Tag: love

Child’s Play

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Over the holidays, I received a very interesting tutorial from Spirit in the form of a New Year’s Eve game of Scrabble. Instead of strategizing and studiously mulling over possible letter combinations and words, I found myself just being present, doing nothing in particular. As if by magic, letters began to form themselves into words that I would effortlessly place on the board. My partner could barely finish her turn before I had a new word ready to go. This continued throughout the game, and I ended up with the highest score I had ever made (hers not far behind). But it wasn’t really about winning; it was about playing. The entire experience was almost surreal—I felt as if Scrabble was being played through me, and I was just the vehicle to allow the playing. Thus, the larger life lesson: When you let go and stop trying so hard, life flows through you. And everything becomes more play-full.

Effort, trying, has always been my approach to the world (I was born pushing hard to emerge from the womb, breaking my mother’s tailbone in the process). Only recently have I learned to slow down, breathe, and allow my life to be lived through me instead of trying to plan every single event and experience in my reality. It’s not as if I’ve never lived spontaneously—I was, after all, a flower child in the 1960s! Nonetheless, there has always been some part of me that believed that living life meant working hard to make it happen (write down a list of those intentions, and act on them—now!). Really, the greater truth is that life is meant to be played. And playing is the opposite of work. It’s being, letting go and flowing with the energies. Of course, that flow comes from an open heart, unblocked emotions, and trust in something greater than your individual life.

All part of human evolution at this time. As babies, we were easily playful, but we lose it within a social construct that demands serious effort from us at an early age. Now, as that old paradigm starts to disintegrate, we are beginning to reacquaint ourselves with that wise child within, that soul self more aware of what’s really important in life. Our soul knows that, first and foremost, we are here to love (the world and life itself), and that everything is a vehicle for that—a way to reach greater and greater levels of loving and harmony with our fellow beings. How do we do that? Play. Allow life to play with you. Let it be an adventure and a game, one that you are not here to win but just to play—with everyone in your life. Play it forward!

2013: Reboot to Resilience

Photograph © 2012 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2012 Peggy Kornegger
The year 2012 is behind us. The world didn’t end. But it did shift in major ways for people all over the world, and those shifts continue. Many of the changes involved extreme challenges and emotional/physical upheaval, but the promise of the Great Shift was never instant utopia. It was transformation: the caterpillar gradually morphing and expanding within the cocoon until it breaks free, emerging as a full-fledged butterfly. During this transitional time of expansion and growth, our greatest strength is our resilience, our ability to stretch ourselves beyond limitation or growth pains and emerge triumphant. And 2013 is all about resilience, fueled by the power of our individual and collective evolution.

In 2012, my heart opened more and more—with love, with joy—until there were times when I felt as if it couldn’t possibly open any wider. In the process, however, I found that I also had to face the presence of pain that I had carried within me for a very long time. My heart was aching with the suffering I saw everywhere in the world, and my body itself struggled with pain in the form of headaches. Unconsciously, I felt a resistance to becoming fully resilient and healed because I believed that would separate me from other people. As I moved to a place of acceptance of the full spectrum of human experience on Earth at this time (pain included), my entire consciousness shifted. Pain/suffering is one part of a greater whole, and as we continue to evolve, that part begins to diminish in the face of human compassion and love, which brings all of us closer and closer together in the global experience of oneness.

What is more, as I/we expand and become more resilient (peaceful, joyful, loving), that energy goes out into the collective matrix and helps to shift everything/everybody. This is the power of interconnections and of the reverberations of light resilient energy. It is the butterfly that moves its wings in China and affects the wind on the other side of the planet. It is the human heart that opens so wide as to embrace every experience and every living being with unconditional love. It is the power of fully awakened spirit in human form.

Mud in Your Eyes

Photograph © 2012 Peggy Kornegger

What do you do when life events hit you hard, knocking you to the ground, facedown in the mud? When you lose your job, your home, or your health? When a hurricane, flood, or other environmental disaster devastates your city or town? Does “oneness” or “universal love” have any relevance in a world full of pain and suffering? Having faced job loss, financial uncertainty, and health challenges myself in recent years, I know there are no simple answers to such difficult questions.

Some events, like birth and death, are part of all life cycles on Earth, but others, like war, economic turmoil, or global warming, are linked to human constructs and beliefs. We live on a planet currently experiencing extreme polarity and imbalance. Yet, within this seemingly chaotic tension, there is a glimmer of hope. The dissolution of rigid hierarchical forms that do not serve all of humanity is on the rise, and possibilities that did not exist in the past are coming to the forefront of human consciousness. We are finding the will to survive, and prevail, in our relationships with one another.

If you turn aside from the mainstream-media interpretation of world events and look instead at local community alternatives grounded in acknowledgment of the connection between all beings, you will see a new Planet Earth being born. If you pay attention to the lesser-known stories about individuals and groups stepping up to help others in life-threatening circumstances or dire need, you will witness compassion in action. We have not reached critical mass as yet, but the energy of transformation is expanding daily.

Countless people around the globe have envisioned and worked tirelessly for this transformation, and continue to do so. It takes tremendous courage to see clearly both what is and what is possible and remain centered in hope and love. But it is what we are being called to do at this time. If we don’t do it, who will? We stand at the very edge of possibility. We hold a vision of universal loving-kindness and generosity of spirit in our hearts. We truly are the change we wish to see in the world.

As the saying goes, it only takes one candle to light the darkness. We are that light, each of us and all of us. Loss is part of life, but love makes it bearable. Even when we bow our heads in sorrow or pain, we are never really alone. Look up, wipe away the muddy tears, and see the light of those who share the Earth path with you and who may be experiencing exactly what you are. Reach out to a stranger, and you may discover a commonality that bridges all seeming differences. It is oneness and universal love that creates that miracle of connection.

 

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.

 

Growing Up Godless

I grew up outside of organized religion. In a small Midwestern town, this was unheard of. I knew no one else like me; all my friends dutifully went to church every Sunday. My parents didn’t want to impose any one set of religious beliefs on me, so they basically left the door open. They told me that God might exist or might not; it was not provable, all based on belief—the agnostic’s view. So I was left with a question mark and a feeling of “differentness” among my peers. I can remember feeling very uncomfortable whenever the topic of church or God came up at school, fearful that I would be “found out.”

When I was about 9 years old, my parents took me to a Unitarian church service in a nearby town, after which I commented, “I’m glad that’s over!” Clearly I wasn’t longing to go to church as much as I was longing not to be different. When I reached college age, all my new friends were rejecting their religious upbringing, and I found myself ahead of the game since I didn’t have a religion to reject. But still I was searching for something, as were so many others of my generation. The meaning of life perhaps, or the secrets of the cosmos. At any rate, I gradually began to look for answers in diverse spiritual books and teachers, not really wanting a guru or one answer, but rather a tapestry of truths that resonated with me.

My search for meaning was partially driven by a deep-seated fear of eternity/infinity, which I had carried within me since childhood, possibly because I had no superimposed God image to block the fear. The void, or an endless universe in which “the world went on forever and ever,” was very real to me. Eternal life and eternal death seemed equally frightening. Still, in spite of this, I was a happy child for the most part, nurtured and supported both by my parents’ unconditional love and by the natural world outside our rural home. It was only at night that my fears about the infinite universe arose.

These night fears continued throughout adulthood, even after I came to believe in Spirit, or a greater sacred presence in the universe. After many years of spiritual exploration and growth, it was in an individual session with Panache Desai that I had my first tangible experience of infinity as an expanse that was both peaceful and comforting (see previous blog post “Infinity). Months later, during Panache’s webcast series “Mother, Father, God,” I faced my long-ago religionless past. As he instructed listeners to embrace the image of God they had grown up with, until it disappeared and became one with them, I felt disconnected, alone, different, stuck in my Godless childhood. But when he said, “The Divine in essence is formless and nameless and is in fact love,” I suddenly realized that I was already at “disappeared,” and God/Spirit had always been a part of my life, as love. I felt old fears dissolving as I also realized that I had never really been alone. God, or the Divine, was always there, at my very core.

Looking back, I see how what seemed my greatest challenge as a child was in fact my greatest blessing. What I experienced then, through my parents, through nature, and within my own heart, was Divine love in its purest form, undiluted by human concepts of an external God. Now, in my present life, as I continue to have extraordinary experiences of Spirit and infinity, I am so very grateful for my parents’ openhearted love and wisdom which allowed me to follow my own path when it came to matters of the spirit.

“Look in your heart for God, for truth, for the answer. Feel that heart space—that is where you and infinity can meet, because your heart is not limited, but ever expansive.”—Panache Desai