How Do I Stay Present with My Family Members?

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. 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 when 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 is possible. But for the time being, she is 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 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 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 us, 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. So my father was much more accepting. He accepted whatever I did. Usually he said okay. He was very unusual and eccentric. That's why they didn't get on my mom and my dad like total opposites. How they ever got married I don't understand. But he was eccentric. And even when I was in school age, he said, do you want to carry on going to school? I was 14. I said, no way, don't want to go to school. He said, okay, then don't. So in some ways he was quite enlightened. In other ways, still Burdened with a huge ego, depending which segment of his life he looked at. So that's parents. Now let's see if we have any of this is helpful to the questioner because the questioner is now in a dilemma. Going back to the mother is suffering. Staying away from the mother is suffering for other reasons, guilt and so on. So I hope this question has some provides a little bit of help that see that what she says is all part of her conditioning. It may be possible for you to go back to your mother one of these days or next year or the year after and be in a state of allowing her her limitations without feeling the need to respond to her criticism. Because she does it. Because otherwise you buy into the old record and you just play the duo. Her old record is combined with your old record of defending yourself or justifying yourself and then getting angry. And you play out the same scenario every time you go there, but you're there as a conscious presence. Allow her to be. Listen to her. You can either say nothing or you can say yes, I know that's how you think, but that's not how I feel. I feel differently. That's how it is. And then at first, perhaps go spend not too long with her, visit her for half an hour just to see what happens. And then the next visit can be a little bit longer. And then you may be able to meet her with compassion and awareness and allow her to be who she is temporarily in her conditioned form. And sometimes if you allow, then people change and sometimes they don't. But they are more likely to change if you bring an acceptance. If you no longer oppose a person who always putting out their old stuff towards you. If you don't, which is her egoic identity is continuously reasserted by her criticism of you. Her criticism of you. She doesn't know that. But her criticism of you asserts her sense of self, her false sense of self. Because every time she criticizes you, she is right. She is so right. And the ego loves nothing better than to be right. Because the more often you are right and the more right you are, the. The bigger the ego is. You feel more acknowledged in your sense of who you are. That's why she loves criticizing. But of course she doesn't know what she's doing. It's all unconscious. But if you recognize that this is what she's doing, then you realize that's not your mother at all. The true being of your mother is somewhere hiding underneath all that stuff. It's obscured by all the egoic conditioning. It's hiding somewhere there. But you strengthen the egoic patterns by opposing them. And every time you defend yourself against her criticism or you start getting angry and you shout back at her, whatever you do, you strengthen her patterns and you yourself fall into egoic patterns yourself. So you both become more unconscious. Because even your defense mechanisms, the way in which you defend yourself, is part of your egoic identity. The victim. You are the victim of your mother. There's the victim identity. That's. Yeah, but why don't you leave me alone? Can't you leave me alone? Okay, so don't feed her patterns, which means don't oppose them. It makes no difference what she says to who you are and what you do. You just. You listen. That's okay. That's what you think. That's fine. Or you can use the famous expression that originated in therapy sessions, I hear what you're saying. Or you can say, I hear you. I hear you. It's a nice saying. It's overdone a bit these days, perhaps. And people say, I hear you even when I'm not really hearing you. But if it's done rightly, if it comes from the right place, it's a wonderful thing to say. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. As long as not followed by, but you are wrong and I'm right. So I expect a progress report about your mother sometime next year, perhaps.