Dear Margreet,
Like you I will declare my religious background first. I was raised as a
Catholic in a very liberal tradition post Vatican II. So my parents and the
Catholic school I went to were very interested in social justice issues, the
ecumenical movement and open to Eastern religions. In fact my parents were
yoga teachers on the 60's. As I reached adolescence I had lots of questions
the church could not answer satisfactorily. So my spirituality evolved into
an agnostic one, which means I am happy to sit with not knowing the answers
to the great existential questions. However I do feel a deep connection to
the planet, to nature, to animals and especially to other members of the
human race. That is my spirituality. Also I am very grateful to my Catholic
Christian upbringing for giving me a grounding in ritual, reflection on the
existential issues, ethics and a wonderful narrative. I am also very
grateful to the Eastern traditions for giving me a broader perspective and
practical spiritual practices such as meditation.
Having said that, I must disagree with your point about monotheism being the
cause of war and interracial strife. Animistic and polytheistic societies
have been very warrior like as well. Any belief system can be coopted for
the purposes of tribal hatred. You have described very well how that can
happen with monotheistic religions especially those that use the concept of
a chosen people. I know Bert writes about that. However rather than that
being the cause of the problem I see it more as a justification for an
attitude of xenophobia. Robert Heinlein the science fiction writer once said
Humans are not rational animals but rather they are rationalising animals.
I think Bert's ideas of group conscience have much more explanatory value as
do the concepts of social psychological and evolutionary psychological.
They are more consistent with the observed facts of ongoing wars among New
Zealand Maoris, Australian Aboriginals and different Tibetan Buddhist
groups.
The social psychology of attribution describes in groups and out groups.
Simply put if someone from our own in group does good we tend to attribute
it to their intrinsic nature. If they do bad we tend to see it as an
aberration much as we have just seen with the artistic community's attitude
to Roman Polanski's rape of a 13 year old girl. On the other hand if someone
from a disdained group does something good we tend to see that as an
aberration and if they do something bad we tend to see that as confirmation
of their bad intrinsic nature. All of us are prone to these processes.
Evolutionary psychology states these same processes maintain cohesiveness
of the tribe (group conscience) and helps protect us from external threats
including those from other tribes.
The problem with attributing war and other human conflict to monotheistic
religion apart from not being particularly accurate is that it risks us
making monotheists another out-group the we can conveniently blame for the
worlds woes.
hasta la vista
Chris Walsh
806 Lygon St Carlton 3054
(Melbourne, Australia)
ph: +61 (0)3 9347 4300
fax: +61 (0)3 9347 4355
web: <http://www.cwalsh.com.au/> www.cwalsh.com.au
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Margreet Mossel
Sent: Wednesday, 30 September 2009 5:09 PM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] about religions
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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