Birth Pains of a New Planet

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

The daily news is full of distressing world events. Terrorist attacks, lockdowns, drones, guns, and the targeting of entire religions, races, or nationalities as enemies. Racism, homophobia, violence against women, bullying—these too are pervasive. There is no doubt that much of the planet is living through turmoil. Many people are reacting within themselves to this turmoil, experiencing chronic depression, emotional upheaval, or physical/mental breakdown. In one way or another, we are all affected by events in the world and in the lives of those we care about. Still, beneath those events is the transformative energy of a planet in transition. The old age and the new age are engaged in a vibrational dance-off, and something entirely new is being born. The planet’s vibration is shifting radically, and our vibrations are shifting right along with it. Yes, change can be unsettling and frightening, but it also can be exhilarating and hopeful.

We hear lots about fear, violence, and conflict at both the global and the individual levels; yet, that is not all that exists. Stories of compassion, courage, mutual aid, and loving-kindness are under-reported, but they occur, as do stories about the spirit of people in the midst of crisis. The website Positive News (http://www.positivenewsus.org/) posts less-publicized accounts of the lives and experiences of people around the world who are taking positive action for peace, harmony, and global oneness. These are individuals and groups who live love day to day in their homes and communities as they step out of separation and embrace others as sisters and brothers. In that embrace is the beginning of the end of “otherness.” Through compassionate action, sharing, kindness, and mutual regard, these people are making a difference in the world. Small scale becomes large scale person by person.

The extreme polarities (love/hatred, war/peace, oneness/separation) that we are seeing now are all part of the planetary shift Earth is experiencing. No matter what you see in the external world or in the media, something greater is being birthed on our planet. At the deepest level, it is the full expression of love itself, the complete embodiment of spirit in human form, and the conscious awareness of the divinity that lives within each of us. That may sound like spiritual nonsense or utterly utopian and unrealistic when you look around at the anguish so prevalent in the world or in the lives of those we love. Still, ancient cultures have foreseen and spoken of this time. It’s not just wishful thinking or uninformed naiveté. The wisdom of elders in many cultures tells us that “now is the time” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

This past Christmas Eve, I watched a late-night program called “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” Broadcast nationally and viewable online, it was organized by the United Religions Initiative and was meant to be a bridge between those of varied religions, spiritual beliefs, cultures, and backgrounds. The diversity of those participating was both impressive and grounded in a visible sense of community among those speaking, singing, dancing, offering prayers, and lighting candles. To me, it was a hopeful sign, that there are more and more people and groups dedicated to oneness and community instead of divisiveness and separation.

So if you listen to the mainstream news, don’t forget that it’s not the whole story. Those who pay for these newscasts benefit from keeping people uninformed, fearful, and powerless. We don’t have to buy into that reality. We can choose to love one another. That’s how a new planet is birthed. It may not be easy or clean or quick, but eventually, something miraculous appears. A new planet is being born, and we are the midwives. We are the newborn as well. In the midst of chaos, new life comes into being, and new being comes to life. Each of us is a miracle moving down the birth canal to emerge onto a light-filled planet, full of infinite possibility.

 

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.

 

 

Trust

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to experience it all—everything. Live in different places, travel to different countries, work in different jobs, expand into different identities. I did not want to be stuck in any one location or persona all my life. For the most part, I’ve lived that. My life has been full of change and exploration: shifting experiences that have opened me to a continuously growing beingness in the world. Only recently, however, have I come to know the shadow side to that inner desire: regret, fear of missing something. This too is a part of the human quest for a fully lived life.

This past August my high school graduating class held a large reunion celebration in Lockport, Illinois, where I grew up. For various reasons (travel logistics, other events scheduled that same month), I did not attend. A few days afterward, when individuals began to post photographs of the weekend, I began to feel a deep sadness that I had missed out on something very special: the opportunity to see again friends I hadn’t seen in decades, some whom I had known since first grade. I couldn’t shake it for days, and a week later, I experienced similar pain at not being able to attend a six-day intensive spiritual immersion. It was Panache Desai who pointed out to me the unconscious pattern of regret that I had been carrying inside me, a fear that I would miss out on something extraordinary that everyone else was experiencing. Bringing it into my conscious awareness helped me see it pop up in other ways in my life.

Even in my spiritual practice, I found it intertwined with my deepest desire for divine connection. There it was: Fear that I would be somewhere else when everyone else got “enlightened.” Fear that I would miss hearing the key words of wisdom that would open the door to samadhi, awakened oneness. Fear that I would never experience again the expanded consciousness that embraced infinity and God as part of me, as part of everything. Within my most profound spiritual experiences and connection to something greater lay a fear that I might be missing something or I might lose what I had found. And at the heart of that fear was the issue of trust, surrender.

The more I surrender in my life, the more I see that needs to be surrendered to. I thought I had reached the deepest possible acceptance of “all that is.” I had recognized and embraced the divine orchestration of everything in life. Yet, there I was, feeling that I had somehow made a mistake in not attending a high school reunion or a spiritual retreat. Inside me was a kernel of apprehension that I might miss something KEY to my own evolution as a human being, as awakened spirit. The next step, of course, was to surrender to that too. Accepting the fear itself as part of being human opened the door to a deeper letting go.

With that surrender came another level of realization: that there are no mistakes. I’m always where I’m supposed to be for my soul’s experience and growth on Earth. Spirit has the road map for my human journey, and there is never a wrong turn. Wherever I am, all is in divine order, always. It’s about trust. Trust in something greater and wiser than my own mind’s idea of what I should be doing or experiencing. More and more, I am letting go into infinite unquestioning. I still want to experience everything, but I also have faith that wherever I am and whatever I’m doing is perfect beyond my human understanding. Ultimately, I am surrendering to trust itself. As Panache often says: “Your soul has already chosen. You’re just along for the ride.”

Goodreads Holiday Book Giveaway!

kornegger-loseyourmind-cover-front-final-150pxJust in time for the holidays! My book Lose Your Mind, Open Your Heart is currently part of a Goodreads Book Giveaway running from November 19 to December 19. Enter to win one of five free signed copies, for yourself or as a gift. https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/162359-lose-your-mind-open-your-heart-limitless-love-on-an-evolving-planet.
For anyone living in the Boston area, come and see me on December 5, 6-10 p.m., at a free author event at Arlington Center for the Arts, hosted by Maat Publishing. I will be reading from, signing, and selling my book, along with a number of other authors. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/authors-event-at-aca-tickets