The Knowing Field Issue 27

Dear Reader,

Today is my third grandchild’s fourth birthday. Yesterday was my second grandchild’s fifth birthday. In June, my fourth grandchild will celebrate her first birthday one day before her cousin’s eighth birthday—my first grandchild.

An interesting inter-meshing of birthdays, which would make a field day for the astrologists, no doubt. But for me, with what I now know about the inter-connectedness of dates, place, and energies, it makes complete sense that such interweaving would happen in our family, as in many other families too. Fascinating!

This issue of the journal brings an overriding theme of migration—a hot topic in Europe at the moment! It’s interesting to view these events through a systemic lens and see what’s happening as a possible balancing-up process following Europe’s past colonisation of much of the world. It’s a complex subject and not easily resolved, but I am pleased to be able to include a variety of connected articles from different countries and points of view.

Here in the UK, there is such a mixture of responses to the events amongst my friends and colleagues: deep empathy and compassion for those risking their lives and facing further trauma in trying to escape trauma in their own lands; a fear of being overrun in our already overcrowded country; accompanied with a deep desire to help in some way.

Bert leads us into the topic with his piece on the Dark Night of the Soul and how ultimately it leads to joy. We can see the ripple effects everywhere of our past actions: within our own families, within our own cultures, and in our relationship with the wider environment and our global destruction of the natural world. Maybe the dark night of the soul is where we are headed as a species—and who knows what the outcome of that will be!

Our two Spotlight interviews are both linked to this theme: Lisa Iversen talks with Diana Claire Douglas about the interconnectedness between family issues and the wider collective and highlights this in terms of the history of the USA and First Nations. She points out that it is essential to include our own family history when dealing with these larger collective issues.

In her conversation with Susan Pogue, Jane James talks in some detail about the background to the publication of her recent book on parenting, bringing in some of her own personal links to the writing of the book. These wider global issues begin within us and our own families, so there is no better place to start than looking at the whole issue of families and parenting.

Widening out from this theme, the next five articles take us on a trip around Europe to look at the migration crisis. Starting in the UK, we have an interesting article from Judy Ryde, who runs a foundation for supporting asylum seekers. Judy has no direct personal connection with constellations, but she organised a conference last year which aimed to bring together various approaches to dealing with trauma—and I was invited to present on constellation work. It was a very useful day with some important dialogue taking place between people with various approaches to working with trauma. This article brings together Judy’s current thinking on the issue of migration and trauma, through the lens of working with recently traumatised individuals.

From the UK we travel to Hungary and hear from Sandor Csurgo Jr. about the large group constellation which was carried out on the issue of migration, with particular relevance to this country and their handling of the refugee crisis. From Hungary we progress to Croatia to read of Alemka Dauskardt’s thoughts and experiences of migration with particular reference to Croatia, her home country where she now resides, and Australia, where she spent several years. In addition to her own personal journey, Alemka expresses an interesting dynamic whereby refugees are simply going through her country on to wealthier European countries. Croatia is experiencing emigration rather than immigration. She writes in more general terms about the effects of leaving behind our country of origin and the fact that it may take many generations for a new country to feel like ‘home’.

Pavlos Vouzoloudis shares with us some very moving stories on the plight of some individual refugees, which give the whole subject a very personal touch. None of us can fail to be moved by some of these stories.

Undine Whande, herself a migrant, shares her thoughts and insights on the deep-seated migration issues in South Africa, and her realisation of the ongoing emphasis on white privilege even now. This is another country which will take many generations to move beyond its history.

Long-time social traumatologist and expert on the effects of migration, invasion and other associated issues, Anngwyn St. Just shares with us this time her own personal history of her Cornish ancestry and its links to the wider collective of Cornish people and their skills and customs which were taken to various corners of the world.

This personal story is followed by her blog on the links between the historical image of the Raft of the Medusa, shown at the Louvre in Paris, and the associated story of the less fortunate being thrown overboard and left to perish—and the current refugee crisis, where the image of a drowned boy touched the hearts of many Europeans and became a catalyst for motivation and empathy for these desperate people. Together with Dr. Karl Heinz-Rauscher, she makes a plea for people to join the ‘circle of all’ where every person is included.

It is a fitting moment to then move to Sarah Peyton’s next article, which is taken from her presentation at the Bernried Intensive last May in Germany, on the value of attunement, resonance, and really being seen. She takes us one step further to look more deeply at the nine levels of integration of the brain, where everything begins to come together. Fascinating that this subject appears just after the one from Anngwyn and Karl-Heinz on the possibility of all of us coming together from across the world—internal and external integration as mirrors of each other.

Following on from this, we have another article which depicts a kind of coming together as Tanja Meyburgh and Karin Huyssen from South Africa have a conversation about the different emphasis of their work—traditional Family Constellations and inner parts work. Here they demonstrate how it is possible to embrace our differences and make space for all in the wider constellations field.

Following this, Anngwyn and Karl-Heinz return one last time to help us move once more away from the specific to the wider issues of our connection to nature, to mother earth and the cosmos, through the use of the medicine wheel and a more shamanic approach which was recently constellated in Germany.

Returning again from the wider, more global issues to the more specific, we have two individual constellations taken from workshops run by Judith Hemming and transcribed by David Presswell. It is hoped these constellation examples will become an ongoing feature in the journal.

This is followed by an individual constellation from Richard Griffin on the subject of fear; the use of real trees as part of a ritual to connect us to our own family trees, from Shelley Easthope; and some new ritual offerings from Jim Shine.

In the Reports on Conferences and Intensives we have several contributions from the recent USA Conference in San Diego in November last year. Jonathan Hooton starts off the process with his presentation on trauma and different parts of the brain, which links very closely to Sarah Peyton’s work. The remaining articles on the same conference begin with a review from the co-directors, Leslie Nipps and James Woeber. It seems like the conference has taken a radical step towards community-led events without one clear leader, and though there is fear about moving forward in this way, the initial impetus is there. Conferences can be a real catalyst for such movements.

In the same section—but this time from the Integral Theory Conference held at Rohnert Park in California—member of the Integral City core team, Diana Douglas, describes her use of the constellation approach to help address issues within the collective behind Integral City’s Meshworks. This sounds like an exciting new development, bringing together different fields.

It seems very fitting to end this issue with a rallying call from Francesca Mason Boring’s new book for those within the field of Family Constellations to step forward as facilitators of this amazing approach—and for those on the outside of this ground-breaking new work to step in and believe in what is happening. These are very exciting times for those of us working within the Field, but also for the transition towards a much wider acceptance of this new worldview. I feel very privileged to be part of it.

Barbara Morgan

Editor