believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one’s own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.
—Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
It’s easy and natural to get mired in our own conflicts. In fact, we often identify ourselves with our conflicts. We forget who we are, but in reality, we can disentangle ourselves from conflict by remembering our true nature. And that deep remembering is part of what the Constellation Approach offers—a way to awaken. It does not offer a system of personal psychotherapy or of engaging in family therapy, but rather a path of discovering how the nature of our Soul acts through us and our Family Lineages. Ultimately, we discover how each family connects to a greater whole.
Following this simple, enriching path is not only a way to resolve our personal conflicts. It also enables us to glimpse our Soul’s purpose for this life, for our family, and for humanity at large. In order to navigate this journey, you may find it helpful to consider various ways of viewing your true nature. That’s what this part offers—a sampling of perspectives that will help prime you for the Constellation journeys ahead.
On Conflict
We are not our conflicts. Resolving conflict begins with healing the unresolved strife each of us carries, often unconsciously. Much of our inner turmoil originates before birth; it begins with our mothers, fathers, grandparents, and passes from one generation to the next.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, no one thinks of changing themselves.
—Leo Tolstoy, novelist
Every human being has the opportunity to be a peacemaker, a contributor to personal, familial, and societal peace though resolving our internal discord. In this sense, conflicts are the silver lining of our inheritance from our ancestral bloodlines. But if we do not heal the inner unrest with our own family—our mother, father and siblings—we carry it within ourselves and into the world. If we’re in conflict (internal or external) with our mothers, we will eventually find ourselves in friction with women. The same happens with our fathers: if our discontentment is not healed, we will be at odds with men throughout our lives. Moreover, such unresolved conflicts create internal dissonance between the masculine and feminine aspects of ourselves. The pitched battles within us—sniper attacks on the opposing gender, running feuds with siblings, predictable patterns of gathering and losing resources—originated long before we were born in the actions, agreements and circumstances of our ancestors. In this lifetime, we either pass on these unresolved conflicts or contribute towards everlasting peace.
The Constellation Approach is an opportunity to discover true peace and happiness for ourselves, our families, and for those who will follow in our footsteps. The approach hinges on this simple view: Who we are and the conflicts we carry and aspire to resolve stem from our biological mother’s and father’s respective lineages. By exploring our parental bloodlines to uncover, understand, and integrate these conflicts, we can move forward with a sense of peace previously unknown to us.
If there is to be peace in the world, There must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, There must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, There must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, There must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, There must be peace in the heart.
—Lao Tzu, Taoist philosopher
On Connection
To journey into our mother’s and our father’s respective lineages can be unnerving, to say the least. Such a process challenges some of our fundamental views of our individual self.
Many of us have grown up believing that to become a fully realized human being we must differentiate ourselves from our parents and “strike out” on our own. This cultural myth includes assumptions about free will, individuation, separation, and self-reliance—core beliefs of the self-realization movement. Yet, these tenets of emotional and psychological maturity have helped push modern civilization to the brink of disconnection from our ancestors. This urge to leave the nest, to break away from old beliefs that hold us in place, affects everyone regardless of social or economic circumstances. If we’re lucky, we mature, and a new perspective forms. We gain appreciation for our parents, grandparents, and ancestors who have paved the way for us. If not, we stay stuck in the attitudes of blame and victimhood, which keep us small and fearful, and often lead to defensiveness towards others.
Many people spend whole lifetimes searching unconsciously for the meaning of why things happened in their lives or in their ancestors’ lives. The answers to these questions remain elusive, or at best, rationalized on the mental plane of consciousness, but these “answers” and narratives do not bring peace within. On one hand, we feel free to do as we wish, to be different from those who have come before us. On the other hand, we are never truly free from the ancestral field in which we were born.
The particle is not separate from the field. The field determines everything. If you wish to understand the movement of the particle you must study and understand the field.
—Albert Einstein, physicist
We are merely a particle as Einstein tells us, part of an immense energy field that determines everything. Our movement, the direction of our life, the partners and careers we choose, even the illness and disease that occur in our lives are determined by this powerful field that influences us at the deepest levels of our unconscious being. If we want to truly know and understand ourselves, it is important to study and understand the influence of the Family Energy Field.
The Science of Behavioral Epigenetics
Part of who we are is genetic, but there is increasing evidence that our present behaviors stem from our ancestors’ experiences. The science of behavioral epigenetics can shed light on our nuanced nature and prime us for the experience of a Constellation. Current scientific research on DNA transmission strongly suggests that our parents’ and even grandparents’ experiences influence the behavior of their offspring.
For instance, how might experiences such as abuse, trauma, or addiction affect the genetics of future offspring? Interestingly, traumatic experiences do leave molecular scars that adhere to our DNA—as cellular memories of our ancestors’ lives. These scars mark the history of their lives but they also provide information about our own behavior—past, present, and future. What our parents, grandparents, and distant ancestors experienced in their lives literally creates an overlay on our DNA.
The Greek prefix epi means “over” or “outer.” Behavioral epigenetics is beginning to prove that our behavioral traits—both our weaknesses, and our strengths—have their origins in our ancestral past. According to a recent article in Discover Magazine1,
Like silt deposited on the cogs of a finely tuned machine after the seawater of a tsunami recedes, our experiences, and those of our forbearers, are never gone, even if they have been forgotten. They become a part of us, a molecular residue holding fast to our genetic scaffolding. The DNA remains the same, but psychological and behavior tendencies are inherited. The mechanisms of behavioral epigenetics underlie not only deficits and weaknesses but the strengths and resilience that we inherit too.
We know that our DNA is the biological basis for our physical being, and that DNA testing now allows us to trace the migration of where we originated to who we are today. The Constellation Approach explores the possibility that these epi-overlays are, in part, our emotional inheritance from our ancestors.
Our life is like a grain of sand
Blowing among others—
Touching and resting for a while
Moving through