“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, We Are Three
This was in my inbox today and seemed to be perfect timing, The Universe is funny that way. I have been asked why I want to facilitate Constellation work, how has it touched me personally. The short answer would be because in that moment I am with someone, when I am facilitating connection, there is nowhere else on earth I would rather be.
So, now onto the longer answer. In 2001, I attended an evening workshop in what was then called Trans Generational Family Constellation work. A chiropractic colleague of mine who owned a healing arts center in the Los Angeles area had seen the work and felt its potential for deep healing. She brought in a facilitator and had been hosting these evening workshops for several months. She kept saying I should check it out, so one evening I did and….I thought it was a crock of sh…t. But like a pebble in my shoe it would not leave me alone. So I attended another evening, then another.
I am an observer by nature, and as I watched Constellation after Constellation being done, one of the first things I could see and feel was how healing relieving a burden of shame, guilt and incomplete understanding is for a person. I also saw how that burden not only had been but was being passed on from generation to generation.
It was not long before I decided to do a personal Constellation. It has been thirteen years since that time, and quite honestly I do not recall what I wanted to look at. But what I distinctly remember is that at one point, I was asked to choose someone to represent my maternal grandfather. Within the circle of about 20 people, all women that night, I chose my chiropractic colleague to represent him.
Why was my choosing her to stand in that place significant? What I did not know was that several weeks earlier she had done a personal Constellation herself. That what ended up being set up was pretty much the exact same family dynamic as my own, that being that the eldest son who was also the first child, was born slightly mentally retarded and the grandfather felt shame and guilt around that. To put it in context, these were families of the late 1800 to early 1900’s in rural America.
The other thing that touched me deeply that night was that in my Constellation, the resolution for my family was that the eldest son was seen and fully accepted by all the family members. The whole room, not just myself, could feel the relief in that. My friend said that standing as the representative of my grandfather helped deepen for her the healing experience of her personal Constellation. I will add here that before that evening, neither one of us knew anything about the family history of the other.
It has been many years now since I saw my first Constellation workshop. I have sat in many workshops, stood in as a representative hundreds of times and been a facilitator. In those experiences what I gained is a much broader perspective, a softening of judgement, because I felt what it was like to walk for a moment in another’s shoes. To watch and feel as we go beyond the mind created story that so often leads to a feeling of separation into the world of the universal connection where we can see from the perspective of the soul energy and wisdom that surrounds us.