Tag: surrender

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.

 

Jump!

Photograph © 2016 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2016 Peggy Kornegger
Leap frog. Hopscotch. Jump rope. Relay races. Tree-climbing. Gymnastics. Children’s games are full of jumping, leaping, running, climbing. Stretching to the edge of risk–and laughing all the way. Somehow, as children, we trusted the momentum of the play we engaged in, so that even if we fell, we got right up again and continued on with scraped knees and elbows. For the most part, we weren’t held back by hesitation or fear, but instead were drawn forward by curiosity, wonder, and the urge to explore/experience everything. A good game was an adventure, and nothing else mattered in the timeless magic of childhood.

Somewhere along the way to adulthood, we were introduced to caution, the handmaiden of fear. Many of us became less willing to take risks, to totter wildly at the edge of uncertainty and then jump. Once we became adults, even if we did choose risk or risk chose us, we still held onto a desire for some kind of control in the midst of it. Over time, the Jump impulse atrophied inside of us.

Fear of great loss at any level, physical or emotional, can keep us frozen within our lives. Yet it is in walking through that fear (or jumping into the middle of it) that we find freedom and liberation from the wish to control. The walking or jumping is an act of courage, but it also is an act of complete surrender. When we let go of everything and turn our trust over to something greater, that something greater (call it God, Spirit, Source, whatever) lifts us into the flow of life’s currents, and we are carried to exactly where we were always meant to be.

I recently returned from a weeklong program called “Dynamic Peace” in Santa Barbara, California, which was essentially a deepening into greater soul emergence/evolution in the world. In going, I knew I was taking a leap of faith on multiple levels, especially budget-wise. I broke through many mental constraints in choosing to go, knowing in my heart that I had to keep stretching myself further and further—to jump yet again. To be honest, I couldn’t NOT go. My soul was loudly and insistently whispering in my ear that I had to be there. So I stepped into the flow of life and flew westward to California to embrace risk and expansion into the unknown. As I walked by the Pacific Ocean every day, I could feel its power and deep peace fill me. I knew that it was that very blend of power and peace that would always sustain me in my life, wherever I was. Looking down at the crashing waves from a sandy cliff, I understood that it was not one jump before me but many–a kind of sustained, endless free fall. Let go and let life, the eternal lesson.

You can’t think your way to letting go nor can you force yourself into it. When you stand alone on the edge of a precipice and consciously choose to let go completely, that letting go creates the jump that brings you over the edge into infinite possibility. It is a sweet fusion of action and surrender that creates the dynamic of full engagement with life. And that is exactly where we find ourselves now on this planet that is undergoing a major shift in consciousness. As the world rapidly changes all around us, we are being asked, as fully conscious human souls, to release the past, trust in the present, and act from a place of love and connection with all beings. Our heart-informed actions are the “jumps” that will lead us into more fully integrated and holistic lives. Lives that are intertwined with each other in the most loving expression of oneness yet lived out on our planet.

Ultimately, we are not here on Earth to be cautious or hold back. We are here to live our soul-selves full out and jump with open hearts into an expansive future that is unlike any that has come before. So what are you waiting for? Take a risk. Take a deep breath: Jump! And then jump again….

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.

Trust

Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2015 Peggy Kornegger
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to experience it all—everything. Live in different places, travel to different countries, work in different jobs, expand into different identities. I did not want to be stuck in any one location or persona all my life. For the most part, I’ve lived that. My life has been full of change and exploration: shifting experiences that have opened me to a continuously growing beingness in the world. Only recently, however, have I come to know the shadow side to that inner desire: regret, fear of missing something. This too is a part of the human quest for a fully lived life.

This past August my high school graduating class held a large reunion celebration in Lockport, Illinois, where I grew up. For various reasons (travel logistics, other events scheduled that same month), I did not attend. A few days afterward, when individuals began to post photographs of the weekend, I began to feel a deep sadness that I had missed out on something very special: the opportunity to see again friends I hadn’t seen in decades, some whom I had known since first grade. I couldn’t shake it for days, and a week later, I experienced similar pain at not being able to attend a six-day intensive spiritual immersion. It was Panache Desai who pointed out to me the unconscious pattern of regret that I had been carrying inside me, a fear that I would miss out on something extraordinary that everyone else was experiencing. Bringing it into my conscious awareness helped me see it pop up in other ways in my life.

Even in my spiritual practice, I found it intertwined with my deepest desire for divine connection. There it was: Fear that I would be somewhere else when everyone else got “enlightened.” Fear that I would miss hearing the key words of wisdom that would open the door to samadhi, awakened oneness. Fear that I would never experience again the expanded consciousness that embraced infinity and God as part of me, as part of everything. Within my most profound spiritual experiences and connection to something greater lay a fear that I might be missing something or I might lose what I had found. And at the heart of that fear was the issue of trust, surrender.

The more I surrender in my life, the more I see that needs to be surrendered to. I thought I had reached the deepest possible acceptance of “all that is.” I had recognized and embraced the divine orchestration of everything in life. Yet, there I was, feeling that I had somehow made a mistake in not attending a high school reunion or a spiritual retreat. Inside me was a kernel of apprehension that I might miss something KEY to my own evolution as a human being, as awakened spirit. The next step, of course, was to surrender to that too. Accepting the fear itself as part of being human opened the door to a deeper letting go.

With that surrender came another level of realization: that there are no mistakes. I’m always where I’m supposed to be for my soul’s experience and growth on Earth. Spirit has the road map for my human journey, and there is never a wrong turn. Wherever I am, all is in divine order, always. It’s about trust. Trust in something greater and wiser than my own mind’s idea of what I should be doing or experiencing. More and more, I am letting go into infinite unquestioning. I still want to experience everything, but I also have faith that wherever I am and whatever I’m doing is perfect beyond my human understanding. Ultimately, I am surrendering to trust itself. As Panache often says: “Your soul has already chosen. You’re just along for the ride.”

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.