Unconscious loyalties to groups to which you belong, whether they be through family, religion, co-workers or other sources, can influence you in the way magnetic lines in the Earth’s field pull the needle of a compass to orient northward. The forces are invisible and subtle, and can exert a low-level background influence on your life and choices. By examining your loyalties, you can become conscious of which values are helping guide you along the path your soul chose for you in life, and which may be creating resistance and uncertainty.
It’s a perilous thing to write about your family members while they’re still alive, and about your own formative experiences as a child. And in writing that sentence, the ocean of feelings behind it tell me I’m approaching the depth of this topic. The loyalties I developed to family messaging when very young are being challenged to do their job- to protect ‘our’ image and future prospects for success, and to keep ‘us’ away from examination by authority and out of trouble. At least, those were some of the messages I internalized from my father’s dominating presence as the family leader. By sharing something I’ve discovered that was unspoken yet urgent, I now risk pulling back the curtain to expose what I sense is a deeply held belief. It’s one that served well at one time in my family story- but it became part of my destiny to challenge it and find a different way. I hope to share this with deep respect for my ancestors, and for the transformation of a thought-form that I have learned held great love within it.
Years ago I was invited to a birthday party of a good friend who belongs to the same extended community of healers and spiritual seekers that I do. It was a fun, high-energy party and at one point the hostess, who had a djembe drum, asked me to play for a short while to inspire some dancing and take the level up one more notch before the birthday cake was brought out. I said I was happy to oblige, but noticed that I felt self-conscious and very uneasy. I drew on my professionalism and experience and played. People went bananas, dancing and whooping for about ten minutes. The entire time I played, I felt that I was under intense scrutiny and hid a squirming discomfort. I sensed an ominous glare coming from a vague figure in my peripheral vision, who stood with arms crossed in the very back row of people surrounding a large kitchen island. The contrast between the obvious jubilation all around me, and my intense internal stress was difficult to hold.
I finished playing and many people praised my drumming and expressed appreciation for what I had done, and yet I couldn’t shake loose from a sense of having done something wrong. I stayed for a while at the party and didn’t talk to anyone about this strange experience. It was only after some days had gone by and I reflected on it that insights began to surface. I slowly came to understand that I had projected a disapproving, critical figure from my subconscious onto someone I couldn’t fully see behind the crowd, and while playing had felt unresolved pain from my childhood experiences with my father, who regularly and actively criticized my interest in music and drumming.
My grandfather Carmelo Cogliandro sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to Ellis Island on the steamer “Calabria” from Naples, Italy in 1903, at age 18, with very little money, education or skill and a tremendous capacity to work. He passed these qualities on to my father who honored them well. From my father’s accounts, when he was a boy he loved baseball with a passion and wanted to play with his friends all the time. He used to play catch with me in the backyard and would get into a catcher’s squat when I started learning to throw a curve ball and was developing pitching skills in Little League. It was one of the only times I can remember him playing any type of game. His own father (my grandfather) denigrated his son’s enthusiasm for baseball, because it was only a game and distracted from the vigilance necessary for survival. I imagine my grandfather could focus on nothing but survival for many years after coming to the U.S., working in coal mines, as a laborer and then as a plumber.
From an adult perspective, it shouldn’t be a surprise that my father was threatened by my great love for music and drumming, as it likely represented the same waste of time that his father had seen in his baseball. For any child with boundless optimism and openness to spirit it’s a difficult thing to hear criticism of your passion from someone you love; someone you sense you must respect; from someone who clothes, feeds and shelters you. You’ve known nothing of adult responsibility to provide for yourself or anyone else, and you’re captivated by dreams and imagination. You also can’t imagine the ways a parent’s love might include an intense demand to reject uncertain career paths, especially one that had no precedent in the family story. You’ve never raised a child, and don’t understand the challenges of guiding someone young through the risks of following their life’s adventure.
How does this relate to loyalty? I eventually came to understand that my internal stresses while drumming at the party were residual conflicts between my soul’s longing to play drums, and the messages from my family that involved ways of protecting me from what they believed was harm that I had integrated when very young. I still carry places in me that want to be protected by the family. I came to appreciate that my father and I had something profound in common; that we both had grown up with fathers that struggled to value their son’s boyhood passions. I’ve been very successful in my life in music, and I know my father respects that I’ve thrived after taking a leap into an unconventional life path. I’ve worked hard, although in a very different way than the men who came before me, to whom I owe my life.
Consciousness is not linear, and can hold many things simultaneously. We have skills and accomplishments, as well as limiting internal voices of doubt. Reinhard Flatischler, one of my teachers, writes in his book “The Forgotten Power of Rhythm” of a time he performed with a Korean percussion ensemble in Seoul. After the performance a man said to him, “your drumming is very good, but something inside of you still says ‘no.’” This enigmatic encounter stayed with him, guided him to find that same man (who it turns out was a shaman) and study an ancient drumming tradition with him a year later. It led to a profound healing he experienced in a powerful drumming ceremony.
I find it interesting that many of my West African drumming teachers were also criticized for their love of drumming. One, whose father was an imam, used to chastise him severely when he found he had been drumming. Another friend who grew up in Senegal, whose father was a political leader in the capital of Dakar, moved the entire family to a different district because his son was spending time hanging out at the compound of Doudou N’Diaye Rose, the most famous drummer in the nation. There’s a sense of ignominy that has become attached to the drummer caste by those who look down on it or fear it. Yet in indigenous cultures that have retained their ancient wisdom and connection to Nature, there is great respect for the ongoing needs a community has to keep its spirit alive through pulsation, high-energy group connection, song, music, movement, dance and drumming.
A constellation can help you move close to the boundary of what you know, which has only taken you this far in life. The exploration can help you expand your awareness to take in new learning necessary for your next step in growth and to release limiting thoughts and beliefs that no longer help you. I think of similarities to the way a cell membrane selectively allows entrance to the molecules needed to maintain the health of the cell, as well as the expulsion of waste materials from normal activities. That transfer takes place at the edge.
Many people feel resistance to exploring at these depths. It can feel like there’s risk in wading into the deeper waters of the unconscious mind, which is why there is a trained facilitator for guidance. One of the reasons I value the method of Family Constellations and am passionate about sharing it, is because of its great respect for all who have gone before us, regardless of the story we know and our judgments about it. There’s no need to separate ourselves from our family lineage, no matter how painful our memories may be. By acknowledging the larger family story that was already being told when you entered it, you may see there were difficult struggles your ancestors lived through as well. Beginning to come to peace with more of all you were born into is a powerful step toward freedom, compassion, and living your purpose. What unconscious loyalties do you imagine you carry, and in what area of your life might they be creating internal resistance for you?