Tag: soul

Surrender the Outcome

Photography © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photography © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
In the last month or so, I’ve been coming face to face with issues related to my physical body–specifically an eye diagnosis and more frequent migraine headaches. Since I am simultaneously participating in a yearlong accelerated program with Panache Desai, I’ve learned to look closely at everything I experience as part of that acceleration: What part of my soul’s journey is now being highlighted? I sometimes ask “Why?” too, but that question can be a distraction if it arises from fear or a sense of unfairness. What’s happening is happening; if I can accept and embrace it, the experience becomes fully integrated into my life.

So what about uncertain health diagnoses or physical pain? That is what is before me now. As humans, we resist this experience. I certainly have. So perhaps that is why it’s accelerating. Until I can fully accept all aspects of my physicality as part of my life experience, I will continue to suffer on some level. My human mind wants perfect health with no pain, so every time I am faced with something short of that mental construct, I resist what I am experiencing. The outcome that I hold tightly to is preventing me from flowing with my actual experience. The more I resist, the stronger the pain or unease.

It’s about surrender again, at a deeper level. I am being guided to release attachment to any outcome whatsoever. Perhaps even to reality itself. I’ve watched my eye diagnosis shape-shift over the past month or so, depending on which doctors I saw and which test they were looking at. Perhaps this particular health scenario is an encapsulated version of all of life. What we view as reality is always changing. Ultimately, everything is a continuously shifting illusion that we create in our minds (individually and collectively) to experience life as it passes before us. More simply: life happens; we then assign meaning to it, spinning the illusion of reality out of thin air. If we assign negative meaning, we are unhappy. If we assign positive meaning, we are pleased. But if we just observe life from a place of spacious awareness, allowing it to be a divinely orchestrated mystery, then we experience inner liberation.

There is a profound freedom in no longer being tied to specific outcomes or ways of seeing the world. In doing so, we are entering the realm of the soul, the god consciousness that lives within. Our souls have no opinions or agenda. They are just witnessing life peacefully, here solely for the experience of it and their own evolution. When I open to my soul’s full emergence, my mind steps into the background and releases the reins of control. I am no longer mentally committed to any particular version of reality; I’m just “along for the ride.” I begin to flow with life.

Not the easiest path to access, especially when facing health issues, as I am. The external world continually pulls me in the opposite direction. Still, when I take time to connect to my own inner peace, I am less tightly tied to outcome. I feel lighter, freer, more open to all possibilities. Many of us are facing crossroads like this in life. I believe that is one reason we are here on this planet at this particular time: to finally let go of the mind’s centuries-long control and allow the soul to be the divining rod of our earthly lives. To release the illusion of certainty and embrace an ever-evolving mystery. May we all find our way home to that very wise, soulful part of ourselves.

 

We Are Infinity

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
“You are here to demonstrate what infinity looks like.”—Panache Desai

I have carried a fear of infinity within me my entire life. Fear isn’t even the most accurate description. It was mind-freezing terror that kept me awake at night as a five-year-old child, imagining a universe that went on “forever and ever.” Religion can sometimes provide comfort to those fearing death, but I was not raised within that structure, and actually, death was not exactly the issue. As I grew up, the “answers” of traditional religion (eternal life) and atheism (eternal nonbeing) were equally frightening to me because they were both eternal. Yes, of course, death was scary, but it was what came after death that was terrifying to me. Eternity. Infinity.

I learned to distract myself from the fear as I grew older, but it never really disappeared. It just lurked in the background, making an appearance at unpredictable times, like when I took an astronomy class in college (which gave me actual visuals of infinity!). Sometime prehistory could set it off too. No one I knew quite understood what I was talking about, so I felt very alone with this extreme awareness of eternity and the accompanying extreme fear. I carried it inside me like an unwelcome guest. Many years later, when I was in my 40s and embarking on a spiritual path, I would ask various teachers about it but never received guidance that was particularly helpful. They too looked at me with lack of understanding. That is, until I met Panache Desai.

Panache, who has been my teacher and friend for several years now, has the uncanny ability to feel what others are feeling, from the inside. He never questioned my fear or its hold on me. In my first individual session with him, he just took me to infinity—a place of utter peace and divine tranquility. Thus began a timeless journey to embrace something I had held at bay all my life. It has been a gradual process: a letting go or surrender to a power much greater than the mental fear in which I had been trapped.

My first epiphany, after turning around to face what I had run from for so long, was that it was my mind that was terrified. My soul has no fear of infinity, because it is infinity. What a realization that was! Actually, it was Panache’s teachings about infinity and divinity as one and the same that helped me realize this. Through my work with him as well as my own experiences, I came to see the Infinite and the Divine in all things everywhere, in the world as well as within myself—my core essence or soul. My conscious awareness that “everything is God” has deepened and expanded, especially this past year when I took part in a yearlong acceleration program with him. That program culminated in a transformative weekend event, Global Gathering 2015 (see my last blog article, “Soul Reunion”).

At GG15, any remaining distinction between infinity and divinity that my brain held onto was washed away in a wave of divine energy that carried the codes for awakening and embodiment of spirit within it. As the energy coursed through my physical body (transmitted vibrationally via Panache in sessions), every separation fell away, every fear fell away. All that existed was beingness, oneness. I was simultaneously empty and filled. The transmission was so powerful that there was a paradigm shift within me: my soul took the lead, and my mind stepped into a support role. What I had been moving toward for years came into full presence in a nanosecond. Afterward, I could barely speak coherently, let alone write, but gradually I was able to articulate the essence of what I had experienced: I am infinite. I am divine. Infinity is divinity. On this rapidly evolving planet of ours, we are now beginning to fully and fearlessly live the truth of that. We are human beings with infinite souls. We are infinity.

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.

Good Vibrations

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
No, not the song—we’ve moved beyond the Beach Boys now. It’s not about “good vibes” in the 1960s sense. Vibration today has taken on a much more expansive meaning. As the collective consciousness evolves, more and more individuals are recognizing vibration, or energy, as the basis of everything in the universe, including people. This “truth” comes from modern science as well as ancient spiritual traditions. We humans are high-vibration light beings at the level of spirit, slowed down to inhabit denser physical forms. As our spiritual awareness expands, we become more luminous and free. We are stepping away from density and into being conscious spirit in physical bodies. As we do so, we begin to experience our own soul’s vibration, as well as those of others.

I first became aware of my own vibration at a global gathering with Panache Desai in 2011. He was guiding us in a deep meditation, and after a time, my sense of my physical body faded, and what I experienced was an almost electric pulsing at my center, near my solar plexus—a vibration so strong that it radiated out through my entire being. And the feeling accompanying it was a profound peace that I didn’t want to come back from. I lay there for a long time, just floating in that space. My only conscious thought was that I was experiencing my soul, a vibrating essence that had preceded my physical body and would continue after its death. An extremely powerful experience, unlike any I had ever had. It changed everything for me in ways I can’t even describe. Put simply, my experience allowed me to see that the physical world was only the surface manifestation of a much deeper and limitless “reality”—one made up of vibration.

As I continued to take part in programs and sessions with Panache, I had further experiences of my own inner vibration, as well as a growing recognition of that core essence in others. My sense is that when two people connect at the soul level, they begin to vibrate in tandem with one another, feeling one another’s essence at the level of pure vibrating energy. Panache holds this space for everyone he comes in contact with. He is like a tuning fork, accelerating people into a higher vibrational resonance through the powerful energetic frequency he embodies: unconditional love. I believe this is where we are all headed. That is why we are here on Earth at this key transitional time: to vibrate our soul’s loving light in the world.

We are each becoming embodiments of love energy, and that love vibrates out from us to all those whose paths cross ours. Our open hearts open the hearts of others, without a word being spoken. This is what the Great Shift in Consciousness is all about. Consciousness—which is everywhere, which is shared—opens into its greater unlimited being when it is touched by love. Narrow perceptions fall away, and we are One, beyond thought and individuation. In the presence of pure love, people become that love and begin to shine it from their own hearts.

Each day now, I feel the light within me more, and I see it shining out from others. Love, the highest vibration there is, is transforming the planet from hard rock to golden light. We are each becoming luminous energy fields, vibrating light and love, and awakening others to the beauty of their own inner vibration. One by one, many by many, everything and everyone will shift. Our little blue planet will become a golden shining vibrating star. This is the true meaning of “good vibrations.”

The Silent Nature of All Things

Haleakala photograph © Peggy Kornegger
Haleakala photograph © Peggy Kornegger

I spend countless hours outdoors in my yard every day in the spring- and summertime. It is a deep inner calling that brings me peace of mind, heart connection, and balance between being and doing. Nature in its silent presence teaches me stillness and reminds me of that same place inside myself. When I stand quietly within the natural world at my doorstep, I am a part of all that I see, and I feel the stillness at the heart of everything, whether stone, tree, bird, bee, butterfly, human, cloud, rain, wind, star, or planet.

Indeed, the universe itself is complete stillness at its core. I experienced this primordial silence in a very powerful and unforgettable way once when I was hiking into the dormant volcano Haleakala on Maui. If you walk a ways down the trail that winds gradually to the bottom of the crater and then pause to listen, you hear absolutely nothing. No sound at all—no wind, no birds, no human activity. Nothing. I felt as if I were present at the birth of the planet, before anything existed except sandy red lava fragments, ocean, and sky. I’ve never forgotten that profound sense of eternity in the silence, and now I recognize it within all things, everywhere—if I pause long enough to feel it within myself, in my own breath.

That inner stillness is the spirit of life, our soul’s home. It is what calms and soothes us on our human journey. In silence, the soul witnesses our actions, thoughts, experiences, and emotions; our challenges and celebrations; our pain and joy. When we become lost in stress or suffering, often some mysterious force leads us to turn inward, to seek the silent solace of the soul. The human soul or the soul of nature, one and the same. We live at a time in which an increasing number of us are hearing the call to connect with our innermost being, a part of All That Is. A shift in consciousness is occurring, an awareness that opens us to choosing harmony and balance in our lives. I find it a hopeful sign that people are evolving to the tipping point of remembering the being part of human being.

I sense that thread of hope and remembering within my own life. When I balance activity or action with timeless time in nature or meditation, then I begin to live a seamless oneness of being and doing that are not in opposition to each other but exist naturally side by side. Doing that arises from being, not imposed by the mind’s tendency to overthink and plan, but organically part of the creative flow of all life, within and without. I experience internal harmony when I include moments of silent connection and presence continually throughout my day.

In fact, continual (“intermittent”) is gradually becoming continuous (“ongoing”). As my awareness expands and evolves, along with everyone else’s, the separations and distinctions of a world based in polarity and duality are fading into the background. Life becomes a divinely inspired stream instead of an on/off spigot that we think we control. And the source of it all is a peaceful stillness that we can access in each moment of our lives just by taking a deep breath and observing the true nature of what is right in front of us.