Forgiveness, Ho’oponopono, loss & the human journey – and your awakening & freedom

‘You’, awake or unconscious, are Love & Freedom. You are not the thoughts or feelings. You are not the conditioned messages. You are Life itself. How do forgiveness and ho’oponopono help you realise this? Forgiving others, or yourself, for what you or they did, forgiving yourself for what you have lost, for what you don’t or didn’t know how to do, is crucial. During the apparent ‘journey’ of awakening to the Love and Freedom that always is, always was, in coming into more consciousness, getting freer from the tyranny of the robotic mind and more fully embodied, more present in the physical body, more spacious around past experiences or ‘issues’, deep loss or bereavement, you may well become aware (or more acutely aware) of uncomfortable emotions or memories, that were previously unnoticed, perhaps for many years. The healing of unresolved and deeply painful material is a spiralling process that can take years or, with grace, in awakening, happen in a moment. Being reveals that nothing ever happened, there is no-one, time and space are not. all there is is joy of being and it is truly infinite and can and does unfold as anything and everything.

Of course, awakening experiences or glimpses are just that-experiences. They end. The separate self returns. As the personality & conscious mind tries to maintain the status quo & protect the identity, other old but more obvious emotions might prevent the deeper inquiry and intimacy with life which are required to enter a deeper at home-ness with all that is or can be, which is the gateway to stillness and freedom. Ironically this gateway is always there even when veiled by the painful residues of  emotional history, not even just a blink away from the personality’s belief in its separateness & its resulting never ending desires, ‘mistaken’ perceptions of reality, (there are in truth no mistakes), disappointing stories & fears.

That is why committment and discipline can appear to be necessary qualities of a lover of truth. If your conscious mind avoids the negative emotions by denying, or escaping in distractions, or giving up in a ‘what’s the point after all the work Ive done I’m still feeling….’, the personality succeeds in running the show, creating the oh so common dramas and victimhoods, & your opportunity to realize what is already free of the personal small self and its emotional states will be lost.

If the descent into what the personality might judge as negativity is not fully embraced in the love which can dissolve it, that old pain will continue & magnetise recurrent circumstances that it resonates with –thus proving how right you are! Either consciously or unconsciously, the pain will affect the physical body & life circumstances & the more resistance there is to allowing in the old material the stronger the impact gets, because a being who has been engaged in any kind of empowering work will magnetise events more & more quickly.  This can feel very frightening & demoralising. ‘I did all this work and I feel terrible now…and nothing works anymore. I am a very special victim’. This is where so much maturity, self-love and courage, and maybe the witnessing and holding of others, is needed then.

How do you heal this?

The only solution is a simple one – to allow the emotions, the pain, to be just the way that it is & feel it fully in the body. To have the courage to open to the unconditional love of life that is always here, anyway. The conscious mind’s thinking can align with the negativity, which makes the pain & to appear more and more as the only real way to see life. So the associated defence mechanisms and strategies can get stronger, just when they were on the verge of crumbling.

The invitation in Secret Garden is to allow & embrace the pain and own it fully as one’s own-then at least there can be gradually a clearer seeing of how thoughts are influenced by your emotional states & vice versa & how apparent negativity then recurs. Choice apparently increases.

Direct, felt sensational experience without judgement allows a completion. Deep healing comes in the conscious allowing, and the acceptance of what is rather than the glossing over, or avoidance of, or fight with, what is or the putting out onto others as being the only cause of it.

Isn’t this acceptance just a giving up?

Many people have spoken to me of their fear that if they accept a particular pain or happening they are giving up. This is not the case. it is a most courageous act to be willing to open to a pain or discomfort, a  hurt or disappointment, with all the compassion the heart holds, without trying to dilute it by complaint, or blaming someone or something else outside of your innermost being. Acceptance of suffering, welcoming life in all its destructive ways as well as its glories, brings peace & true peace is the most powerful energy available to a human being.

Presence of such quality requires consciousness and pure consciousness -aligned as it is with life’s depths & the ocean of aloha that life is – harmonises & bring unity. Consciousness begins transforming your pain into the love that it already is.

This act does not require trying, effort or technique. Indeed transformation & healing happens by itself, naturally and miraculously. If this presence simply isn’t available to you for a particular pain or situation, or repeated patterns are beyond your understanding or seem to be someone else’s fault, then find the holding & presence of a being who can bring more light and consciousness to bear than you can and a community of kindred spirits who value authenticity and that which is beyond words. These are the best investments you can ever make and you will be re-paid endlessly. Life gets better and better.

Feeling old emotions may seem to be unbearable. However, the pain is made worse in the resistance or in your refusal ‘to be made feel them’ or in your fears about what might happen if you do feel them. During self-enquiry you might well discover that even the most extreme feelings are extraordinarily without real substance.  Pain can continue, although “no one” is there to suffer or claim ownership. I do realise this may sound controversial. Truth often is.

Suffering will not end until it is faced, met, owned, fully conscious. That which is known becomes past. Self-realisation is always of the present & is the end of all suffering, though not the end of life experiences or fully alive responses to them,  of course. AND that ‘journey’ of self-realisation – that is only apparent, and can seem too painful as you come to consciousness – has no escape route. Once you have started you cannot stop, even if you think you can.

We have all had painful past situations that have to be lived. You do not need to go into the past to process the story. You might have already noticed that repeating a painful story does not resolve and heal the pain.

Old, hidden emotions arise as conditioned reactions to a present life situation. This is the past living on in you. Some feelings or learned responses are so deeply embedded in the unconscious that they do not even surface until you begin to go within.

The importance of forgiveness

You may have already tried to forgive the past -a person or situation, an old story, God, the government, your own mistakes or cruelty, your body, yet the forgiveness might have remained intellectual or on the surface & the deep healing of your radiant heart hasn’t happened.

Forgiveness and recovery from loss has definable stages, in the human story. it has its own natural rhythm and time and can’t be skated over or rushed into (one of the dangers of the new age spiritual marketplace is the denial of the need to be with what can feel ‘unacceptable’ in order to ‘be in the light’).

Another pitfall though is to assume that forgiveness or healing from deep loss must take a long time. This isnt necessarily the case. What matters is self-honesty and the clarity and sincerity of intention to come back to wholeness, rather than allowing in the temptations of ‘being the victim’ of past events or other people.

In Hawaiian Huna, which is core in all Secret Garden exploration, and of which LomiLomi is the bodywork aspect, there is a healing practice -which can be elaborate or simple, short or longer,  called Ho’oponopono (the meaning of this is ‘being aligned with right or truth’). While apparently dualistic in nature (it assumes there is a ‘person’ & ‘another’, & that something can be done to make life better, ho’oponopono requires taking full self-responsibility for all that has previously been resisted, denied, avoided, judged or put out onto others. It is also vital to forgive yourself for the mistaken perception.

Ho’oponopono then addresses profound questions about reality and perception and ‘who is perceiving? and ‘did anything ever happen?‘ These are questions that take you way beyond the who was right? who was wrong? mindset and can help energy to shift. All of this happens in the appearance or dream of life.

True heart forgiveness has no agenda or requirement, which means that it is free of any need or dependence. It has nothing to do with anyone else or any particular happening. This deep forgiveness is the power of that within you that is beyond time & space, already free of personal history. This is sometimes called ‘higher consciousness’, a term I am not so keen on as it is misused so much and reinforces dualistic perceptions. The context of all Secret Garden healing is non-dual.

Before awakening, when it is realized that a life story is a self-projection, self-forgiveness becomes a profoundly central, vital way to heal and return to sanity. Just as a movie projector projects images onto a screen, what remains unconscious & unloved within you, and is not allowed to be experienced, is projected in your life right now. that is how it can be consciously seen. Much of the time the world that you experience, if you believe in its reality, is a projection of unconsciousness within you.

So both the victim & the persecutor are potentials within you. The personality will deny this & continue to blame apparent others, but through self-enquiry and observation you may find it is true. When you embrace, love & accept what seems to be unacceptable, you are free of it and no longer need to act from it.

You then realize that you have indeed always been free & that you have been suffering for no reason. The harsh polarisations of the planet will only melt when most humans choose inner enquiry & healing over blame.

A well known short form of Ho’oponopono is based on these beautiful phrases,  “Please forgive me. I am sorry. Thank you & I love you.”

At their deepest these can be addressed simply to the inner.  In a simple meditation which can occur as you go about your day, this becomes –  “Please forgive my projection, I am sorry for perceiving in this manner, thank you for bringing what was unconscious into consciousness, I love you, Being, Life intelligence.”

At the Huna and Lomi retreats & Essence gatherings, we can work -amongst much else which invites awakening to freedom – with a longer and more comprehensive ho’oponopono that harnesses the full transformative power of the unconscious’ capacity to change projections instantly, This is also energised by the field we share there, perhaps with a few profound chants, and the shared intention for healing and wholeness. Ho’oponopono can heal all trauma, whether related to body image, serious illness, violence, deep emotional loss, tragic bereavement, betrayal, misunderstandings, minor conflict, business struggles, a pet who is sick or injured. This may also involve unfolding process, or it may be one simple intervention or self-healing. The applications are endless. As all is one, ho’oponopono can be used with concepts such as money or work, or be applied to apparently inanimate objects such as a car or printer!.

So in Huna while healing the apparent duality of the personality’s & conscious mind’s state of consciousness, you, the separate individual must- apparently – take full responsibility for felt pain until this responsibility is fulfilled and until an unconsidered  dance of aliveness is all that ‘you’ are.

Before this freedom of being, the most powerful tools that are readily accessible to everyone are ho’oponopono, silence,  a willingness to look within, self enquiry & let go of the without regularly, embrace ALL you feel, completely without trying to change anything,.. you can then realise that there is nothing wrong with you and never was!

You can then be free for the deeper inquiry into the spaciousness & formlessness within, realize who is conscious and enquiring into being that endless love & ultimately, realize the absolute which is making ‘everything’ possible, the absolute from which all arises.

Ho’oponopono is the simplest and most profound resting place, healing retreat during the storms and trials of the transition between awakening & ultimate liberation.  a time that can last a lifetime or be over fast, a time of intense contrasts, pain and shadows as well,as extraordinary openings & deep joy.

If you can read this far, there is no one who is not ready to surrender the belief in identity “I am forgiving” (being …) and “I am unforgiving” (being …) and rest only as “I am.” “I am” is the gateway to who or what you already are, always were, that beyond beingness which was never born & will never die.

You are already the love and completion you seek, the freedom you long for. Regardless of circumstance, regardless of others.

The real you is beyond ho’oponopono. yet sometimes -often- ho’oponopono allows that revelation. Learn how you can fully heal the pain of separation and human loss, and experience profound ritual ceremony, combined with luxuious mssages and visions of a clear future, at the LomiLomi & Ho’oponopono Retreat and in the Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness webinar series

You – and those who are or have been in your life – are not the apparent mind-body limited by form & time, involved in a process of becoming something more or needing to blame self or others. You are already the All -One that is inseparable from unconditional love,  peace and joy for no reason; from & within which all beingness, the whole universe is appears.

Join us at the next gathering-find out more here

aloha, all love, Joy Hicklin-Bailey