Tag: light

Another Day in Paradise

Photograph © Copyright 2018 Peggy Kornegger

When I used to take walks at my favorite nature sanctuary, Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I often thought to myself, “This is paradise,” as I gazed up at the towering oak and maple trees and listened to the varied birdsongs. Now that I live in Florida, I find myself feeling much the same way. Each morning after sunrise, I walk the nature trail that encircles the perimeter of the community where we live, enjoying the palm trees and flowering bushes and the calls of birds that make Florida home. This morning at the end of my walk, another walker passed me, said “Good morning,” and commented, “Another day in paradise.” I laughed and agreed with him. Most people I pass on my walks make some similar comment about the beauty of the day.

I know the stereotype of tropical climes like Florida is a paradise with warm weather and easier day-to-day living. That vision is not entirely fantasy, in spite of an extremely challenged ecosystem and ongoing political polarities.* Florida is living its own variation of what is happening in so many places in the U.S. Still, I do see paradise here, as well as up north in Massachusetts. In fact, everywhere. It’s all about how you frame life as you look out at the world around you. If I see only environmental loss and breaks in human connection, I miss the larger picture, which includes the possibility of change and transformation. If I consciously “reboot” to a wider perspective, I see every seemingly divergent detail as sacred and integral to the evolution of life on Earth.

Is “reality” as malleable as all that? Well, to me, it’s more like shifting into seeing the truth behind the facade, the inextinguishable light beneath the tarnish, wear, and tear of human existence. Life can be hard, no doubt about it. But there are always those who seem to be able to perceive hope and possibilities in all people and events. They intuitively understand that everything is part of a greater expansion and growth that we on this planet are now experiencing. Solutions arise out of the problems themselves. Life unfolds on so many levels and in so many uniquely diverse human hearts and souls. Yet at the deepest level, we are all One.

If I open my heart, I see this oneness, and the beauty of it, everywhere I go. It becomes a daily practice. I take a deep breath, as I sit in meditation or walk outdoors, and consciously bring myself back to the peace that lives inside me. From this space, nothing is dissonant or out of place. In spite of broken glass, broken promises, and broken hearts in the world at large, I can feel our collective heart beating as one, reaching out for a common vision that will uplift and sustain us. This is not an impossible dream or an insubstantial, unrealistic desire for change. Whatever is within each of us that keeps us moving forward on our life paths is what makes up that connection—to one another and to something greater.

Photograph © Copyright 2018 Peggy Kornegger

The universe is not an accident. Pause and look carefully, and you can see the intricate interweavings that constitute our lives and our world. The key is to stop periodically, step back, and allow the larger picture to fill your consciousness. This is not something we are taught to do in our society, but sometimes we stumble upon it by accident or through someone else’s help, and it begins to sustain us. I hold to this awareness in my own life in order to remain centered in what some call universal wisdom, or God.

We are not alone and we are not lost. In spite of what seems to be catastrophe and conflict on a global level, something else is occurring. We are evolving and expanding with the universe itself. It is my deep trust in this that helps me to walk through my front door each day and experience paradise, wherever I happen to be. To see paradise in the eyes of those around me and to hear it in their voices. Visible or invisible, we all hold paradise in our hearts; it lives in our souls. We have but to shift our vision slightly to see it everywhere, every day. And live it, going forward.
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*e.g., toxic red tide on the Gulf Coast from pollution flowing out of Lake Okeechobee;
on gun control, immigration, environmental protection, etc.

 

Seeing the Light

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger

When I returned from Panache Desai’s immersion, “Dynamic Enlightenment,” a few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I was now “enlightened.” I didn’t know how to answer. My hesitation stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t sure “yes” was entirely accurate or conveyed the nuances involved. We humans have a tendency to mistake one step for the entire journey. Better to see process rather than destination. On the other hand, I knew I was different after that intensive week of sacred activations and ceremonies. I was in a more expansive, divinely connected place. In truth, we are already enlightened at the soul level; we just have to become aware of that. So maybe the best way to describe my experience would be that I opened to a greater awareness of my soul’s constant state of being and light. And that awareness runs through my life in a continuous stream.

In the garden this morning, everything I looked at radiated light, everywhere. That is how it is most of the time for me now. Perhaps enlightenment is not the head-trip that many people think of it as, but an alignment with the ever-present light in your soul, which then is reflected in all that you see. When I look out the window in the morning, I see the light of the sun in everything: tree leaves, dew on the grass, flower petals, car windows, broken glass on the sidewalk. When I’m walking at dusk, I notice streetlamps, house lights, the moon rising, city lights in the distance. Light in all its various forms leaps out at me now. Colors are more vivid, reflections are multidimensional. I am seeing with the eyes of my soul, which is nothing but light. Actually, the whole planet, the entire cosmos, is nothing but light. It becomes denser when it takes on physical form, but our souls, which vibrate at the same frequency as light, perceive it as the basis of everything.

Photograph © 2017 Jean Pierson

So en-light-enment helps us see the true nature of the universe, of ourselves. We are light beings inhabiting heavier physical bodies, but the light at our core, our soul’s essence, never leaves us. When our awareness opens again to what it once was when we were first born, we see light everywhere, including within ourselves. The world is revealed as a magical kaleidoscope of colors and light, and we live within it and beyond it simultaneously. Other people begin to see that in us too. We become more transparent, and our inner luminosity shines through.

Today, if you asked me about enlightenment, that is what I would say. It is not one thing, either/or, yes or no. It is everything. And it is within every one of us.

 

Illumination on Vancouver Island

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
There comes a time when you realize that your life doesn’t really belong to you, like a bicycle or car that you can control by shifting gears or braking. Your life is actually part of something much greater, an expansive beingness that includes you in its infinite Presence but over which you have absolutely no control. When you reach this level of awareness, this overview, you find there is nothing left to do but let go completely and turn everything over to that Presence, or God. Within this surrender is liberation. Your soul becomes the acknowledged divine force in your life, and your human personality begins to flow with that newly accelerated energy. In releasing your grip on your own life, you are free to live it the way it was designed to be lived, the way you planned it before you were even born. God and your soul have known this all along, and you recognize who you really are at exactly the right moment in the greater scheme of things. It’s called destiny.

When we come face to face with our destiny, it is often a moment of illumination, when everything shines with clarity and coherence. We see a timeless expanse within which we are playing a small part in the unfolding of the universe. My own moments of illumination have occurred over time in increasing power and resonance. With each radiant surge, my consciousness has expanded further. Most recently, I experienced a major life-changing illumination during a six-day immersion with Panache Desai on Vancouver Island in Canada. This particular immersion, “Dynamic Enlightenment,” was dedicated to intensive traditional sacred ceremonies and activations, such as shaktipat, to bring each of us in our group to oneness and illumination, or enlightenment.

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger

During the week, I began to experience an electric vibration throughout my body, expansive pressure in my head, and tingling in my crown chakra. I felt as if my entire physical system was being recalibrated to accommodate the power and magnitude of the divine energy that Panache was transmitting. Then one evening after dinner, I took a walk as the sun was descending slowly in the west and a strong wind was rising off the water. As I looked up at the towering evergreens silhouetted against the sky, the wind began to sweep through them with a powerful force that caused them to sway back and forth dramatically. The wind was literally dancing with the trees, and the air itself was alive with life-force energy. In fact, everything I looked at was alive with this energy (prana). The very basis of all life was being revealed to me wherever I looked. The trees, bushes, birds, wind, and sky were filled with a shimmering luminosity and vibrating aliveness: God’s living spirit. I stood transfixed in absolute awe.

As I remained motionless, in an altered state of expanded awareness, my attention was drawn to the sun itself. I closed my eyes to take in the full radiance of this beautiful shining star. A golden glow shone through my eyelids, filling my senses with warmth and light. Then, after about ten seconds, the glow increased significantly, as if someone had turned the switch on “high.” The amplified light seemed to come not only from the sun itself but from within me as well. In fact, everything was light—golden divine light, in which I was immersed. God presence everywhere—in the trees, in the sun, in my human body. The soul of the universe clearly visible in that golden light. It was extraordinary, and I’ll never forget the feeling. I carry it within me now, a light that illuminates everything each time I take a deep breath and look with God’s eyes on the world around me.

We all live our own versions of illumination, sometimes dramatic, sometimes as simple as opening a door to a new way of seeing everything. En-LIGHT-enment is nothing more than stepping into the ever-present light of our own being and seeing ourselves for the divine souls we truly are. Our collective destiny is to know ourselves as God and to live as that all-encompassing harmonious love within our human forms. On the other side of all the extreme polarities now occurring on this planet, we will finally come back into balance and align with the sacred soul light and oneness at our core.

 

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.

Beyond Roles, Beyond Gender—Who Are You?

Photograph © 2016 Peggy Kornegger Gabriel Dawe, Plexus A1
Photograph © 2016 Peggy Kornegger
Gabriel Dawe, Plexus A1

We are alive at an amazing time on this planet. In spite of efforts by those desperately trying to patch them up, there are widening cracks in the old paradigms, and everything is shifting. Culturally constructed identities are dissolving, and infinite possibilities are opening up. Within the last few decades, movements for social change have shifted our very assumptions about what it means to be human. We have become aware of gender stereotypes and behavioral polarities that ultimately do not benefit anyone. Relationships between men and women have changed as men embrace their vulnerability and women embrace their strength. Narrow, constrictive definitions of gender roles and of gender itself have been called into question, and consequently we are all evolving into more expansive, more authentic whole human beings.

I grew up in the Midwest in the 1950s and 1960s, a “girl” as it was socially defined then. Yet, there have always been ways in which I did not exactly fit the mold of acceptability. I wore dresses and played with dolls, but I also wore jeans and climbed trees. I had crushes on boys, but girls were my best friends. In college in California, I embraced a flower-child/activist identity, wearing beads, bell-bottoms, and long Indian-print dresses as I took part in peace marches and student sit-ins. Once again, my love relationships were with men, but my closest friends were women. In my mid-20s, I became active in the feminist movement in the Boston area and eventually came out as a lesbian. I cut off my long “hippy” braids and wore colorful T-shirts, jeans, and artsy earrings. As a lesbian, I consciously chose relationships that were not defined by gender roles but by equality, balance, and celebration of each other’s uniqueness.

Today, I have been with my partner Anne for 34 years, married for the last 2. She and I have been able to share our lives and work through individual differences (and “imperfections”!) without the constraints of role expectations. Together we’ve seen the evolution of the LGBTQ community and the greater world around us over time. The wisdom and truth of “Love is love” has gradually entered the collective consciousness, and that has changed all of our lives. None of us are the same as we once were. Yes, homophobia, transphobia, and violence against those considered “different” still exists, but there has also been a shift to more acceptance of difference, of diversity. Minds are opening because of heart connections, because of a deeper recognition that we are all family on this planet. New possibilities for individual expression and equal relationships now exist for all people because of those who continue to shatter the old paradigm, just by being themselves.

To me, those individuals who consider themselves gender-fluid, gender-nonconforming, or non-binary are on the cutting edge of human evolution now. They stretch me the most in my own perceptions. By refusing to accept labels that perpetuate polarity (male, female), they inspire us all to ask: “Who am I beyond roles, beyond gender?” Indeed, who am I, as a human being, as a human soul? Really, the simple sacred truth “I Am” is the most accurate description of each of us on a soul level. The soul is infinite, eternal. Our human identities are temporary and not boxes that we have to fit into. The LGBTQ community has opened the door to life outside the boxes. We as human/divine beings are unboxable, indefinable, and infinitely expansive. And that is exactly why we all incarnated at this time: to embody limitless luminous rainbow consciousness as a species, as a planet. The entire global community of human souls is part of this extraordinary evolution of light within light. Every single shining one of us.