An Interesting Encounter With My Brother

(I originally drafted this story a couple of weeks ago, but am just now posting it. Hence "tonight" refers to a fortnight ago.)

I had originally stumbled across this site a few weeks ago while I was researching relationships between psychic sensitivity and migraines (my own rather crippling ones). In the process, I found one story calling for my help and some words of comfort in my heart, and then another... By the time I had responded to thirty souls, I decided that it was probably about time to post my own story.

I have seldom thought of myself as psychic - more as spiritually oriented - and frequently didn't even think about that much, as I was pretty much dealing with things on the run processing the suicidal, homicidal, substance-oriented, violent, and frequently psychotic issues intrinsic to my line of work.

However, despite the battle ration nature of my spirituality, it has always been a definitive part of me. Beginning with an adolescent fascination with ESP and the occult (and a few scrapes with big bad things that brought home the need for spiritual grounding), on through really amazing healing experiences (both my own and my clients') through a range of holistic modalities ranging from massage through shamanic work, and finally as a social worker on the marrow-naked front-lines...things beyond the physical were central both to my work and my own well-being. Precognition, empathy, telepathy, channeling, medical intuition spiritual healing, remote viewing, communion with spirits... And a few things that I can't put words to... You name it, they were just part of my metabolism every night and day, at least keeping me afloat and blessing my work, more than once saving my life and the lives of others.

I have had a few challenges, and over the last few years my losses have included my wife to her own demons, my career to a choice to put a child's safety above politics, the use of my leg for a few months) to a chainsaw accident when I fell back upon my old tree climbing trade, and, predictably enough, all of the conventional trappings of dignity, security, and comfort that go hand in hand with financial well-being.

These and a few other events, piling up as they did, served to overwhelm me just a tad. The comfort that I received from Spirit and my calling to bring light to this world were all that kept me alive.

In the process of working night jobs, going to grad school to start a new career, and later teaching and starting a business while going to school, along with managing a number of other personal affairs that I'll skip over here, my exhaustion and overwhelm pretty much eclipsed my spiritual self-care.

A little over a month ago, just before I finished my academic program, my brother died.

So here, I suppose, is where the immediate event for my "psychic story" begins.

A few words about my brother and our relationship are probably in order. My brother (nine years my senior) chose a lonely, cynical, violent path in his attempts to achieve manhood early in life. My father traveled, my mother was emotionally unstable, and I was frequently alone with my brother and abused in every way. Yet he seems to have seen in me a strength that he could never break, and he seemed to hatefully respect the spiritual faith and grounding that I had, as much as he frequently tried to beat it out of me. He had a hatred for deceit, and was fierce in calling things as he saw them, albeit from the warped vision of his cynical woundeness.

A psychic told me a number of years ago that he saw me with an older brother who was very ill with not much time left, and that it was critical for me to be there for him. We had not been in touch at all for years. He had for some time been extremely miserable and self-absorbed in his life, doing brilliant work but horribly in debt, miserable in his marriage, and totally isolated. I began to call him every week, and, while a lot of the conversations were still far from civil on his end, a healing bond was built such as we had never been able to express in the earlier years. In the few most recent years, he stopped drinking and began over the last few months began to find great comfort in the church.

When he died, (rather abruptly and unexpectedly, ironically enough), I literally did not have time to process what, if anything, I was experiencing. Along with other things, I had work, finals, and a dramatic increase in chronic migraines to keep me busy. The best I could do was to send up a few prayers on the run.

The last week has been extremely rainy, and this has changed my routine. In my new "free time", I met this site. Since I started posting to this site, I have begun to meditate and journey again.

Tonight, I thought about my brother, honestly for the first time in a couple of days. I was suddenly struck by how spiritually bewildered he had been his entire life. And then he was there, in my living room.

It has been some time since I wrote the last paragraph. Rather emotional...

He was...well, he was vulnerable. He was confused. He really didn't know what was happening or what to do. He was, as he always has been, wanting to love me and in need of my love. We shared some words of love and forgiveness, including my apology for not being here for him over the last month. I am who I am largely due to what I learned from him, as mixed as the lessons may at times have been. I sure as truth can call a spade a spade, at any rate...

When we had finished our talk, I helped him to find the light, and watched him go. When I felt the final, joyful release, I laughed out loud.

No migraine tonight.

Stormtree

P.S. (Written just before posting this.) My brother just came into one of my dreams a few nights ago. A dark practitioner who had attempted to seduce me thirteen years ago (my rebuff won me a fairly fierce curse from a dark coven... But that is another story) had begun another attempt. He stormed in with his typical violent cynicism and hollered that this "hocus-pocus bu_____t") had to stop. It was only after awakening from this rude interruption that I realized just who my pseudo-succubus had been...