Q: My father died last year and since then my mother has become very unhappy and dependent on me. I’m with her a lot. I often feel her unhappiness and it makes me physically ill.
John: She doesn’t need you. She needs to be in her heart, and she is not in her heart. That’s why she’s not happy.
Q: Yes. Is it wrong to feel her so much? What can I do?
John: You can see her and just enjoy her, regardless of how miserable she is. Just enjoy her despite her self. If she draws your attention to her self, you can in a very sweet, kind way, show that you don’t really have much interest in her self, but you’re really interested in her.
She has become lost in her self. She needs to return to her heart.
Q: Yes, that sounds so good but I’m afraid that I will still get pulled into all of her difficulties.
John: Then you have to be really clear that you’re not interested in her stories. You’re not interested in why she’s miserable or why she’s having a hard time, because then she’s dragging you into the life of her miserable self.
She doesn’t need to be miserable just because her self is in difficulty. She doesn’t have one good reason to be miserable. She might have many reasons for the difficulties that she’s in, but she has no good reason to be miserable. She’s able to simply be in her heart, in the midst of the difficulties in her self.
Q: I feel badly because she doesn’t know this.
John: Why feel bad that she doesn’t know this when you can enjoy her, and you can tell her? She doesn’t need to accept, see or understand it, but you can tell her.
Q: Yes, I will do that.
John: But if you tell her without enjoying her, then you’ll be feeding the misery in her self. If you don’t see her, despite her self, then telling her something isn’t going to bring her back. And it’s important for you that she doesn’t need you.
Q: Yes, this is really very important.
John: As soon as you believe she needs you, then you can’t see her. If you believe she needs you, you see her self, the difficulty her self is in, and you can’t see her.
