SO beautiful, Vinay. And you, for spreading this work in so many places it
is even more needed.
Thank you.
Alison
On 8/31/14 2:49 AM, "Steve Vinay Gunther spirited@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk]" <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi folks
I have just finished a workshop in Hiroshima. I wanted to share with you some
of the experience.
Beforehand, I paid the necessary visit to the Peace Museum. Every detail of
the history and background, the actuality of ground zero, and the aftermath
was there. I read every single line, looked at every single picture, every
exhibit. Many emotions going through me. It was essential to bear witness to
something absolutely intolerable. Mans¹ inhumanity. The museum didn¹t mince
words about the Japanese responsibility for the destructiveness of military
expansionism, the forced labour of Koreans and other brought to work in
munitions factories. It also laid out plainly, without any unnecessary drama,
the role of the US. I didn¹t really fully get it before. But dropping the bomb
was absolutely unnecessary. Japan was already engaged in negotiations to
surrender. The US did not reveal the threat of the bomb, which in itself could
have completely changed everything. They just dropped it. They needed to
justify the billions of dollars spent. And even more cynically (if its
possible), is that they wanted to mark the territory, like a dog against a
lampost, so the Soviets wouldnt have designs on Japan. So they created mass
suffering, just for this purpose; and also, for a kind of evil scientific
interest in what would happen¹. For years after the war the Americans
operated facilities where they would regularly examine victims of the blast,
suffering radiation sickness, but not treat them. Examine but not treat - that
seems as bad as Mengele to me.
Then the workshop; on the second day, a woman brought the issue of sorry for
being me¹
Her setup of the constellation was very strange. I have never seen anything
like it. The mother and father were next to each other, facing the same
direction. Then her brother was on one side, and she was on the other, a
little further away, facing in, so it looked like a U-shape, with lots of
space. Like a quadrangle.
Her grandmother was affected by the Nagasaki bomb, and died some years later
of cancer. She had shards of glass in her body, from the blast.
So I got the client to add all the grandparents. They were also arranged in
this odd manner. I commented it looked like spectators lining the streets,
with the mother and father facing forward.
It seemed clear the mother and father were facing the war, so I put a rep for
war at the front. Now it was a rectangle. It was still very odd - so much
space.
Then I remembered the pictures from the museum, of what the city looked like
after the atomic blast. Completely cleared. Nothing left. Just a big space.
This space reminded me of that space - like a hole in the middle of
everything.
So next, I placed victims on the ground in that space. The mother wanted to
join the victims, and lay down. The grandmother turned away. The client wanted
to move to the position where war was, so I put war into the middle of the
atomic blast space.
Now the client became aware of her choice - to be sorry for being alive, and
identify with her mother and the victims, to turn away as her grandmother had
done - because it was too much to hold. Or to be in the leadership position,
and bear witness to the pain and suffering and horror, and hold onto herself.
A rep for life stood behind her, and supported her. I have tears as I write
this, and of course, everyone present was deeply moved. There were many people
at the workshop who were local to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who had
therefore family connections to what occurred.
I appreciate so deeply this work, the capacity to broach these huge social
issues, in a way which can bring healing. And for the people who come, willing
to open up their stories, willing to do the healing work.
Vinay
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