The Guiding Principles Of Love

Family Constellations was developed By Bert Hellinger. A former priest & missionary to the Zulu in South Africa for 16 years, after observing the rituals & systems of the Zulus & later training in Psycho-analysis & group dynamics he begun to notice that inherent in the way energy moves within systems & individuals there were certain principles that when adhered to would increase the amount of energy available to the individual & their system. He noticed that when these principles were not observed and respected then it would create disturbance or entanglement in the individual & the system. He also realized that through the process of Family Constellation we could become aware of these disturbances or 'entanglements' where these principles had not been followed in the family system, by bringing these entanglements into the light of awareness they are given the opportunity to dissolve in order that the client may be able to move forward in life. These principles he called 'The Orders Of Love', The orders of love or the 'guiding principles of love' are Belonging, Order & Balance.

Belonging - The most important Order in terms of the healing process connected to this work. Everyone in a person's Family system has the right to belong to the family system. This includes people who have been pushed away, rejected or forgotten. This includes aborted children, sometimes miscarriage, members who died early in life, mentally ill family members. This also includes anyone who has had a particularly strong impact upon the system. So murderers & victims of ancestors also become part of your family systems & have to be equally respected as belonging to that system. For example, in the context of systemic work, a Jewish person more than likely needs to accept the Nazis as being part of their family system & therefore go through the process of loving & accepting them as one important step towards healing the trauma that binds them to their past. There is a mystic who I have forgotten the name of who said that until every Jew has prayed forgiveness at the grave of Hitler then the past will remain present in the Jewish Psyche.

Order - Everyone in the system has their own place based on when they came. Those who came first are higher up the order & those who came later are lower down the order. This may feel a little like rigid hierarchy and some may be put off by this notion, however, what needs to be remembered is that it is simply a principle, a law that when not followed creates disturbance in the individual and the system. It is a law we can use as a lens by which we can notice where & how disturbance is created. An example of a disturbance is when a wife or mother is unavailable for her husband emotionally because she is still very much looking at her dead father at an unconscious level, in this scenario the daughter may well take up the position of her father's partner in order to fulfill a need that her father may have. The child always wants to help her parents but her attempting to help very often creates greater disturbance and never really helps. In fact we can notice in Constellations that when the child begins to step backwards away from the business of their parents & take up their rightful place in the family that the parent they are trying to help actually becomes more free to breathe & move, the parent has more space to grow when the children take up their rightful place & stop interfering in their parents' business.

Balance - The last order which is slightly less important than the other 2 but still an integral part of the healing process is achieving balance within a system or relationship. What we have to watch for is the movements of giving & receiving. When one person gives too much then this creates an imbalance in the relationship. Very often what you can notice when people are given too much Is that rather than feeling gratitude they become Angry, this is because something deep inside feels cheated & wants to be in balance. There is an example of this. There was a very rich man who went to Osho & said I don't know what to do, my family all hate me yet I'm always giving them money and taking care of them. Osho told him that instead of spending his money on them that he should go away for 3 months and practice receiving from them, practice asking them for help in certain areas of his life. He did this and of course his family members begun to open up to him because they felt respected. Some much deeper part of them felt more in balance. Also Hellinger talks about balance in relationships. He says that When a partner gives love then you should give love back but give 'more' back, this cultivates a more potent flow of love in the relationship & when a partner does something bad to you, you should do something bad back but make it less bad out of love for your partner. This supports the recalibration of balance in the relationship. Those who stubbornly maintain their 'innocent' position in the relationship arrogantly waving their fingers at the 'guilty' party are the destroyers of the relationship. This wisdom clearly contradicts the cultural habit of maintaining innocence in relation to the guilty party, being a little bad back is serving of humility & the sentence is, 'I am also a little guilty'. When a couple are willing to enter into this space then growth & healing is possible, maintaining ones innocence & refusing to be bad only serves to strengthen the polarisation & fuels the conflict. Peace arises out of a willingness to feel guilty.

The only exception to the principle of giving & taking is between parents and children. Parents give and children receive with love. The most any child or grown adult can do for their parent is be grateful for what they have received, love their parent and pass the love on to their children, there is balance in this, the parent gives love and the child gives gratitude. Again this is not a rigid rule but simply something to notice that happens organically in healthy relations.