'Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.'

LightWorker11
Nov 3 · 4 min read

My cousin brother and I were born two months apart in a joint family. Till the age of five, we all lived in one house. He was my partner in crime, my brother from another mother, my soul twin. We were like two peas in a pod.

When I went through a major heartbreak about 9 years ago, he was the only one who didn't make me feel bad about myself or preach to me. He would come home often, and we'd just watch funny videos together. He'd share his favourite songs with me and take me on drives so I could change my mood. He was my only friend through it all.

About seven years ago, he began dating someone. Intellectually, I was happy for him, but experientially, I struggled with this situation. I didn't want to share my only friend with anyone else. I didn't want to be the only single person in the world. I didn't want to feel abandoned yet again.

I resisted this new equation very much. I felt so much negativity that it reflected in my behaviour and crept into all our lives. My relationship with my brother's partner was ruined even before we could establish one. Everyone else was concerned about my behaviour and I held her responsible for my feelings. About a year and a half ago, my life came to a standstill. I had wrecked the situation to a point where it appeared beyond repair. My relationship with my brother was in turmoil and we had a major showdown. We stopped communicating entirely and I refused to accept responsibility for anything.

Everything that happens to us, we attract it through our thoughts. It is easy to blame the other person for how a relationship is going, but the truth is that no difficult relationship would ever show up in our lives if we did not send out difficult thoughts to begin with. It is not easy to accept this, and one's ego rears its ugly head precisely at the moment when you are working on accepting responsibility for everything in your life.

I had only been sending out negativity in this area of my life, and it was hardly surprising that my relationships were not working well. I spent the alone time I had in Canada reflecting on every area of my life and identifying the patterns that had shown up because of my own thoughts.

I took very long to realize that I had destroyed my own relationships, mostly because my ego was afraid of the guilt and regret that would overwhelm me when I did. But I did. I allowed waves of grief to be shaken out of my body with every bout of racking sobs. I reluctantly gave myself the permission to ask for my own forgiveness and then receive it with grace before I could even venture into asking it from others.

After several false starts and countless discarded drafts, I wrote my brother a big letter, apologizing for the last seven years, acknowledging the impact my actions had had, and asking for the possibility of a renewed relationship.

However, I also knew that being fixated on a certain outcome with resistance to all others wouldn't be in the flow of the universe. Even though we can send out positive thoughts, we cannot decide for another person. I didn't know, after all that had happened, if my apology would make a difference to my relationship with my brother and his partner. But I knew that as long as I felt any shred of negativity, nothing would change.

Writing to his partner was even more difficult. She had been the most affected in this whole situation and I didn't even know how to form the words. So I wrote a gratitude exercise for her, thanking her for 10 things I felt deeply grateful for. While writing the exercise, I realized I had missed out on having a relationship with someone I felt so much love for, but felt ecstatic for feeling so much love for her. I finished the exercise with 'Thank you, thank you, thank you for the perfect resolution'. I didn't send it to her, but I surrendered to the universe the task of finding the perfect resolution for us. I opened my heart to accepting whatever would be in our highest good. I respected if she chose not to have me in her life while hoping that it wasn't too late to begin a new relationship with her.

Five days after I did the exercise, we met, hugged, cried, and I could feel the universe smiling at us. Today, we are in touch almost daily, developing a beautiful relationship and talking more than I talk to my brother, with whom I just picked up where we left off seven years ago, back into our peapod.

"Love is the most powerful force in the universe and we have the extraordinary ability to give and receive it." - Tim A. Ewell

    LightWorker11

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    Sharing my understanding of love and life.