Re: [ConstellationTalk] about religions
- From: Alison Rose Levy <LevyAR@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:50:11 -0400
Dear Margreet and Rita:
Thank you for your wisdom.
Monotheism may have developed historically as a foundation for
individuality/individualism to evolve.
But now we can see where both lead unless tempered by:
Compassion for the sake of all sentient beings.
And whether or not, they are sentient, I love rocks, water, light, and a whole
lot more too.
Alison
PS: Rita, thank you for your Einstein quote.
Dear Friends
Yesterday I worked on the translation of a chapter from one of Bert
Hellingers books and it was about spiritual religion. So some questions came
to my mind about this topic and I like to share them with you.
I will first give some facts about my own background and then share my ideas
and questions. Of course you can skip the personal thing, as we usually do
in our work anyway.
I was raised as a catholic and as a little child I went to the nuns-school.
I found the stories that they told from the bible terrible and refused to
listen to them, they upset me and they seemed to be not true to me and I
thought it was not fair for those who were hurt delibirately. In church I
just enjoyed sitting next to my mother, listening to the beautiful sounds of
singing and bells, watched the candles burn and smell the incense. And my
top-favourite was the one sentence: speak one word and I will be healed.
Due to the systemic work I realised that my father was a Jew and he and his
family suffered a very difficult fate during World War II. I learned to give
it a safe place in my heart, with this I got back the connection to my lost
family and I am so grateful for the work of Bert because this made it
possible for me. So this means I have not studied the bible or the Jewish
traditions.
But often the questions come to my mind about the religions.
One day I was invited to the home of a friend and there was a rabbi giving a
lecture. Afterwards I asked him: What was the original land of the Jews?
Because this is one of the problems, if a people doesn't have a land where
it belongs to and where it has its roots then it stays a guest wherever it
is. And since I know this feeling in my own life too, I was interested in
this topic.
The rabbi could not tell me. So I asked him: then who was the first Jew? I
was determined to find out this simple systemic construction but the rabbi
was not used to these sorts of questions. He told me that one son of Abraham
stood up to his fathers religion because he believed that it was not good.
It was in his idea (where did this conscience come from?) not good to have
many gods, only one god could be the good one. (Today's troubles are
yesterday's solutions.) This was the start of the first mono-theistic
religion. Later the father followed his son in this new tradition.
I was surprised that no one thought of honouring the father as the first and
all those before him and all the gods before this one to give support to
this new god. To me this seems like a true recipe for systemic trouble.
There must have been many religions that were all equally good before some
people thought it was more convenient to rule the world when we have only
one god for the whole world, their own god of course.
But I wonder if maybe at that point they took god or the divine out of all
things. Out of each person, each body and each animal and each plant. With
that movement you can give yourself easily the task of killing others, also
in the name of your god, because with killing a person or an animal you are
not killing god. Not quite true in my opinion.
From the systemic work we know that the recipe for all conflicts is just one
simple movement: I feel a little bit better than you. And the recipe for
peace is: I am just like you.
We also know that the judgement between good and bad causes huge conflicts
and suffering, horrible diseases and all the rest. And we can clearly see
that all the gods have done their best to communicate this one message: do
not judge or you will be judged, love your neighbour like yourself etc. But
these messages sometimes get buried in the rest of the stories. In his book
Bert adds to this phrase: and love your neighbour's religion like your own
and love your neighbour's country like your own. What a beautiful peaceful
thought.
At the end of this writing I am not sure about my question to you, my
friends. It is more like an image to me. Like how would it be if we think
behind the religions that we know of all the religions that were there
before, that we don't know of? And behind that the spirit of nature as a
whole and behind that the ultimate creative force that we also don't know
but that we can only notice in its effect? Every cell of my body knows this
force anyhow; it knows how to heal from any disease after a shock or a
trauma.
I am aware of the fact that on this planet there are still many traditions
alive that have not been erased by the idea of: one god is the best and that
happens to be my god. And they seem to be less involved in the suffering
that religious wars bring about for perpetrators and victims and their
offspring.
All the best to you my friends and colleagues
Margreet Mossel
The Netherlands
www.opstellingen.com <http://www.opstellingen.com/>
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