Is it necessary to stop caring what people think? I tend to value what people think because, like me, they're living spiritual entities (even if in many cases they haven't woken up to their spirituality yet). But that doesn't mean that I act or respond emotionally to what they think of me or what I'm doing.

In part, that's because I know that in order to survive I position myself as a hypocrite. My work often involves marketing which in turn involves tinkering with people's minds to persuade them to engage (to buy things, say). Most people don't know what's going on. They're just puppets. But of course, this is against my higher principles. So I have to bear a certain guilt of not being true to myself. In another instance, I played music at a wedding recently (before the lockdown) while disapproving of this "big day" stuff which is a commercial enterprise, sucking vast amounts of money from a couple for a public show to legitimise their sharing a bed which they'e usually already done anyway. I still took my £250.

But without such things I'd starve and be unable to pay my bills. So it's always a bit of a compromise - and if people question my adherence to higher principles... they're probably right but I can't afford to care. In other respects (e.g., interacting with individuals) higher principles apply.
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