Hi david
thanks for replying and in so thoughtful a manner as well.
i totally agree with you and resonate with your experiences with the masculine
and feminine flavours of man and woman and of the field itself of course. and,
as you pointed out, though both energies are essential and in the best case
scenario need to be in balance for both order and love to be present, they need
not be limited to or contained by or flow through, necessarily, a female or
male body. though of course the female body, and in general the female role and
upringing and cultural and familial place is to embody the feminine
characteristics and women in general are born to do it best, this is not always
and not always necessarily so. and sometimes that is appropriate and sometimes
it is not. the feel of the field will let you know, as well as the
'scrunched-upness' of the particular woman involved. i don't know how to put
that better, but that's a neologism i just invented to kind of explain that
energy of women trying to be miss piggy's and take on masculine roles when that
energy is not right for them at that time, it hurts the deep feminine within.
unfortunately a large part of our western society seems to encourage this
masculinisation of women, to our detriment. and someetims also a feminisation
of men. to see men being soft and gentle appropriately and nurturing
appropriately is a wonderful thing (and actually again has a different but
still right quality or feel to it than when a woman is doing it), to see them
enfeminised and emasculinated for the sake of appearing trendy or snaggy or
whatever is sad.
this story you tell of the group you led - and by the way i loved the way you
described how you helped this group, it feels utterly right when i read what
you did for them - is a good example of an unfortunate trend in (mostly
western) society with women. women get together, having abandoned or rejected
the male species as an entity becuase of the acts of a few bad people, and then
fail to support eachother. they are looking for nurturing from eachother, and
companionship and probably assistance, adn yet it ends up that they are
sometimes worse to and for eachother than if they had sought refuge in a
mixed-sex group. this is partly, i believe, adn of course i may be wrong in
relation to the group that you worked with, as i know none of them, nor the
details, so before i go and do what i accused bert and others doing ie jumping
in with profound pronouncements of this equals that and so forth and so on
(again i agree generally a masculine characteristic and not surprising to me
coming from someone like bert who is after all older, male, german, a leader
and used to being listened to and being right) i will add the caveat that i
could be way off track adn am using generalisations here, as i suppose we all
do by necessity now and then.
...sorry i'll take up this thread a bit later, gotta go and take a lie down.
since my leg got chopped off my back went in numerous places and i'm wedged
into an awkard position trying to write this to you in my sister's kitchen and
need a break from the torture! catch up with it and you soon..
best regards
sounds like you're doing just fine in china
love to all
sarah
--- In ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Kay Needham
<familyconstellationinfo@...> wrote:
Hi David,
How refreshing to hear your experiences of these differences. It would seem
that
many differences are rooted in the exclusion of one half of our energys
within;
either the masculine or the feminine. How creative outcomes can be, and how
quickly solutions revealed when both energies work their magic! Do you find
the East
to have a particlularly feminine flavour (even though it is "sticky" at the
moment)
as well, and the West more masculine?
There has been some talk of a headmistress of a school in Australia lately who
is tackling school disorder on our TV news. She is laying down clear
consequences
for acts of violence that create disorder. It also was refreshing to see
her success
rates increasing with the introduction of respect to order. It seems the
respect of order
sets the boundary to support, as you say, the internal love flow. I thought
this was
another example of how our collective is beginning to recognise these things.
It soon may
be not so much a case of "turning the other cheek" but "giving a good whack
back!".....a little
less hard....of course!
Kind regards and "cool" wishes for your hot sticky days in Guangzhou.
Luv Sadhana
________________________________
From: "david@..." <david@...>
To: constellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 12:52:17 PM
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] Re: abortion and Sarah's post
Dear Sarah,
Some thoughts prompted by your post.
I think on Ctalk we often see people ask about a certain situation,
and what are the causes, and then someone comes back and says 'its
caused by this or that, and in fact I have a model for finding the
solution' and there are some famous structures of likely causes, maybe
the most famous being Bert Hellinger saying Autism is about murder.
So I am going to do something similar, as a man.
I think that men or the male energy tends to gives us structure and
form and protection, and women and the feminine energy tends to give
us love and relationship and the weaving of life together. Men tend
to hold the boundary within which women can relate and love.
I find sometimes as a therapist that my female clients find it hard
to think in terms of 'parts' of themselves as this is more structural,
but men find it quite easy usually.
So when we read in Ctalk about the structure and methods, such as the
recent ones by Dan and Fung I think they are just being natural as
men. But that doesn't mean for me they don't have other aspects and
feminine energy as well, as I have.
So, my way of thinking is that the weaving of feminine and masculine
energy is important, and both come together to provide support for
healthy relationships.
My thinking has been shaped by some recent experiences. I was asked to
heal a group of women, who had mostly experienced difficult situations
with men, and had, in a way, taken some refuge together. But over the
years they had lost the ability to relate with each other, to love
each other, they had lost their hearts and they asked a man to help
them. The first thing I did, in my maleness, was to help them restore
a boundary and safety and they started to see each other again, and
some emergedlove. The next bit is a bit harder, to help them find
ways of providing their own safety, maybe the community will end or
their views of men will change, who knows.
The second experience was spending some time in a spiritual community
of healers, where I received male energy and guidance, witnessed by a
woman. At first I struggled to fully understand this, that a woman had
been so figural in this. And then I became more in touch with life and
love coming from the mother, the feminine energy, and honouring this.
This experience led me to remember the women in my life who had loved
me, and how much I had respected that, even though quite often I had
struggled to say to them, 'I love you'.
So, my thinking now makes more sense of the father often standing in
first place in constellations, holding the boundary and protecting the
love in the family.
Twice I have seen this in Constellations, in Germany and Australia,
where a group of women had come together in the centre to heal, and
the men have taken positions on the outside, on the perimeter, maybe
looking out, to protect the healing and the love.
So in Constellations now I am less inclined to have rows of men or
women, as I think this excludes the natural flowing of male and female
energy, apart from actually excluding half the grandparents and more.
Sarah, you said "the trick imo seems to be havve a hypothesis, either
based on your own experience or on what you've learnt from others and
then be prepared to modify or even toss it according to where the
energy and flow of the constellation is going." So I agree with you,
in my words structure can give us the safety to make a start, to set
some boundary to feel safe enough to start, and then as things flow,
as love flows, the container for work can grow and the truth can show
up.
This thinking has also led me to think of Constellations not so much
as the Orders of Love, but of Order and Love.
Thanks again Sarah
David Mathes, from a sticky Guangzhou.
Posted by: "sarahjibhai" drsarahmoore@ gmail.com sarahjibhai
Mon Jul 13, 2009 1:50 pm (PDT)
dear all
thanks for the conversation. although i butt in from time to time
sometimes what people say here does move me to respond. i particularly
find it difficult to bear when people either new or old to
constellation work say ' mr x says that this means this - so that's
the way we have to interpret it'. in the early days, lots of people
used to go on about bert like this. bert would say something, and he
did have a tendency too in his session like ' this happening in this
constellation means y' and then some people would have a tendency to
then take this as gospel as if when it comes up in a constellation
from thenceforth it always means the same thing. any prolonged
experience in the constellating circle would seem to me to indicate to
anyone involved that different meanings attach at different times to
different actions and reactions in the mandala - and it is dangerous
indeed to interpret them as 'this means that' cos the unfolding of the
constellation itself will often prove the hypothesis wrong. the trick
imo seems to be havve a hypothesis, either based on your own
experience or on what you've learnt from others and then be prepared
to modify or even toss it according to where the energy and flow of
the constellation is going. like in life and the universe in general
for every hard and fast rule there is exception and no-one person has
ever pinned down the categorical laws of the universe. the fluidity of
constellation practice should ram home that lesson to us as we go
about it - the constellation space is a particularly good classroom
for demonstrating it again in my opinion..
happy constellating all and thanks for the discussion
best regards love
sarah
