Tag: infinity

The Woman Who Feared Infinity

© 2015 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2015 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
If you’ve seen the film The Man Who Knew Infinity, based on the life of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, you will recognize the reference above. Ramanujan was a highly advanced mathematical genius with relatively little educational background in the field. He was primarily self-taught. His theorems and ideas were brilliant, ground-breaking, and 100 years later are still being studied. According to a number of sources, his work was inextricably connected to his deep devotion to his spiritual practice. In the film, his character explains: “An equation has no meaning to me unless it expresses the thought of God.” Other great scientists and mathematicians have recognized that same connection; Galileo, for instance: “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.” Ramanujan lived and expressed this truth. His unconventional mathematical thinking, often revealing the effects without the cause, or proof, came from a place within him that was connected to the infinite, to God. Because of this, he became a clear vessel for God’s light of universal truth to shine through him.

I watched The Man Who Knew Infinity twice, weeping each time, moved by something beyond the poignancy of Ramanujan’s life story. I identified with his connection to God and the infinite that defined his life. Infinity has defined my life too, but almost in reverse. All my life I have feared infinity, run from it in terror—until finally I found that I was running from something that would change my life forever. Through my work with Panache Desai, I stopped running and faced infinity. In the process, I discovered that infinity was divine, was God—something Ramanujan knew all his life in the deepest part of his soul. He was an embodiment of that spiritual truth. He lived it. He began his life at the place that I am just now experiencing.

For whatever reason, I was given the life path of moving through intense fear in order to discover profound divine connection. I am the woman who feared infinity. Yet I am becoming the woman who now recognizes infinity as the deepest, most powerful immersion in universal consciousness. Fear is really the reverse of knowing at the soul level. It is the last barrier to embracing the Great Mystery and merging with God. As I let go of fear more and more, I come to understand what cannot be expressed in words but only felt intensely in the heart. To be human is to fall through the black hole of fear, confusion, and aloneness into the light of a love that is completely unconditional and unlimited. This is God.

Perhaps that is the journey we are all on in our own unique ways. Some individuals, like Ramanujan or Panache Desai, have a clarity of vision that lights the way for those around them, who then in turn share that light with others. The light of knowing, which we all carry deep within us, is the soul’s shining wisdom. When released from the fears that surround it, this knowing lifts us to a place of harmony, peace, and continuous spiritual connection. Some would call this living with the Bigger Picture always in view. We are able to see clearly what the purpose of life on Earth really is: to become clear vessels for God’s light to shine through and illuminate the world around us.

A Lifetime Longing

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
In a recent teaching, Panache Desai talked about how so many of us have unconsciously yearned to know God or the truth of existence all our lives. We didn’t always have words for it, but at our core was a deep-seated longing to understand the universe, to feel a connection to something beyond our own separate selves. In our individual aloneness, we reach out for contact, for meaning, even in our early years. I certainly did, although I did not recognize it as a desire to know God. My reaching or yearning took the form of fear. Fear of eternity, of an infinite universe. It scared me so much that I was unable to sleep at night, and my mother would sit at my bedside to comfort me.

I was not raised within any particular religion, so God was just an idea to me. A possibility, my parents said, a question that each person must answer for themselves. I suppose, in their own way, they were referring to what Native Americans have called the “Great Mystery.” Nothing I could relate to at 6 years old. What I was seeking was relief from the terror I felt whenever I thought about the universe going on and on forever. God’s existence had no relevance to that, at least in my own mind at the time. As I saw it, eternal life (heaven) and eternal death (the void) were both eternity and thus equally frightening. I lived for years and years with that fear embedded in my consciousness. Many times, I thought it would drive me crazy.

It wasn’t until I met Panache and began to work with him that the fears I had carried all my life began to gradually transform. Through him, and later on my own, I experienced infinity as divine presence, or God. It filled me with the most profound peace imaginable—absolutely no fear. I felt at one with everything everywhere, beyond time and space, and my consciousness shifted completely. It was then that I began to realize that this was what I had yearned for my entire life, this immersion in oneness and unconditional love that is God. I had always longed, as William Blake wrote, to “hold Infinity in the palm of [my] hand” and know it as pure love, not fear at all. And here it was at last—God’s loving gift of presence within my own heart and soul. In truth, that sacred connection had always been there. It is who I am, who we all are.

Sometimes you wait your whole life for a key experience that changes everything in all directions—past, present, future. Often you can only reach that experience after having lived your way to it. Ultimately, that is why we came to this Earth: to experience our separateness and find our way home again; to recognize that separation is only an illusion within that greater oneness which encompasses all of existence. That is the human journey, during which we can feel so lost and alone at times, but looking back, we see nothing but grace and love. In that moment of realization, of conscious awareness of our oneness with everything, we step into ananda, or bliss. We know in our deepest heart that all of life is a blessing and that we ourselves are a part of that blessing because we are part of the infinite presence of God.

 

We Are Infinity

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
“You are here to demonstrate what infinity looks like.”—Panache Desai

I have carried a fear of infinity within me my entire life. Fear isn’t even the most accurate description. It was mind-freezing terror that kept me awake at night as a five-year-old child, imagining a universe that went on “forever and ever.” Religion can sometimes provide comfort to those fearing death, but I was not raised within that structure, and actually, death was not exactly the issue. As I grew up, the “answers” of traditional religion (eternal life) and atheism (eternal nonbeing) were equally frightening to me because they were both eternal. Yes, of course, death was scary, but it was what came after death that was terrifying to me. Eternity. Infinity.

I learned to distract myself from the fear as I grew older, but it never really disappeared. It just lurked in the background, making an appearance at unpredictable times, like when I took an astronomy class in college (which gave me actual visuals of infinity!). Sometime prehistory could set it off too. No one I knew quite understood what I was talking about, so I felt very alone with this extreme awareness of eternity and the accompanying extreme fear. I carried it inside me like an unwelcome guest. Many years later, when I was in my 40s and embarking on a spiritual path, I would ask various teachers about it but never received guidance that was particularly helpful. They too looked at me with lack of understanding. That is, until I met Panache Desai.

Panache, who has been my teacher and friend for several years now, has the uncanny ability to feel what others are feeling, from the inside. He never questioned my fear or its hold on me. In my first individual session with him, he just took me to infinity—a place of utter peace and divine tranquility. Thus began a timeless journey to embrace something I had held at bay all my life. It has been a gradual process: a letting go or surrender to a power much greater than the mental fear in which I had been trapped.

My first epiphany, after turning around to face what I had run from for so long, was that it was my mind that was terrified. My soul has no fear of infinity, because it is infinity. What a realization that was! Actually, it was Panache’s teachings about infinity and divinity as one and the same that helped me realize this. Through my work with him as well as my own experiences, I came to see the Infinite and the Divine in all things everywhere, in the world as well as within myself—my core essence or soul. My conscious awareness that “everything is God” has deepened and expanded, especially this past year when I took part in a yearlong acceleration program with him. That program culminated in a transformative weekend event, Global Gathering 2015 (see my last blog article, “Soul Reunion”).

At GG15, any remaining distinction between infinity and divinity that my brain held onto was washed away in a wave of divine energy that carried the codes for awakening and embodiment of spirit within it. As the energy coursed through my physical body (transmitted vibrationally via Panache in sessions), every separation fell away, every fear fell away. All that existed was beingness, oneness. I was simultaneously empty and filled. The transmission was so powerful that there was a paradigm shift within me: my soul took the lead, and my mind stepped into a support role. What I had been moving toward for years came into full presence in a nanosecond. Afterward, I could barely speak coherently, let alone write, but gradually I was able to articulate the essence of what I had experienced: I am infinite. I am divine. Infinity is divinity. On this rapidly evolving planet of ours, we are now beginning to fully and fearlessly live the truth of that. We are human beings with infinite souls. We are infinity.

Simply Being

Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger

As I meditate for longer and longer periods of time (1­–2 hours) at daybreak each morning, I am finding complexity and simplicity are merging into one flowing experience. Seems contradictory, I know, but only because of the constraints of language. Put another way, layer upon layer of awareness is opening up within me, yet all the layers are part of one whole, one seamless state of being. I’m discovering it is possible to feel inner peace at the same time that I’m feeling sadness or distraction. I am aware of silence at the heart of all sound, of light at the center of darkness. Beyond the illusion of separation, there is wholeness. Within complexity itself is infinite simplicity. Perhaps the best way to describe all of this is oneness, feeling one with everything, at times just resting without thought in simply being, in simply breathing.

Various spiritual traditions speak of such moments. The Sanskrit word samadhi refers to union or merging with God or the Divine, and the Hebrew word devekut describes intense melding or deep communion with God in prayer or meditation. Humans have tried with words to approximate an experience of Divine union or universal oneness that really defies description. Yet we try.

Because I am a writer, I have always felt a deep compelling urge to describe my own spiritual journeys. Yet, the deeper I dive, the harder it is to find the exact words to replicate what I am feeling. Indeed, during one of my deepest inner experiences of infinity (in a session with Panache Desai), I completely lost the desire to write or describe at all. For several hours, I remained in a state of infinite peace. My journal lay untouched nearby. Lately, as I spend longer periods of time in meditation, this same experience is recurring. Words are unnecessary within pure being, the soul silently witnessing. Language arises from thought, and when thoughts float by without attachment or disappear, there is no need to speak or write. Only, later, as I come to the surface from these depths, do I reach for my pen.

This is not to say that the goal of life is to give up speaking or writing. I guess that what I am getting at here is that the experience of peaceful oneness without words changes you. I perceive the world a little differently. The need for constant intervention and effort diminishes. Events seem to flow of their own accord without my monitoring them. There is a recognition of a higher intelligence at work, an intricate tapestry of which I am but one fiber. And my purpose, as that fiber, is to simply be myself, not orchestrate the entire universe. There is a humility in this, a letting go. It doesn’t mean lack of doing; it means doing that arises from being—a softer, less frenetic approach to life. When I write, the words flow from my soul more than my mind.

Am I in this space all the time? No, of course not. I am human. My mind gets busy, and I start to make lists, feel rushed, etc. But those experiences are becoming more transitory, less all-consuming. My soul self knows better, and that connection grows ever stronger. All of us have that connection, and we are gradually learning its importance. There truly is an inner core of peace. When we open to that peace, one breath at a time, it simplifies everything.

Dawn—The Sacred Hour

Photograph © 2002 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2002 Peggy Kornegger
Since the beginning of December, I have been drawn to meditate in complete silence for a full hour as the sky is lightening just before dawn. I usually meditate in the early morning each day, but recently, the timing has become very precise. Some inner guidance awakens me while it’s still dark. Sleepily, I walk to the chilly living room and wrap myself in a blanket before sitting in my favorite chair to meditate. The guidance seems very clear that nothing less than an hour will do (sometimes more), and thus I am present for the complete experience of sunrise: darkness to first light to full radiant sun shining. It takes that amount of time for my physical body to settle into the depth of meditation required of me. This is not the one-breath-and-you’re-there process that sometimes is my experience. I am going much, much deeper now, and commitment and patience are necessary.

As I sit through the restlessness of my mind and body, I bring myself repeatedly back to the breath and gradually sink down into the inner stillness and peace of the soul, which always awaits me. It takes a full hour to get there, but “there” is deeper and more expansive than ever before. The breath, slow and steady, carries me to a place where infinite space without boundaries opens up all around me. In fact, there is no “me” really. Instead, there is consciousness, being without form, which has no beginning or end. Separation does not exist. I am aware of my physical body as a transitory container for that infinite beingness. The body is temporary, but consciousness is eternal. I experience this rather than think it.

I open my eyes at this point because I can feel the sun’s rays on my face. As the sun becomes fully visible over the tops of the trees, light fills the sky and illuminates everything. Each tree branch, each drop of water, sparkles and radiates light. Multiple suns are reflected in the window glass; dream-catchers and hanging crystals shimmer and dance. Ordinary objects are magically transformed in the light. I am transformed. Or perhaps the more accurate word is revealed. The soul of all things is revealed, and my eyes, filled with light, see the true nature of everything, which is radiant, sparkling divine light. I understand that we all are that. The details vary and morph into different forms, but our essence, the core essence of all things, is divine light.

As I continue to sit in the silence, an all-encompassing love fills my heart with gratitude and my eyes with tears. Dawn—the sacred hour when divinity and infinity reveal themselves as one in the light, and the soul silently witnesses it all. This is the amazing power and grace of the dawn hour, an unexpected gift of warmth, light, and renewal in the midst of this cold New England winter.