Tag: soul

A Perfect Pairing: Patience and Trust

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
In the past, patience has been sort of a situational attribute of mine. Sometimes I’m completely allowing of the gradual unfolding of events, and at other times, I find myself leaning forward, impatient for the next plot twist in my life story—or the planet’s. On a spiritual journey, however, there is no place for impatience or grabbing for the gold at the end of the rainbow. The highest wisdom is that you are holding the gold in your hands right now, and the rainbow is directly in front of your eyes. I re-learn this with regularity the deeper I dive into life’s mysteries. In truth, the story has already been written, and only my soul and God have access to the entire script. So the illusion of control falls away, and I am left to completely surrender to the trajectory of my own life.

That is where trust comes in to bolster patience. If I remember that there is a divine orchestration much greater than my mind’s perceptions, then I can relax into trusting that everything will come to pass exactly when it’s meant to. There is no hurrying the course of life’s events. In fact, the tension caused by grasping and clutching at the future only puts a chokehold on the flow. The energy of trying and wanting keeps you caught in a tailspin that leads nowhere. As soon as you let go, everything opens up, and the river’s current streams naturally forward. What divine intelligence has in mind for my life is infinitely more expansive and imaginative than even my most creative multidimensional visions. When I trust in that completely, both the gold and the rainbow become clearly visible right before me.

We often hear that patience is a virtue, but the deeper meaning of that is lost in our frenetic push-for-the-outcome world. Impatiently pushing only creates the energy of struggle and keeps us frantically racing on a treadmill of trying. Even success brings the worry of maintaining what we have achieved through striving. We believe only our own hard work can achieve anything in life. At the level of the personality self, or ego, control is the only truth. The soul, however, knows that control is an illusion, and we are part of a dynamic universal dance that we as humans can participate in but can’t control.

There is a beauty and freedom in realizing that. Through letting go at the deepest level, we find freedom from the gridlock of grasping at the material world in order to satisfy what is actually a soul yearning. What we long for, really, is to be one with something greater than our individual solitary selves. When I restlessly reach for the future, I only emphasize my aloneness. When I recognize and accept my life’s path as a beautiful mystery to which only God holds the key, I learn patience and trust and become one with everything around me. Loving my life right now, as is, draws more love to me. The blessing that is human-divine connection is then revealed within my own heart and within the hearts of everyone I meet.

A Love Story

Photograph © 2017 Peggy Kornegger
Mt. Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been my spiritual and nature sanctuary for more than twenty years. Filled with towering trees, flowering bushes, and wildflowers, as well as ponds, hills, and dells, it is the closest I come to being in the country while living not far from Boston’s urban landscape. I walk there in silent meditation at all times of the year, and every spring I spend countless hours observing the annual migration of songbirds from Central and South America. Hundreds of birds come through Mt. Auburn, and some nest there, because of its abundance of trees and other natural features.

The history of the cemetery itself as well as those buried there, known and unknown, is quite interesting too, but I usually pay only fleeting attention to the angel sculptures and carved gravestones, as my eyes are focused upward, looking through my binoculars at orioles, tanagers, and warblers. I always take note of Longfellow’s and Margaret Fuller’s graves as I pass, but other than that, the birds and nature are my primary reasons for being there. All that changed one Saturday last month, however, when, as I rounded a turn on a familiar hillside path, I suddenly noticed a gravestone I had not noticed previously.

My eyes were first drawn to a quote by the Dalai Lama etched in the stone: “Be kind whenever possible. (It is always possible.).” Wondering who had chosen it (one of my own favorites), I glanced at the names above it. Immediately, I saw that they were both women and were both born in 1949. One was still alive, and the other had died in 2013. Just below these dates was the single line: “Married on June 15, 2004.” The story this simple gravestone told may have been invisible to some, but to me, another lesbian, it was crystal clear. These two women had married immediately after same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts in May of 2004, and one had died nine years later. As the emotional impact of that hit me, I glanced down further at the bottom of the stone, where I read the following sentence: “Together we could do anything.”

This completely undid me, and I began to sob openly. Fortunately, no one was nearby. I just stood there and let my heart completely break open with love and sorrow for these women who had shared their lives, at long-last legally recognized, and then been separated by death. I could not help but feel close to them because my partner Anne and I had also married when same-sex marriage became legal (after 31 years together). Our ceremony was held on June 22, 2014 (three years ago today) at Mt. Auburn Cemetery’s Auburn Lake, not far from where I was standing at that moment. The parallels sent chills up and down my spine.

Part of Anne’s and my decision to marry was that we didn’t want to regret not having had a special ceremony to share our love with friends and family, even though our relationship was not a new one. I could only imagine how these two women felt—about how important their marriage and those nine years were to them. A delicate etching at the top of the stone shows a path leading to distant mountains and a table in the foreground with an open book on it, cat below. I imagined them hiking, reading, and loving their cat together, just as Anne and I have done. I also pictured the surviving partner choosing the images as a way of cherishing those memories.

Our lives are so intertwined, we human souls. We think we are living distinctly individual destinies, but at moments like this, we see the larger picture, filled with synchronistic commonality. Really, there is only one destiny, and that is love. When we meet—beautiful gender-free spirits in human form—and allow love to fill us, yes, we can do anything, together. We can touch hearts beyond our own lifetimes with the sheer power of the love we embody and share.

• Dedicated to Julie Felty and Susan Donaldson

Are You a Dreamer?

Photograph © 2012 Peggy Kornegger

Martin Luther King Jr. had one. So did Susan B. Anthony. And Harvey Milk. Malala Yousafzai has one now. All those who speak out for human rights and freedom have dreams, no matter what country or century they live in. Artists too are dreamers. As are musicians, poets, and storytellers. Monet and Maya Lin. Jason Mraz and Indie.Arie. Toni Cade Bambara and Mary Oliver. Dreamers are visionaries, conduits, soul-speakers. There is a dream within them that has to be verbalized, vocalized, lived out. It can be a yearning or a lament. A celebration or a revelation. Whatever form it takes, it is an expression of the heart and soul that transcends the individual human form it comes through and becomes universal.

In truth, we are all dreamers at the soul level. It is what makes us human—and divine. Each of us carries a dream inside us. When we speak our inner truth and wisdom in the world, we are sharing with others what is unique to us. A special spark of creative awareness that can move mountains and create miracles. Not everyone is Michelangelo, but everyone is their own version of Michelangelo. You don’t have to be famous to live your dream. In fact, fame can be a distraction. All that really matters is that you allow your soul’s voice to sing in whatever form it takes.

How do you make that happen? Well, you can’t really “make” it happen; the key is to allow it to happen. Let life flow through you. In other words, live your life so openly and fully that your soul just naturally expresses itself in all that you say and do. Be a risk-taker; step over the edge of predictability into the unknown. When you do this, you activate the dreamer within who can see possibility beyond circumstance, beauty beyond pain, transformation on the other side of “reality.” The dream that comes from your soul, when expressed fully in the world, becomes humanity’s dream as well. Truly.

The energy of your life affects all other lives on the planet, whether anyone knows your name or not. We are all so connected that every thread in the tapestry of life is interwoven with every other. As in the classic “butterfly effect”: the butterfly that moves its wings on one side of the world changes the direction of the wind on the other. We are all butterflies on this planet, dancing in the wind of our individual and collective destinies. When we allow ourselves to become the dance and the wind, we transform and are transformed simultaneously. That is the magic of becoming one with something greater than your own life. You align with a choice you made before you were born, and suddenly there is nothing that can stop the dream within you from expressing itself.

We are living at a time of accelerated planetary evolution and transformation. Polarities and divisions are dissolving within us and around us as we see with complete clarity the possibilities for harmony, balance, and self-expression in this world. That dream is awakening inside each of us. It is a human dream, a soul dream, however it is expressed and lived out. May we all open to and celebrate the dreams unfolding in our hearts.

 

Time Passing, Time Standing Still

Photograph © 2016 Peggy Kornegger

At times, it seems that our lives are moving so fast that we can’t catch our breath. At other times, it can seem that we are stuck, that time is standing still. Yet, past, present, future; birth, life, death; and time itself are all mental concepts, distinctions that we humans invent and superimpose on the world as we try to make sense of it. Beyond the mind’s created parameters is eternity. Occasionally, we touch it with fleeting awareness: In moments of great love or great loss, the mental boundaries fall away, and there is just presence without beginning or end. The deeper we live into life, the more we open to this perception.

Over the course of a lifetime, if we are lucky, there can be a gradual disengagement from the arbitrary cognitive constructs that seem to hold life together but actually keep us from seeing the infinite universe we are part of. William Blake writes of holding “Infinity in the palm of your hand, and Eternity in an hour.” Poets and mystics help us step over the threshold of the world we perceive as real into a limitless open space of sheer beingness where time passing and time standing still become one.

One night last month, for no particular reason, I thought of my parents and the ages at which they had died: 81 and 94. It gave me pause. I don’t often think of my own age, and I usually perceive the future as open-ended. But, of course, we have no idea how long we have on this Earth. I could live to 100+. Or I could die tomorrow. Thinking of my parents’ deaths made mortality more “real” somehow. I asked myself: In the time left to me, how do I want to live?  A question I have usually answered in the living itself—embracing the full adventure, aware of each precious unrepeatable moment. The answer evolves as I evolve.

Last year, in the midst of a health crisis, I answered that question with a prayer in which I surrendered my separate human identity to something greater: to divine connection, in service to God/dess. That moment of surrender shifted everything for me and continues to, on a daily basis. When I thought of my parents last month, I surrendered again—to the unknown trajectory of my own life and death as a physical form here on Earth. The human ego, or personality self, struggles to survive at all costs, but our souls are eternal. When the personality surrenders to the soul’s greater wisdom, an inner alignment of human and divine takes place. We start to experience life as beautifully orchestrated, beyond time. We step into a flow of living energy that is limitless and multidimensional.

Only the soul sees this greater universal picture. In recent years, I’ve found that there are some experiences that cannot be described, that elude language entirely. They are encounters of the heart and soul that are primordial and timeless. Only in silence are they fully received. When we are present at a birth or a death, when we hold another close to our heart with love, when we experience God’s presence—these are times of wordless immersion in the mystery of life. Time ceases to exist. These are the truest moments of all, when we know that everything is unfolding exactly as it’s meant to. My life, your life, all of life, is of a piece, a miracle that defies description.

The Woman Who Feared Infinity

© 2015 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2015 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
If you’ve seen the film The Man Who Knew Infinity, based on the life of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, you will recognize the reference above. Ramanujan was a highly advanced mathematical genius with relatively little educational background in the field. He was primarily self-taught. His theorems and ideas were brilliant, ground-breaking, and 100 years later are still being studied. According to a number of sources, his work was inextricably connected to his deep devotion to his spiritual practice. In the film, his character explains: “An equation has no meaning to me unless it expresses the thought of God.” Other great scientists and mathematicians have recognized that same connection; Galileo, for instance: “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.” Ramanujan lived and expressed this truth. His unconventional mathematical thinking, often revealing the effects without the cause, or proof, came from a place within him that was connected to the infinite, to God. Because of this, he became a clear vessel for God’s light of universal truth to shine through him.

I watched The Man Who Knew Infinity twice, weeping each time, moved by something beyond the poignancy of Ramanujan’s life story. I identified with his connection to God and the infinite that defined his life. Infinity has defined my life too, but almost in reverse. All my life I have feared infinity, run from it in terror—until finally I found that I was running from something that would change my life forever. Through my work with Panache Desai, I stopped running and faced infinity. In the process, I discovered that infinity was divine, was God—something Ramanujan knew all his life in the deepest part of his soul. He was an embodiment of that spiritual truth. He lived it. He began his life at the place that I am just now experiencing.

For whatever reason, I was given the life path of moving through intense fear in order to discover profound divine connection. I am the woman who feared infinity. Yet I am becoming the woman who now recognizes infinity as the deepest, most powerful immersion in universal consciousness. Fear is really the reverse of knowing at the soul level. It is the last barrier to embracing the Great Mystery and merging with God. As I let go of fear more and more, I come to understand what cannot be expressed in words but only felt intensely in the heart. To be human is to fall through the black hole of fear, confusion, and aloneness into the light of a love that is completely unconditional and unlimited. This is God.

Perhaps that is the journey we are all on in our own unique ways. Some individuals, like Ramanujan or Panache Desai, have a clarity of vision that lights the way for those around them, who then in turn share that light with others. The light of knowing, which we all carry deep within us, is the soul’s shining wisdom. When released from the fears that surround it, this knowing lifts us to a place of harmony, peace, and continuous spiritual connection. Some would call this living with the Bigger Picture always in view. We are able to see clearly what the purpose of life on Earth really is: to become clear vessels for God’s light to shine through and illuminate the world around us.