Tag: oneness

Peace of Mind

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

Everyone aspires to “peace of mind,” but is it possible to access it when the mind often seems at war with itself? We in the Western world have long been a left-brain-dominated culture. We inherited a worldview in which rationalism and scientific thought predominated and have grown up and lived lives in which logical thinking and behavior was valued above all else. Left-brain orientation is often seen as directly opposed to intuition and emotions, associated with the right brain (and with women). Feminists in the 1970s and 1980s pointed out that feminine attributes have been undervalued and often denigrated within the prevailing patriarchal systems. This split between masculine and feminine and left and right brain caused an imbalance and disharmony that divided individuals against themselves and undermined day-to-day human interactions.

Gradually, over time, people have opened to the idea of a healthier whole-brain orientation and functioning. In 2008, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor published her groundbreaking book My Stroke of Insight, which chronicled her experience of how her left and right brain functioned after she had a stroke. Initially her left brain (language, organization, linear time) was almost completely nonfunctional. On the other hand, her right brain (nonverbal, intuitive, timelessness) was providing her with brand new life-altering perceptions. A deep inner peace filled her, and a profound connection to something greater opened her heart. It took her eight years to completely recover the functioning of both halves of her brain. Part of her motivation was to be able to tell others how crucial the right brain is to our well-being. Each part of our brain has important functions, and when they work in tandem, we are more whole as human beings. We now need to consciously welcome our right brain’s input to bring about balance.

My own spiritual journey over the past 25 years has brought me to some of the same insights as Jill Bolte Taylor. Like so many others at this time, I am opening to an experience of consciousness that includes everything and everyone in its infinite expanse. In deep meditation, I have at times felt no separation between my physical body and the outer world. Boundaries fall away, and I am just open-ended awareness. Recently, in fact, I had this experience while walking in my neighborhood at dusk. My body was part of infinite consciousness, as were the crickets and locusts I heard in the trees. And I heard them not from inside my head but from within that conscious awareness which was simultaneously everywhere. The crickets and I were points of life within that vast awareness, the God essence that is experiencing the world through me and the crickets and everything else. A deep sense of peace and oneness arose from this awareness.

That is the peace and oneness we are beginning to access now, individual by individual and group by group, until ultimately it will fill the planet with a new way of being. Harmony, balance, wholeness, loving-kindness—these will no longer be utopian ideas but instead real ways of living our lives. When we allow our hearts (and right brain) to guide us, that high vibration entrains the left brain like a tuning fork so that both parts work harmoniously together, and we human beings do the same. It is an incredible cosmic shift we are living through, and we incarnated to do all of this, for ourselves, for one another, and for those who come after. Peace of mind and harmony of heart—that is the promise and fulfillment we are individually and collectively stepping into now.

Human Angels

© 2008 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2008 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
Most of us have had someone—a good friend or a complete stranger—step into our lives at a key moment and help us when we were facing some challenging experience or event. One of those individuals in my life was a Catholic sister at the hospital where my mother lay dying after a heart attack 20 years ago. She visited my mother’s room on the third day of my vigil sitting at her bedside. After kindly and gently talking with me as I cried, she asked if I would like to say a prayer with her. I told her that I was not really religious, but I did believe in the Great Spirit. Without missing a beat, she extemporized a prayer to the Great Spirit that was heartfelt and greatly comforting to me, an only child about to lose her mother. She gave me a hug when she left, and I felt as though I had been visited by a human angel. And indeed I had been.

Human angels are everywhere on Earth, appearing exactly when we need them most—to offer empathy, kindness, compassion, even humor. Whatever will lift the energy to a lighter level is what they are here to give. I’ve often felt that some beings only take physical form briefly to do spot assistance and then fade back into the invisible dimensions. But I also believe there are souls who incarnate specifically to lead lives of loving-kindness and caring for others. Some are nurses, medics, aides, or hospice workers. Others are teachers, therapists, or spiritual counselors. And many are mothers, fathers, sisters, or brothers, who care for family members for years with unselfish dedication and love.

Ultimately, we’re all human angels. We are spirit in physical form, here on this planet to awaken to the deep truth that our separate identities are only the costumes we wear while we’re here. Underneath, we are the same, part of a oneness that spans every dimension, including Earth as well as whatever we might envision as Heaven. At this key transitional and transformative time, light beings across the universe have incarnated to help shift planetary energy to a higher vibration. Sometimes by saving a life, sometimes by wiping away a tear, sometimes just by listening. That’s why each of us is here: to be completely, lovingly present to everyone who crosses our path—friend, family, or total stranger.

My mother was that kind of human angel—a compassionate listener. People would come up to her anyplace—on a bus, sitting in the mall—and begin to share their life stories with her. My father and I used to joke that we could leave her for five minutes, come back, and a stranger would be glued to her side, confiding the details of their life. My mother had open-hearted, loving energy; she smiled at people, appreciated them, and they were drawn to her. Her brother, my uncle, was exactly the same. My father, on the other hand, shifted energy with laughter, the unexpected, dry comment that would magically lift your depression or sadness. Now that I have lived so many years beyond their lifetimes, I see more clearly who they came here to be. They were precursors, forerunners, of who we are all here to be now. I was blessed to have had such beautiful role models in my family.

If we look closely, there is almost always someone like that in our lives. It may not be a parent or other family member. It could be a friend or coworker who quietly listens or makes you laugh. Someone who comforts you when your heart is broken. It could even be an animal companion—in fact, animal angels are some of the best master teachers here on the planet. Dogs, cats, horses, dolphins—animals teach humans daily, by example, how to be loyal, loving, patient, playful, forgiving, and totally present in each moment. Perhaps they have been sent specifically to give us one-on-one tutoring in how to live our angelic soul selves here on Earth. However you want to see it, all the people and animals in your life are there for a reason. They reflect your soul back to you and show you your own shining angelic beauty. Look, listen. There’s an angel sitting next to you right now….

The Cutting Edge of Courage

March from Selma to Montgomery, 1965 (Library of Congress)
March from Selma to Montgomery, 1965
(Library of Congress)
In the past few weeks, I have seen two incredibly moving and inspiring films: Selma, about the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965, and The Normal Heart, about the beginning of the AIDS health crisis in the 1980s. Perhaps because I lived through both of these time periods, the subject matter hit me hard as I remembered the events recreated in the films. Selma chronicles three key civil rights marches in Alabama (two stopped, the third completed with federal protection) that challenged the pervasive racism and violence preventing African Americans from voting in the state. The main characters are based on real people, including Martin Luther King Jr. The Normal Heart is the film version of Larry Kramer’s play of that name, which addressed the public silence and denial that accompanied the rise of AIDS and the radical activism that brought the epidemic to the nation’s attention.

As I watched each film, I was struck over and over again by the extraordinary courage displayed by those who lived through these events. Not just mental strength and physical fortitude but raw unglamorous day-to-day courage that frequently meant facing not only hatred and violence but also the deaths of loved ones and one’s own death. Out of that matrix of fear, hope, anger, and pain, people rose up to speak out for the very basic right of each human being to be treated with compassion and respect. In both films, there is a scene in which one individual cries out with anguish and rage: “People are dying!!” These are the voices that have changed history.

Martin Luther King Jr. marched in Selma, Montgomery, Washington DC, and countless other cities. His speeches echo down through the decades, clarion calls to remember that the dream of equality, freedom, and justice has yet to be fully realized. Selma couldn’t have come at a better time, reminding Americans of the history of racism that precedes tragedies like those in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere. Larry Kramer co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the activist group ACT UP to fight for acknowledgment of the AIDS crisis and for treatment, care, and research for a cure. The Normal Heart, written and performed first in 1985, was his heart-wrenching call to awareness and action. Watching it today, I found that the issues have lost none of their power or poignancy. The “causes” in these two films were not popular at the time; many didn’t want to hear what King and Kramer had to say. They were criticized and hated; yet they continued. They walked into the resistance, into the face of death, and they inspired thousands of others to do the same.

When people have the courage to speak the “inconvenient truth,” to be both bold and uncompromising, they become part of the cutting edge of human evolution. When they step forward and take action for basic human rights, they help to move us all forward into greater compassion and caring. We need the activists and the whistle-blowers to shake us up and remind us that the human story is not finished and we are here to do the work of freedom, equality, kindness, and love, not indifference and silent acquiescence in a deadly status quo. Thank God for Martin Luther King Jr. and Larry Kramer. For Mahatma Gandhi and Rosa Parks. Pete Seeger and Robin Morgan. Alice Walker and Dennis Banks. Karen Silkwood and Harvey Milk. Malala Yousafzai and Julia Butterfly Hill. For Occupy Wall Street and Millions Against Monsanto.

I am thankful for the known and unknown individuals across time and around the globe who have spoken and acted with integrity and bravery in their lives and in so doing reminded us of our human hearts, our common humanity. May together we each find the cutting edge of our own courage and live truth and love into this world. The planet needs all of our passion and commitment to turn the evolutionary wheel in the direction of universal freedom, equality, and loving-kindness. We are one people, and humanity’s voice speaks through each one of us.

Freedom, Justice, and Radical Love

IMG_1390
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

The grand jury decision not to indict the police officer who shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, weighs heavily on the national conscience. Regardless of the specifics of this case, it’s a story that has repeated itself, with variations, countless times in this nation’s history. Even though today we finally have an African American president, the daily lives of people of color continue to be defined by racism, violence, and injustice. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of an equal, just society has not been realized.

Yes, we have evolved in many ways, but the tipping point that would shift momentum toward completely ending separation and “otherness” has yet to be reached. It gets down to the fact that people carry silent preconceptions about other people based on race, sex, age, etc. all the time, even if they don’t believe they do. Racism and all the other “isms” have permeated our collective unconscious mindset and inform how people see and act in the world. What needs to occur is a radical awakening and heart opening into conscious awareness that at the level of our souls, there is no difference between any of us. We are one. Our hearts and souls need to supersede the collective mindset.

How does this happen? Can it happen? I believe if ever there was a time in which it could occur, it is now, when global change and transformation are rocking our planet. It’s up to us to remember the dream of freedom and justice for all and live it. To speak out, act up, and occupy our lives with radical love for all people everywhere. The truth is that there is no “other.” We are one consciousness living the illusion that we are separate. Our minds tell us we are individuals, alone, pitted against everyone else for survival. Our hearts and souls see only oneness, only Being that takes a multiplicity of physical forms.

The “costumes” we wear in our lifetimes are temporary. Beneath our transient skin color, gender, and physicality is an unbroken stream of consciousness that fills all living creatures equally. Whether you call it Spirit, Source, God, or infinite Intelligence, something beyond physical form ties us all together on this Earth. It is this living spirit within that moves us to commit “random acts of kindness” and to march in the streets for human rights, as 1,400 peaceful protesters did in Boston (and many other cities) last night. When our hearts are fully open, it becomes impossible to see another human being as separate from us. The world becomes a mirror, and we see our soul’s reflection in everyone we encounter.

This Thanksgiving, let’s be grateful for the miraculous gift of sharing this world with so many other extraordinarily diverse, yet infinitely similar human reflections. Let’s end all Fergusons by making “love your neighbor as yourself” a reality in our lives. Love everyone, even those you think you disagree with. Sound impossible? Think you can’t do anything to change the status quo? Don’t think, just love, radically, one person at a time. True lasting freedom and justice arises from the love that connects every human heart.

 

Fractals of Life

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
I became fascinated with fractals many years ago when I came across two wonderful photography books on nature: Patterns in the Wild and By Nature’s Design. Fractals, or fragments, display characteristics similar to a larger whole. In nature, fractals form repeating patterns that can be seen everywhere. One example is an oak tree, in which the branching pattern of a leaf is the same as the branch to which it is attached, which is the same as the tree itself. A leafless tree silhouetted against a winter skyline shows countless large and small fractals in its branching. The branching of blood vessels in the human body also looks very much like a tree’s branches, as does lightning in the night sky. The spiraling pattern in the center of a sunflower resembles a spiral-shaped shell on the beach, as well as a spiral galaxy in the heavens. Infinitely complex examples of fractals are visible throughout the natural world. These repeating patterns together make up the greater whole of the universe we are part of.

Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2014 Peggy Kornegger

My own backyard and flower garden are full of nature’s fractals. Perhaps that’s one reason why I love being in nature. I am continually in awe of the colorful patterns I see there, whether bird feather, butterfly wing, flower, or leaf. When I sit and gaze at the beauty with patterning in mind, I begin to see the connectedness of everything on Earth. The tiger swallowtail butterflies that visit my butterfly bush in summer call to mind their namesake, the tiger. An allium flower is made up of tiny flowerettes, forming a larger ball that looks like a small lavender planet. Sunflowers, of course, resemble the sun itself, with rays of golden light shining out. Many other flowers are named for what they remind us of. Cleome, or spider flowers, have long thin stamens that resemble the legs of a spider. Cardinal flowers look like smaller versions of the brilliant red feathers of the male cardinal. And pastel-pink bleeding hearts, which hang by the dozen from the branches of the plant, are indeed just like tiny hearts.

When I work outside in the garden, I am reminded again and again of the extraordinary complexity of the living world. Every plant, flower, insect, bird, stone, and piece of dirt is an integral part of something much greater, of which I too am a part. I look at the sunlight filtering down through the trees, the clouds floating by overhead, the hummingbird darting between the honeysuckle and bee balm flowers, and I feel the oneness that connects every small fragment of life everywhere: I am the leaf and I am the tree. I am the wave and I am the ocean. I am the spiral shell and I am the galaxy. We are all fractals in an infinite, perfectly designed and geometrically sacred multiverse. We are all fractals of God.