What we have named God, or Spirit, lives on planet Earth in billions of human, animal, and plant forms. God appears nightly, and daily, everywhere we look, inside and out. There is nothing that is not an expression of Spirit in this world. Yet we often question her/his/its existence, especially in today’s conflict-ridden world, and repeatedly fail to recognize the divine light within ourselves. If we are spiritual or religious, we may think we have to do something to be enlightened or blessed. We see ourselves as falling short of divinity, of worthiness for blessings. And we also judge others for what we have been taught are their failings.

What if there are no failings, no impossible tasks that we have to achieve in order to be blessed by Spirit? What if we were born blessed, full of the light of God/dess, which can never be extinguished? What if everyone and everything we see on this planet is part of an intricate design of becoming, which we can only see a small portion of in our individual lives? And what if we are now living through a time in which our inner awareness opens wider and wider until we can see enough of that design to recognize it everywhere—most of all within our own hearts?

We did not come here to live and die as tarnished, imperfect, self-hating human beings. We came here as God to experience God in ourselves and all things. To realize there is no such thing as imperfection. Each of us is living out the perfect design that we decided on, with Spirit, before birth—so that we may grow and evolve, along with all living beings. We are not separate from one another. We are one another, because within Spirit, all is oneness. It lives as us and every other animate and inanimate form on Earth, each a divine expression of beingness. When we fully realize this on every level, the separations and conflicts now so prevalent on Earth will dissolve.

I’ve always had a “utopian” vision of a future world where people share responsibilities and decisions in a peaceful, circular way with no leaders or followers, no roles or hierarchy, no guns or war. All abundance shared. Creative expression encouraged and supported. Loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-centered interactions as natural as breathing because everyone sees one another as family, not “other.” Over the years, I’ve come to believe that we all have a similar vision deep inside us. We were born enlightened, with the light of God present within us as our soul. Our soul knows the overview of our life journey and is always guiding us toward more understanding and expression of our light in the world.

We have learned how to survive as individual identities in a world that doesn’t currently support soul expression, but there is an awakening occurring now on the planet. We are bridges from the old paradigm into the new as we become increasingly aware of the light within us and express it more fully in the world. We are each opening to this vision in our own way, and no one way is better than others. We will eventually realize that there is nowhere to go and nothing to attain–it’s all within us already. God is always here, day or night, 24/7. Adyashanti: “You are seeking God with [God’s] eyes.”