The Knowing Field Issue 37

By the time you receive this edition of the journal, we will be into a new year with its accompanying hopes and aspirations. It’s probably fair to say that 2020 has been a year like no other. So much has happened so fast that it’s been hard to keep pace with it all, and it’s also difficult to really know what’s going on with so many different perspectives on everything. So, I’m in agreement with Cecilio Fernández Regojo in his article about the pandemic when he says: “I don’t know.” I’ll return to this later.

Our cover image, kindly donated by Francesca Mason Boring, will hopefully inspire you to find some hope in the advent of Spring. Francesca has entitled this photo Spring Landscape and refers to it as her ‘front yard.’ With Spring comes new life in all its vibrance.

Before I begin going through the articles in this issue, I want to say a few things. Firstly, I was deeply shocked and saddened to learn of the recent death of Jen Altman over the Christmas break. She has been part of the backbone of the journal for many years, helping me with editing, proofreading, and general advice. She has also helped edit my last two books. She will leave a major hole in the fabric of my support system. I will miss her greatly. My condolences go to her partner, Paul, and the rest of her family.

Secondly, I was also saddened to hear of the ending of the Annual German Intensive, which for many years was a place of support and companionship for me, sustaining me through some very difficult trajectories at times. The network of friends I built up over the years was second to none. It wasn’t always easy being part of what happened there over the years, but Hunter Beaumont and Lutz Bessel managed to create a thriving community there. Francesca has kindly offered to gather some memories for next time as a tribute to what was created and maintained so adeptly by Hunter and Lutz. My grateful thanks to both of them.

So, if you feel moved to share something of your experience—large or small—with the wider constellations community, please address your memories to:  They will be published in the June 2021 issue.

Thirdly, you will see under the ‘Working with the Collective’ section, two invitations: one from the De-Col Hub in London and one from the ISCA Board. Both are invitations for us to come together, which seems even more important now than ever before when we are so separated from each other physically. The first invitation from the De-Col Hub went out last year and received no response, so I urge you to see whether you can, in some way, become involved in what is, after all, a worldwide issue. Colonization has touched all of us in one way or another and is still in existence today.

Two years ago, we organized a workshop on this subject and invited Anngwyn St. Just to facilitate us. We realized at that workshop what an enormous issue colonization and its ongoing effects are, and several of us have been meeting regularly since then to look more deeply at the issues and plan future events. We will be organizing some podcasts, and Covid permitting, another large workshop in the Autumn of 2021. With the insights we have gained so far regarding colonization here in the UK, we have committed to attempting to include participants who represent all aspects of the legacy of inequity, colonization, and expansionism. But we still have a long way to go. The whole process requires deep listening, humility, and a willingness to learn.

Alongside this, the ISCA Gathering on Belonging: Thriving Together fits very closely with the overall theme, and I imagine there will be many presentations and workshops continuing to explore it.

We are sorry to see the departure of Chris Walsh as administrator for the ConstellationTalk online international discussion group, which has been running for many years under his expert guidance. Like the journal, it has traversed many rocky terrains during that time. I would like to offer my personal appreciation to Chris for his handling of the group over the years. I am pleased to see what an easy transition has been made to another site with the help of Daniel Gackle and the generous offer from Tanja Meyburgh to take over as administrator. I look forward to more contributions on this very relevant and much-needed forum.

And lastly, it is our intention to simplify the subscription system of the journal. You will see towards the back of the journal an ad to this effect. My graphic designer, Lubosh Cech, has re-designed the website to make it easier to navigate. We will have an annual, automatically renewable subscription price of £45, which includes access to everything online, as well as downloads of the January and June issues of the journal each year. In addition, we are planning to make available bundles of themed articles for a one-off price. It is our hope this will make access to this rich array of articles much easier and more satisfying. We look forward to receiving your feedback on this new process once it is up and running. When I run my trainings, I draw strongly on the articles available, and it has always been my dream that other trainers would do the same. After all, this is when interest is at its height—when people are in training. So, I’m inviting all you trainers out there once again to encourage (or even require) your trainees to subscribe to the journal as a rich source of knowledge from all over the world and a support for the ongoing work of facilitating.

Our first piece from Bert Hellinger is taken from his Sunday Contemplations and is about prioritizing what is important to us. He lists our health as the number one priority, which often gets sidelined in favor of other commitments, mostly related to fame, making money, etc. Another priority is our own happiness and the happiness of our family. This all seems particularly pertinent in these times of great upheaval and the struggle to know who to listen to, alongside what feels true and right in our hearts.

The second piece from Bert is an extract from his book Journeys to the Core, published in 2009. He describes the experience of being deeply moved as one of being drawn to something external, beyond the ordinary, such as a beautiful piece of music or a natural phenomenon. He then draws a distinction between being deeply moved in a way that alienates us from ourselves and that of drawing inward to a place of awe and grace. During this time of the pandemic, we have come face to face with both of the phenomena highlighted here by Bert—having to prioritize what is important to us and being deeply moved in nature, particularly by the amazing way she has blossomed in the face of a huge reduction in human activity.

I’ve already mentioned the two invitations under the ‘Working with the Collective’ banner. In addition to them, Diana Claire Douglas continues on her journey of finding facilitators who work with the collective, and this time, she is in conversation with Yuval Carmi from Israel. After relating his experience of working with the collective, he describes in detail the blind constellation carried out on the subject of Jerusalem.

Regular contributor Anngwyn St. Just offers us three articles under the History of Nations section. The first, Something that Can Stand in the Wind, covers the rarely publicized history of slavery in Ireland and the lives of well-known Irish Saints: St. Patrick and St. Brigid. The second, co-written with Timothy John Thornton, is on the subject of Man’s Inhumanity to Man, looking at slavery—both white and black—across the world, from now and throughout history, as one of the darker aspects of the human condition. Her third article is also related to Ireland and the Chronicles describing the atrocities committed in the Magdalene Laundries towards mothers who became pregnant out of wedlock, and their infants, many of whom were murdered and buried in mass graves. The shock of this reverberated throughout the world and shook the foundations of the Catholic Church.

Under Research and Development, we have two pieces. The first, by Yildiz Sethi, writes about her development of the work by incorporating some of her own ideas and coming up with a new package. She combines what she calls Emotional Mind Integration for the personal with Constellation Work for the systemic. Secondly, in her research into the Roots of Racism, Nikki Mackay shares how much hate and perpetration she has witnessed in her (often blind) constellations on the subject of slavery, and how intractable it seems. Integral to this subject is the issue of migration and the deep pain and wounding this brought to the families concerned. She also describes the difficulty with the issue of belonging and the entanglement between enslavers and the enslaved, with representatives of enslavers asking to be relieved of their guilt by the forgiveness of the enslaved, rather than being able to fully look at what happened and the pain it caused. This continues to this day, even within our constellations community, with our collective difficulty in being able to fully address this huge issue.

The first piece under Personal Reflections is Cecilio Fernández Regojo’s reflections on the pandemic. He describes how many people came to him for his opinion and advice on Covid-19, and how his main response would be: “I don’t know.” This was a test and good modeling for the task so needed in Constellation Work: staying with the process of ‘not knowing.’ He sees the advent of the virus as Mother Nature sending us a warning to wake up to what is happening around us and face ‘what is’—another task of constellation facilitation. He maintains that we are caught worldwide in a collective trauma and urges each of us to return to our own resources and give thanks for what we do have.

Next, we have two pieces connected to music. New contributor Marcela Velfl relates her experience of moving on the dance floor and her need for close physical contact, despite the current social distancing laws. She describes her attraction to Kizomba—a music and accompanying dance originating in Angola and rapidly spreading across Europe and the world. Alongside other forms of dance, she shows how the underlying need for participants is ‘connection,’ not only with each other, but with themselves. It is seen as an opportunity to ‘tune in’ at a deep level. She links into the work of Tanja Meyburgh and Sian Palmer in referring to how it is possible for us to also connect deeply to our ancestors via dance and movement. So, the whole process becomes like a moving constellation.

Franziska Pretsch emphasizes the importance of the voice and singing in helping us link into our ancestors. She uses this process in her facilitation and draws on songs from ancestors all over the world to connect us to these deep roots. She provides a link to one of the songs she has written in this respect.

Both these contributors highlight for us the importance of music in connecting us to our right brains and our bodies, where a soulful experience is more possible than through our left-brain, linear minds.

It is helpful every now and then to be reminded about the basics of Constellation Work, and in her piece describing her experience of being introduced to the work, Jane Buyers does just that. She covers those most important issues of ‘acknowledging what is,’ ‘belonging,’ ‘taking our place,’ and ‘the balance of give and take.’

Francesca Mason Boring takes us on a delightful journey around her house with the vivid imagery of a group of elk bugling outside her bedroom window in the middle of the night. What an awe-inspiring experience for nature to come so close to visit in all its magnificence! She demonstrates how, on some occasions, complete invisibility can work to our advantage. In this instance, it enabled her and her husband to witness an extraordinary spectacle. She then contrasts this as a chosen silence and invisibility, with the traumatic response of being frozen and unable to speak out or become visible. She offers some possibilities for finding resources once the possible historical contributions have been explored.

Barbara Morgan

Editor