I invite you to consider joining in my first fully online constellations training that starts next month. But first…
For me, it’s been several weeks of locking the doors to keep smoke out here in my Oakland home. Day after day, I experienced a terrible fear of what’s “out there,” both the more local bad air, and the further-out fires where people have been losing their homes and their lives. That’s on top of pandemic that never had to get this bad; structures of criminal justice that are bound up with racism and maintaining white supremacy; and a continuing voice of “leadership” that is obviously not even trying to lead.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold, William Butler Yeats wrote in The Second Coming. Yes, exactly.
For the long-term thriving of all, the truth is, our large-scale societal systems aren’t working. There is so much good happening all around us, but honoring these goods cannot keep us from seeing how seriously our shared failures are causing deep, sustained and unjust suffering for so many.
It can be maddening to look at a system that doesn’t work, and know it can be better, that it needn’t be this way. Our oil-based infrastructure? Our school systems? Our justice systems? Our medical health structures? Our governance? We can legitimately differ about how we do things, but seeing the systemic patterns of non-workability and how advantages accrue to those with the most, can make some of us feel crazy some days. Especially when the impacts fall so intensely upon us and those whom we love.
I’ve been feeling kind of crazy lately, at least. You?
Systemic intelligence reminds us, however, that what is on the surface is not all that is present. There are invisible structures underneath these unworkable and unjust systems, structures that, in their way, make sense and have a logic.
If we try to make change, or even simply try to understand, without knowledge of these invisible structures, we may be like the spouse of an alcoholic that tries and tries to change their beloved, and is doomed to failure. We don’t have access to any leverage. And if we keep viewing it at that level, we can go kind of crazy.
Family Constellations work gives us access to those invisible structures. There are lots of ways to work with systems these days, but constellations is the only approach I know of that is able to really explore what is deeply unconscious and flourishing at deeper layers of our complex systems.
Once we have a better picture of what’s underneath, we then have some potential leverage: a possible guide to how we can engage the system most effectively, whether it is our own family systems, our businesses, systems we have to interact with (like schools or hospitals), or our specific neighborhoods and countries.
If you are an alternative healer, a worker for social justice, or just really wanting to grow beyond current limitations, I warmly encourage you to check out my upcoming training, and consider whether it might be a good opportunity for you in this system-breaking moment that we are sharing.
It gave me great hope this morning to read Choctaw leader and Episcopal Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston’s post on Facebook:
We are in a time of awakening. One of our leaders for environmental justice, Al Gore, used that word just last night in an interview. I think he is right. We are waking up. It is not easy, but we are waking up. We are becoming alert to the fault lines that have made our culture more fragile than we imagined. We are seeing the injustice, the inequality, and the pain. We are waking up to the result of past mistakes come back to confront us with climate change. We are living between flood and fire. Now we are engaged in a great process of political change. We are opening our eyes to the end of chaos and the beginning of renewal. Even if we are not sure where we will go next, we are spiritually more aware than we have been in a very long time. The awakening has begun.
To be honest, I don’t usually talk in terms of “an awakening.” Not my style. 😉 But when one of my elders speaks with the kind of authority that Bishop Charleston does, I listen. Time will tell if we “woke up” or not. But I know from personal experience that constellations work contributes to this effort. Check out the details below, go to the website, and if it resonates, reach out to me soon – Super Early Bird ends Tuesday, September 22nd.
What is your experience of our breaking systems? What gives you hope? You are welcome to share your stories and reflections on my blog below.
Although this pandemic has brought untold pain and devastation for so many, I feel that so much has been out of balance for so long, and that sometimes systems need to tip to breaking point and to completely fall away and die for something new to be able to be born and emerge.
The seismic shift which has occurred has touched everyone on this planet, along with our institutions, economies and local and global ecologies. Our personal sense of identity, work, relationships and our sense of a predictable future have been rocked to the core, splitting open our BC realities and leaving us in new territory, without a map.
What has happened for me is that, after grappling with my initial resistance and then gradually accepting “what is” I have found less struggle and frustration and a sense of greater serenity and peace.
Having the time to really go within, to come face to face honestly with myself, to consider my mortality and reassess whether my life is truly in alignment with my leading principles and where I need to recalibrate in order to fully achieve my purpose has given me an even greater sense of volition to live my best life, right now, despite of and in fact because of everything.
Having gone through an immense personal upheaval three years ago and having to let go of everything that previously defined me and where I thought my life was heading, I had already experienced a living death.
When everything in my life had been swept away, everything I valued had been annihilated and I sat huddled in a cocoon of grief , unable to imagine my future, I had no choice but to surrender.
Then strangely, in that space of nothingness, after my heart had been forced to crack open, something emerged unexpectedly beneath me….a rock-solid foundation that lay beneath everything else…something that had always been there, but until then I hadn’t realized or been able to recognize.
This unshakeable, impervious, indestructible foundation was, surprisingly…love. Without my bidding or any intention or effort on my part it had come to me!
It had always and will always be there. I now know and feel this deeply in every cell of my being and this gives me unshakeable faith and hope that all the destruction and dying of so many of the systems to which we belong provides us the with the opportunity to co-create something new that will better serve us personally and collectively …..if we can manage to surrender and accept “what is” and allow our emerging future to come to us.