It's the law of cause and effect, immutable, out of your control, with its own schedule. But you can ameliorate and/or appreciate, amplify and celebrate some of the effects in your family system
Your family system is like a pond. Your therapy is a stone thrown into it. The pond ripples, without knowing, without question. The change may be uncomfortable initially. Fish may jump, dragonflies lift off - as things rebalance and come back into order. It will be beneficial. Be the imperceptible change in your family system.
Karma is not a spiritual commodity. It’s a law. You kick someone, they might cry out or kick you back or go off and tell people what a bad person you are, and then others avoid you or speak badly of you in turn. Fairly immediate understandable results, or reactions, or we could say karma. It’s not always so tangible, and we do not know when the reprisal or feedback will come to us. Nor can we predict with accuracy the nature of the effect on other people our actions will have. Speech is action. Thoughts are actions.
This is the frame that Family Constellations is circling in. Long lasting, unknown, rippling results, as indestructible as matter. Our great grandparents did things, went places, experienced horrific and beautiful events and it all comes down to us in some form or other. As more becomes known about epigenetics, we can have more appreciation of this hitherto seemingly incredible phenomenon through that lens.
We also create our own karma by our actions. Many of these are benign and so seemingly banal that we do not wait for or study the effects, the ripples caused by stones thrown into the pond. But every little action has its reaction, so it’s a great rippling, reverberating, trembling, vibrating (you choose) universe! Last week a couple of ripples came to my consciousness, one so benign and gentle that it would not have occurred to me without something in my environment touching it, rejuvenating it. I was having coffee with Nanette. She watched a TV show in which someone restored and remodelled an elaborate cupboard containing shallow specimen drawers. The clever person cut and spliced and rejoined and other magical things to make a new piece of furniture from the old. It was a delicious anecdote of imagination, and design and consummate skill. I hooked into the little drawers: I love small drawers, and moderate trays, and bowls of all sizes. For me they are containers for love, ultimately. Nanette’s story flashed me back to my maternal grandfather’s shed. He was an eccentric; an unschooled man, creative and of imagination and deep intelligence, whose passion was growing gladioli and daffodils to show the flowers and to sell the corms by mail order. His shed was set up with aisles forming ribs across half the space. The aisles comprised back to back ranks of small drawers, high enough that Pop needed a ladder to reach the top rows. Each drawer contained specific corms, labelled by colour and what ever else Pop needed to know as he scanned the rows. Tiny cards containing the information handwritten onto them fitted into metal slots on the shallow front of each one. That alone was magical. He’d open a drawer and softly rub the oniony skin from the corms, from which a unique odour ‘escaped. I can smell it now. What I am getting to, is surely my love of small drawers came from moments beside my grandfather doing his slightly eccentric, loving work in that shed. He really did love these plants in every stage, and created new flower colours by lifting the pollen he wanted to cross with a small soft paint brush. The flower heads destined for an imminent show were doted over and cared for like a baby in an incubator. Pop would go out to inspect in the morning, encase the flower heads in plastic at night, pack them infinitely carefully on show day. He had first seen gladioli in France or Belgium in WWI, and that’s another story for another time.
The second little drop was around my fairly hapless relationship with money or accumulation of it, somewhat less benign. In another conversation - different cup of coffee, different cafe, different friend - the sense of sorrow, dread and wonder about what more would happen over a situation in which Dad lost a court case to recover money embezzled by an uncle of mine he had been in business with brought tears. . When I was a child, no-one sat me down to tell me anything, but I overheard enough to know Dad and we, had lost whatever sum of money was contested. It’s far from the only shadow over my money sense, or ability to accumulate, or feeling of deserving it, but I recognise that response as real: emotional truth told by sudden tears on being flashed back to that room, in which I sat here, and my parents were discussing it over there, not knowing that I had already become super vigilant around every nuance of their relationship, and I suspect, around their money stuff more especially.
A love of small drawers derived from pleasant, even magical moments with my grandfather may not have had a negative affect on my life, apart from a few small spends on used furniture, but in the money sphere, numerous events have been unhelpful, including the overheard conversation. I see that as having been internalised as there is no point fighting over money because you will not win, even if you ‘should’ win and fully deserve it. What of my haplessness around money have my children picked up, and unconsciously interpreted in their lives? I’m sure that has been something for them to wrestle with one way or another: it is a biggie in any case. It, the money issue, needs helpful, positive vibes and interactions.
Intergenerational stress or trauma or joy or what we create by our own actions, or take on by interest or proximity has an effect. Karma.
What actions our ancestors took, what we do in our own lives are more or less significant, may be recognised or not, and still exert the same powerful influence around us, through us, ripples on the pond. It stands to reason, indeed to the immutable law of physics, that if we take steps to understand, recognise, accept, come to terms with, or take steps to stop a pattern through our own therapy it will have an effect on our family system.
Would you like to throw a stone into the pond of your family system by doing some constellation therapy? No one needs to know. No one else needs to be involved. But beneficial change will come, and not just for you. As surely as a stone thrown into a pond creates ripples. The change may be uncomfortable initially - fish may jump, dragonflies lift off - as things rebalance and come back into order, but it will be beneficial.
This piece first appeared at ksole.substack.com GetConstellated. Go there to subscribe.
copyright Karen Sole
manawa family constellations - heart breath emotion
Next globally accessible event: Night and Day Constellation Workshop, Sunday 16 March, 2000-2300 New Zealand Time, 0800-1100 Central European Time. See website for details.
Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au . Karen's profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in regular professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators.
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