Bert Hellinger:

The Peace and the Higher

Family constellations bring to light how that which has been excluded can be re-included and integrated without it’s essence being lost in this inclusion. The excluded does not become absorbed or subsumed as such. But it is acknowledged as different and still of equal right. This is the foundation for peace. It works in the same way within our selves, within families and also within larger human groups.

The individual remains limited in his feelings and his views of what he may consider good or bad, right or wrong. It is difficult for him to comprehend that something can exist beyond these limitations. Usually, he condemns the difference and fights it, or he tries to change it so that it becomes similar to his own stance or viewpoint.

However, we can deal with this in a completely different way. Instead of fighting the opposite, we give space to it without trying to change it. In that moment, the individual extends his lens and inhabits a place beyond his usual limiting belief system and at the same time he welcomes and allows the other to also go beyond his own limits. Then they search on a higher level and maybe they find something in common.They each remain different, and in the presence of something higher they are connected with each other.

So, what is this ‚Higherness‘ to which we are obviously subject to?

It is that which wants the differences. More than that, this Higher not only wants the differences, it also wants and includes the argument, the conflict between them. Because it is only after this process of conflict and argument that peace between them becomes possible.

Therefore, we may not wish away differences and conflicts. No more so than we may wish away the shadow and the evil. They belong to reality and substantiveness.

When there are two opposite forces or when one people stands against another, or one religion stands against another, the road to reconciliation would be that both of them acknowledge that the other is ruled by something Higher as well. When we align ourselves at this Higher, the distinctions of good and bad or of better and worse trans­form and loose significance, although the differences remain. With such a gaze at the Higher they become equal.

Taken from: Bert Hellinger, The Future of Family Constellation Work. A current positioning

in: Praxis der Systemaufstellung 1/2002. S. 16f

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