The Flower and the Fruit

What makes the Nelles approach so exciting is that it expands the whole landscape of constellations: what we have called family constellations over the past forty years turns out to be only one part of a much larger whole - the foundational level. Hellinger is the flower; Nelles is the fruit.

Billions of micro and macro connections. The participants are women and men of countless colors and shades, each one lovable in their own striving. Some I know more deeply, some I love more deeply, and among them are old spiritual companions with whom I've been coming to places like this for decades. And then, of course, above all, Edó. With her I feel the deepest connection, even though, outwardly, we barely connect at all. I don't even know how to describe it or what to call it.

How do I recognize friendship? By the fact that, although it is always fresh, it never has to begin again from the start. We simply continue either where we left off or from where life has brought each of us in the meantime- separately and together. Separately, because each of us walks our own path and together, because we continue to keep one another in mind. We think of each other, we speak to each other, sometimes only inwardly, spontaneously, and with joy. That, too, is a form of connection.

Seen from here, my life back home feels like a dream, a memory from some previous or parallel life. Just as I used to feel during Zen meditation retreats, whenever I looked back toward home.

When people who are, more or less sincerely, devoted to inner work spend this much time together—in camps, retreats, and similar gatherings—we inevitably begin to see the suffering of one another more clearly, whether we want to or not, consciously or unconsciously. We see each other's neuroses, and the strategies we use to avoid facing ourselves. We see them in their wholeness, in their human simplicity, sometimes clothed in the weight of a difficult destiny. The perfection of human imperfection. The cigarette breaks, the evening and late-night parties, the joking over lunch, and the intimate conversations all serve, in one way or another, to soften—or sometimes to escape—the intensity of this encounter. It is no coincidence that Edó recommends not giving even a gentle touch or a hug to someone who has just come out of their own constellation.

I also connect more clearly with my own suffering. With greater acceptance and allowance. More honestly. For example, I notice how a Spanish person seems to be uplifted simply by being Spanish, while I am weighted downwards only by simply being a Hungarian from Transylvania—and, alas, even my family name, even more. It feels almost given, regardless of context. Someone from Hungary, simply by being from Hungary, appears freer, lighter, more relaxed. And I, simply because I am a Transylvanian, somehow feels correspondingly less, more rigid, heavier—as if the Transylvanian lives inside their own blind spot, able to see themselves only through the eyes of those who are not from here. It has never been an equal starting line, and it never will be. Fortunately—and thanks to God, thanks to Edó—there are moments when there’s no starting line and no competition and in those moments, everyone shines freely in the fullness of who we are, for one another's joy. And we all connect: Transylvanian, Hungarian, Spanish. Freely, in a soul-to-soul connection, delighting in each other's different shades and colors. Life is living us, not the other way around.

(Notes from the Nelles Institute Transylvania Summer Academy, 2026.)

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