Dear Thomas, dear all,
I started this mail earlier today, before Thomas' last 2 mails came in, I
finish it now. Again the rich situation on CTalk that there are so many
thought-full mails coming in that I can barely keep up reading with other
mails to read, let alone comment on all I would like to comment upon.
Before I put my two cents in, I want to say something about New Orleans.
What has happened and is happening is beyond my comprehension and I am so
deeply sad and upset about it I know I have to constantly disassociate
somehow to 'deal' with it. When I let it in, honor the reality, I cry.
Here we see before us the shallow scabs that have been growing over huge
gaping wounds of history in our country, ripped up and open for all to see.
Hopefully this will be a crisis where many people ask for change, and where
the deeper fissures- about the slavery era, race & class in the present, are
addressed. For we do not talk much about class in this country, though our
class divisions are great. And although I am not very hopeful about this
crisis being taken as an opportunity, I can still hope.
For all of you doing constellation work with people who are truly
underprivileged, my hat goes off to you. I work mainly with people who are
able to come to a workshop and pay for it, sometimes I work with people
whose money is 'tight' who pay a somewhat lesser fee, but even those who say
they have
little money are I am quite certain in a far better place than those truly
living in poverty.
To Thomas' next mails today about constellations and New Orleans:
Thomas, just as in the way I have learned to handle the work, I would
approach this. Is someone asking me directly for help? (Like a survivor,
someone from a city agency, etc). If not, what reason do I have to get
involved?
What is happening certainly involves all of us as Americans and the whole
world as humans. I would like to see more deep healing about the deeper
dynamics of what is happening. But is it my place to seek to heal that?
For me, I could say- I am having a damn hard time as an American and as a
human to agree, to say yes to this- to current victims and
perpetrators and everyone who is neither nor, for there must be some! of our
country. A foundation of this saying yes to NOW is also-
saying yes, agreeing to and giving a place in our hearts to the victims and
perpetrators of the past of our country.
That's work for each and every one of us. I've been working on the latter
for myself, taking in my country and saying yes to the past, now this
present situation blows my mind and I know- I either say yes here, too, or I
do not live in reality. So I'll just keep working on that, too, for I'm not
ready to say yes yet. it's all very new....
Bert's work.:
Dan, I would like to take your wonderful sentence "These pronouncements are
always meant to be taken within the context with which they are delivered,
not as absolute truths for all times and situations." and have it sung,
spoken, repeated, sent by carrier pidgeon to each and every person involving
themselves with constellation work of whatever kind - this is the gist, this
is what Bert has been saying for years, just not on every page of every book
after he says something. But if one reads on, he says it again and again.
People talk about 'the work'. At this point, and for years already, that has
meant a multitude of things. Bert gave us and the world this gift of his
work, and his personal path with the work continues to evolve. Some people
do work based on his 'older' work, some based on his 'newer' work, his gist
remains his gist & there are also some changes as well. From what I
understand the changes are not about order, bonding, balance of giving and
taking, limits of conscience, but having to do with as Thomas is asking
about, going with the spirit AND going with the soul and I can not say what
that really means in terms of changes, how Bert works now, what he
personally means by that, besides what I intuitively understand (spirit and
soul!).
I do not know what Bert means exactly by these words for his new' way of
working, for I have not been reading Bert's most recent writings or seen him
'live' since last October. I could not take in much of his work at that time
(here in NY Oct 04) as I had family obligations and was not able to stay
for much of the event.
I know that Bert has a newsletter in German, available through he and his
wife's website www.Hellingerschule.com . This newsletter will also be
available in English soon, it's in the works and you should be able to find
out about getting or get copies of it from Suzi Tucker at the conference in
Portland.
Alison, you bring up transference. Yippee!
My guess is that people who have major unresolved stuff about their fathers,
who might unconsciously seek a supposedly wiser, more understanding,
unconditionally loving, etc etc etc, father, might transfer things onto
Bert.
(and those who are seeking that 'perfect' mother- are those the ones who are
extra pissed off about Bert leaving his first wife?!)
I love and honor the parents I have, I just wish they were still alive. I
miss them indeed.
Do we transfer things onto eachother in the community? I am certain of it. I
don't understand it all as I am part of it surely, but I sure do feel things
sometimes. Would it be helpful for us all to admit it? I feel it would help
greatly. I don't know how it would change things, but when I imagine us all
doing it, I feel peaceful and good.
I look forward to meeting some of you at the conference, and to everyone
else who will not be there (and who will also no longer be pestered by
mails about dinner in Portland) all the best to you.
Libby Shapiro
Brooklyn, New York
----- Original Message -----
From: "Family Constellations" <familyconstellations@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 3:39 AM
Subject: Re: [ConstellationTalk] Re: Constellations with Soul AND Spirit
Dear Tom,having
I believe that one of the underlying tenets of our work is knowing what is
our business and what isn't, and I feel that some of your questions about
Bert are not really our business. I certainly do not agree with everything
Bert says or does, however, I hold in in the very highest regard for
brought this work to the world. Additionally, I also greatly believe inthe
saying "we teach best what we ourselves have come to learn" so I assumethat
applies not only to myself, but to Bert and all of us out there doing thisin
work. For the most part, those of us who become healers and therapists are
motivated in the first place by wanting to fix something that went wrong
our own family, then as we mature, we are no longer on a crusade, butsimply
sit with what is and allow others to benefit from our experience.my
For me, my views of Bert are as irrelevant to the work as they may be for
grandfather in a constellation. My grandfather may not have been a nicebegat
person, I may not like him, he may have done some harm, however, as he
my parent, and my parent begat me, I bow to my grandfather anyway, as agrandfather
source of life. And so it for me with Bert, I bow to him as the
of this wonderful work. In essence, it makes no difference if I agreethe
entirely with him, like him as a personality or otherwise, he simply is
bringer of this work and for that I honour him and I'm not interested inhis
personal affairs.will
I've had the priviledge of meeting him in person once. He was warm and he
touched me deeply with his words. I've also found that at times when I've
gasped at some of his infamous pronouncements, that when I sit with it and
mull it over, I more often than not find a deep truth in what he says. You
know, we all have our foibles and not everyone is going to like our work,
our stlye and the way that we say things, we'll all have clients that will
demonise us and those on the opposite extreme will make saints of us - and
neither perspective is true, and so it is for Bert or anyone in the public
eye. There is a saying that goes "the bigger the tree, the more wind it
catch", this is true for anyone that has something to say in public.being
Life has taight me that the one thing that irritates people more than
lied to, is the truth being told. FC work lends itself to exposing truthsin
undeniable ways. Bert is much older than all of us, I'm sure he doesn'thave
to worry at this stage in his life about being polite or being politicalin
order to to win him favours through smothering the truth in warm and fuzzyhas
platitudes, he calls a spade a spade, and sometimes a shovel.
I for one see his gentle heart, plus also his dogmatic side. Each of us
light and shadow that we bring to this work. It makes not one iota ofstudents.
difference if Bert is 'working on himself' or not, it's not our business,
our only business is ourselves within the work and how we carry it. As a
facilitator, I see my clients as my teachers, for we are perpetual
been
Welcome to the group and thank you for brining up a topic that may have
considered a Holy Cow***************************************************************************
Warm regards,
John
South African Institute for Family Constellations
Office: 011 614 0821 Cell: 072 138 3048
Website: www.familyconstellations.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "tmasthenes13" <TomBuoyed@xxxxxxx>
To: <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 1:30 AM
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] Re: Constellations with Soul AND Spirit
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.)
Yahoo! Groups Links
Yahoo! Groups Links
