Archive for June, 2008
Ho’oponopono.
This heading is more than lovely Hawaiian word that rolls off the tongue like music.
It is an even lovelier–or rather, a more potent–life changing, cultural mind-set, by which the kanaka maoli, the aboriginal Hawaiians, will potentially instruct the world. And, I believe, ours is a world sorely in need of some instruction.
By its smallest measure, ho’oponopono has been labelled, “An ancient Hawaiian mediation technique.” By that narrow measure, western psychologists have, “discovered” this ancient cultural gift to the world–and attempted to recast it to fit our modern sensibilities, and fill our vacuum of spiritual satisfaction.
But ho’oponopono is much more than another twist and turn in the American academic competition to find a PhD dissertation topic. Psychological adaptation (and recent self-help books) have popularized ho’oponopono at the expense of truth, and at the disservice of the indigenous Hawaiian culture. Catch-phrases and self-help gimmicks don’t penetrate the surface of ho’oponopono.
Ho’oponopono cannot be lifted out of the deeply embedded context of the culture that birthed it. To embrace the ritual, the tradition–and to understand it in its fullness–one must wander deeply into the authentic culture; know the people; know the words they speak to describe their world; embrace their true history; and cut no corners.
Ho’oponopono is embedded in community, in the fullness of that word–and aboriginal community is embedded in its connection to the ancestors and the ancestral spirit, as manifest in every part of nature. There are no known shortcuts to building such a community.
Living in one, however, we share an authentic compassionate responsibility for one another–and for every single part of Creation. That is the work to be done. It can be done. It must be done.
The alternative is the missed opportunity to bring peace to our warring Earth; to establish ease and harmony in the fearful, angry hearts of our modern peoples; to recognize that our isolation from any and every element of nature–animal, mineral, and certainly human–wreaks destruction.
Ho’oponopono worked wonders on the Hawaiian Islands for over 12,000 years–during which time there were no wars, no gender segregation, no hierarchy.
‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani has spoken of it often at our Return Voyage gatherings across the nation.
“Ours was a matriarchal culture. Women gave birth. They believed that our Creator needed no help in taking a life. There were no wars.
“Only when a violent colonizing sect brought fear and denigration of women to our peaceful Islands in 1320–and enslaved our open-hearted people–did our nation experience the aberration of war.
“War happens, when men cease to recognize that they are half their mothers–cease to embrace that wholeness. War is the mistaken search for that wholeness.”
‘Iokepa describes one possible result of ho’oponopono as a peace-keeping ritual. “When two young men wanted to fight, they were required instead to run a distance together–then they had to swim the ocean together.
“By the end of it, they’d worked their energy down–and they realized that they sucked the same air.”
At almost every Return Voyage gathering in our 22,000 coast to coast, car miles, over these past nine months, someone–intelligent and well meaning–has asked about ho’oponopono. They were uniformly disappointed, when they heard that what they’d read was insufficient, or misleading.
Ho’oponopono is above all a spiritual practice. Lifted out of its spiritual context–placed in a purely intellectual, psychological one–is to render it meaningless.
A couple weeks ago, in Manhattan, at the powerful and exciting New York Open Center gathering, a participant, who speaks still in the delightful lilt of his native Africa, extracted a promise from me. Time had run short that evening–and the gathering ended without a proper explanation of ho’oponopono.
I promised him I would rectify the omission on these pages.
Let me speak, first, of the destined mediator. This was a person who was universally recognized and trusted for his or her commitment to, and responsibility for, the entire tapestry of community–the web of Creation. It required a purity of purpose. She was, by necessity, drug and alcohol free. Her connection to the divine wisdom demanded clarity.
Her job was to facilitate the healing of spirit–individually and communally. She did not mete out punishment.
Ho’oponopono–the ritual mediation at the heart of the original culture–demanded that every man and woman in the community examine his or her soul for complicity in every other human’s misfortune: Illness, emotional distress, physical harm. It had nothing to do with our modern concept of guilt. When we live these connections, we assume responsibility for every living thing.
A community would examine and clear its collective soul in this way: Each member of that community would gather in a circle–always over food. The trusted facilitator held sway with a lidded gourd. The lid off the gourd meant it was time to speak, and the lid returned meant it was time to cease speaking.
Simple enough: A circle, some food, a gourd, and a mediator. But–free of a community that deeply respects every soul as a piece of his own– the circle, the gourd, and the mediator are empty symbols. And free of the setting (feeling the wind in our faces, hearing the sound of the ocean in our ears, watching the changing clouds) and then reading these elements and accessing their messages–there is no ho’oponopono. Finally, there is the all-important acknowledgment: Gratitude for our ancestors’ answers.
So ho’oponopono is not how we build community. It is how we support existing community. The trust, the clarity, and the purity of intent are the essential foundation for the ritual. Without that solidity of community and trust between souls, ho’oponopono is meaningless.
In a circle of kindred spirits, it might work like this.
I voice the distress I’m experiencing in my household: Perhaps the source is a son, or a husband, or a mother in law–ill or troubled in some less tangible way. Every single person in our communal circle takes the ritual time to examine his or her own soul for complicity in that trouble.
Perhaps, I’m a neighbor. I think in my heart–and then speak aloud in the circle. “Last week, when your son called my son, “Stupid,” I spoke angry thoughts about your son in my heart. I am part of the your troubles. I ask your forgiveness.”
In the days after this ritual circle, the entire community slows its ordinary activities to heal the troubling breach. Without a full and complete healing, the community is not whole.
The point, here: Every word or action within community impinges on every other. Each soul, and each element of nature either nurtures, or refuses (for one reason or another) to nurture the rest. Ho’oponopono is an opportunity to claim a responsibility for our thoughts, our actions, and give ourselves (and others) a chance at peace.
That cannot be done without the hard work first, of building a solid, responsible, integrated community and fully acknowledging the divine thread that sustains every aspect of it. That–now–is the work of the world.
Not coincidentally, that is also the work of Huliau–The Return Voyage. We ask that you join us.
