Tag: awareness

Mind-Less, Time-Less

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger

This past month I’ve been practicing what I call “mindlessness.” No, I don’t mean air-headed bumbling through life. Or vacuously staring into space with no connection to the world around you. It’s more like living moment to moment from the non-thinking center of your being. Your heart, your soul. Pure awareness without the overlay of language. The practice has involved breathing deeply and dropping down into my body’s core whenever I notice myself caught in thinking overdrive, my mind running from one thought to another like a mad marathoner. Taking a deep breath and becoming aware interrupts the mind’s busyness. I breathe, feel my physical body, and come into present-moment awareness of my immediate environment. Wherever I am, I look or listen without thinking about it. I consciously step into the now, perceiving without filtering. The mental concept of time ceases to exist.

Of course, this is not as simple as it sounds, or as long-lasting. The key is to practice doing it, again and again. Practicing lays down new behavioral cues, new perceptual impulses, which help me to be present with more ease and grace the more I do it. In truth, a silent center of pure thoughtless soul awareness lives within us all. That is what I’m connecting to with each conscious breath. It is a space that I frequently relax into while sitting in meditation or when I am outdoors walking in nature. The challenge is to “be here now”—not lost in thought—continuously, under all circumstances. That is the practice.

As the weeks pass, I am finding that both gardening and bird-watching center me effortlessly in “mindless” presence, again and again. The beauty of the natural world immediately opens my heart and awakens me to the present moment. When I look at a brilliantly colored bird or flower, I am not thinking; I am just being. My heart is directly connected to my soul, and together they quietly override the mind’s dominance, bringing me into complete immersion in Now. And that presence gradually spills over to other moments in my daily life….

Watching a middle-aged man gently holding his elderly father’s hand as they cross the street in front of me, I am present. Riding the bus as the sun rises and shines dazzling light on the distant city skyline and the nearby spring-green trees, I am present. Listening to a wood thrush’s ethereal flutelike call in the evening stillness, I am present. The smell of banana bread in my neighbor’s kitchen, the sound of a dog barking on the next street, the full moon casting shadows through the tree branches, the feel of soft flannel sheets on my body as I slide into bed—all of these are opportunities to experience life directly, separate from the mind’s interpretation. Each one of us has moments like these in our lives in which we can break through to full awareness and presence. The key is to take a deep breath and notice what is directly in front of us.

More and more frequently, I am realizing when my thoughts have taken me away, and I consciously breathe and bring myself back to the world around me, to the timeless present moment. Slowly but surely, my mind is letting go of the reins of control. I am relearning to see and hear without mental gymnastics, as a small child does. Breathing, I am connected to both my heart and my soul. Breathing, I am present for each second of my life. Breathing, I am fully alive, experiencing everything firsthand, seeing miracles everywhere. Breathing, I AM….

 

Let Life Live You

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
There’s a refrigerator magnet I’ve seen for sale in some stores that reads: “You make plans. God laughs.” I love that reminder to let go and allow life to unfold instead of constantly struggling to control it. It’s a reminder I need quite often, as most of us do, I would guess. Our educational institutions teach us very early that working hard and trying are rewardable attributes. “Going with the flow” or using intuitive insight to guide daily activities is just not acceptable behavior within a system geared to the future productivity of adults-in-the-making. In first grade, we even have “Think and Do” workbooks to teach us how to achieve control over our classroom studies. So, by the time we reach adulthood, we are thoroughly conditioned to think a lot and do a lot. We make “To Do” lists every day and try hard to keep life handleable. Never really works, does it?

Life has a way of being messy and out of our control. Plans are continually disrupted by the unexpected in one form or another. What if we could rewind our lives back to first grade and choose a different handbook for life, one called “Pause and Reflect” or “Breathe and Be”? Not completely impossible, if we think of time, and our selves, as infinitely flexible. We can choose to respond differently now and break the old conditioning with conscious awareness. What if you allow life to live you, rather than trying to make life play by your rules?

Lately, I have noticed that I am “allowing” with greater frequency. I watch my life take shape each day as both an observer and a participant. This means that my “soul as witness” is very much a part of my consciousness. From that perspective, I see how “I” fit into what is unfolding. If I look at everything as a divinely orchestrated stream of events, then my own place in it just seems to emerge organically. I don’t have to plan every detail ahead of time; I just respond with awareness to what is before me. I allow life to be a mystery that is opening up all around me. I don’t have to solve it; I just have to experience it. And in truth, that’s all I can ever do. Control is an illusion. We want to believe we have some control because we are frightened of the unknown.

But nothing is known for certain in our universe. Native Americans call it “the Great Mystery” for good reason. Yesterday’s “truths” are pushed aside by today’s “truths,” and tomorrow will debunk them all. What if we could live peacefully with that constant flux, letting every day be a mystery to step into with anticipation and excitement, as though we had front-row seats to a wonderfully innovative new play or film? What if we looked at our lives from that perspective, as both actors and audience? And God as improv coach.

It’s called surrender, a spiritual concept hard to swallow for most people. Yet, if we are to find peace, within ourselves and with one another, perhaps it is something we should consider. It’s not an instant solution to the challenges we all face; it takes practice, surrendering over and over. Still, the more I let go, the more I experience a profound freedom and calm. When you let life live you each day, you can gratefully set aside the endless list of tasks and just be present for it all.

Whose Hands Are These?

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What is sound before hearing, world before language, being before the idea of it? A baby, who has yet to develop a conceptual framework or ego, sees the world solely as spirit without words or ideas. That conscious spirit, that pure awareness, exists within us all beneath the layers of egoic stories and beliefs that we have gathered over a lifetime. The soul, or spirit, is our inner home: the Great Mystery silently witnessing life through our eyes.

A few months ago, I was on my way to a silent retreat in Florida and was reading one of Adyashanti’s books, Emptiness Dancing, on the plane. As I sat absorbing what I read in an almost-meditative state, I grew sleepy and gradually dozed off. After a short time, I opened my eyes and looked down at my hands resting on the book in my lap. “Whose hands are these?” passed through my not-fully-awake consciousness. This question was not “mine”; it came from that place before “I.” For a second, there was only the mystery, prior to my idea of me. Then “I” returned and recognized “my” hands. It was a moment of deep connection with that conscious spirit within, a step beyond anything I had experienced previously.

Occasionally, when I am in deep meditation for a prolonged period of time, I slip silently into a space without boundaries, infinity opening infinitely. I perceive my physical body as a temporary container for this eternal beingness without form. It is an exceptionally peaceful state that I always long to return to, but it is not reached by an act of will, of course—only by completely relaxing and letting go. That kind of letting go is an ongoing evolutionary process for human beings now, and we all need almost daily reminders to release the reins of control. Meditation definitely helps, and certain books do as well. Although on the surface meant for the mind, books like Emptiness Dancing slide between the cracks and reach our soul without our realizing it at first. My own experience on the plane awakened the “I” of me to that place of conscious spirit before and beyond form, if only momentarily. A new and more profound level than I had reached through meditation alone.

We are all heading in this direction, I believe. The Divine is always patiently waiting for opportunities to show us our divinity, our presence within infinite consciousness beyond the parameters of body and mind. During these extraordinary times of increasing awareness and awakening on our planet, the moments of passing effortlessly between form and formlessness may become more and more prevalent. After all, it is not alien to us. We were formless before birth, and we will be formless again after death. Perhaps this time on Earth is tutoring us in eternal fluidity and flow, which is the heart of divine consciousness in the cosmos. We are gradually learning not to be afraid of that mysterious unknown realm but instead to embrace the magnificent wonder of it.

The Eternal Moment

Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

 Spiritual masters down through the ages have advised seekers to live in the present moment, where all wisdom, peace, and divine connection reside. Those who meditate know that within each breath is that presence, the spirit within, connected to all spirit across time and space. Whether or not we formally meditate or call ourselves spiritual seekers, we all have countless opportunities to access that wisdom in daily life.

Many years ago, my father told me a story about his own experience of realizing how irreplaceable each moment is. He said that when I was a little girl, he used to be upset that my feet wore away the grass beneath the swing hanging from an old oak tree in our yard. My mother told him, “Someday you’ll wish Peggy was still around to play on that swing.” Years later, when I was 18 and on a graduation trip to Europe, my appendix burst in Italy, and I was taken to the hospital in Venice. My parents received a long-distance phone call in which they were told I was dangerously ill and they should fly to Venice immediately. After the call, my dad stood staring out the window, lost in thought, when his eyes fell on my old swing, now hanging by one rope, the grass all filled in on the ground below. He recalled my mother’s words and realized how much wiser than he she had been. “You were all grown up and hospitalized in another country, and I would have given anything to have you safely back home and swinging on your swing in the backyard.”

At that point in his life, my father was able to see the greater wisdom. It changed him, I think. He became softer in later years, more centered in the flow of life’s precious moments, especially in the natural world outside where he spent much of his time gardening after he retired. Interestingly, it was during those years that I remember him reading William Blake and sharing quotes with me. “To hold infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour” was one of his favorites.

I’ve never forgotten my father’s story or his love of William Blake’s writing, which I share now too. Life presents us with so many doorways to a wider perspective that can open our hearts and minds to timeless insights. Just the other morning, as I sat in meditation, my mind preoccupied with some passing worry, I suddenly remembered Blake’s words and was stopped mid-thought. I opened my eyes, looked out the window at the rising sun lighting up the winter trees, and was filled with such intense gratitude for the beauty right before me in that moment. Spirit gives us these reminders all the time. Our days are full of them. We can fear the future and rail against life’s difficulties, or we can appreciate the world around us in all its infinite wonder and variety. If we step into living our lives fully and openly, we experience eternity  in every passing moment.

Freedom, Justice, and Radical Love

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Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

The grand jury decision not to indict the police officer who shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, weighs heavily on the national conscience. Regardless of the specifics of this case, it’s a story that has repeated itself, with variations, countless times in this nation’s history. Even though today we finally have an African American president, the daily lives of people of color continue to be defined by racism, violence, and injustice. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of an equal, just society has not been realized.

Yes, we have evolved in many ways, but the tipping point that would shift momentum toward completely ending separation and “otherness” has yet to be reached. It gets down to the fact that people carry silent preconceptions about other people based on race, sex, age, etc. all the time, even if they don’t believe they do. Racism and all the other “isms” have permeated our collective unconscious mindset and inform how people see and act in the world. What needs to occur is a radical awakening and heart opening into conscious awareness that at the level of our souls, there is no difference between any of us. We are one. Our hearts and souls need to supersede the collective mindset.

How does this happen? Can it happen? I believe if ever there was a time in which it could occur, it is now, when global change and transformation are rocking our planet. It’s up to us to remember the dream of freedom and justice for all and live it. To speak out, act up, and occupy our lives with radical love for all people everywhere. The truth is that there is no “other.” We are one consciousness living the illusion that we are separate. Our minds tell us we are individuals, alone, pitted against everyone else for survival. Our hearts and souls see only oneness, only Being that takes a multiplicity of physical forms.

The “costumes” we wear in our lifetimes are temporary. Beneath our transient skin color, gender, and physicality is an unbroken stream of consciousness that fills all living creatures equally. Whether you call it Spirit, Source, God, or infinite Intelligence, something beyond physical form ties us all together on this Earth. It is this living spirit within that moves us to commit “random acts of kindness” and to march in the streets for human rights, as 1,400 peaceful protesters did in Boston (and many other cities) last night. When our hearts are fully open, it becomes impossible to see another human being as separate from us. The world becomes a mirror, and we see our soul’s reflection in everyone we encounter.

This Thanksgiving, let’s be grateful for the miraculous gift of sharing this world with so many other extraordinarily diverse, yet infinitely similar human reflections. Let’s end all Fergusons by making “love your neighbor as yourself” a reality in our lives. Love everyone, even those you think you disagree with. Sound impossible? Think you can’t do anything to change the status quo? Don’t think, just love, radically, one person at a time. True lasting freedom and justice arises from the love that connects every human heart.