I
The
Train

p. 2-3
Introduction,
"My relationship with shamanism started a little over 25 years ago, when I was just 18 years old....
"The first time I encountered family constellations was in 1998.....
"My active participation in the Jewish field started after I had already embarked on the shamanic path, in the late 1980. As with most important things that happen in my life, it started while I was sleeping. In a dream, I was making my way to the top of a beautiful hill, which was covered with grass and flowers. I was walking arm in arm with a fragile-looking old lady. I knew she was one of my Jewish ancestors. I must confess that I was feeling quite good about myself. In fact, I was congratulating myself for being such a nice person, helping this old grandmother to climb the hill on one of my free afternoons. And while I was having all of these pleasant narcissistic feelings, I suddenly made the embarrassing discovery that my feet were not even touching the ground. I was going through all the movements of walking, but I wasn't really touching the earth: I was only going uphill because the old lady was carrying me. This dream encounter woke me up to the strength that was available in the Jewish part of my family roots. ...
According to halacha (Jewish law) you are only a Jew when your mother, or at least your mother's mother, is Jewish, and with me that is not the case. Still, this did not stop the ancestors from appearing in my dreams to teach me. Over time, the connection in my soul with the Jews in my family's roots became stronger than with the Christians. This was a source of confusion for me for many years. It was only after experiencing a family constellation facilitated by Bert Hellinger that I could finally embrace and appreciate this situation. As a result, I went through the traditional rituals and procedures that are necessary to officially become Jewish - not to "become" something or someone else, but to confirm and strengthen the ancestral connection.

Shamanism, constellations and Judaism... all three recognize the existence of different layers of the same soul. .. and that healing requires a community effort...

4 ... If I was a participant in various tribal soul fields, my own knowledge [for writing this book] could be only a small part of a greater understanding... It seemed to me that each of these people could be the caretaker of a piece of the puzzle I had set out to solve...
...each collective has its own memories. Some memories inspire feelings of pride, others cause shame. Memories of victory and defeat are especially important for the collective's identity, but these memories are highly charged and never complete, with details high-lighted, others neglected, and some even repressed. The victims and perp0etrators who are a part of a collective's history continue, however, to be a living presence in the timeless reality of the group's soul, whether they are remembered clearly or not...

Let us start the journey now. And let us start with a dream and a story, the way many things have started. Let me tell you about a moment when shamanism, constellations and Judaism met and came together for a time. It is a story that opens the door to the realm of the tribal soul.

5
I was leading a seminar somewhere in Germany, and in my dreams at night I found myself in a small eastern European Jewish shtetl at least 100 years ago or more. A young man had died and, as was the tradition, the people of the small settlement came together and brought him to his grave. In this dream I was a rabbi, saying the traditional prayers at the burial. After praying, before we picked up the coffin, I spoke to those who were gathered around. I told the people that I was going to teach them a simple niggun , a worldless melody, and I asked them to let their tears flow with the melody when they sang it because we needed to cry. Not only did we need to mourn our own personal loss, but we needed to cry for the losses of our ancestors, too. I told the people how the uncried tears fo those who lived before us did not magically disappear after their deaths, but that those tears were living on in our own bodies. We, the living, are the body of our ancestors, and in our bodeies we carry all the tears they could not cry during their lifetimes. And when we allow their tears to be cried through us, something is being made whole between the generations, we are engaged in tikkun olam; repairing the world.
I started singing. As people picked up the melody, some of the men lifted up the coffin and we started walking. Amuddy path took us to the small graveyard. We sang, and we cried. We sang, and we danced, crying. It was raining, and the rain mingled with our tears. Tears became prayers, prayers became tears. In our grief we were one with the ancestors and they were one with us, and through our dance, they were dancing, too, As I woke up, I was still singing and crying, I immediately recorded the melody so I would not forget it.
The day following the dream, I asked the participants in the group to join me in a ritual. I asked them to stand facing each other in two rows of equal length. I explained that everybody would walk through the tunnel of people, one by one. While walking, each person would look at those standing on the sides as if they were ancestors. And everybody standing in the two rows wold look at the one passing through the tunnel as their own descendant. Upon reaching the end of the row, the person would then join one of the two rows of standing people again, and there, he or she would represent an ancestor for all those who would walk by them. In this way, everybody would have both the opportunityh to move through the tunnel of ancestors, and to stand along side of them.

When the logistics were clear and everybody was standing in place, I taught them the dream song and explained its meaning. One by one, they walked slowly through the tunnel of ancestors. As the first one began the journey, the first tears began to flow. Together, we sang and we cried, Most people walked straight, a few stumbled and one or two were carried. And as had happened in my dream, for the duration of the ritual we became one with the ancestors. Prayers became tears, and tears became prayers. We cried our own tears and the tears of the ancestors. The tears of Jewish ancestors and the tears of German ancestors mingled and became one. And for each of us present, something was made whole that day.
- Daniel Theron van Kampenhout

p.10
Chapter 1 Auschwitz-Birkenau
...understand this grave of at least one and a half million? Here, a complete world has come to an end...
...there are moments when the need to try to come to terms with it all is gone. And then, when my mind has fallen away and all thinking has stopped, I temporarily dissolve, I disappear in the expansion of my soul, in a worldless state. Birkenau is a place that exposes the limits of my analytical mind more effectively than any spiritual practice ever has done.
.. walk through the camp on my own. And I get smaller and smaller in the huge emptiness. I am unable to stup, and can finally only crawl forwards. Moving at the bottom of a sea of tears, breathing water, every breath a tear. Whose tears?

11
The strength it brings, where does it come from? I have never felt more grounded, more present, more complete. But it also frightens and shames me to find such wholeness in that experience because it goes against all that I have learned.... I do not dare to share it with non-Jews. Later, after the retreat, my friend Evelien , who has joined the annual peacemaker retreat several times in the past, [and also was with us in 2003!], "My experience is that you never fully return after having been there. A part of you stayes in Auschwitz, and that part becomes a source of healing, strength and peace."

14
The Wheel of Souls
According to Hellinger, ..In the core of the greater soul all polarities are transcended and all paradoxes are resolved....
...Somewhere in-between the family soul and the greater soul, we find a soul layer in which the individual is participating in collective fields, but these various collectiveds are still separated from each other. These collective fields are much bigger and stronger than that of that of the family, but they are not engaged in the process of becoming one that we can recognize in Hellinger's greater soul layer. The borders of the collective souls levels are strong and stay firmly in place.
I call such collective fields "tribal souls." ... Because there are many different kinds of such collective fields, each individual person is part of several of these tribal souls simultaneously.
On the level of the tribal soul, we let go of some aspects of our individuality. Here, our identity is based on the community. The "I" makes room for a sense of "we".

41-42
Finally, just Neska's grandfather was standing on his own, between his mother in the group of Chinese family and his father with his Black ancestors. At first, he did not really know where to go.Then I asked him: "Where do you find the dignity your soul needs?" Then he knew he had to turn to father's people. Born as a slave, his ancestors enslaved as well, they embraced each other and grieved together. But their tears were like the water of life and had a healing effect, and the grandfather found strength with his father and his people.

Now that Neska's parents and grandparents had found a place, and the great grandfather had been honored and welcomed by his own son, Neska herself could move through the constellation, presenting herelf to each group of ancestors, The Dutch... The Molukkans... The Chines... the Blacks... Neska invited the four groups to stand close to each other, and so, leaning into the group of Blacks she could be close to all of them. Later she reflected that it was only after her grandfather had been taken in by the representatives of the Blacks that she could start to really see that group of ancestors, and after she herself had been taken in by them, she could see them even more clearly...

45
Ancestors who are rejected by the family at lare will sooner or later ask for a place in the heart of at least one of their descendants, as was the case with ...Neska.... On the national level, a related but multilayered dynamic was noticable in the group in Spain where the energy of exclusion was present in families of many of the participants. ...when the excluded ones are welcomed back, they become a source of strength. As their dignity is restored to them, they restore the dignity of those who remember and welcome them.

continuation , culmination? on Sept. 5

The next day - typing on the computer - I added: