THE CONSTELLATION APPROACH. Jamy Faust

      Exposed for all to see.

       Take me, Oh great sea!

       Carry me to some foreign land

      Deposit me on a shore far away.

      Let me have a taste of other earth,

       Feel the wind of distant places

      And the scent of tropic soil.

       I face the fullness of this life

       Yet forever will remain

       Just a humble grain

      From the beach where I was born.

      —Jamy and Peter

      The Eastern Medical Perspective of Congenital Essence

If we consider epigenetics alongside the Traditional Chinese Medicine view of Congenital Essence, we can gain even richer insight into our true nature. In the Taoist perspective on life and incarnation, we inherit parental energy from our birth parents that we cannot change, but we do have the opportunity, if we are aware, to transform it. This prenatal, pre-birth energy—all the energetic qualities inherited from one’s parents—is known as Congenital Essence.² It’s the basis for our individual energy signature.

      We all grow up with the weight of history on us.

      Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.

      —Shirley Abbott, author

      The Tao teaches that it is always up to the individual to accept fully what we inherit in order to cultivate our Congenital Essence for the highest good. With wisdom and understanding, we can utilize our inherited Congenital Essence to foster strengths and limit the effects of lesser qualities. Everyone receives aspects that are considered more or less desirable, the teachers of Traditional Chinese Medicine say.

      Our very essence is derived from the qualities passed onto us though our incarnational journey, especially our Family Lineage. In the Constellation Approach, we work to accept fully what we have inherited and to consciously evolve those aspects for the better.

      The Hindu View of Samskaras

      The Constellation Approach also complements the Hindu philosophical view of incarnation. According to this view, each of us has three distinct yet intertwined bodies of energy that guide our actions in our current lifetime: our father’s and mother’s energy signatures, and our own samskaras.

      Samskaras are imprints or traces of past deeds and experiences (karma) involving ignorance, fear, attachments, afflictions, and ego-driven actions that each of us has accumulated over lifetimes. These impressions (klesas) are stored within the body-mind and may be carried from one lifetime to the next. But this cycle may be broken when the samskaras are realized.

      Besides quieting the mind and gaining self-knowledge, another way to bring awareness to our samskaras is by approaching our Family Lineage with neither attachment nor repulsion, but rather equanimity. In this sense, The Constellation Approach process can guide us to attain lasting peace, or brahma-nirvana, much as ancient Hindu practices do.

      The Mystical Principle of the Vesica Pisces

      Something miraculous can occur in a Constellation when two willing participants come together with the simple intention of the highest good. Our view is that this sacred space, the Vesica Pisces, is the passageway that leads to experiencing our Soul nature. One of the most profound motifs of both ancient and modern times, the Vesica Pisces is shaped like an almond, and called a mandorla. It is created by two circles overlapping and has many representations including the Jesus fish, Ichthys, in the Christian tradition; the Ark of the Covenant in the Judaic; the Chalice Well at Glastonbury, England; the Goddess Venus; and the vaginal opening of female genitalia. The Vesica Pisces is considered a portal between heaven and earth. It symbolizes the joining of two, communion, to create a potent third energy, and therefore, is a source of immense power.

      In Constellations, the Vesica Pisces is the sacred intersection of two overlapping Individual Energy Fields, represented by two figurines or by two participants. Within the Vesica Pisces, the auric field and the chakra system (Chapter 3) of each person play a vital role in the transformation of consciousness. As two or more participants in a Constellation move closer together, the field of information in the form of images and feelings intensifies. Few words are spoken. The emphasis is on silence. The rational mind is transcended and our personalities, though still present, seem to recede as we begin to recognize our shared Soul consciousness.

      The Veil of Forgetting

      Here’s something useful to remember: All of us forget who we are. The Constellation Approach is a path that can help us to remember.

      Between the above and below, heaven and earth, Spirit and matter, before and after, knowing and forgetting, there is a realm that has been called The Veil of Forgetting. The Veil is a barrier that protects us from knowing what we agreed to experience in this lifetime, with whom, and for what reasons. It’s also the realm that each of us pass through during incarnation, when our consciousness shifts from Spirit to the form of Soul.

      In Hindu and Buddhist mystical thought, a teaching used to help grasp this concept is conveyed through the symbol for Om. The symbol is divided into five sections: a dot, a curve, and three semi-circles. The upper single dot (turiya in Sanskirt) is the unmanifest, God Self, the Source of Creation, the Above, the All, the Pure Lands. The curved and horizontal line (maya) is the Veil of Forgetting, often referred to as the Veil of Illusion. It is the mist we pass through that erases our conscious memory of our incarnational choices.

Below the Veil of Forgetting are three manifest states of consciousness: wakefulness, deep sleep, and dreaming (jugrat, sushupti, and swapna). Om, pronounced A-U-M,³ is the sacred sound that represents all manifested phenomenon. The Om symbol reminds us that we come from the noumenon, the Source, the Above, the All, from Spirit. We originate from elsewhere as fully conscious beings and descend into consciousness, when we incase in human form. But in this process, we forget our reasons to incarnate.

      As human beings we are Spirit consciousness existing as an individuated Soul in human form, with three ways to experience consciousness—waking, sleeping, and dreaming. On the purely biological level, each of us is alive because of our mothers and fathers. However, sustaining and nurturing our existence, and the quality of our life experience, are separate matters. First we have to arrive here to incarnate. Then, we can begin the gradual but thrilling process of waking up and remembering our true nature, and the reasons we chose this life.

       We are not human beings having a spiritual experience;

      We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

      —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit priest, philosopher

      The Constellation Approach helps lift the Veil of Forgetting and allows Soul awareness to occur. We begin to understand and comprehend events, circumstances, and relationships at the deepest level of our being.

      The idea that we are spiritual beings having a human experience may be difficult to comprehend, but it is a spiritual concept that has been taught and