The Orders of Love: Freedom from the Past

Some of us grew up rejecting one or both of our parents. We judged and criticized them, pushed them away, and vowed we would never be like them. We believed our parents didn’t do enough for us or that they could have been better parents. Life goes on, and we notice that we are making the same mistakes our parents did and that our life mimic theirs. Even though we vowed to do better with our children, we fall into the same patterns we experienced as children. Why is this?

The simple act of rejecting and pushing away one or both parents stops the flow of love with great consequences for us. We believe that by rejecting our parents, we will never be like them, but the opposite happens. When we reject our parents, we transgress the natural Orders of Love, and by doing so, we are more likely to be entangled with our parents and not free to live our own lives.

According to Bert Hellinger, when our family has been brought into its natural order, we can leave it behind while still feeling the strength of our ancestors supporting us. After acknowledging the connection to our family and understanding our responsibilities, we can free ourselves from the past and live a full life.

When we respect The Orders of Love, we allow great love to flow from our parents to us. We can receive and share this love by living according to this order. Our parents and ancestors still live within us, and we cannot be fully happy and free unless we live according to the orders of love. We are not a lost leaf floating alone; we are the branch of a tree, our family tree.

What are The Orders of Love?

After years of phenomenological work, Hellinger observed that certain patterns would emerge from the Knowing Field, deep within the unconscious of a family group. He named these patterns, The Orders of Love. These Orders are Belonging, Precedence, and Giving and Taking. Hellinger also observed that when these Orders are respected, the love and strength from our ancestors will healthily flow to us.

Belonging

Everyone who belongs to a family system has the equal right to belong. We cannot exclude anyone because the system will not allow it. When a family member is denied the right to belong, disorder arises with serious consequences. Where there has been an exclusion of a family member, a movement is created in the family field to bring back the excluded one and give them back the place they deserve. If someone is excluded, the family soul includes it by assigning someone in a future generation to be entangled with the fate of the excluded person to balance the system, including what was excluded.

Some examples of exclusion are institutionalized mentally ill people, people who died tragically, imprisoned people, miscarriages, abortions, stillborn, children who are given away or adopted, and perpetrators. We can resolve these entanglements with Family Constellations by bringing back the excluded member and including them in the system. In this way, the order is restored; what was separated before is now reunited with others.

Precedence

The Order of Precedence demands that everyone in the family take their rightful place, which belongs only to them. Precedence is a hierarchical order. In the family, some come first, and others come after them. The time of belonging determines the order of precedence. For example, parents come before their children; kids born first take precedence over those born later. Previous romantic partners need to be acknowledged and honored. When someone is excluded in a family system, a later member will represent the earlier excluded member, honoring their right to belong and balancing the system.

Giving and Taking

There must be a balance between giving and taking in our relationships for us to strive in them. As soon as we receive something from someone, we feel obliged to give them something of equal value. We feel indebted to them until we give them something in return, settling the debt. After that, we feel free toward this person again.

Our parents gave us the greatest gift, which is life itself. We can never give back to our parents as much as they gave us. But we take it from our parents and give it to our children by passing life to them. We can also give to our life projects and other contributions to humanity. The family system also seeks balance and compensation across generations. What happened in the past affects the present generation.

“Love must be incorporated within an order. The order precedes love. This is what we observe in nature: a tree grows according to an order contained within. It can only grow within this order. The same thing happens with love and human relations: love can only grow within an order. This order is a precondition, a prerequisite for love. As soon as we know the orders of love, our relationships and our love has a greater chance to fully expand.”

Bert Hellinger

Who is missing from this picture?

Close your eyes for a minute and bring to your awareness your family of origin; your parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, and aunties from both sides. Imagine that you have all your family together for a moment. What do you notice? Is there anybody missing from this picture, and why? Is there a “black sheep” who abandoned the family? Is there anyone you don’t want to include in this image because you feel they don’t deserve to be there? Who is missing?

When we exclude family members from their rightful place in the family, we create an energetic blockage for ourselves and the whole system. Exclusion affects everyone because the system encompasses all its members to function with balance. The criticism, judgment, rejection, and exclusion of family members result in strife for everyone. The solution is to bring these excluded family members back into our hearts. We don’t need to be in a relationship with them; we only embrace them as part of the family, especially the ones we dislike the most. Where there is a great emotional charge, there is also a great blockage. Exclusion brings chaos to the family system; the only solution is radical inclusion! With inclusion, it comes order. When the family system is in order, the energy flows, and all is well for everyone.

Adriana Romero, Ph.D

Mother, Your Gateway to Abundance and Prosperity

What is the connection between our mother and the manifestation of abundance and prosperity in our lives?

Bert Hellinger, the creator of the Family Constellation methodology, says “We relate to Life the way we relate to Mother.”

When we reject our mother, we face strife and a blockage in every area of our lives. However, when we take our mother into our hearts, just as she is, we will succeed in all areas of life and open the gates of prosperity for us.

Why is this? Because when we reject our mother, we reject life itself, with all the wonderful things it can bring us. Our relationship with our mother forms a template for everything possible for us. In other words, our relationship with our mother becomes a matrix that will be imprinted in all areas of life: love, relationships, health, and our ability to recognize and express our unique gifts.

When we heal our relationship with our mother, we reconnect to life and reveal our true self, hidden beneath trauma and stories. Healing the mother wound frees the stuck energy causing so many blockages in our lives and naturally guides us to express our inner gifts and our sacred female energy, which is pure creativity.

Our mother is the source of life and the first source of nourishment and safety. When we were born, the first natural movement was towards the mother as we took her breast, seeking her milk. A mother’s nourishment gives us a sense of abundance, warmth, safety, and wealth. A mother is a whole universe for her baby; she is the sole provider of everything.

Bert Hellinger

When it comes to professional success, healing the mother’s wound is crucial. When we reject our mother, we also reject life and professional possibilities. How we relate to our mother is also how we relate to life and our profession. When we take mother to our hearts, just as she is, we are taking in life, and we will create happiness and purpose in our professional field. Taking the mother to our hearts brings a natural order to our energy field where finally, love can flow. Then we become a vibrational match for abundance and prosperity by taking in what life offers.

As Bert Hellinger said, “Money, mother, and life are equivalent energies. How we treat, our mother is also how we treat life and Money.”

The Interrupted Movement towards Mother

For many of us, childhood was not a lovely experience. We didn’t feel safe or nourished in the way we needed, and we grew up feeling angry and resentful. We do not trust life. Early separation from our mother can often prevent us from taking her to our hearts. For example, if we were put in an incubator or our mother got sick and could not take care of us, perhaps we were given away to another caregiver. The separation from our mother caused us great pain and instability. We felt unsafe and hopeless, and to cope and survive, we made an unconscious decision to move away from our mother. We changed our inner attitude from seeking our mother to “I don’t need my mother; I can do it all by myself.” We rejected and pushed our mother away and became independent early on.

The early separation from our mother and the change in our inner attitude caused the interrupted reaching out movement or break in the bond with our mother. This early interrupted movement will manifest in every area of our lives. In romantic partnerships, for instance, we will not move toward our partner because this movement reminds our bodies of the trauma of early separation from our mother. We cannot bear our partner’s closeness and reject them in one way or another. The partner triggers our early wound with our mother.

What is the Solution?

In Family Constellations, we can resolve the break in the bond with our mother by going inwardly back to when the rupture occurred and retaking that movement slowly and gently towards the mother again. As we move back to mother and take her in slowly, we reconnect to the flow of love and prosperity and move towards life and success in all areas. Mother is life, abundance, and success.

How was your relationship with your mother when you were a child? How would you describe your mother today?

Imagine that your mother stands in front of you. How do you feel saying the following healing sentences to her: “Thank you, mom for everything you could do for me, and what you couldn’t, I am now doing for myself,” “Mother, I take you just as you are. You are the right one for me.”

What is coming up for you? Do you feel like moving towards your mother or away from her? Are you feeling gratitude or resentment? Is there any hint of judgment about your mother?

If you felt the need to pull back from your mother or perhaps felt negative feelings toward her, you might benefit from exploring further your relationship and bond with your mom. You can unleash your inner wealth and abundance by taking your mother into your heart.

Adriana Romero, PhD

Father, Your Portal to Success in the World

Sometimes, we have difficulties finding our place in the world. We graduate from school, get jobs, and open businesses, but we are still not succeeding. Why is this? One possible cause is our relationship with our father.

Our father embodies the masculine energy which flows down to him and through him from all his male ancestors. The sacred masculine energy is external and is connected with actualizing, forming something new, and bringing it into the physical reality. The male energy has a creative force necessary to manifest everything we want in life.

We all have male and female energy flowing through us. We receive the female energy from our mother, who receives it from her female ancestors. The male energy we receive from our father. When we lack balance in the male energy, we face great difficulties in life, such as making decisions appropriately, setting goals and achieving them, developing a healthy boundary, and finding personal and professional fulfillment.

How can we develop and strengthen the male energy in our lives? By cultivating a healthy relationship with our father. Our relationship with our father is the secret sauce for outside success because dad is the portal to the world. If we only take in the mother’s energy, we feel lonely and isolated. The father’s energy is essential to materialize our goals and manifest our dreams.

When we take both parents to our hearts, just as they are, we achieve an inner balance between female and male energies and polarities. Life can flow easier now when we feel balanced inside, as within so without. As the female energy is about holding, like a mother holds the child in the womb, the male energy is about releasing and letting go. The father, carrying the male energy from all his ancestors, passes down his strength to his child and then releases the child into life. Father is the one who propels us to life, away from home.

Bert Hellinger

We all came from parents, and our parents were the right ones for us. If our parents had been different from who they were, we would also be different people. We can only be at peace with ourselves when we take mom and dad into our hearts. When we reject one or both parents, we reject ourselves because we are half mom and half dad. Our inner peace comes from taking our parents as they are, without judgment or criticism.

“I now look into my childhood and at everything that I lived through, that which was heavy and that which was beautiful. I acknowledge everything that happened, just as happened. Precisely because it happened that way, I could grow. What I rejected did not help me to grow. I can only grow from that which I acknowledge and give my consent.”

Bert Hellinger

How can we achieve fulfillment and success?

Fulfillment and success are the outcome of inner peace, which is only possible if we are at peace with our parents. When we focus on what we believe to be wrong with our parents and reject them, we become entangled with both mom and dad, and therefore we are no longer free to live our lives. We can see this entanglement when we unconsciously imitate them and go through the same difficulties they did.

What is the solution? To take both parents to our hearts just as they are! When we take our mother into our heart, we reach an inner state of wealth; then, by taking our father in, we manifest this wealth through successful enterprises in the world. Both parents are equally important, and our relationship with them will determine the balance of masculine and feminine energy within us.

A good exercise is to develop an inner attitude of total gratitude for our parents because they gave us the greatest gift of all, life itself.

How was your relationship with your father growing up? Do you see him differently today? What qualities do you love in your dad?

Imagine your father is standing in front of you. Tell him the following healing sentences, “Dad, thank you for everything you did for me. You gave me life and this was enough,” “Dad, when I love you I am also loving myself,” “Dad, I love you.”

How do you feel after doing this exercise? Are you moving towards your dad or away from him?

If you felt the need to pull back from your father or felt negative feelings toward him, you might benefit from exploring what is happening in your relationship with your dad. Taking in your father could be that missing link to great success and fulfillment in your life.

Adriana Romero, Ph.D