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Notes on the First U.S.
Intensive with Bert Hellinger:
Moving with the Spirit-Mind
November 16-23, 2008, Louisville, Kentucky,
“Perfection Includes Its Opposite”
A simple metaphor. Sailing vessels, too many to count, on a body
of water without boundaries. Each vessel carries just one person
through the currents. Some boats seem to be traveling together,
while others drift alone even within the group. The wind is there – steady,
fierce, or just a whisper. Being one among, we cannot tell where
time begins or ends or how long the journey will be. Destination
is an illusion. Maps are hidden.
The Spirit-Mind may be understood within this metaphor as the
wind … and the water. In other words, the combined force
of the immeasurable ocean and the unknowable wind is a living entity,
a force that holds us, directs us, and is unmoved by human intervention.
So much of the experience of being with Bert Hellinger for the
Intensive in Louisville still lingers that attaching words to the
parts is a challenging task. Immediately, one could feel
that this would be a shared experience and yet completely personal.
The grace and organization of the five members of the Center for
Visionary Studies was apparent from the beginning so that the initial
nervous questions about tiny things were handled respectfully and
promptly. But these types of questions, too, disappeared quickly
as most everyone came to realize that against the backdrop of this
experience the petty this and that of complaint was irrelevant.
The days progressed in improvisational time. Because Bert Hellinger’s
articulation is squarely in the realm of philosophy, the depth
and breadth of what was said felt relevant in the moment and also
in the gathering of all moments, whether ours or those of ancestors
or descendents yet to be. The lectures were brief; crisp haikus
that fell gently or sharply on individual realities. Whether Bert
considered the “divine revelation of Mother” or how
schizophrenia lands in a family, the words were provocative, not
in the sense of argument but in the sense of nudging listeners
out of the often-threadbare understandings and interpretations
developed over decades. In signing up for the Intensive,
part of what we were saying was that we are tired of our own prisons
of comprehension and willing (to different degrees) to explore
what it might mean to allow the walls to fall. As Bert spoke, the
150 faces in the circle registered the nuances of 150 ways of allowance.
But people did not simply sit back passively. Part of the brilliance
of Bert’s work has always been that he has found a way for
people to translate deep knowledge into experience -- into new
experience that fills out the narrow pictures or replaces the moment
of trauma or makes fresh meaning out of difficult circumstances
or invokes the expansive landscape where once there was rigidity
and contraction. Moving from the traditional “family constellations” to
the Spirit-Mind allows for a much larger field to be acknowledged.
Images unfold differently because of the assumption that everything
emanates from, and is already known by, the ultimate creative love
or Spirit-Mind. And this assumption is the connecting piece
at all points. Thus, where in family constellations facilitation
may be assertive, with dynamics and systems concepts in the foreground,
being attuned to the concept of Spirit-Mind necessarily shifts
the stance of the facilitator to one of far greater reserve with
it and before it.
There were instances in which Bert asked initial questions to
bring out the client’s issue, but other times, he went with
an impression. Sadness, anger, isolation, fear, all can be
seen in people’s faces or bodies or they leech out in the
incongruities between what is said and what is communicated. Sometimes
the impression is the deep truth even though seemingly unsupported
by the well-designed characteristics of a person. The soft-spoken
man who moves deliberately and with grace harbors volcanic anger.
The round-faced jovial woman hides sadness that threatens to consume
her, or, perhaps, her daughter. Frail and translucent, another
woman is capable of terrible violence, while the seemingly fearless
aggressor at her side may shatter at any moment. To perceive what
is most strongly at work (assuming that there are many streams
at one time) requires engagement, attunement and distance. Once
perceived, the decision as to what to bring onto the floor is a
creative one – creative in alignment with the ultimate creativity
of Spirit-Mind.
On one level, simply “dimensionalizing” the issue
provides the client with a new perspective that is outside of self-referencing
conceptualizations and beyond dyadic thinking. But once invoked,
the new images move without prodding and without intention. It
is Bert’s sense that nothing is manufactured in these pictures
but rather that something is revealed that has always been, a glimpse
of the subterranean forces that influence behavior and thoughts
and choices and limitations.
Often we act in accordance with a very small aspect of the entire
spectrum and inadvertently go against the greater part. This can
cause difficulties for the individual and for those within his
or her sphere. What Bert refers to as the “little self” takes
action based on the limited information gleaned from interpretation
and judgment with no ability to see the larger context. Then
these actions further obscure the landscape, interpretation and
judgment becoming more and more ironclad as the fog takes over.
Part of the reconciliation (the bringing together of parts that
have been separated) is in support of the “larger self,” which,
in acknowledging life exactly as it is as being the gift,
can begin to move in accordance with a fuller sense of the spectrum
and thus not be so entangled in the sticky details of life’s
narrative. The larger self responds to, collaborates with,
embraces and respects – even when it doesn’t understand – the
endlessly generative Sprit-Mind. The little self is a minion.
Over the years, Bert has also started to use small-group exercises
to allow participants to practice their attunement beyond their
private notions. The exercises provide opportunities to experience
fresh ways of perceiving and of being perceived, exploring the
shadowy nooks of the system where the treasures are kept. By
colluding with the defenses and denials of others (often family
members), we cut ourselves off from integration; when we enter
into agreement with what lies behind those defenses and denials,
we can move more freely.
Different people were invited to guide the exercises for each
round that took place so that everyone could have the chance to
sit on both sides of the process; perception and insight in this
sense are accessible to all who are willing to expose themselves
(versus attempting to expose others). They are the gifts of a reciprocal
relationship.
The exercises provided scaffolding for some of what Bert described
in his lectures, but they also moved participants along in their
own particular understandings of the issues and vulnerabilities
that they carry. Folks made huge discoveries with their peer groups
and began to imagine ways in which they would share them once outside
of the Intensive. Incremental, layered, abundant, the exercises
allowed for the emergence of burgeoning emotional reference points,
whether about parents, children, partners, countries of origin,
illness, fate or life. As always, in addition to stepping
into the place of the self within the broad context of our many
streams of influence and consequence, people had numerous opportunities
to represent those variables for others. This exposure to manifold
tapestries of the human condition necessarily called into wonderful
question any tendency to judge, and thereby to withdraw from, life
-- past, present, and future.
So, the lectures and exercises were part of the rhythm and dramaturgy
of teaching. But profundity requires levity in order to be integrated,
and meditations and music provided some of that balance. As people
went to silence, allowing words to pour in, or rose up in song,
allowing feelings to pour out, we all could feel the group
experience and personal experience meeting up and becoming more
than either/or. In these moments, everything melted into
a great exhale, so that people could come back to their own calibration
and sense of direction within an expanding sense of field. In his
book Through the Children’s Gate, Adam Gopnick states: “A
guru gives us himself and then his system; a teacher gives us his
subject and then ourselves.” In this way, Bert is a teacher.
In the evenings, after dinner, Bert again made himself available
to the group for questions and answers. His laser focus on the
questions beneath the questions sometimes shook up the room, again
inviting us (maybe challenging us) to snap out of the acquiescent
mind. In the space once inhabited by it, courage might begin to
supplant fear, clarity replace confusion, and love rise up from
rejection. Access to our authentic resources might open up, guiding
us to make trustworthy changes in our life even as we consent to
its natural and essential flow.
A simple metaphor. Sailing vessels, too many to count, on a body
of water without boundaries. Each vessel carries just one person
through the currents. What is beneath us, well below the surface,
is a mystery, and yet we know that it buoys us, holds us, no matter
our size or shape. It wants nothing in return. If we stay attuned
to it, we can embrace all aspects of the journey, in the moment,
for themselves, as they are, exactly. Even when the storms hit,
our little vessel can stay upright and ready for the clear, crisp
afterwards. Welcome. The wind, too, is mysterious, and yet we know
it moves us forward. It fills the sail, now or in time, and we
can move with it alongside the others who share this part of the
journey. If we stay attuned to it, we can catch and release in
time with its cadence. Only in setting our sails against it, do
we put ourselves and others around us in danger.
The Intensive in Louisville was a training on the level that Bert
described and demonstrated the most recent evolution in his thinking
with regard to Spirit-Mind and gave hints as to how they can be
incorporated into every work that touches the lives of others,
arguably any type of work in which people are engaged. At the same
time, training might be better understood as “practice,” meaning
that the extrapolation from philosophy to genuine application requires
our own embodiment of the perspective. In order to reach out to
others in accordance with this something that is greater than ourselves,
we need to be steady enough to discern whether we act in unison
with an organic movement or attempt to act against it, even with
good intentions.
The Intensive began in the midst of our lives – early, mid,
or late – and the contained experience ended just eight days
later. But the ripples will continue for a long time, as the images
return again and again. What is recalled now will undoubtedly give
way to new realizations over time, and as we stand in the world
differently, those realizations may become revelations that infuse
our lives with ever-greater meaning. In one of Bert’s
lectures, he offered: “When we trust movements beyond ourselves,
beyond our ideas and our insights, then we are taken by other forces.
These are creative at any moment. They never revert to the known;
they are always new and creative.” In the midst of
our lives, a beautiful breeze from unknown parts may beckon.
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