From my experience we are born whole and complete - little beings of love. Once exposed to the contradictory messages and behaviors of our parents and others; wholeness is forced underground and forgotten. In it's stead is personality: a fractured set of role specific automatic responses that produce wounds until there is contact with the love that is the being within me. I call this essence - some call it soul. (BTW I have seen essence within myself. It is a light that runs along the spine.)

Realizing love miraculously heals the fractures from places outside time. I am so very attached to the stuff of my personality that my essence/love is unconsciously crowded out.

Here's were meditation and other forms of inner spiritual work enter to reunite us with love, forgiveness, compassion. Love and her/his/their children such as -forgiveness et cetera hold the wounds without blame, shame and so on. Oneness happens. My personality try to claims it and oneness is diminished to a thing. Essentially oneness seems gone, but Essence/Love is always there awaiting our recognition and immersion. Word are wholly inadequate to describe the reunification with love.

Yes? No? Maybe?