That understanding was one-dimensional, however, because it was only mental. It had no feeling behind it to give it reality beyond just an abstraction, a shallow intellectual concept. But in the flow of unconditional love, meeting my brother heart to heart and soul to soul, I was experiencing a far deeper perception and an ocean of feelings--my brother’s feelings. They were only too real to me now. These emotions flooded me with the multilevel sensation of the near crippling pain and loneliness he had experienced during his childhood.

At long last, I knew why and how my brother could have behaved the way he did. I finally was able to see that rage, excruciating pain, and isolation had formed my brother’s emotional experiences as a child. I became aware that he truly did not know any better, so he vented his rage on a baby sister he hadn't wanted anyway. I could perceive that in his own pain and desolation, he returned the same to me out of confused ignorance, not deliberate, calculated malice. I understood that he acted out of his own overwhelming need and limitations. And I also could feel that afterward, my brother experienced horrendous guilt at having played a part in something so dangerous to his sister. His guilt and my anger became a wall between us, making our conscious lifelong relationship strained and tenuous.

The kicker in all of this: my brother didn't have a clue as to why he had acted the way he did toward this little girl. He was as ignorant of self as I was until that point. The wonder was that he had managed to grow up functional.

After walking for a brief time in his emotional and spiritual shoes, I felt my anger with my brother start to subside. His pain deeply saddened me, although with Jana’s help I recognized that I was not the cause of his pain, nor was I responsible for resolving it for him. That would have to be his choice.

I also finally obtained answers to my questions that made sense to me uniquely, if to no one else. With those answers, I chose not to stay angry with my brother anymore. It was not difficult at all for me to make this new decision, thanks to the profound new insights about my brother and myself that I received through the flow of unconditional love.

Some might argue that as a toddler, I was too young to recognize the danger of that old refrigerator and that my brother was “old enough to have known better.” I regard this as a limited, judgment-based assumption. He truly did not know better and that love-flow enabled me to experience his lack of awareness in this area. My brother was in far too much pain to be able to assess the consequences of such an act and his age didn't matter. Moreover, he may have cajoled me into hiding in that old refrigerator, but I was the one who shut the door and then couldn't get it open again. Big mistake, as my guides pointed out to me very gently.

I also recognized in that love-flow that I made this mistake partly because I needed and wanted very much to win my big brother's approval. So I did my best to join whole-heartedly in the game. A need for outside acceptance turned out to be my issue as well as his. The love-flow revealed not just my brother to me, but me to myself, so that I was able to become much more aware of my own motivations. I grew immensely in self-understanding in just a few brief minutes.

My choice to let go of my anger instantaneously freed me to move beyond blame, even while acknowledging my emotions as well as my legitimate right to have felt my anger and resentment. Jana encouraged me to tell my brother out loud exactly what I had experienced while trapped in that refrigerator, how painful it was physically, and how humiliated, terrified, hurt, and rejected I had felt.

To his great credit, my brother paid close attention, because he also desired to learn and grow. After all, he was free at any point to vacate the session, but he chose to remain.

Once I granted that little girl the dignity of full and open expression of her feelings, Jana could feel another shift in my emotions.

“Do you want to forgive your brother?” Jana asked.

“Oh yes.”

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