In the name of the father

With the title, I don't want to mention the incipit of the sign of the cross in Christian prayers.

I want to say something about what I understood about my relationship with my father.

The Family Constellations shed great light on this relationship. I do not want to give a description from the point of view of the expert of this work. In that capacity I try to bring out the blocks to this essential relationship. I try to highlight how some behaviors are connected to transgenerational traumas.

Let's make one thing clear right away: if the father and the contact with him is missing, the direction in life is also missing. The father determines our interpretation and relationship with the outside world.

Let's get another thing straight right away. The father is always within us. So the relationship with the world is precisely determined by the relationship with him, consciously or unconsciously. Whether we like it or not, we have to deal with him.

I was a few years old. My father was tall and big. At least that's how he seemed to me, the happy little boy that I was. My relationship with my mother was splendid. That's why I was happy. My father used to interrupt the happiness with an air that felt threatening to me.

That man scared me. He was strict, serious, full of rules. At the table, for example, when faced with my whims about a certain dish, he would say to me: "If you don't eat it now, you will eat it later".

I hated him. It forced me to give up my pleasure, my desire. I would have found that disgusting dish before my eyes, in the evening. Hopelessly, I gave in and there was no point in my mother wanting to indulge me. My father wanted to give me character and he succeeded.

And sometimes I also got hit. Once I came home after playing with my cousins ​​and he spanked me. I had arrived one hour late. I had lost myself in the fun and that wasn't good: “agreements must be respected”, he said. If you say you'll come back at a certain time, you have to.

I didn't take the beatings my sister took. Rebellious, proud, she wanted to make her way into the male-dominated convictions of a still archaic society. My father represented that society very well.

“Beatings and bread make children good children; bread without beatings make children ugly and crazy”. This was the philosophy of a man who grew up in the countryside, found himself without a father at 18 and became the man of the family alongside his mother. His education stopped at third grade, he conveyed in his way to raise his children what he received in his upbringing. He was the father: he was the authority to which one had to bend in order to maintain order and direction.

He was curt in manner. He wasn't much of a talker. I always saw him sad as he spent his time behind the counter in a tobacconist's bar on the outskirts of my town. Sad because in that shop he had lost his freedom in the name of sacrifice for building a family.

He got up early and came back late. The tobacco shop never closed during the week, and when they forced him to close it by law, a day per week, he complained. Earnings were reduced. But with that unexpected free time he could work on his small plot of land.. There, fatigue didn't scare him… on the contrary, his body rejoiced in those weight lifting and exercise that the commercial activity did not consent.

How did he compensate for his roughness, his authoritarianism? By telling me: "Look, the money is here (pointing to the drawer where it was kept) and you can draw on useful things whenever you want. Make sure it is for useful things."

He paid me for a correspondence course without batting an eye. He bought me books without asking what they were about, giving me full freedom of choice.

Deep down he felt that those with culture had more chances in life. He knew he was ignorant since he hadn't been able to study. He knew the importance of knowledge to establish oneself in the world. He never hindered me, also because I was a male and in his mentality the male was freer than the female. Why? Simple, a woman can be easily fooled, get pregnant and get into trouble. The sooner she’s married, the better.

The support I received from my father was silent. The appearance was one of domination, rigidity, an invitation not to trust the world. Then, suddenly, he revealed himself. When I left for some holiday destination or university, his tender heart showed itself. Tears came copious, in an almost embarrassing quantity. His heart was pounding., literally laid it bare. He was emotionally overwhelmed. After all, he was a man of heart, whose heart was not seen, except in these moments.

I hardly realized his support, consciously. There has been a lot of distance from him for many years, until the encounter with Family Constellations. I thought I respected him, but I attributed my whole being as I was, to my mother. She was the reference figure to me.

So, I didn't do anything in the father’s name, on the surface. I did everything in the name of the father, however, deep down. "The denied parent is the one you are most faithful to deep down" I hear myself repeat in seminars and trainings. And every time I say it, my father appears.

Loving, soft behind a mask of rigidity, a little clumsy in practical things but with the attitude of "as long as it works", tireless worker, minimal and essential pleasures, absolute devotion to his beloved, a simple man.

Once, while doing a group as a participant, a fellow traveler saw me in the connection with my father. “You are a simple man,” he told me. And he added: “who unnecessarily complicates his life”.

This statement penetrated me: I understood for the first time that there was no point in denying my father on the surface. I was hopelessly like him. A simple man!

I had denied him and I was unconsciously loyal to him. As I wrote before: loving, soft behind a rigid mask, a little clumsy in practical things but with the "as long as it works" attitude, tireless worker, minimal and essential pleasures, absolute devotion to his beloved, a simple man.

I was in politics when I was young: I was against the system! And I was a manager: I entered human resources to oppose a certain type of aggressive and authoritarian masculine and to encourage listening and harmony. I was fighting my father's exterior model.

The fight then ceased.

I met Osho, a different male figure. There were two encounters: in 1986, when I was annoyed by his Rolls Royce and his being a guru. I would never have supported a guru, a hierarchical figure to whom everyone bows. That was my image of Osho at 21. I couldn't become a sannyasin at the time: I was fighting my father and the hierarchies.

The second meeting with Osho took place at the age of 36. In this more mature encounter with Osho, the reconciliation, without knowing it, with my father and the questioning of my mother began.

There's no need to fight. There is a need for understanding. Understanding can only happen if you observe, if you meditate.

All the similarities to my father started to appear. Who can you resemble if not your roots?

Family Constellations, together with Osho, brought compassion towards my parents. It's a fact: you always love them deeply, you often fight them on the surface. This blind love must be brought to light in order to become oneself and not just their mere photocopies.

My attitude to the outside world was the same as my father's.

With the Family Constellations, I highlighted what marked his relationship with life and what was unconsciously handed down to me.

With meditation, I was increasingly able to free myself from patterns that had settled under my skin. These patterns, if not investigated, lead you, on an emotional level, on the paths already trodden by those who preceded you. Without observation, there is no possibility of deviation.

Parents are everything. Your trust depends on your relationship with your mother. Your relationship with the world depends on your relationship with your father.

At any moment in life, you can heal memories of episodes of conflict with your real parents, by connecting with internalized parents. Otherwise they will continue, if you don't wake up, to guide you in your basic decisions.

The good news is that our lives can change. We can become parents of ourselves! We can do this if we bow to the fact that we have chosen to incarnate in those very parents. They represent the first steps of our spiritual path.

If we don't bow down to them as messengers of our lives, we risk remaining nailed to these first steps and not evolving.

In my father's name I have done nothing in the outside world.

In my father's name I have done everything in the internal world.

Objectively, Osho has shuffled the cards. Without him now, I would not be grateful to my father for life, support and the drive to become myself. I would not have known the Family Constellations approach that made me realize the blind love for my father.

Without Osho I would not have come out of the struggle with the world (my father) and with myself (my internalized father and mother).

I want to clarify that Osho is not the external guru. For many, this may have been the historical experience. For those like me who have not known him in the body, Osho is the mirror that wisdom exists within you. It is the teacher within, it is the mirror that you are something beyond the mother and father and their conditioning.

Osho is an invitation to trust yourself. It's the end of doing things in your father's or mother's name, and it's the beginning of being who you are and doing things in your own name!