Tag: light

Shedding

In the second week after my first chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer, I began to lose my hair. Like a white angora cat, I shed hairs everywhere: on my clothing, in the shower drain, on my chair, in my hairbrush. Sometimes they drifted down onto my shoulders like cherry blossoms in the springtime; other times they clumped like small snowdrifts on my pillow. All of it strangely fascinating to me, as if they were bits of my identity falling away, freeing me even further at a soul level.

That may seem an odd way to view it; yet the process feels symbolic of a larger shedding that occurs as I clear out the clutter of a lifetime of identities. To be human is to move through many experiences and identities. I used to gather identities like flowers in a basket (flower child, activist, feminist, lesbian, writer, editor, spiritual seeker), feeling glad that I was eclectic and not tied to any one self-identification. I felt freer that way. As the years went by and my spiritual practice expanded, I began to realize that freedom is a much more expansive designation when viewed from the soul’s perspective.

The soul is pure being. It has no identity in the way we think of that term. The soul comes into physical form to experience life as a human and to evolve and expand its beingness. It has no attachment to any one identification we may claim as we pass through our lives. When we begin to drop attachments to particular identities, the soul moves to the forefront of our experience. We begin to experience being in an entirely new way. And we see more clearly, and intensely, the world we are passing through here on Earth.

I first experienced this “dropping” of identity when years ago (2005), I was invited to travel to Guatemala with Maya elders Mercedes and Gerardo to participate in ceremonies at sacred sites there. I was both honored and excited because the Mayan cosmology held great meaning for me. However, the “gateway” I had to pass through was the fact that women traditionally wear long dresses at every ceremony. As a lesbian feminist, I had not worn a dress in 30 years; consequently I found my attachment to that particular identity being challenged. In my heart, I knew there was no way that I would ever turn down such a precious invitation from the elders. So that meant opening to a different way of being in the world. At the time, I experienced this as a complete falling away of who I had been before and going to Guatemala “naked” at the soul level. I honored the Maya tradition by wearing a beautiful long skirt, and in the process, I stepped into magical interdimensional experiences at the sacred ceremonies, beyond language and definitely beyond identity.

As I continued on my soul journey over the years, I found that the more I dropped identification with any identity at all, the more I experienced a beingness without beginning or end …. and the more I knew God, or Spirit, in a way I never had before. Ultimately, I came to understand that the final realization is that all identity is an illusion. Our identities are merely the costumes, or disguises, that we put on for this human ride; when we take them off, all that remains is Spirit.

So this is where I am now. Yet another identity falling away with the hair on my head. Perhaps one of the last identifications and attachments: to my physical form and what I look like. Once again, soul-naked before the universe. One definition of the word bald is “undisguised” or “unveiled.” The process of life often removes our protective veils and disguises if we don’t do it ourselves. Either way, it is liberation for the soul. I can feel that. To live my life as pure spirit, unfiltered and free. It is our collective human destiny to shed identity and shine the light of soul presence in this world.

A Camino: Firewalk and Life Streaming

When I first heard the diagnosis “breast cancer,” I was lost in shock and fear. How could this happen in my life? To me?! After a few days, I gradually was able to re-center in the peace within me, to remember that everything that happens in my life is part of a soul plan that I was part of designing before my birth. Nothing is a coincidence, and everything is connected to everything else. I am one soul in one lifetime on one planet. Yet I am also part of the entire fabric of being in the universe. Sometimes it takes loss or crisis in our lives to fully realize this. When things fall away or apart, the long view becomes more visible.

Illness or disease can stop you short in your tracks and remind you of your own mortality. Even if you think you are unattached to outcome or completely surrendered to however events unfold. Even if you feel connected to a greater consciousness beyond life and death. There is always more surrender available, deeper all the time. And there is always more letting go of attachment—until there’s nothing left but soul. The physical body holds within it the last attachment. You definitively let go of that attachment at death. But you can also let go of it as part of life. This is what is meant by “dying unto yourself.” You release attachment not only to your identity but to your physical form. You live your life as your soul, immersed in peaceful Presence. The same immersion in Presence that occurs at death. Only you are radiantly alive and aware.

I have experienced times of surrender and Presence on my spiritual journey, but when breast cancer came into my life, I stepped onto an accelerated path: my own Camino.* The more I trusted that I was being divinely guided on this path, the more everything flowed. During and after surgery, I felt surrounded by angelic healers, floating in profound Oneness. My physical form seemed almost nonexistent. I returned home to heal and rest quietly. A week later, the pathology report showed wide clear margins—excellent! Then my surgeon told me that new test results indicated I should probably include chemotherapy in my treatment plan along with radiation. I had already accepted the latter, but the combo frightened me. Attachment to my body as it currently looked and felt was front and center. I was being asked to dive even deeper into acceptance and surrender.

My breast-cancer-survivor friends helped me with this acceptance (as did my very knowledgeable and kind doctors), but then my own inner genie handed me a vision that changed the way I saw everything. During a powerful meditation one morning, I suddenly understood what breast cancer represented in my life. In my mind’s eye, I saw an image of burning coals, like those used in the traditional firewalk, practiced by many cultures for thousands of years as a rite of faith, healing, or initiation. Immediately, I knew that for me radiation and chemo were the “burning coals,” and that I would safely “walk” through them as I surrendered attachment to my body and trusted my soul’s journey. My Camino walk is a fire of initiation, transmutation, and expansion beyond the physical. I envisioned myself afterward as pure soul light. No attachments, just life streaming through eternity in timeless splendor.

This is our collective destiny: to walk through humanity’s fires and emerge as light, each in our own way. Every person’s journey is unique. Each soul path divinely orchestrated. On the other side of our firewalks is a Presence that permeates the universe in life and in death. In truth, they are one: infinite beingness. When we realize that, all fear falls away, and we can live our lives with peaceful, open hearts and souls.
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*The Camino is a well-known path of spiritual pilgrimage across northern Spain.

Floating in Kindness

I have read that patients hear everything that is said or felt in the hospital room even when sedated or unconscious. Those who have near-death experiences describe watching and hearing the doctors, nurses, and family members from “above” and seeing the connections between everything. I have always believed this to be true. Recently, I had my own experience of something similar, though not at the edge of death. I was sedated for a breast cancer operation, and as I came out of sedation after surgery, I had the vivid experience of writing a very detailed letter describing how extraordinarily kind everyone was in the operating and recovery rooms. I lay there feeling it all intensely as I slowly returned to conscious awareness within the “real world.” But I ask you, “What is real here?” There was no doubt in my fully conscious mind that I was remembering what I experienced during surgery and immediately after. I had felt surrounded by bodhisattvas.*

Lying there, slowly drifting back into my mind’s perceptions, experienced in conjunction with my heart’s loving awareness, I “knew” my surroundings and the world at large in a greater, wiser way. The feeling of floating in an atmosphere of caring and kindness expanded until all I felt was oneness with everyone in the room as well as everyone on Earth. And everything in the universe. Immersion in a loving Presence. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Thus God guides us along our soul’s path in our human lifetime. Gradually, we come to see the larger picture, the divine tapestry within which we are all threads of consciousness.

Two months ago, I was invisibly guided to find the lump in my breast, and everything that unfolded afterward has been a blessed dance of deepening soul awareness and connection. All my friends and loved ones, all the doctors and nurses, are playing a part in this dance—and are, I’m sure, experiencing their own soul journeys parallel to mine. This is what is happening now on our blue planet, as it becomes golden with illuminated collective awareness. In truth, we are all bodhisattvas returning to Earth to shine the light of loving kindness and oneness so strongly that finally we all feel it as powerfully as I did in that recovery room. I am forever changed by that experience.

As I walk down the street now, I see shining souls all connected to one another, not solitary human forms lost in the dramas of their own lives. Beneath our earthly costumes this is who we all are: infinite beings of light. We are here on assignment from the stars. Look around, look within, and remember who you are. Reach out the hand of kindness to every person, animal, plant, tree, butterfly or bee you encounter. Feel the connections beyond language. What will be returned to you is the reflection of your own soul and God’s imprint on your heart. We came here to love one another and to love ourselves. In that there is only Oneness.
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*Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who return to the Earth plane out of compassion and the desire to be of loving service to others (a Buddhist teaching).

Shadows and Light

On August 9, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.* For two days I moved, stunned, beneath the dark shadow of those words, which I never had imagined would apply to me. I felt as if all joy and flow in my life had vanished. I couldn’t access the inner peace that had become so much a part of my daily experience. I couldn’t hear my soul’s voice. I was lost within the dramatic scenarios my mind was playing out, all of them shadowed and sad. I grieved the loss of my connection to spirit, to trust (and perhaps to life). Then a wise friend reminded me that I didn’t have to immediately be at peace, that it was okay to feel whatever I needed to, day by day. The light of peace would eventually return, as long as I remembered not to get caught in the mind drama, and just trust the divine process of it all. He was right.

Shadows and light come and go in our lives. They are the yin and yang of the Earth plane. One can’t exist without the other. We wouldn’t know happiness without sorrow, pleasure without pain. On a planet of polarities, we cannot expect the external world to be only one thing. We might be bored if it were. What we can do is find a place of calm acceptance within us to experience (or observe) all those seeming opposites that fill our lives. From that perspective, all is well, and there is purpose beneath the play of consciousness before us and within us at all times. Eventually, we learn that the opposites flow together into one. The diverse forms that make up our planetary experience arise from formlessness and eventually return to that oneness. This is the nature of the multiverse that we inhabit and that is also within us.

That is wisdom I carry in my soul. At times of crisis in my own life (cancer) or in the world (pandemic), it is easy to forget. Feelings of fear and sadness almost overwhelm me. At the last minute, something or someone appears to remind me. The light shines, and the shadows recede. If I can accept the existence of both shadows and light, I can move forward even in the face of fear, even with sadness in my heart. The human experience is complex and unpredictable. Only in deep inner surrender and trust can we find peace. I signed up for all these life experiences before birth; to resist them is to lose the greater wisdom and purpose of my unique life. I am expanding and evolving through each and every one of them. Our entire planet, our entire multiverse, is evolving through our individual and collective experiences.

I am still on this journey, still facing the unknowns of living with a cancer diagnosis (follow-up MRI yesterday; awaiting results; surgery next week). All this is perhaps a further emptying out within my life, which began in Florida. I know now, with everything in me, that that emptiness occurs so God awareness can fill it. I remind myself repeatedly to remain open to everything that appears to be a loss. More space for God, for divine connection, and for my own soul’s full flowering. There are no mistakes, no terrible errors or punishments. Every single thing, as Rumi wrote, “has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

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*NOTE: I found the lump in my breast myself, only two weeks after a “normal” mammogram. It couldn’t be seen because my breasts are very dense. A subsequent ultrasound picked it up, and I was sent for a biopsy. I am grateful for whatever divine impulse moved me to examine my breasts (which I rarely do) that day because the cancer was found at what appears to be an early stage. So please remember to do breast self-examination–it could save your life!

Embodying Light

Photograph © 2021 Peggy Kornegger

In her inaugural poem, Amanda Gorman spoke of being light in the world. In doing so, she opened the door wide so that light could shine in, in all its radiance and power. Her words echoed out from the podium around the world and across the centuries. Standing invisible beside her were immigrants and enslaved people, civil rights activists and suffragists, Parkland students and pacifists, poets and day laborers. All those who have envisioned a freer, more compassionate world and lived and died for it were there in spirit to witness a shift in consciousness becoming visible at last.

You could feel the energy shift and recognize it in the faces of those present, speaking, singing, and seeing herstory/history in the making. Many of the women, like new Vice President Kamala Harris, wore luminous purple, others sunshine yellow, some radiant red or crimson. The colors were visible light. Permeating everything was a vibrant energy of transformation and change. The traditional songs that were sung—”This Land Is Your Land” and “Amazing Grace”—took on a deeper tone of inclusiveness and gratitude. Even the national anthem sounded somehow different, as Lady Gaga, wearing a golden peace dove, passionately sang the words. The feeling in the hearts of those listening, there or at home, was relief at having collectively survived an extremely challenging, painful time into a new dawn. Four years fell away, 200 years fell away, 2,000 years fell away. This is the Great Shift into Light that has been foretold by elders and seers for millennia.

I was continually moved to tears during the songs and speeches. It wasn’t patriotism I was feeling; it was profound gladness that this country had narrowly escaped falling further into fascism, that light was visible ahead of us and all around us, that humanity was reaching a new level of awakening. The colors of the thousands of flags spread out on the mall seemed to show a rainbow expanse of possibilities—for all people everywhere. Ultimately, it’s not about countries and presidents (though they can hold symbolic places in the world’s histories); it’s about the evolving of human consciousness and the emergence of a shared life on this planet based in love, compassion, and celebration of diversity.

I could see and feel it coming into being on January 20. Amanda Gorman gave voice to the words that were written on our souls before we entered this particular lifetime. We are all playing our parts, none of us extraneous or unimportant. Each of us is unique in our life purpose and inner vision and thus absolutely indispensable in the weaving of the greater tapestry of freedom, peace, and loving kindness here on Earth.

Poets and politicians and people of all kinds are being moved by something just now coming into humanity’s awareness. We are here to live out a sacred promise made eons ago across the cosmos. We have come to this planet to live the Light, our soul light, and share that light in all we say and do. This is the time we were born for. We are standing, souls shining. We are Light embodied.