Meditation 24/7

When I was first learning to meditate many years ago at the Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I discovered that the teachings included not only meditation while sitting in a chair or on a cushion but also while walking. It was my first exposure to the idea of meditation off the cushion or mat and out in the world. I took to it immediately. In fact, within my own experience, I widened the idea of walking meditation to include bird watching, which was/is my year-round passion. I found that the focused attention and slow silent walking that were a part of looking for and at birds were very similar to the focus on each breath and each step in walking meditation. Both activities fostered full presence in the moment. Every time I spent a morning or afternoon watching birds, I always felt very much in a meditative state.

This approach to meditation has remained with me through the years. I do consistently continue to meditate indoors while seated, but I also find that “meditation” defines my prevailing state of mind whenever I am outdoors in nature. This is particularly true since I have become a backyard gardener in the past few years. When I am planting or transplanting flowers, my hands in the earth, or just standing quietly watching everything grow, my mind has slowed its busyness, and my thought waves are peaceful, unhurried. I am centered in the present moment and feel one with the flow of life all around me as it slowly grows and moves into flowering. I see myself as part of that flow, that flowering. It is a comforting, inclusive feeling.

For me, then, meditation has become more than a singular activity or practice. It is a way of being in the world that I remind myself of on a daily basis. Just as I focus on the movement of each living breath in the present while in seated meditation, I can take deep breaths to inhale and exhale with gratitude for each moment no matter where I am or what I’m doing. It is all the same practice really. I would guess that most meditators (and yoga practitioners) experience a similar inner and outer connection.

To Do or to Be?

Recently, a friend and I were talking about how to handle the polarity between doing and being that many of us carry inside of us. We’ve been raised in a culture that emphasizes effort, trying, achievement, and success in material terms. The work ethic and the drive to constantly do pervade our society. On the job, unpaid overtime has become routine, and low-paying positions often force people to work at two jobs to make ends meet. Multi-tasking, email, and social media fill up all our “free” time, and friends and family are seen on the fly.

Even outside of mainstream culture, among those who are seeking to change the status quo to something more humane and truly livable, there is a certain push to be active, busy, involved in something. During the current period of major Earth changes, people’s experience of accelerating time also contributes to the frenetic need to keep moving—just to keep up with the hours that are rushing by!

Yet cracks in this compulsive busyness are appearing—possibly because we have run ourselves to the wall with the 24/7 modality. People are turning to things like meditation and yoga because they are quite literally burned out. Often their bodies stop them before their minds do. Headaches, injuries, and dis-ease of all kinds pop up in our lives to show us that all is not well. We are forced to slow down and find a way back to health. When we stop filling our lives with events and activities and instead focus on self-healing, doing takes a backseat to being and allowing.

Regular meditation or yoga practice helps individuals make this mental shift. The breath is of prime importance in both. Students learn to allow the breath to flow in and out without effort, without holding. In some traditions, they learn to watch the breath and just be in the quiet inner stillness. Eventually, with practice, people learn to carry that letting go to their daily lives, allowing events and emotions to pass through them without judgment or clutching, just as the breath does. Doing in this context arises from the quiet, centered space of being, not from polarized trying or effort.

The key, of course, is reaching that balance in a world that is skewed to emphasize just the opposite. But that’s why we’re here. The world is evolving, and we are evolving. We’re living the transition, learning how to embody the new human BE-ing, how to be conscious spirit in physical form, effortlessly flowing with the energy of life.

 

2012 and Beyond: Radio Interview

On January 31, 2012, I was interviewed by Peter, Barb, and Ric on the Spiritual HelpDesk online radio show. We talked about the energies of 2012 and beyond and how the Great Shift is affecting all of our lives. I also read an excerpt about my trip to Guatemala with the Maya elders from my book Living with Spirit, Journey of a Flower Child. The program is available for listening at this link: http://spiritualhelpdesk.com/2012/01/23/peggy-kornegger/.

Heart and Soul

February is the month of valentines, chocolate, flowers, and romance. Less commercially, we could also call it the month of the heart. Taking that a step further, I would like to suggest that we make February the “Month of Living with an Open Heart”: to live each day from our soul’s perspective, centered in love and compassion for our fellow human beings (all of them, not just partners or friends we send valentines to). Within the transitional energies of 2012 and beyond, we can co-create the world we want to live in, moment to moment.

So, this month, smile and make eye contact with every person you see at work, on the bus, or in the street. Smile from the heart, as if you were encountering a great spiritual master (and indeed you may be). Fill your pockets with bills and change and give generously to every homeless person who asks you for help. Hold the door open for a stranger. Carry a neighbor’s groceries. Call an old friend or family member with whom you have been out of touch. Or just be a listening presence for someone who crosses your path—you might be surprised at how many people just need a sympathetic ear to help them better cope with life’s ups and downs.

This month, count your blessings, and be a blessing in someone else’s life each day. Be grateful. Live fully, your heart overflowing with love. This is your soul’s path in life. It’s not here to find fault or complain; it’s here to experience and evolve, to see wonder and beauty in the ordinary details of the world. This is the miracle of living on Planet Earth, from the soul’s point of view.

If every one of us behaved in each moment as if the person we are interacting with is our most beloved soul-friend, think how wonderful the world would be. Make this month, this year, a time of living with an open heart and soul. For every person is indeed another version of you.

 

I and We: One Tribe

If you’ve read my recent posts, you may have noticed the recurring theme of oneness. As the energies of these times accelerate and take us along for the ride, it becomes increasingly important to remind ourselves of the consciousness we want to carry forward, as individuals and as a people. Unity consciousness, or oneness, seems to me to be a key focal point in the evolution of a new Earth and a new way of being human.

Large numbers of human beings on this planet live life primarily from the point of view of the ego; “I” consciousness rules. Many people fear losing their individual freedoms within a greater “we” (often seen as “them”). But it’s really all about balance. We become truly free as individuals when we embody freedom within our communities in an ongoing process of receiving and giving: the dance of I and We, which acknowledges the primal connection between self and other.

Enter the Great Shift in humanity’s awareness. Gradually, ideas about sharing, giving back, and “paying forward” are entering the collective consciousness. People are beginning to see their neighbors in all parts of the world as not so different after all. In the aftermath of disasters near or far, we hear countless stories about individuals and groups who have dropped everything to help those in need. It is a time of coming together, of realizing that we are all part of one another.

In the realm of quantum physics, scientists describe a universe in which the smallest particles that make up everything are interconnected in one huge expanding energy field. Spiritual masters throughout history have spoken of a Divine presence that fills and surrounds us in a golden sea of light and love. This “I AM” consciousness has no boundaries; it flows through us all, and within it, there is no separation between I and We. From the point of view of both science and spirituality, then, we are indeed all connected.

As more and more of us awaken to this basic truth, it becomes our joyful responsibility to think and act from a place of spacious oneness, not constricted separateness. We are here to embrace that awareness, to birth a new way of being through living our lives as conscious connected spirit in human form.