So I'm the why am I here person. And maybe we can find out if I can be of any use to this process. I'm partly here because I'm your host in a sense. in this meeting. And I'm here because I'm old friends with Guni and Walter. But I'm also here because one of the reasons is I find constellation practice so interesting and fruitful. It gives me a chance to observe consciousness and mind.

[01:00]

So I just made it implied or said or whatever. There's a distinction between mind and consciousness. And that part of making such distinctions is part of what I can say about constellation practice. Now, Guni has asked me to say something every noon for the next couple of days, I guess. And I'm completely... hoping, completely open to and hoping for questions or comments from you about whatever I bring up or whatever you'd like to bring up.

[02:32]

Now, I'm sitting here in a chair, which is unusual for me. I mean, I sit in chairs quite often, but not when I speak usually. Because posture and mind and the access to mind are profoundly influenced, thoroughly influenced by posture. Now I wasn't here this morning and I wish I had been but I will be here sometime. And there's a postural aspect to constellation practice. How you stand and how you feel yourself and how you feel yourself in relation to others and how somebody gets you started, etc.

[03:59]

Yeah, so I should say something about about mind and consciousness. No, just in April I was at a huge conference in Tucson, Arizona on the science of consciousness. And the so-called, in that context, hard problem is how can consciousness be produced by a world constructed of matter? I mean, here's this floor made of chestnut tree wood

[05:01]

This was a carpentry hall and we put this floor in and did various things. And we think we, there's an assumption we understand the floor. Molecules or atoms or energy fields or chestnut trees, etc. But we don't understand consciousness. How could chestnut trees produce consciousness or molecules or atoms? But I'm convinced actually that trees, and there's even a popular book I hear about it, and a botanist friend of mine, he's a research botanist, trees have some sort of something like consciousness.

[06:30]

So the problem is not that we don't understand how consciousness and matter are related, but that we don't understand matter well enough to know how it can also be consciousness. Okay, now why I'm bringing this up? It's because, in effect, when you do constellation work, you're simultaneously studying, observing consciousness and mind.

[07:51]

Okay, so let me try to say something about how we can, because although we can't defined mind in terms of matter, we can observe the function of mind, the functioning of mind, neurologically, electrically, chemically, and so forth. And although we may not be able to explain the mind from matter, we can still observe the functions of the mind. We can observe it in a neuro-scientific way, chemically, And you can observe the power of mind over matter. I just raised my arms. How did that happen? I don't know. I intended it. So let me

[08:51]

From the point of view of a Zen practitioner, which is my life, how would I define mind? Okay. First, mind is content-free. Like if you had a lake and it was just the water and there's no boats on it and no insects on it or anything, that would be, the water would be just water actually, it's H2O. But still, metaphorically think it's just water. So mind is just mind and there's no content, no mentation, no feelings, no thoughts. So if you look at a lake, for example, and there are no boats on it, no insects, no fish and so on, but just the water, then when we use this metaphor, then the spirit is like that.

[10:09]

The spirit is just a spirit, just like the water is just water without the contents. And the spirit would then be something like without the mental processes and the sensations and the emotions and so on. So it's mind, let's call it content-free mind. Now, Zen practice is about approaching and utilizing content-free mind even in the midst of content. Und in der Zen-Praxis geht es darum, sich diesem inhaltsfreien Geist anzunehmen und ihn sich zu nutzen zu machen, selbst inmitten eines Feldes von Inhalten. Okay, now there's also mind with context. Und es gibt aber natürlich auch Geist mit Inhalten. And we call that associative mind. Mind which has had lots of different associations or lots of different memories, thoughts, you know, moods.

[11:16]

But they're not structured by consciousness or the narrative self. Now consciousness is a structure. We can define it as structured mind. It's the mind which allows us to function, the form of mind, which allows us to function practically in the world. So it tends to observe things in categories. And relates those categories. And sees things as entities more than activities. And sees things as semi-permanent predictables.

[12:30]

And that structure is very powerful. And it excludes what it can't structure or restructure. And then there's self-narrated consciousness. You see everything in relationship to yourself in a very self-centered way. wo man alles in Beziehung zu sich selbst sieht auf eine ziemlich selbstzentrierte Art und Weise. Okay. Now, we exist in various configurations. And wir existieren in unterschiedlichsten Konstellationen.

[13:34]

Familial, tribal, humanitarian, beingness. I'm testing her memory. maybe, and worldness. Now, I think we, in terms of... Oh, and the most important. Worldness. Beingness is sentience. And then worldness. Okay, so I'm thinking about these things and I wonder what government and Trump-tanic, I mean Trump, he's like the Titanic and he sinks the Republican Party. What is governance?

[14:36]

It's a more amusing part of our world coming apart, but it has its limits. Yeah, okay, but I would say governance or governing is mostly tribal. That's instinctive. We function through our tribe. One, I would say that the government and the government, that this is something that has to do with a clan or tribal consciousness, something instinctive, where we work through our tribe, is tribe a good word for tribal?

[15:42]

Through our tribe, where we were born, we work. government should be over all these aspects, or a part of all these aspects. But personally what I see is we're intergenerationally familial beings. Before we're even tribal, we're intergenerational familial beings. And constellation work practice is a way to look into that intergenerational familial beingness. When I was a kid, I used to, my job, family job, household job, was washing the dishes usually, among other things.

[17:10]

And I would take an exceedingly long time to wash the dishes. And my family would come out and say, you're still washing it? And I'd actually have a glass, and I'd be looking under the soaps, looking at all the silverware. Somehow I was fascinated by under the suds were all the silverware. And constellation work gives you a kind of way to look under your habits, under your acculturation, and under the structures of consciousness and see sort of what may be going on.

[18:38]

Okay, so when we sit down in meditation, the first thing we do is slip out of consciousness. As I say, consciousness gets you into the room and into the right door at the right time. But as soon as you sit down on your cushion, that goes away. It takes a little skill and time before that happens quite easily and naturally. And at that point, there's all these associations which appear, which may be excluded from consciousness in the Freudian sense, but they're also just lots of stuff.

[19:55]

that has no relationship to consciousness but has been experientially noticed by you. And there's tons of non-conscious information. For example, sometimes you can hypnotize somebody after they've seen a car accident and they hardly remember anything. And then once they are hypnotized, they say, oh, yes, that was a Skoda and the license plate was M374. How they know that? But it comes out. Manchmal kann man jemanden hypnotisieren, zum Beispiel nach einem Autounfall und im bewussten Zustand erinnern sie sich an überhaupt gar nichts mehr.

[21:14]

Aber wenn sie hypnotisiert sind, dann können sie einem solche Informationen geben wie, oh ja, das war ein Skoda und der hatte die und die, das Nummernschild und so weiter. Excuse me, I left one sentence out. And then you ask yourself, how did they know that? How did they notice that? I mean, there are false memories, but when you do find the car which was hit by the blah, blah, blah, and it does have that license plate, it tells you something. So constellation practice, again, in my experience, allows you to somehow, partly by... not being the person, not representing yourself, but representing someone else.

[22:17]

Somehow enters you into an overlapping field of mutual not exactly the same, but overlapping at least, field of mutual consciousness. And why that's the case is even a harder problem than why consciousness is conscious. But our consciousness or our mind field is a lot more than we think it is. And it's a lot more than we can think. So, again, how do you see into your own familial patterns with the help of an intra- and intergenerational pattern, with the help of a bunch of people, strangers who usually you don't know?

[23:56]

I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. And if we can discover this dimension of mind and have a physical feel for it. Because again, one of the truisms of yogic practice, Zen is a yogic practice, Is that all mental phenomena have a physical component.

[24:58]

And all sentient physical phenomena have a mental component. So I'm guessing, I'm not experienced at this, but an experienced constellation practitioner knows the feel of being in a constellation and can enter the zone of the constellation. And if you come to know that feel of the constellation field, this is bodily knowledge.

[26:06]

And you can call this bodily knowledge forth in other circumstances than just a constellation sculpture. Now I prefer to sit cross-legged and we didn't want to move it platformed because the antenna of this body I can feel the mutual field of us right now a little more clearly if my posture is more antenna-like. don't think I'm crazy, I might be.

[27:22]

In other words, mind content-free mind and associative mind that's not structured by consciousness, has a mutual dimensionality, that we can't really understand. I mean, it's not graspable by consciousness at least.

[28:25]

But constellation work is a technique which allows you to, without any yogic experience particularly, loosen yourself from consciousness and enter an imagistic field. You have a kind of image of you being somebody's grandmother or uncle or something. So in constellation work you have a kind of image of it but not a concept of it. And you have to kind of shift and feel the difference between a concept and an image. Because immediately a concept pulls it into consciousness and all the structures and the sense that we know what we're doing.

[29:43]

And for ordinary sanity it's necessary to know what we're doing. But to sometimes release yourself from the structures of consciousness and enter an imagistic field, is a treasure, really, an extraordinary potentiality that one can learn to feel the world in a new way, not just in a constellation, but often. What did you say? To enter the world and what kind of thing? Feel. Anyway, whatever. Whatever you said was good. I see my friend the Buddha over there has been covered by a screen.

[31:05]

Because you have some unusual participants in your constellation. The Buddha is not a usual participant. And this column which represents the past which is always present. And perhaps this column represents the support that's always present but not always seen. So you have other participants in this constellation field. And for a Buddhist practitioner in one's own inner interiority inner constellation the Buddha is one of the main participants. So the Buddha is the humanification, I don't want to say personification, humanification of the content-free mind.

[32:43]

And the Buddha is the humanification and the female figures and male figures are the humanification of the ideal person all of us secretly want to be. And sometimes not so secretly. Der Buddha, also die in weiblichen Formen und in männlichen Formen ist die Menschwerdung von der Person, die wir heimlich So the ideal person, the person we wish somewhere existed in the world. And I think we really recognize that we wish such a person existed.

[34:02]

And we've been hunting for him and all the love songs or her and all the love songs and all that stuff, right? But maybe we're really hunting for the Buddha or something like the Buddha, not, you know, the ideal partner. Any case, once we recognize we really would like someone like that to exist, auf jeden Fall, wenn wir wirklich erkennen, dass wir uns wirklich wünschen, dass so ein Mensch existiert, then it kind of creeps into us, feels into us that, hey, maybe we should be that person. So in that sense, this ideal person may be always present in our own interior constellation. Okay, so that's fine. And we're supposed to have lunch at 1, is that right?

[35:26]

Yeah, at 1, yeah. And you have then a 17- or 18-minute break. Unless you have something you'd like to bring up that I can speak about tomorrow, or I don't know, whatever. Yes. I would like to know about the difference between mind and intuition. Intuition is the experience of knowing something. that has to push its way or find its way through the structures of consciousness. And it's a excuse me for being rather technical, but it's a putting together of aspects of the associative mind in a way that consciousness hasn't recognized.

[36:58]

And it's interesting that because it pushes through consciousness and it's often different from what we thought and we see it as an insight or an intuition, And because it comes from a layer of mind less structured than consciousness, And less structured, it feels a truer layer of mind. It feels true.

[38:03]

Intuitions often feel this is true. But sometimes they're not true. But they feel true because they come from a layer of mind which is true of unconsciousness. more likely to be. So ideally the yogic practitioner who doesn't locate his or her decisional world in consciousness experiences all thinking as a flow of intuition. Can you say that slowly again?

[39:06]

I don't know which one I said. I know what you said, but you have to say it differently and slowly. Well, I said that because the less structured layer of mind feels truer, things that arise, recognitions that arise from that less structured layer of mind, have a feel of truth about them, a feel of being a more inclusive decision than the decision you thought your way to. It's like, should I change my job or should I go to college or whatever? And you think about it, think about it, and then something happens.

[40:25]

You say, I had no choice. You say, I had no choice. It means I had no conscious choice, but something else made the choice. And then, that experience of... when your decisional experience is not located in consciousness this then a person who

[41:28]

is not located decisionally in consciousness, except for driving a car and stuff. Part of driving a car. For such a person, all thinking is a kind of flow of intuition. Now, we technically call that the alaya-vijnana, which means the more inclusive field of mind, which can be more inclusive than consciousness. And consolation practice is a technique to have access to that more inclusive field of mind.

[42:50]

Growing up in America, I thought only women had intuition. Because, I don't know why, people always say, a woman's intuition. And if a man says something, they say, well, you have a woman's intuition. Und wenn ein Mann dann mal irgendwie sowas in der Art sagt, dann sagt man auch zu dem Mann, ja, du hast eine weibliche Intuition. Und falls da was Wahres dran ist, vielleicht ist es schon so, dass es Frauen ein bisschen leichter fällt als Männer, das Bewusstsein zur Seite zu schieben. I like to think that because I'm kind of working on my feminine side.

[43:57]

I'm not very successful at it. Okay, is that enough? Yeah, that was a long, but you know, the concept of intuition, we all know, but we don't understand it in this way in which it functions through the layers of mind. And maybe if I come back tomorrow, I could be less philosophical. I'll see if it's possible. Excuse me, that's my habit. Okay, thanks.

[44:52]

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