Several Informing Experiences

1. “Close your eyes and hold onto the dream”

In 2017, I attended a training by Bertold Ulsamer on Trauma and Constellation work. The last day, he led a collective constellation. In silence, we were invited to enter into the constellation as we felt drawn, and to represent whatever we felt moved to.

During my representation, I was walking around the field, sowing seeds or sprinkling blessings everywhere for a while. I then paused at one end of the long room, looking into the constellation from there.

I kept my eyes open, intending to bear witness to it all (in the spirit of Zen Peacemakers, Global Social Witnessing, and Acknowledging What Is in Constellations).

Very soon after this, an inner prompting said to me: “Close your eyes”.

I protested: “I need to witness, I need to see what is here!”

It said again “Close your eyes”.

A third time I protested, describing how I felt that I needed to witness – how it felt important that someone is there to see it all. I felt that it was my duty.

This time, it said: “It is all going to fall apart.” “Close your eyes and hold onto the dream (with your awareness/intention). That is yours to do.”

It asked that I not be distracted from this by trying to save anything or hold things together (This is hard for an ER doctor to do!).

I admire and support those who feel called to resist oppression and strive for justice and truth in an active way.

These experiments feel like a different kind of contribution, in the spirit of the second or third kind of helping described by Joanna Macy in The Great Turning — ways to offer space, attention and our capacities to help something subtle eventually come into being.

2. Experiences of heaviness and of “spells”

On Saturday November 2, 2024 (a few days before the presidential election), I was a representative in a constellation with the intention “to learn what is needed to support the highest evolutionary purpose of the USA at this time.” The constellation was blinded, so nobody knew who was whom.

As soon as the constellation began, the facilitator found himself unable to think clearly or function in his role. He said that he felt “deauthorized” — confusion, nausea… Unable to proceed, he turned the facilitation over to a woman.

During my representation, I described feeling “unable to think or feel, drugged up, lack of intelligence, dumbed down, mesmerized, as if something was put into me” — a real loss of agency and capacity. Really doped up… No real relationship or sense of depth. And a sense that I could do bad things, without really being in touch with the consequences of my action.

As Bruce, I had a sense of functioning on about a first-grade level of cognitive capacities — an absence of depth, able to follow simple commands, but not consider anything mentally… Logic would have no effect on me — I needed simple human contact and guidance…

About halfway through the constellation, the facilitator revealed to us all what each representative was. I was “The Cloud” — the stuff/trauma/negative influence on society…

It is interesting that the only two men in the constellation were both feeling confused and had limited capacities… It was scary, as I had no idea how to get out of or to work with the state I was in… Neither did the facilitator.

During Election Night, November 5, 2024, before the results were in, Camille and I tuned into the field. She felt a sense of a heavy dull metallic something, like a metal/iron curtain coming down over the country…

These both had some sense of something imposed or put upon the country, having an effect of making people less intelligent, less agency. I am not sure that “spell” is the proper diagnosis, but there is something clouding consciousness.

Interestingly, about a week before the election, Camille and I attended a ballet version of The Snow Queen. The first part of the story feels relevant to this:

Hans Christian Andersen – The Snow Queen (Hersholt translation)

3. A Special Kind of Seeing

Over 15 years ago, I had a dream in which I was looking at a comic book/graphic novel. Everything — the words and images — were in black and white.

As I looked at it, the characters on the page began to turn to color. They also began to come off of the page and expand into full-size three-dimensional beings.

And, they went “off script”. They had their own words — were no longer limited to saying the words that were written in the bubbles on the page by the author.

I was quite amazed and touched, thrilled and grateful to have been permitted to be present while this exceptionally profound process was happening.

To my surprise, they were very grateful to me. They spoke to me, letting me know that, in some way, my seeing had enabled something to happen between myself and them which allowed this to occur, allowed them to come to life in this way.

This has stayed with me ever since. Something about the power of a kind of seeing that may have the power to “bring things off the page” and “to go off-script” — to have their own life. And the promise of some way that we may be able to offer that.