An excerpt from the free e-book Radiance: Experiencing Divine Presence, available by signing up for the Radical Happiness monthly newsletter or on Amazon Kindle. Radiance is also available in paperback on Amazon.com. You can sign up for the newsletter here. You will also receive the e-book What About Now? by signing up.

There is nowhere that the Divine is not. Stop a moment and really take this truth in, because the mind has a very different perception. If really grasped, this truth will change your life. Everything you see, everything and everyone that exists, and everything that happens is a manifestation of the Divine. The Divine is not only behind every good act, but also behind every evil one, which is what happens when the you that you think you are is lost in fear and the illusion of being separate. The Divine is both the perpetrator and the victim, the lover and the hater. It plays every role that has ever been played because there is no other. There is only the illusion of other.

Imagine that—there is no other! The mind is so good at imagining, but it has difficulty imagining Oneness because it goes against its programming. So when Oneness is experienced, as it is momentarily many times even in one day, it isn't acknowledged. Oneness goes unnoticed, unappreciated by the mind. Worse than that—Oneness is rejected by the egoic mind because acknowledging it would threaten its existence. The ego doesn't exist in Oneness; it can only exist in separateness. The ego is created by and perpetuates separation. That is the very definition of the ego. The ego and Oneness are at odds, or so it seems. However, Oneness designed life to be this way, so Oneness has no problem with the ego, although the ego has a problem with Oneness.

Everywhere it looks, the ego sees separation. It translates all the differences it sees as separation: The ego sees a tree, and because the tree is different from the ego's image of itself, the ego sees itself as separate from the tree. But is that true? Where did this definition of self come from, in which anything that is different from itself is seen as separate from itself?

It is the ego's own definition that creates the idea of separation: Different equals separation by the ego's own definition. The ego sees boundaries between things and people. It even creates boundaries conceptually through language and in terms of time and by holding certain beliefs. This is just how the egoic mind digests life. All these differences are seen by the ego as potentially dangerous and problematic. The ego is constantly on the defense, trying to protect itself from everything out there that is different from itself. Its world is full of fear, anxiety, jealousy, hatred, anger, and pain. This viewpoint and the sense of being separate is at the base of all suffering.

But reality is not as the ego supposes. There are no boundaries. There is no separate self in opposition to the world. There is only the Divine creating each moment fresh from itself. Everything is the Divine expressing itself as tree, as dog, as person, as thought, as emotion, as light, as sound. No boundaries. No one. Only One. Only the Divine creating and expressing itself through life.