Tag: connection

Sacred Circle of Love

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger

Are our ideas about love evolving right along with us? Yes, I believe they are. Today, in our seemingly chaotic world, beneath the surface of visible turmoil and divisiveness, there exists a gradual, almost imperceptible shift in the way we think about love. We are seeing an expansion from clannish familial love and romantic love based on physical appearance/attraction to a more inclusive universal love that encompasses all beings. In the past, this universal love has often been linked to the Divine love associated with a God or Goddess. In various spiritual or religious traditions, the Divine Mother is the primary image of unconditional, compassionate love. Historically, it has been difficult for ego-bound humans to express this kind of selfless loving. But all that is changing.

Now, during this time of accelerating evolution in human consciousness, we are opening our hearts to that infinite love without conditions or parameters. As we step into embodying the archetypal mother’s love for her child, we experience and radiate that love to all whom we meet on our life’s journey. The Divine within each of us mirrors the Divine in others: I love, you love, we love—the sacred circle of unconditional love. This is the love that is at the core of our being and at the center of the cosmos. In truth, both our universe and we were born in love. And we are finally awakening to that universal Divine love that permeates all things.

This February, the month in which people celebrate Valentine’s Day and romance, let us also recognize a love greater than cards or candy or our individual lives. A love that, if we let it, could redefine the way we live on this planet and make every day one filled with profound human connection and global harmony. Let us celebrate Love in the capitalized sense. Let us love the way Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. loved all peoples of the Earth. Let us love one another, and ourselves, with the delight and wonder a new parent feels when they look at their child. Let us, at long last, love from the depth of our souls, beyond limits and beyond words.

 

Surrender, Dorothy!

In The Wizard of Oz, there is a classic moment when the Wicked Witch of the West sky-writes a warning to the little girl from Kansas: Surrender, Dorothy! Most of us have always thought of that as an ominous threat. What if we look at it instead as wise and magical advice: surrender. Dorothy doesn’t surrender to the witch, but she does surrender to the power of her own journey, which finally brings her back home. Don’t all of us who are on life journeys come up against that ultimate challenge—letting go and trusting in something greater than our own individual lives? A surrender that will bring us “home,” to ourselves and to the heart of the universe.

“Dorothy and Alice” © 1995 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist

In the past year, I have faced this in my own life. Never having been raised in a religious tradition of any kind, surrender was a foreign concept to me. Yet, the deeper I went within my own uniquely eclectic spiritual journey, the more I found surrender to be the key to opening the door to a greater expansiveness in myself and a profound connection to the cosmos. Not to mention, the key to a greater ease in living life.

Synchronistically, messages to that effect began to appear everywhere in my life. On an Oprah show that I tuned in to, Shirley MacLaine offered one piece of advice: “Surrender to a highly sophisticated Divinity.” A friend of mine described a comic strip with the punch line: “Resign as general manager of the universe.” It was Panache Desai’s ideas about “allowing and receiving,” however, that really struck a chord within me: in essence, flowing with everything that comes into your experience.

I’ve discovered that for me surrender isn’t a mental decision or a set of prescribed steps. It’s an ongoing process of emotionally letting go and embracing all of life, over and over. Part of me wants to hold on, wants to be in control, and it gets scared if I consider releasing that tight grip. Gradually, though, I’ve learned to relax and open to a wider vision of my life and my place on Earth. Like Alice, who discovers another world “through the looking glass,” I too have found that this physical reality is only one piece of the multilayered dream we call life. And it’s nothing I have to “control.” It involves trusting that my life as it is unfolding is exactly what I need in order to grow/evolve and that all that I perceive is part of an intricate tapestry of universal meaning and infinite love. As I have more and more experiences (within the physical realm and beyond) of the web of connection that we are all a part of, my trust grows, and I allow my life to flow with greater ease.

Surrender, then, is ultimately an opening of the heart: surrender in joy, surrender with tears and laughter. Fall in love with the world! Surrender to the dance of life. Step through the looking glass, put on those outrageous, sparkling ruby slippers, and click your heels together! You’ll be home in no time.

 

Unplugged and Reconnected

Not long ago, I decided to unplug myself from technology for a month. I took a mini-sabbatical from computers (including all email and editorial work), TV, and radio (I don’t own a cell phone). It was with a huge sigh of relief that I did this. My days had begun to be filled with such constant busyness that even finding time to meditate or take long walks seemed difficult. When I stopped sitting for hours in front of the computer, my life opened up all around me.

At the same time that I closed the technology door, I opened another door—to the natural world outdoors and the world of spirit present everywhere. Outside in my backyard, I gardened, read, meditated, or just gazed at passing clouds in the sky or the sun on the flowers in my garden. I often felt transported to another dimension where only infinite variations of light were real. Life seemed as fragile and precious as a flower petal or an inhaled breath. There were moments when all I felt was gratitude for the gift of being alive.

In my journal I wrote: “We have this one lifetime to live in a human body, to look through human eyes and see the beauty of the world. I just want to drink in the wonders all around me, to feel in my heart each exquisite detail of flower, leaf, and cloud. I could look at the sky forever and never come to the end of its magnificence. Every bird and butterfly and bee is a tiny miracle. In the swirling center of each flower is a sacred universe. I am so blessed to have this life on Earth. I don’t want to miss a thing. I don’t want to lose a second looking at a computer or TV when the world and all its breathtaking beauty is just outside the door.”

Along with the wonder and awe came a deep connection to the living spirit that existed in the natural world all around me. The spirit within me embraced the spirit everywhere outside of me, and I stepped into a profound experience of oneness that expanded with each passing day. I found that within each exquisite detail of the universe that I perceived with my physical eyes was an invisible thread that led to the infinite Source of all things. William Blake described this perfectly: “To See a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wildflower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.”

So did I renounce all technology for the rest of my life after discovering “God in the details”? No, of course not. We live in a human world that has manifested global communication via the Internet. If it doesn’t overtake your life, it can be a wonderful vehicle for experiencing worldwide interconnections. The key is balance, as in all things. I still check my email, visit favorite websites, and even listen to spiritual webcasts, but I’m now more in touch with when it’s time to turn off the computer and walk out the door into nature’s paradise.

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.