Bert Hellinger is a philosopher and teacher on the Path of Insight. As soon as his family constellations transformed into the Movements of the Spirit-Mind, he started to base his work on a simple premise: the source of everything in existence is the Spirit, the primordial force, who thinks everything and is kindly disposed towards everyone. This premise is related to Aristotle’s idea of the prime, unmoved and intelligent Mover – “a supra-physical entity without which the universe could not function or persist” (source). In this regard Bert Hellinger has introduced the term “Spirit-Mind”.
The Path of Insight should be followed in three steps:
- Step 1 – careful and unbiased observation (feeling)
- Step 2 – thinking about the results of observations and opening oneself for new insights (thinking)
- Step 3 – carrying out normal actions with these insights in mind in order to correct and deepen them through direct experience (willing)
This three-step cycle is repeated again and again. Bert Hellinger writes in Truth in Motion, “Criticism of an insight as not scientifically proven – even though it has been proven by its effects – is derived from the idea that the insight has to be generalizable, and therefore already completed. But this is not in line with the reality of life. Just as action cannot come to an end as long as there is life, insight cannot be final because life does not stand still. Action and insight urge each other on continuously.”
Therefore the Spiritual Family Constellations, which are practiced on the Path of Insight as the observation step, are not constricted to any methodical boundaries. They are open in every regard. They allow us to widen our perspective by revealing hidden aspects of reality through the feeling sense – by the revealing movements of the spirit-mind.
All three steps of the Path of Insight include three fundamental forces of the soul (described by Rudolf Steiner), namely thinking, feeling and willing, thus the teachings of Bert Hellinger may be easily connected with other spiritual traditions, for example with anthroposophy.
