It is a beautiful October day and one group participant approaches me. She is fearful of my reaction to the question she is about to ask me.

She takes courage and asks, "Can the Constellation give me the answer to a dilemma? I would like to decide whether to stay in my workplace or leave."

Her fear has a reason for being. She knows that a meditator seeks answers within and what she is asking for is an answer from outside.

I, however, have no judgment about vulnerability. Even a meditator has her moments when they would like some help from heaven! :))

I welcome her question and answer, "Dear, remember: Constellations are not a solution tool. But they do show you the premises on which a certain situation is based. In this case, we will see what are the ones that lead you to be so indecisive. The "solutions" you can see are related to the irrational beliefs that keep you in the impasse of your life. Your spirit will do the rest. With understanding, it will start a process that will bring you out of the mechanism of suffering."

Constellations, superstition and awareness

Sometimes we approach Family Constellations to seek definitive answers to a problem. In each of us survives a superstitious part. This part sees Systemic Constellations as a crystal ball that gives the answers and pull our chestnuts out of the fire.

Therefore, it is easy to ask the question from which we started in this article. It is human to hope that a lottery win will solve our financial problems for a lifetime. It is human to wish that a constellation would solve a particular problem for us. We would all like a little help, but life doesn't give discounts.

What you need to see to solve problems is part of a sometimes uncomfortable process. Accomplishing a project or getting our relationship back on track do not depend on luck.

Bringing out one’s original qualities

Family Constellations are a very effective means - but not for immediate solutions. Family Constellations go deep, they go in search of the root of our actions.

The seed contains the original project. The root, which represents its development, adapts to the soil.

We have to clean up the root so that it reconnects with the original project contained in the seed.

You cannot change your life by cutting a few branches here and there and modifying a few behaviors. All your efforts are doomed to frustration. You have to turn to the premises, to the roots. Clean them up, love them, take care of them in a different way.

The changes

Thus, that October morning we enacted the Constellation on Decision Making. The participant was able to see the premises on which her decision-making stalemate was based.

Premises form the background of our every action or decision. We seem to act rationally. Our mind works out justifications and evidence that the premises are correct. And those premises are not questioned as long as everything flows smoothly. Then, something gets jammed.

Unexpectedly a relationship with one's partner sours. Or it is the relationship with our children that begins to seem unbalanced or painful.

Or in life we keep repeating a fixed pattern that we have wanted to get rid of for years. We try to change strategies, behavior tactics, attitudes, and nothing changes.

We thus eat the fruit of our premises.

With Constellations we are able to go to the origins. We are shown the so-called entanglement, which is that unconscious connection to one of our ancestors. We can see what binds us to our family and binds us to family destiny.

Negative emotions and the premises on which they are based

The premises are almost always unconscious. We take a certain way of acting for granted.

It happens to me on the same day that another participant tells me about a feeling of anger she is assailed by when she has to deliver a certain service, in the pharmacy where she works. She notices that the reaction is out of proportion. The anger is not made manifest of course. The client knows nothing about her inner process. Her feeling is as if the client is taking away a piece of her life. After all, she is only asking for a service like any other.

I smile and tell her that her repeated emotion has nothing to do with the situation. It is merely a sign of something else simmering under the ashes of her mind. One must go to the premises and discover the true nature of that thought and anger.

It's not like when I punch you and you say, "Ouch." That is real pain connected to a real event.

When the "Ouch" is of lesser intensity but constant, the external situation is just prompting a reaction from you. It is signaling to you that something is wrong. You need to question yourself, not take it out on the world.

In the case of our pharmacist, her tension stems from a deeper, repressed need for change. This is the foundation of her anger: neither the client nor the service required. It is an assumed powerlessness with respect to change or an impeded will to accelerate it.

We grope in the dark when we continue to attribute our misfortune to external elements. Of course, there are more pleasant environments and others less so. External circumstances can be more or less adverse. No one denies that. Painful events happen. Difficulties exist.

The mind's contribution to unhappiness

Most of our difficulties are, however, related to our mind. It bases its reasoning on incorrect premises. They are such when they are based on superficial elements. Superficiality happens if we do not realize that it is we who produce that inner state. Not the external.

These two examples make it clear that in order to change, one must embrace the challenge of depth. Meditation is nothing more than the work of healing the roots and changing the premises. At first, the cleansing is easy. Then, we must prepare ourselves for patient and constant work.

The art of bringing the root back to the original qualities of the seed -- of our true Self -- requires attention, gentleness, benevolence to self.

Spiritual growth is a lifetime's work . And it is a work on the roots, not on the branches. On our unconscious motivations, not on our behaviors.

So we need to enter into a dimension of exploration without time, without goals, absolutely receptive and relaxed toward the journey.

Entanglement

Family Systemic Constellations put us in touch with the roots of our behaviors. They put us in touch with entanglement. Through each of us, a piece of family history is repeated and manifested anew. With repetition of its characteristics the system’s tradition are assured. Tradition really means to deliver, to transmit, to pass from generation to generation. Unfortunately, that entanglement makes us unhappy. We are unknowingly driven to repeat a pattern of the family of origin.

Regaining our place changes the premises of our behaviors. Giving our ancestor their destiny back. Seeing how much blind love binds us together. Realizing that we do not lose belonging if we develop our original features.

These are the new foundations for change, for taking back one's destiny.

Our pharmacist has changed the premise of her life. She went inside and changed her job--because that was what really mattered to her. She would not have made it if she had continued to maintain the premise that her anger depended on an external phenomenon. The analysis was superficial.

Going through the paradox

We project frustration everywhere, when we don't want to stop and look inside.

For her part, our undecided one at the beginning of the article understood that the dilemma was only a superficial manifestation. It was an ongoing process, a dialectic between an old that resists and a new that wants to assert itself. This process could not be accelerated by forcing the situation: either this way or that way.

Staying represented a deep connection to family history. That bond had to be respected in order to be overcome.

Change was growing roots and would manifest itself in its own time. The Family Constellation gave its solution: the change of premise consisted of relaxing and not forcing.

The dichotomy that emerged was only apparent.

The mind divides. We have everything inside: the past and the future. Sometimes they seem contradictory. We have to let the paradox that we are live. Getting out of the schizophrenia of the mind that wants everything and wants it now, sees black or white, is the challenge of every meditator.

Enlightenment is a process and requires perseverance and dedication, and above all not to believe the mind that lies. Every angle has to be looked at and looked at again. To bring more light where there is darkness.

So, we have only to proceed on this path, "Without haste, without rest." (W. Goethe).