Tag: peace

Open Heart, Open Soul

Photograph © 2020 Peggy KorneggerIf your heart opens completely, everything else within you also opens. Your heart becomes an expressway to your soul. And your soul is the designated navigator for this lifetime. Not your mind or your physical body. Before you were born, your soul was downloaded with the customized codes for this particular life journey. God’s cosmic plan is miniaturized within your cells. As soon as you open your heart completely, those soul codes light up and go into super-connectivity mode. Everything starts to flow seamlessly within your conscious awareness, within your physical form, and thus within your life.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that day-to-day life is without challenges or ups and downs. It means that no matter what happens, if the pathway between your heart and soul is wide-open, your consciousness will register peace and acceptance. That’s because you trust, at the deepest level, that everything is unfolding as it’s meant to for your soul’s evolution. The love that emanates from your open heart and soul guide you in all that you say and do. Your life begins to flow, your eyes to shine, and your connections with others and the world around you multiply and feed your soul’s further expansion.

This is life on Earth at its optimal best. It is why we incarnated at this time. Many of us are already having the above experience at certain accelerated moments in our lives. It is amazing, extraordinary. Then it fades, or disappears completely. We feel lost or confused. Yet we know that it happened, and we long to get back there. How? Well, the key is to repeatedly remind yourself to keep your heart open no matter what is happening in your life or in the external world. What does that feel like? It feels like accepting everything that arises and allowing any accompanying emotions to be experienced without getting lost in them. It feels like becoming a transparent window of glass that the world flows through. It feels like equilibrium, balance, peace.

It’s not magic; it’s a practice. A practice made up of an inner commitment to ongoing conscious awareness. A practice based on the core wisdom that whatever you or I are experiencing outside us is a reflection of our individual inner soul journey. And that journey is divinely guided. When we come to that realization, we no longer mistrust the people and events in our lives. We surrender to life, and in the process, our open hearts and souls become bridges of light, both for ourselves and for everyone around us.

Thus is the collective heart and soul of the world opened. We have entered a new decade, and now more than ever before, each fully aware divine/human being on this planet is contributing to the greater evolution of conscious awareness everywhere. It is a time foretold for millennia, and we have the great honor, gift, and responsibility of being among those who have incarnated to be part of it. So keep your heart open in every circumstance, and your soul will guide you perfectly into a world that is filled with openings.

 

A Conscious Reset

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger
There are times in life when you may feel as if you’re running backward down a dark alley that has no outlet. Kind of like a bad dream. When you finally realize you’re backing yourself into a dead end, there’s nothing to do but stop, take a deep breath, and look honestly at where you are. In fact, you are being given a precious opportunity to fully awaken and live with greater awareness. It’s what I call a conscious reset. And it’s what I’m experiencing right now.

This past year, a series of losses and life-direction changes hit me hard with their collective force. I couldn’t understand why, if I was following clear divine guidance, things were not unfolding divinely. They were just plain painful. It was one of those “God, why hast thou forsaken me?” moments. Yet deep inside, my soul knew exactly what was going on. It took me a while to re-align with that wisdom, but I learned a lot in the process. I had to consciously, intentionally, raise my head above the onslaught and see with God’s eyes.

When I was able to look at things more clearly, more “soulfully,” I came to realize an important truth: It’s easy to believe that I am being divinely guided when everything is going well and I am surrounded by synchronicities and miracles. The real challenge is to trust that I am also being guided when nothing makes sense, and everything appears to be falling apart. To have faith that even the seeming setbacks are happening for my evolution as a soul within a complex cosmic plan that includes all souls and all of the universe. I am one thread in the divine tapestry, as are we all, and we each play a key part.

Even in difficult circumstances and events, there is a greater purpose. The razor edge of pain can pierce our armor of assumption and habit and make us more acutely aware of the sweet grace of everyday life. For there are synchronicities and miracles in loss, sadness, and struggle, but we don’t always have the clarity of vision to perceive them. The more we are awakened by life’s events, the more we can see that God is in everything, without exception. Confusion and crisis come to us to encourage trust and surrender, the gateway to peace at the deepest level.

A conscious reset, then, does not mean you have brought disaster upon yourself through failure or negligence. It doesn’t mean blaming yourself or trying to erase the past. A conscious reset involves the way you look at things; it means seeing life positively, not negatively. Some call that the “silver lining” or “rose-colored glasses.” But it’s not a false happiness that ignores difficult emotions. A positive worldview accepts everything as part of the human evolution on this planet. One that trends to love instead of fear or doubt. You can emerge from even the darkest alley into the sunlight.

For me, a conscious reset meant stepping out of complaining and criticizing, either situations or people. One way to support that is a “negativity fast.” My partner and I agreed to do that last month. We made a sign that said “No Criticism. No Judgment. No Complaining. No Irritation,” and we placed it where we would consistently notice it. We gently (or humorously) reminded each other if one of us slipped into a negative outlook. It helped. What also helped was thinking of one thing to be grateful for each morning and holding that in my consciousness throughout the day. And taking walks in which I silently expressed gratitude for everything I saw. It is a heart-opening practice.

You or I may still find ourselves in an experience that triggers sadness, fear, or upset, but if we have consciously committed to feeling those emotions in a larger context of trust, then we can return to a more peaceful state of mind. We let life just flow as it’s meant to without trying to control the outcome. This is the soul’s greatest wisdom, which it is perfectly willing to share if we just pause and listen. What better way to begin a new year?

Unsubscribe and Live Peacefully

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger
“Subscription” once referred mainly to printed magazines and newspapers (“Your subscription is about to expire—please renew”). Now it’s the backbone of online communication. If you ask a question or sign a petition online, you automatically get subscribed to a barrage of ongoing emails. Subscription has become a cyber activity, distanced from anything real or living. We don’t subscribe to, or unsubscribe from, life. It’s just there, always supporting us. We can, however, lose touch with the essential simplicity of life. We can get entrapped in excess minutia—like too many emails.

A few weeks ago, I reached critical overload with the number of non-personal emails flooding my inbox. Political and environmental groups, spiritual programs and teachers, doctors and alternative healthcare practitioners, bookstores and theaters, online businesses. What a waste of time just to delete them multiple times a day! I went through and unsubscribed from virtually everything except a few key ones. At the same time, I decided to cut back on social media, visiting only occasionally. It was a relief. I felt as if I had lifted the heavy weight of contemporary social busyness and distractions off my shoulders. At least one day a week now I don’t even turn on my computer or phone. Wow, what freedom!

In unsubscribing there was also surrender, letting go into the natural flow of daily life, unmanipulated by technology. I was once again the 9-year-old girl who spent summers running through the fields with my dog or sitting up in a tree reading mysteries. Life was rich, full, perfect. It was a simpler time then, both in my life and on the planet. Now we have to filter out unnecessary complexities in order to live a simple life, one dedicated to what’s really important: connection to the spirit within us and all around us.

Spirit has become the focus of my life in recent years. The idea of unsubscribing as surrender somehow fits with that. As my soul’s wisdom moves to the forefront of my consciousness, I make choices that are more in alignment with a loving beingness in the world. Heart more than head. Social media engages the mind for the most part. What we want is to engage the heart, with the mind giving quiet feedback but not dominating. This is the way to balance, to harmony. The heart is directly connected to our soul’s purpose, and when we live a simple heart-centered life, we are living the “why” of our presence on this planet, in this lifetime.

If I remember each day to choose love and appreciation over distraction and dissatisfaction, then I am connected to the natural flow of spirit everywhere in the universe. Even disliking social media or emails can take you to a place of judgment and negativity. The key is to calmly “unsubscribe” from anything that is not positive and uplifting, anything that locks you into busyness instead of beingness. It’s not as hard as it may seem. Allow your computer or cell phone to be an occasional tool for information or connection. Visit now and then, not continuously. Life is not “virtual.” It expresses itself everywhere in extraordinary bursts of color and light. When your awareness expands and your heart opens, life becomes both richer and simpler. Within that is peace—of mind, of body, of soul.

 

Who Would You Be Without Identity?

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger
Can you imagine yourself without a gender, a role, a story, a sense of self that precedes you into the world? No mental concepts that define how you see everything? No language to structure the formless into form and separate you from others? This is how you were born. This is how you entered life on Earth (and how you will leave it), a divine soul without human definitions to shape it. And this is who you still are, deep within. No matter what words were spoken or names were given to you, your soul remains intact. Your soul is always connected to the Source from which it came, regardless of what separation is experienced by your personality or ego in the course of a lifetime.

The question for so many people at this time of awakening on our planet is: How do we get back there? How do we return to the child’s wide-eyed wonder and love of the world? Newborn babies are pure awareness, pure being. No language blocks or distorts that essential life force energy that flows through. As our human minds learn to name and categorize, that energy remains but goes underground. Our souls are disguised by the “personalities” that overlay our essential Self. Gradually we forget our divine connection, and our minds, supported by external social norms, define our daily experience. We don’t realize that our physical bodies are merely costumes that we are wearing for this particular lifetime. Consequently, we lose our sense of oneness with others and with all that is.

It takes ongoing intention and practice (or sometimes an identity-shattering experience) to return to conscious awareness of our soul’s presence. Habit and external distractions can often be impediments in this process, but the strength and power of the spirit within moves us forward even when we feel most lost or disconnected. I believe this because I have experienced it myself. The personality self I learned to navigate the world with carried me through my childhood and young adult life—until one day, at age 18, I met a new friend, a kindred spirit, who opened my eyes to the limitations of that self. I started to seek something greater and embarked on a decades-long journey into awakening and self-awareness. Not unlike many other seekers at this time. Ultimately, we are all meant to take this journey back to soul, back to Self.

As I learned meditation, yoga, and self-exploration, the doors to my inner being gradually opened. I experienced divine connection, or soul presence, through a variety of experiences with many spiritual teachers over many years. All of it led to the present moment, wherein the journey is deepening and in many ways becoming solitary. The final path back to God, to complete awareness and soul embodiment, often has to be walked alone because there really is no intermediary between your soul and its Source. They are actually one and the same, and this is a realization that occurs deep within your consciousness. It cannot be imposed from without.

So, at some point, you and I (and all of us) realize the oneness of all of life. We begin to see clearly how language was just an attempt by the human mind to explain a Mystery that cannot be solved or even translated into words and concepts. Only at the soul level do we “see” the connections and feel the power of Being itself. There are times when, as a writer, I try to express my own soul’s awareness, but I know it is an approximation of something vastly beyond my ability to describe it. It resides at the place beyond language, roles, and all other human designations.

This is the place without identity. It is the place we experience every time we are fully present in our lives. When we take a deep breath and feel the peace at our core, when we open our hearts to unconditional love of self and others. These are the moments when our soul awareness expands, and we know ourselves to be eternal and infinite, a divine presence that came to Earth to experience itself as human, awaken to its own divinity, and then return to the sacred Source from which it arose.

Woodstock and Its Legacy

Photograph © 2018 Peggy Kornegger

Fifty years ago, in August 1969, nearly a half million young people gathered on a farm in rural New York for “three days of peace and music.” Contrary to warnings about how it would all go wrong, peace and music are exactly what occurred. In spite of the huge crowds, rain, mud, and countless challenges, love and community prevailed. The impact of that peaceful spirit was felt across the country and around the world. Woodstock Nation, whether you were there in person or not, defined a generation. Its legacy continues today.

In California, where I had moved from the Midwest, I was living out my own flower-child dreams in the late 1960s. The counterculture’s vision of peace, love, and flower power was everywhere, and the energy of Woodstock and Haight-Asbury linked both coasts. The music events and peace demonstrations I went to in San Francisco had a very similar high vibration. When I look at film of the Woodstock festival now, I feel it all again. So many iconic moments: Joan Baez’s unmistakable voice ringing out over the hillside, “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night…” Sly and the Family Stone singing “Wanna take you higher,” echoed by half a million people. And Richie Havens opening the festival with “Freedom”—a perfect description of the greater message of Woodstock.

In the many years since then, that message has been carried forward in the hearts of those who attended as well as those who read or heard about it. Woodstock showed that one generation’s dream of freedom, peace, love, and community is possible. It was made real at Woodstock. And it has continued to live in the consciousness of subsequent generations in spite of increasing challenges.

War, racism, and violence were predominant issues in the United States in the 1960s, and we continue to face them today. As racial hatred of immigrants, gun violence, and destruction of the environment escalate, the voices calling out for radical change also grow. More and more individuals and groups are speaking out for peace, social justice, diversity, and connection through community. Somewhere in the collective consciousness, we know it can be different. We remember Woodstock, despite many efforts over the years to dismiss it as a childish unrealistic dream that no longer exists.

The Woodstock legacy does exist. Every time someone speaks up for peace and freedom or acts with loving kindness, the dream is revived, and the memory is awakened. If complete strangers can love their neighbors—the people sitting right next to them in very crowded conditions—for several days, then we can love our local and global neighbors in the same way, for even longer periods of time. It takes open hearts and open minds to reach that critical mass. And that is the transformation that is now taking place beneath the turbulence of a world in transition.

If the Age of Aquarius first dawned in the 1960s, then its emergence continues today, and its full flowering is yet to come. At some point, the prophecy of universal peace and love will come to pass. You and I are here to assist in that birth. Woodstock was just the beginning.