Tag: love

The Experience of God

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
God is everything. Yet within that everything, God has many aspects of being, from formlessness to form. At the center of the universe (actually before the universe became the universe) is just Source energy, pure potential. In some teachings, this is called the absolute, or “I.” It is the precursor to the Big Bang: out of nothing came something, out of absolute being arose relative being, or “I Am,” wherein God becomes relatable, experiential, as love, as consciousness. When we on the spiritual path feel divine love, when we expand into conscious awareness of something greater in our lives, we are experiencing the “I Am” at the soul level.

The next aspect is “I Am That,” in which we as humans identify completely with our physical forms, personality selves, or egos, and forget our divine connection. Forgetfulness is the common state for humanity at this time. In forgetfulness, we get caught up in all the polarities and dramas of human physical life on Earth. Our minds, emotions, and bodies are our primary experience, and the soul takes a backseat, often completely overlooked. This also is God, but it is God forgetting that it is God—something we all experience before we awaken again into the “I Am,” the love we came from.

In the collective awakening that is happening more and more on this planet, we reconnect with our souls, with the God within. This is the primary experiential focus for many of us who have incarnated at this time—to expand in awareness from “I Am That” to “I Am” and finally to “I.”

My own life has taken me through all three aspects at different times. Most of my early life was spent in “I Am That.” I dropped much of my socially created personality when I left my small-town home at 18 and went away to college to “find myself.” I spent years exploring “who am I?” and “why am I here?” I often felt lost and in despair during this self-exploration because I couldn’t really see beyond the Earth plane. I was on a spiritual quest, but I didn’t know it as such. I found meaning and a new kind of self-identification within the breakthrough experiences of my generation in the late 1960s and 1970s—flower-child consciousness and political activism. Belief in Love defined my life and informed all the experiences I had at that time. It was a period of awakening, but at a beginning level.

Many years later, I began a conscious spiritual journey, which eventually took me to “I Am,” experiencing God, or universal consciousness. This occurred in my own spiritual practices (meditation, yoga, programs with inspiring teachers), in Nature, and eventually I found that divine connection existed within me at all times. These were powerful moments of bliss and joy, when tears streamed down my face at the all-encompassing loving Godness that filled me. I began to live more and more from my soul (and my heart which is the entry point to the soul) instead of my personality or ego. My fears around infinity and death gradually began to be replaced by trust and surrender to something greater than my single human life. Yet, there was more.

I am only now beginning to touch into “I,” or the absolute. I experienced it once years ago at the very start of my work with Panache Desai, when in an individual session, he took me there. More accurately, he accessed that state within himself, which opened the door for me to access it within myself. It was a completely emotionless state of peace beyond peace. This was infinity, on the other side of any fears my mind could invent about it—because there was no mind, no me. There was nothing. I remained in that state for hours, with no desire to do anything but rest in the experience. It made a huge crack in my previous level of consciousness, and deeper awareness began to trickle, and then gradually stream, in. Because of this crack, I was able to experience God in ways I never had previously.

The door is opening wider now to that fathomless, directionless, experience of absolute potential, where God is not even a definable entity. In a recent immersion retreat with Panache, I found myself “lifting off” into that state, like a hummingbird spiraling upward into invisibility. Here there is no language, no recognizable signposts to point to, so when I “return” (actually, there is no return because it is ever-present, the source of everything), I can find no words to describe it. A woman at our retreat called it the place of “no God”—in other words, God before God is seen by us as God. And it’s not frightening because fear doesn’t exist. As I said, indescribable.

These are the states that great masters throughout time have spoken of and, seeing into the future, told us: “All this you will experience, and more.” I have no idea where I am going on this journey; every bit of it is beyond my human “understanding.” It’s a Great Mystery that I am here to experience in its eternal expansion through formlessness and form, emptiness and fullness, potential and presence. In all honesty, the “I Am That” in me at times still fears the nothingness of the “I” and wants only the loving comfort of the “I Am.” Yet my soul knows they are all God, all one unified ocean of energy and light within me and all around me. Separation and fear only exist in my mind.

Living Kindness

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger

We learn kindness and patience step by step, sometimes in the receiving, sometimes in the giving. And sometimes, even more powerfully, in the shadow experience: through thoughtlessness or impatience, our own or someone else’s. Hurt by hurt, mistake by mistake, we walk forward into the swirl of human emotion and interrelationship. We learn about pain by being hurt as well as by hurting another. Someone else’s anger or offhand remark can cut to the quick. But to see pain in a loved one’s eyes from our own unthinking or harsh words is to know the other side of pain. It can break your heart, but in the breaking is the opening­—to compassion, to kindness.

When I look back honestly on my own life, I see moments that have taught me, painfully, to be more compassionate and aware. In the years before my mother’s death, she began to have challenges with both her eyesight (cataracts) and memory. I felt tremendous responsibility and fear around making sure she was okay. Once, after a doctor’s appointment, I was asking her questions about what had transpired (What did he say? Did you ask him about ____?). She couldn’t think fast enough to answer me and finally burst into tears. Abruptly I realized I had to slow down and just listen patiently instead of question her. I could see the pain in her eyes at not being able to answer me quickly. It stopped me in my tracks, and I hugged her. What did the answers matter when my mother’s ease of mind was at stake?

Years ago, my partner Anne and I were traveling in the south of France after visiting a friend in Paris. The morning newspapers brought stories of bombings in Paris, which made us apprehensive about returning. Still, we continued to enjoy our trip before heading north again. After our train reached Paris, we began to walk (a bit nervously) across town to our friend’s apartment, but at a certain point we needed to ask directions. I didn’t want to ask because I couldn’t remember the exact French word (I had lived in France years before and felt I had to say it properly or not at all).

Anne thought this was ridiculous and went ahead and asked anyway. She was understood, answered, and we were on our way. I, however, was angry with her (and myself) about it and insensitively pointed out a mistake in her wording. She began to cry. I can still see her walking by the Seine with her heavy backpack, sobbing. It broke my heart, and I apologized with tears in my eyes. What does perfect French (or potential bombers) matter when you’ve just hurt the person you love most in the world?

This is what it means, I suppose, when they say we relive our entire life, all of it, in a split second before we die. We see the times when we were caring and compassionate as well as when we caused suffering or pain. If we are fortunate, we come to realize before that last moment the ways in which we affect others, and we self-correct to be mindfully conscious of the power of our words and actions. We learn to choose kindness in every situation. Just like the wisdom teaching about asking yourself three questions before speaking: 1) Is it true? 2) Is it necessary? 3) Is it kind? In most cases, a “no” answer to any of those prevents us from hurting another.

 

Your Soul’s Awareness

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
Live as your soul, and trust in God. Live as God, and trust in your soul. One and the same. Your soul is God here on Earth within a physical form. God is in every physical form on the planet—every human being, every animal, every butterfly, every tree, every stone, every tiny grain of sand. There is absolutely nothing that is not Source energy. When we come to this greater awareness, we can be free of separation on every level. Separation from God, separation from others, and separation within ourselves. My mind, body, emotions, and spirit are all one. I am one with all beings everywhere.

Separateness is just an illusion that God/dess put in place so that we could experience our unique individual forms and then come back into conscious awareness of the oneness of all things. Earth is a playground of expanding consciousness. We see one another as different and separate, but when we begin to align more fully with our soul’s awareness, we remember the oneness from which we were created and to which we will return after death. Life allows the experience of separation and the blissful reunion after separation. On this planet of polarities, we come to know all extremes, and God knows them through us, experiences life as we experience it. We are human emissaries who enable God to explore constantly evolving realms of beingness.

So if you thought that you came to Earth only to suffer, think again. Better yet, drop down out of your mind into your heart. Within the heart is where we are closest to the Divine because God is love, and our hearts are love transmitters. When we feel pure unconditional love for another being, we break through the illusion of separateness and experience our own divinity. We love as God loves, and in doing so, we fulfill our purpose for being here. We came to this planet to reach full awareness of who we are and to live as God in human form, loving all that we see as God, including ourselves. Sounds simple, but we have to live the complications to reach simplicity.

I have lived through layer after layer of complicated experiencing in my life, all of it eventually bringing me back home to my own soul, to the God within, which so many spiritual masters have pointed to for thousands of years. We were born wise, fully conscious of our divine connection. Then our clear vision gets blurred by the illusions of the world we are taught is real. All my life experiences are meant to awaken me from that illusion. We who are alive at this time have incarnated specifically to reach collective soul awareness. Each of us is here to know and love one another as God. That is heaven on Earth, and that is the grace-filled destiny that is yours.

“We’ve Been Waiting for You”

Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger

These were former President Obama’s words last week after students across the U.S. walked out of their classes to attend demonstrations protesting guns and violence in this country. The Parkland, Florida, high school shootings on February 14, where 17 students and teachers were killed, was the most recent of over 200 other school shootings in the last six years. It appears to be the “last straw” for young people who have watched the escalation of lethal violence directed at their classmates and teachers.

Emma Gonzalez, senior at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, spoke fiercely and articulately at a gun control rally in Ft. Lauderdale: “The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us….Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this….It’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see.” She speaks for countless others across this nation, of all ages, races, nationalities, and backgrounds. And she echoes Oprah Winfrey’s words, in a different context (sexual abuse) but also about the devaluing of human lives by those in power, “Their time is up!” We are reaching critical mass on so many fronts.

I had tears in my eyes when I listened to Oprah’s speech and Emma’s speech, and when I read Obama’s heartfelt reaction to the students taking a stand against the existence of guns and violence in their lives: “We’ve been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs.” Those of us who have actively spoken out for nonviolence, peace, and the honoring of all human lives (“Black Lives Matter!”) for years see hope for the future in these angry but determined young faces. They are in great pain, but often great change comes from such pain. Pain that cuts through all the lies and gets to the heart of the matter: How do you want to live your one precious life? At war or at peace? In fear or in love?

We are at a crossroads in this country and on this planet. The culture of violence that is killing our children and breaking our hearts is also causing us to stand up and let our voices be heard for something different. Every single “ism” and “phobia”—racism, sexism, ageism, xenophobia, homophobia—that has dominated the collective consciousness for hundreds of years is starting to unravel and fall apart at the seams. It may look like hatred of all kinds is gaining strength, but what we are seeing is the desperation of those who sense “their time is up.” “Power over” is frantically trying to hang on, but “power together” (“Me too”) is gaining strength. The spirit of oneness is rising in people’s hearts, whether they are aware of it yet or not. The “otherness” and separation that we have been trained to believe in is losing its grip, and compassion and unity is coming to the fore.

That spirit is in those students whose courage and resolve inspire every one of us to stand with them, to “have their backs.” Because it’s not just about them. It’s about all of us. We are all immigrants on this Earth, and we came here for a purpose beyond our individual lifetimes: to embody peaceful coexistence and loving kindness on a planet that has never fully lived it. The waiting is over; our time is now. Each of us knows in our heart that love is stronger than fear and hatred, and global transformation occurs when we live that truth, shining it outward from the very core of our being so that it is reflected in the hearts of everyone, everywhere.

 

Losing Heart and Having Heart in Troubled Times

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger

When you “lose heart,” you become discouraged and lose hope. When you “have heart,” you keep your faith and trust in spite of the odds. We are living at a time in which both of these options present themselves. The shadow side of our collective consciousness in the United States is coming to the fore, and we are seeing people fiercely hanging on to privileges and prejudices as if their lives depended on it. In truth, it is their identities, their egos, that depend on belief systems based in hierarchy and entitlement.

The 1% believe they have earned their place at the top of the heap and that those they have stepped on and profited from in order to get there are losers and leeches. Minorities and immigrants are targeted as threats to an elitist, white-male status quo. The exact opposite of the values of democracy and equal rights that this country is supposedly founded on. Of course, those founders were also white, male, and many were slaveholders, so the underside of American “freedom” has always existed.

When the rest of us look at this scenario, our hearts are tested. Will we lose hope or will we keep our faith that the imbalances will eventually right themselves? To paraphrase (and update) Thomas Paine: these are the times that try human souls. Can generosity, compassion, and loving-kindness eventually prevail in a society like ours where the accumulation and hoarding of monetary wealth and material possessions, as well as the oppression of entire segments of the population, is so widespread? Classism and racism overlay our so-called democratic society, to say nothing of sexism.

Everyone’s consciousness is affected by this skewed worldview. Many with more don’t want to give up what they have in order to assist others who have less. The media promotes consumerism and the lifestyles of the rich and famous, as if these were behaviors to aspire to. The artificially created “need” to buy and keep buying invades our daily lives. Unless we make a conscious decision not to participate. Unless we choose sharing over greed, caring over selfishness, simplicity instead of overconsumption. Unless we choose to live from our hearts and not our conditioning.

All the extremes and polarities are being displayed in full view of the world. The advent of  a belligerent, self-aggrandizing approach to life is pervasive. There is an increasingly harsh and ruthless holding on to privilege, often accompanied by hatred of all those who stand up for their rights as equal citizens. Yet, there is a hollowness to these defenders of entitlement. Their hearts seem to be empty, their minds filled with delusions of superiority based on money and power. Appearance is more important than truth. But there is only so long they can maintain that facade. Their extreme behavior is the death rattle of an outdated paradigm, doomed to disappear like the dinosaurs.

Hope for the future lies with those who are, everywhere on this planet, now awakening to a conscious awareness that sees unity and commonality, not separation and divisiveness. People whose lives are lived heartfully and soulfully in deep connection with their fellow beings. Generosity of spirit prevails. You don’t hear as much about these individuals, because the media tends to focus on disaster and destruction instead of imaginative and inspired alternatives to power and elitism. But they/we are out here, and we are not going away.

Even though at times the odds seem overwhelming, we mustn’t lose heart. In having heart, in living heart, we open the heart of the world to greater compassion and caring so that eventually everyone, every soul on this Earth, can step out of separation and live in oneness. A critical mass of love and kindness has the power to shift everything. You never know when even the most recalcitrant of dinosaurs will have a change of heart. In the long run, hate can never “trump” love.