(a description of my most recent epiphany while on a St. Martins vacation)

Caribbean teal lapped luxuriously over my eyelids and around my nostrils while seeping slowly between my lips. My limp limbs lolled rhythmically back and forth, back and forth … back … and forth.

Pictures splattered across my mind’s eye like subway posters on the walls outside a speeding train and I, the lone traveler, gazed out the window to gauge their meaning. The soundtrack for this inward sojourn are Jan’s insistent words, on loop,

“Why are you taking it so personally? Don’t you know? There is nothing that anybody does that is about you. Nothing is about you, it is about them. Nothing is personal to you, it’s simply each person processing their own shit. Even if they reject you, or leave you, or have an affair, or whatever … it’s not about you.”

Something clicked, and shifted … my muscles clenched for something to hold on to as I gasped in surprise.

That’s it.

It was as if the words NEEDED to be on loop, in order for me to actually get it … deep down … below the superficiality of intellectual banter and philosophical musings.

It’s not about me … nothing is about me … it’s all about them.

Relief washed over my spirit, more refreshing than even the crystalline beauty of the waters I floated in. My eyes drank in blue. My descending toes burrowed joyfully into the white sand below as a salty smile splayed widely into my reddened cheeks.

Even if my worst fears and suspicions were true … even if they thought my contributions weren’t as meaningful as theirs, or they didn’t respect me as much as the others, or thought I was not someone worth listening to … it doesn’t matter.

It’s not about me … it’s about them.

Most likely none of those fears or suspicions are true … and that doesn’t matter either. Finding or revealing “The Truth” doesn’t matter … there is no truth. There is just a world full of people each processing their own past, present and future programming.

Anyone’s actions are simply a reflection of what is inside of them … and they have nothing to do personally with me. It’s their inner workings; assumptions, presumptions, calculations, emotions and programming that are either holding them back or forwarding their future. Why worry about what anyone thinks when it is simply a reflection of their personal history … which none of us can ever know?

It might sound simple, or obvious … but as this realization truly hit home for me … the weight of the world lifted. All the fears, and paranoid scanning, all the years of worriedly wondering where the next attack would come from … and shifting, changing, adapting, melting and molding myself into whatever, whoever, could avoid the next attack.

The years I spent thinking, believing, that if anyone ever truly knew me they would reject me. If I ever opened myself enough for them to see my authenticity … the charade would be over and I would just be that bullied, violated and abused child with nowhere to hide … and no mask to hide behind.

There is no masquerade ball … it’s just been me with my many masks in a house of mirrors, and fear, and a volcanic rage to defend against anyone who happened to somehow slip past my defenses.

It was never about me at all. Every single fact I’ve been building my case with … has all been about them.

How freeing that is.

Wow.

I turned, and walked back to the beach … and the rest of my life to unfold.

~~~~~~~

Religion4All is an idea: that every human being (no matter their race, religion, sexuality, social status, lifestyle, or any other possible factor) is LOVED by God; just … as … they are.

We all are loved by God, and NO religion or person has a monopoly on it. Every single person on this planet is loved equally by God … SO many are cut off from God because they are told they don’t belong. God loves everyone … we ALL are beautiful creations … we don’t need to cringe when we hear the words “God”, or “religion”, or their judgments … God LOVES us all!

There is no requirement to change in order to be LOVED by God, or to LOVE God. God is LOVE, and LOVE is God … period. There is no one who God loves more than anyone else … there are only those who choose to LOVE more … to love God more, and consequently then to love each other more. In doing so, we grow closer to God … and know God.

By opening our hearts, and minds to God (free of boundaries like religion, or social trends); by LOVING God … we are exactly where we are meant to be. If we maintain that openness, never allowing any person or event to make us close our hearts, we will be guided by God to be who we are meant to be.

In that space of openness we can then live a life of LOVE, and be guided to where we are meant to be … forever in LOVE.

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