My brother is still teaching me about love

When my little brother left, everything froze.

Time, body, thought.

I had no more points of reference. Just a shattered heart and an absent presence, everywhere.

In the days that followed, I experienced what many know but few dare to speak of: this dizzying feeling of emptiness, this sensation that a piece of me had been torn away, as if the story had no right to end this way. There was so much unfinished business. So much love, so many projects, so many silences to fill.

And yet, in the midst of this dull pain, an inner voice, soft, almost whispered, called me back to another space.

Not that of logic. Not that of answers.

But that of memory.

The memory of who I am, who my brother is, what we shared… is not over.

And above all, was not born into this world.

My brother IS the Love with which I love him.

This is where, more than ever, I looked for answers in A Course in Miracles .

And the very first thing I did when I heard he was leaving was call my friend and teacher.

I think I will always remember what he said to me at that moment, with a clarity that pierced me:

“You didn't call me to give you small talk. Stop thinking your little brother is gone. Stop thinking you're separated. And you'll hear it, you'll feel it more and more.”

These words were not a refusal of pain, but an invitation not to drown in it.

To recognize that at the very heart of grief, there is another perspective, another world.

A world where Love knows neither distance nor absence.

A world where who we are can never be taken away.

And at that moment, a crack opened in my perception.

As if, in the midst of chaos, a gap of light came to show me a way out.

Not an exit into denial, but into memory.

The memory of what is real.

What is called "the end" is not what I thought it would be.

One of the most radical teachings of the Course says this:

“Death is the thought underlying all fear.”

And again:

“Death does not exist. The Son of God is free.”

I struggled with this idea internally for a long time.

How can I say that nothing is over, when I can no longer touch, call, or hear the one I love?

How can we not feel this as a denial, even violence?

But little by little, through the tears, through the moments of deep silence, I understood.

What we call “death” is not a divine act. It is a perception, a symbol within a dream.

It's the idea that something real can be destroyed.

It is the belief that love is fragile, temporal, dependent on the world.

And what I feel, deep down, is that the love between my brother and me has not been reduced to nothing.

He is here.

It pulses differently. It circulates elsewhere.

But he never stopped.

Forgiveness as a return to truth

Forgiveness is not a response to an offense. It is not a moral act, nor a spiritual obligation.

It's an opening.

A recognition that what I perceive as painful always comes from my own interpretation, and that this interpretation can be put down.

Forgiveness, as taught in A Course in Miracles , doesn't erase the pain all at once, but it begins where I stop believing that the pain says anything true about who I am, or who the other is.

He does not justify, he does not deny. He disarms.

It disarms the ego that feeds on loss, injustice, and rupture, to bring me back to that inner place where there is no separation.

To forgive, in this context, is not to "forgive death," but to recognize that what this absence seemed to signify, the end, the break, is not real.

The temptation of guilt

In this process, one of the most persistent voices has been that of guilt.

It has crept in everywhere: in silences, in past decisions, in medical diagnoses, in heredity.

She pointed the finger at the doctors, the family, him, me.

She sought to attribute fault, as if giving meaning necessarily required condemnation.

But A Course in Miracles teaches that guilt is the root of all suffering .

And that it is never justified.

Guilt is an invention of the ego to maintain the belief in separation: if there is fault, there is judgment; if there is judgment, there is distance.

What the Course showed me with infinite tenderness is that no one is guilty of dreaming .

My brother isn't.

I am not.

Nobody is.

The only true forgiveness then consists in giving up looking for a cause in the world , and returning to the Spirit, where no fault has ever been committed.

Where there is only forgotten innocence, ready to be recognized.

And then, anger against God

In the days following this brutal announcement, I received numerous messages, heartbroken calls, voices full of compassion, but also of distress. And among them, this question came up again and again, almost word for word:

"But what have we done to God to deserve this?"

“Why did God allow such a young, luminous being to leave like this?”

I heard this pain, this anger that seeks a target, this human attempt to make the incomprehensible more bearable by pointing to a culprit, even a divine one.

But I couldn't help feeling that behind this question, it wasn't really God who was being attacked, it was confusion.

It was the echo of a world that taught us to believe that God judges, that He punishes, that He takes and that He decides.

A God in the image of our fear.

But A Course in Miracles states something else. It says:

"God does not know death."

“He did not create a world of suffering, separation, or end.”

And above all:

“Love has forgotten no one.”

This sentence has become a landmark for me. An anchor.

There is no forgetting in the mind of God.

There is no abandonment, no mistake, no tragedy inflicted from above.

There is only the memory of a perfect love, always present, even when we no longer have access to it from our wounded perception.

If God did not create this world as we perceive it, then the suffering we see in it cannot come from Him.

It comes from a sleeping mind, from a dream of separation that we have collectively chosen.

But God does not dream. He does not take anything away. He does not judge us for our pain or our anger. He does not ask us to be calm or wise. He welcomes us in every state.

And in my own journey, I had to recognize that I too, sometimes, felt this dull revolt:

Why? Why him? Why now?

And then I remembered: God didn't take my brother away from me.

God didn't take anything away from me.

It is my perception of the world, of the body, of time and of love that makes me believe that we can lose.

So no, God did not want that.

But He can use it.

He can, through what I thought was a tragedy, show me another way.

A path of memory. A path of return.

Not a God who gives and takes away, but a God who reminds us that nothing has been lost .

A God who, at the height of my pain, does not say to me, "It's good," but, "I am with you. Even here. Even in your cry."

And maybe that, in the end, is the real miracle:

When anger no longer needs a target, but becomes a door.

A door to a prayer that no longer asks, “Why did you do that?”

But who slowly begins to say:

“Help me see beyond.”

He is in us, as we are in him, because in love there is neither outside nor inside, only the unity that never separates.

The silent lesson of a seemingly ordinary brother, yet such a great master.

I believe that another of the great gifts my brother left me is this questioning.

Because, you see, my little brother wasn't spiritual.

No grand theories. No speeches. No meditations. No temples.

And naturally, I asked myself:

What will happen to him?

Since in appearance, he had not walked towards God (Towards Love) at least consciously?

Because my mind, still attached to forms, sought to understand, to classify, to judge what would be “sufficient” or not, what was “accomplished” or not.

And yet... in those days after, I was shown how much he was goodness incarnate , how much he never judged anyone , how much he saw love in everyone, even where others saw faults, limitations, past stories.

And that really shook me.

Because, in my mind, I believed that those who “follow a spiritual path” were supposed to be the most awakened, the most advanced, the most practical.

But A Course in Miracles teaches that form matters little.

That content is everything.

That the only thing that matters is the intention behind our actions, our thoughts, our gestures.

That “love cannot be taught, it must be recognized.”

That “forgiveness simply sees beyond what the body’s eyes perceive, to see only innocence.”

And I believe that my brother gave me, through his simplicity, one of the greatest lessons in unconditional love.

He wasn't trying to be a good person.

He wasn't trying to be a "good brother," a "good friend," or a "good therapist."

He was just there, fully there, with an open heart, without defending an image, without a spiritual costume.

And the Course came to gently whisper to me that forgiveness is exactly that: not judging, accepting what is, as it is, without wanting to correct, without wanting to understand.

Perhaps he, without knowing it, was already experiencing what many spend their lives searching for.

Perhaps the open heart of a simple man is worth more than a thousand learned words.

And maybe it's me, again, who learns from him.

Welcoming pain without attachment

Yes it hurts

Kenneth Wapnick often said that it's not the pain that's the problem, it's what we do with the pain .

He also reiterated that we don't have to feel guilty about being in pain. That sadness, grief, and tears are not spiritual failures, but normal human experiences.

And that's what I felt with my whole being.

There was no immediate transcendence.

And it's still too early as I write these words,

There were sleepless nights, wordless sobs, days when I didn't even know if I wanted to "understand."

Just cry. Just walk. Just survive.

And I think it's important to honor that.

Grief, as Kenneth says, is not to be dismissed or spiritualized too quickly. It must be allowed to be what it is. A journey. A process. A slow loosening of the grip of attachment.

This is not incompatible with awakening.

It's just that pain doesn't mean anything in itself .

It only reveals what we held onto, what we believed to be the truth, a body, a history, a future, a visible presence.

And the Holy Spirit does not come to deny this pain, but to envelop it. He comes gently to teach us that what we thought we had said goodbye to… is still there, in another form.

Kenneth also added that we do not heal by attacking pain, but by looking at it gently .

So that's what I'm learning to do.

To look at this suffering, not as an enemy, but as a sister lost in the dream.

Tell him: I see you. I won't silence you. But I won't believe you blindly anymore either.

What my brother taught me when he left

He taught me humility.

He taught me that I can't control anything. That I can't save anyone.

And that it is not a failure.

He taught me that life is not measured by its duration, nor by what we accomplish, but by the love we have been able to offer, even in silence.

He taught me that the bond doesn't die.

That it can even become purer, more vast, when we stop waiting for a form to recognize it.

He taught me to pray without words.

To feel without searching.

And maybe one day I will remember without suffering.

And now ?

I didn't find all the answers.

Besides, it may be too early to write this article, but it doesn't matter.

It will take time, but I have faith in what cannot be explained.

Somewhere inside me:

I know I haven't lost anything,

I know my brother is there, in another way,

I know that forgiveness is the only door that opens to peace.

And every day, I choose to open that door a little wider.

sometimes gently,

sometimes trembling

but always with the impulse to love beyond forms.

Because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about:

Remind our mind that it is not separate.

And that nothing real can be threatened .

To you, my brother… I love you more than words can ever say

To all who are learning to see beyond the veil.