The Moment Destiny Begins to Soften

 I began learning about family constellation work around 2003. Later, I had the great fortune to study directly with the German therapist and founder of Family Constellations, Bert Hellinger. From the beginning, I was deeply drawn to this mysterious and powerful force. Yet I often felt as though I was standing outside the door, unable to fully enter its essence. What I learned seemed to remain at the surface. Although I could facilitate constellations and clients often experienced remarkable shifts, I did not yet clearly understand how family energy truly operates.

 

 

It was during the pandemic, when I had the opportunity to study more deeply with Teacher Suzhen Liu, that my understanding became grounded and clear. I began to directly experience how family energy can profoundly shift a person’s destiny.

 

 

 

Family energy can change destiny because it is a system. Family members are like ingredients in a pot of soup—each one affects the flavor of the whole. Every experience within the family, especially unacknowledged trauma, influences the entire field. Yet we often remain unaware of how this energy shapes our lives. Without realizing it, we follow inherited patterns, living out movements that are not entirely our own.

 

 

 

Through deeper study, I came to understand that when tragedies occur within a family—suicide, murder, serious accidents, children being given away, or early death—these are not only personal tragedies but systemic shocks. If no one knows how to face and integrate such trauma, it remains suspended within the family field, waiting for someone in a later generation to acknowledge and transform it.

 

 

 

If it remains unaddressed, this energy continues to influence every family member. This may explain why some people carry an inexplicable sadness or heaviness, even when their own lives seem stable.

 

 

 

Just as individuals repeat unresolved patterns, families do the same. Every family has experienced death. When death and grief are not properly faced or integrated, a weight settles into the system. Sometimes tragedies repeat in later generations, such as suicide or fatal accidents.

 

 

 

This is why learning to work with family energy is essential. If we do not clear and transform these accumulated energies, they continue to guide our lives unconsciously. Only when unfinished energies are acknowledged and integrated can we soften the inherited path of destiny—and begin to live a life that truly belongs to us.

 

By Suzanne Yang

Seeing the GO(o)D in others

 Everyone is God speaking.

Why not be polite and listen.

Hafez

We fall in love with potential! Parents see God in their children just as lovers discover divinity in each other. 

With Awakening some walls of separation come down, but in most cases, some work remains to be done. Sometimes we see the GOoD in others. Sometimes we carry GOoDness in our heart, and sometimes we aspire to do GOoD despite ourselves. The journey is not finished until both heart and mind are open and innocence prevails. Until then, the interference shows us the work that remains to be done. A Course in Miracles states, “The partly innocent are apt to be quite stupid at times.” So let’s keep learning in between the being. Life shows us our healing opportunities.

Motivation is the outcome

Without awareness, we continue living under the influence of our belief system.

 

When we were children, we worked hard to meet our parents’ expectations and demands. We believed that if we followed their instructions, they would become happy. But even when we tried our best, they were not necessarily happy. At the same time, our parents were also busy meeting other people’s expectations. In the process, many of them lost touch with themselves. And people who have lost themselves cannot truly be happy.

 

We learn very early to meet others’ demands so they will be pleased with us, accept us, and love us. Once this pattern is formed, it becomes difficult for us to be happy. Our attention constantly goes outward—we watch other people’s reactions and worry whether we are doing well enough.

 

Without awareness, we remain stuck in this pattern. It feels familiar, and we are drawn to it instinctively, just as ants are drawn to sweets. We cannot help returning to it. There is a strong pulling force in this pattern, and without learning and reflection, it is very difficult to step out of it. So we remain caught in this cycle of suffering.

 

Our motivation is our intention, and our intention shapes the outcome. In that sense, motivation is the outcome.

 

A child’s motivation is simple: to make their parents happy in order to receive care and love. The child believes that if the parents are happy, love will follow. So the child studies hard, helps with chores, and obeys instructions.

 

But if the parents are still unhappy and do not offer attention or affection, the child begins to feel unloved and undervalued. Frustration slowly grows.

 

We believe that if we fulfill others’ expectations, they will be happy. And when they are happy, we will finally be happy too. This belief is passed down from generation to generation. We hand over our right to happiness to others and wait for the day when “if they are happy, we will be happy,” but that day never comes.

 

So what is wrong with the thought, “If they are happy, we will be happy”? The issue is not whether this pattern is good or bad. The real issue is that we believe it is true. We do not see that it is only a thought. Our mind cannot recognize that it may be an illusion—something we constructed ourselves.

 

Perhaps it is not created by us alone, but by the whole society. Yet we rarely question it.

And that is where we remain trapped.

 

By Suzhen Liu

 

 

If you enjoy Suzhen Liu’s writings, please check out her new book, “Discover Love Within—Release Your Suffering” available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Discover-Love-Within-Release-Suffering/dp/0999251732

Being and doing

 The difference between being and doing is neurological in nature. In being our mind is still but vibrant and whatever parts of our neurological networks that needs activating does so on command. The network is not in the driving seat, our downloads are. The universal energy manifests life as is and we are the medium.

In doing, we can differentiate between learning and productive doing on the one hand, and venting our personal longings, fears and drives on the other. In learning and productive problem solving, new neurological links arise, whereas in venting old pathways get cemented while neglecting other healthy connections.

What we call ego is a vision. It zooms into what is perceived as useful and pleasurable while shutting out the stuff we fear or want to avoid. Our neurological network gets re-wired and downsized according to our narrow-minded seeing and believing. Have the guts to stay with the unpleasantness and question all clinging.

Being alternates with doing but not not everyone is alert to the health and welfare benefits of being. Our neural network heals in being. Actually, all three states advance us in our quest for wholeness, mindfulness and love. We can’t be apart from being for long so that persistent venting is also bound to lead to spiritual insights. 

Face your pain

 When we are willing to truly face our own pain, to face the darkness and vulnerability within us, a deep inner harmony and love naturally begin to arise. It is not something forced or cultivated deliberately; it flows from within. And from that place, we naturally begin to love the people around us—no matter what state they are in.

 

Because we have walked into our own darkness and suffering, we begin to understand others. We can see why someone is in pain, why they speak the way they do, why they act the way they do. A profound sense of understanding and compassion arises on its own. In that moment, you feel that the world is harmonious and whole.

 

Suzanne Yang

Being and learning

 If you don’t become the ocean

you will be seasick every day.

Leonard Cohen

Our emotions are like waves—up and down, happy and miserable. We know we are not those. That knowledge is a perk of Awakening, but this knowledge also doesn’t prevent us from having these ups and downs. Maybe the amplitude of experiencing different emotions is reduced but we are still human just like everyone.

Suzhen Liu used the metaphor of the ocean in the introduction of her family energy seminar. The human emotions are the waves, the ruling family energy is the current beneath the wave, and the still depth of the ocean is the Consciousness outside of all conditioning. Using this analogy, I would observe that we have to make it through four layers before we can enjoy the depth of our being—the personal memories, the subconscious past life impressions, the family energy and the accumulated history of humanity altogether. How to penetrate all that humanity, our parents and we ourselves have ever created? Isn’t that a hopeless endeavor?

There is a difference between “That” and learning. In universal energy learning is impossible because there is no “I” around to learn anything. Universal energies speak for themselves and we are mere mediums channeling what is. In Suzhen Liu’s image there is no current at the bottom of the ocean, that does not mean a current near the surface of the ocean does not exist, it is just not relevant for the whale who had swum to the bottom of the ocean. Yet, learning is essential for developing the lungs to frolic in the depth of the ocean; staying with painful memories in the past and be open to past life regressions, just as opening up to family and all of humanity’s energies.

There is a time to be present with God’s energies, and there is a time to look through the trickeries of the thought and image we have identified with. We refer to ourselves as human beings for a reason. Every day there is an opportunity to be, just as there is an opportunity to understand and let go of that which never was.

Acknowledging Vulnerability

 “There is a pattern that often moves quietly through my life:

If you ignore me, I will ignore you.

If you reject me, I will reject you.

If you do not love me, I will not love you.

Who needs you anyway?”

 

What is this state?

 

The stronger we try to be,

the deeper our hidden vulnerability.

We fear that if we admit our fragility,

we might shatter,

might dissolve.

 

Yet the truth is the opposite.

 

The very moment we dare to acknowledge our vulnerability,

something profound shifts.

Our strength is no longer a rigid armor

held together by the mind.

It becomes a living strength —

quiet, grounded, unafraid.

 

To accept vulnerability

is to step into real courage.

It is a strength without defense,

a fearlessness without hardness.

 

When vulnerability is rejected,

it grows more fragile.

Pain thickens.

And because we cannot welcome this tender part,

it finds other ways to surface —

in relationships,

in work,

through life itself.

 

“I must be strong.”

“I must endure.”

“I must push through.”

 

And so the cycle begins.

From this refusal, suffering is created,

again and again,

until it seems unstoppable.

 

But the moment vulnerability is allowed,

the cycle loosens.

 

By Suzhen Liu

 

If you enjoy Suzhen Liu’s writings, please check out her new book, “Discover Love Within—Release Your Suffering” available on Amazon.

 https://www.amazon.com/Discover-Love-Within-Release-Suffering/dp/0999251732