Tag: presence

Slo-o-w Down…

Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2011 Peggy Kornegger

So many of us find ourselves rushing down the “fast track” at one time or another these days, focused on our next destination or goal. Whether walking rapidly down the street or moving briskly through the day, we forget to connect with our inner selves, the part of us that is unhurried and centered in the present. When we move forward at a breakneck speed, we miss the moment. Everything becomes a blur, and the sweet details of life are lost to us. This culturally acquired habit can be easily broken, however, through meditation, yoga, or some other practice that cultivates conscious awareness.

I have been a fast walker for most of my adult life, so when I learned walking meditation many years ago, I found it to be the perfect antidote to that old pattern. Now when I’m out on my daily walks through the neighborhood, I usually become aware fairly soon when I begin to move too quickly. I consciously slow down so that I am fully present to the world around me, not lost in my head, with my body on automatic pilot. Peacefully observing my breath in meditation has helped me to peacefully observe my life as I live it. From my soul’s point of view, there is no need to rush. Everything is unfolding just fine without my foot on the accelerator. Any attempts on my part to control things are both irrelevant and self-defeating. Let go and let life, as the saying goes.

Yes, surrender—the recurring theme in my life these days, and certainly one of the greatest paths to wisdom I’ve ever known. I believe all of us are learning to let go at deeper and deeper levels now. Just in the past few months, I’ve felt a new layer of resistance fall away; I’m allowing life to flow through me, to carry me. As I surrender more and more, every moment becomes a new opportunity to release all expectation and just experience open-heartedly everything that life brings me. There is such freedom in that. If we let go of the desire to personally direct our own destiny and that of the world, a weight is lifted off of us. We don’t have to do it all alone.

You and I are being perfectly carried forward by life’s river. If we let go of judgments about events or people, and see them as part of that river, everything becomes alive with motion and possibility. Take a deep breath, relax, and live life as it presents itself, moment to moment. Meet the day with all the doors and windows open, no barriers to what is showing up. If you let your peaceful, timeless soul lead the way and just witness and experience, life will open up into more synchronicity and magic that you could possibly imagine. More and more, this is what I am experiencing as I slow down, breathe deeply, and let life live me. That’s the blessing, that’s the gift each day offers you and me.

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….

Morning Glory

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
“Everything is sacred.”—Panache Desai

The morning glories outside my door have been nearly tropical in their lush profusion this year. Huge heart-shaped leaves and purple flowers cover the porch ironwork in the rising sun. Each morning when I go outside, I feel a sense of awe at this breathtaking beauty coming from a few small seeds planted in the late spring. There are moments when gardeners feel like magicians, making bouquets of flowers appear out of thin air. Of course, the gardener is just the conduit, the helping hand that opens wide enough for living energy to flow through it. Mother Nature is the true magician, the source of glorious life here on Earth. As a gardener, I learn this on a daily basis—the absolutely unparalleled sacredness of everything around me. It is an awareness that keeps arising everywhere in my life, and in so many of our lives, these days. I consider it one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.

This past July I spent a week at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, taking part in a weeklong workshop/retreat with Panache Desai, whose programs and events I’ve been attending for several years.* This particular week seemed to be an expansion of all that I’ve experienced with him and with the other people who attend, many of whom are good friends now. As a group, we reached a deeper level of oneness and soul connection than ever before. The divine energy moving through all of us was so intense that it could not be contained within time or space. Seeing the sacred everywhere, in every moment, became a constant. Each person’s eyes shone with light and love. Conversations during and between sessions were deeply meaningful, rich with laughter, tears, and heart-full sharing. As I walked down the hill to the dining hall each day, I saw before me a dazzling world: The color spectrum itself seemed to widen to include new shades and hues. At the end of the week, I felt wide open; life flowed through me without impediments—soulfully, sacredly.

A few weeks later, my partner and I took the train to New York to see Fun Home, lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s tragicomic 2006 memoir turned into an extremely powerful and moving Broadway musical. In it, “Alison” looks back at her complicated relationship with her closeted gay father who committed suicide. Because it was theatre in the round, it was a fairly intimate setting (we were in the first row), and it almost seemed as if we were living the heart-wrenching events along with the characters. At the end, as everyone stood and cheered, and the actors took their bows, the raw emotion we were all feeling was reflected back and forth on the faces, and in the eyes, of actors and audience alike. I couldn’t stop crying, because of the story and because of the people around me, on and off stage. It was a moment of shared humanity and oneness that seemed truly sacred to me.

More and more, we are being moved to embrace all of life in moments like these. A friend or family member will unexpectedly speak their heart’s truth in a sudden rush of vulnerability and honesty. A complete stranger will share a smile or a gesture of generosity. The sun will rise, or set, in stunning pinks and golds. A cat or dog companion will gaze into our eyes with pure love. Someone dear to us may become ill or die. Life will touch us in a thousand different ways, both joyful and painful, during the course of any given day. And at last we are opening to receive the sweetness and power of those moments. We are becoming fully present for life as it moves through us, giving us the greatest show on Earth. Morning glory, evening gratitude. Everything sacred—everywhere, in every moment.

* I’ve written about my experiences with Panache in several other blog posts and in my book Lose Your Mind, Open Your Heart.

Spirit of the Garden

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

In my flower garden, I encounter all of life on a daily basis. I am also continually given opportunities to practice classic spiritual principles: Be in present-moment awareness. Accept what is. Let go of all attachments to a particular outcome. Each one is perfectly applicable to both gardening and living. Nature doesn’t play by human rules or expectations. Nature just is. Entering the natural world that surrounds us brings us home to a part of ourselves that often gets lost in the clock-centered busyness of daily life.

When I walk through my back door in the early morning stillness, I am met with a presence that I would call sacred. Neighbors still asleep, traffic sounds distant and minimal. I am alone with the beauty of the green and growing Earth, my eyes clear and open to all that is before me: nature in living color and infinite variety. Immediately I am completely engaged and present. Thinking has faded to the background, and I am just being. When I look at each blooming lily or rose, there is no separation. The flowers and I are one in the spirit of life that flows through us. Standing beneath a towering maple tree, I am drawn into the silence that holds both of us in timeless being. I AM. The tree IS. We are both part of a consciousness that links every living thing on Earth and in the cosmos. Each morning becomes a meditation in slow motion that centers me in the now and eases me into my day.

The actual work of gardening—seeding, planting, weeding, pruning—is another practice that both engages me and teaches me acceptance of all that is. The past winter’s cold has killed my butterfly bush as well as several other perennials. My native honeysuckle, covered with bright red blossoms, has aphids that are eating the new buds. Finding replacement plants and removing insects and dead leaves are all part of gardening. Within that process of letting go of the old and welcoming the new, I surrender to the flow of life, with both sadness and celebration. The garden teaches me to hold it all in my heart without judgment or distress. Every day is a new opportunity to embrace each event in my life and in my garden. When I have sudden unexpected expenses or a painful migraine headache, I am reminded that living includes these challenges as well as the joys of laughing with friends, listening to music, or watching a glorious red sunset after a dramatic thunderstorm. To be human is to encounter all parts of the experiential spectrum.

Gardening immerses me in nature, but it also aligns me with divine presence. My soul is with me in the garden. In truth, my soul is with me everywhere. And it is being in presence within my garden that teaches me this. There is nowhere and nothing that is not filled with spirit, that is not God experiencing life on Earth in a multitude of forms and expressions, including human. We are so much more than we think we are, and it is only in not thinking but just being present that we experience that expansive awareness. Heaven is here on Earth, and when we realize that, we see paradise everywhere we go.

 

Soul Vision

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger

There are moments in my life when I become acutely aware that there is a greater Presence behind and within everything. Often it occurs when the beauty of nature opens my heart, and I perceive life with such expansive love that it feels as though God is seeing the wonders of all the world through my eyes. Or, put another way, God seeing God through God’s eyes. In those moments, I feel in the deepest part of my soul that every single thing is divine, inner and outer.

Spirit breathes through us, and when we take a deep breath and know ourselves as that soul force, then we see the miraculous unfold in every second of our lives. We become aware of Spirit—God, the Great Mystery—whenever we let go of thinking and slip into just being. Present-moment awareness, as it is called in meditation practice. When I consciously breathe and drop down into the stillness at my core, the connection between my human self and my soul becomes illuminated and unlimited. At times there is only infinite floating awareness, beyond the boundaries of my physical body. What I was before birth and what I will be after death. In truth, what I am now. What we all are. Our experiences of limitless soul beingness will increase, and we will remember them more and more—until we live in that state of awakened awareness continuously. We are gradually becoming conscious spirit in physical form, what we came here to embody at this key time on planet Earth.

It may sound esoteric and unattainable, but really it isn’t. As growing numbers of us experience moments of deep spiritual connection and consciously integrate them, it will become more accessible and commonplace. It is part of our human and planetary evolution, why everything is unfolding the way it is now—at times chaotic and catastrophic, at times flowing and expansive. Birthing pains include all of these extremes. A new age is being born in our lifetimes, and we are both the midwives and the newly birthed. We are the witnesses and the participants. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” The wait is over; it is happening now.

When I see the world through God’s eyes, my heart fills with so much love and gratitude that tears stream down my face. I feel myself part of something beyond the physical plane, and within that soul vision, life is a streaming flow of birth and death and becoming in which I am one drop of consciousness in the greater eternal consciousness spiraling upward and outward. I am here to be a thread in the tapestry of cosmic creation—to experience and evolve, not to understand or control. The orchestration of the universe is beyond my human comprehension. Yet, there are times when I hear the transcendent notes of the music of the spheres in my soul, and I sense how I am one with everything, seen and unseen, in this extraordinary multiverse we are passing through, on our way home.