What would it take for each of us to become fully human?…

I’ve been thinking about two ways of being a human:

• In Eastern cultures, people learn about where they belong in their families, their neighborhoods, and their culture. They understand who they are by noticing their proper place with others.
• In Western cultures, people learn to look inward, to find out who they are and what it means to be an individual, unique person.

Both of these ways have deep wisdom, and I think we need them both to have a full life.

Since in the West, we tend to almost exclusively emphasize being an full individual, often what we need are concrete ways to understand how we belong, especially to our ancestral networks.

Bert Hellinger, the founder of Constellation work, introduced a beautiful, powerful way to experience proper belonging as a way to becoming fully human.

I will forever be grateful to him for showing us this way. It has changed my life. My parents were troubled alcoholics. It wasn’t easy to receive nurturing from them in childhood. But now, through this work, I can find a real basis to experience their authentic love for me, and the love of all my ancestors. I have found that I always had a good place in my family, and I belong.

I am becoming fully human.