“The past is not past. It has effects in the present in many different ways. When there is something that needs to be brought into order in the present, you need to look into the past to be brought into order in the present, you need to look into the past at what has happened. Only when the past is put in order are the living free.
On the other hand, when we do a constellation of what has been left unfinished from the past and when we find a resolution with full respect for the dead, there is also an effect on the dead. They can more easily find their peace. Therefore, this work serves the dead as well as the living. Bert Hellinger, Peace Begins in the Soul (2009 - original edition 2003), page 147. "Parents go too far when they make demands on their children that exceed the needs of the well-being of the greater whole. For example, parents sometimes demand that their children comfort them. Then the children have to behave as if they were the parents of their parents, and the their parents behave as if they were the children of their children. This is a perversion of the relationship between parents and children. Children cannot protects themselves against such demands by their parents. They become entangled in something against which they have no defense and are forced to presume to something for which they may later punish themselves. For example, children who were forced to take on inappropriate responsibility often later suffer illness or misfortune, or failure or early death. "
Bert Hellinger, Love's Own Truth, Bonding and Balancing in Close Relationships, (2001), 139. "In family constellations, the work of reconciliation begins in the individual soul and in the family. When reconciliation is achieved there, it can spread to larger groups and contexts. Therefore, we have to remain modest and aware of our limitations when doing family constellations. A deep and lasting peace is beyond the reach of our good intentions. When it occurs, we experience it as a gift."
Bert Hellinger, Peace Begins in the Soul, (2009) page 12. “The Orders of Love aren’t rigid structures. They’re always changing; they’re different from moment to moment. There’s something richly varied in them, a profound abundance that we can glimpse for only a brief moment. That’s the reason why every family constellation is different, even when the issues in the families are similar. When I recognize that an order is a certain way, then I say what I see. Some people who are accustomed to thinking in terms of “true” or “false” or “right” or “wrong” have tendency to hear what I say as a statement about a general truth. It’s not! It’s only a recognition of the truth that could be glimpsed in a certain moment. It applies only to that moment, and in that moment, it has full truth. If someone isolates what I’ve seen from its momentary context and makes a general principle out of it, then it appears dogmatic. But others do that with what I say – I don’t.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), page 91. “The family group ‘re-members’ the excluded, the ignored, the forgotten, the unrecognized, the dead. When a legitimate member of the group is shut out, someone is a later generation must compensate for the injustice by suffering a similar injustice. The persons drafted for this service don’t choose their fate. In fact, they usually don’t even notice what’s happening and can’t defend themselves against it. They relive the fate of the excluded person, and recreate the person’s experience, complete with the guilt, the innocence, and all the other feelings that belong to that experience.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), 164 “Illnesses very often are connected to the fate of another member of the family that has been excluded or forgotten. Health on the other hand, is restored when this excluded person is welcomed back into the family. Illness results when one person becomes entangled with the fate of another family member, who might have died generations before. Thus, health is made possible when the neglected family member is recieved back into the family with love and when reconciliations with that person has been achieved.”
Bert Hellinger, “Spirtual Dimensions of Illness and Health”, Messagers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Helliger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005) page 269-270. “When I work with a family, I confront them as they are, without any intension, even the intension of helping. And without fearing the consequences of what I may say or do. Because I withdraw so completely, I am able to see where it is leading. At the same time, I am restricted too. But this is a phenomenological way of working. It does not rely on any theory, or an earlier experience, but rather on a willingness to deal only with the moment And that is very difficult because each therapy represents a new risk."
Bert Hellinger, No Waves Without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page 23. “Reconciliation between the decendants of victims and perpetrators is perhaps most durable when they are able to mourn together for the dead on both sides and hold all in respectful memory. In the soul, the deceased victims and the deceased perpetrators need the love of the living long after the actual events. One consequence of the deeds that have been perpetrated is that victims and perpetrators can only be loved in conjunction with each other. If a perpetrator had many victims on his or her conscience, it may be more than the love of a single person can carry. Resolutions may only be possible through the love of many, that is at a societal level.”
Jacob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), 74. “When rage grows and comes too dangerously close, confusion helps to keep it a bay. The person moves away from feeling, preferring confusion to the experience of other emotions. A reversal to the opposite pole also occurs, and someone may feel small and frightened then furious.”
“Rage is itself often taken on from somewhere else and may have been passed down through several generations. Under the anger, at its source, lies pain. When I am hurt, I become angry. There is strength to be found in rage and I can still maintain contact with others. In pain, I lose my strength and feel alone.” “When the underlying pain increases to the point that it becomes unbearable, the anger on the surface loses its heat and turns to cold hatred. In this state, cut off from feelings and focused on the desire to hurt and destroy, a person is capable of cruelty and atrocities. Even at that point these is still strength available in the depths. When pain becomes too overwhelming, it moves into apathy and inertia. Bertold Ulsamer, The Art and Practice of Family Constellations: Leading Family Constellations Developed by Bert Hellinger, (2020), page, 150. With phenomenological truth it is completely different. This sort of truth emerges briefly, in the way we have often seen it here. Something comes to light and one perceives a glow. But alas, when one reaches out to grasp hold of it, it disappears in a trice. The desire to work through an issue is actually a desire to hold onto an old truth. Likewise, the fear of what may be revealed is a desire to hold onto an old truth, although of a different sort. In this case one wants the glow to go away. If I take a phenomenological stance, however, the truth can come as it will. I will look at it, bow down before it and let it go. It is far more effective than if I talk about it. It is simply there and then gone again.”
Bert Hellinger, No Waves Without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page 22. "In Family Constellations work we use representatives to stand in for members of our family and ancestors; this is when we engage the unseen presence that we have come to know as the Knowing Field. It is then that we meet the phenomenon that representatives have access to information and feeling of the individual they are representing. This, for the representatives, can be a powerful and life-changing experience in its own right as they step into another's shoes and 'become' someone else, with little or no knowledge of the personality and circumstances of the individual they are representing."
John L. Payne (Shivasti), The Healing of Individuals, Families and Nations, (2005), page 4. "An identification can be resolved when younger persons who are repeating the fate of earlier persons realize what the problem is, Then they can look at the shut-out person, or stand by that person and give him or her a loving place in their hearts. This love creates a relationship and then the excluded person becomes a friend, a guardian angel, a source of support."
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), 169. “If a person in a family has committed murder, then he or she is bound to the victim through the heavy shift in the balance between giving and taking. This connection is stronger than family bonds, and the perpetrator is obliged to follow his or her new bond and leave their family. If he or she does not do that, a serious risk arises—that family members in following generations will have to share the fate of the perpetrator. They often do so by leaving the family in acts of penitence for the perpetrator. An example would be committing suicide. The perpetrator must voluntarily undergo the same fate as the victim by going to prison or some similar manner of taking distance from normal life in order to relieve future generations.“
Indra Torsten Preiss, Family Constellations Revealed, (2015) page 115. Learn about Family Constellations online workshops with special topics.
“Many families strive for innocence and are, for example, overly concerned with appearance and what others think of them. They hide, repress, or even eliminate anything that endangers their idea of innocence. In the effort to remain innocent, they engender their own guilt. They exclude certain family members and are ashamed of them. They push away any thought of them because their difficult lot in life raise anxiety and fear. Thinking about them causes pain. The family atrophies and isolates itself.
Peace in the family is not what is simple and comfortable. Those who desire peace and serve peace must confront difficulties, pain and guilt. They must find a place in their soul for each and every member of the family. They accept this challenge and the critical self-examination that leads to an acknowledgement and love of what is 'other’ and of others, as equals.” Bert Hellinger, Peace Begins in the Soul, (2009), page 10. “Strictly speaking, we don’t get life from our parents - it comes to us through them from far away. They’re our connection with the source of life, with what is beyond whatever shortcomings they may have. When we connect to them, we access that deeper source, and it holds many surprises and mysteries. Something beautiful happens when people look at their parents and recognize the source of life.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), page 105. “When the love that binds together the individual members of family operates blindly, it demands blind obedience, and unless individual members gain insight into its dynamic and transform it, they unknowingly submit to the laws of blind justice—an eye for eye and a tooth for tooth. Then the damage is passed from one generation to the next, and the extended family finds no peace.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), 161. “I open myself to a situation in darkness, not knowing what is going on. The question is: How do I get to a truth concealed in darkness? I dive into a flowing field; I become part of it, and it reaches out beyond. Things move in the field, some into area of light, revealing something of what IS. I open myself to that and wait for something to come to me. An image for this process is: I feel my way in darkness along walls until I find a door. When I find a place of light, I try to describe what is illuminating me with a word that is full and ripe. When the right word is found, those for whom it came grasp it at a level beyond rational thought. The right word touches and moves them, even when they don’t understand how.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), page viii. “A basic principle of my work is that love brings strength to the loved one, primarily at the deep level of the soul. A relationship that mostly serves to satisfy personal needs such as financial support or an avoidance of been alone, or one the exploits dependency usually weakens the partner. “I love you,” often means, “I want something more from you.” The something may be more attention, more support, more understanding, and so on. Such needs exist, of course, and can be met in a satisfying relationship with a good balance between giving and taking.”
Ilse Kutschers & Christine Bruder, What is OUT of ORDER HERE? Illness and Family Constellations, page 24. “Guilt is not the same thing as evil. Often it's exactly the opposite, and doing the good or right thing makes us feel guilty, whereas doing the wrong gives us the feeling of innocence. Many times people feel innocent when they stay stuck in a problem, or when they suffer in a bad relationship. Only someone who is willing to take on guilt is capable of taking a step towards a solution. One is lonelier at this level, and a retrun to old patterns is more comfortable."
Bert Hellinger, Supporting Love: How Love Works in Couple Relationships, page 248 “Sometimes parents cannot accept it as an act of fate when a child dies in an accident. Instead of becoming aware of their helplessness regarding such a fateful event, they develop the belief that is might have been avoidable. By doing this they avoid experiencing the deep pain and grieving process that the death of a loved one brings. They might flee into feelings of guilt or berate themselves or their partner of the loss, which is perilous for the relationship. This makes it more difficult for the remaining siblings to lead relatively harmonious lives. “
Indra Torsten Preiss, Family Constellations Revealed, (2012) page 92 "For a child, the entire world is initially comprised of the relationship to his or her parents or caretaker. Being recognized, cared for and touched, and having a feeling of belonging all contribute to a healthy development. The child lives within these relationships and exchanges, and experiences the assurance that his or her needs will be met when they are expressed, and that affection and attention are forthcoming.
When a child's movements towards relationship are not responded to, and when attempts at closeness lead repeatedly to rejection or helplessness, the child takes that to mean that the environment cannot be relied on to provide what is needed at the moment. As in the trials described above, even a child not yet capable of speech becomes physically distressed and turns away when this occurs. This can be understood as a basic pattern of secondary feelings. If it continues as a pattern through life, we describe it, in Bert Hellinger's terms, as an interrupted reaching-out movement. If the disruption in the relationship occurs frequently and over long periods of time, a limit is clearly reached where resignation takes over and the child ceases to make any more attempts at contact. It is as if the child comes to the decision to never again submit to such a painful experience that results in that physical state, and never again to try to establish a close, deep relationship, but rather to do everything alone. Particularly underlying depression and resignation, it is often clear that a person has been repeatedly subjected to situations and the associated feelings in which the reaching-out movement found no responding recipient. What this experience means for a young child is that no actions will have an effect on others. It is as if the child suspects that at the bottom line, he or she is helpless, and at the mercy of death itself. In therapy, as clients come closer to the primary feelings underlying the secondary coping strategies, they often describe feelings of fear, or general anxiety, deep dread, panic, fear of death, horror, indescribable outrage, existential danger, and the feeling, or the fear, that they will come apart, disintegrate, or disappear." "Symptoms, Feelings, and Inner Movements: Reaching out, turning away – primary and secondary feelings, feelings taken over from another, and meta-feelings" By Dr. Ursula Franke-Bryson "Rupert Sheldrake speaks of morphogenetic fields, by which he means that particular patterns, which have established themselves in the past, continue to compel family members and are thus repeated. He views the natural laws in this way, as memories of the time when an organism first developed. These memories continue to have resonance to work and repeat themselves. It is probably also true in families that particular patterns repeat themselves. There is no impulse from the forcefield to break through them. In order to break through it is necessary to step outside the field, perhaps to place oneself on a more elevated level from which one can courageously confront and embrace what is new.”
Bert Hellinger, No Waves without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page174 Discover the power of private online Family Constellations sessions.
“Rage is itself often taken on from somewhere else and may have been passed down through several generations. Under the anger, at its source, lies pain. When I am hurt I become angry. There is strength to be found rage and I can still maintain contact with others. In pain, I lose my strength and feel alone.”
Bertold Ulsamer, The Art and Practice of Family Constellations: Leading Family Constellations as Developed by Bert Hellinger, (2020), page 153. A solution brings with it a feeling of being unburdened, of peace and contentment. In a family constellation, one can actually see a family system change and the family find tranquility when an excluded member is returned to a respected place in the family, and order and full membership are achieved."
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), page 170. “A family constellation is a result of a phenomenological stance. A phenomenological stance means, philosophically speaking, that a person holds herself back and is without intention, without fear and without wish to help someone else. The constellation unfolds in front of the therapist; something happens outside of the therapist. By holding back she does not engage with it. It is this way of holding back that creates the space in which decisive movements can come to light. The representatives move under the influence of the soul and find solutions that lie outside the influence of the therapist who basically doesn’t need to do anything. She isn’t passive, however. She is not passive, however. In holding back she is completely present and so sees when it is appropriate to intervene and does so. One also withdraws and clearly gives space to whatever arises of its own accord. “
Bert Hellinger, No Waves without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page 175. “When adult children take care of their elderly parents, love requires that they treat their parents with the respect due to them, even if the parents become more child-like in their behaviour and demands as they grow older. A son or daughter can never really satisfy such child-like demands. It is often helpful for the caretaker child to imagine that the deceased grandparents give the elderly parents what they need to satisfy these childish demands, and children can lovingly give only what is actually neededand what is justified and appropriate.”
Jacob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), page 87. “The ritual of bowing down before the appropriate person, paying homage, restores balance and order. In our culture, this movement has become difficult for many people; bowing down as an act of respect is easily confused with bowing down as an act of unhealthy submission. When we bow down and pay obeisance to someone who deserves to receive our honoring gesture, the soul and the body respond with release and a sense of lightness. It feels good and it has a good effect.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Love’s Hidden Symmetry What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), Page 280. "For a child, the entire world is initially comprised of the relationship to his or her parents or caretaker. Being recognized, cared for and touched, and having a feeling of belonging all contribute to a healthy development. The child lives within these relationships and exchanges, and experiences the assurance that his or her needs will be met when they are expressed, and that affection and attention are forthcoming.
When a child's movements towards relationship are not responded to, and when attempts at closeness lead repeatedly to rejection or helplessness, the child takes that to mean that the environment cannot be relied on to provide what is needed at the moment. As in the trials described above, even a child not yet capable of speech becomes physically distressed and turns away when this occurs. This can be understood as a basic pattern of secondary feelings. If it continues as a pattern through life, we describe it, in Bert Hellinger's terms, as an interrupted reaching-out movement. If the disruption in the relationship occurs frequently and over long periods of time, a limit is clearly reached where resignation takes over and the child ceases to make any more attempts at contact. It is as if the child comes to the decision to never again submit to such a painful experience that results in that physical state, and never again to try to establish a close, deep relationship, but rather to do everything alone. Particularly underlying depression and resignation, it is often clear that a person has been repeatedly subjected to situations and the associated feelings in which the reaching-out movement found no responding recipient. What this experience means for a young child is that no actions will have an effect on others. It is as if the child suspects that at the bottom line, he or she is helpless, and at the mercy of death itself. In therapy, as clients come closer to the primary feelings underlying the secondary coping strategies, they often describe feelings of fear, or general anxiety, deep dread, panic, fear of death, horror, indescribable outrage, existential danger, and the feeling, or the fear, that they will come apart, disintegrate, or disappear." "Symptoms, Feelings, and Inner Movements: Reaching out, turning away – primary and secondary feelings, feelings taken over from another, and meta-feelings" By Dr. Ursula Franke-Bryson “Conscience ties us most firmly to our group when we are most powerless and vulnerable. As we gain power in a group and independence, both bonding and conscience relax, but if we remain weak and dependent we also remain obedient and loyal. In families, children occupy this position; in a company, the lower employees; in an army the enlisted men; in a church, the faithful congregation. For the good of the stronger in the group, they all conscientiously risk health, happiness and life and make themselves guilty - even when their leaders, for what is called ‘high purposes,’ unscrupulously misuse them......These are the children who leap into the fray for their parents and relatives, who carry out that which they didn’t plan, atone, for what they did’t do, and bear burdens they didn’t create. “
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Love’s Hidden Symmetry What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), Page 9. “The family system is a closed system. Once you are born into a family, it can never be different than what it is. This does not mean that you cannot be adopted into another family. It does not mean you will be bonded with the people in that family, but biologically, you are a part of this family system. The egg that you came from is the egg that you came from, the sperm that fertilized the egg is the sperm that fertilized that egg. This “point of origin” is just an objective fact, an impermeable truth.
Another truth about all human births is that you were born from the sperm of a man, and an egg of a woman. This is just a fact. It is not sexist, it is biology. Each of us does, in fact, come from a mother and a father. It is important to agree to life. Having a mother does not mean that one was nurtured or “mothered” by that person, and having a father does not mean that one has been nurtured or “fathered’ by that person. Some have endured very difficult fates as children and have been abused or neglected. But the fact remains that if one is alive, there was a mother and a father that contributed to that life. It is life that is acknowledged when there is nothing else. If your parents did not feed you and you are able to read this today, someone did feed you. Sadly, if one is not able to be grateful for life itself, they may alternatively live their lives in rage, unconsciously punishing terrible parents with their own terrible life. This, in Family Constellations sometimes becomes illuminated. One then has a clear choice. Paradox is possible. “Thank you for my life. It is all that you gave me. What I do with my life is up to me.” Paradox is painful, but honoring the paradox may be the only true reality that allow us to stand in a gentle and powerful way. If one was abused what is true might be, “You wronged me. And you gave me life. I will make something good of it.”” Francesca Mason Boring, Family Systems Constellations: And Other Systems Constellations Adventures: A transformational Journey, (2015), page 29-30. “Ultimately all therapy is a process of reconciliation. It is a process of conscious-raising and integrating split-off parts of the self and, consequently, splits between people. It brings reconciliation between the illusions of childhood and the true meaning of events. This is extremely difficult when children have been seriously injured by their parents, or perhaps have been given away. It is difficult when partners have caused each other harm or physical or mental distress. It is particularly challenging when someone is seeking reconciliation between victims and perpetrators, or peace in the aftermath of war.”
Jakob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), page 72. "The early death of a sibling, whether as stillborn, infant, child or teenager often places a burden on the surviving brothers and sisters. They often feel a draw towards death and a sense of guilt for having live, even when the child dies before they were born. At times we observe the one of the parents—usually the mother—has a strong pull to be with the dead child, such is the power of maternal instincts. When this occurs another child may step forward as if to say, "I'll go, so that you can stay with the other children."
John L. Payne (Shivasti), The Healing of Individuals, Families and Nations, (2005), page 10. “The family constellations method and process developed by Bert Hellinger is new and old at the same time. Hellinger took the concept of phenomenology and used this way of viewing the process to work with family constellations. The method required a different kind of therapist from the Moreno/Satir style, one who could be open and touched by life and death issues, be courageous in the face of despair and trauma, could trust the unknown, and remain engaged and present while waiting for a resolution to emerge from the client.”
J. Edward Lynch, “The Stance of the Facilitator,” Messengers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Hellinger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005), page 84. In Family Constellations we see that many clients unconsciously blame themselves for not feeling safe in their family or system. Bert Hellinger refered to this feeling as “guilty.” To feel safe, he observed that children will try to do whatever they perceive as “good” that allows them to feel safe in their family. He called this a need to feel “innocent.”
Guilt and innocence in these terms is only what a child feels and does not necessarily have anything to do with actual behaviors or actions in the family or the real world. As soon as a child is conceived and/or born the instinct to survive requires them to have a place in the system that they experience as safe. If a child is born into a family where the parents are nurturing and loving but something in the system is out of order, the child may feel something is wrong and try to find a way to do something that will allow them to feel right or innocent. If they cannot, they feel guilty in that family. In a family where there is psychosis or personality disorders or abuse, the child may constantly feel unsafe, wrong and guilty if they cannot find a solution to finding a safe place in the system. The child always looks to themselves for a solution to feeling guilty even when they have no power, control or responsibility for the family members and their actions, no matter how terrible. They unconsciously feel guilty no matter the reality of the situation. If a systemic resolution that allows for safety in the family or system can be discovered, the burden and suffering of always feeling guilty or needing to feel innocent can be resolved. -- Barry Krost “From a systemic point of view, problems are unsuccessful attempts to love, and the love that maintains the problem can be redirected to resolve it. The therapeutic task is, first of all, to find the point at which the client loves. When I have found that point, then I have therapeutic leverage. By helping the client find an appropriate and mature way to love, the problem dissolves, and the same love that maintained the problem solves it."
"As a rule, problems are described in such a way as to avoid a solution. That’s why I don’t need to hear all of the description of the problems from people in a group; they’re certainly false. If they had the correct description, they wouldn’t be taking about their problem anymore. The correct description of a problem contains the resolution to the problem." Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), page 220. “Tranquility and clarity of perception are made possible by consenting to the world as it is without any intention to change it. That’s fundamentally a religious (spiritual) attitude, because it aligns me with a greater whole without separating me from it. I don’t pretend to know better or hope to achieve something better than what the inner forces already at work in the system would do by themselves. When I see something terrible, that, too, is an aspect of the world, and I consent to it. When I see something beautiful, I consent to that also. I call this attitude “humility”— consenting to the world as it is. Only this consent makes perception possible. Without it, wishes, fears, judgments—my constructs—interfere with my perception.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), page 91. “Whereas our ancestors had relationships based on survival, tradition and loyalty, we now have relationships based on love. Considering the divorce rate, we can say that both individually and collectively, we are mostly at a loss about how love-based relationships can be lived harmoniously. We all carry a great deal of unprocessed ancestral suffering in our mind-sets, with destructive consequences for our current relationships. It is mostly through a relationship crisis or divorce that is becomes clear that there are still other issues at play and that there is a genuine chance of awakening and healing.”
Indra Torsten Preiss, Heal Your Relationships: A new way of improving your relationship skills, (2015), page 109. From the Orders of Success By Bert Hellinger
Money is energy. It does something. It is preceded by something, such as an achievement that deserves remuneration. The greater the achievement, the more power the money has, given that it is proportionate to the achievement. If the money is less than the achievement, it retains its value, but has less power. If it goes beyond the achievement, it also loses its power. This shows in the fact that the money “wants” to leave; it will not and cannot stay. The same happens when we hoard money instead of doing something with it or spending it for a service. When money breaks free of its purpose, of its function of exchange for services rendered, those that serve our life and that of others, then all that remains are figures without any real value. The figures regain their value when they attract an achievement that demands something of the owner of the figures, when they are used in a way that serves life again. But here again, effort and achievement must be attached to it. Money that is lent, instead of forming an allegiance with human effort and achievement, will be lost. It loses power and then vanishes. Money moves in a cycle of achievement and remuneration, of new achievement and new remuneration. This is a cycle of growth for both achievement and remuneration. Without achievement and without appropriate remuneration, or when money is lent or given away, without a view to a corresponding achievement, a similar cycle begins. This is a cycle of loss to loss, until the excess vanishes. Money comes back from the sky to the earth. Those who despise money keep it away. Without money they become weak instead of strong, and they remain poor. Money remains kindly disposed to those who are easily satisfied and modest in spending it. It comes to them when they need it. It remains a support for them. Those who respect money can let it run its course. They keep it on a long leash like a dog. All the more happily does it return to them when they need it. Sometimes money withdraws, for instance, when we disrespect a service that was offered and rendered to us, and above all if we disrespect what our parents did for us. Only when we honor their ongoing effort and support does the reward that is due for their achievement come to us and to them. This is also the case generally. When we appreciate what others do for us, often without financial reward, there is a reward for them and for us. They pay for our respect with more support, disregarding the effort they need to make. Without our respect their efforts will fade out. All money comes and stays in this world. In the world beyond ours, there is another currency. Still, the way we dealt with money in this world has an effect on the currency in the other, when we take and give in a good way, and also leave it behind. When our time here comes to an end, money may stay behind as well. It has served its purpose. For whom or what does it stay? Do those receiving it after us have the strength to preserve it? Does it turn into remuneration for an achievement that has to be delivered by and with this money, or does it turn into a burden, becoming oppressive rather than giving? What insight comes from these ponderings? Money behaves like a messenger sent from elsewhere. It wants us to acquire it in order to achieve something with it, and when its time is up, it wants us to let go of it. We hear the message that this messenger from elsewhere brings us, and we heed carefully what the messenger demands from us in the name of its master, whatever it may ultimately be. The choice cannot and must not be up to us. We treat money with devotion, like a divine revelation. In accord with it, we agree to money, whatever it expects and demands from us. In accord with this revelation our dealing with money becomes divine service -- service for the life of many, a service of love. From the Orders of Success By Bert Hellinger Become a certified Family Constellations Facilitator
"You can visualize a constellation in your imagination and complete all the movements and rituals in your minds eye. Alternatively, using figures, dolls, or blocks to represent the family members allows the client and the therapist to look at the constellation together from the outside. Constellation using markers consisting of felt pieces or sheets of paper are also effective. The client or therapist can stand in the various marked positions, thereby gaining additional information about the dynamics in the family system through bodily sensations and any changes following interventions.
All of these methods can provide experiences of high intensity and awareness and serve well to test out hypothesis, develop resolutions, and create effective images of resolution.” Ursula Franke (Bryson), In My Mind's Eye: Family Constellations in Individual Therapy and Counseling, (2003), page 30. “If we stand in our places as members of a family, we feel immediately better when we look at certain other members with whom we feel in tune. By the same token, when we look at family members with whom we are not in agreement — or whom we reject rather than love — we feel uneasy or angry or sad. Both love and rejection are felt in the body, causing us to feel better or worse as they take hold.
However, it is often not a personal matter; that is, we are not, as individuals, in agreement or disagreement with others inthe family. It is the family as a whole, compromising not only living members but also those who have died, that has a particular dynamic stance. Because a family is part of a field that is made up of the both the living and the dead, they are all in resonance with one another. In this field, none of the family can be excluded or lost, and the field is in disorder if members are rejected or forgotten. These individuals exercise a strong influence on the present family and the health of its members. This influence often shows up as illness. What does this mean? It means that an illness often respresents an excluded member of the family. Put anthter way, this illness or malady encompasses the exclude member, forcing us, through the pain it caused, to look at the excluded and to acknowledge his or her place to belong and to tak his or her place amoung the other members of the family. Therefore, while we may feel that an illness is in dissonace with our body, we become aware that it is actually in resonance with another person.” Bert Hellinger, “Spirtual Dimensions of Illness and Health”, Messagers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Helliger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005) page 269-270. “When I sit next to someone, being in tune is not as easily described. It is a heighted state of ‘is … together.” Allowing the breath and body and the thinking, the story, the experience, the past, the present, the potential, the wish, the life and death, all to wash over me; that is being in tune with another. Inherent in it is being in tune with the person’s system. She is at once very young and very old and just where she is. Behind her is everything. Or he is a boy, a man, a father, a son. Before him, everything.
The thing about being in tune is that it is a seamless state. There is no room for contrivance. The observations that come out of this place are simple that, observations without intention or agenda. As a facilitator, one has the choice to name them or not, and this too comes out of being in tune. From this position one sees, or more accurately, feels what the system can tolerate, and what it will allow.” Suzi Tucker, “The Weight of Words,” Messagers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Helliger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005), page 12. “In constellations, the living and the dead have an opportunity to say goodby in a way that was perhaps impossible in reality. Many of the dead seem to need some sign of peace and release from the living, and many of those alive need some assurance of release from someone who died. There appear to be dead people who have to be reminded that they are dead before they can let go of the living. Often the dead can only find peace when they are allowed to lie in peace next to others who are also dead, for example a mother who died prematurely, or a twin who died at birth, a first love, a murderer, or perhaps a fallen comrade.
Jacob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), 66. “It emerges from many constellations that relationships that do not end peacefully continue to have negative influences on one or both partners. To conclude a relationship in peace does not mean a person simply gets over resentment, pain, and anger with ease. It means rather that the people involved have respect for one another, can speak courteously with each other, and look each other in the eye. Where children are involved, it means they are able to make the necessary arrangements in a respectful and fair manner.
If a former partner is not honored, than that will find expression in the new relationship—usually throught the new partner feeling unsafe. Subconsciously he or she feels he or she could easily be the next casualty of the same unprossessed predicament.” Indra Torsten Preiss, Family Constellations Revealed, (2015), 137. “When the objectives of a child’s love and the means to achieve them are brought to light, they lose their magical powers because they are rooted in magical beliefs that cannot survive in the adult world. The love, however, endures. More discriminating when combined with reason, the very same love that once caused illness now seeks a different enlightened solution, and it it still possible, to fulfill the goals of love, making illness unnecessary."
Bert Hellinger, Loves Own Truths: Bonding and Balancing in Close Relationships (2001), page 317. “Conscience ties us most firmly to our group when we are most powerless and vulnerable. As we gain power in a group and independence, both bonding and conscience relax, but if we remain weak and dependent we also remain obedient and loyal. In families, children occupy this position; in a company, the lower employees; in an army the enlisted men; in a church, the faithful congregation. For the good of the stronger in the group, they all conscientiously risk health, happiness and life and make themselves guilty - even when their leaders, for what is called ‘high purposes,’ unscrupulously misuse them......These are the children who leap into the fray for their parents and relatives, who carry out that which they didn’t plan, atone, for what they did’t do, and bear burdens they didn’t create. “
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Love’s Hidden Symmetry What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), Page 9. “Surprising as it may seem, we need to understand that unfinished stories do not just evaporate into thin air. When we repress or forget these kinds of stories, this does not mean they are finished. or that we have dealt with them. On the contrary, they are more likely to be transferred onto the next generation because of the efforts to suppress, deny, or forget them. These unfinished stories make up a “past that is not past, “like a debt that will have to be paid one day or another. Transformed into something unconscious, these unfinished stories also become timeless but remaining suspended, and they hide behind all kinds of symptoms present in later generations.”
Tony T. Gaillard, Transgenerational Therapy: Healing the Inherited Burden, (2020), page 13. “Solutions are the hard part of the work. Many people see the solution, feel the energy and go with it for a while. But then they sink back into the old beliefs. For those who are able to hold out, solutions lead to a sort of loneliness. The deep connections and the bond that we experience through holding on to our problems and our entanglements must be given up as the price for a solution. Of course, the solution also connects us to many people in a different way and not with the same intensity as before. These new bonds have something light to them, something liberating. They have intimacy but with an awareness of our separateness, so many people sink back into the old entanglements. “
Bert Hellinger, No Waves without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page 199. In Constellation work, we observe the transgenerational impact of men and women not being able to fully honor each other due to entanglements or identifications. Forces outside of the family system may also be a catalyst for disconnection between men and women.
One pattern of disconnection that may often be seen is a result of social castration of men in a family and community. Due to the interruption in the ability of men to stand as men, there is an inability of women (generationally) to honor men. This honoring of the men is not an antifeminist, brainless lauding, but a deep respect that comes from the soul of one human being to another.”
Francesca Mason Boring, Connecting to Our Ancestral Past: Healing Through Family Constellations, Ceremony, and Ritual, 2012, page 99 "You can visualize a constellation in your imagination and complete all the movements and rituals in your minds eye. Alternatively, using figures, dolls, or blocks to represent the family members allows the client and the therapist to look at the constellation together from the outside. Constellation using markers consisting of felt pieces or sheets of paper are also effective. The client or therapist can stand in the various marked positions, thereby gaining additional information about the dynamics in the family system through bodily sensations and any changes following interventions.
All of these methods can provide experiences of high intensity and awareness and serve well to test out hypothesis, develop resolutions, and create effective images of resolution.” Ursula Franke (Bryson), In My Mind's Eye: Family Constellations in Individual Therapy and Counseling, (2003) page 30 “The inner attitude is a withdrawal from the multiplicity of phenomena and preconceptions into an empty void. The more dramatic the work is - the more it concerns life and death issues - the more important it becomes for the therapist to remain collected in this empty void. And the greater the depth of this collectedness, the more impact the intervention will have. Whatever comes from this empty place in the centre has a direct effect because it comes from harmony with the forces that support us.”
Bert Hellinger, No Waves without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006). page 187. “A love that is awake sees the other as he or she is and loves that person as a complete individual. Love leaves room for the other person and that person’s fate. That loved one is strengthened. I always ask my clients, “Does this love strengthen you or weaken you?” When such questions are understood and taken seriously, the answers are spontaneous and reveal the essential quality of that particular love. “
Ilse Kutchera What’s Out of Order Here? Illness and Family Constellations, (2006), page 23. |
“What he found was this: If you want love to flourish, you need to do what is demands and to refrain from doing what harms it. Love follows the order of the hidden Greater Soul. The therapeutic work documented in this book shows what happens when we injure love or ignore what it requires. It also shows the healing that happens when our intimate relationships are restored to order. It reveals how children’s innocent love blindly perpetuates what’s harmful, and how injuries to the Orders of Love by earlier members of a family affect the lives of later members, just as waves and ripples in a river caused by a submerged boulder upstream still twist and swell far downstream.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), x. “Good medicine, like good psychotherapy, is based on recognizing what really is the matter with a patient. In my experience, family constellations in a therapeutic context are the most effective method towards clarifying what is essential for each individual. Here it is the unconscious mind that plays the most important role. Since systematic entanglements are unconscious, a therapeutic method is needed that can bring this to light. Bert Hellinger observed and described how invisible bonds in families may have effects over many generations, and in family constellations, he developed a method of making visible those bonds as well as the underlying basic dynamics. This process often allows healing to occur.”
Ilse Kutschers & Christine Bruder, What is OUT of ORDER HERE? Illness and Family Constellations, page 8 “Illnesses very often are connected to the fate of another member of the family that has been excluded or forgotten. Health on the other hand, is restored when this excluded person is welcomed back into the family. Illness results when one person becomes entangled with the fate of another family member, who might have died generations before. Thus, health is made possible when the neglected family member is received back into the family with love and when reconciliations with that person has been achieved.”
Bert Hellinger, “Spiritual Dimensions of Illness and Health”, Massagers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Hellinger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005), page 269-270. The original version of Family Constellations was a live group workshop with clients and participants volunteering as representatives. Over time some facilitators began to do one on one sessions with clients using objects (or floor markers) as representatives or visualizations. Eventually the group workshops and one on one session were done online.
Family Constellations trainings were live opportunities to observe and participate in constellations with a trainer as well as learn about the philosophy and principles of the work, primarily created by Bert Hellinger. In more recent years there are many online Family Constellations trainings and certifications. From the beginning there have been intensives involving a number of trainers often in a residential or retreat format. Online intensives are also more available in recent years. -- Barry Krost “I am convinced that Constellation Work, with its systemic worldview and the gift of the opportunity to stand as a representative in a constellation, is one of the most relevant and important tools to support us as we navigate our evolution into our future. I am convinced because I have stood in powerful constellations, and I’ve had the felt experience of being guided to unexpected resolutions by some unseen hand, of knowing that we are parts of a larger whole, of knowing that, in one sense, we are not individuals, but rather human systems of relating, of knowing that the Here and Now contains both the past and the future, undivided. I have experienced deeply held beliefs transform in minutes and hate and fear and frozen hearts dissolve. Entanglements can be undone. Love can prevail.”
Hunter Beaumont September of 2021, Knowing Field Journal “When two people can’t manage to separate cleanly, it’s often because they haven’t fully taken from one another whatever has been given. Then one must say to the other, 'I take the good you’ve given me. It’s a great deal and I treasure it. All that I have given to you, I have given gladly, and it’s yours to keep. I take responsibility for my part in what’s gone wrong between us, and I leave your part with you. I leave you now in peace.' If they manage to say this to each other authentically, they can separate in peace."
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), page 78. "Although it’s necessary for all members of a family to have their places and to be “re-membered,” families must be allowed to forget what is past after an appropriate time."
"There is a strong tendency in families to try to hold on to things that are past – memories of both good and hurtful experiences. When members of a family group hold on to something that should be over, the past holds them captive and continues to work inappropriately in the present. Because the old then cannot fade away, the new has difficulty in establishing itself. It requires great discipline to extract yourself for such systemic entanglements, and to release everything that deserves to be finished. All members of a family group must let go of things, both positive and negative, as soon as their effect for good is past. " Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), page 157. “A problem starts when someone loves. I can only see the client and the problem compasionately if I can find the place where this love revealed itself.
Therefore, the solution must work with the energy from which has led to the problem. But it is now given a different orientation, one that is more wholesome and happier for all. This mean demonstrating how it is possible to love in a better way and how love radiates in and through the solution far more brightly than through hanging on to the problem.” Bert Hellinger, No Waves Without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page 234. “Constellations succeed by diminishing the unconscious impluses that drive destructive behaviors. In a heartbeat, the pattern is released, opening the heart to reverance for life and compassion for others. “
“When we set up Constellations with men serving life terms in prison, and look at what emerges, first we see that our hearts carry everything a human heart can hold. Then we find a way to heal the trauma so life can continue in a good way. We agree to it all, to carry it all… with compassion.” Dan Cohen, I Carry Your Heart in My Heart: Family Constellations in Prisons, (2009), page, 18-19. Within each of us is a wise, compassionate essence of goodness that knows how to relate harmoniously. In addition, we're not one messed-up mind, but an internal system of parts. Sure, these parts can sometimes be disruptive or harmful, but once they're unburdened, they return to their essential goodness. And because this is true, each of us has a clear path in front of us to access and lead our lives—inner and outer—from that essence. In doing so, we realize the basic truth of interconnectiveness on all levels, and the natural result of that realization is compassion and courageous action.
Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholenss with the Internal Family Systems Model, (2021), page 68. “Sometimes the living have to show the dead the consequences of their confused state of mind in order to free them both from fear and guilt. If we haven’t achieved clarity and reconciliation with the dead, especially our parents, when they were still alive, then we in turn, when we are dead, seem to look for them among the living. The living can help the dead to understand their confusion and often it is then possible for he dead to turn to the ones they really want to be close to, to call to them and finally be welcomed and received by them. This always is a relief for everybody involved.”
“How the Living and the Dead Can Heal Each Other,” Albrecht Mahr, The Knowing Field, Issue 6, June 2005, page 6. “Inexplicable symptoms are distressing and weigh heavily on our clients, who feel responsible for them and self-critical when they cannot get themselves under control. It is an enormous relief when their symptoms finally make sense, or take on meaning through systemic understanding. "
Ursula Franke (Bryson), In My Mind's Eye: Family Constellations in Individual Therapy and Counseling, (2003), page 43. “I don’t work with fixed preconceptions or concepts. They can’t merge with the flow of life. There are certain definite orders that can be observed. But at the same time, there are always deviations from these orders. If you start from hard and fast rules or preconceptions, for example ideas about how the original orders appeared, you may end up missing the mark. This is why I find myself more and more steering clear of these fixed ideas. I try to understand each situation as I come upon it and set something in motion. But what will actually go on for the client is unknown to me. As far as I am concerned it’s completely open. I don’t have a picture of the outcome.”
Bert Hellinger, No Waves Without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page 234. “It is always astounding to see the power of a movement in which one person attempts to assume the fate of another in an attempt to spare them, as if one could free someone of forces pulling them into tragedy.”
Jacob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), 52. “When someone has a problem, after a while he or she begins to habitually give the same account of it. This reaccuring account of the problem and the cooresponding inner image it engenders make it virtually impossible to find a solution. Describing the problem sustains it and keeps it going. The first step toward a solution is to interrupt this habitual narrative.”
Bert Hellinger, No Waves Without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page 234. “The healing path of Family Constellations is one of taking ownership of your life. Its healing as an act of supreme agency. Healing is saying, “I am an adult; I am responsible for my life. I’m in charge.” Healing is finally knowing what you want and what you don’’t want—and being willing to do what necessary to get rid of the latter and bring the former into reality.”
Marine Selennee, Connected Fates, Separate Destinies: Using Family Constellations Therapy to Recover from Inherited Stories and Trauma, (2022), 173. "Often, when individuals who are entangled with the fate of one who has died tragically, unlawfully, or has been forgotten, it is the drain on their physical organism that leads to the development of illness and disease. When we are identified with one who has died, we have one foot in the grave so to speak, and therefor we are not fully present in physical life."
John L. Payne (Shivasti), The Healing of Individuals, Families and Nations, (2005), page 31. “A basic principle of my work is that love brings strength to the loved one, primarily at the deep level of the soul. A relationship that mostly serves to satisfy personal needs such as financial support or an avoidance of been alone, or one the exploits dependency usually weakens the partner. “ I love you,” often means, “I want something more from you.” The something may be more attention, more support, more understanding, and so on. Such needs exist, of course, and can be met in a satisfying relationship with a good balance between giving and taking.”
Ilse Kutschers & Christine Bruder, What is OUT of ORDER HERE? Illness and Family Constellations, page 24. “Reconciliation between the decendants of victims and perpetrators is perhaps most durable when they are able to mourn together for the dead on both sides and hold all in respectful memory. In the soul, the deceased victims and the deceased perpetrators need the love of the living long after the actual events. One consequence of the deeds that have been perpetrated is that victims and perpetrators can only be loved in conjunction with each other. If a perpetrator had many victims on his or her conscience, it may be more than the love of a single person can carry. Resolutions may only be possible through the love of many, that is at a societal level.”
Jacob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), 74. "Phenomenological means studying situations in their original context: you allow the phenomena to speak for themselves, without wanting to add or change something. Instead of breaking the system down into separate parts, you look at the larger whole. You constantly question which larger whole causes the current situation or problem."
In systemic logic you assume that reality has multiple layers. This layered structure is present always and everywhere. We call the explicitly visible layers at the surface the “overcurrent.” The overcurrent can be observed through the symptoms on the surface. Symptoms can take the forms of problems or certain (unwanted) behaviour…. An intervention in the overcurrent does not always have the desire effect. If that is the case, symptoms often recur. Problems arise again. Or people, teams and organizations relapse back into old habits once the pressure of the intervention disappears. In cases of “repetitive patterns” it can pay off to investigate the undercurrent. Instead of only tackling the symptoms, you look into the roots of the problem or behaviour. Interventions in the undercurrent often concern interactions or feelings that are present, but are not discussed because they are taboo, or only latently or subconsciously present. From twenty years of experience with systemic work and constellations, three life giving forces have been formulated that apply to each system: belonging, order and exchange. These three life-giving forces in the undercurrent of all systems are universal and timeless. “ Sites Bakker & Leanne Steeghs, Unlocking Systemic Wisdom, (2017) page 8-9. Without a doubt, we have all received from our parents and we each also lack whatever it was we did not get. It is up to each individual to decide where he or she remains attached. Those who look at what they received feel the beneficence and usually have something to pass on to others. Those who have unmet demands and are attached to the what is missing may feel cheated by their parentsg and by life. Such a person does not usually do well; he or she has an on-going sense of deficit, and may be unable to give to others. It is an attitude towards life that contributes to depression in many people.
Stephan Hausner, Even If It Cost Me My Life, Systemic Constellations and Serious Illness, (2011) page 49-50 “When adult children take care of their elderly parents, love requires that they treat their parents with the respect due to them, even if the parents become more child-like in their behaviour and demands as they grow older. A son or daughter can never really satisfy such child-like demands. It is often helpful for the caretaker child to imagine that the deceased grandparents give the elderly parents what they need to satisfy these childish demands, and children can lovingly give only what is actually needed and what is justified and appropriate.”
Jacob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), 87. "There's another dynamic that I have seen in relationship systems. The innocent party is always the most dangerous one. His is the greater or anger, and his actions are the most destructive to the relationship. He loses his sense of proportion because he feels he is in the right. The guilty party is usually far more prepared to give in and make reparations. Attempts at reconciliation usually go wrong because of the innocent party, not the guilty one."
Bert Hellinger, Love's Own Truth, Bonding and Balancing in Close Relationships, (2001), 139. "Besides blood relatives, the system encompasses all those who have had a significant effect on the family, positive or negative, through their fate or death. For example, one of our parents or grandparents may have had a previous partner who vacated a place, leaving an opening for a new partner, or one who was forced to relinquish his or her place. In this larger sense, victims of violent acts perpetuated by a family member also belongs to the family group. A special connection exists between victims and perpetrators so that, in a family in which a member has been the victim of violent crime, the one who did this act also remains a part of the system. All of these people comprise the family’s ‘community of fate.'
Stephan Hausner, Even if it Costs Me My Life: Systemic Constellations and Serious Illness, (2011), Page 23. “There is a real danger in family constellations that people may use this form of therapy superficially. “I think I will do a constellation on my family of origin” – “I guess I’ll do a constellation on my present family now.” Using constellations as the fad of the moment degrades a powerful method to a market product. Such an unserious attitude towards family constellations does not serve the clients, bit it does contribute to the unrealistic expectation that a constellation can somehow magically solve all problems. I inform all my clients at the beginning of a group that a constellation is nothing more and nothing less than a step in ones development. I am fond of he image of a sailing boat chasing its course by one degree and landing in a completely different place than was originally intended. A constellation can contribute to a tiny course correction that may lead to a major change. As I have already said, the essence of this change rests in the inner stance and attitude of the client. A constellation is neither a miracle formula nor a magic trick and in no way guarantees that a problem will be solved permanently. I warn people that under certain circumstances they may feel even worse following a constellation, particularly if the work goes very deeply. This is due to loyalties within the family system that are stirred by any resolution of entanglements. The unconscious provokes a bad feeling and a guilty conscience in order to preserve unconscious loyalties, and it is important for clients to understand the connection.”
Ilse Kutschers & Christine Bruder, What is OUT of ORDER HERE? Illness and Family Constellations (2006), page 42. “Sometimes the living have to show the dead the consequences of their confused state of mind in order to free them both from fear and guilt. If we haven’t achieved clarity and reconciliation with the dead, especially our parents, when they were still alive, then we in turn, when we are dead, seem to look for them among the living. The living can help the dead to understand their confusion and often it is then possible for he dead to turn to the ones they really want to be close to, to call to them and finally be welcomed and received by them. This always is a relief for everybody involved.”
Albrecht Mahr, "How the Living and the Dead Can Heal Each Other,” The Knowing Field, Issue 6, June 2005, page 6. “The purpose of a constellation is to resolve entanglements—not to expose the truths behind family secrets. It is also important to respect that the ancestors had their reasons for keeping secrets. A troublesome issue could be left to rest and could be forgotten about for the good of the family.
In most constellations all that is required to resolve entanglements is to honor ancestors, leave the secret, together with the emotional load, with them, and accepts it as part of their fates. People are usually motivated by curiosity, pedantry, or sanctimony when endeavoring to uncover family secrets and, therefore, arrogantly place themselves above their ancestors, which can cause yet more entanglement. However, if it is necessary to find a good solution for the seeker, the secret will come to light. “ Indra Torsten Preiss, Family Constellations Revealed, (2015), page 128. “I have discovered some things about the dead. I don’t know, of course, to what degree they are true, but if you give them some room, you can feel the effects in your own soul.
Who of the dead are in the best situation? Which of them have completed their dying and have eternal peace? Those who we allow to be forgotten. We could imagine how things would be ourselves if we died and were remembered, or how it would be if we died and were forgotten. Where is there more a sense of completion? After a time, all the dead have to be given the right to be forgotten. Sometimes there is something in the way. Perhaps we have yet to honour them, perhaps even thank them, and perhaps grieve for them. Then, they are free of us and we of them.” Bert Hellinger, Peace Begins in the Soul (2009 - original edition 2003), page 124. “As a representative, I have found that no human emotion is foreign to me; I can feel anything when I am in a role. Nonetheless, it is important for representatives to be aware of their own identity, parallel to the role. At the same time, it is also possible to activate one’s own awareness and developmental processes. These three phenomena occur simultaneously; the role, your own identity and your own developmental process. Therefore, it might be useful to stay in a role for a while and allow the role to have its after-effects. On the other hand, if the role is a very disturbing one, the representative should leave it behind as quickly. A symbolic expression, such as leaving the room, shaking ones self physically, or washing ones hands, may be helpful in shaking off a role. It is the task of the therapist to recognize and deal with this phenomena.”
IIlse Kutchera What’s Out of Order Here? Illness and Family Constellations, (2006), page 44. “There is no way to avoid taking life from one’s parents. Parents cannot be any different than they are and, as far as the gift of life is concerned, it is not necessary for them to be different. Parents are parents solely because they have conceived a child and given life; it does not depend on whether they are rich or poor, strong or weak, good or evil, warm-hearted or cold, or whether they bring up their children poorly or competently. There is great diversity, as we all know from looking at our grandparents, our parents, and ourselves. The point is to be able to take life the life we have with love and a strength that looks towards the future. Many obstacles stand in the way of that kind of taking, and family constellations serve to make them visible and to resolve them when possible.”
Jakob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), page 88. “Sometimes loyalty is so strong that it is not possible to find a solution and free oneself. The solution demands that one leaves the family and that one is prepared to stand on one's own feet. This is bound up with a feeling of loneliness the makes the step feel enormous. It requires an inner metamorphosis, a process of maturation, often something like a spiritual consummation of something greater. Then it might succeed."
Bert Hellinger, No Waves Without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page, 199. “Many people have difficulty letting go of the deceased, and others cannot take them into their hearts. Constellations provide an opportunity for both these processes to be completed. It is very moving experience, particularly for someone who has lost a parent. Children are often unable to grieve because the pain is too overwhelming for them, and adult forms of mourning may make children fearful or leave them feeling isolated. Sometimes a system is carrying an additional burden of guilt (or perhaps even feelings of relief if there were bitter rows between parents, or if death was preceded by a long incurable illness). Grieving can be completed in a constellation when obstacles are revealed, and natural pain and love are allowed to flow. If the constellation ends in relief and joy for everyone in the group, it is clear the process of grieving has been successfully completed. It is difficult to describe the depth with which a group can follow someone else’s grief process in a constellation and how enriching the experience is for everyone. “
Jakob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007) page 70. Interrupted Reaching Out Movement: Reaching out and turning away
“A reaching-out movement can be understood as an interest in the world, turning towards life and openness as an unconscious or intentionally adopted attitude. This reaching-out movement can be described as a primary movements directed towards contact with other people and objects. It has the function, essential to life and survival, of establishing and maintaining contact. The patterns of reaching-out movements reflect so-called primary feelings and the physical state is marked by relaxation, flexibility, and spontaneous reactions appropriate to the situation. The basic attitude is one of interest and agreement and basically says 'yes' to the world. In this sense it is strengthening, life-bringing, and guides us further along our path. A turning away movement can be understood as a kind of withdrawal, pulling back and closing up. This serves primarily to protect us in situations that cannot be met and mastered any other way. It is physically recognizable in chronic tension, and cognitively in fantasies and concepts of how things should be, rather than reflecting the actual situation. There is often a pattern of refusal, rejection and defense, or a constant readiness for a row. This is understandable as a more or less active strategy to set external boundaries for the personal area. Secondary feelings round out the picture. The general attitude says 'no'. This attitude or pattern of withdrawal is usually the result of experiences at an early age, unless there has been some massive trauma later, after the early childhood formative phases, that has changed and damaged the original basic structure of saying yes to life. “ Ursula Franke, In My Mind's Eye: Family Constellations in Individual Therapy and Counseling, (2003), pages 41-53. “Another thing to be considered if love is to succeed: love succeeds provisionally. It is a phase in a larger process and ultimately strives for conclusion. The conclusion of love lies ultimately in the conclusion of life. The disappointments that sometimes come and the crisis between couples are a preparation for this final leave taking. If one is able to experience this leave taking as the relationship grows from its beginnings, then love in the face of this ending becomes something particularly precious, precisely because it has limits.”
Bert Hellinger, No Waves Without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, Page 89. Perpetration begins with murderous rage and a deep emptiness. It often escalates into violent and terrible acts that are justified by grotesque, distorted projections onto their victims and themselves. When this rage transitions into a cold hatred the perpetrator often hides what they have done and makes it secret. It is common that they use magical thinking about their actions that appears rational, religious (or even justifies continued perpetration). They place themselves in a dark place where they avoid comprehending what they have done and its consequences.
-- Barry Krost “In the work I do, it become apparent that many illness are connected to the idea that we can save somebody by taking upon ourselves the illness or the fate of that person. We observe this especially with children. Very often a child wants to take upon him or herself the illness of the mother, for instance. Such children become sad like the mother, become ill like the mother, want to die like her or in place of her. If they wish or do this, they feel innocent and good. They feel in tune with their conscience, because they do this out of love. Therefore, they get ill with good conscience. Their conscience supports their illness and their wish to die.”
Bert Hellinger, “Spiritual Dimensions of Illness and Health”, Massagers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Hellinger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005) page 271. "Developing and following personal disires leads to inner conflicts as soon as the child contradicts the rules of the family system or steps outside them. It is precisely when a child is not supported in independence, but rather takes over the task of restoring a missing balance in the system that the child experiences his or her own wishes as a transgression against the family. “
Ursula Franke (Bryson), In My Mind's Eye: Family Constellations in Individual Therapy and Counseling, (2003), page 53 “What happens to people who have killed someone? They lose their soul. Then the soul is sought. If the murderer cannot find it, later generations continue the search for the lost soul. And where is the soul? With the victim. It can retrieved there, from the victim. That is why, when we are looking at these larger solutions that lead to peace, what is needed is to look at the victims and to weep for their fate with profound empathy. We take into our soul in this way. In doing so we also take the lost souls of the perpetrators into our soul. Only then can the past be past.
Bert Hellinger, Peace Begins in the Soul (2009 - original edition 2003), page 111. “When chosen carefully, words linger after a constellation like tiny points of light. They have the power to evoke the deepest feeling, the broadest knowledge, the simplest truths. They may express systemic mantras, reflecting dynamics that took root generations ago that have been passed down like precious heirlooms. They may contain powerful salves to heal family breaches or offer surprising, even shocking information to wake the sleepiest clients. Yet, even when we know full well the potency of words, it can be a tough assignment not to be reckless with them, not to infuse them with ego and reckless narcissism. We, who are endlessly encouraged to speak our minds, may find it difficult to suddenly be cautious.”
Suzi Tucker, “The Weight of Words,” Messagers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Helliger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005) page 7. The ORDERS of HELPING (From Bert Hellinger)
Bert Hellinger identified the Orders of Helping, which provide a phenomenological understanding about helping someone that’s healthy for the client and the practitioner. “We are all dependent on the help of others. We need others in order to develop. And we are dependent on being able to help others. If we cannot be useful, if we cannot help others we become isolated and cannot flourish. Helping is not only good for others, it is good for us too. Helping presupposes that we have first received and taken for ourselves what we need, because only then can we have the desire and the strength to help others, especially when much is demanded of us. And it presupposes that those we wish to help want and need what we are able to give. Otherwise our attempts at helping will separate rather than connect us.” * The First Order of Helping ** Helpers only give what they have and can only expect and take what they need. (Helping is mutual and a balance of give and take) The second Order of Helping Helpers respect the client’s circumstances, and their interventions only go as far as those circumstances permit. (Facing the uncomfortable) The Third Order of Helping Helpers meet an adult who seeks help as an adult. (Adults) The Fourth Order of Helping The empathy of the helper is focused on the whole system rather than exclusively on the client. (Commitment to whole- systemic resolutions) The Fifth Order of Helping Helpers have love for each human being, no matter how this person may differ from the helper. (Holding reconciliation in the helper’s heart) The Six Order of Helping Helpers agree to the situation of the client, exactly as it is or was without any regret. (Agreeing to the past) * Translated from an article (May 2003) by Bert Hellinger Translated and edited by Sally Tombleson and Jutta ten Herkel * * This list is from Bert Hellinger, Rising in Love, 2006 (with my annotations) “Healing sentences are another substantial part of Family Systems Constellation facilitation. These sentences, and the emergence of the right healing sentence, can be taught and learned. It is such a powerful aspect of constellations work, so that if one can find support in the training for stillness that allows these sentences to emerge, it is worth the time and patience, to actually learn as much as possible in a training setting.
Francesca Mason Boring, Family Systems Constellations: And Other Systems Constellations Adventures: A transformational Journey, 2015, page xx. Systems thinking focuses on the ways members of a system relate to one another. When you approach symptoms through that lens, you often find that they are a manifestation of problems in the structure (the patterns of relationship) of the systems in which the person is embedded (family, neighborhood, work, country etc.) as well as the system embedded within them…
I learned as a family therapist that understanding and improving a family structure was a far more effective and lasting way to help a child stop acting out than simply diagnosing and treating them without considering their family context… I also found that these family structures were often maintained by extreme beliefs or emotions that were not necessarily overt but were constantly felt. Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholenss with the Internal Family Systems Model, (2021), page 61. "Whatever the underlying reasons for a disruption in the early child-parent relationship, the consequences are that the child is often caught between an unfulfilled need for closeness to his or her parents and a sense of having to hold a line of demarcation and protection. In the context of a constellation group, if the background of this relationship disturbance is brought to light and the patient’s emotional splitting resolved, there may be an end to this ambivalence in the soul; there may be a sense of peace, and often healing at the physical level as well."
Stephan Hausner, Even If It Cost Me My Life, Systemic Constellations and Serious Illness, (2011) Page 67. “A very simplified way of describing constellation work is, “moving from blind love to love you can see.” When we are able to see the people we are blindly bound to, conscious love is free to flow. This love means: “You are you, and I am I. You have your fate and I have my fate. I remain bound to you in love forever, even if my fate is different from yours. Stay friendly if I leave you to your fate and your suffering, and go on to live my own life. I fully accept you and our family, including everything that has happened. I agree to the way everything has happened. I agree to how you are. Please stay friendly if I am the way I am. You have a place in my heart. I pass no judgement, I honour you, and I bow before what cannot be changed, for you and also for me.”
Jakob Robert Schneider, Family Constellations: Basic Principles and Procedures, (2007), page 78. “In constellations we often experience different layers of feelings, some covering others. Above all, we protect ourselves from rage and cover it up with indifference, or coldness or in an arrogance from which we look down on others with scorn, even though it is sometimes barely discernible. Pity also has a component of devaluing because it also implies looking down on someone from a superior position, rather than respecting who the person is and what they have to carry. “
“When rage grows and comes too dangerously close, confusion helps to keep it a bay. The person moves away from feeling, preferring confusion to the experience of other emotions. A reversal to the opposite pole also occurs, and someone may feel small and frightened than furious.” “Rage is itself often taken on from somewhere else and may have been passed down through several generations. Under the anger, at its source, lies pain. When I am hurt I become angry. There is strength to be found rage and I can still maintain contact with others. In pain, I lose my strength and feel alone.” Bertold Ulsamer, The Art and Practice of Family Constellations: Leading Family Constellations as Developed by Bert Hellinger, page 153. “Strictly speaking, we don’t get life from our parents - it comes to us through them from far away. They’re our connection with the source of life, with what is beyond whatever shortcomings they may have. When we connect to them, we access that deeper source, and it holds many surprises and mysteries. Something beautiful happens when people look at their parents and recognize the source of life.”
Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), Page, 105. “While working in a phenomenological manner, one must dare to listen, look, touch, smell and perceive in a way that may be outside of the norm of Western linear thought. The archeological truth is that, we all come from the tent (or cave). We all come from the early indigenous people of our lineage, no matter which continent we hail from. The knowing field is part of the landscape of human beings, and warmly invites every facilitator and every family to walk there with humility and competence. When facilitators find a place of trust in the knowing field, there is often a wonderful feeling of recognition, a coming home, for the client and their family system, those who are supporting the Circle and the facilitator.”
Francesca Mason Boring, Family Systems Constellations: And Other Systems Constellations Adventures: A transformational Journey, 2015, page 19. "When we try to avoid what is unpleasant, sinful and confrontational, we lose precisely what we wanted to keep, namely our life, dignity, freedom, and greatness. Only he who confronts the dark forces and accepts their existence is connected to his roots and the sources of his strength."
Bert Hellinger, Insights: Lectures and Stories, (2002) page 25. “We all want to belong. Part of the beauty of Family Constellation is how it shows us how natural, how universal, how human this need is. That’s the first thing as a child, as a newborn, that we know we must do—secure our belonging. Our survival depends on it. When we don’t belong, we are not seen, we are not heard, we are not recognized. Rejection, exclusion, is erasure of the self. A decade as a therapist has shown me unmistakably that almost all issue, our problems. our toxic behaviors go back to belonging.”
Marine Selennee, Connected Fates, Separate Destinies: Using Family Constellations Therapy to Recover from Inherited Stories and Trauma, (2022), 175 A person who succeeds in saying the words with the whole force and conviction of love affirms the child’s love, but affirms it in a different context, standing as an adult face to face with the beloved person. This combination of affirmation of the child’s love and the adult context allow the child soul to realize that the other loves as well, that both are adults love and beloved to each other. This knowing love draws a line between them, and thus between individual destinies. It makes possible the realization that he other gains nothing from my sacrifice; on the contrary, my efforts to intervene in favor of the beloved person are more likely burdens than help. “
Bert Hellinger, LOVE OWN TRUTHS: Bonding and Balancing in Close Relationships, (2001), page 317. “There is a resistance to changing one’s basic view of this outrage over perpetrators and remembering, and it’s often connected to the fact that, identifying with the victims allows one to feel better, superior and critical. That way, you’re spared your own suffering, or looking into your own depth, your own temptations, and your own experiences of failure. Those who feel outrage presume they have more rights than others and feel superior, exactly as the perpetrators felt. But when I identify with someone, that person is no longer visible to me. By identifying with him or her, I avoid looking him in the eye. Whoever looks the dead in the eye can’t carry on with a sense of outrage or presume to take over that which is the right of the dead.”
Bert Hellinger, Farewell: Family Constellations with the Descendants of Victims and Perpetrators, (2003) page 126-127. “Healing means freedom. The freedom of creating the life that you truly want based on your own terms, beliefs, and values. Not being afraid of pleasing everyone, of being rejected or abandoned because you think or feel differently. Healing is self-love. Healing is falling madly in love with yourself, secure with yourself, especially belonging in your soul.”
Marine Selennee, Connected Fates, Separate Destinies: Using Family Constellations Therapy to Recover from Inherited Stories and Trauma, (2022), 175 “Western culture has attempted to banish the body to the realm of medical science, emotions to the laboratory of neuropsychology, and spirit to the realm of physics. There is a form of knowledge in each of these disciplines, but something vital is lost. The body especially with its primitive dependence on the physical necessity for day-to-day survival and procreation, is connected to the larger dance of life and thus in touch with the deeper wisdom that organizes our living planet. The living, breathing body is in a primal relationship with Life, not with the abstractions of the mind….
Although the process by which representatives in constellations are able to sense the experience of people, they do not know seems mysterious, I believe it is an ancient way of knowing that I call embodied knowledge, which allows us to access information about the family system in this way. Placed by the client in specific locations, representatives’ bodies specially recreate the configurations of an individual’s constellation. Once they are standing in “in relationship,” the representatives’ bodies can sense information about the persons they represent. “ Jane Peterson, “Deep Roots: Musings on the Philosophy of Constellations,” Messagers of Healing: The Family Constellations of Bert Hellinger Through the Eyes of a New Generation of Practitioners, Edited by J. Edward Lynch and Suzi Tucker, (2005) page 45. “Observation seems to indicate that the dead leave us only slowly and gradually, as though they wish to stay near us for a little while longer. A few remain for a particularly long time. These are the ones who have been forgotten by their families or who have not been respected or were never mourned. And those who remain the longest of all are the ones who have been feared or rejected completely. Their families wished to know nothing of them. Mourning can only be fruitful when one gives oneself over to the pain. Through this pain one respects and honors the dead. When the dead are mourned and honored they feel able to withdraw. Life is over for them and they can be dead in truth.”
“Being dead is completion. When we accept this image of death our approach to it changes. This is true too of all those who have died young and of children who have been stillborn. We might imagine that they have missed out. But what are they supposed to have missed out on? What is essential is before and after. From this we come into life. To this we return after life.” “If we are able to let go of the dead they can have a beneficial effect on our lives without exerting pressure or demanding exertions on our part.” Bert Hellinger, No Waves without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page, 273. “If you recognize personal and accept personal guilt, you no longer feel it as guilt. It gets transformed into a powerful force for action. You still know about your guilt, but it doesn’t oppress you as guilty feelings. Guilty feelings develop at the point at which you refuse to act responsibly with respect to your guilt. Then you’re cut off from the power to act that guilt gives you. When you open yourself fully to your personal guilt then you have a source of support for doing good...
Whenever I feel guilty and try to atone for something I’ve done, I feel tight and limited. When I allow my guilt to overpower me, the effect is totally different.” Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, Love’s Hidden Symmetry What Makes Love Work in Relationships, (1998), Page 283. The soul is in agreement with death at a deep level as well as the source from which life comes and to which it returns. There is an inner movement that draws people back towards this source. It’s a delicate movement and one has to respect it…. The soul wants to return to the source of being at the time when it’s right.
Bert Hellinger, Supporting Love, pages 132- 134 “If a partner nonetheless tries to provide what one of the parents could not, a shift in the relationship occurs. The partner who gives ends up in a place not conducive to love in a couple relationship. He or she become a kind of substitute parent instead of a partner. Meanwhile the partner on the receiving end winds up in a subordinate position. This means the partner relationship shifts into a child-parent relationship. If the couple does not realize this in due time, the partner who enters into the position of the child “enters puberty” and will eventually leave the parent-child relationship. “
Indra Torsten Preiss, Heal Your Relationships: A new way of improving your relationship skills, (2015), page 81. “A widely accepted view is that the dead are gone form amongst us. This is not so. They are present. Even in our bodies they are present, for all our ancestors live on in us. In the same way they are present in the family soul. In what I call the greater soul meanwhile, the distinction between us - the living and the dead- has no significance.”
Bert Hellinger, No Waves without the Ocean: Experience and Thoughts, (2006), page 274. “Victim and perpetrator are twinned energies. When we hold on to the victim energy (or the perpetrator energy), we fuel the imbalance that disrupts the order of the family system, creating a cycle in which someone in a later generation will be drawn to right the balance, to act for us in an entanglement. In fact, when we commit to despising our perpetrators, we often unwittingly crate perpetrators in our children or grandchildren—people who feel justified in their anger as they seek retribution on behalf of those with whom they are entangled. We also perpetrate perpetrator energy through exclusion. As we know, missing people are among the greatest causes of entanglement. A missing family member is a week point in the structure of the system. The family system will seek to repair that vulnerability by replacing the missing with a member of a subsequent generation, who becomes identified with the excluded person and is drawn into that person’s place. Or we may transmit victim energy, creating an entanglement with a child who is compelled to revisit scenarios like the trauma in an attempt to change its outcome. In all these senses, entanglement is in many ways like a generational trauma response. Whatever has not been taking care of and recognized will happen again. When we acknowledge what is and consent to it, when we include our perpetrators in our family systems, we cut short the cycle of violence and preempt the trauma it creates. This is a remarkable gift we can choose to give our children and our children’s children.”
Marine Selennee, Connected Fates, Separate Destinies: Using Family Constellations Therapy to Recover from Inherited Stories and Trauma, (2022), 170. “Certainly, in order to lead constellations, you need to have the courage to listen to your inner voice, even if it leads you into uncharted territory with no signposts and many surprises. On the other hand, constellations do require a basic understanding. The movement in the work is not purely dependent upon flashes of intuition and inspiration based on the experience of the moment. A large part of what occurs in a constellation rests on certain structures which can be explained and understood.”
Bertold Ulsamer, The Art and Practice of Family Constellations: Leading family constellations as developed by Bert Hellinger, (2003) page, 11. "In Family Constellations, often people are able to experience in a holographic way what it is that they have always know at the level of the soul. In a constellation, people re-member the connections between themselves and their parents, siblings and partners. They become strengthened by the gifts of their ancestors and learn to separate themselves from traumas and limitations of their predecessors. (In Constellations work, many facilitators use the term “re-member” to refer to the dual experience in which forgotten or excluded members of a family are brought back into the family system through remembering in a more accurate way the isolation of their trauma and the impact of their transgenerational pain on a family or descendant.)"
Francesca Mason Boring, Connecting to Our Ancestral Past: Healing through Family Constellations, Ceremony and Ritual, (2012), page 26. |