Dear Doubting Thomas,
Bert goes where he is invited to do workshops and
seminars. What others make of what he does and says is up
to them. Make up your own mind about how you feel about
this work, and take what you want, if anything, and leave
the rest. Other people's personal lives are their
business, and if they want to share parts of it, they
will. One thing emphasized during our training as
facilitators is that we don't interfere in people's fate
and don't seek family secrets just for curiosity. Our
ancestors let us in on secrets only if it serves the
purpose of making our lives work better, and then we
forget them and move forward. Trust yourself, not anyone
else.
All the Best,
Diane Yankelevitz
On Thu, 01 Sep 2005 23:30:31 -0000
"tmasthenes13" <TomBuoyed@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Barbara,
Thanks for your reply. I actually have seen part of a video of Bert in Santa Barbara from a few years ago. It would be great to do a workshop with him but that means going over to France or Germany since I hear he no longer travels to the USA.
But if you want more thought-provoking statements, I'll ask this one as a proverb in Latin: "Quis custodet ipsos custodes?" ("Who will guard the guards themselves?") Explanation below.
I appreciate what you say about taking any scuttlebut with many grains of salt; but there is a nagging question I have that concerns the attitude of separating out the personality of Bert from his work.
What about Bert's own family system? Has he himself put himself through the same gauntlet of constellations that everyone else who becomes a facilitator must go though? And if so, does anyone know about the results?
I can understand that such information would be used against him by his enemies, but on the other hand, facilitators not knowing about it puts Bert in the superior position of a father, and in his case a Holy Father because of the ritualistic, shamanic, and Catholic aspects of his work and being. That's why I joke about him as Pope Bert, knowing that I can tell more truth in jest than in serious talk. Are we to hold his family system as sacrosanct because it is one of the secrets that children must not ask their parents about?
I really feel that he has, for whatever reason, placed himself above the rest of us who are drawn so deeply to pursue and extend his work. I've recently read through both _Love's Hidden Symmetry_ and _Acknowledging What Is_. With every page, my soul does cartwheels and raises a fist in the air and shouts YES! to the truth that I feel flows through every page in every answer to every question posed in those books.
But then I wonder about the absolutism of his attitude, the infallible aura of his pronouncements, any my deep desire to believe such pronouncements. I have nothing against infallibility because the universe itself is infallible (at least the right-brain universe is, not the left). But we are all fallible in our perceptions and observations of that world and universe, and the fallibility is precisley in the realm of the mind soul where our ordinary left-brain intellectual consciousness must allow for its transcendence by the emotions or what I like to term "heart-thinking" that goes beyond the ordinary logic of our intellects.
My fear is that however sincere and well-intentioned he is, nonetheless Bert Hellinger has set himself up as a Father-God figure to all those who are drawn to pursue his work. As a Catholic and now a Hellingrite, I feel like there's two German Popes now.
As I read so many of his pronouncements about God and spirituality, etc., I keep wondering how much of this is his own personal projecting which might be revealed as such if we knew about the dynamics of his own personal family systemic order.
Quis custodet ipsos custodes?
Doubting Thomas
(who doubts so much, he even doubts his own doubting.)
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