Dear marco,

It is very nice to see you as a family person wanting to have all relationships close and loving towards each other.
At certain times things are beyond our control and this may always not be possible.

Getting straight to the point there were things like sharing of keys and intrusion of your privacy… but that was THEN and this is NOW. Now you have a different house and as you said you are living a happy family life within yourselves…which is really a great thing and something that many people crave for.

– you have informed your parents that you do not accept the conditions imposed
– your sisters won’t visit you
– you cannot visit them without your wife
– your wife has said she doesn’t mind if you visit your sisters but you can’t visit them with any happiness knowing how they are hating your wife
– the children who used to mix, no longer see each other and the pressure on you is growing day by day
– your sisters are accusing you of breaking family relations because you won’t visit them

“I would like to find a way to get past this issue
…for the sake of my parents and my own soul, reconciliation I must find”

– Your sister is not willing to make any amendments in their decision.
– Your wife has already made an adjustment by accommodating to the situation.
– Your parents cannot do anything about the situation as it is not directly in their hands.
– Your sisters’ husbands are not actively looking into this matter.

The only way of what you asked “to get past the issue”, the only way “to find reconciliation” is YOU.

In any conflict, only a “win-win” situation for everyone can subside the strain in the situation.
But for this, adjustments, change of belief systems, change of mindset need to be made.
As seen above, all others are not willing to make this adjustment.
So can you? Can you break the mental position of thinking that it not fair to visit your sister’s place. More below.

Excerpt: The Power of Now ~Eckhart Tolle.

“Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating, or unconscious, but all this is irrelevant. Whether your thoughts and emotions about this situation are justified or not makes no difference. The fact is that you are resisting what is. You are making the present
moment into an enemy. You are creating unhappiness, conflict between the inner and the outer. Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution”

“How can you handle this negativity?
By dropping it. How do you drop a piece of hot coal that you are holding in your hand?
How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that you are carrying? By recognizing that you don’t want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it.”

Why not just visit your sisters to remain in touch. Without much negativity about anything. Keeping your inner space clear. Inner peace (or peace of mind) refers to a state of being mentally at peace, with enough knowledge and understanding of the situation inspite of its downsides and keeping oneself strong in the face of discord or stress.

Drop your unhappiness that you cannot visit them. It is they who are hating your wife. It is their problem. So drop the burning coal and become internally free of the situation.
You do this without much reactivity and without much resistance towards your sisters. You still do the interactions with them with peace, love and harmony.

There may still be situations that may come to provoke you. Your sisters may find chances to intentionally talk about your wife. You be non-resistant. How does it really matter when someone says something wrong. If you say I am a mad person, how will it matter to me. I know I am not. But if I believe you then I truly am. If in future something becomes truly unbearable and intolerable, then that will be handled at that stage. That will be THEN, this is NOW. You be in the NOW.

During any interactions – do not use any word to speak against your sister, against your wife or even against yourself. Simply use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love and remain in yourself.

Have no negativity about any person, situation or event.

By doing this you will have answers to both of them in the title of your thread- family as well as wife.

While you keep doing this you will soon find that life circumstances will keep changing. In due course of time all will get busy in their own lives or in the challenges and routines of their own lives. Things do not remain the same. Impermanence is a law of life.

The only bitterness in the relationship now remains between your sisters and your wife. But is this something new? This was always there. Wasn’t it? You simply made certain adjustments for everyone’s benefit and all things would be just the way they were. Regarding the ill feelings from your sisters towards your wife – let it remain as it is. Let it be handled by Life itself when/if it wants to. You continue to interact with your sisters and enjoy your happy loving family life with your wife and children.

This really does not mean that you are not loving your wife. This in fact means that you love your wife very much and hence are not involving her in a situation where she will not be treated well.

Of course have a genuine, loving talk with your wife as to why you are enforced to do this (for the goodness of the situation) and that you are really thankful and grateful to her for being supportive. Mention to her that your love towards her has increased even more because of this situation. Along with mentioning, also show that love.

If you are cutting the relationship with your sisters you are going to estrange the relationship even more between several people – parents, sisters, wife, children, and many others involved. Who knows – think of the “hatredness” their children may have while they interact with your children when they are grown ups. Think of the quality of relationships between your children’s wives and their children’s wives, then between your children’s children and their children’s children and all of other family members involved. Then friends of family members also start to see them in the same darkness because of what they may have heard.

This is how hatred keeps on multiplying in this world.

See to it that you are not cutting the bonds of every single relationship because of someone else’s ill behaviour whereas you can still be accommodating and loving towards everyone, including your wife, inspite of all the difficulties in the relationships.

Accept the imperfections of this strained relationship.

“Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Love & blessings,

VJ

* didn’t get submitted correctly….

Dear marco:

Yes, you should focus on your own wife and children. Absolutely, I have no doubt.

If you accommodate your sisters’ cruelty, you will be guilty of a wrongdoing. Your guilt will be valid.

If you continue to not visit your sister/s, you will continue to feel guilty, but this guilt will not be based on a wrongdoing. It will not be valid guilt. I know how it is to feel this kind of guilt, it feels real even though intellectually I know it is not valid. It is likely to continue to feel real, distressing, uncomfortable. One day maybe your guilt will catch on to reality and you will realize, on the emotional level, that you are not guilty.

What do you accommodate: the valid guilt or the invalid guilt, is the question.

Notes:

* Your sisters complaining about your wife being disrespectful… while they use slurs.

* The cultural attitude you described regarding a daughter in law explains why your wife has been a convenient target to express hostilities that far predate your wife appearing in their lives, hostilities that have nothing to do with your wife.

* Regarding the value of blood: without respect there is no value to any relationship, blood or not. No value, none whatsoever.

anita

Hi marco,

Your comments in the latest response to me has taken the depth of the situation into a different dimension.

I re-read your original post and found the only issue of bitterness towards your wife and that other things were fine including their relationship with you.

I am sorry to bring the excerpts of the post again but that is only for the sake of the explanation.

“my two Sisters, have a real issue with my wife”
“My sisters have got an impression that my wife was not as respectful”
“lot of slurs and old complaints were made about my wife”
“10 years of underlying issues between my wife and sisters blew up again”
“sisters had now said that she did not want any future relationship with my wife” and she was no longer permitted to visit them”
“if I wanted to visit my sisters with my children that would be fine”
“My sisters are adamant my wife is a rotten apple”
“my sisters would no longer be visiting my house because of my wife”
“my sisters want to cut my wife out of the family”

But now it is seen that-
“I think they have bitterness towards me also and my wife is the easier target to cause me pain “

All of the questions at the end of your post are coming from the mind and are still nothing about your NOW. But the NOW I was referring to was to bring acceptance of the present moment which means to be in total internal alignment to the situation. This does not necessarily mean inaction. It was about – Accept and then act in accordance to what is required to the situation. Also, at times there is not much you can do about the situation externally, but requires only to be internally free. More on this below.

“At some point, I have to say enough! this is not acceptable, these conditions are not acceptable and draw a line in the sand”

But now that as you say you have already taken the required action several times and that you find your NOW unbearable and intolerable, I will be leaving with you a “3 choice formula” for this situation. This is not designed by me but coming from master Eckhart. This can be used not only in this but also in any other challenging situation in our daily lives.

I can easily make you feel “relieved and contented” by giving you permission by telling you to immediately cut the ties with your sisters. But I am not going to do that since I too come from a country (India) where significance to family and all others connected to the family are given utmost importance. And also because life doesn’t work that way – ie; you have a painful situation – simply get out of that. Life will haunt you with the same situation if it has to. So in most cases it is better to be in internal acceptance or alignment of the situation, even if you are still in it or have come out of it. (Even if you have come out of it and are still having negativity, resentment about all those people involved then chances are you may come across another such situation or the same one may give more troubles. Hence the externals change after the internals and not the other way round)

Since it is only YOU who is aware of all corners of the situation only you have to make this decision. But ultimately, whatever option you choose, it is going to be on the similar lines of what I have already suggested to you in the earlier post – Acceptance, non-negativity, non-resistance, non-judgmental, compassion, love, forgiveness, truth, harmony, non-reactivity, being in the HERE & NOW. How these can be applied to the situation and still effectively work towards the situation? – more on that below.

————————————————————————————————————–
Wherever you are, be there totally.
If you find “here and now” intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options:
i. Change the situation:
Speak up or do something that will bring about a change in the situation

OR

ii. Remove yourself from the situation

OR

iii. Accept it totally

All else is madness

If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now.
Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear. Do not pollute your beautiful, radiant inner Being nor the Earth with negativity. Do not give unhappiness in any form whatsoever a dwelling place inside you.

If you take any action – leaving or changing your situation – drop the negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity.
Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.

Or is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity.

If your overall situation is unsatisfactory or unpleasant, (mentally) separate out this instant and surrender to what is. That’s the flashlight cutting through the fog. Your state of consciousness then ceases to be controlled by external conditions. You are no longer coming from reaction and resistance. Then look at the specifics of the situation. Ask yourself, “Is there anything I can do to change the situation, improve it, or remove myself from it?” If so, you take appropriate action. Focus not on the 100 things that you will or may have to do at some future time but on the one thing that you can do now. This doesn’t mean you should not do any planning. It may well be that planning is the one thing you can do now. But make sure you don’t start to run “mental movies,” project yourself into the future, and so lose the Now. Any action you take may not bear fruit immediately. Until it does – do not resist what is. If there is no action you can take, and you cannot remove yourself from the situation either, then use the situation to make you go more deeply into surrender, more deeply into the Now, more deeply into Being. When you enter this timeless dimension of the present, change often comes about in strange ways without the need for a great deal of doing on your part. Life becomes helpful and cooperative. If inner factors such as fear, guilt, or inertia prevented you from
taking action, they will dissolve in the light of your conscious presence.

If you cannot surrender, take action immediately. Speak up or do something to bring about a change in the situation – or remove yourself from it. If you cannot take action, for example if you are in prison, then you have two choices left: resistance or surrender. Bondage or inner freedom from external conditions. Suffering or inner peace.

—————————————————————————————–

Based on your situation, I have excerpted the above contents that may exactly be relevant to you. Below are just a few pointers based on my understanding of the situation. So these are just examples. Do not take them in the literal sense and work it out as per your understanding and maturity of the situation.

i. Change the situation: Speak up or do something that will bring about a change in the situation

– you bring this to the table and speak to your sister’s husbands
– or you directly speak with your sisters
– or you speak to a common friend
– or discuss the situation with a relationship counsellor, either online or offline)
– if there are still see chances convince your parents to speak to your sisters
– note that this option is not only about “speaking up” but also says “take action” or “do something” – so think out what that can be
– or see even if there something to at least improve the situation

OR

ii. Remove yourself from the situation

– this can involve not visiting them
– or may be visiting them only on certain very important family functions or gathering
– stay only in touch via phone, or via other interaction modes
– you can remove yourself from this situation by moving out to another city by you having to look for another job where there will be no question of meeting one another. Again you can still remain in touch with all of them but in a non-resistive way (in which case you will accept their imperfections and apply option 3).
In case, it may be possible for you to change your job, but perhaps the changing of the kids’ schools may not be easy. Again in that case make your job change the priority, apply acceptance (no. 3) that yes it is going to be difficult towards changing the kids schools, but will have to do it.
Then people may stop you from relocating to another place, but you will have to think about it beforehand and even fake or make up a few things (like there are problems started in this job, there are no other jobs suitable for me in this city, etc.) just for the goodness of the situation by applying no 3.

[As I said these can be applied by any one and in any other situation of our life, so this option also includes things like separation or divorce but is not applicable to your situation. This may be applicable to someone who is having a painful relationship with their partner and the only option now left is to part ways.]

This may not always involve extreme removal like divorce but also applicable in situations where one has an argument with someone and walking away is the best option in which case that person is removing her/him self out of the situation.

OR

iii. Accept it totally
– the last option applies when you are unable to go with options 1 and 2, when all of your resources are over and you absolutely have nothing else to do. But remember this is about accepting your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance.

———————————————————————————————-

At any time don’t rush to find an answer to the choices.
Sit down, Contemplate, Meditate on each of the 3 points.

Also do not stay adamant or stick to one of the options all throughout the life of the strained situation.
For example; Right now you chose No. 1 (speak up to change the situation) Speak to your sister’s husbands – then their husbands come up with something different – you may not like it fully but is somewhat better and requires slight acceptance from you – then in that case you choose No 3. (Accepting it fully)

Be very much noted that the “speak up” above is not in a negative sense of getting up and quarreling with whoever you speak to. It involves non-resistive, non-negative discussion.

It involves surrendered action.

Take care buddy.

~VJ

Hi marco,

How have you been doing.

You asked me for my thoughts and I have provided you my inputs (two posts above).

What is your opinion on that? Also, if you have any other option than the 3 above then please let me also know and if that sounds good to me that can be added to the 3 options suggested by spiritual master Eckhart Tolle in dealing with any difficult situation.

It would be nice to hear from you that in some way or the other you have been able to, at least, strive towards the betterment of your situation.

Warm Regards,

VJ