Peace of Mind

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

Everyone aspires to “peace of mind,” but is it possible to access it when the mind often seems at war with itself? We in the Western world have long been a left-brain-dominated culture. We inherited a worldview in which rationalism and scientific thought predominated and have grown up and lived lives in which logical thinking and behavior was valued above all else. Left-brain orientation is often seen as directly opposed to intuition and emotions, associated with the right brain (and with women). Feminists in the 1970s and 1980s pointed out that feminine attributes have been undervalued and often denigrated within the prevailing patriarchal systems. This split between masculine and feminine and left and right brain caused an imbalance and disharmony that divided individuals against themselves and undermined day-to-day human interactions.

Gradually, over time, people have opened to the idea of a healthier whole-brain orientation and functioning. In 2008, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor published her groundbreaking book My Stroke of Insight, which chronicled her experience of how her left and right brain functioned after she had a stroke. Initially her left brain (language, organization, linear time) was almost completely nonfunctional. On the other hand, her right brain (nonverbal, intuitive, timelessness) was providing her with brand new life-altering perceptions. A deep inner peace filled her, and a profound connection to something greater opened her heart. It took her eight years to completely recover the functioning of both halves of her brain. Part of her motivation was to be able to tell others how crucial the right brain is to our well-being. Each part of our brain has important functions, and when they work in tandem, we are more whole as human beings. We now need to consciously welcome our right brain’s input to bring about balance.

My own spiritual journey over the past 25 years has brought me to some of the same insights as Jill Bolte Taylor. Like so many others at this time, I am opening to an experience of consciousness that includes everything and everyone in its infinite expanse. In deep meditation, I have at times felt no separation between my physical body and the outer world. Boundaries fall away, and I am just open-ended awareness. Recently, in fact, I had this experience while walking in my neighborhood at dusk. My body was part of infinite consciousness, as were the crickets and locusts I heard in the trees. And I heard them not from inside my head but from within that conscious awareness which was simultaneously everywhere. The crickets and I were points of life within that vast awareness, the God essence that is experiencing the world through me and the crickets and everything else. A deep sense of peace and oneness arose from this awareness.

That is the peace and oneness we are beginning to access now, individual by individual and group by group, until ultimately it will fill the planet with a new way of being. Harmony, balance, wholeness, loving-kindness—these will no longer be utopian ideas but instead real ways of living our lives. When we allow our hearts (and right brain) to guide us, that high vibration entrains the left brain like a tuning fork so that both parts work harmoniously together, and we human beings do the same. It is an incredible cosmic shift we are living through, and we incarnated to do all of this, for ourselves, for one another, and for those who come after. Peace of mind and harmony of heart—that is the promise and fulfillment we are individually and collectively stepping into now.

Slo-o-w Down…

Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger

So many of us find ourselves rushing down the “fast track” at one time or another these days, focused on our next destination or goal. Whether walking rapidly down the street or moving briskly through the day, we forget to connect with our inner selves, the part of us that is unhurried and centered in the present. When we move forward at a breakneck speed, we miss the moment. Everything becomes a blur, and the sweet details of life are lost to us. This culturally acquired habit can be easily broken, however, through meditation, yoga, or some other practice that cultivates conscious awareness.

I have been a fast walker for most of my adult life, so when I learned walking meditation many years ago, I found it to be the perfect antidote to that old pattern. Now when I’m out on my daily walks through the neighborhood, I usually become aware fairly soon when I begin to move too quickly. I consciously slow down so that I am fully present to the world around me, not lost in my head, with my body on automatic pilot. Peacefully observing my breath in meditation has helped me to peacefully observe my life as I live it. From my soul’s point of view, there is no need to rush. Everything is unfolding just fine without my foot on the accelerator. Any attempts on my part to control things are both irrelevant and self-defeating. Let go and let life, as the saying goes.

Yes, surrender—the recurring theme in my life these days, and certainly one of the greatest paths to wisdom I’ve ever known. I believe all of us are learning to let go at deeper and deeper levels now. Just in the past few months, I’ve felt a new layer of resistance fall away; I’m allowing life to flow through me, to carry me. As I surrender more and more, every moment becomes a new opportunity to release all expectation and just experience open-heartedly everything that life brings me. There is such freedom in that. If we let go of the desire to personally direct our own destiny and that of the world, a weight is lifted off of us. We don’t have to do it all alone.

You and I are being perfectly carried forward by life’s river. If we let go of judgments about events or people, and see them as part of that river, everything becomes alive with motion and possibility. Take a deep breath, relax, and live life as it presents itself, moment to moment. Meet the day with all the doors and windows open, no barriers to what is showing up. If you let your peaceful, timeless soul lead the way and just witness and experience, life will open up into more synchronicity and magic that you could possibly imagine. More and more, this is what I am experiencing as I slow down, breathe deeply, and let life live me. That’s the blessing, that’s the gift each day offers you and me.

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.”

Human Angels

© 2008 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2008 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
Most of us have had someone—a good friend or a complete stranger—step into our lives at a key moment and help us when we were facing some challenging experience or event. One of those individuals in my life was a Catholic sister at the hospital where my mother lay dying after a heart attack 20 years ago. She visited my mother’s room on the third day of my vigil sitting at her bedside. After kindly and gently talking with me as I cried, she asked if I would like to say a prayer with her. I told her that I was not really religious, but I did believe in the Great Spirit. Without missing a beat, she extemporized a prayer to the Great Spirit that was heartfelt and greatly comforting to me, an only child about to lose her mother. She gave me a hug when she left, and I felt as though I had been visited by a human angel. And indeed I had been.

Human angels are everywhere on Earth, appearing exactly when we need them most—to offer empathy, kindness, compassion, even humor. Whatever will lift the energy to a lighter level is what they are here to give. I’ve often felt that some beings only take physical form briefly to do spot assistance and then fade back into the invisible dimensions. But I also believe there are souls who incarnate specifically to lead lives of loving-kindness and caring for others. Some are nurses, medics, aides, or hospice workers. Others are teachers, therapists, or spiritual counselors. And many are mothers, fathers, sisters, or brothers, who care for family members for years with unselfish dedication and love.

Ultimately, we’re all human angels. We are spirit in physical form, here on this planet to awaken to the deep truth that our separate identities are only the costumes we wear while we’re here. Underneath, we are the same, part of a oneness that spans every dimension, including Earth as well as whatever we might envision as Heaven. At this key transitional and transformative time, light beings across the universe have incarnated to help shift planetary energy to a higher vibration. Sometimes by saving a life, sometimes by wiping away a tear, sometimes just by listening. That’s why each of us is here: to be completely, lovingly present to everyone who crosses our path—friend, family, or total stranger.

My mother was that kind of human angel—a compassionate listener. People would come up to her anyplace—on a bus, sitting in the mall—and begin to share their life stories with her. My father and I used to joke that we could leave her for five minutes, come back, and a stranger would be glued to her side, confiding the details of their life. My mother had open-hearted, loving energy; she smiled at people, appreciated them, and they were drawn to her. Her brother, my uncle, was exactly the same. My father, on the other hand, shifted energy with laughter, the unexpected, dry comment that would magically lift your depression or sadness. Now that I have lived so many years beyond their lifetimes, I see more clearly who they came here to be. They were precursors, forerunners, of who we are all here to be now. I was blessed to have had such beautiful role models in my family.

If we look closely, there is almost always someone like that in our lives. It may not be a parent or other family member. It could be a friend or coworker who quietly listens or makes you laugh. Someone who comforts you when your heart is broken. It could even be an animal companion—in fact, animal angels are some of the best master teachers here on the planet. Dogs, cats, horses, dolphins—animals teach humans daily, by example, how to be loyal, loving, patient, playful, forgiving, and totally present in each moment. Perhaps they have been sent specifically to give us one-on-one tutoring in how to live our angelic soul selves here on Earth. However you want to see it, all the people and animals in your life are there for a reason. They reflect your soul back to you and show you your own shining angelic beauty. Look, listen. There’s an angel sitting next to you right now….

Morning Glory

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
“Everything is sacred.”—Panache Desai

The morning glories outside my door have been nearly tropical in their lush profusion this year. Huge heart-shaped leaves and purple flowers cover the porch ironwork in the rising sun. Each morning when I go outside, I feel a sense of awe at this breathtaking beauty coming from a few small seeds planted in the late spring. There are moments when gardeners feel like magicians, making bouquets of flowers appear out of thin air. Of course, the gardener is just the conduit, the helping hand that opens wide enough for living energy to flow through it. Mother Nature is the true magician, the source of glorious life here on Earth. As a gardener, I learn this on a daily basis—the absolutely unparalleled sacredness of everything around me. It is an awareness that keeps arising everywhere in my life, and in so many of our lives, these days. I consider it one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.

This past July I spent a week at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, taking part in a weeklong workshop/retreat with Panache Desai, whose programs and events I’ve been attending for several years.* This particular week seemed to be an expansion of all that I’ve experienced with him and with the other people who attend, many of whom are good friends now. As a group, we reached a deeper level of oneness and soul connection than ever before. The divine energy moving through all of us was so intense that it could not be contained within time or space. Seeing the sacred everywhere, in every moment, became a constant. Each person’s eyes shone with light and love. Conversations during and between sessions were deeply meaningful, rich with laughter, tears, and heart-full sharing. As I walked down the hill to the dining hall each day, I saw before me a dazzling world: The color spectrum itself seemed to widen to include new shades and hues. At the end of the week, I felt wide open; life flowed through me without impediments—soulfully, sacredly.

A few weeks later, my partner and I took the train to New York to see Fun Home, lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s tragicomic 2006 memoir turned into an extremely powerful and moving Broadway musical. In it, “Alison” looks back at her complicated relationship with her closeted gay father who committed suicide. Because it was theatre in the round, it was a fairly intimate setting (we were in the first row), and it almost seemed as if we were living the heart-wrenching events along with the characters. At the end, as everyone stood and cheered, and the actors took their bows, the raw emotion we were all feeling was reflected back and forth on the faces, and in the eyes, of actors and audience alike. I couldn’t stop crying, because of the story and because of the people around me, on and off stage. It was a moment of shared humanity and oneness that seemed truly sacred to me.

More and more, we are being moved to embrace all of life in moments like these. A friend or family member will unexpectedly speak their heart’s truth in a sudden rush of vulnerability and honesty. A complete stranger will share a smile or a gesture of generosity. The sun will rise, or set, in stunning pinks and golds. A cat or dog companion will gaze into our eyes with pure love. Someone dear to us may become ill or die. Life will touch us in a thousand different ways, both joyful and painful, during the course of any given day. And at last we are opening to receive the sweetness and power of those moments. We are becoming fully present for life as it moves through us, giving us the greatest show on Earth. Morning glory, evening gratitude. Everything sacred—everywhere, in every moment.

* I’ve written about my experiences with Panache in several other blog posts and in my book Lose Your Mind, Open Your Heart.