Eckhart Tolle's Guide to Overcoming People Pleasing | Eckhart Tolle Explains

But your happiness or fulfillment does not depend on any other human's acceptance of who you are. That would be a deluded thought. It sometimes happens that members of the same family evolve at very different rates. So a sense of separation can come if one member of the family evolve spiritually much more rapidly than another. And that is something that you cannot do anything about. You need to accept that your sisters, their viewpoints and their judgments of you arise because of the way in which they have been conditioned by their culture. So this is part of the mental conditioning. There's nothing really personal about it. They have been conditioned in a certain way. To some extent, you have gone beyond your conditioning because anybody who begins to awaken spiritually goes beyond. Also simultaneously begins to go beyond their cultural conditioning. And that applies whether you're from Somalia, whether you're from Australia, or whether you're in the United States or anywhere. If you are not awakening spiritually, you are. Your behavior, your viewpoints, your opinions, the way in which you judge other people, the way in which you judge other cultures, all that is conditioned by the content of your mind, the culture and family and so on that you grew up in. So you are basically a conditioned entity. And your opinions and viewpoints are not really yours. They are the product of your conditioning. And so that's the case with your sisters. So sometimes the same thing applies to close friends. I've had many similar questions of people who had a close friendship with someone. And sometimes it's the case with husband and wife. Often have had many. In many cases, one of them, either she or he began to evolve and awaken spiritually. And a gap suddenly arose between the. The one that was still totally conditioned and the one that was beginning to awaken spiritually. In some cases, they can still live together. It depends on the nature and degree of the person who is not yet awakening spiritually. Depends that the ways in which this non awakened state manifests differs from person to person. Some you can live with, you can awaken, and you know your partner is not. And you can totally surrender to that fact that your partner is not awakening. Yet in other cases, it will create a hostility, a growing hostility in your partner. The ego objects to the other being becoming so different and changing. They don't understand you anymore. And so, and then a separation happens with husband and wife. Then it sometimes happens that they do their different ways. In the case of a family member, there's a link that remains. So you cannot just say, we go our different ways. There's always a certain bond between you and your family members. But the first thing is you ask me what I would do. What I would do is first of all understand why. And this is what I've just been talking about. If you understand, then already it is a helpful thing. If you don't understand, why is this happening. But if you understand that these people act out of their. Your sisters act out of their conditioning, you have began already are in the process of transcending your conditioning. Whether or not they will also awaken or begin to awaken spiritually, we don't know. So in the meantime, all you can do, or if I were you, all I could do was continue to recognize the limitation in them. It is they are conditioned in their responses. Recognize that that is what happened. Not to blame them for it, not to feel guilty because you make them angry, because you don't. It's their conditioning that makes them angry. So you don't feel guilty because you are different from them. I wouldn't. I'm talking now, but I would. I would not feel guilty. I would simply recognize compassionately what it is that makes them say and do the things they say and do towards you. And you cannot even explain to them. It would be futile to say to them, I know why you're saying that to me. Because you're totally conditioned. What? They wouldn't know what you're talking about because they know nothing outside of their conditioning. So compassion arises. Compassion and acceptance of a person's limitations. You can still hold them in your heart and realize there is an essence in them that is lovable. And you can continue to be connected to that essence of who they are. If they refuse to talk to you, then you have to accept and surrender that you can hold them in your meditation. You can even sometimes look at their photos. Look beyond the surface appearance of who they are. And the photo can be a little help to establish the inner connection. Then you don't need the photo anymore to establish the inner connection. Feel the inner connection with their innermost selves. And even if they don't talk to you, that can still be there. And then you send in the conventional New Age language, you send loving energy to them. There's some truth in that. So there's a. There's a loving, still a loving connection, even though you don't talk. So recognition, to summarize, recognition of why this is happening. Accepting your family members limitations and not judging them. They judge you, of course, because their judgments of you are part of their conditioning. But you don't need to judge them. You simply see that this is a limitation of their state of consciousness at this present time. They will awaken too, in time, eventually this lifetime or the next. So then you can begin to feel peaceful about it so that it does not become a source of suffering, continuous source of suffering at the back of your mind. So if you can be in a loving relationship, even though you might not meet them much anymore or at all, you can stay in a state of love towards them, compassionately accept their limitations, and then see what happens. Sometimes in that way, a healing does happen. It may be that at some point there's a crack in their conditioning and they're suddenly able to accept you, who you are for who you are now. But your happiness or fulfillment does not depend on any other human's acceptance of who you are. That would be a deluded thought if you think you can only be happy if these people accept and understand you. Some people have that with their parents. So they say, my dad, my father. They don't understand me at all. It's terrible, terrible. I'm trying to explain what I at. Of course they cannot understand you. It's beyond their comprehension. If you have awakened spiritually and they haven't so compassionately accept that they cannot understand you. Instead of trying to explain yourself to them, just be there in a loving way with them. When you meet for Christmas or Thanksgiving and you hear all the judgments coming at you from them, you should have. Why don't you look where it's taken you? Look at your sister, she married a millionaire. And you and you are into that weird kind of meditation stuff that's not getting you anywhere. Whatever judgments come say, okay, I know that this is what you think and feel, and I think and feel differently. That's all. So you don't need to justify accepting people's limitations and suddenly realizing whether or not your father, your mother, your sister, your brother, or anybody else close to you accepts you for who you are is really not. You become free of the need to be accepted. But you can nevertheless have a deeper connection. Keep that deeper connection and connectedness with them. It.