Tarot – Intuition I.Q. . Zen – Radical Dharma . Trance of Empowerment . NLP – Now Live on Purpose
For the freedom you deserve .. for the world we long for
What if the problems you faced
were not your own,
but were based on family loyalties
that you can now release?
Making the Invisible Visible
Family Constellations . Organizational Constellations . Systemic Constellations
If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire – Simone Weil
Systems, Family, and Organizational Constellations
Imagine you are standing in a room with three, or four, or more people who have agreed to represent elements of your life. They represent family members if you are doing a Family Constellation. They represent the chosen role you have designated for them if you are doing an Organizational Constellation for your organization or business; or they may simply represent aspects of your inner experience or life-path.
You direct your representatives to stand in an arrangement that expresses your current idea of how your ‘system ‘works, how the various elements are situated in relation to each other. Each representative has already agreed to trust their intuition and put aside any story they may have about you or the issues you are addressing. They may not even know who or what they are representing. Then they move as they are inspired to. Their positions may continue to change as the Constellation proceeds. The facilitator may ask them to speak, and to express their relationship to others in the system. You, as the client, simply observe. Later you may be brought in to interact with various representatives of your system under the guidance of the facilitator.
No two constellations are the same. Some last for a few minutes, some last for an hour. What is common to all Constellations is that any system changes when it is illuminated by an external representation of itself.
Interestingly, the participants in any constellation also experience change. Something shifts in the collective energetic field. Accessing hitherto unseen information has the effect of activating our capacity for new insight into our own life, whether we are the client, the representative, the facilitator, or an observer.
It may sound like magic, but it is only magic in the sense that it reveals how quickly, deeply, and effectively change can take place when we make the family, organizational, or personal system visible.
Everything’s connected, Everything’s alive, Everything matters, Everything is Relevant
When people ask us what informs our work we say, “Everything’s connected, everything’s alive, everything matters.”
We are informed by the truth that everything is part of an integrated whole: our thoughts, our experience, the people who cross our path, the stories we project onto our lives, the shadows we try to exclude, our fears, obsessions, regrets, ambitions, joys, creativity, memories .. everything!
Everything is part of the intimacy we call life, and as such is worthy of our attention. More than that, it demands our dispassionate awareness if we are to become whole. When, out of fatigue or fear, we exclude part of that system we call life, we diminish ourselves and everything around us, and we pay the price with our suffering.
Human beings are gifted with a capacity for life-altering insight. We are not broken, even though we may invest in the idea that we are.
Constellation work is a way to help you know what you already know, but don’t yet know that you know it.
Which is why whenever we facilitate a Constellation, we, and the clients we work with, are astounded by the incredibly rapid shift they experience in their perception of their life, and of their so-called problem.
Two reasons we are blocked from solving our problems.
- We imagine that the changes we need to make are complex
- We imagine that because we’ve taken a long time getting to where we are, it will take a long time to get out.
Experience is always in the present moment. Thinking concocts a complex chronology to reinforce the illusion of trauma reactivated over time. But that’s thinking, not experience. What if you cut through thinking and go straight to the rich tapestry of experience in this moment to uncover your capacity for new awareness, perception and healing in the moment?
We imagine that we can’t change the past, that we can only influence the future. The opposite may be closer to the truth. The past is exactly what we can change. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood! – because we can change our perception of it. And we can, more easily than we often accept, convert trauma to learning, resistance to gratitude, and acceptance and fear to joy and love.
I sent this in an email:
“The system is alive. Our ancestors are not dead but live on, in us, through us, through the system which we call our life. And of course, until we learn to fully acknowledge them, honor them, grieve them, respect them, they will get up to no end of mischief. Sometimes, some of the things we feel are the most unfortunate circumstance in our life, may just be our ancestors, trying to get our attention. If you haven’t worked on this level, then these words may sound fantastic, bizarre, superstitious, unrealistic. But when you start working in this realm, you will understand that they are true.”
I received this reply:
I’m from Puerto Rico. I grew up honoring our ancestors, it is part of our culture. My dad passed years ago. I serve my dad his coffee every morning – just like he liked it and ask for his blessings.
When the family has been brought into its natural order, the individual can leave it behind him while still feeling the strength of his family supporting him. Only when the connection to his family is acknowledged, and the person’s responsibility seen clearly and then distributed, can the individual feel unburdened and go about his personal affairs without anything from the past weighing him down or holding him back. — Bert Hellinger
Is there anywhere to stand in this universe that is predictable and safe? We like to hope it is so. Wouldn’t that be nice! All our fundamentalist logical scientism has been an attempt to make it so. But profoundly useful as our logic and reason might be, it points to just a fragment of the way the universe plays itself out. As the Chaos Theory people would say, “If you could see what’s behind your back at any moment, you’d see that all the so-called laws of the universe had been suspended. The apparent order you see in front of you has been organized for you by your brain.”