Dear Daniel - My guess to your riddle. I imagine Bert offering you his
twinkling smile and answering you, "That's right.. It is too late for you."
I think about grammar and shamans as well. Today a colleague called me to
talk about organizational change. She is a corporate coach. Her last
assignment was for a high ranked corporate executive who was a recent cancer
survivor. After the treatments, she plunged back into work and was nearing
the breaking point of physical and mental exhaustion. The coach was brought
in to help her better prioritize and organize. Having attended many
Constellation workshops, she faced this dilemma. Should she give the client
what she was asking for: the grammar; or what the coach saw she needed: a
shamanic intervention? She took a risk and did a Constellation-inspired
imagery exercise to put her in contact with whomever she was dying for.
When the client open her eyes the two of them sat still together for a very
long time. The next day the client fired her.
The Coach told me about an article from Fast Company magazine that discussed
the tendency for resistance to change. I found it at
About 2,000,000 patients with heart disease undergo bypass surgery and
angioplasties each year -- all at a total cost of around $30 billion. The
procedures temporarily relieve chest pains but rarely prevent heart attacks
or prolong lives. Many patients could avoid the return of pain and the need
to repeat the surgery -- not to mention arrest the course of their disease
before it kills them -- by switching to healthier lifestyles. Yet very few
do. "If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years
later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle."
She asked me, "How can we get people in organizations to change?" I
guessed, "Have them set up their Constellations?" We laughed at that one,
owing to her experience.
So how are we to be most effective? On the more solitary Warrior path of
the shaman? Or is it better to compromise on somewhat principles in
exchange for making the Constellation experience more accessible to a
greater number of people?
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Constelaciones
Bolivia
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 10:05 PM
To: ConstellationTalk
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] Spiritual FC
Spiritual FC? so, the old devil keeps on expanding and creating and
discovering. I traveled with him by some countries un South America, I wrote
about that, and friends, I don't understand where does he get his strength.
I, with my 36, was more tired than him by the 3rd country.
Well, I didn't have the chance to see this Spiritual FC. He kept the
surprise for his Bday.
Reading Max's recount, I have these thoughts.
I have seen in Europe some of the other developments in the organizational
course in Holland. Too many instructors were always making direct or
indirect criticisms to H. The missiles were directed most of all to that
dimension of FC nach Hellinger, that deals with "Black Magic" the
mysterious, the Ineffable. Oh! so slippery a fish.
One of them, a guru of the organizational approach, made clear one of the
most fundamental prejudice of the opposition:
We have found that FC are a language, so we go after its "grammar". We
decode the grammar and then we can teach it. We want to be able to teach it
like a language can be taught, and can be learned by any one. So we avoid
having a "shaman" in a privileged position, owning a knowledge only for the
chosen ones.
God, what a Mc'donalisation of FC. Will they pack it with happy toys?
I told him: So, there really is a grammar, yes, like a language, yes, and
like a language it can be learned by every one who wants it, yes... good I
said, but... the fact that your students can definitely learn english... how
many will be Shakespeare?
I didn't like at all that Marie Sophie called H, in Spain, too many times
and too intently, the Great Shaman! But hell, he is a kind of shaman, and
hell again FC is closer to shamanism than to psychology or systemic
something.
Castaneda was also working out the grammar of sorcery:
Do you think we are equal Carlitos?.... Of course don Juan, we are equal,
said the mister anthropologist to his grammar study subject, don Juan.
No, he said. No? No, you are a petty a**hole while I am an impeccable
warrior.
I can not think of FC as other than "the way of the warrior". Grammar is
only the platform to make a mortal jump into the Unknown and come back with
your sanity.
I use the word grammar here, to all those aspects that are visible,
measurable, technical, even, may God forgive me, SYSTEMIC.
Take the "Spirit"(the Ineffable, the "shamanic") out FC, and you will have
Romeo & Juliet into a computer user's manual, ha! maybe helpful for
connecting the mouse, but then what? Oh! why can't we stand greatness?
The Ineffable can not be taught, that is why I run after the master in Spain
after he said he will become teacher and will teach and give diplomas. And
told him, trembling and sweating of course, how could I tell this to my
beloved master... I told him that it was late for me already, that I was too
Hellingerean to belive in diplomas...
Guess what he told me?
well friends, do I write too long letters? just tell me.
Daniel.
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