My Brother Sid, Part 5, My Shadow Side

I have wondered all along why I have had this so strong impulse to write about my brother Sid. I could only think it was to heal what was between my brother and me. Now I wonder what was between my brother and me. I cannot seem to get off the subject.

Since writing the previous four parts, I have had some needed insights.

All these years I have been thinking how much I loved my brother. Certainly, I was attached to him and to my memories of him, the happy and unhappy. Certainly, I did long for repair and a return to the golden days. But did I love my brother? Did I really? I thought I did. I loved the picture I once had of him. I loved how he was always there for me when he was. But did I love him when he was not?

Do I love my brother now? I think the feeling I hold in my heart is not love. A craving for what once was, yes, but love?

I remember there was an Indian master who said: “You love people only for their usefulness to you.�?

That seems so cynical, that we use people for our own ends. On the other hand, this may be another way to say we love those we love for how they make us feel. That’s not so bad. It must be that how they make us feel is their basic usefulness to us.

But does the reverse mean that when those we love no longer fill our perceived needs – we drop them from our hearts?

I have liked to think I loved my brother deeply, and that he once loved me. Now I wonder. We played certain roles of big brother, baby sister, and so long as we played these particular roles, I was happy. Thus the true villain that entered was my inability to let go of these roles.

When Sid no longer played the role I was sure he was supposed to play (by some kind of divine decree and my will) then he no longer could be the backdrop for my role as adoring sister. How I wanted to be adoring sister.

When I used to work with people in job search, a computer programmer client I once had said a very wise thing. He said that whenever there was a bug in the program he was working on, the bug was really in him. When he solved the bug in himself, the bug in the program disappeared.

God in Heavenletters™ has said often enough that everyone we meet is ourself. Just on February 18, the day I’m writing this down, Danilo posted a helpful quote on the forum from #2642, The Circling Presence of Love. The quote was: “You are always looking into a mirror of your self.”

This leads me to think that the bug in my brother was really in me. The uncaringness I saw in my brother was my own. His hardness of heart was my own. All these years, my heart has not been warm meltingness for my brother. My heart held hurt. I judged my brother and found him wanting. He had to be the brother I wanted him to be, or I was unable to love him, and so my heart grew cold, and I blamed him for how I felt. Now I can see that I loved my brother only so far, and I could go no further. How I hung on.

Moses said to Pharoah. �?Let my people go.�? Finally, Pharoah did.

Now I have to let the controlling Pharoah within me let my brother go. I have to relinquish my brother Sid. I have to say goodbye. I have to say:

“Sid, we met once in sweetness, and then we parted, you to your good, and I to mine. Thank you and bless you for what you once meant to me. It was great. You were a brother like no other. No one could take your place. You couldn’t even take your place.

“And I could not let you go. I was not forgiving. I made you the bad guy. I had no right. I understand now that forgiving isn’t about saying I’m sorry, although I am sorry. It is about being open rather than closed. Now I cut the threads that were never mine to sew, and you are once and finally free of me.

“God would say that we never existed, that it was all story, and that beneath the story, we do love forever. May it be so.”

Posted by Gloria on February 20th, 2008 under these topics
Personal Development, Family Stories, Forgiveness, Purely Personal, Heaven Letters, Godwriting Journal

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7 Replies

Reply from Charles Fines on February 20, 2008

Gloria, these family stories would at first glance seem of most benefit to you. Certainly they are also of benefit to those of us who are reading them. May I suggest that they have benefitted Sid as well in a very real and tangible way where he is on the other side, and that on one level or another he knows and appreciates this.

Reply from Carol Maurer on February 20, 2008

God and you have got it pinned down now. I have been going through a similar process in my grieving for Larry. I know I am telling myself a story — a fantasy I made up — about why and how much I loved him and that the grief and depression I feel is because he is gone. Deep down I know that a sense of separation from God is the only real grief, and that when I correct THAT, all the rest of it, and all the rest of my relationships, fall into place and love and forgiveness are just THERE in fullness. But ego keeps on yammering away, just never gives up trying to get me to give in to despair. Today’s Heavenletter about enlightenment is certainly to the point. I keep pursuing enlightenment as if it’s just out of reach and thinking I probably need to come back for a ba-zillion more lifetimes to every “get” it. Then occasionally I’ll have that sense of recognition in which I so clearly experience that enlightenment is not a change at all, it’s just really hearing ONLY the one Voice. That Voice comes through so beautifully in Heavenletters, and in my own Godwriting, yet only when I can truly not let the ego voice distract me am I walking in the light, or enlightened.

Reply from Jo on February 20, 2008

Gloria - what wonderful closure you are putting on your Sid story here. There comes a time in telling our “old” stories when healing begins and no matter how many times we’ve told our old story(ies), this telling feels different. It’s as if we can feel the bonds breaking and the gates opening. We are letting go. Whatever we were holding onto no longer serves us in any way, and in that moment, when we know this with every fiber of our being, we say farewell to the old story and start writing our new story. Thanks for sharing this process and modeling the forgiveness that is guaranteed to heal in all ways.
Namaste, Angel!

Reply from Jack van Raders on February 20, 2008

Dear Gloria and others. Not always are the people we meet really ready for the meeting something does not click and sometimes I get angry till recently I have found that people I clashed with are just as nice as people I get on with they only have different vibrations that clash with mine. Now if I feel a difference I smile and be particular nice and I feel the others vibration coming in line with mine. If I am nice to all even if they are different all will come together. I say that quit awkward maybe our retired teacher gets my gist and can say it better. Love you all. Jack

Reply from Xenia on February 20, 2008

Dearest Gloria,
With much interest, did I read your “My Brother Sid�? stories and enjoyed your storytelling abilities. Now, your taking the responsibility especially moves me, and by the way you let go of your attachment to Sid. As Charles suggested, I benefit also from your ‘story’ and consequent release, having had “Sids�? in my life. Thank you for being an example.

You mentioned:
“When I used to work with people in job search, a computer programmer client I once had said a very wise thing. He said that whenever there was a bug in the program he was working on, the bug was really in him. When he solved the bug in himself, the bug in the program disappeared.�?

So it is.
Xenia

Reply from Jacqueline on February 21, 2008

Gloria,

This is truly a five-piece masterpiece of story telling and awakening.

Now I cut the threads that were never mine to sew. What a one-sentence truth we can all think about for our own lives.

How many times have I sewn up threads that bound something or someone in a cocoon of stagnation?

Thanks for the insights.
xo

Reply from One on February 24, 2008

The healing is in letting go. When we hold on, life experiences get tangled. There’s no clarity when life’s all knotted up.

Now that we have the understanding and that we accept; “There is no other”, will all relationships be as smooth as peanut butter? Yes, if we remember to remember.

This 5 part series is beautiful. I love that the series did not really end and that when it continues, the story will have gratitude in the next opening scene.

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