Ho-oponopono - love and forgiveness to heal the world?

Anyhow, where was I before I became sidetracked by core wounding?  And, before that, before I became sidetracked wondering about Andrew Wallas’s first wife?   Oh yes, Ho’oponopono.  This was the thing I was thinking about at The Pause. 

This was the thing I read about in A&A’s book that struck me.  It was pretty much an aside, an anecdote told in passing, but it made me wonder.  I’d not heard of it before.  So I looked it up and, okay, so it’s a Hawaiian spiritual healing thing.  By the way, don’t you have to love the word ‘thing’?  It pleases me every time I type it.  Though I wish I had a thorn on my keyboard so I could spell (yes, in every way) it the Old English way.  Why? Because the rune ‘thorn’ looks like a thorn and...when I went looking for a picture of it to show you, I found this (hideous picture, but hey, once you've read the whole post you'll see why this made me smile).

Anyhow.  Ho’oponopono.  Apparently (and do correct me if I have this wrong – I’m not Hawaiian) it comes from a verb that means to put to rights, to put in order, to shape, to correct, to revise, to amend, to tidy up. It’s about putting things straight, not by pushing at  external reality but by looking within ourselves.  So, if you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life.  And there’s only one place to look and that’s inside your own self.  Yup, that makes solipsistic sense to me. 

Illness, the theory goes, is caused by breaking sacred laws and can’t be cured until the transgressor atones for the transgressions.  Illness is created by the stress of anger, guilt, recrimination and lack of forgiveness.  Not just our own illness, but the wider illnesses of society.  So we are responsible for…everything – for the terrorists, for the rapists, for the banks and the economy, for pollution and war and…everything.  Ouch.  But…that kinda chimes too.  It puts me in mind of Arnie Mindell’s ‘world work’.  It also puts me in mind of my old dear anti-guru Marek who said that you can’t heal the world; you can only heal yourself (but that that healing might, in itself, heal the world). 

Anyhow.  Andrew Wallas quoted the story of a Hawaiian psychologist called Dr Ihaleakala Hew Len who said he didn’t need to have consultations with the criminally insane patients in hospital; he just wanted to see their charts.  He studied the charts, so the story goes, and then looked within himself to see how he created each person’s illness.  And, as he improved  himself, the patients improved.  

Everything in your life is your responsibility.  The entire world is your creation.  Being conscious is about taking 100% responsibility, responsibility for everyone’s actions, not just one’s own.

Hmm, that’s a tough one, huh?  Taking responsibility for the haters, for the hitters, for the abusers?  Well, why not?  You know what I’ve found?  It’s actually a lot more comfortable to take responsibility than to harbour anger, resentment, sorrow, blame.  Who wants to be a victim?  Who wants to be eaten up with hate and misery? 

In a world that feels like it’s spinning further and further into chaos, in a world where it’s so easy to feel hopeless, powerless, pointless, well maybe this is something small that we can all do.  Maybe it’s true – maybe by clearing our own errors, we really could clear everyone.  Maybe by healing ourselves, we could heal the world too.  Who knows?  Nobody.  None of us know anything, anything for sure.  So why not try? 

How do you do it? It comes down to four simple phrases.

-          I love you.

-          I’m sorry.

-          Please forgive me.

-          Thank you.

You know what?  It's stupidly simple but I like this.  It works for pretty well everyone with whom I’ve had any kind of conflict, any kind of history.  So I’ve been trying it.  Meditating on a person and just repeating it, pondering it, then throwing out that love and that hope for forgiveness.   And trying not to get caught up in the mind games, in the ‘yeah buts’ and the ‘but you’s’ and so on and so forth.  Because mostly it’s all fiddle-faddle and, even when it’s not, what’s the point in clinging onto it?  Life’s short.  And, as I’ve said so many’s the time before (but need to keep remembering) Love really is the bottom line. That is all I 'know' for sure and certain.

So…I love you.  I’m sorry.  Please forgive me.  Thank you.  J

One man, three witches and a hell of a lot of sex, magic and…steak.

Remember my anti-guru?  The guy whose book Symphonic Bridges kickstarted my ‘rejuvenation’ –y’know, the whole weight loss/exercise/meditation/spirituality malarkey?  Well, he’s written another one.  The Cave.  To be fair, he wrote it a while back but, up until now, it was only available in Polish. And now – it’s been translated into English. 

Here’s what I had to say about it…but don't take my word for it - check it out yourself.  

The Cave by Marek Stefanowicz

I’ve been waiting impatiently for The Cave to be translated into English for some considerable time. It’s a novel that’s also a guidebook on how to live consciously. But it’s not remotely dour and worthy – it’s packed with sex and has lashings of humour. So, really, what’s not to like?

Maste has vanished. His wife Margarita (yes, Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita inevitably comes to mind) begs her friend Natasha to help. Natasha is a psychologist and a fortune-teller but, most importantly of all, she’s a witch. Her sisters, Olga and Irene, also highly intelligent (and beautiful) witches, agree to join Natasha on a wildcap quest across the world (each part of the book is set on a different continent) to find out what happened to the missing ‘madman’. 

It’s an unusual book, quite different from Marek’s previous titles, the semi-autobiographical Symphonic Bridges and the elliptical Pro-vocation (written in ‘real time’ on the website Authonomy). 

The Cave is a Rabelaisian, almost Milesian, romp, using humour to offset the deep spiritual and philosophical deliberations of the novel. Its language veers from the pedantically anal to the rhetorically extravagant (or, as it has been described, ‘grotesquely flamboyant’), playful, humorous and sometimes joyfully crude - as wild as a broomstick ride across the skyline of Manhattan (in lieu of Moscow) by night. It enjoys the same love of language as Symphonic Bridges but is, I suspect, more accessible by dint of its strong characterisation and surprising shifts in location and pace.

What’s it about? Really? Well, everyone sees something different in a book, of course, but to my mind it’s about life, about conscious living, about the stormy search for Self. Each sister undergoes a profound personal journey in the course of the book, changing into…something else? Olga takes the slow ‘baby steps’ route to enlightenment, becoming the Mistress of Breath while Natasha metamorphoses into the miraculous Mistress of Light. But perhaps the most appealing character is the bawdy, hard-living, tough-talking, no-nonsense Irene who scoffs at her sisters’ increasing spirituality and sticks firmly to her regime of whiskey-swigging, fag-smoking, steak-eating and casual sex (with the strict proviso that one night is always enough). She’s an every(wo)man, a modern-day pilgrim navigating the world in black leather and high heels. A head-turning heartbreaker, she is undoubtedly a Mistress of Sex who may eventually become the Mistress of Love. 

Ah, love. Love. It’s the bottom line, of course. And I love (Love) that The Cave makes us ask questions. Who are we? What are our limits? Do we actually have limits? What is consciousness? How far can science or gurus provide us with answers? What is the purpose of life? What is the one question? Is Love the answer? The reason?

Then, just when your head starts spinning (or turning into a pumpkin) there’s another shift and you’re eavesdropping on Friends in New York or sharing a group hug with the cast of Lost, diving into bed with an animagus or getting high with a snorkel in the bath. 

Which (witch?) is just as it should be. For I don’t believe spirituality needs to be po-faced and dour, worthy and hairshirtish. Far from it. The Cave is a total delight, a metaphysical masterpiece. There’s even a cat – called Behemoth of course.

Marek is an extraordinary writer and, as the world latches onto the need for a spirituality grounded in everyday unreality, I strongly suspect his books will become cult classics. 

The Cave is available in paperback or as an ebook for Kindle. Click the links.  

"Follow me - I'm right behind you" - the Good Guru Guide

Let’s get one thing straight right from the start. I don’t hold with gurus.  It’s a purely personal thing so if you have a pet guru and the relationship works for you, then great, tickety-boo (but try to choose one that doesn't have a fancy car habit, okay? And I'd steer clear of ones that advocate only one colour of clothing - particularly if that colour doesn't suit you).  Otherwise, go for it. But me? I run a mile.

Another thing I don’t like?  Spiritual self-help books.  Yeah, yeah, the irony doesn’t escape me.  I have, for my egotistical sins, written twenty or so books on natural health and spirituality. In my defence I try not to spout my own non-existent ‘wisdom’, I just report or maybe ‘translate’ what other people say.  Which, I suppose, when you look at it that way, is even worse. J

Anyhow, I have read thousands of books, literally thousands – including hundreds upon hundreds of New Age, spiritual, and self-help guides. As a journalist I interviewed a holy and unholy host of so-called ‘gurus’ and experts. Many were great people, with great ideas, but I was never tempted to lay my hat at their door. I have never been a follower; I have never even followed one particular ‘path’ or creed or religion or therapy. There’s a lot of stuff out there, some good, some bad, some blissfully bonkers. Probably way too much stuff. Maybe I got lost in the sheer volume of it all. Or maybe I just felt that there wasn’t a One Size Fits All answer to the seeking.  I was fed up of people saying with total egocentric certainty ‘do this’, ‘be that’. 

But this year I started a sort of process of distillation, of figuring out what works for me, what chimes for me.  And I started listening to people, really listening.  Okay, so a couple of those people were dead but, hey, let’s not let that get in the way of anything, right?  But one of them was very much alive and kicking (except when he died, but that’s another story).  Time to introduce you to Marek, aka Ma.Ste. Aka…nah, let’s keep it simple.

Marek and I started talking on the Labyrinth thread.  He posted chunks of his book Symphonic Bridges and I found they chimed chords. You could argue that I had found someone I could project upon (and, by heck, I’ve got a PhD in projection). That, in Marek, I found someone on whom to project my subconscious knowing, my inner guru, if you like (alongside a whole host of other projections). And, bless him, the poor guy  never took advantage of that – he just patiently (and, let’s be honest, sometimes impatiently!) held up the mirror. 

    

Anyhow. I thought that maybe one of the edgy, far-sighted spiritual publishing houses would snap up Symphonic Bridges but the daft fools didn’t.  It’s funny really how traditional people are when it comes to spirituality.  Even in this field, surely the one that should be the most fluid and experimental, there are rules and formats and genres and slots. And Symphonic Bridges doesn’t fit into any slots.

It isn’t always easy; in fact it can be downright perplexing.  A lot of people run flinching from it, saying it’s ‘self-indulgent’ or ‘crazy’.  I can sort of understand those reactions.  It isn’t a ‘safe’ book; it doesn’t play by the standard rules; it doesn’t do what it’s told.  Maybe that’s partly what delights me about it.  I used to want to edit it, to cut and paste and add and splice; to wrestle and reduce.  Then the former Daily Mail journalist in my head kicked in and I nagged Marek to write another book, to condense it, to make it all ‘simple’. ‘Tell people this stuff in easy-to-get language, in seven simple steps,’ I said.  He didn’t reply.

And no surprise because, really, what a stupid idea. The language of the soul can’t be squeezed into seven easy steps. The language of the soul is like a half-remembered tune, catches heard on the wind. Maybe its language is poetry, music, feeling, scent; maybe it’s found in the dancing interstices, rather than in stolid prose.

‘Follow me!’ says Marek.  And then swiftly adds, ‘I’ll be right behind you!’ 

Anyhow. It’s not a book for everyone, that’s for sure. A lot of friends have read it and shaken their heads at me.  But hey…I said I’d tell you what worked for me and this was a large part of it.  So make up your own mind. Or rather listen to your own soul.

Here’s a chunk of what I wrote by way of a blurb/preface when Symphonic Bridges first came out (you can buy it on Amazon or CreateSpace, b(u)y the way...just follow the links...)

“You can drive yourself crazy going round in circles, reading, researching, trying to understand, trying to be clever, making spiritual truth all very complicated.  But, at heart, it is probably very very simple. Do you want to live a more balanced, spiritual life?  Everything you need is here, pretty much.  This book set me back on the right path and, when I’m feeling very dramatic, I say it saved my life.  Do I agree with it 100 percent? Not quite yet.  *smile*

But Marek won’t tell you what to do.  And that – I think – is why I really love this book so much.  He wraps the spiritual stuff up in the fabric of his own life, splicing it into a sort of apologetic autobiography.  In many ways it reads like a love story:   about divine Love mirrored in the very human love he feels for his wife and soul-mate (a lovely and loving microcosm of the macrocosm). 

He tells you about what he believes, what he does, and what he hopes he will get out of it.  But he never ever says “you must do this”.  And that is so right because everyone has to find his or her own way; you can lead the proverbial horse to water but horses can be bloody-minded. Ultimately we have to choose for ourselves – we can control our bodies, our minds, our destiny – or we can float.  No judgement if you float...floating is fine.

It’s not a worthy book either and, dear God, do I loathe worthiness.  There is humour and fun and lightheartedness and sex mixed with sadness and frustration and anger (mainly directed at himself). It’s human, so human. 

Finally, if you love language, surely you have to smile at the way he plays with words, constructing and destructing them, pulling them apart to tease out meaning, to release, to reveal?  And (okay, so that wasn’t the final finally) if you have a mystic’s soul, doesn’t that soul soar when it peeks over ego’s shoulder and reads something like:

“The true nature of Time and Space cannot be known. It can only be heard. Do you see?”

Personally, I reckon it’s got the makings of a cult spiritual classic.  But what do I know?”

What indeed?    For those patiently waiting for the ‘how to lose four stone’ bit, it’s coming, it’s coming. But, see, this is all part of it.  Am I saying Symphonic Bridges should be renamed ‘Four Stone in Four Months - The Ma.Ste. Way to Magic Weight Loss’?  Nah.  Though, hmm, maybe he’s missing a trick. J