When I first left to go to the monastery,
To go to the Buddhist monastery,
I mean,
There was a lot of judgment towards me.
And then when I didn't ordain,
You know,
I went to the monastery,
I stayed for a while,
I left,
I came back home,
And then I was like,
No,
I'm taking off again,
I don't want to live a traditional householder's life.
And I can remember being,
You know,
You know,
Some people gossiping about me down at the beach because my,
Someone came back and told me,
And they're like,
Oh,
They're all saying you're not going to find what you're,
What you're looking for,
And what are you doing?
And,
And so yeah,
So probably causing them a little bit of harm in that moment,
Because they weren't happy about what I was doing with changing our roles.
Right?
People don't like seeing someone kind of break off from the herd.
But I knew in my own heart,
I'm like,
I'm not,
This isn't about them.
And it's not,
I'm not really,
I'm not causing them any harm.
If they're not happy about it,
Well,
That's their path.
This is my path.
I'm doing what I need to be doing.
And you do just have to own that.
Like,
You know,
Not everyone's going to be happy about what you're doing,
As long as it really isn't causing them any harm,
Then you have to be okay in yourself to have the courage to follow,
To be true to yourself.
If you do not want to be living a life for everyone else,
You want to be living a life true to yourself.
So I would suggest,
Whitney,
This is more about how you're internalizing this,
More than about them,
About you being okay with it.
Yeah,
Some people are going to judge us,
They're going to,
They're going to make it about them.
You left me,
You're not doing this anymore.
You know,
You're not living your life for other people.
If something is speaking to you that you want to pursue more,
And it means certain relationships,
You're not as close with those relationships anymore,
Hold those people in your heart.
Do tonglen so that you don't start judging them in return.
You don't want,
You don't want to create any resistance anywhere around this.
But the more that you can hold them in your heart,
Understand their fears of losing you,
Their fear of,
Because maybe they're not really losing you,
But they have a fear of it.
And the more you can hold them in your heart,
Just understand that,
You know,
They're just who they are,
They're afraid.
And when people are afraid,
Right,
So accusations and judgments,
Right,
When people are afraid,
This is what they do,
Right?
People try to hurt others.
When we're hurting,
We try to hurt others.
You're,
You're going away from me,
I'm going to try and hurt you now.
I'm going to judge you and accuse you of things.
So it's very,
You know,
It's very much a reflection of what's going on with them.
And then for you to understand that,
Okay,
This is part of their path,
Because maybe there's something for them to learn here.
Not that we,
We set it up that way.
But we understand that possibly they could learn something from this.
But it's also for me to learn,
To know,
To practice tonglen,
Hold them in my heart,
Because they're just afraid.
They're just afraid.
And usually so much anger and judgment and accusations and resentment is coming from fear.
So much of it's coming from fear.
So the more that we can hold them in their hearts to understand so that we don't start judging in return,
That we don't become defensive,
Because you don't need to defend your life to anyone,
Right?
The ego wants to defend and prove I'm right,
I'm right.
Instead,
Just,
You know,
I know I'm doing the right thing for me.
I'm going to hold them in my heart.
I'm going to stay present.
And I'm going to allow that to be the guiding force here.
And that's how we live an authentic life.
Not by judging others for judging us,
Because there's no authenticity in that.
There's no freedom in that.
It's being able to live our life and still people will judge us.
There's not much we can do about that.
People will judge us.
Right?
But what we can do is not to judge them back.
Yeah,
And I just,
You tell yourself those things every day,
Great,
Pray for them every day,
Great.
And some,
Hopefully some validation today.
Yeah,
Hopefully some validation on that.
