Much of my work recently has been facilitating constellations.
Constellations, in this context, have nothing to do with stars or astrology. Rather, it’s a method of working with people that resolves frozen and repeated patterns in families, organisations, and systems. (The word “constellation” is a direct translation from the German aufstellung, which means formation or line-up.)
It’s incredible, magical work that I count myself very lucky to be able to do.
Here’s my journey into it, how it changed my life, and how (I think) it works.
I remember the first constellation I took part in, almost 10 years ago now.
A group of twenty people sat gathered in a circle. The facilitator1 asked for two volunteers to “represent a role”. Two people from the circle stood up, and each took a folded piece of paper from the facilitator. They didn’t look at it, they just put it in their pockets. Then the instruction was to “let the roll come”.
Again, they didn’t look at the pieces of paper on which their roles were written. None of us had received any information about the roles or the situation we were going to explore. Even so, as soon as the two people took the pieces of paper, they started behaving and feeling differently than they were just a couple of minutes prior.
One of the representatives walked around in a dazed stupor, reporting that he felt like he’d been drinking and partying all night. The other person curled up in a ball in the corner with his back to the other person, hiding in resigned desperation.
Eventually the pieces of paper were opened and the roles were revealed. The first person was representing a drunken father. The second person was representing his abused son.
In that moment, my embodied and intellectual understanding of life changed in an instant.
I have always been a bit of a mystic. Well, not always to be fair. In my late teens I was drawn to the work of atheist scientist and author Richard Dawkins. I remember preaching his (and Bertrand Russell’s) arguments that believing in God was akin to believing that a tiny, undetectable teapot orbited the sun between Earth and Mars. Without dwelling on the absurd line of reasoning here, suffice to say my teenage self was seduced by scientistic logic over all else.
As my own personal journey went on, other layers of reality started making themselves increasingly known. The more I dissolved the walls of separation and protection in myself, the more in touch I became with the world around me and the world inside me. Eventually, dismissing the deeper dimensions of life as illusional turned into the ultimate illusion itself.
Somewhere along that journey it became clear that there is more going on in this life than meets the eye. The deeper sense of it was always there, but I didn’t have a reliable way of seeing it or working with it.
That’s when I stumbled upon constellations.
In that unremarkable gazebo in Marin County all those years ago, I could see people tuning into something that was beyond their cognitive mind. It was clear they were gaining access to information that they had no logical right to have – but there it was. Plain as day. Without preparation or practice. And I’ve seen it repeated hundreds of times since.
I was hooked.
Then began a journey of learning how to facilitate constellations – but mostly it was a journey of gathering the courage to try it out.
Asking people to access something they have no conscious awareness of is, quite literally, an insane proposition according to mainstream worldviews.
But when you feel called to something you feel called. There is no way out.
Surrender or perish. And so surrender I did.
The first time I facilitated a constellation, I was physically shaking. I was cold to the bone and had constant chills. Somehow I was still able to keep it together, and I set the intention to start the constellation. Although the following hour felt a bit clunky, in the end it worked. Participants tuned into the roles and the constellation concluded with a distinct sense of harmony and resolution for the people involved.
While I don’t get nervous before constellations anymore, I do get excited. Another peek behind the curtain. Another chance to dance in the mystery. Granted, we are always in the mystery, all of the time. But it’s fun to be able to see it so explicitly.
The founder of constellations, Bert Hellinger, said: “I’m unable to explain this phenomenon [constellations], but I see that it’s so, and I use it.”
I humbly follow in kind.
As I’ve written about in my book, life is relational. Not only are we always in relationship with people and things around us, but at its very core life is an experience of ongoing relating. We are swimming in a relational field, a field in which relationship is a necessary and immutable aspect of existence. Relationship exists prior to that which is being related.2 It’s relationship all the way down.
But not only is life relational, it is also informational.
Most people would assume that information is limited to the confines of the human brain. Some people go further: from the data we store on hard drives, to biological phenomenon such as DNA, epigenetics, and the signaling in and between cells – all can be considered information.
But I am referring to something deeper than that still.
Life is informational at its core. We are swimming in informational soup all of the time. There is nowhere in existence where information isn’t available. Not only the information of what’s immediately around you or inside of you, but literally all information ever.
Most of us mere mortals have severely suppressed and compromised capacities to tune into this informational field. Cultural assumptions, the separative power of the trauma response, and lack of encouragement all contribute to neglected informational receptors. But like all skills, with willingness and practice we can learn to tune into the informational field that is available all of the time.
There is much more to say on the topic, and I hope to say more in weeks and months to come. But in terms of constellations, the assumption of a relational and informational foundation begins to make the impossible more probable. If systemic intelligence and relational information exist beyond our minds, then it’s only a question of how, not if, we get a chance to interact with it.
And what’s more, since constellations work on a systemic level, the changes that result from a constellation are systemic too. For example, it’s not uncommon for a client to get a call from a long-lost relative the days following a constellation after years of radio silence. A small ripple here can make big waves over there.
Taking part in a constellation makes all of this real in tangible ways, but this commentary is not about constellations. These ruminations are about the world we live in and the world we take part in creating. It breaks my heart to consider how much we drum out the magic from our lives, particularly that of our children’s. Today’s separative, individualistic, profit-over-all-else worldview gives no room for engaging with that which we can’t see or measure. Fantasy, make-believe, and role playing may be encouraged (sometimes), but there is an assumption that the “individual” is “creating” the ideas, and that those ideas are less valuable or real than cold hard facts. There is no space to listen, tune in, and receive from the collective world around us and within us.
Ultimately, we are all on our own path, and we discover deeper layers of reality as we stumble along. Sometimes, through grace or good fortune or a heavy dose of psychedelics, we might get a peak of the other side. At that point there is no going back. Other realms beckon from beyond, yet we don’t have to move a muscle. “There is another world,” said the French poet Paul Éluard, “but it is this one.”
The only question is whether we are willing enough, daring enough, and desperate enough to open our hearts and our minds to the moreness of life that is right here, and to play a part in midwifing it more fully into our lives.
Sometimes we need to pry our hearts open with a crowbar3. Sometimes it will get cracked open in response to the agonies and vicissitudes of life. And sometimes we’ll find ourselves in a quaint gazebo in a faraway land, where we’ll get woken up to the magical reality that was hiding in plain sight all along.
Until the next layer of the veil is ready to be peeled away once more.
Since moving to the north I’ve led a monthly in-person constellation group here at Allsta Gård. And I regularly lead online constellations for people and organisations from around the world.
If you would like to take part in an online constellation, click here. You will then join my free email newsletter for upcoming constellations. During the constellation you can volunteer to represent a role or you can just observe. It’s free of charge. There’s no obligation to take attend, you’ll simply be sent invitations to future constellations as they are scheduled.
If you would like to a constellation of your own, reach out.
1 The first constellation I took part of was facilitated by Carl Buchheit at NLP Marin. I am deeply grateful to him, Carla Camou, and Michelle Masters for their teaching and guidance throughout the years.
2 “Relationship comes before the relata – the ‘things’ that are supposed to be related. … [R]elations are primary, and form the bedrock of our existence.” Iain McGilchrist in The Matter with Things, p10-11 and p1005.
3 A phrase attributed to my teacher Patrick Connor.
