Issue 36, June 2020
£ 15.00
Contents
Barbara Morgan: Editorial
Bert Hellinger: The Future; Breakthrough
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Lisa Iversen: In Conversation with Una Suseli O’Connell
HISTORY OF NATIONS, CULTURES & RELIGIONS
Anngwyn St. Just: The Haunted Chair
COLLECTIVE CONSTELLATIONS – CORONAVIRUS
Cheng Lap Fung: Coronavirus: Sharing of Experiences from the Pandemic in China
Dan Booth Cohen & Emily Blefeld: Understanding the Great Mystery of the Pandemic as Revealed by Seeing with Your Heart’s Collective Constellations
Maria Dolenc: The Coronavirus
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
Rafael Ruiz Amdal: Facing the Virus with Mature Love
Leslie Nipps: Leading Group Constellations Online
Alemka Dauskardt: Men and Women: Love and Struggle against the Backdrop of Universal Patterns of Life – Observations from the Field
Nikki Mackay: The Silent Cost of Belonging
Max Dauskardt: Soul Search
BOOK REVIEW
Alemka Dauskardt: Reflections on Motherhood, Vol.I: The Birth Process by Barbara Morgan
BOOK EXTRACT
Bertold Ulsamer: Practical help against Fear: what you can do to help yourself in times of crisis.
IN MEMORIAM
Ivana Markovic (1964 – 2020)
POETS’ CORNER
Karine Butchart: Everything & Nothing; Love Bubbles in Winter
Various Contributors: Poetic Expressions from the Frome Training Course 2019–2021
Extracts
Bert Hellinger: The Future
…Where lies our future? In whose hands is it? Do human beings hold it in their hands? Can others gain power over us and decide over our future? Are we at their mercy?
If we fear them, yes. The more we fear them, the more they gain power over us. What above all do they have power over?
They hold sway over our thoughts, power over the ways we try to escape them, with a whole range of precautionary measures. They maintain power over the way in which we hand the world over to them, as if they were its creators, as if the fate of the world were in their hands, including our survival.
Can our imaginings be more distorted and muddled, especially as it is clear that they die like anyone else, at their appointed time, and with them, their power? …
Cheng Lap Fung: Coronavirus: Sharing of Experiences from the Pandemic in China
…It is very sad to see that the virus has spread so widely across the whole world. And it is also sad to see many politicians prioritising political posturing over human life. In many cases, they have promoted racism and hatred in the media. Blaming and shifting focus doesn’t help at all, and just splits humanity even more.
Historically huge pandemics have changed the world (e.g. the plague), and I believe this pandemic may change the world significantly as well. We are not going back to the old days for sure. And I hope it takes us in a better direction for the world as a whole.
A pause in human activity actually brings change in the environment very rapidly. We can see cleaner air in China, cleaner water in Italy, marvellous Mountain Views in India etc. Humanity does really need to ponder its relationship to Mother Earth.
The Pandemic has brought heavy human casualties. If it is to prove meaningful for our existence, we may need to stop our human-centred mentality. Human beings need the Earth; the Earth doesn’t really need human beings.
As a final example, one of my students organised a constellation about COVID-19 and the setting was a reporter interview with Coronavirus…
Dan Cohen and Emily Blefeld: Understanding the Great Mystery of the Pandemic as Revealed by Seeing with Your Heart’s Collective Constellations
…‘Seeing with Your Heart’ Constellations weave together personal stories, family histories and mythical archetypes to release ancestral entanglements, reveal their deeper cultural fractals and support individuals to fulfil their intentions, desires and life purpose.
The onset of the Covid-19 global pandemic called upon many in our international community to examine the deeper questions about its meaning in their lives, relationships, purpose and being. How can we, as a collective, learn these lessons? How do we integrate the messages revealed into our personal, familial and communal lives? What changes in our being need to occur for our lives to align with the Earth and with the heart evolution required for survival?
As we adjusted to the new reality of being confined to our homes and experienced the mystery unfolding, we began to gather online Constellation groups to explore the hidden meaning of the pandemic and its collective messages. These Global Pandemic Zoom calls, some with more than 200 participants, have included blind Constellations and exercises with different experimental designs. In this article, we will describe one in detail and glean some of the insights from others….
Maria Dolenc: The Coronavirus
…When asked if it was going to stay or leave, the Virus had no answer. When asked about the message it was bringing, it also had no answer, but reported that something was missing in the Field. The representative for ‘that which was missing’ was brought in and stood in front of the Virus and the Virus felt an immediate interest and connection to it, trying to touch its back. The new representative said it was happy to be there, but did not want to be touched by the Virus. It was feeling manipulative, like a trickster, laughing and trying to cooperate and connect with the Government and the Media. It turned out the missing representative was Pharmaceutical Industry. It felt very powerful and influential, until a new representative (Truth) stepped in and fiercely told the Pharmaceutical Industry off. The representative for the Pharmaceutical Industry immediately started to lose power and became deflated, slowly withdrawing. In that moment Fear began to feel better and stood up.
The People found their way to Nature and when they stood next to it, started to regain strength and feel better. The Pharmaceutical Industry retreated out of the Field, deflated, and Death joined them. The Virus was not so influential or strong any more, and the People wanted to kick it out, but before that happened, the Virus stepped away on its own towards the Medical Industry and became less central to the Field…
Rafael Ruiz-Amdal: Facing the Virus with Mature Love
…Bert Hellinger, and our continued experience in Constellation Work have surely opened the path for dealing maturely with situations such as the one we are living through now, in this present pandemic….
… As life goes on, we find that we often oscillate between immature and mature responses. In stressful situations, we find that both narcissism and ‘child love’ show up as ways to cope, by loving ourselves (to survive). A mature response would have to come from becoming conscious of the collective space that we are sharing, realising that we cannot survive alone. This is the basis for compassion. The Coronavirus is making us aware of the common destiny of humanity; it shows clearly that we are all being menaced by it, together.
Understanding what the Virus really is, may demand that we begin to acknowledge it as it is. And this is not an exercise for the mind, where we go into Google and find information. That may be the beginning, and science certainly has to do research and look deeply. But now we are called to look deeper into the premises of our perception. If we only acknowledge the existence of the Virus in relation to the harm it can do to us, we will miss seeing what it really is. We must go beyond our narcissistic and childhood love in order to recognise the larger context of this entity that has appeared to threaten our lives. Why and how has it surged? What does it demand in its own nature? And in our coexistence with it? Only mature love will help us cope with it, understanding all the deeper truths about its existence and our coexistence. And many seem to be discovering this…
Leslie Nipps: Blessed as we Connect in a New Way: Leading Group Constellations Online
…Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, constellation facilitators have been leading both one-on-one and group constellations at a distance, whether on the phone, on Zoom, Skype, Facetime, Google Hangouts, Whatsapp, or constellation apps. Many, however, found themselves having to move their live in-person groups online abruptly. Most of us have seen one-on-one constellations done online, but suddenly, many were asking: can you do group constellations online, and if so, how?
The answer, as many have discovered over the years, is a robust yes. And the very good news is that the most important part of constellations is entirely unaffected by distance: the power of the Knowing Field and our capacity for representational perception. Also, much of what we do with in-person groups is the same: we need to have a strong container, clear instructions, an agreement about what we are up to, a shared sense of purpose, etc. Finally, whatever our personal style as a facilitator, we can still bring that with authenticity and commitment – indeed, our clients are longing for us to do that!
But there are some important adaptations we have to make as facilitators, depending upon the platform we use…
Alemka Dauskardt: Men and Women: Love and Struggle against the Backdrop of Universal Patterns of Life – Observations from the Field
…Is the love between men and women dying? Is there still a chance for a healthy, robust, creative and joyous relationship between a man and a woman? And on what grounds does it have to be based in today’s world? Do we still want it and aspire to it? Can we still hear the song of the spirit inviting us to be together?
It seems that more and more men and women are having difficulty coming together and some are giving up on the other sex altogether. In our western world there are less people marrying and having children, more divorces, more singles, and more same sex relationships. It is not only the idea of marriage that is being disposed of, but there is also a staggering increase in the percentage of people living without a partner in some countries.
I want to work on a partner relationship
It wasn’t surprising, really, that at a recent workshop I was facilitating, almost every person who wanted to work, came with an issue to do with their relationship with their partner. There were more women than men, as is often the case in constellation workshops, but there were at least some men, and women of all ages. Most of our issues get played out in the arena of partners’ relationships, and show up as relationship difficulties or the absence of a relationship, which doesn’t mean that this is where the problem, and the solution, necessarily lie. Most of our unresolved difficulties stem from our primary families, some from childhood or other traumas, or from difficult dynamics in the collective Fields we belong to – and all that gets played out through our difficulty in establishing and maintaining that one important relationship on an intimate level with a significant other…
Bertold Ulsamer: Excerpt from Practical Help against Fear: How you support yourself in times of the crisis
…You will find five topic blocks. If you have never dealt with the topic of fear before and you are currently experiencing repeated attacks of anxiety, I recommend starting with the first two chapters. First of all it is about fear as a physical feeling and how to deal with this biological fear. Then we look at the thoughts that generate the fear.
If you experience being permanently and massively tormented by existential fears or fears for your own health or that of your loved ones, start with Chapter 3 about the roots of fear. The current intensity of your fears is often fed by previous personal experiences or experiences passed on from your parents and ancestors. ‘The war is not over yet’ is a sub-chapter. You may not yet understand why your fear is so overwhelming. But if you look in these directions, it will fall from your eyes like scales and you will regain your ability to be and act in the present.
Then follows a chapter about fear of the future, where death awaits each of us. In normal times, we push away thoughts about constant change and finiteness as much as we can. At the moment these insights are getting closer. Connected with this are sadness and pain about these facts of life. Finally, for the last Chapter the question remains: Which attitudes to life help you here and now to leave fears behind? …