Confessions on a Plane

"I’m right there”, I motion to the window seat and he gets up to let me in. Our eyes lock and just like that two hours comes and goes, from takeoff to landing. We didn’t stop talking. 

“What do you do?” He asks.

"How much time do you have? "

Smiling, he glances at his watch, “About two hours.”

"I help people put words to what’s happening inside of them. More and more people are finding the freedom to say they’ve changed their minds and don’t believe things that they once did. I guide people who are deconstructing ideas and beliefs that were given to them before they had a choice to decide for themselves. In other circumstances, people once thought the nature of reality operated in a certain way, but now they have more information and think differently because of this.”

I go on, “The liberation to have one’s own ideas can also be isolating, especially from family and friends who still believe in what you no longer do.”

He wants to share his story. “I don't want you to have to work while on a trip”, he mentions, checking in to see if he can go there.

“It doesn’t feel like work to me, it feels like breathing. It’s who I am, not just what I do.”

With permission granted to proceed he says, “I grew up religious, but always questioned that God could be put into such a narrow category as to exclude many people who believed something different about the divine. I find God in nature and feel most connected to a source when I am there, not in a building with teachings from thousands of years ago being translated to today”.

Feeling safe to continue, he goes on,

"My mom says she worries about me not being with my kids in the afterlife because I don’t ascribe to what she believes in order to be saved.”

"Wow, that’s a heavy load to bear… for both of you.”

"Yes, I live with a lot of guilt all the time about everything that I do.”

"Yes, religion can have that effect on people. Ironically, the very thing that is meant to liberate us can be twisted and feel more like chains that hold us.”

Then the stories and confessions poured out, things he felt he couldn’t talk about with anyone else because of the heavy cloak of judgment he expected to find. Yet, the light in his eyes was so bright, captivating…it amazed me that he could believe anything other than that he was the embodied expression of the divine. How differently we all would move in this world if we believed this.

This is a part of the work I am doing in the world at this time.  If you or someone you know needs to be held and heard in this way, I have openings right now and would be honored to remove my shoes and step carefully onto this sacred ground together.