So many of us have been looking outside of ourselves for peace and happiness. Yet, anytime we look to others or circumstances to change in order to be at peace, we unwittingly set ourselves up as victims. The peace and happiness we’ve been yearning for has always been here, albeit at times overlooked.  It is the very search that distracts us from what we most fervently desire. 

How does that happen?   

At birth we Divine Sparks are pure innocence. In the absence of vocabulary and prior to social conditioning, we Sparks were aware of everything as one.  We were open to giving love and receiving love. We were love in the purest sense.  Love, Oneness, is our divine nature.  

Not very long after birth something began to change. We fell out of love and moved from Oneness into the allusion of duality.  In the biblical sense, we ate of the forbidden fruit of the tree of good and evil.  Duality took the form of my name, my family, my house, my language, my nationality along with other social indicators … all a natural part of childhood upbringing.  However, these attributes also served to create a biographical self that began to veil the Divine Sparks that we are.   

As part of the process of growing up, we also began to sense what was love and what was not love. Our upbringing may have been challenging. If a parent even looked at us disapprovingly we would develop protective mechanisms. A little girl may be told by her parents that they had hoped for a boy. To please them, she may end up acting like a boy and never feel accepted for who she is.  Her sad and shameful feelings will likely get locked away in a dark room in the basement of her mind.  She fears she will never be accepted for being herself. Having given up her identity in order to please her parents, she will likely expand her efforts to please others throughout her adult life.  

Over time, the everlasting love that emanates from the Divine Sparks that we are, becomes overshadowed.  Many of us began veiling our heart when we experienced strife or lived with families in chaos. Some of us may have been physically and emotionally abused leaving our hearts scarred.  The very love that is the core of our being became overlayed with fear.  We had to develop survival strategies and lock our fears and wounds in a closet and begin living as a wounded child.

Some of us became pleasers, giving to others what we desperately desired. Others became ‘difficult children’ always getting into trouble.  We might have looked for love in all the wrong places:  drugs, sex, over eating, toxic relationships, on and on. All we wanted was to give love and receive love. 

In the midst of life’s vexations, the Divine Sparks that we are lay in the background awaiting to shine our love light. 

The very search for true peace and happiness in the external world distracts us from looking within where unreleased emotions and concealed feelings of being unloved have been stored away. Full participation in life can only occur when toxic emotions are cleared and shame-based beliefs are disarmed, thus removing the roadblocks on the soul’s journey.  Then, and only then, can we experience and radiate the peace and happiness that we desire, the essence of our being, the Divine Sparks that we are.