समोऽहं सर्वभूतेषु न मे द्वेष्योऽस्ति न प्रियः।ये भजन्ति तु मां भक्त्या मयि ते तेषु चाप्यहम्॥
samo ’haṃ sarva-bhūteṣu na me dveṣyo ’sti na priyaḥye bhajanti tu māṃ bhaktyā mayi te teṣu cāpyaham
Word by word
The verse says
I am the same toward all beings. There is nobody I hate and nobody I favour. But those who worship me with love are in me, and I am in them.
In plain words
Two halves that look like they cannot both be true.
First: complete evenness. No favourites, nobody disliked.
Then: and yet those who come are in him, and he in them. Nothing has changed on his side. Something has changed about where they stand.
Where you've felt this · in study
A teacher is fair to all thirty children in her class, and she is closer to the three who stay behind to ask questions. The fairness is not an act, and the closeness is not favouritism. One of them is what she owes every child in the room. The other is just what happened.
Going deeper
Equality and intimacy are being held together here, and the usual objection is that they cannot be.
If he is truly the same toward everyone, then closeness looks like a contradiction. The resolution offered is not that some people are preferred but that some are present. Sunlight falls without preference; it is still true that standing outside is different from standing indoors, and nothing about the sun has changed to make it so.
It is worth saying that the traditions do not fully agree here. Some read the second half as describing grace freely given rather than a position taken up, which is a real difference with real consequences.
What both readings share is the first half, and it is the more radical of the two. Nobody is disliked. Whatever has gone wrong in your life, this line rules out one explanation for it.