When I first decided to get healthy,
It was difficult to spend time with friends who ate fast food all the time.
Not because they were bad people,
Or because fast food is inherently wrong,
It simply wasn't conducive to my new lifestyle.
Instead,
I surrounded myself with people who regularly exercised,
Ate nutritious food,
And kept stress to a minimum.
They later told me that helping me find the path to better health strengthened their resolve to stay on it.
When deciding to embark on a spiritual journey,
However,
Cutting certain people out of our lives sounds like a logical parallel.
But keeping ourselves in an echo chamber,
Where we only hear what we already believe repeated back to us,
Is actually detrimental to our spiritual growth.
In a very real sense,
Those who challenge us actually teach us more than those who agree with us.
They are not only beneficial to our growth,
They are essential.
So surround yourself with people who offer you a salad in one hand and a milkshake in the other,
So to speak.
Because strength comes from actively choosing what is conducive to your journey,
Not from living in an echo chamber from which you've eliminated challenges.
Activism that brews in an echo chamber tends to be dangerously on the cusp between non-violent protest and a riot.
At some point,
Fighting for what we believe is right turns into fighting to prove that we are right.
That's when actions switch from altruistic endeavors to egotistic ones.
The Buddha was an activist in that he actively encouraged people to think for themselves,
But that is very different from telling people what to think.
This is exactly why we monks are discouraged from making the monastery our permanent home.
We are urged to go back into the world of chaos,
Where our spirituality is challenged,
Not coddled,
And where helping people find the spiritual path strengthens our own resolve to stay on it.
