Tag: spirit

Making Space for Spirit

© 2012 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2012 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
People have gone on retreats within various spiritual traditions for hundreds of years. The definition of the verb retreat is to “withdraw” or “move back.” In a spiritual context, an individual usually withdraws from the world and goes within, seeking a deeper connection to self, to spirit, or both. Today, many people go on retreats that provide time and space apart from day-to-day life in order to renew their physical body and inner spirit. Both yoga and meditation are frequently offered for week-long retreats in peaceful locations where participants can relax into being instead of doing.

My first retreat was a 10-day trip to Tulum, Mexico, with Brooke Medicine Eagle and Angeles Arrien in 1997. Fifty of us stayed in palapas (stone structures with thatched roofs) next to the Caribbean and met daily for shamanic journeys and sharing in small groups. We visited Maya temples and also spent 24 hours in silence at the end of the retreat. That day/night was the most powerful part of the trip for me because I felt deeply aligned with something greater than my own life as I walked and sat alone in silent meditation. Upon returning home, I decided I would find a way to include retreats in my life regularly.

Since then, whether on a longer trip to a sacred site outside the United States or more locally at New England centers such as Kripalu, Omega, or Rowe, I have periodically stepped away from my life and gone inward to connect with spirit. Last month, however, my time/space apart took the form of an at-home retreat in combination with one of Panache’s Desai’s online programs. I found that if I formed the intention of “retreat,” I actually didn’t need to leave my home or travel great distances to get away. Instead, I limited social and online activities and spent longer periods of time in meditation and silence. Retreat became an inner place of the soul that I could access any time I took a deep breath, relaxed, and tuned in. The key was making space for that experience.

In our busy, multi-tasking lives, we often run from one activity to another and then fall into bed exhausted. We think we don’t have time for anything else, and certainly not a retreat, of any kind. Yet, it is possible to step back, even for a moment, and experience a quieter, unhurried part of ourselves. Your spirit is always waiting for you to connect with it. Find a quiet corner, close your eyes, breathe deeply, and you are there. The mind will try to keep you spinning along on a high-speed wheel of mental activity, but the breath can sidestep that compulsive tendency. View thoughts as passing clouds in the sky, or passing waves in the ocean, and gradually, with each deep breath, you will be able to rest in the space beyond thought—soul as silent witness.

Of course, the goal is not to abolish thinking entirely (unrealistic for most of us) but to become aware of it. In so doing, you are seamlessly connected to the part of you that is witnessing your life peacefully and without judgment. That experience alone, whether a minute, an hour, or a week, can provide you with a renewed inner spirit and refreshed physical body. Suddenly, the need to rush through every task on your to-do list seems less urgent, and you begin to allow other possibilities to arise. One or two consciously centered deep breaths can make that inner space available. A retreat is as close as your next inhalation. Give it a try, and the edges of your life may begin to expand in all directions. Make space for the infinite within and without, and your spirit will be forever grateful.

Free Fall to Infinity

Grand Canyon, NPS
Grand Canyon © National Park Service
Some of you may recall a blog article I wrote last year called “Infinity.” In it, I described my lifelong fear of infinity/eternity and my first individual session with Panache Desai in which he took me to infinity. Unlike the mind-freezing terror I had experienced late at night at the thought of a never-ending universe, what I felt with Panache was free-floating peace and calm. No real sense of time or space; no thoughts, no emotion. Yet a comforting soft energy surrounded me. I remained in that state for hours, and the experience shifted my consciousness profoundly. The late-night fear did not occur for more than a year and a half.

This past summer, however, the terror-infinity thoughts began to recur, more and more frequently. I gradually realized that I was being prepared for the next phase in the evolution of this deep-seated fear. Consequently, I decided to take part in Panache’s 21-day program of “vibrational activation,” which consisted of daily meditations and energetic transmissions, interactive telephone sessions, and online group support. Each participant wrote an intention for the 21 days, and mine was to walk through my fear to freedom. A friend had recently told me that “terror is the final barrier to merging with God,” which actually helped give me a positive incentive for the journey.

How to explain an inner process that practically defies language? I will try. The first thing I experienced was a subtle shift in the energy around the terror, which allowed me to get closer to it than I ever had before. Usually panic took hold of me completely, and I froze. But one night I was able to access what was an integral part of the terror: overwhelming grief. Was this the sum total of life—a universe without end and an equally endless state of being or nonbeing? The despair I felt was so strong that I shut down entirely. But in a phone session, Panache sent me energy for the grief, and I was able to feel it through completely—days and days of crying at the “painful beauty” of life, then anger at the unfairness, and finally emotional neutrality and an inability to access the terror at all. I was in a holding pattern, wondering what would come next. I wrote online: “I feel as if I’m sitting on the edge of something HUGE—like the Grand Canyon with God in the middle of it. If only I could find a way to free fall into that vastness—or get someone to push me!”

Around the same time, another group member posted this quote by William Blake: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.” I have always loved those lines, but that evening I read them as if for the first time. The words infinity and eternity leapt out at me. World upon world opened up inside me. I realized that I had held Infinite Spirit in the pulsing palms of my hands during sessions with Panache. And I had experienced the Eternal Now in meditation, with my soul as silent witness. What we call God, or Spirit, exists as infinity and eternity and loving presence within each moment. Now is all there is, ever, and my soul doesn’t fear infinity because it is infinity. Only the mind is terrified of something that is beyond parameters, beyond thought really.

The next morning, during meditation in my back yard, I sat silently observing all the dimensions of the universe playing out magnificently within me. Opening my eyes and looking up at the infinite eternal peaceful blue sky, I felt my heart and soul as one with everything. No separation, no duality. I am the Grand Canyon and God. And life is a free fall that includes it all.

Ascension for Everybody

Photograph © 2012 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2012 Peggy Kornegger

What is ascension anyway? The word historically has had either a religious or an astronomical context: the ascent of a human body to heaven after death or the position of a celestial object in the skies. Another definition refers to spiritual masters who spontaneously dematerialize from this plane to another, higher one. Today, however, there is an expanded meaning used by those who believe our planet is undergoing an evolving shift of consciousness. In 2013, ascension is about becoming conscious spirit within our living human bodies on Earth—in essence, “ascending “ into our soul selves and bringing Heaven and Earth into alignment in the process. Not just for masters or dead people, this ascension is for everyone.

The level of spiritual awareness and wisdom attained by the average person is growing exponentially in the new millennium. So many have a sense of something greater touching their lives, even those who don’t consciously subscribe to a particular religion or new age philosophy. God, or the Divine, is no longer a concept associated only with special days or events that take place within a church, synagogue, or temple. Spirit is everywhere, at all times, and humans have given it many names. Some call it Source energy or an intangible Intelligence that permeates all things. Others consider Mother Nature to be the most sacred spirit of all. And many believe that language concretizes something that is beyond physical description, a connection that can only be found in the stillness of one’s own heart.

However expressed, more and more people do seem to be experiencing some kind of greater Presence. It is this awareness that, once fully felt, connects each of us to our individual spirit, or soul. In discovering the Divine within and opening to that powerful flow of energy, light, and unconditional love, we “ascend” into our unique soul-ness here on Earth. We begin to live as our authentic selves—not the ones society told us we should be, but the ones we came to this planet to embody, full of endless possibilities. Body, mind, feelings, and spirit become a cohesive whole, and we learn to love ourselves, as well as others, at a deeper level. Our authentic soul selves live in harmony, peace, and oneness, not separation, conflict, or hatred. Ultimately, that is Heaven on Earth. That is ascension.

 

Growing Up Godless

I grew up outside of organized religion. In a small Midwestern town, this was unheard of. I knew no one else like me; all my friends dutifully went to church every Sunday. My parents didn’t want to impose any one set of religious beliefs on me, so they basically left the door open. They told me that God might exist or might not; it was not provable, all based on belief—the agnostic’s view. So I was left with a question mark and a feeling of “differentness” among my peers. I can remember feeling very uncomfortable whenever the topic of church or God came up at school, fearful that I would be “found out.”

When I was about 9 years old, my parents took me to a Unitarian church service in a nearby town, after which I commented, “I’m glad that’s over!” Clearly I wasn’t longing to go to church as much as I was longing not to be different. When I reached college age, all my new friends were rejecting their religious upbringing, and I found myself ahead of the game since I didn’t have a religion to reject. But still I was searching for something, as were so many others of my generation. The meaning of life perhaps, or the secrets of the cosmos. At any rate, I gradually began to look for answers in diverse spiritual books and teachers, not really wanting a guru or one answer, but rather a tapestry of truths that resonated with me.

My search for meaning was partially driven by a deep-seated fear of eternity/infinity, which I had carried within me since childhood, possibly because I had no superimposed God image to block the fear. The void, or an endless universe in which “the world went on forever and ever,” was very real to me. Eternal life and eternal death seemed equally frightening. Still, in spite of this, I was a happy child for the most part, nurtured and supported both by my parents’ unconditional love and by the natural world outside our rural home. It was only at night that my fears about the infinite universe arose.

These night fears continued throughout adulthood, even after I came to believe in Spirit, or a greater sacred presence in the universe. After many years of spiritual exploration and growth, it was in an individual session with Panache Desai that I had my first tangible experience of infinity as an expanse that was both peaceful and comforting (see previous blog post “Infinity). Months later, during Panache’s webcast series “Mother, Father, God,” I faced my long-ago religionless past. As he instructed listeners to embrace the image of God they had grown up with, until it disappeared and became one with them, I felt disconnected, alone, different, stuck in my Godless childhood. But when he said, “The Divine in essence is formless and nameless and is in fact love,” I suddenly realized that I was already at “disappeared,” and God/Spirit had always been a part of my life, as love. I felt old fears dissolving as I also realized that I had never really been alone. God, or the Divine, was always there, at my very core.

Looking back, I see how what seemed my greatest challenge as a child was in fact my greatest blessing. What I experienced then, through my parents, through nature, and within my own heart, was Divine love in its purest form, undiluted by human concepts of an external God. Now, in my present life, as I continue to have extraordinary experiences of Spirit and infinity, I am so very grateful for my parents’ openhearted love and wisdom which allowed me to follow my own path when it came to matters of the spirit.

“Look in your heart for God, for truth, for the answer. Feel that heart space—that is where you and infinity can meet, because your heart is not limited, but ever expansive.”—Panache Desai

 

Fear Less

In Jan Frazier’s book When Fear Falls Away, she describes a sudden falling away of fear, just before having a repeat mammogram. The subsequent awakening she experienced changed her life. It is something we all dream of: to live with unshakable trust in the universe. I believe that we are now entering a period in the Earth’s evolution in which that is possible, not just for yogis or shamans, but for every person on the planet. Individual processes may not be as instantaneous as Jan Frazier’s, but I think the ultimate experience of trust in something greater will be very similar. I believe this because I feel it happening to me.

Recently, after intentionally stepping away from external busyness in the “real” world (see blog post “Unplugged and Reconnected”), I found that a door opened within me through which life poured through in boundless exuberance. The perfect books and spiritual workshops presented themselves to me with free-flowing synchronicity. In addition to these, the time that I sat alone in silent meditation and contemplation in my backyard was deeply transformative. I spent hours there each day, sometimes working in my garden, sometimes meditating, sometimes just breathing in the beauty all around me—the flowers, the trees, the sky, the clouds, the birds. A tiger swallowtail butterfly floating into the yard would make my heart catch in my throat at the miracle of its very existence. A single ray of sun penetrating the dense green shrubbery to form a patch of shimmering golden light on the grass would fill my eyes with tears. It was if I were absorbing the magnificence of the world through my very pores.

Gradually, as these magic moments continued, a deep loving connection to something larger than my own life became my prevailing experience. I have had such moments frequently in recent years, but something new was beginning to shift within me now. The connection to Source or Spirit was less fleeting, more a part of me. As the external world continued to be rocked by the changes inherent in 2012 and the Great Shift, I found that, within me, everything that was not trust in the presence of Spirit in all things began to dissolve. Old rigid ways of perceiving the world fell away. As did fear. I was not completely fearless (impossible—I am human), but I feared less.

Months later, after continued inner journeying on my own and at various spiritual gatherings, I find that this opening/shedding process has continued. I am no longer run by fear. Instead, at any given moment, I can connect to a spacious silent place within where peace and a trusting calm exist (see previous post “Infinity”). And I truly believe that now is the time when we all can find that inner space and open our hearts to a greater trust, a greater love.