For most of my life, I believed in a dualism of the Divine out there, me here and perhaps through effort and merit, one day we would meet halfway.

This seems to be a default belief, particularly within many religious traditions, this disconnect between us and the creative, intelligent energy behind everything in the Universe.

We seek the external Divine in sacred books, rituals, pilgrimage, better behaviour, etc. Almost touching but never realising. The chase that never ends.

It perpetuates a belief of Separation, an insurmountable distance between us and the intelligence that birthed us and all creation.

Call it what you will. I call it God, the Creator, the Divine. Some refer to it as The Source, The Infinite, Pure Energy among others.

Whatever way you identify with it, it permeates our entire existence and experience.

However, if we go deeper and are prepared to unlearn much of what keeps us from truly ‘seeing’, slowly but surely, an inner understanding emerges and strengthens; by insight and then though experience:

The divine is already within me and within you.

It’s here, within; it is in your awareness, in your being, in the quiet intelligence that draws your next breath, grows an oak from a seed, returns the salmon to their spawning ground and turns a solar system around it’s galactic centre.

It is our essence. There is no separation or dualism.

In both the older Eastern traditions and those of Native Americans, as an example, the acceptance of the unity of ALL things was a felt, self-evident truth.

I admit that I don’t always see this. I lose sight of this transcendent and beautiful principle but this is how I sometimes recalibrate and get into this unifying perspective again:

I stop for a moment then look for a feeling in the stillness behind my thoughts. I can sense that it is not emptiness; it’s fullness.

The same fullness that gives rise to mountains, forests, oceans and stars. To you and to me.

At times, with a pause of habitual thinking, I become aware of the indwelling of the Divine, that Great Spirit illuminating everything; me, you, the whole cosmos of which we are inseparable from.

We are One. We are Everything.

Peace & Blessings.