What aspects of constellations work praxis support the transformation of consciousness?
Amended extract from Geils, C. (2021). Unpublished doctoral dissertation, UKZN, South Africa.
In 2021 I completed my doctoral these reflecting on constellations as a method that supports transformation in consciousness. I will reflect on what is consciousness and how constellations work praxis assists awareness and transformation.
What is consciousness?
Various thinkers have suggested that consciousness originates beyond the brain (Grof, 1986; Laszlo, 2000). Underlying, permeating and connecting all of reality is thought to be a creative, aware, intelligent, pulsating and unified consciousness field as the original source and ground of all being. Ancient wisdom traditions teach that all is One and therefore interconnected within a non-dual universe, ranging from matter, to body, to mind, to soul to Spirit in a Great Chain of Being (Baring, 2013; Bohm, 2005; Edwards, 2014; Huxley, 1945; Laszlo, 2000; Wilber, 2000).
Instead of producing consciousness, the human brain and entire nervous system, together with the body and subtle energy systems, may act as a receiver, resonator and amplifier of information that originates in a quantum field outside of time and space. (Bradley, 2007; Shelton, 2010; Thomas, 2010).
What is the transformation of consciousness?
The transformation of consciousness is a universal and fundamental process and practices have emerged out of the major wisdom traditions to communicate with or achieve union with the Ancestors/God /Allah/ Brahman/Atman/Source/Creator etc., as well as to develop healing abilities (Edwards, 2013; Luskin, 2004, Wilber, 1996). Braud (2006) suggests the phrase transformative changes in consciousness rather than transformation of consciousness, as the former refers to an ongoing process, whereas the latter suggests that the process is complete.
According to Braud (2006) transformation is a process of change that is permanent, profound and pervasive across many areas of a person’s life. It implies a change in the patterns and structures of the psyche and therefore levels or stages of consciousness (Braud, 2006; Luskin, 2004; Wilber, 2000). It is distinguished by Wilber (2000) from ‘change’ which translates experience into a different meaning system yet does not necessarily transform interior consciousness and interior growth and development. It is also distinguished from transcendence and non–ordinary states of consciousness, which goes beyond or rises above the consciousness of pre-personal and egoic stages without changing its basic patterns and structures ((Braud, 2006; Grof, 2008; Ferrer, 2003; Wilber, 2000). According to Clements (2003) transformative change is a consequence of going beyond ego consciousness (leaving ordinary waking consciousness), entering liminal or spiritual realms (non-ordinary states of consciousness, transcendent states) followed by integration of these experiences by merging them with intellectual understanding thereby restructuring the ego personality (Clements, 2003).
Constellations work as accessing non-ordinary states of consciousness. Constellations have been compared to indigenous ceremony and rituals in their prescribed order of steps and ability to access deeper levels of consciousness and facilitate transformative change (Baxa, 2011; Baxa & Blumenstein-Essen, 2009; Boring 2013; Jirásek & Jirásková, 2015; Van Kampenhout, 2001, 2008).
Through phenomenology we are taken out of the realm of the conceptual into experiencing and observing embodied experience. By including the living, the dead, unborn, and abstract, past, present and future, as well as combining time and physical space, our usual experience of time and reality is disrupted. Through representation, empathic identification, somatic focus, and emotional and spiritual experience, the disruption to linear time perception and habitual thought and personality patterns which limit our growth, creates an expanded awareness and space for new insights and new experience to occur (Ordonez, 2012; Somé, 1998; Van Kampenhout, 2001).
Through the process described above, most people in a constellation will enter a light trance (Van Kampenhout, 2001). Franke (2009) identified hypnotic trance as the mechanism underlying the effects of a constellation.
Constellations Work as transformative
The principles of constellations work that serve psychological maturation and transformation are theorised to be:
Creation of a strong container. The container is created by the facilitator and the representatives. They hold the field with witnessing presence and awareness. The presence, witnessing and naming that takes place in representation as well as the adding of resources in the form of supportive ancestors, archetypes and many other strengthening structures, a strong container creates a crucible within which the alchemy of transformation can take place. This allows the containment of forces that create dissociation and fragmentation, allowing inclusion and integration of excluded elements, such as experiences that were previously overwhelming, releasing the state of ‘freeze’ and moving back into reconnection with ‘Life’.
Expansion of awareness allows witnessing unconscious dynamics and facing reality. Dismantling denial and other mechanisms which distort reality requires facing reality as it is and all the discomfort, pain, fear, horror, shame, grief and loss that this may entail (Hellinger & ten Hovel, 1999; McQuillin & Welford, 2013).
Judith (2004) identifies the importance of acceptance of limitations. These are the limitations of physicality which, without acknowledgement, will continue to entrap us. Hellinger’s existential position was that our freedom is limited. “Freedom in this sense, means acknowledging that I must face the consequences of my actions. If I can do that, I am capable of acting” (Hellinger & ten Hovel, 1999, p. 27).
In Ruumet’s (2006) model of consciousness transformation, she discusses how we must return to review our life, in order to look at the truth of what it really was, rather than our internalised stories created by perceptions and projections.
The strong container and support by representatives in a group allow facing and bearing what was once too painful or overwhelming, without resorting to defence mechanisms. By grieving what is no longer possible – unmet needs, unlived dreams, fantasies and alternate realities, and releasing hurt, grudges, anger and guilt, we can truly come into our unique expression through the heart.
According to Hellinger (2010) this enables freedom and stepping into full participation with the creative force of life and the mystery. “Simply being alive then becomes a cause for celebration, because the future is open and invitingly fertile” (Ruumet, 2006, p. 104).
Connecting with the relational bond of love. Out of loyalty to their system and a need to belong, members of a family will often sacrifice themselves or be sacrificed to the greater systemic conscience that seeks to bring balance within a system. Out of love borne out of loyalty, children will wish to heal their parents, to fix the problems of their ancestors, and right the wrongs of the past. Healing in a constellation can come through grief and coming back into the heart, a place of both connection within and without. This releases enmeshment of boundaries that results from connections driven by loyalty and trauma (Hellinger, 2010; Ruhl, 2014).
Healing at this level within the family soul is to differentiate boundaries with respect. It also allows us to honour the burdens and fate of others, without having to take on fixing it. Releasing back to others what belongs to them, honouring their strength and capacity to carry this, and taking responsibility for only what is ours, allows reconnection with love. This is a bond at a higher, heart-based level (Hellinger 2001, 2010; Hellinger et al., 1998).
Transcending narcissism and self-centredness. Jirásek & Jirásková (2015) discuss the orders of priority, that those who come first are honoured as such, and that we take up the position of the child in relationship to our parents. This helps to correct Western values of educational and economic status and power strivings which have the potential to make us think we are superior to our parents. The orders of love restore the child to the position of the child and the gift of life to the highest priority and value which renders the position of the child to their parent forever unequal (Hellinger et al., 1998).
As our contemporary society seems to prefer power games, often we are determined to influence others, to force our will on them; but until we submit to the influences at work within our own particular systems, we will always encounter systemic manifestations of discordance (Jirásek & Jirásková, 2015, p. 65).
Prevention of spiritual bypass. Transcendent states of consciousness can also become an escape for those who attempt a spiritual bypass, that is, an attempt to avoid the difficulties and challenges and grief of full human development and the ordinary, human, and mundane aspects of every-day living (Ruumet, 2006). In constellations work, the search for self-realisation, enlightenment or God is considered to be compensation for the search for the “not-yet-taken father and the not-yet-taken mother” (Hellinger et al., 1998, p. 105). In constellations work, we observe out connection to the ‘Source of Life’ as it comes through the parents and ancestors from a mysterious source beyond (Hellinger, 2011; Hellinger et al., 1998; Meyburgh, 2015; Meyburgh & Campbell, 2018).
Internalisation of a new system. One of the ways constellations work is thought to transform us is by providing a new image of the system. As the client witnesses the representatives voicing the experiences of other members of the system, a new perspective is seen. Often we internalise stories that may be limiting or not include the full picture (McQuillin & Welford, 2014). It is thought that the new image of the system gradually replaces the old one which supported the symptom (Cohen, 2009; Mayer & Viviers, 2015). As the representatives move, so the new system within is embodied (Broughton, 2006; Meyburgh, 2017). According to Van Kampenhout (2001), the new resolution happens at a soul level and attempts by the personality to create a story and understand disturb the power of this resolution to unfold. He recommends that the constellation is stored as a concrete image in the quiet timeless place of the soul, where it draws energy from the soul and unfolds with its own intelligence.
Finding a place of belonging, connection, and alignment with a creative flow of life and death. Hellinger’s observations led him to conclude that it is not our life that belongs to us, as something to own or possess, but that we belong to life. He suggested that this shift in perspective aligns us with a bigger, more supportive force as we experience ourselves as part of a greater whole. He adds that as we align with the life force that comes through our parents from a source much greater and mysterious, which passes onto us, so we also align with the flow towards death. He says that if we keep the dead in sight, then we also do not elevate life above death (Hellinger & ten Hovel, 1999, p. 58-59).
This brings peace and acceptance beyond judgement, as judgement, pain, guilt and blame block love and the freedom to choose how to act (Hellinger & ten Hovel, 1999). As trauma, guilt, blame, and exclusion that separates are resolved, new connections are made. Connecting to family and ancestors and so integrating human and spirit, biology and transpersonal, we find a grounded place of belonging in ordinary life.
Alignment with the spiritual conscience.
To what does the spiritual conscience respond? It responds to the movement of the spirit; this spirit that moves everything exactly in the way it moves. This spirit moves everything in a creative manner. Everything is subject to this movement, whether we want it or not, whether we submit to it or we try to resist it. We have to ask ourselves whether we perceive ourselves in harmony with this movement, whether we willingly surrender and knowingly remain in tune with it (Hellinger, 2010, p. 60).
Hellinger (2010) emphasizes that within this spiritual conscience, everything is included and loved just as it is, and in a constant, endlessly, and infinitely creative movement, behind which lies true power. This is consistent with Ferrer’s (2011) participatory approach.
Constellations Work According to Ferrer’s Participatory Approach
Jorge Ferrer’s participatory approach is an approach within transpersonal psychology that reframes consciousness evolution from development towards a universal and unitary spiritual goal measured through subjective inner experience; to – multiple, possible, co-created and participatory intrapsychic, interpersonal, communal and transpersonal pathways that engage the entire range of human faculties, body, vital energy, heart, mind and soul, in enactive sacred processes that are transformative of self, community, and world (Ferrer, 2011).
Ferrer’s definition replaces predetermined ‘levels’ of spiritual development with agency and dynamic relational participation, as well as the principle of co-creation with an “undetermined mystery or generative power of life, the cosmos, and/or the spirit” (Ferrer, 2011, p. 2). He integrates masculine knowledge building with feminine germination and gestation in service of authentic creativity (Ferrer, Romero, & Albareda, 2007).
Constellations work shows us that when natural orders (structures, patterns) are restored, with the freedom that comes from honouring these limitations, and aligning with the creative movement of the spiritual conscience, new pathways can be created.
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About the Author
Cathy Geils is South African born, mother to two daughters, and primarily descended from British lineages. She has worked as a clinical psychologist since 2003 in South African public hospitals and community clinics, and then in private practice. She completed her training in constellations work in 2013 and currently integrates hypnotherapy, eye-movement integration and constellation work modalities within an integral psychology framework in her private practice. Cathy has taught, trained and supervised student and intern psychologists and other health professionals, has conducted many experiential workshops for both the public and for psychologist continued professional development, and more recently began training others in constellations work. Using the transpersonal research method of organic inquiry, Cathy’s PhD investigates transpersonal psychology, constellations work, and transformational changes in consciousness. She has presented at international and local conferences and published articles on this and other topics.
