Why Healing Your Family System Feels Impossible Before It Heals | Eric Lopez | EP17

In this episode of the Zulu One Podcast, I sit down with my dear friend Eric Lopez, a shamanic and energy medicine practitioner with over 20 years of experience working with family constellations, plant medicine, and systemic healing.

Eric is a certified Family Constellations facilitator through the Bert Hellinger Institute of Germany and has spent decades supporting people through deep ancestral, emotional, and spiritual healing. In this conversation, we explore why family constellations often create disruption before relief, and why resistance is not a sign of failure, but a sign that something real is moving in the system.

We talk about hidden loyalties, subconscious patterns passed down through generations, and how love, not trauma, is often the force that keeps painful dynamics alive. Eric shares powerful metaphors around shaking the system, letting the dust settle, and why healing requires patience, consent, and compassion for both victims and perpetrators.

This episode also expands into collective and global systems, showing how the same family dynamics repeat in cultures, nations, and politics, and why healing at the family level is where real change begins.

If you’re interested in family constellations, ancestral trauma, systemic healing, or understanding why healing can feel chaotic before it brings peace, this conversation offers deep insight and perspective.

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🔔 Upcoming Family Constellation Workshops

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🗓 February 7, 2026
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Transcript

Welcome And Eric’s Background

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Zula One Podcast. Today we're joined by my dear friend Eric Lopez, shamanic and energy medicine practitioner with over 20 years of experience. He works for plant medicines and is a certified family consolation facilitator through Bert Hellinger Institute of Germany. We explore his journey and his perspective on consolations and what led him into this work. Let's begin. Helped, always been there, you know, to say to guide and and really help through throughout this process. Like you've your family, you know, that we just we just have such a such a such a special place for you and our family system, you know. And uh jokingly, internally, we say um my mom's roommate. Um because every time you go to Chicago, you stay with my mom, which is a beautiful, you know, and and and you take care of her and and you cook for her. So it's just it's a really cool, you know, um just just relationship that we've that we've created over the years. And I just want to say thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for becoming a spiritual family for me as well. And following this work because now you are doing it, your mom is doing it, your sister is doing it. Back then, none of you were doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And and you know, um, one of the things that that I'm I'm very grateful for is that you you you were one of the impetuses of saying, hey, you should you need to start facilitating. It's like, hey, go. And you did it with my sister and you did it with my mom. It's like, well, you know, he said, hey, you're ready, right? So we've been involved with consolations for so many years that you don't know, and so much reverence for the process that you really don't know when you're ready to become a facilitator. And so thank you for that. And you, um Sophie, Sophie Sudai as well was pushing us, and Michelle was pushing us. So you're you're you know, I I just want to say thank you and honor that that support. And I I think it's extraordinarily important and and what a world that we've lived in over these six years. There's been Netflix series in Turkey and you know, stuff that has been blowing up all over the world in a great way, amplifying the the work of family constellations, and I know you're a massive part of that. So so it's it's amazing to have you on the podcast again.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

You're welcome, Anahaul.

From Student To Facilitator

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yeah, yeah. So, Eric, um wanted to ask you and and want to kind of wrestle with these ideas, right, of of family constellations and and how you see this shifting and kind of the emergence of the new systemic resistance for some some way. And the we've seen that the world has changed so many times, like a couple times over over the last couple of years with COVID and you know, geopolitical things that are happening and presidencies that are changing and shifting, and these big energies that are coming into into the orbit. Um, and at the same time, family constellations is kind of coming to prominence, right? That it's it's becoming popular. There's this famous, um, now famous um Netflix series called Another Self that I know you were intimately involved with. Um, and you know, sometimes in family systems you see things get a little bit tumultual before before healing happens. So what I want I'm curious about your perspective, all these kind of things that are moving in in general terms.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Well, when when we do family constellations, and and you just also your experience, everything moves, right? Uh there is a storm behind the calm. So when we move something, for example, you have a a glass full of dirt, but the dirt has settled and it's been dormant. When you shake that glass, you can see how dirty it is because the amount of dirt that has been there, laying, you know, put it on the bottom of it. When we shake it, everything moves. And then we can be aware how dirty that glass of water was. So we don't drink of it anymore. That's the best way to put it. Uh people say, oh, I'm gonna do family constellations, and then uh tomorrow I'm gonna speak with my sister because I never spoke with her for 20 years. No, it's like something has to continue moving, and sometimes it's not only one constellation, sometimes it's one, two, three constellations. But I always try to give at least a six months to a two years before doing uh from a group constellation to touch the same issue. Helen just said two years. I noticed that because of the world that you come back to it, uh, you come back to the same dynamics, you sometimes you need a boost after six months, but not before that, especially if it's in a group. In a one-on-one, we take step by step. So we take one step towards the reconciliation of your family or your mother or your father, and in two, three months, or a month, or two months, if nothing has changed, or you don't feel that you are still connected completely, or you started, you feel the same as when we started. Most of the cases it's not. But sometimes, you know, daily life will bring you back into your subconscious loyalties. So you go back and continue with the same dynamic. But you are aware of it, but you continue. So sometimes we need a little push or a little boost two, three months later for the same issue. If it's on a one-on-one. When it's in a group, you want to touch the same issue and say, listen, wait at least six months.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Yeah, you gotta let the dust settle like a snow global.

Storm Behind The Calm

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Exactly. It's like you shake that water and you gotta put the bottle of the glass there and see how dirty was and how it's been settled in. Once it's been settling, maybe you can actually filter it. Or see how much is left.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

You know, you see how much the dirt is left of this process removes the dirt and the noise from the system.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Exactly. The noise of the system. That's a very good word. There is a noise in our subconscious mind that is always saying, No, but my mother did this. So my father didn't was not there. Why should I, you know, now have them in my heart completely? It's not an easy process, but constellations helps you to make it a little bit more lighter to go towards that end product of having everybody in your heart.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Yeah, having everybody in your heart. Wow, isn't that a concept? Even the the excluded ones and the perpetrators, right? Exactly. Everyone.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Everyone that calls what your mother uh the way that the mother treated you, or the way your mother manipulated you, or the way the father was absent or not present for for the family, even though he was there. You know, we have to look at behind them, what is behind to really make peace with them, even though it was not our issue. It was their father's issue, you see, to also incorporate those ancestors into our hearts. Because they were the costs or the original costs of why your father became or be behaved that way.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

So can you talk about the concept of loyalty in family constellations? I know that's a concept that people wrestle with. Can you uh open that one up a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah, when we talk about family constellations, we in the world of family constellations, we see the hidden loyalties, the hidden loyalties that are in the subconscious mind most of the time. The hidden loyalties are those patterns that we encounter in our daily life that come from our ancestors. A very uh simple observation, we say. Sometimes you say, Oh my God, I'm I just say to my son what my father used to say to me. And you are you're like in shock sometimes and says, Huh, I gotta change that pattern. But you just already said it. You see? Those are the hidden loyalties. When we refer to loyalties, that's the hidden loyalties. Even though you don't want to be loyal to those sentences, to those uh dynamics that you have encountered in the past because they were damaging to you, you subconsciously are loyal to that. Subconsciously, hidden loyalties. And unless you do family constellations, those hidden loyalties will continue being passed on to the next generations. You already said that to your son, the same thing that your father told you, that you're not good enough, for example, or you will never be like me. That's very common sentence for a father that is has wounded with his father. He will repeat it to you, and you subconsciously, knowing that it hurt you, you will say sometimes in a different way to your son. And then you realize it and you say, Oh my god, what did I do? And then you ask for forgiveness to your son, but that sentence repeated, and that is your loyalty.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

And it and it's uh almost a way to belong to the system is this loyalty to a broken system.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

The loyalty is yes, to have the chance. Why do you why are you loyal? Because the soul with unconditional love will try to repeat it in order to do it differently. Oh, okay. Okay, that subconscious mind is driven by the soul connection to your family. And the way the soul connection to your family belongs, it belongs with the same traumas and everything that happened before. And why it passes on, why your soul takes it on, is because to have the opportunity to heal it for the past generations. Oh wow. That is the concept of it. It's not that it's a karma, it's an imprint. No, it's a love connection through your soul into your subconscious mind to have these hidden loyalties in order to repeat them and have a chance, only a chance to do it differently. And ultimately we have a choice to do it differently or not, or continue the pattern. Only if you are aware. Most people are not aware of the hidden loyalties unless they are involved in the realms of family constellations. Sometimes uh therapy also addresses that in a mental way, in a not in a spiritual way. Because the problem with therapy is now the new way of therapy is now therapy. Therapy is also changing. Now they're looking at a more subconscious hidden loyalties as well. But they always analyze it from the mind. Why are you, oh, because it's an imprint. It's because what you hear from your father, you can change that. No, it's not an imprint, it's an imprint, but you take it on and you repeat it out of love. Even if it's an unbalanced love, even if it's a damaging thing, you belong in that way because you love your family in that way, already damaged.

Let The Dust Settle

SPEAKER_02 11:43

You know, I've I've heard so much of current psychology today, and it's like becoming, you know, known. It's like, oh, my this is my unresolved trauma. This is my inherited unresolved trauma. And people are talking about it as a weaponization of it rather than saying the 180 of it, which is now that I'm aware of it, it's my responsibility to fix it because nobody else can.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

But aware that it's out of love. It's not out of trauma, it's out of love that you took it on. And willingly you came to that family to heal it, to have the opportunity to heal it. Now, it's it's almost like uh when your grandfather, your grandfather died and inherited a sweater, a Christmas sweater, let's say, we just finished Christmas, right? Your father wears it. When you're even though it's an ugly sweater, old fashioned, he's wearing it. It's already with holes. When your father dies, he inherits you the sweater. And even though you don't like it, you wear it out of love. In remembrance to honor your father that way. Even though it's an ugly sweater from the 50s.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Yeah, it's like in order for me to belong to this family, I have to wear the sweater.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Exactly. Even though you hated it, you still wear it. That's what we do. And you wear it with love. That you don't even notice that you hate it. That's exactly the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

This concept that that doesn't only happen with behaviors, but it also happens with career paths, that it also happens with illnesses, that it also happens with relationships, that these patterns take on many different forms. We show our loyalty, our subconscious loyalty, our hidden loyalty to the family system in many different forms.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

It's it's the epigenetics that has been a study and it's been, you know, the surroundings create a sickness, the emotional creates a sickness. The sole connection to your family creates a sickness. So emotion either emotionally or physically or mentally.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

I'm really exploring this concept of, you know, if it happens in individuals, and if it happens in enough individuals, that there's these mind momentums of of many people in like a s in a social system, right? And just like really understanding that if like one person has a repeating pattern, and then many people in that same cultural system has a repeating pattern, and then you can almost see like waves of momentum that happens um epigenetically throughout a population. So you say this certain population has these patterns, and these certain populations have these patterns. Have you noticed that with all the countries that you've been to?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

It's a pattern based on the collective consciousness, the good conscious and the not so good conscious. Nobody in other countries do it with bad consciousness. We do it with their consciousness because that's where they belong. So for them, they're doing something right. And if they've been the if in the history of the past they've been the abused victims of something that was life-changing for your ancestors, the next generation will become what they rejected or what they haven't healed, and they become the perpetrators, the killers, the abusers.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

I mean, if we talked about global conflict in that term, in those terms, right, it would make a lot more sense than how these things repeat over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Exactly. It makes sense because that's the way you're trying to heal what happened to them. And sometimes in political and we are getting into political things because we're going into countries, right? Sometimes the political stage is to judge, not seeing it from the perspective of what they experienced before, that they are acting this way.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Yeah, and and you know my story very well of me being half Venezuelan, half half-American, and and you know, with the geopolitics that are happening right now, it's like, okay, how do I understand this from a systemic perspective as a facilitator, as uh somebody that creates information on this? How can I, how am I, you know, processing this without being entangled myself? Because as as as we know, we there's other communities that we're involved with that have similar dynamics, and even facilitators sometimes struggle with the dichotomy of being a facilitator, but also a member of a community that has these energies involved. And I'm going through that stuff myself, which is which is really fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, well, what what's just happening to Venezuela, for example? Maduro was taken into custody, right? And everybody rejoiced of it. Um taken away from his country.

Hidden Loyalties Explained

SPEAKER_02 16:28

And and I and I wrote an article recently about that. It's like, you know, I think, and it's it's so difficult to say as a as a human being, as a Venezuelan, right, and also as a facilitator, but what we reject, we become. It's like this, you know, these movements that have happened in our in our especially Venezuelans, like these are symptoms of undercurrent, you know, those mind viruses that we talk about, or these things that overcome populations, and they have different textures. And we see these waves of uh righteousness and emotion and judgment taking over different countries and say, rather than saying, what, why do we have this? Why are we what what am I doing to contribute it, to contribute and co-create this movement that's happening in the country? Because it will just repeat again. We'll have some other kind of dynamic pop up, it will rhyme with it, and suddenly the pendulum swings the other way, and then it swings the other way, and then it swings the other way, and it just creates the patterns of pain that can get passed down from generation to generation. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Well, the original issue with Venezuela that nobody paid attention to the poor. And that's what's happening. You know, the poor took over, came into power, and became the abusers, the same as the rich people that were managing Venezuela. Years ago, when Venezuela was thriving, yeah, they thrived only for a certain class, not for the rest, didn't include that that comes all the way on. If you will go back even before we go to Bolivar, you know, the Spaniels that came to take over and manage the country, the Indians, and you know, abolished, didn't pay attention to the Indians' culture. They came to change it. So the same thing is happening now. The United States is taking over. Another Bolivar, another Bolivar, Simon Bolivar come into play.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

The memes that you start seeing, it's it's so fascinating. You see certain characters of the political stage dressed like liberators of Venezuela. So it's like you're just you're you're we're we're giving off the our agency, you know, the agency of the Venezuelan. Your identity. You're giving up your identity to change it. And like I'm I'm I'm so fascinated about how we can do healing at scale. And how can we, you know, if there's if there's an effect that creates patterns, is there a an effect that removes patterns? And I know that you've, you know, in so many countries done that work, that there's thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people that you've had a direct effect on, being able to help deal with that trauma. And that has to have an effect, moving the direction of the country, a certain a certain way of connection rather than repeating a pattern.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Well, the only way to change it is to have compassion for the perpetrator. That's the first step. Treated the whole people with the way he treated and the political stuff, because he was fighting for that identity of the masses that were suppressed before. He became the perpetrator of those masses again. Against who? Against the ones that had the money, expropriated the comp the companies, expropriated private industry to what? To give the idea of I'm going to save. And in a way, he lost himself. You see, his hidden loyalty kicked in for the moment that he rejected the perpetrators, he became a perpetrator.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

In family language, that's like I judge my father for being, you know, a womanizer and blah blah blah, and then you become a womanizer. And then you become and then you step outside of the relationship or whatever that is, rather than saying, I see you for who you are, and I take all of it in and I consent to all those feelings. It was like, ooh. That's to put them in your heart. Yeah, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

And that is so difficult. Most Venezuelans are rejoicing about what happened to Maduro. They even wish him dead. You're wishing to a brother.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

I know this is like super controversial, but Bert Hellinger's poem to Hitler. Like that, it's like the same force that created you created me. The more I how who am I to judge? You know, like to say, am I can I love you? Can I send you love from a place of connection? It's like, man, talk about radical responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

And and that is the most difficult part. So with our work as a facilitators is to teach that in the family level. Because the moment you start from the beginning, from your family, then you can expand to the communities, to your town, to your city, to your country. And whatever happened within the country to make peace for the next generations. Because we we already lived it. We already imprinted with it. But if we take the responsibility of putting everyone in our hearts, the next generation can be liberated from those hidden loyalties.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Yeah, that's beautiful. The word that comes off is like, you're left to do things differently. Not because of the stuff that you're inheriting out from me, you know, and I and that that's such a beautiful sentiment.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

In shamanic practices, because I'm a shamanic practitioner, as you know, we see everyone as a brother and sister. Okay. What do I do with my neighbor, which is my brother? What do I do with the woman that comes and complains about a dish that I'm serving them in the restaurant if it's my sister?

SPEAKER_02 21:54

And you you hear that in music too. It's like when you hear music that's so moving, they they talk about everybody's your brother, everybody's your sister, that we're all, you know, we're all connected, we're all one. It comes out in art.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

We have forgotten, yeah, we have forgotten the connection that comes from our ancestors that created us. Ancestors I'm talking about. They create the moment where we became humans, conscious humans.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

You know Gary Stewart? Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah. Gary was Gary came on the podcast and he's like, you know, uh talking about what something that Bert said about that all the evil in the world comes from the sentence, I am better.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

That separates us. That's why there's countries, that's why there are lines of that separate us from one country to the other. We're all brothers and sisters at the end. With different colors, with different customs, with different ideas.

unknown 22:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

But if we respect each other's ideas, those boundaries that separated us can be broken. And that's what shamanic practices. That's why I took this work, because shamanic practices always teaches us that, and including the surroundings of us, the trees, the animals, everything is our family. Watch the Avatar movie? You know? Oh yeah, of course. That's so chamanic.

Epigenetics And Collective Patterns

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Yeah, that is so dramatic. Yeah, it really is. And you see, like in how how this stuff, you know, goes in in art and in culture and in the movies and in music, and you see these like people are like, we're all connected. We're all there's because if it shows up in many places, it's true that when people go into shamanic practices, or they it's like we're all connected, everything around us is connected in some esoteric.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Well, the avatar, I just made a comment in um for New Year's and says, Listen, we avatar movie is us. But we are not the humans that are coming to invade. We are the avatar people. We are the avatar people, the humans that came to create us. It was the the extraterrestrials that came to change our DNA. And we were used to being in that peace with nature and the earth and the trees and the animals. We were in peace with that. Something changed. The reptilian DNA was implanted. I always say the avatar people as us in the past, before we were changed to the human DNA, to the reptilian brain. We were connected, we disconnected, and we our calling is to go back to it. So people that look at these ideas, this remembrance of how we used to be. That's why it's so touching that movie, because it gives us the remembrance of who we used to be.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Yeah, the ability to connect with everything is like we still have like ideas, and some people can do it, and some people remember how to do it. It's it's fascinating to look at it from that perspective. I think that's why those stories resonate with so many people, and they keep coming up, and there are these archetypes of these stories.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Yeah, the archetypes of these stories are a remembrance of what we used to be. It's it's us in the past, and that's what we will have to become in the future. That's when you say return to your roots. That's those are our roots.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Well, they literally take the thing and they plug into the system because it's the root ecosystem, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:24

It's the root of your brain, right? Into your subconscious mind. Remember who you are.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

And they see, like at the end of it, you see like everybody connected and this tree and this thing and these roots and above and below, and you have them connected into the thing. You're like, wow, this is fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

But that's exactly what Shamanic practices has been always teaching us. Yeah, they left it open for a fourth movie, so I'm interested if the you know, the fourth movie will have family constellations in it. They'll be doing family constellations in space.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

So And it actually it teaches you, you know, that little kid that is the father. He hates his father, but he doesn't have the courage to kill him because he has to do it differently than his father.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Yeah, that was that was that was fascinating about how that that moves. So I wanted to ask you, there's a concept that I that I love discussing, is the concept of consenting.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Consenting is an uh uh in the English doesn't get the full meaning. Consentimiento in Spanish it says con with sentimiento, with feelings.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

And where your feelings are coming from, your heart. With your heart, with your feelings, consent. You say yes to the event, not to the doing.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

That makes sense. No, that we're consenting with all the feelings that come with it. That that is that that radical responsibility that we come with, we're consenting with the feelings, not only that the act happened, that also the feelings and the responsibility that we both we own those feelings as well. A car accident, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Okay, it happened. You have this emotion of fear, but if you don't consent to, okay, what happened, I let it go, my insurance is gonna take care of it, I let it go. I consent to what happened. If you don't consent to it, you will stay with the feeling of fear, and it will stop you from driving to continue your life. Normally, you used to drive until you got into an accident and that imprinted you. Either you let it go, and if you don't, you will continue not being able to drive or drive in fear.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Yeah, and the the not consenting looks like that idiot came in front of me and they t-bone me and they were drunk, or what you know, like all the things that the judgments and things that further entanglement you entangle you into not having the full consent to be like, this has happened. I was there, that person was there, I assume. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

He was driving, I was driving, we got into an accident, and we have insurance.

unknown 28:01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

And if you even if you don't, that you will consent to all that, right? And you consent to everything that happened.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah. Exactly. And if you didn't have insurance, then you purchase insurance for the next car. You change something with that event at the moment you consent in peace. You make peace within yourself for what happened. And and if we put it in family constellations, how can you make peace with somebody that abused you sexually, for example? How can you make the consent? The only way to be able to be able to consent is to look at the other person that he was also a child, and he became a perpetrator because he was a child when his perpetrator converting into him, when he got into that crash, and he never healed that crash. He never consented to what happened to him and his perpetrator. So he becomes a perpetrator because you look at your abuser as a child. And when he becomes a child, you look at what happened to you as a child, and that he did it, he also experienced it. And that's when the moment of compassion for your perpetrator happens. And when you have that moment of compassion, it touches the heart. And at the moment it touches the heart, the healing starts.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

You know, it reminds me of uh, you know, these constellations that have these complicated themes and they have the victim and the perpetrator, and then at the end, there's a reconciliation between the victim and the perpetrator. That's that's truly beautiful. That once the wound is seen through those lenses, and not to take away responsibility from the person, but to see them as another human being is is just so profoundly moving. Yes, exactly.

Venezuela As A Systemic Mirror

SPEAKER_00 29:47

So uh it's in in family constellations and all family constellators will have to have compassion for more for the perpetrator than the victim. And that's how you start your work by looking at the perpetrator and the victim as two equal individuals that come to heal not only through the victim, but through the perpetrator, you can also heal the perpetrator.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Yeah, and we have these, we've built these systems that just solidify perpetrators being in chain. And you're the prison system. There the way that you get punished in the prison system is to further exclude you. So you're in the jail and then you get put into solitary confinement. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

It's like it just continues to exclude until until society takes a look at prisons, at what we exclude, it will persist. We have to change the way we are in society. There's ways now. There is ways, you know, scientifically and emotionally, and and healing with plant medicine, healing with um mushrooms therapy that now is very popular within the psychology and psychiatric um realm. That's the going back to nature, you see, nature is giving us the answer.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

Yeah, I I I finished and I talk about this book so much in podcast of Dan Booth Cohen's book of Family Consolations in Prison. That book just fundamentally changed me as a human being. It's just so beautiful, the act of returning dignity to the perpetrator, right? That say, how can we, through this map modality of consolations, reconcile and create redemption and a pathway to return dignity? It's like so we can break these cycles of pain. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Uh instead of prisons that will have retreat camps.

unknown 31:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Or you give them uh planned medicine, of course, there's sometimes there are psychiatric issues within the that, but also plant medicine can heal that.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

And and we're dealing with it as uh not in all of the above, which are binary, right? You're like, you're bad, you're good, bad people go to this place, good people go don't, you know, they keep going. Like rather than saying these these can be all the above. And that's the one thing that we learn in constellations is that's well, I think what consent really is, is all the above. Should this person suffer the consequences for breaking the agreements that we have as a as a society? Yes. Are they irredeemable? No. Can they can we return dignity in a way that's appropriate, that's even-handed, to break these cycles, to make sure that these patterns of pain don't get passed down? Yes. Through the reconnecting and bringing back into the circle of society rather than excluding them forever. But that's the way Talmanic practices is.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

If you one member of the tribe commits a crime, we embrace him even more because he is having a difficult time. Because he will feel excluded by breaking the rules.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

So how is that balance? And that's a that's a that's a great way to do it, because you there's there is this idea of innocence, right? That's like when when the balance uh is shifted the other way, that we take agency and responsibility away from people if we're not in our position, right? That ego that will say, I forgive you, right? It's like I have the power to forgive you. It's like I'm not no one to forgive you. If I can just say this is what it is, and I can make sure it doesn't happen again, and I can get it farther away, or I can get closer, and if I but judgment creates that rigidity between people. Can you talk a little bit about that? That I don't I don't want to say toxic empathy, but well, the that innocence, right? That it's like the enablement also, because there's a flip side to that, right? That has a place where you take away somebody's power in the 180.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Yes. Uh well, Bert, how would you said it very clearly? The only way to forgive is to forget. I remember those words, and I was like meditating for days and says, How if I forget, do I forget what happened and I will lose my identity as the victim? Yes, exactly. You can lose your identity as the victim because that's the only way you're gonna heal you because you stop being the victim. I forget what you did because you're still my brother. I forget what you did because you need the healing, and I will, by forgetting, I will heal what happened. So it doesn't pass on to the next generation on my lineage. Now, what Berhelinger says, embrace the perpetrator. At the moment you do the reconciliation, you embrace the perpetrator, you don't only embrace him, you put him into your heart. And you consent to the event that happened, not to the act. And by consenting, you embrace him in your heart, and you want his best benefit to heal as the perpetrator, to even be involved with his healing. That's what society is not doing.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

You know who Hunter S. Thompson is? Uh no. He Hunter S. Thompson was the Gonzo. Like, have you ever heard of uh the movie, Johnny Depp's movie, The Fearing Loathing in Las Vegas? No. He was a gonzo journalist of the 1960s. He ran around with the Hells Angels. He was kind of this wild man kind of journalist, and he would like mess with politics, and he was just kind of this character. But he has this great quote that says, Pray to God, but row away from the rocks. Right? That we have this thing that we could say, hey, we can heal, but also I can say, I'm not gonna put myself in that situation again.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

How do you heal? By forgetting what happened. Because if you keep on saying, I am the victim of this, I am the victim. If you keep remembering that, you will never heal.

Compassion For Perpetrators

SPEAKER_02 35:53

And even some people that have a difficult relationship with the parent, they're like, they're being difficult, you kind of create some distance, and they're being good, you can get closer, right? And if they're like, not being good, but they're being constructive, right? You can get a little bit closer. And if they're, you know, they're they're having challenging times, you get you create a little bit of distance to protect yourself. That there's this, I think sometimes that naivete or a righteousness that happens when we're again in the same pattern, where we're like, how could you? And this righteousness of how could you hurt me in that way, one saying, I'm gonna, I have responsibility. I have the ability to respond and get closer and farther away to say, because I don't have judgment and I have love in my heart that I can say from afar, I can send you love. And from close, and if if things are good, we can get closer and I can adjust and have this this movement and fluidity in in how we react to the current dynamic that's happening in our system.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

The way you know that you have heal in your heart and you put them in your heart is when they are doing the same thing, but it does not make you react. Yeah, yeah, that is correct. That's when you really know, says, okay, now I change myself. The way I feel, the way he treats me. Why? Because I look at a person with his wounds and his loyalties, and I option to do it differently. Looking at the other person as a child always, or how are you dealing with a child, a two, three, four-year-old child? No matter what the child does, you have to maintain your posture and teach the child a different way. If you cannot teach it with example, is the best teaching. So when they're trying to push you or kick you, or you know, to react, and you don't react, and you still look at them with love. You love that child because it's a little unexperienced and hasn't had experience of a different way.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

You know, we we when we when we do inner child work and constellations, and you can see when the wound happened, and they reconnect with that child, and you can translate that wound into it's a wounded little child acting out because they didn't get their knees met. And you see it through that lens, you're like, wow, that makes all the sense in the world.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Yeah. But uh at the moment is we do not consent because there's so many things. Oh, he's acting like a child. He's acting like a child, almost like we're rejecting that. It's almost like a like a oh, you are acting like a child, instead of saying, you are the child that hasn't healed. Now I can see. I see you as a child. Two different things. Oh, you're acting like a child. No, you are the child that hasn't healed. And that's consent. That's consent. That's consenting.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Rather than rejecting consenting and saying, I see this as a wounded child. It's like, oh, oh, that makes sense. You can have compassion, you can have understanding.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

That's one of the things that Berhel just said. At the moment we touch the heart, the healing happened. How are you gonna touch the heart? By having compassion for that person.

SPEAKER_02 38:59

That's the moment of the switch. Yeah, and you see today in society, like on social media, and they're like these outrage machines, and they're all designed to, they're, you know, in some way designed to for us to activate our triggers. We couldn't design a better system to continue the patterns of pain. But now we have this opportunity to say, well, if I'm triggered, that's my next breadcrumb to heal. It's like if I'm if something deeply triggers me and I get hijacked by my reptilian brain, as you were saying, that I'm like, oh, outrage, how could you? And you throw, you know, you throw your phone on the bed and you get your super outraged, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What inside of me is being activated by that? What part of my healing process have I not addressed that I can deal with that I that I'm so activated by this outrage machine? Now, now I have my next step. I got in my next I'm gonna put it in my journal and I'm gonna say, I was outraged when somebody, you know, victimized somebody else, or did this was this when somebody when somebody praised Trump. Yeah, exactly. Or politics or oh my god. Maybe I have a father wound, but I haven't dealt with my relationship with my father. You know, like those are those are those things, right? You can say, oh, well, these are teachers. These are all teachers that come to show us where we can heal and we can become better. And we have, and to think that we do not co-create this world is extraordinarily naive, right? To say we get the people as above, so below, we are part of the system. Pogo talks about we found the enemy and they as us. That's those are all acts of responsibility, right? To say we get what we do, we well, we get what we deserve and co-create in some way. And without judgment. Not not saying that in a place of I'm part of this as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So um I remember once with Bert Hellinger when I was training with him, he came, one woman came with warts. And I remember this because I was so appalled when he treated her. And this woman next to you, she says, and I says, What do you want to heal? That's what he asked him. And he says, I want to heal the warts in my skin. And he looked at her and says, You making me waste my time and the time of everybody else. Go and sit down. I was like, Oh, why did he do that? And then two, three days later, he called her up and says, Now you're ready. He saw in her the victimism that she was coming with. That, oh, poor me, look, am I going to heal with victimism? My words are my pride of being a victim. And he saw that immediately boost, you know, killed her ego in a way, and said, Go back and sit down. Don't waste our time. Because she was not ready to heal. She wanted to continue being the victim. And that stayed in my mind, and I look at everybody as sometimes they want to continue and they don't want to heal. Because that's the way they want to stay with, but they want the attention of everybody to say, oh, poor me. And in a way, we have what is that? Even if it cost me my life by step in house, even if it costs you your life. You want to continue to stay in those. And it's okay. At the moment we consent to that. It's okay for you to be the victim that I cannot help you as a constellator. I see that victimism. And if you want to stay in that pattern, it's out of love for your family because there were so many victims that you're carrying within you. A lineage of two, three, four, five generations of victimism. How can I ask you to change it when you love so much that victimism that you will stay with it? Even though in your conscious mind, you're saying, I want to heal this. But in your subconscious mind, your love is bigger and we cannot change it. We as constators, sometimes we have to also succumb to not able to heal or to help everybody.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

You know, that this was such a big realization for me in this process is that I'm nobody as a facilitator to do this for you. We do this together. And if you're not ready, we can't do it.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Right? Just really be in the position of a neutral and be like, this, this with I can't help you here. I'm no, I'm nobody to help you through this process. What we can do is this thing together when you're ready to be able to let this go.

Rethinking Prisons And Redemption

SPEAKER_00 43:39

But that imprinted me in a way when I saw that he gave some time, right? But in this life, that we were in a, you know, we were all there, you know, trying to learn from Berliner. They were all trainers and some people that we came just to heal. But in a in a daily life, as fast as we are, as much as I'm traveling, you know, when I'm in some place and somebody's not ready to heal, I step away from the facilitator and I let the energy. I let the ancestors. I call in the ancestors and I said, okay, she's not ready to heal, but show her something, you know, move with that energy behind her. And I'll just observe what develops. And at the moment you step away from, okay, you're not ready, and I'm going to kind of reject that you're not ready. No. You're ready because you're here at this moment in time, in this time and space, and there is a reason why you're here. I always say when you make your constellation purpose, right? Uh an intention to come to a constellation. Sometimes I have reservations for 30, 40, 50, 50 people, and only half of them showed up. Yeah, the systemic resistance is real. Yeah. When I do my my intention to have the constellations, and I says whoever's going to be ready to heal, or to take a even a look at what they're perpetrating or what they are loyal to.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

If they are ready, they're welcome. That's such a powerful thing that you you just said is that even if you're if you're not ready yet, you can place this field, the system, and say, today I took a small step to seeing this for what it is. Exactly. Right? Just to be like, I'm gonna, some systems are complicated and they're they're very, you know, they have a lot of noise, right? That we can say, today we're just acknowledging that this exists. And that's the first step that starts a healing journey that can be extraordinarily cathartic for the person.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Exactly. You don't need to heal the crash of the car, you just need to heal the moment you took the keys. Maybe that you own a car. Oh, exactly. Yeah, to take a look at that only. You're not gonna heal all, but you didn't heal me the the fear and the the fear to drive. No. But now you can take the car and be grateful for the car. Even if you cannot drive it yet, be grateful that you have one. That you can move around freely.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

That you can that you know how to drive.

unknown 46:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Do you know how to drive? That you have you own a car and it's parked in your in your driveway. But I cannot drive it. It's okay. First step, be grateful for the car you have. Be grateful for the parents you got. We're not gonna change it, we're not gonna change the way you interact with them, but be start with the gratefulness.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

Yeah, that that part of like, you know, regardless of how the circumstances of us coming into this world were, right? Whether they were violent, where they were a hurricane, where they were uh in love, whether they were in a moment, whatever those things are, that two people came together and we have life. And for that we can be grateful.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

That's that's the order of that's the order of love, that's the order of creation. The universe, sometimes it's it creates with chaos. If you are a child of a rape, that's a chaos. But life will continue. And if you are in peace and in your heart with the chaos that happened, you can embrace your life in a different way without chaos.

SPEAKER_02 47:17

Well, you talked about epigenetics a little bit, right? That in some way there's imprints in our in our DNA, or that we're they have this stored memory in our DNA. It's like if we go far back enough, we all have all of it. Stories of love, stories of disconnection, stories of abandonment, stories of abuse, stories of war, stories of murder, stories of all these stories are, if we go back enough in our lineage, they all exist. They all exist, right? And we can say, we can consent to all of it and say, these are all, thank you, all of it. Because of you, I am here today. And there's an infinitesimal probability that me that I'm here today, right? Just on random chance, just on math, when if you go down what 12, 12 generations, it's 4,094 people that had to meet at the right time and say the right things and all the things, and all of it had to connect and the biology of who we are, and the eggs and the sperm and those stuff, the chances of us being here is infinitesimally small. We can be grateful for that.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

And you add to it that we're all connected because we are supposed to be. Whoever came into your view, into your that's a Buddhism. Whoever comes and looks into your eyes is a past life. The beggar that is asking you to give you a coin, if he looks into your eyes, there is a past life. There is an interconnection with that soul, and you need to address it. You need to look at them back.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

It's amazing. So, Eric, as always, it's been an incredible conversation. Is there anything that you think that we should address before we wrap up?

Consent, Forgetting, And Agency

SPEAKER_00 48:53

We should address the chaos that is happening with all the nations, that we have to start stepping away from the chaos and look at everything as, okay, it's happening. You know, there's a game, we get excited, we start yelling and screaming, and we suddenly are against the other team. Don't be a team player. Be an observant of the game that is happening. With no judgment, just look at it. And whatever you don't consent to it, just say it in your heart, I do not consent to that because it's not part of love. It doesn't vibrate in the vibration of love. With whatever is happening, with Trump, with uh Maduro, with uh Israel, with whatever we are looking at. If it doesn't vibrate in the love connection, we can just simply say, I don't want to be part of it. I do not consent to it for me or my family. At the moment you say those words out loud or deep inside your subconscious mind, you are changing the energy of it. And I encourage everybody to do that. Because that's the only way that we can change the energy collectively for the things that we cannot change and we have no control of it. But we do if we start one by one saying, I do not consent to the way this is handled me. I do not consent because it doesn't come from a place of love. So, Eric, if people want to get a hold of you, how do they do that? Uh, through my WhatsApp, uh, because I travel so much. I have a tight schedule. I'm always booked at least a month ahead. So uh my phone number is 305-987-0936. Or by email, so be spirit69 at gmail.com. S-O-B-E spirit like the airline 69 at gmail.com. Uh email, it may take me a little longer, it's better through WhatsApp.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

Eric, as always, a pleasure. Love you, brother. Thank you so much for this.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Love you, love you, and uh blessings to you and your family.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Thanks for tuning in to the Zulu One Podcast. If you found value in today's podcast, please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. Your support means everything to us. And thank you for being part of this journey.