Tag: surrender

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.

 

Resignation or Surrender?

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger

What’s the difference between resignation and surrender? To me, resignation seems to have a hopeless aspect to it, giving up on possibility. Surrender doesn’t have that flavor. It’s more a letting go of control, so that life can bring possibility to you instead of your clutching at it. Yet, perhaps there is more to resignation than first meets the eye. What if you have to go through resignation to get to surrender? What if in resigning yourself to life not turning out the way you thought it would, you let go at such a deep level that complete surrender is at last possible? In expecting nothing, you open the door to everything.

I recently experienced something like this as I continue to integrate living in a new state after more than 30 years in another part of the country. Massachusetts and Florida could not be more different. In order to make the transition, I had to embrace those differences, which has been very challenging at times. I have surrendered again and again. Yet I still felt stuck in some indefinable way. Basically, I don’t feel at home here, at least in the way I had previously defined it. When I accepted that I may never feel that way, something started to change.

It was a book that brought about this perceptual shift: Braiding Sweetgrass by Potawatomi naturalist Robin Wall Kimmerer. In early chapters, she writes of her people losing their traditional home and being forced to walk the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. With that background, she also writes of her family’s ties to New York State and how “home” has been defined in her life, usually through a deep connection to Mother Earth. Her stories and descriptions are so vivid that at one point I just sat and cried, feeling all the past homes in my own life and how nature was an integral part of each of them.

I have lived many places, north, south, east, and west, but my childhood home in Illinois and my recent home in Massachusetts tug at my heart most. As I allowed myself the thought that I may never see either of those places again in this lifetime, something in me let go, into grief, into resignation—and then, gradually, a release into a deeper surrender. I had no expectations anymore about anything. I was just present in my life as it was, with no attachments to past or future. The sadness and loss broke my heart, but in the breaking, spirit poured in, as it always does, and left me washed clean.

Life brings us so much, realities arising from possibilities, again and again. Each reality, beginning and ending, is the doorway to another possibility, another reality. Our lives are forever shifting from one dimension into another wider dimension. Right now at this moment, we, as individuals and as a planet, are being asked to let go of everything that came before and move forward in our lives, through resignation to surrender and ultimately to infinite possibility. Our feelings are passing signposts. Where we are going, there are no parameters really.

As I look out my window today, there is only the living presence of Mother Earth in all directions, filling my heart and soul with a greater sense of home than any one particular place. Each of us has a soul window that opens out to that same view. Each of us is finding our way home.

 

Saying Yes to Life

Photograph © 2019 Peggy Kornegger

Our minds have an annoying habit of continually warning us to watch out, be careful, stand back, or say no to any new situation. Perhaps left over from prehistoric times when humans often encountered oversized predatory beasts outside the safety of their caves. Not so helpful today though. Certainly there are things to be concerned or cautious about, but not every choice we make is fraught with danger. Over-cautiousness keeps us frozen in fear and inertia.

In his book The Surrender Experiment, Michael Singer writes about his decision to ignore his mind’s constant badgering and instead say yes to whatever life presented him with every day. Refusing to pay attention to negative mental opinions and fears took him on an incredible adventure of openhearted, expansive living. Perhaps this is exactly what we are all being called to do at this time on the planet: say yes to life instead of no. That is the next stage in our evolution.

When I read Michael’s book again recently, I was confronted with my own mental no’s, the closed doors in my mind that were locked with negative thoughts. In particular, about where I had moved a year ago, Florida. After a dear friend moved away last January, I felt so sad that I began to be hypercritical of aspects of life here: the car culture, strip malls, gun shows, red tide. The list got longer each day. What I initially viewed as an incredibly beautiful paradise I now found never-ending fault with. Until The Surrender Experiment jolted me into the realization of my own negativity. How could anything positive be experienced in my life if I spent every moment focused on what was wrong?

It was a wake-up call to remember who I am at the soul level (love) and why I am here. I didn’t come to this Earth to complain and criticize. I want to live my life saying yes, not no. In truth, life is how you frame it. Our lives our filled with challenges as well as celebrations. When you pause, take a deep breath, and remember to be grateful for everything in your life, it can shift you energetically. Gratitude (an inner Yes!) raises your vibration—and the vibration of whomever you come in contact with. Together you see possibilities instead of obstacles.

That energy will positively affect everyone in your life. A heartfelt smile and kind word can be the greatest gift of all for someone who is having a hard day. When you wake each morning and allow your heart, not your head, to lead the way, then you experience life’s wonders. If you let your mind constantly repeat warnings and tell you what is wrong with the world, then you are living in a prison and perpetuating negativity. Instead, break the lock. You can be free of your inner no’s by seeing them for what they are—the mind’s way of trying to protect you and control every unknown situation.

As soon as you recognize that and choose another way of seeing life, those thoughts will lose their power. They will just be passing blips in consciousness that you don’t have to pay attention to or impose on others (unless, of course, there is a large beast outside your door!). Instead, you can choose to say yes to the mystery and magic of each moment. Nothing is certain, but that is okay. I’ve found that the greatest surprises, joys, and connections await on the other side of the mind’s chattering.