…..The beginning of healing is mutual voluntary self-restraint. We need
punctuation, a full period STOP, to the continuing abuse and re-patterning as
dominant and subordinate. The world needs to find and agree to a safeword.
I am very intrigued by this tradition of claiming sanctuary, a place that both
sides respect. I could imagine that in a constellation one could tell the
story of sanctuaries in different cultures and then try it out. The
representatives for one or both sides could step over the line to experiment
with any difference they might feel. One would proceed according to the field
from there.
Dan Van Kampenhaupt did something similar in constellations I attended, but in
the realm of time. He gave a timeline in several constellations. In one of
them, the line started from the time all was good, then marked a spot where a
kidnapping happened, and then the time after where the victim was killed. He
also set up spirit world and a receiving committee. On the spot marking the
moments before the tragic event, Dan had the victim say to his soul, “I had
forewarning . I will take you to a safe place. I send you where they cannot
touch you.” Representatives for soul and body then said good-bye to each other
with great agony and many tears, and Dan guided the soul to the safety of
spirit world and ministering spirits. The body found a home with earth. The
constellation brought deep comfort to the client, who was a relative of this
victim.
In another one of Dan’s time-line constellations, I represented the client’s
soul. As we moved along the line and approached the marker of her trauma, I
could feel the exact moment I (soul) jumped out into a safe space. Dan did
not touch the trauma itself, but took the client back where all was still OK to
allow her to feel the whole self she was and he worked the constellation from
there.
To find ways out of victim-hood would be vital for many aspects of our culture.
May ways open up and be shown in the knowing field!
Gertrud Yaustake
________________________________
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on
behalf of lynxdn@xxxxxxxxx [ConstellationTalk]
<ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2015 1:37 PM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] Re: Justice and the Balance of Giving and Taking
Thanks Alison for launching this thread.
As an African American living and observing and engaging others in my life and
times, deep questions like yours are not only played out within me, but through
various movements and prominent black national orators.
Just yesterday I began listening to "Say It Plain: A Century of Great African
American Speeches," edited by Catherine Ellis and Stephen Drury Smith. New
York: The New Press. Library of Congress System: PS 663 N4 S39 2005; Dewey
System 815' .508896073—dc22; ISBN 1-56584-924-8 (hc).
This is a text and CD set, so I can hear the person's recording while reading
along with them. I reached Fanny Lou Hamer's speech before the National
Convention of the Democratic Party in 1964. She talked about a group of black
people in Miss. traveling via bus to their county seat to take tests in their
efforts to register to vote. The bus driver was fined for having a bus "the
wrong color" by the police. She gets home and the white landlord she
sharecropped from is terribly upset she went to try to register. She told him
she didn't register for him, she registered for herself. She had to flee the
plantation.
She was stopped, arrested, and beaten by the police. Yet she stood before the
overwhelmingly white DNC and plead her case to become the official MS's
delegates to the convention. Meanwhile, this powerful speech was deliberately
being preempted by (white) President Johnson for a "urgent national
announcement" on the Vietnam War he understood the (white) networks would jump
to cover. Intentionally, he timed it at the exact time of Hamer's speech, so
she never got the coverage.
This is part of our species' legacy for enacting sadomasochistic (SM) patterns
with each other. Once I understood that I see it everywhere, of course. SM is
about power, it is just handy when dominance can be linked to some marker, be
it gender orientation, gender, or skin color. But, what about greed? some may
ask. Greed means little if one lacks the power to enforce it on others
unwillingly.
SM is widely thought of as a sexuality kink. What is not generally known,
though, is that the parties have mutually agreed to a "safeword" to stop the
action when either feels things may get out of hand. In the "Hunchback of Notre
Dame," if anyone is being pursued by the police (flee and chase being a type of
SM) and reaches the great cathedral they can call out "Sanctuary!" and the
chasing police respect the sanctity of the church and stop, voluntarily. In
Africa, in many villages, the same thing would happen if you can reach the
chief's house.
The beginning of healing is mutual voluntary self-restraint. We need
punctuation, a full period STOP, to the continuing abuse and re-patterning as
dominant and subordinate. The world needs to find and agree to a safeword.
"Sanctuary" to all,
John Perkins, Seattle, WA, USA
