Tag: connection

Moments of Grace

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger

The word grace has so many meanings, depending on the speaker’s intent. Grace can be flowing movement; a prayer of gratitude; or a blessing. It can also be an act of kindness, mercy, or compassion. We talk about dancers or skaters moving with ethereal grace. Many people bow their heads and give thanks by saying grace before meals. Spiritually, grace is associated with an infinite divine love that envelops all humans regardless of their beliefs. The iconic song “Amazing Grace” describes a man lost and then found through God’s grace. The juxtaposition of human and spirit seems to run through all these meanings. For me, grace has come to mean flowing with life’s blessings and experiencing connection to a greater Presence in the multiverse we inhabit. Grace is always with me, and my awareness of it grows with the expansion of my consciousness.

The Presence I speak of some call God/dess or the Divine. Raised outside of all religious traditions, I have found my way to spiritual connection through various teachers and my own experiences, often in nature. In fact, the closest analogy I can think of to the shining radiance of Spirit is the sun. The sun’s light is powerful and ever-present, whether or not we can physically perceive it. Clouds, weather, or the turning of the Earth may obscure our view of it at times, but it is always there. When the skies clear, or the day dawns, and that light hits us full force, we are energetically and emotionally uplifted. Yet we are not able to gaze at it directly or run the risk of blindness. Our physical bodies cannot visually take in the full force of the sun’s light. The same is true of the Divine. Physically, we are not yet equipped to receive all of that heavenly radiance without blowing out our circuits. This is changing, faster and faster now, however.

At this amazing time of transformation on planet Earth, we are evolving and expanding so that we will eventually be able to continuously perceive/receive the Divine in its full expression of light and love. In the meantime, we are experiencing what I call glimpses of God—flashes, bursts, increasing increments of open-hearted joy, peace, and love. Moments of grace. When we evolve to the point of fully embodying spirit in our human bodies, there will no longer be a separation between inner and outer; all will be the oneness of divine consciousness, of which we are each an integral part. In truth, the only separation that ever existed was in our own limited physical ability to see the entire panoramic view. As the doors of perception open wider and wider, the light of conscious awareness floods our being with infinite grace, and we see as we are seen. God’s vision of us and the world becomes our own.

That is how my own life seems to be evolving anyway. I am experiencing Spirit/Presence in rushes of electric energy and euphoric expansion that repeatedly fill me to the brim with light and warmth, like the sun. The Divine is acclimating me bit by bit to the power of its infinite love. These experiences flow and then ebb but always recur, each time with greater expansiveness and deeper immersion. Is this en-light-enment? Possibly. Not the historically known, sudden individual awakening, but a new kind of gradual collective awakening that we are all experiencing in our own ways, each of us influencing the greater whole. Great spiritual masters through the ages have pointed the way to this time, when all of humanity would embody what they embodied. I never quite knew what that meant until now. That is why we are here, to live this. These are infinitely grace-full times. What a gift to be alive now and experience it all!

The Magic of Springtime

Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

Every year in early May, I spend three to six hours each morning at nearby Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Why? you may wonder. Well, Mt. Auburn, with its woodlands, lakes, and gardens, is a magnet for songbirds during their annual spring migration. They fly in by the hundreds on the way north from South and Central America. Some of them nest in the cemetery; others continue further to northern New England and Canada. But during the small window of time that they grace our local flowering trees and bushes, birdwatchers are blessed with up-close views of the colorful and musical birds of the tropics. Each year, I see or hear something new: a chestnut-sided warbler and a ruby-throated hummingbird having a territorial faceoff; a flycatcher singing next to a kinglet displaying its usually hidden ruby crown; a Baltimore oriole weaving a hanging nest in a tall maple tree; a wood thrush singing its fluted song on the path a few feet in front of me. These moments are magical—a fleeting glimpse into nature’s secret world.

Equally as exciting at this time of year are the perennial plants and flowers that break through the soil reaching to the light. How do they know when to move upward, when to grow stems, leaves, and flowers from their buried roots? It’s a yearly miracle that I witness both at Mt. Auburn and in my own backyard garden. Tightly furled leaves and flower buds appear first, gradually opening to the sun’s warmth and the longer light-filled days. A plant like Solomon’s Seal begins as a blunt grey/green finger pointing up out of the ground. Day by day, the finger slowly becomes a tall thick stem that bends and arches with opening leaves of fernlike delicacy. Beneath the leaves, along the arching stem, small white buds form and eventually open into a line of belled flowers. Swaying in the wind, Solomon’s Seal is one of the special visual gifts of spring, along with lilies of the valley, violets, grape hyacinth, columbine, and so many others.

Year after year, spring flowers and nesting birds remind me of life’s cycles of rebirth and renewal. After a long icy-cold Massachusetts winter like the one we have just experienced, this is a welcome message. Even in the freezing temperatures, even in the dark, life continues. The birds migrate south and return to raise their families; the plants withdraw into the earth to rest before emerging to bloom again in spring. Humans, too, have their cycles, though many of us have forgotten how to align ourselves with life’s rhythms of rest and renewal. If we look to the natural world, we can see that each living being has its own cycle of birth/flowering, rest/renewal, rebirth. In our over-scheduled, busy lives, we often careen out of control and crash in exhaustion. Yet, if we let go of so much trying and effort and allow life to unfold in cycles of activity, rest, renewal, and rebirth, we will feel so much more in tune with ourselves and all of life.

In spring’s wonders, there is great beauty, but there is also great wisdom, showing us firsthand the ever-turning circle of life/rest/rebirth that we too are part of. Something more powerful than our own attempts to control daily life is at play here. If we surrender to the flow of life that is so stunningly visible in springtime, we open ourselves to both inner peace and connection to spirit.

 

A Life Well-Lived

Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

When folk singer and political activist Pete Seeger died recently, at age 94, I was filled with great sadness. His larger-than-life presence and spirit, head thrown back in song, will be missed in this world. I also thought, though, that his was truly “a life well-lived,” as the saying goes. From the 1940s to the last years of his life, he spoke out and sang songs for peace (“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”), civil rights (“We Shall Overcome”), workers’ rights, saving the environment (the Hudson River), and more recently, the Occupy movement. He was tireless, fearless, dedicated, and his heart and soul were in all he did, for human rights, community, and the Earth.

There are so many others who have lived long full lives: Nelson Mandela, Howard Zinn, Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, to name only a few. Of course, not all well-lived lives belong to the famous. My own parents, who passed away at 81 and 94, lived long wonderful lives, deeply connected to the natural world around them and to the friends and family they loved. And age is not necessarily a factor either. My dear friend Michael, actor, poet, and musician, died at 39. His life had been creatively filled to the brim while he was alive.

However long they’re here on Earth, some people seem to embody full-out living, treating each moment as a glorious opportunity to experience all of life’s wonders. They stand out in our minds as vital and vibrantly alive. When Pete died, as I thought about the people I know and know of, it occurred to me that perhaps more and more of us are choosing to live our lives as he did. It is a time of great change on our planet, filled with transformation and evolution of all kinds. Many of us are struggling just to survive, but even within those struggles, there is often a deep desire for more than just the material. Our hearts long for human connection, for spiritual connection, and within community and shared experience, we are finding it. There is so much more to life than we can perceive with our physical eyes. Our souls know this, and as we awaken at that level, we will open up to all the possibilities of life, both imagined and beyond imagination.

So, let us take a page from Pete Seeger’s songbook. However long our life’s transit is, let’s live with our heads thrown back, singing, laughing, celebrating every single moment. No half-lives or shelf lives. No sitting on the sidelines and longing for a chance to dance in the circle of life. Let’s step forward fearlessly, heart open, eyes full of light, and fully embrace this precious gift of life we’ve been given. If time is an illusion, as we’re coming to realize, then it’s the quality not the quantity of the years that matters. Let’s make each moment an entire “life well-lived”—expansive, soaring, and full of sweet appreciation.

In memoriam, Pete Seeger, may your beautiful singing spirit continue to inspire us all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4YwKPOgz5o

It’s All Just Divine!

© 2011 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2011 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
Divine is an interesting word, with more than one meaning, depending on context. The adjective divine means godly, angelic, or heavenly, in the spiritual sense. Divinity, or the Divine, is another name for God in some traditions. Then, somehow, the “heavenly” reference came to also mean splendid or sensational, especially with regard to food. “This chocolate cake is divine!” There is even a kind of fudge called divinity. The experience of God and the experience of food can both be transcendent, as we all know!

In my spiritual exploration over the past 20 years, I have often used Divine as an alternate name for Spirit, Source, or God/dess. I like the word because it has a shining, translucent aspect to it, like something floating between this dimension and another. Which is, I suppose, what God is, really—a luminous, non-localized presence. Within my own meditation and yoga practice, I have experienced that Divine presence at different times as shivers all over my body, tears in my eyes, inner vibration, pulsing in my palms, or deep expansive peace. More and more, I know that I am not alone and heavenly guidance is available to me 24/7 if I just breathe deeply and tap into that space of inner peace. This connection is not always instantaneous (to say the least), but if I just remember that it’s there, then I am halfway home.

One morning recently, I found myself unable to quiet my busy mind and the endless stream of distracting thoughts that filled my consciousness. Self-judgment followed. Then, I heard again the inner guidance I had heard before when I was trying to understand why I suddenly felt so much sadness in the midst of feeling peaceful: “It’s all Divine.” Right. I forgot. That’s the wisdom that keeps gently tapping me on the shoulder and whispering in my ear. God is in the thoughts and in the space between the thoughts, in the emotions and in the peace. There is no place where God is not. When I let go of judging and embrace my active mind and my sadness, I am at peace. Peace is always present within the soul’s silent awareness. The soul is quietly observing the Divine (itself) having the experience of being human, and there is no separation anywhere from that vantage point. It’s all human and Divine.

Each time my mind won’t settle down or I’m distracted by neighborhood noise during meditation now, I am remembering more and more easily: My spinning thoughts, the roaring garbage truck, and the water drops sparkling on the tree branches in the morning sun are all part of the same oneness. As I take deep breath after deep breath, I slowly relax into the inner peace that is awareness without attachment or judgment: It’s all just Divine….

Heart Vibes

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Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger

This year on Valentine’s Day, how about being love instead of just showing love? In fact, how about being love 24/7, 365? What’s the difference, you may wonder. Well, to me, showing love often falls into the realm of expected behavior: cards, candy, flowers on a particular holiday. All very lovely, but there’s more to love than that—a deeper beingness that we are at our very core. Our soul selves, our universal selves, are pure love, connected to our hearts. When we live from the center of our souls, love vibrates outward from our hearts, however we are expressing ourselves, in words or in actions.

As human beings evolve into more open-hearted ways of inter-relating, love will become our modus operandi, whether on a specific holiday or on an ordinary calendar day. An unconditional love that includes love of self as well as love of other. In fact, truly loving and appreciating our unique soul self seamlessly leads to loving others’ uniqueness, too. Every one of us is here to be an individual expression of the universal love. When we recognize that, love and loving behavior become second nature. We won’t have to be reminded by marketing ploys to send flowers or chocolates to loved ones. Everything emanating from us will be an expression of the deep love that connects us all vibrationally in the web of life. You are me, and I am you.

So, on February 14, send out your loving heart vibes via U.S. mail or email, on line or in person, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Open your heart so wide that that love will shine throughout all the calendar days of this year and years to come. There’s nothing more important in life than love. And it’s not about doing. It’s about being.