Should You Leave Your Loved Ones Behind?

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You started doing the work. You began to see the patterns, the conditioning, the way things have always been done without anyone stopping to ask whether it still serves them.

And now something strange is happening. The deeper you go, the more distance you feel from the people closest to you. The friends who don't see it. The family who don't want to see it.

A quiet voice starts asking a painful question: are the people I love the most actually the people I need the most? And underneath that, an even quieter voice, one you might not want to admit is there. A little judgement. Of them. Of yourself.

Let's sit with this properly, because it comes up more than almost anything else in this work.

You Are the One Doing the Work, Not Them

Here is the first thing I want you to hear, and you've probably heard me say it many times over the years. If you're doing this work, any amount of inner work, transformation work, you're the one doing it. Not them.

So what should this work do for you? It should expand your capacity for compassion and your ability to hold space for others.

That doesn't mean you have to put up with people's bad behaviour. But it gives you a greater capacity to meet them where they are. The moment the work makes you feel separate, superior, more evolved, something has quietly gone sideways.

Because everyone is on their own journey. And it's so easy to fall into the trap of "I'm working on myself, so I'm better than them."

Watch for the Arrogance of the Mind

That feeling of being better than? That's the ego. That's a certain kind of arrogance, and it's worth naming it honestly.

Keep it in check. Notice when the mind starts to say "I am better than them" or "those people just can't see it." Even when the people in question really are, in some ways, less aware of themselves.

And here's something I've learned again and again. Don't underestimate the people around you. Sometimes the very people I assumed weren't very self-aware would make a choice or say something and I'd think, wow, that's actually really deep. There's so much awareness in that.

Life expresses itself in profound yet simple ways. Sometimes there's a profoundness in someone's simplicity that your clever mind might miss entirely. Who's to say their limited ways are wrong, or lesser, or not so great?

It's always easier to see someone else's stuff than to see our own.

When you're in your own process, you can't see it clearly. We're all on our own roller coaster, and it's hard to notice we're even on one. But someone standing outside of it can see it plainly: there goes your ride, up and down, spinning around, then a backflip, then it starts again. Round and round.

So don't assume your loved ones can't see your stuff. They're dealing with your behaviour, your choices, your patterns every single day. They don't need an introduction to it. It's slapping them in the face just as much as theirs is slapping you.

Let Them Be Them, and You Be You

This is, I think, the real lesson this work has taught me. It teaches us to give room for the people we love to be exactly who they are.

Let them make their choices. Let them make the so-called mistakes. And love them anyway.

Let them be them, and you be you. Give them the space to be them, and take the space to be you.

That second part matters just as much. You don't have to be indoctrinated or cajoled into anyone else's way of living. However well-meaning they are, people who aren't very aware of themselves can try to pull you into their way of doing things. And even when they're not doing that, you can put the pressure on yourself. To just follow along. To eat the food you always ate together. To drink because that's what you do when you're with them.

You can be you. You're allowed.

Stop Waiting for Permission You Already Have

Here's a trap I see so often. We wait for the people in our lives to give us the space. And when they don't, because they don't have the capacity or the awareness to, we get angry. Resentful.

But that's unfair, isn't it? To expect someone to hand you a permission they don't even know they're holding. They don't have the power to give it to you. Only you do.

So give yourself the permission. Take the space. Let yourself be, and make the choices that feel right for you.

Once you become an adult, it's your life, and you're responsible for it. All of it. The good, the bad, and everything in between. We have to wear it, all of it, and because we don't want to, it's easier to put it onto the people around us instead.

Don't wait for anyone to hand you your own life. Just take your space.

You Don't Actually Have to Reconcile This

Come back to the original question. Those you love the most may not be those you need the most.

My question back to you is this: how do you actually know they're not the ones you need? Is that thought coming from the mind that has decided you're better than them because you've done some work on yourself?

You don't have to reconcile it. You don't need to work out whether you need them or not, because you can't know that. They're simply here, in your life. On a soul level, you could say your soul chose to be around these souls in this lifetime. And a lifetime, from one angle, goes by in a flash. From another, it's plenty of time. Enough time to make the choices that feel right for you without forcing yourself into a box built out of things they said, or things you only imagined they said.

Because so often it's that. I think it, I make it up, and then I act as if it's true when they never said it at all. It was all in my head. That, too, is something to bring awareness to.

The Judgement Softens From the Inside Out

The last part of your question was the most tender. If you're less judgemental of yourself when you step back into the Matrix, will it help you be less judgemental of the people who choose, consciously or not, to stay there?

Yes. But not quite in the way you might expect.

From everything I've experienced over the years, the way to receive more love is to first give it to yourself. The way to become more compassionate in the world is to first be compassionate with yourself, and to receive that compassion from yourself.

It's the same with judgement. The practice of being less judgemental and more accepting of others begins with being more accepting of yourself. It's as if a pathway opens. What we're able to give to others flows through the very same channel as what we're willing to give ourselves.

So if you want more love, give it to yourself first, and the path to giving it away opens too. Same with acceptance. Same with this whole thing.

Be gentle with yourself first. The rest tends to follow.