Family Constellations, also known as Systemic Constellations and Systemic Family

Constellations, is an alternative therapeutic method which draws on elements of family systems

therapy, existential phenomenology and Zulu attitudes to family.[1] In a single session, a Family
Constellation attempts to reveal a supposedly unrecognized dynamic that spans multiple
generations in a given family and to resolve the deleterious effects of that dynamic by
encouraging the subject, through representatives, to encounter and accept the factual reality of
the past.
Family Constellations diverges significantly from conventional forms
of cognitive, behaviour and psychodynamic psychotherapy. The method has been described by
physicists as quantum quackery, and its founder Bert Hellinger incorporated
the pseudoscientific idea of morphic resonance into his explanation of it. Positive outcomes from
the therapy have been attributed to conventional explanations such as suggestion and empathy.[2]
[3][4]

Practitioners claim that present-day problems and difficulties may be influenced by traumas
suffered in previous generations of the family, even if those affected now are unaware of the
original event. Hellinger referred to the relation between present and past problems that are not
caused by direct personal experience as systemic entanglements, said to occur when unresolved
trauma has afflicted a family through an event such as murder, suicide, death of a mother in
childbirth, early death of a parent or sibling, war, natural disaster, emigration, or abuse. [5] The
psychiatrist Iván Böszörményi-Nagy referred to this phenomenon as "invisible loyalties". [6]

Contents

 1Conceptual basis
 2The method
 3References
 4Further reading

Conceptual basis[edit]
The philosophical orientation of Family Constellations were derived through an integration
of existential phenomenology family systems therapy and elements of indigenous mysticism.
The phenomenological lineage can be traced through philosophers Franz Brentano, Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger. This perspective stands in contrast to
the positivist reductionist orientation of the scientific psychology. Rather than understanding mind,
emotion and consciousness in terms of its constituent parts, existential phenomenology opens
perception to the full panorama of human experience and seeks to grasp a sense of meaning. [7]
Family Constellations take their form from family systems psychology. Influential figures in this
movement include Jacob Moreno, the founder of psychodrama; Iván Böszörményi-Nagy, the
pioneer of transgenerational systemic thinking; Milton Erickson, a pioneer of brief therapy and
hypnotherapy; Eric Berne who conceived the concept of life scripts; and Virginia Satir, who
developed family sculpture, the precursor of Systemic Constellations. [7] In the past decade, further
advancements in the use of the process have been innovated by practitioners throughout the
world.
The process draws from indigenous spiritual mysticism to contribute towards releasing tensions,
lightening emotional burdens, and resolving real-world problems. Hellinger lived as a Roman
Catholic priest in South Africa for 16 years in the 1950s and 1960s. During these years, he
became fluent in the Zulu language, participated in Zulu rituals, and gained an appreciation for
the Zulu worldview.[7]
Of particular importance is the difference between traditional Zulu attitudes toward parents and
ancestors and those typically held by Europeans. Heidegger postulated that to be human is to
find oneself thrown into a world with no clear logical, ontological, or moral structure. [8] In Zulu
culture, Hellinger found a certitude and equanimity that were the hallmarks of Heidegger's elusive
authentic Self. The traditional Zulu people lived and acted in a religious world in which the central
focal point was the ancestors. They are regarded as positive, constructive, and creative
presences.[9] The connection with ancestors is a central feature of the Constellation process.
The term "Family Constellations" was first used by Alfred Adler in a somewhat different context to
refer to the phenomenon that each individual belongs to and is bonded in relationship to other
members of his or her family system.

The method[edit]
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Family Constellations

This description is the prototype group Family Constellation as developed by Bert Hellinger in the
1990s.[7] Many practitioners have blended Constellation work with psychological aspects of
healing. Others have kept the classic form as taught by Hellinger, such as the Constellation
Approach.[10] The Constellation Approach merges concepts of Family Constellations, energy
medicine, and consciousness studies to complement the understanding of classic Constellation
methodology.

 A group (workshop) is led by a facilitator. In turn, members of the group can explore an
urgent personal issue. Generally, several members will be given an opportunity to set up a
Constellation in each session.
 After a brief interview, the facilitator suggests who will be represented in the Constellation.
These are usually a representative for the seeker, one or more family members, and
sometimes abstract concepts such as "depression" or a country.
 The person presenting the issue (seeker or client) asks people from the group to stand in
the Constellation as representatives. He or she arranges the representatives according to
what feels right in the moment. The seeker then sits down and observes.
 Several minutes elapse with the representatives standing still and silent. Initially,
unlike psychodrama, the representatives do not act, pose, dialogue or role-play.
 Emphasis is placed on perceptive intuition in placing the representatives and in
subsequent steps of the procedure. The aim is supposedly to tune into what the psychiatrist
Albrecht Mahr describes as the Knowing Field[11] and former biologist Rupert Sheldrake has
suggested as morphic resonance.[12] Representative perception is not a concept with any
scientific basis. The representatives have little or no factual knowledge about those they
 represent. Nevertheless, the Knowing Field is claimed to guide participants to perceive and
articulate feelings and sensation that mirror those of the real family members they represent.
 The facilitator may ask each representative to briefly report how they feel being placed in
relation to the others. The facilitator, seeker, and group members may believe they perceive
an underlying dynamic in the spatial arrangement and feelings held by the representatives
that influence the pertinent personal issue. Often, configuring multiple generations in a family
is thought to reveal that traumas continue to unconsciously affect the living long after the
original victims or perpetrators have died.
 A healing resolution for the issue generally is supposedly achieved after repositioning the
representatives and adding key members of the system who have been forgotten or written
out of the family history. When every representative feels right in his or her place and the
other representatives agree, the facilitator may suggest one or two sentences to be spoken
aloud. If the representatives do not feel at peace with their new position or sentences, they
can move again or try a different sentence. This is claimed, in an abstract way, to represent a
possible resolution of the issues faced by the seeker. Sometimes the process concludes
without a full resolution being achieved.
 When the facilitator feels that the healing resolution has taken hold among the
representatives, the seeker is invited to "replace his/her representative in the Constellation".
This supposedly allows the seeker to perceive how it feels to be part of a reconfigured
system. When everyone feels comfortable in their place, the Constellation concludes.

BERT HELLINGER

"A person's greatness is that which makes him/her equal to

others"                                                         --Bert Hellinger

Widely regarded as one of the most influential and effective family therapists in the world
today, Hellinger acknowledges several important influences on his life and work: his
parents, whose faith immunized him against accepting Hitler's National
Socialism; his 20 years spent as a priest and missionary with the South
African Zulus; and his participation in interracial, ecumenical training in
group dynamics led by Anglican clergy. After leaving the priesthood, he
immersed himself in the study of the major forms of psychotherapy,
including Psychoanalysis, Gestalt Therapy, Primal Therapy, Transactional
Analysis and Family Systems Therapy, out of which, Family Constellation Work evolved.
To learn more about Bert Hellinger, please visit his Web site.

"ORDER AND LOVE WORK TOGETHER"

Identifying what he terms, "the Orders of Love," Hellinger observed that certain
governing principles must be respected for the love in the family to flow in a healthy
way. And that when these orders are disturbed, for example, when a child tries to take
on the fate of a parent, suffering and unhappiness ensue.

Hellinger found that each member in our family holds a special place and has an equal
right to belong to the family system. This applies equally to stillborn and aborted babies,
as well as to the failures and perpetrators in our family who may have been rejected for
reasons of immorality, criminal misconduct or abuse. If any member of the family is
disrespected, forgotten, excluded, or disregarded in some way, someone in a later
generation may repeat his or her fate by sharing a similar misfortune. Only when we
acknowledge and honor the difficult fates of those who've preceded us, can the "Orders
of Love" be reestablished and the chain of tragic destinies be broken.
A person’s greatness is that which makes him/her equal to
others.  Bert Hellinger
Considered one of the most respected psychotherapists in the world
today, Bert Hellinger has revolutionized the heart and soul of family
therapy by illuminating the unconscious, and often destructive,
loyalties within families. While much of psychology concentrates on
exploring the conflicts in one’s childhood, Hellinger’s work examines
the tragedies in one’s family. Hellinger has observed that traumatic
events, such as the premature death of a parent, sibling or child, an
abandonment, crime or suicide, can exert a powerful force affecting
later generations. Entangled with unhappiness from the past, family
members often continue patterns of anxiety, depression, anger, guilt,
fear, chronic illness and unfulfilled relationships. It’s a common theme:
sad mother, sad daughter… alcoholic father, alcoholic son… the
relationship difficulties of the parents, mirrored by the children.

Hellinger developed Family Constellation Work, an effective therapeutic

process that helps to break destructive family patterns of unhappiness,
illness, failure and addiction. The results are often immediate and life-
changing. The Family Constellation Approach is becoming one of the
most rapidly expanding forms of therapy in the world and is practiced in
more than 35 countries.

It Didn’t Start With You shows how the traumas of our parents,

grandparents, and even great grandparents can live in our unexplained
depression, anxiety, fears, phobias, obsessive thoughts and physical
symptoms—what scientists are now calling “secondary PTSD.”
Documenting the latest epigenetic research—how traumatic
memories are transmitted through chemical changes in DNA—and the
latest advances in neuroscience and the science of language, It Didn’t
Start With You is an accessible and pragmatic guide to
breaking inherited family patterns.
WHAT IS INHERITED FAMILY TRAUMA?
Simply put, many of us relive the tragedies from previous
generations and rarely make the link. Examples from the book include:

 A man in jail for a crime he didn’t commit discovered he was paying the

price for a murder his father had been acquitted for a generation earlier.
 A woman who couldn’t understand her sudden indifference toward her
husband was entangled with her grandmother who lost her husband
tragically at the same age.
 A young, Cambodian boy whose self-destructive behavior was linked to
the murder of his grandfather by the Khmer Rouge.
  A woman with claustrophobia—unable to ride in a plane or elevator—
made the connection to her father’s parents who perished in a gas
chamber.
 A woman with a paralyzing fear that her child would die discovered that
her grandparents lost two children before they immigrated to the United
States.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE
The book leads readers through a process of self-discovery
and healing, helping them identify the emotionally-charged language
of their worries and fears that link to unresolved traumas in
their childhood or family history. Through provocative questions,
relevant case studies and a series of body-centered exercises,
readers are guided to become detectives, mining their family history to
unearth the source of their issues. Ultimately, readers learn how to
convert old, fearful images into ones that bring strength and healing. It
Didn’t Start With You is the first book of its kind to offer step-by-step
guidance to help people break the cycle of destructive inherited family
patterns.
You will learn:
 How to identify inherited family trauma that lives in your
anxious words, fears, behaviors and unexplained physical symptoms.
 How to map out the traumatic events in your family history that keep
the cycle of suffering alive from generation to generation.
 Practices, visualizations, healing sentences and other tools that can
help you disentangle from an emotional legacy you’ve inherited.
 How to create new neural pathways in your brain, new experiences in
your body, and new vitality in your relationship with yourself and others.

Hellinger, Bert, Acknowledging What Is: Conversations with Bert Hellinger.

Hellinger, Bert, Love's Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in
Relationships.
Hellinger, Bert, Love's Own Truths: Bonding and Balancing in Intimate
Relationships.
Hellinger, Bert, Supporting Love: How Love Works in Couple Relationships
Hellinger, Bert, No Waves Without the Ocean
Hellinger, Bert, To the Heart of the Matter: Brief Therapies
Hellinger, Bert, With God in Mind
Hellinger, Bert, Together in the Shadow of God
Hellinger, Bert, Rising in Love

Biographical Sketch
Bert Hellinger is probably Europe’s most innovative and provocative psychotherapist and a best-
selling psychotherapy author. A former priest and a missionary to the Zulu in South Africa for 16
years, as well as an educator, a psychoanalyst, body therapist, group dynamic therapist, and a
family therapist, he brings a lifetime of experience and wisdom to his work. The family
constellations, which have become the hallmark of Hellinger’s approach, as well as his observations
about systemic entanglement and resolution, have touched the lives of thousands of people and
have changed how many helping professionals carry out their own work. 
Bert Hellinger has written 83 books. Translations of them are available in 30 languages. His work is
documented in many CDs, DVDs, Audiobooks and eBooks.
Bert Hellinger says that his parents and his childhood home were a major influence on his later
work. Their particular form of faith immunized the family against believing the distortions of
National Socialism. Because of Hellinger`s repeated absences from the required meetings of the
Hitler Youth Organization and his participation in an illegal Catholic youth organization, he was
eventually classified by the Gestapo as ‵Suspected of Being an Enemy of the People’. As fate would
have it, his escape from the Gestapo was made possible by being drafted. Just 17 years old, he
became a soldier, experienced the realities of combat, capture, defeat, and life in a prisoner of war
camp in Belgium with the allies.
The second major influence was certainly his childhood wish to become a priest. At the age of 20,
he entered a Catholic religious order and began the long process of purification of body, mind and
spirit in silence, study, contemplation and meditation. He went on to spend 16 years in South Africa
as a missionary to the Zulu, an experience that had a profound effect on his later work. There he
directed a large school, taught, and was parish priest simultaneously. With time he came to feel as
much at home with the Zulu as is possible for a European. The process of leaving one culture to live
in another sharpened his awareness of the relativity of many cultural values.
Hellingers`s participation in an interracial, ecumenical training in group dynamics led by Anglican
clergy was also tremendously influential. Here he was introduced to a way of working with groups
that valued dialogue, phenomenology, and individual human experience. His decision to leave the
religious order after 25 years came with the realization that being a priest no longer was an
appropriate expression of his inner growth.
Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy were to be the next major influence. Several therapeutic schools
have made their marks on his work, in addition to the phenomenological/dialogical orientation of
the group dynamics from the Anglicans, the fundamental need for humans to align themselves with
the forces of nature he learned from the Anglicans and the Zulu in South Africa, the psychoanalysis
he learned in Vienna, and the body-work he learned in America.
He trained in family therapy with Ruth McCledon and Leslie Kadis, and went on to work with Milton
H. Erickson, and others. Those familiar with the full range of psychotherapy will recognize in this
approach a unique integration of diverse elements. In the gathering of powerful approaches from
psychotherapy as well as other paradigms, he has created a uniquely compelling healing approach.
He has learned specific tools from a variety of sources, but the overarching strength of his work
comes from his refined skill of listening to the authority of one`s own soul. This is not a guaranteed
‵technique′, it is, rather, the only real protection we have against the seduction of false authority
according to Hellinger. Seeing ‵what is′ as opposed to blindly accepting what is being said – no
matter by whom – is the linchpin of this often difficult healing work for individuals,
groups, communities and cultures.
Before taking to psychotherapy, he had studied philosophy and theology in Germany.
Subsequently, he obtained the University Education Diploma in South Africa where, for several
years, he worked as a teacher and principal of a teachers’ training college for africans.

Abortion and Ambivalence

 

Abortion
By Suzi Tucker

Prochoice? Prolife? Abortion has been caught in the political tug of war in the United States for
decades. Legal questions have their place most certainly, but one of the most powerful journeys I
have taken since being introduced to the work of Bert Hellinger has been with regard to another
way of thinking about issues that are among the most polarizing. When we really look at everyone
involved in abortion, it is clear that the political level of discussion cheats everyone out of being
able to access all possibility, all potential. Trapped in the dichotomous discussion of prochoice or
prolife, the essential truths slip away.

The ending of a life is on a certain level beyond. On the one hand, the physical functioning of a
person can be shut down, but once introduced the energy of being cannot simply be snuffed out.
We have rituals for coping with the departure from our life of people who die as adults or even as
children, however their death comes. We have rituals to attempt to hold the dual sense of absence
and presence, of what is and what was. We tend to know how to support one another in these
difficult times, and we know that we may have to seek special emotional assistance if the person
who died was close to us. Abortion is a matter of life and death with little in place to help us face it,
as individuals, as a community.

It is interesting that abortion is often felt as a personal experience when in fact it involves many
people. The loss is a loss for everyone, most obviously for the child, but also for the parents,
grandparents who have lost a grandchild, for ancestors who have lost a descendant. When we hold
this image, the landscape of the question becomes immediately wide, not just two points on some
conversational spectrum. Grief, guilt, anger, all thunder beneath the surface of what is officially
known.  When left unchecked, the impact on the system is powerful, the ripples reaching out in all
directions.

Bert Hellinger has talked about the rarely considered effects on the surviving children, for example.
The living child was allowed to be born based on timing: circumstances have improved, the mother
is more mature, whatever. This child gets to live; his or her sibling did not. The living child is
naturally drawn to the sphere of the sibling, while being completely dependent on a mother who is
not trusted. It is the draw of secrets, of the deep subliminal knowledge that all members of the
system have. The tangle of reactions and feelings, of behaviors and repercussions, will take years,
or maybe forever, to unknot.

Is there a way to work with abortion that brings peace to the family? The place to start is to
envision the entire family, everyone with the same right to belong, everyone acknowledged.
Sounds simple, but this is not a portrait we often allow ourselves to see, let alone encourage others
to. People are left out for many reasons, deemed by the group to be unworthy somehow; aborted
children rarely even get this level of consideration. They are pushed out of consciousness, usually
immediately. Sometimes they fall into the untenable prison of parental guilt where they are still not
visible ‒ except as projections of regret, itself an illusion. But calling forth this portrait, with every
member present, in and of itself brings a level of calm to the system. The presence of absence
brought to awareness.

I ended this person’s life. This is a powerful statement. As frightening as it is to give words to, the
statement is actually freeing. It allows all levels of being to come back into alignment. The tension
required to reject the truth is enormous, so admission is a vast opening. The realignment
strengthens the speaker’s ground, allows her to come back into some amount of integrity. More
important, the listener, the child, breathes a sigh of relief. The admission is acknowledgment.
Negation is the greatest violence.

Resolution follows from this essential first step. And resolution includes the fact that there is no
“resolution” per se. Along with the admission of responsibility, there must be the acknowledgment
that there is no fix, no way to balance the loss – no ritual, no planting of flowers, no form of self-
punishment, no prayer, nothing that undoes this decisive action. Bringing that to awareness is also
a relief. After all, it is already known in the deepest pockets of our being. Again, more important,
for the child, we can imagine that this extension of admission is good; it is an extension of the
acknowledgment of his or her existence.

For the living children, we can imagine that if the mother carries the full weight, they get to be
truly innocent, truly free to live. She carries it all, she looks with a steady gaze, she grieves; they
no longer have to. Oddly, she also becomes more trustworthy for them. She is taking care now of
all of her children.

Beyond this full engagement with responsibility, the ways in which something good is done is
within the purview of the mother.  The first steps are clear and common to anyone who has had an
abortion, they are the steps taken toward love and with love; the steps that follow are private,
quiet, humble, far from the public eye.

With this adjustment in our seeing, a widening of our view to encompass even those who remind
us of the frailty and imperfection of humanity, prochoice and prolife become aspects of the same
sphere. Imagine if the two phrases came from the same mouths, spoken with ease and in
harmony. How might we care for all those at the age to bear children? How might we care for all
children? Within this sphere of prolife-prochoice, all would be protected, celebrated, and supported.

Ambivalence

By Suzi Tucker
When people think about ambivalence, they tend to think that it is a state of being neither here nor
there. In truth, it is simply a “no” to whatever it is responding to. In fact it is a “no” that seeks to
place responsibility elsewhere – talk me into it, talk me out of it, convince me one way or another,
and then it is really your decision (fault) not mine.

Thus people who are largely ambivalent about most things, are saying “no” to most things. Just
stand on the receiving end of it for a moment to get to know ambivalence’s true nature. It’s not
that I don’t like you, I am just ambivalent about you. Imagine this from someone very close, a
spouse, for instance. How should he or she respond? When life is on the receiving end of your
ambivalence, how should it respond?

Either a “yes” or a “no” is better all around. It takes courage to embrace one or the other since the
choice in either direction has its own set of consequences. But ambivalence also comes with
ramifications. They may be slower to identify but they are usually more steadfast as well.
Ambivalence closes down communication with others and with Self. We can learn from our choices
but we do not receive new information when we do not move. Further, our ambivalence cheats
others out of mobility in relationship to us. It is unfair and unkind. In the end, though, most will
find their mobility and leave our sphere, indeed making the choice for us, finally saying the no out
loud that we were whispering.

Again, simply standing on the other side allows a quick, succinct experience. I say “yes” to your
invitation – big or small, to love, to friendship, to a dinner party – and you get to feel your
response, and to take steps based on that. By the same token, I say “no” to your invitation – big or
small, to love, to friendship, to a dinner party – and you get to feel your response, and to take
steps based on that.

In the short term, the “yes” position and the “no” position mean specific gains and losses, whereas
ambivalence seems not to be a position at all and so there doesn’t feel like a short-term risk one
way or the other. But ambivalence is, in fact, a position, the third position, and in the long-term
everything is lost to it. It is a fearful “no” without integrity or verve; it cowers in the corner and
lets life and love pass it by. 

The Original Hellinger® Family Constellation

Bert Hellinger is the founder of Family Constellation, which he began in 1978. Today the Original
Hellinger® Family Constellation is offered worldwide by the Hellinger®schule. It is managed by his
wife Sophie Hellinger. Bert Hellinger still enjoys good health with his 93 years of age.

What is a family constellation?

It is a method that takes place in a group under the guidance of one person. It serves people to
uncover the backgrounds of failure, illness, disorientation, addiction, or anything similar. Family
constellation is useful wherever there is a direct need for action or decision-making.

For who is a family constellation?

 Family                  in all kinds of conflicts

 Couples/love         to maintain and improve the relationship
 Children               with all kinds of problems: school problems, illness, aggression, ADHD,
addiction, bullying
 Disease                the backgrounds of health and disease
 Occupation/work   in cases of conflicts or failure as an employee or self-employed person
 Business
& Management      communication, hierarchy, decision issues

Original Hellinger® Family Constellation today finds applications in the following areas

 Politics,
 Large corporations, medium and small enterprises, single companies
 Management and executive management,
 Universities, schools
 Courts,
 Hospitals
 And, of course, for all individual issues
 

Family Constellation for what?

Everyone lives, privately and professionally, ALWAYS in relationships. The family is the basis for
every human being. One who wants to find their right place and their task in life must integrate the
basic principles of life, as discovered by Bert Hellinger and called the Orders of Love. The Orders
of Love are universal laws of life, independent of skin color, culture and religion and the basis for
the success of life on all levels.
Original Hellinger® Family Constellation leads you to realize that it's never too late for a happy life.
There is only one right place in the family for every person. Once you have taken this place, a new
perspective emerges that makes you capable of action.

What's the point of a family constellation?

Often it is beliefs and convictions that we have adopted from our parents that keep us imprisoned.
In the past, these beliefs were created in the subconscious and today they stand in our way. This
prevents behavioural changes.  

In the Original Hellinger® Family Constellations our beliefs come to light, can be questioned and
released. The decision as to whether you are ready to do so is made only by you personally.

What is the Original Hellinger® Family Constellation about?

Family constellations are always about being or not being. For everyone who has experienced and
recognized this once, the inner movement is inevitably always forward, meaning towards life.
Everybody knows that we have planned many things but could not put them into practice.
Entanglements are solved and a responsible and happy life comes into focus.

Through the liberation of the old unconscious bonds, true love, devotion, attentiveness, respect
and dreams become reality.

The Hellinger scienciaⓇ, spelled in this way deliberately, is a scientia universalis in the original

philosophical tradition. It is a universal science of the orders - and even of the laws- that are at
work in all important human connections and interactions. First of all, the orders apply to the
relationships within the family, which means the relationship between man and woman, between
parents and children, including their upbringing. And this science covers the orders in our work life,
in organizations and institutions, and it extends to the orders between larger groups, such as
peoples and cultures.
At the same time, it is a scientia universalis of the disorders that lead to conflict in human
relationships and that separate people instead of bringing them together. These orders and
disorders are also transmitted to the body. They play an important role in diseases -- and in the
health of body, soul, and mind.

Why do I use this term Hellinger scienciaⓇ? Over several decades I have gained these insights and
described them freely. I have tested them in real-life situations, and publicly. This has allowed
people to examine the effects of these insights within themselves as well as in their relationships
and in their actions.
As a science, the Hellinger scienciaⓇ  is a work in progress, meaning that it continues to evolve
through my work and through the experience and insights of the numerous others who have made
a commitment to it – and to the consequences. As a living science, it does not form the static
foundation for a school, as if it was complete and could be passed on and learned as something
definite and conclusive. Development proceeds without efficiency control, as it cannot be assessed
by standards that lie outside of it, and then be expected to justify itself before them. Verification
lies in its effects and its success. This is an open science in every regard.
More about the Hellinger scienciaⓇ membership you will find here-->
The spiritual dimension of the Hellinger sciencia Ⓡ
Beyond the insights into the orders and disorders of our relationships that can be understood
immediately, the Hellinger scienciaⓇ has arrived at yet another dimension, a spiritual dimension.
Only from this dimension can we become aware of how far the implications of these insights are
reaching. Only through the acknowledgment and embracing of this level can we grasp their
universal significance and experience their consequences in all spheres.
What is this spiritual insight, and what are its dimensions? This insight comes from deep
observation of all aspects: Everything that is moves not of its own accord but from outside. All
living things, even when they seem to move by themselves, have an inception that cannot come
from within. Therefore, every movement, including every movement of all that is alive, results
from a movement that came from outside. This is not just true for the beginning of a movement,
but continuously, for as long as this life goes on.

And there is more to consider. Every movement, especially every movement of a living thing, is a
known, a conscious, a purposeful movement. This concept presupposes a consciousness in that
force which moves everything. In other words: Every movement is a thought-out movement. The
movement begins because it is thought by this force, and it comes into movement the way it is
thought.
What is the beginning of each movement? A thinking that thinks everything as it is.
What follows from this? For this thinking there is nothing that it does not want the way it is and
exactly how it moves. Every movement is a movement of the spirit-mind. Therefore nothing ends
for this spirit-mind. Everything that was, is: the spirit-mind still thinks in the way that it thinks us
in the past, the present, and as it also thinks everything that is to come.
Because it thinks that which is coming at the same time as that which is gone, what is gone is
completely related to what is coming. What is gone is in movement toward what is coming and
finds its fulfillment in it.
What is coming will be something that is already gone, and it moves in the past toward what is
coming. For us, the end of this thinking that moves everything is inconceivable. Just as there
cannot be anything that was not thought by it, nothing can come after it. For who or what should
still think it if it is gone? In the face of this thinking, many of our long-cherished assumptions and
ideas no longer have weight; for instance, the concept of a freewill or of personal responsibility.
And many value judgments and distinctions that we consider essential to our culture drop away.
The central theme that dissolves in the face of the spirit-mind is related to our distinctions between
good and bad, between right and wrong, between chosen and rejected, between above and below,
high and low, better and worse, and ultimately also between life and death. But we keep on
making these distinctions, and we experience them as real. Are they then not also preconceived by
this spirit-mind?
Here we have to consider: what is gone is not the same as what is coming. What is gone is on the
way to that which is coming. Therefore, we do experience something that is akin to a ”before” and
an “after” -- to a “more” and a “less”.
What is this “less”? What is this “more”? It is less consciousness or more consciousness. We find
ourselves in a movement from less conscious to more conscious. We are in a movement from less
consciously in unison with this spirit-mind and its all-encompassing movement, to more consciously
in unison with its movement. So, for us, there is a movement from less to more – which is not a
thought of this spirit-mind because for it, there is no such thing as a “more” or a “less”. And yet,
this movement from less to more, in everything that it brings us, is thought by this spirit-mind in
this movement. It is thought for us by the spirit-mind in this way, no matter what experience it
imposes on us on this path to a “more” of consciousness.
Who succeeds in reaching this expansion of consciousness? Who succeeds in moving toward being
more in unison with the consciousness of this spirit-mind? Can it be done individually? Can the
answer be us, just in this lifetime? Or are all human beings – gone, present, and coming – on this
path, and do we achieve this “more” of consciousness together as one? Do we achieve it together,
with all the experiences that human beings had to go through and that we will still have to go
through, we and others, in this life as well as in many others? And here, too, only together?

Freedom

Of course, we have a sense of freedom in many ways. Of course, we feel responsible for our
actions and their consequences. But at the same time we know: Our freedom and our responsibility
and our guilt, with all the consequences, have been thought and moved and willed in such a way
that we experience them as our own – through the power of another force, a spiritual force that
moves everything.
Do we behave and act differently then? Can we? From where should we take the strength to move
differently and to act differently? What is left for us to do then? To go on as before, and to agree to
our freedom and to our responsibility and to our past and to our guilt with all of its consequences,
just as it all is, and as we experience everything. At the same time, though, we experience a
greater conscious unison with this spirit-mind that moves all. We also experience it as a greater
consciousness, for us as well as for all others who carry the consequences of our freedom and our
responsibility, and who have been drawn into the consequences of our actions and of our guilt.
Thus, the many experience the same event differently. They gain different experiences from the
same occurrence. When they perceive simultaneously, both being free and not free, they gain a
more of conscience, and perhaps also a more of unison with this spirit-mind that moves
everything. They gain a more of consciousness that takes them, as well as others, a bit further
along on the path to a comprehensive consciousness.

Worries and concerns

In this spiritual dimension the worries come to an end, including the worries about the future of
the Hellinger scienciaⓇ. It comes from a movement of the spirit-mind, as it was thought by it, and it
remains in movement, as the spirit-mind thinks it, whether people approve of it or reject it. As a
universal science it demonstrates its truth through its effects.
What about our worries then, our worries about the future -- about our future, or the future of
others, and the future of the world? Don’t our worries prove foolish either way, as if our worries
could change or prevent something? If this were so, these worries would constitute a force against
the movements of the spirit-mind, as if they were independent of the spirit-mind.
Those concerns that are in unison with the movements of the spirit-mind are different. These are
concerns borne out of care for the world, and in the service of the world, as the spirit is moving it.
They are in harmony with the spirit’s concerns and care. These concerns are in harmony with the
orders of life, including with its beginning and its end.
The future and the now
In harmony with the thoughts of the spirit-mind, every future is here for us now. This spirit-mind
thinks everything now. In the dimension of the spirit-mind, all worries about the immediate future
come to an end. Whatever concerns us immediately is shown to us now in harmony with the spirit-
mind. Because there is something that is next, there is a future for us, a future that is
now. The Hellinger scienciaⓇ is for the now. All of its insights work now and work immediately. Each
resistance against these insights also works now, and immediately. This is because the Hellinger
scienciaⓇ  is an empirical science, a science of our relationships now.
Love
Ultimately, the Hellinger sciencia is a science of love. It is a universal science of love. It is the
Ⓡ 

science of that love which includes everything, and even in the same manner.
How does this love succeed? It succeeds in harmony with the thinking of the spirit that moves
everything the way it is thought. It is love in harmony with the thinking of the spirit. This love is
clearly aware of the movements of the spirit. This love knows how it loves and how it is allowed to
love, because it is aware of this love as being in harmony with the consciousness of the spirit. It
feels this awareness as insight. Therefore, this love is pure, like the consciousness of the spirit. It is
pure, because it is moved by another thinking. This love is a knowing love, it is pure knowing love.
Therefore, it is also a creative love, creative in harmony with the thinking of the spirit-mind. Thus,
this love also unfolds into a science, into a universal science. As a universal science it works
universally.