Tag: beingness

Wild Geese on a Winter’s Day

Often there are very subtle threads that hold us to life and to the belief that everything is ultimately worthwhile. They reveal themselves in sometimes overlooked daily details: the smell of freshly baked bread from the kitchen, the way the sun highlights the red amaryllis on the dining room table, a snatch of song from a neighbor’s apartment. All these make up life’s tapestry and fill us with delight if we are able to fully receive them. They balance out any sadness or dismay about how things are unfolding and uplift us at the most unexpected moments. This is the magic of allowing your life to carry you to the heart of all experience: Heavenly gifts are always arriving.

For me, one day last month, it was the sight and sound of wild Canada geese flying overhead against the blue winter sky as I stepped outside for my afternoon walk. And it was the surprising sight of 8 to 10 robins in a bare tree, calling excitedly in the January air. Birds always open my heart and awaken me to full consciousness. Their place on this planet is one of such grace and beauty. So many beings and events hold this promise for each of us, in Nature or in our own homes. These are the threads; this is the tapestry of which we too are a part. The words you speak may give someone else hope or solace. Your very presence is a light in the lives of those who love you.

I remind myself of this when the gray days of winter seem endless and I can barely remember spring. Or perhaps it is God who reminds me, who shows me vibrant life (wild geese and cheery robins) even on a cold colorless day. It is the gift we carry with us always. Even in winter we hold summer in our hearts. Beauty and meaning are etched into our souls. Divine vision skates along the surface of our lives, continuously available for our inspiration and sustenance. The very air we breathe awakens us to the day before us. Our senses greet the ordinary, making it extraordinary.

All this is waiting for you if you allow the doors and windows of your life to remain open, if you allow life to flow in and touch your awareness. In those moments, there is no question about whether life is worthwhile. You are so immersed in the wonders of the present moment that thinking recedes; full-hearted beingness carries you forward through life. This is the best of living, available to each of us, if we so choose.

These moments await you and me. Each day is a new miracle to be experienced. The more engaged you become in this way of being, the more all inner queries about purpose, reasons, or outcome fall away. Disappointment disappears, and only celebration remains. This is the life of Spirit, fully embraced and expressed.

Dawn, Dusk, and Midday

Vacillations in how we feel are part of life, particularly now as the planet lives through a pandemic. We have unexpectedly come face to face with potential illness and mortality, as well as the relative shortness of one lifetime. It can shake our emotional foundations. Yet, wherever we are on the timeline of life, most of us gradually reach some kind of resolution. We come to terms with life and death. The wisdom of the ages reaches into our souls and awakens awareness. We realize time is an illusion and if we don’t fully immerse ourselves in “now,” we miss both the mundane and spiritual impacts of life. This is the soul’s journey, right now being played out on a world canvas, as we pass from dawn to dusk and finally see the full illumination of midday (or the “present moment”).

We may not entirely recognize what is happening yet, but the trajectory of the years ahead is the soul’s emergence in the world as full awareness. Within the mystery that is earthly life, each human being comes to that moment of awakening to, acceptance of, and engagement with life “as is.” This particular time in history is showcasing the personal journey on a global scale. In a pandemic, no one escapes or gets out untransformed; same with human life. It may seem dire and perhaps depressing on one level, but from the soul’s viewpoint, there is no real difference between life and death. It is all universal consciousness experiencing itself, beyond time and space. It may take a lifetime to realize this, but it arises within us eventually.

As someone who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, I have felt a multitude of reactions, from initial panic to inner peace. Peace being the most prevalent and sustaining. Primarily because it arises from my soul. The identity can get caught up in future fears or “what ifs.” The soul is embodied spirit vision; it knows that at the center of all life is a loving peace that transmutes all transitory fear. On the cancer path, through the ups and downs of treatment, I have at times felt weighed down or lost. Yet when another day dawns, my spirits rise again; I am re-centered in the peace at my core, the sun lighting up my solar plexus.

Nature has proven to be my greatest ally as I navigate life day to day. Nature is all-inclusive: dawn, dusk, and midday. When we embrace Nature in its entirety, we recognize that all three experiences are really one, and we are One with Nature. In every moment, beginnings and endings exist—a full spectrum of possibility. A perfect design is unfolding, of which we are part. As I open my eyes each morning, I can see this clearly; my sustaining inner peace makes this possible.

So I learn as I go, as I live the diverse experiences of my life. We all learn this way. And we all end up in the same place, because we all came from the same place: infinite consciousness or beingness. Whatever name you give it, it guides us every step of the way in our lives. It is who we are, and our life experiences teach us this. At the end of each day/night, we feel the full circle within us, the golden light of peace that is always bringing us Home.

Infinity Vision

Several years ago, after a somewhat worrisome eye diagnosis, I had the extraordinary experience of looking out my window and seeing the external world moving in perfect synchronicity to the Andrea Bocelli music I was listening to. Every detail—people walking, cars passing, tree leaves in the wind—was part of a divinely choreographed dance of deeply connected oneness. And I too was part of it. There was nothing in the universe that sat alone on the sidelines within God’s creation. And I could see this so clearly that the power and beauty of it moved me to tears. Infinity vision, beyond an eye diagnosis.

Last week something similar occurred. I was taking a late-afternoon walk through our neighborhood when I heard a voice inside me: “Don’t just walk. Look. See!” I stopped in my tracks and looked up at the sky. The brilliant blue was streaked with white clouds like an impressionistic painting. The quality of the sun’s light made everything iridescent, heavenly. When I turned my gaze to the street before me, I saw a man with his dog, a car driving past, and autumn leaves falling from trees all moving together as one. I continued to walk, and everything I saw joined the dance of beingness. A cosmic tapestry so intricately interwoven that each thread was perfectly aligned with every other, and the motion of its living presence filled the universe, and me, with vibration and light. Infinity vision once again.

These are gifts from God, available to us all. Often it is a life crisis or a health diagnosis (like my recent breast cancer) that shatters everything and allows us to see the true nature of the multiverse we inhabit. I have sometimes heard from those who are experiencing it that cancer brings with it both challenge and expanded awareness. I understand that now. I believed I was deeply spiritually connected, aware, but cancer showed me an expansiveness and complexity beyond anything I had previously experienced. It cracked me open and let the full light of infinite awareness in. When disease or illness pries away your attachment to your physical form, magic is revealed. On my walk, I stood speechless before the wonder of everything I saw. Tears of love and gratitude streamed down my face.

If you have been reading my writing over the years, you may have noticed that I have had similar experiences before. Nature is always my profound connector to Spirit and the doorway to something greater. Yet now it is somehow different. The connection is even deeper and more expansive. That is the nature of infinity. You never reach the end of its ever-increasing power and beauty. Birth and death seem like finite experiences, but they are both contained within infinity. There is no end to beingness, ever. And this is the eternal truth that sits quietly at the center of our lives. Each of us is destined to discover it at the perfect time.

Whenever it appears, by whatever vehicle, celebrate its arrival as the greatest gift you will ever receive. The cracks in your life—illness, loss, pain, fear—can be the gateways to seeing with infinity vision. Only then will you understand the true nature of your “one precious life” and all life. Each and every one of us is part of a celestial symphony. The music of the spheres accompanies us everywhere. When you are able to see beyond what your eyes habitually perceive, your vision expands, and you begin to walk on air, immersed in the beauty of infinity, loving everyone and everything around you.

Name Dropping

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger

So many unexpected events and experiences have arisen in the process of moving from Massachusetts to Florida, everything from the sale of the house where we rented there to finding a condo here that far exceeds anything we could have imagined. Probably the most surprising pop-up occurrence was finding out that I had to have my name legally changed in order to obtain a Florida driver’s license. What?! Well, you see, my mother named me “Peggy,” but she used “Margaret” on my birth certificate because the former was traditionally considered a nickname for the latter and not the real name. Of course, today no one cares much about that tradition, and you can name your child “Redwood” if you so choose.

Anyway, I never used “Margaret” on anything throughout my life, including driver’s licenses, health insurance, Social Security, etc. “Peggy” was my name; only my birth certificate and passport showed “Margaret.” No one cared—until I went to the Florida Registry of Motor Vehicles to have my Massachusetts license changed to a Florida one. The fact that my license did not match my passport was not acceptable. The two had to match or I couldn’t have a license. Since 9/11, the federal laws about IDs matching have tightened up, and what was once not a problem is now definitely one. Having my name legally changed to “Peggy” was the simplest solution.

So the very kind and sympathetic clerks at the registry explained the process to me: (1) Fill out a form for a legal name change (listing all the places I had lived since birth—for me it was 25) and (2) file it at the county clerk’s office along with a $400 fee. (3) Go to the police station to be fingerprinted, which is electronically sent to be part of the application. (4) Wait for a court date when (5) I go before a judge for a decision. My scheduled court date is August 21 at 1:30 p.m. I was assigned a 5-minute window.

Meanwhile, the underlying symbolism of this event has not escaped me, given that I have felt I was leaving behind all my past selves in this latest life move. What could be a more powerful letting go than dropping the name on your birth certificate?! True, it was never a name I identified with (or liked), but it was the one that my parents and the legal system handed me upon entry into this world. It defined my existence as a citizen of this country, at least in the eyes of the law. That aspect was not something that interested me as much as the idea of naming itself. I began to think about how language defines our lives in so many ways.

Humans have used words and language to organize, name, and often establish ownership over the world around them. Children are named to give them a lineage, a connection to the family they come from. Within the patriarchal system, names (particularly last names) establish ownership, father to child: “You belong to me. You are my offspring, not someone else’s.” Family pride leads to pride of nationality and eventually, often in this world, to conflict and war over whose nation or heritage is better or “right.” We have yet to evolve beyond these delineations and identifications.

Still, life itself tends to break down the differences and separations that language constructs. As we age, the need to establish and proclaim individuality or superiority has less significance. Over the years, experiences of great love or great loss can open our hearts and hasten the process of letting go of what in the end doesn’t serve our soul’s journey through life. Ultimately, we are born without a name, and when we die, we pass from this world into the nameless, formless beingness that is God. Names are transitory and limiting. Even trying to find words to describe God narrows its infinite unbounded nature. So if we too are God—spirit in transitory human form—then birth names can limit possibility and evolution in our lives.

Of course, names do serve a purpose as we relate to each other as fellow humans on the Earth, perhaps to eliminate confusion if nothing else. Still, to hold onto your name as who you really are is an illusion. We are more than words. We are more than our physical form. We are, as God is, infinite. Drop your name and the illusion falls away. All you see when you look in the mirror and at your neighbor is beingness in a temporary form for this lifetime.

So, as I contemplate dropping my birth name and continuing with the name I’ve used my entire life, I’m experiencing a lighter touch about the whole thing. “Margaret” falls away, “Peggy” stays‚ until she too falls away. This is human life on Earth. One transitory experience in the universe. And the more we let go, the more universally expansive and freeing it becomes.