I received a note from a friend who was facing a difficult situation with her mother.
She wrote: “I have been dealing with my mother for over twenty years over her “man issues.” She has married another man who has taken all her money and has left her broke again. She will lose her house at the end of the month. Her debt is so high that there is nothing I can do for her. She has emotionally drained me and I no longer know what to do for her. Any suggestions?” – Signed, DB
I replied:
Dear DB,
My guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, remarked, “God gives us our relatives, but thank God we can choose our friends!”
We have this sentimental idea that our families should be places of warmth and comfort. But Yogananda said that sometimes we are drawn into families so we can, as he put it, “fight it out at close quarters.”
You have to assume that having such a woman as your mother is karmically appropriate. That the challenges she has put in front of you are just what you need. The beginning of freedom is to strongly reject the idea that you are being treated “unfairly.”
Don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean that your mother is behaving well, or that you have to go along with her craziness. You have to behave appropriately. And “appropriate” includes what is right for you.
Obviously, your mother does not want to hear your good advice. So it would be wise of you not to keep offering it. The point is to do that which will truly help her. If she isn’t ready to change, it will only exhaust and frustrate you to try to change her against her will.
Difficult as it may be to stand by and let her “crash and burn,” it may be the only way she will learn this hard lesson. Her soul is guiding her into these hard times so that she can learn the consequences of her wrong thinking.
My relationship with my parents bears no resemblance to what you have gone through, but there is a point where my experience may help you.
At the end of their lives, my parents suffered from physical and mental debilities. It was very hard to watch. Because of the understanding I have of life and death, I thought it would be fine to pray to Divine Mother to take them out of those bodies and into the astral world. Something about that prayer, though, felt wrong. Finally I realized I was motivated mostly by my own discomfort and inconvenience, and only secondarily was I thinking of what would be best for them.
Still, I was quite dismayed by their situation. I always want to be completely sincere in my prayers, so to say, “Do as You will,” just didn’t work for me. I had a lot of frustration and sadness that had to be included in my conversation with Divine Mother.
So I began to pray in this way: “I don’t know what You are trying to teach them, but whatever it is, You need to get on with it! They may be doing fine, but I am not! I don’t think I can go on much longer in this way. You have to give them the openness, the wisdom, and the courage to receive whatever it is You are trying to give them! And please, do it now!”
As you can see, I didn’t even try to make my side of the discussion “pretty.” Talking to God in this way about my parents completely changed my relationship to them. Their situation did not miraculously improve. In fact, it continued to deteriorate. But now the Divine Mother and I were working together for their spiritual salvation, and that made everything different.
I also found that this way of praying greatly increased my faith that everything was happening as it was meant to, and I didn’t have to try so hard to “fix” it. I could just love them, accept them, and let their karma flow as it had to. It didn’t bother me the way it did before.
I hope this helps. This is obviously a very difficult situation for you. I will keep you in my prayers.
Blessings,
Asha