country, as well as elsewhere in the world, to the essential rights of the natural world and humanity to live a healthy, balanced, unpolluted life on this planet. It’s not only about climate change, which is important but just the tip of the iceberg. Ordinary citizens in rural areas as well as large cities are coming together to say no to the poisoning of their communities by businesses that value money over life itself.* Mother Nature is a living breathing being, which every one of us is part of, and without her, we cannot live ourselves. The “Rights of Nature” movement is an idea whose time has come.
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* See the documentary We the People 2.0 and the dramatic film Dark Waters (based on real events) for the inspiring personal stories of those who are standing up to polluters and state (and federal) governments that back them.

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?