– Ho’oponopono… Love, Gratitude, and Forgiveness

excerpted from Kaiulani Facciani’s book, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Strong.

When you think everything is someone else’s fault,
you will suffer a lot.
When you realize that everything springs only from yourself,
you will learn both peace and joy.
– Dalai Lama

Something that I don’t accept about many of the religions I’ve studied is the concept of punishment… that the bad things that happen in our lives are some sort of divine retribution in order for us to take responsibility. What I reject is that there is this god or gods (or aliens?) up there watching us with a scorecard for each one of us, keeping track of our deeds, and doling out the appropriate punishment. No disrespect intended… but don’t you ever feel that if that is truly what’s happening, then they are doing a really crappy job? Seriously, look around.

But I do accept the concept of karma. I have learned to trust the universe to return the energy that I give. That what goes around comes around. That, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. That you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. This all relates to positive energy attracting positive energy and negative energy attracting negative energy. If one makes a mistake, one must take responsibility for it in order to not attract negative energy.

In ancient Hawaii, it was thought that illness was caused by the bad things that you had done. Perhaps the gods were angry, perhaps it was too many withdrawals from your karmic currency, perhaps it was the negative energy attached to guilt. In order to get well, you needed to take responsibility and ask for forgiveness. You needed to make things right.

This evolved into the concept that the entire world you live in is of your creation and is therefore your responsibility. Not only are you responsible for the ugliness you directly create, you are responsible for all the ugliness around you, even the ugliness that others perpetrate onto you. You must take responsibility and ask for forgiveness for all of it. And sprinkle lots of love and gratitude around. This is my interpretation of Ho’oponopono or, making things right and healing ourselves, island-style.

There was a psychiatric doctor in Hawaii, Dr. Hew Len, who achieved great success in a previously hopeless hospital for the criminally insane by putting these concepts into action. Simply by forgiving the patients for their transgressions, accepting responsibility for his part in how society had failed them, asking for forgiveness, thanking them, and loving them, he healed the part of himself that had created them and everything changed dramatically for the better for both patients and staff at the hospital. He apparently did this from within his office and not in the physical presence of the patients, which is what makes it really interesting.

I imagine these criminally insane people had been surrounded for most of their lives by negative energy. They probably had not experienced much of the positive energy that would accompany the concepts of gratitude, forgiveness, and love. How could bathing their psyches in positive energy NOT have a positive effect?

Having experienced powerful distance healing from energy workers, I have accepted the concept of energy traveling in ways that we do not detect with our 5 senses. Perhaps through quantum sub-space? It doesn’t necessarily matter. All we need to do to control it is generate positive energy by harnessing the power of love, responsibility, gratitude, and forgiveness.

My new healing mantra to my body has become “Thank you for all you have done for me, I’m sorry for all I have done to cause you pain, I love you for who you are…. I love you, I’m sorry, thank you… I love you, I’m sorry, thank you.”

I have a little dance that goes with it. : )

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