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Issue 20, June 2012

£ 15.00

Contents

  • Barbara Morgan: Editorial

  • Bert Hellinger: Reconciliation in Russia

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

  • Thomas Bryson: In Conversation with Dr. Dan Booth Cohen

  • Jane Peterson: In Conversation with Helen & Claudio Celestino

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

  • Hunter Beaumont: How are Constellations True?

  • Hunter Beaumont: Space, Time and the Marriage of Heaven and Hell

  • Jane Peterson: Keynote Address US Conference Oct 2011

  • Darcy Cunningham: Moving towards Principles of Ease: Yoga & Constellations

  • Michael Reddy: Constellations and the Evolution of World-views - Part Three: From Clockwork to Network

  • Thomas Bryson: Systemic Constellation in Context

CONSTELLATIONS

  • Gloria Davila: Concerned for the Safety in our City

  • Don Paglia: A little Brother can only do so much

  • Rabbi Shevach Zlatopolsky & Matvey Sokolovsky, Ph.D.: Torah in Constellations: Meeting with Abraham the Forefather

ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS

  • Harrison Snow: Organisational Constellations with Intact Teams

FIRST PRINCIPLES

  • Anton de Kroon: Problems are Solutions

BOOK EXTRACT

  • Anngwyn St. Just Ph.D.: ‘Blindspots’ from Trauma: Space, Time and Fractals

BOOK REVIEW

  • Jen Altman, Ph.D.: Splits in the Soul by Franz Ruppert

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

  • Various Contributors

Extracts

Bert Hellinger: Reconciliation in Russia

Stalin’s representative stood upright and looked into the distance. Two other representatives sank to the ground. They wept and cried out loud. One woman turned away and sobbed. Others joined together or distanced themselves as best as they could, a little further away.

After a while Stalin began to push individual representatives into the centre. Some of them went to the ground; others remained standing. This was not enough for Stalin. He drew more people from the circle of the participants towards himself, and also pushed them into the centre. When Stalin wanted to draw one particular man to him, the man ran away around the circle of the participants. When he wanted to run past me too, I held my arm stretched out to halt him. Then he also went into the centre.

After some time Stalin withdrew somewhat. One woman on the periphery stretched her hand out after him, but he pulled away. Some women took him into their midst and held him. He lost strength and sank to the ground. One woman held him, and he put his head on her lap. He closed his eyes as if he were dead.

Many of the participants whom he had pushed into the centre got up and looked over to him. Two men went to the ground and bowed deeply before him. Others, especially those still sitting on the ground, were laughing for some time, until they also fell silent.

Here I interrupted the constellation. It had taken more than an hour. Then some music sounded forth. A choir sang in Russian two prayers from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (Rachmaninov, op.31, 1+2).

Hunter Beaumont: How are Constellations True?

When we think about truth, we notice that people use the word in many different ways. One very common way to use the word is as if we were talking about something absolutely True. We talked a little bit yesterday about fundamentalism and fascism and extreme political and religious conviction. In those contexts, we very often meet people using the word Truth in this absolute sense, believing that conviction is absolutely True and that your belief, if it deviates from theirs, is false. They are absolutely convinced that what they say is ultimately and fundamentally True, and they feel justified in their belief that your deviant position is False. For them, words have fixed meanings.

It is helpful to remember that we all also adopt this attitude to Truth from time to time. If you’ve ever had a quarrel with a loved one, you may remember yourself saying things that you believed to be True … “You never understand me; you’re never there when I need you; you’re always putting words in my mouth” and so on. In the moment you say it, you may believe that it’s true, but in a later, more relaxed state of mind, maybe after you’ve made love, or shifted your affect state in some other way, you realise the things you believed were true are only partially true. The confusion between these two ways of understanding truth continues to be problematic for many religions and political systems, and for many relationships.

Conversation between Thomas Bryson & Dan Booth Cohen

Dan: The impulse towards punishment as a form of vengeance does not benefit the family of victims or society at large. The grief over the loss of a loved one lasts a lifetime, but over time it can become integrated. The continued focus on the moment of the crime and the desire to carry on exacting vengeance, fuels the suffering of the families of the victims. The offenders are punished forever, so the families of the victims also suffer forever. In parole and commutations hearings, the victim’s family members testify that they are suffering, in order to justify keeping people incarcerated decades after the crime. If the case were closed, there is a chance that life could go on for both the families of the victims and the prisoners themselves.

The review process is like taking a snapshot of the crime scene and then looking at a frozen moment in time. It collapses the entire context of the culture, community, and individuals involved.