Eckhart Tolle On Parental Criticism

For 46 years, I've been constantly criticized, capital letters, by my mother for everything. I always felt fear in her presence. Trying to fulfill her expectations. I couldn't handle her criticism anymore. And three years ago I decided to stop any contact. But I suffer painful fear, guilt and hatred. I'm exhausted. Please help. Yes. So you've gone from one unpleasantness into another kind of unpleasantness. If you see that your mother, whatever your mother says, is totally conditioned by her mind. She's playing the same old record, cd. It's not records anymore, but nowadays, what do you play? The old download or whatever. What? Yeah. So to realize whatever comes out of her mouth is her mind regurgitating the conditioning throughout her lifetime. And perhaps being conditioned by her mother and so on in that way. So perhaps you've been thinking all those 46 years or whatever it was, that there was some meaning or significance to what your mother said. But basically it was just the noise of her mind. And she believed in it. She believed that whatever her mind repeated and repeated was the truth. There were certain patterns. She could never get beyond being the mother. She knew better, of course, when you were 4 or 5. But she couldn't let go of the belief that she knew better when you grew up. She couldn't let go of the role of mother. It continues to play in her. And so can you see that what she is doing is simply a replay of her mind without believing that it has any significance. And so approach her in a state of compassion. Because she's completely at the mercy of her conditioned mind. And you don't have to buy into what she says. Because of course, many people think, I really. I need my parents to understand me. I want my mother to understand me. And they feel very unhappy if they're not being understood. And it may be beyond the capability of your mother to understand you. And it certainly is beyond the present capability of your mother to understand you. So she is limited. You have to recognize her limitations in this lifetime. Maybe before she dies, she will go beyond. Before death, it's possible. But for the time being, she's very limited in her state of consciousness. And that is not to look down upon her, but to see it with compassion. That what she does is extremely repetitive. And not to believe your own mind when it tells you that she needs to understand you. I need my mother to understand me. Do you? Yes. Okay. What happens if your mother understood you? The mother says, now I really understand you. How you live. Oh, thank you. And now what? It's just another same present moment or before the mother says, what you do is all wrong. You shouldn't have done this. Why didn't you do that? Okay, same thing. It really makes no difference whether she understands you or doesn't understand, except that your mind is telling you that it does make a difference. You visit your mother, you have a cup of tea with her. She understands you. You go off and you look at the sky and you take a breath and it's the present moment. And then you remember, oh, my mother understands me. Or you go and have a cup of tea with her and she continues with her old patterns and say goodbye and go off and you look at the sky and take a breath and. And you say, oh, she's still in her old patterns. Well, that's how it is. Makes no difference unless you believe your mind when it tells you that it's dreadfully important that your mother should understand you. And that happens when you believe every thought that comes into your head and then the thought can make you unhappy. My mother doesn't understand me. And you feel something huge is missing in your life because your mother doesn't understand you. But that's because you believed in the thought that says that this should be when it isn't. And so you feel this enormous burden which is not really created by your mother. It's created by your own mind. So your mother is not to blame. You have to see that your own mind is creating this enormous burden. And when you see that, you can actually, you can let go and allow your mother to be who she is in that particular conditioned form right now and allow her. Her limitations. I had a similar experience with my mother, Although not as extreme as your experience, probably. My mother did not continuously criticize me, but she made it very clear that she was unhappy with the choices I made in life. And sometimes she implied it. She said, oh, well, you could have done so much, couldn't you? You had so many chances, didn't you? And with your intelligence, you could have done so much. And I was already 45. And she said, but you threw it away. Oh, well, let's not talk about it. And so allowing her. Her limitations with not, as I said, not looking down on her and say, you are so limited, but compassionately allowing her. That's. That's how she. That's her. Her mind, mental conditioning. She thinks in terms of a man needs a career, he needs to make money, he needs to get married and have children, and he needs to show that he's successful and all those things. And that didn't happen with her son. And she wasn't happy about that. So she couldn't go beyond the conditioning of her mind because that was conditioned by the particular culture she grew up in. And I could see that and it was fine. Now, a little earlier we talked about likes and dislikes. I had love for my mother because I could occasionally one could actually glimpse beyond her conditioned mind. And occasionally you could see her being shining through her eyes when she stopped talking. And that was just wonderful to see that aliveness in her eyes and the beingness in her. And even when she was talking, I could still sense it in the background. So I didn't have to react to her words. I can allow the words to pass through me like some sound of leaves in the wind without any particular meaning or significance. And that was fine. And yet talking about likes and dislikes, I didn't like being staying with her for more than a few days because it got too much. Although I loved her, my preference was after five or six days to say, okay, I have to go now. And she got used to that and it was fine. I would come once a year, sometimes twice a year, and visit for a few days. And that was surrender to that. My choice was not to say, okay, I'm going to now spend three months at my mom's place. But if that had been inevitable, if I had been forced for some external reasons to do that would have been fine too. I would have surrendered to it. But a few days was usually fine was enough. As you know, Ram Dass tells you that as the great test, whether you're enlightened, if you think you're enlightened, spend two weeks with your parents. And that's the great. That's the test. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation. Sa.