Expansion, Not Decline

Is your body demanding your attention lately? Are your emotions on edge? Do you feel as if your health is declining, your sense of optimism impaired? You are not alone. Almost everyone I know has been facing some kind of physical issue or challenge over the past year or so, including myself. Breast cancer flipped my daily world view upside-down. Yet, as I gradually learned to experience it with a peaceful, accepting heart, calm arose within me to face whatever I needed to without despair or negativity. My soul guided my body, mind, and feelings throughout. Sometimes we have to pass through depression or emotional upset to reach that overview, but it can happen. This is the challenge of these times we are living through, especially during a global pandemic.

How can we come to see physical pain or illness in a positive rather than negative light? Perhaps by seeing it as a cleansing or clearing of your physical form so that your soul can shine more fully and brightly. These are times of expansion, not decline. We are welcoming the complete embodiment of the soul in our bodies. Physicality is the densest part of you, and it will be the last to transform. The heaviness of form is being overhauled to receive the lightness of formlessness, our natural and eternal state. The key to an easier transition may be to view physical illness or pain as metamorphosis, a path to clarity and fulfilment. You are shedding your identity and your past and walking into a new vision of life and yourself. It may feel intensely challenging, but if you look closely, the doors are opening. No matter what is occurring, your soul chose this life path for your greater evolution. Welcome to the Great Shift on Planet Earth.

This applies not only to physical difficulties but to the overall political/social turmoil in the world. The entire planet is experiencing a cleansing. A new Earth is being born. And birthing pains often accompany such a major event, personally and globally. So hang on: you are not deteriorating; you are expanding. Hard to believe at times, but we are being asked to imagine, and live, this vision of a new fully embodied soul, in our selves and our planet. We incarnated at this time for exactly this. Your physical body and Mother Earth herself are shedding density, welcoming conscious awareness of spirit everywhere. Even what seems to be the worst scenario holds within it a seed of awakening.

There is nothing “wrong” here. Nothing “terminal.” Neither age, diagnosis, nor life events can kill your spirit. Your soul is eternal; consciousness too is eternal.  You as beingness exist beyond time and space, beyond mind and emotions, beyond thoughts and expectations. The world is a temporary landing point for your evolution and expansion. We are all part of the divine unfolding of infinite consciousness. Even if you think things are bad or intolerable, there is something greater occurring beyond human understanding. You are journeying through ascension, not decline. Your soul knows the way. Relax and surrender to the cosmic trip God/dess has orchestrated. When you feel lost or alone, hold in your awareness a vision of our blue planet turning golden and our souls shining brightly in the cosmos. At the soul level, our hands are joined, circling the globe as one energy, one expanding light. In pain, sorrow, or joy, you are always part of this collective life spirit. Look up at the morning sky and recall the words of e.e. cummings:

“This is the sun’s birthday, this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth”

New World, New Lives

The media these days is full of stories of angry disputes between individuals and groups over what each sees as “truth” in the world. Much of it has become centered on making rules/laws about everything from masks to voting restrictions, often from single-minded opinions or self-interest, not mutual caring and cooperation. It seems increasingly hard to believe in the possibility of peace on Earth. Some of us may recall past lives where entire civilizations were destroyed from such conflicts. We had hopeful visions of bringing back a lost world, without the power struggles. But what once was is done. Despite appearances, everything is new this time around.

As compelling as past-life memories are, we did not come back to Earth to recreate Atlantis or return to Eden. Nor to experience an apocalypse. This lifetime is different. Our souls have learned from those ancient experiences, and we carry that wisdom into our lives now. We are here to live into a completely new world, dreamed of for millennia but finally rising into physical form. We thought it might come in 2012, but that was just a breakthrough point. The global crack in unconscious robotic existence that COVID provided was the entry into a more expansive awareness. That open space in which we withdrew into our innermost selves opened the door to living from the heart and not the mind. Hierarchical social and political structures that divide us into warring factions will eventually dissolve. This time we are here to live in peaceful harmony with one another, a balance inherent in diverse circular communities and life-centered relationships.

What we are moving toward is the rebirth of a planet, the emergence of the New Earth. It is not always beautiful or engaging, but among the ruins of constricting lifestyles that emphasized competitive relationships and material possessions is a crystalline dimension of possibility and radiance. It shines brightly here and there and gives each of us hope that the vision we hold deep within us is not an illusion but rather a new beginning we have been evolving into for millennia.

This time we will get it right; we will not self-destruct or annihilate one another and the planet. Our blue Earth is turning golden, slowly but surely. The light of love is rising in the collective consciousness—a sparkling beam that will transform the world from singular self-centered living to connected soul presence. It may sound like a dream or a fairy tale, but more and more of us are seeing these visions of possibility becoming reality. We may not experience the full flowering in our lifetimes, but we are definitely meant to be part of the seeding and awakening.

So when you see news reports of hatred and violence in the world, think of it as the death throes of an old world and a futile attempt to shut out change and transformation instead of embracing it. There is a more compassionate and loving kindness that is gradually gaining momentum and visibility in the collective. Many of the new generations are already living in this dimension, this vibrational field. The old ways have become invisible to them. As consciousness has evolved through millennia, it has increasingly opened our minds and filled our hearts. Each one of us, in every generation, back through the decades to the present day, is playing our part. Imagine a new life and a new world—and live there. Now.

Masks

Photograph © 2021 Peggy Kornegger
This blog article is not about the pros and cons of mask-wearing. Instead, I’d like to suggest a possible deeper meaning for this whole phenomenon. All around the world, people are wearing masks, for mutual protection and individual/collective health. When I pass someone on the street here in Massachusetts in winter, I see eyes and a mask—and lots of clothing. COVID has made us almost unrecognizable, one from the other. Sometimes it seems eerie or surreal—a science fiction scenario. Yet people often wave or gesture in a friendly way as they go by, bridging the social distance between us. In our anonymity, we are still human. And maybe, ultimately, that may be the gift of COVID: to show us in an unforgettable ongoing visual that we are really all the same. The masks hide our differences, and our common humanity is clearly visible in our eyes.

Over the past year, I have had vast stretches of time to ponder the greater significance of this pandemic in our lives. From the beginning, it seemed clear that there was a multi-faceted divine understory to what felt so overwhelmingly catastrophic and tragic. God had given us a timeout, a reset. Yes, we faced severe illness, suffering, and death on a global scale. Still, as the world shut down, and we sheltered in place, distanced from one another physically, the human spirit somehow found ways to reach into the emptiness with hope. People sang from their balconies and windows. They flooded the Internet with photographs of clear unpolluted skies, newly visible mountains, and wildlife returning. In looking into the distance and listening into the stillness, we realized how much we had been missing in our busy, noisy lives. Awareness arose in individual after individual. We could perceive the world and each other with greater clarity.

Simultaneously, the more clearly we saw, the more political conflict arose. People voiced their outrage at years of racist violence and oppression. Many listened while others refused to hear. Versions of opposing “truths” played out everywhere. Some viewed this ongoing turmoil as apocalyptic. To me, it was birth pains, the emergence of new possibilities as the destructive and unworkable fell away. My entire lifetime has pointed me in that direction. Countless prophecies of indigenous peoples and spiritual masters have envisioned this time. We are not destroying the Earth and humanity; we are being offered the gift of awakening, revitalization. What has been called the New Earth is now emerging.

On the New Earth, we embrace difference as part of Oneness, diversity as divine. In each other’s eyes, we see commonality and love, not opposition and hatred. We work together to create communities that circle the globe in peace and sister/brotherhood. No one ahead or above, all moving together as equals with unique gifts to share. This is the vision, and it is beginning to come into being now. So, perhaps those sometimes cumbersome and inconvenient masks are actually a blessing. In a world of multicolored masks, who is the enemy? Masks direct us to the eyes, which are the windows to the soul. And that’s who we are ultimately: souls on a fantastic journey on a wondrous blue planet, here to expand and evolve. When we look into one another’s eyes, we see the Soul, unified and infinite. That’s who we are, with or without masks.

 

Soul Agreements

Photograph © 2020 Peggy Kornegger
We each come into our human lifetimes with an individual soul plan, which we then forget at birth. God, however, remembers, and God’s presence as the soul continuously reminds us of that plan. What may seem like a complete falling apart of everything in your life is really only a divine rerouting to keep you on course for what you agreed to experience, and expand with, before you incarnated. Your soul always remembers. When you begin to live consciously as your soul, you won’t feel so blindsided by life events. At the highest and deepest levels, everything is unfolding as it is meant to.

In addition to individual soul agreements, there are also collective soul agreements—for families and friends, for social groups, for countries, and for all of humanity. We are in the midst of a very powerful one right now on this planet. We humans had lost our reciprocal, caring relationship with the Earth, so much so that a massive cease-and-desist order went out in the cosmos. The coronavirus put the entire world in a timeout. And just in time. Mother Nature, our deepest connection to planetary life has been slowly dying, slipping away more and more dramatically before our unseeing eyes.

Now, as businesses, industry, transportation, and entire countries partially or completely shut down to prevent the further spread of the virus, we are beginning to see changes on the planet. Reports and photos of clear skies and waters are circulating on the Internet. People can see mountains in the distance and fish in the sea. They can hear birds sing in the stillness. They hear the silence within them for the first time in their lives. All of this was part of our collective and individual soul agreements: to awaken in the midst of planetary crisis to the wonders of the world and remember our connection to each other and to God. To remember why we were born.

Still, hundreds of thousands of people around the world are suffering and dying. In the worst cases, individuals need respirators because they have difficulty breathing, an eerie and heartbreaking reflection of what life is like on a polluted planet. But the Earth has now shown us that if we step away from “business as usual,” the air and waters can clear. We need to continue that recovery process so we can live in harmony with, and connection to, the Earth and all the people who live here. This is our collective soul agreement. This is our sacred responsibility: to restore balance everywhere, in our communities, in our homes, and in our hearts, so that as a species we can breathe again.

Each of us was born to be part of this huge planetary shift, the culmination of thousands of years of evolving, in incarnation after incarnation. Our individual soul agreements are bringing us together to contribute to a global transformation and the realization of our essential oneness. How do we each contribute? First and foremost, with love in our hearts. We all have particular gifts that we came into this life to lovingly share. Compassion and kindness will guide us as we move forward into an unknown and continually changing future.

Uncertainty is our friend. When we surrender to the fact that we don’t know all the answers yet and trust in the perfection of the process, then everything will begin to flow. Each step, each choice, individual and collective, will arise from how our souls see the world: as one consciousness living in many uniquely beautiful forms. Division and separation will be replaced by community and collaboration. One Earth arising from one Heart. Two words, same letters—the synchronicity of oneness.

 

Living Peace, Allowing Grief

Photograph © 2020 Peggy Kornegger
Yesterday just before sunrise I was overwhelmed by feelings of sadness, grief, and mourning. Tears streamed down my face. The unfathomable loss of life around the world from the coronavirus hit me like an avalanche. The number of cases is continuing to rise here in Florida and throughout the U.S. My thoughts turned to Boston friends who had died of cancer in the last year and the trip home to Massachusetts in May that Anne and I had to cancel. My own and the world’s sorrow and pain rushed through my body in waves as I wept. Gradually, after a time, it subsided, tear by tear, and I sat quietly in the half-darkness, breathing in the silence. The sky began to lighten. Then, as if in answer to my heart’s call for comfort, a mockingbird began to sing its morning song, a medley of every possible birdcall it had ever heard. My heart lifted, as it always does when I hear a mockingbird.

This is how life works. You fall head first into grief, your heart cracks open, and through that crack, grace enters: a birdsong or a sunrise, the comforting words of a friend or the kindness of a stranger. Grace takes many forms, but it always brings us back to the peace at our core, our soul’s presence. I realized that even as I wept in pain and sadness, I had not lost the feeling of inner peace that has been with me since the beginning of the year, an ongoing connection to something greater. Growing awareness of the peace that lives within us will be our greatest strength in these times of huge planetary change. We are learning to let go of the known and trust in something beyond knowing.

My own years of spiritual exploration and questioning have at last settled into trust in a universal Presence (or God) that holds the Earth in its loving embrace. We—meaning humanity—are going through a tremendous shift and rebalancing on this planet. It is a release of inharmonious old patterns, an opening into greater awareness, and ultimately a coming together in oneness. It may not look like it on the surface, but I feel that is what is happening. All of my adult life I have believed in such a shift, foreseen by elders and masters in many traditions and cultures. That vision has inspired and sustained me through the years. Now it is occurring, more and more powerfully.

This paradigm shift is not pretty, a gift tied up with sparkly wrapping paper and bows. It is messy and painful, as all birth is. Fear and anger come up, as well as mourning the end of a familiar but worn-out way of life. In the midst of all those emotions, something new is being born on this planet, and we are all part of the process, midwives and newborns, angels and human beings. What appears to be chaos, conflict, and a shattered world weighed down by suffering is actually the shedding of an old skin and a restrictive structure that has been killing our spirits instead of uplifting them. In the ruins of the current paradigm based in top/down exclusion, a new one is arising that is centered in circular process and inclusion. Humanity is rediscovering its collective soul through the experiences and expanding consciousness of every single courageous one of us.

A cause for celebration, yes. Still, there is sadness, loss. Life on Earth, even in a new, more open and compassionate world, is never just one thing. A utopian vision must include the full spectrum of human emotion and being. We came to this planet, God incarnated in form through us, to experience it all. When we accept that—the sorrow and the gladness, the breaking and the healing of our hearts—we can then hold within us both grief and deep peace. The grief is human; the peace is divine. If we live life fully connected to our souls, peace and calm never leave us, even as the tears flow. In full acceptance of all that we feel and all of life as it is unfolding, we can experience that peace and live it in the world. It is who we are and why we are here.