Peace, Walk, Now: What is Ho’oponopono?
Chapter 4, Cont.
September 2017 - Boulder, Colorado
My last few days in Boulder went by painfully slow. [Read Peace, Walk, Now: Chapter 4, Part 1]
I really missed my two children and was feeling homesick. (If you can call it “homesick,” since I didn’t have a home to go back to.)
While away from the kids, I created a children’s YouTube channel with short videos to help me feel close to them. I thought that if I could make an adventure out of being separated from them, it would help me cope with the trauma of it.
(It helped, to some degree.)
As mentioned in Chapter 2, I was determined to remember:
“the me who intentionally pushed the boundaries of her own comfort zone for mental and emotional freedom from the social judgments and paradigms that were all vying against me.”
I was determined to find better ideas and a higher perspective about the reality that was closing in on me:
Unemployment
Unstable housing
Grief from my mother’s and sister’s recent deaths
The trauma of having my children taken from me
Divorce
Insecurity and low self-esteem
Finding a new perspective wasn’t optional. It was—I dare say—a matter of life and death.
Hey, Google… What’s there to do in Boulder, Colorado this week?
(At least I had Google.)
The Boulder Ensemble Theater Company was putting on a play titled, “The Revolutionists,” written by Lauren Gunderson. It was a reenactment of eighteenth-century France set during the French Revolution of 1793-1794, a time known as the Reign of Terror. With a comedic twist.
This sounded like my emotional life right about then, and I could use a comedic twist.
The program read:
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: OF REVOLUTIONS AND RADICAL WOMEN
“A government deep in debt, political chaos at home, multiple wars abroad, and class and racial conflicts on all sides… modern America really should have a chat with eighteen-century France…”
Grumbling through my personal hot pot of emotions, I decided to go see the play.
The lineup of characters included the legendary Marie Antoinette, along with two other notable heroines, who I admittedly had not heard of: Olympe de Gouges and Charlotte Corday.
Marie Antoinette—quick refresher—was the last Queen of France, who had ascended to the throne with King Louis XVI before she turned twenty. According to her memoirs, she knew she was too young to rule a country or know what to do in the event of national crisis.
Olympe de Gouges had authored over forty plays, namely ones denouncing slavery (which were soon banned after release). Charlotte Corday was described as “the young, intrepid assassin” of an influential journalist, who had been pushing the political agenda for civil war. The program commented that:
“Her act transformed French notions of the valor a woman was capable of.”
This was all very interesting and diverted my attention from my own personal drama. The play, the actors, and writing were all fantastic. It got me thinking about valor…
valor [val-er] (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/valor)
noun: boldness or determination in facing great danger, especially in battle; heroic courage; bravery: a medal for valor.
Yes, perhaps there was a time and place when assassinating someone with the hope/intention of stopping a war showed valor. I will not disregard the decisions of those who came before me. Before this time, before this moment in history…
…this precise moment that finds us together...
I—the writer—and you—the reader—here together, with these words on this page, right here right now…
This moment, filled with the luxury of reading about valor…
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
How do we liberate our collective consciousness from the paradigm of war?
I believe we are all capable of this valor.
I’d like to get a little personal with you now…
Even in my grief and rage and sense of imminent and impending doom; amid the atrocious court system process and unfathomable ex-husband drama that kept my children away from me; amid the betrayal by friends, family, neighbors and community that left me judged and alone and judged for being alone during a time of extreme personal crisis…
I never got that sense that starting a war with anyone would solve things. I made a conscious choice to avoid starting any war of any sort—including the choice to forgo a legal battle with my ex-husband.
If you haven’t figured out my political views yet, I’ll sum them up in one sentence:
Only peace leads to more peace.
I believe we are all capable of this valor.
I will also say that in this day and time, the most revolutionary act of radical liberation available on the planet is ascension.
Not the Marie Antoinette paradigm of ascending to a throne.
Not the social media paradigm of ascending to a followship.
Not the academia paradigm of ascending to a fellowship.
Not the global economic paradigm of ascending to a corporate buyout or commercialized mass market presence.
In this day and time: The most revolutionary act of radical liberation available on the planet is the ascension of the conscious mind out of outdated paradigms—the ascension of the angry heart out of darkness.
I believe we are all capable of this valor.
I believe we are all capable of making the conscious decision to ascend out of patterns of catastrophic behavior, to let go of expired modes of destructive thinking, to do whatever it takes to choose the path of inner peace, and make this choice repeatedly, daily, hourly, minute by minute, moment by moment.
Ascension shows boldness, determination, and heroic courage to walk beyond the daily emotional and mental battles of 2020-something living. Ascension is a new paradigm of first responder self-preparedness, self-understanding, and self-preservation modeling for circumnavigating the internal battlefields.
This requires compassion (for ourselves and others).
The old paradigms promoting perpetual fear of external predators are still ruling human consciousness. To me, this feels painfully outdated.
Aren’t we the predators slaying ourselves and each other daily with our judgements, criticism, gossip, anger, jealousy, hatred, resentment, animosity, competitiveness, distrust, and unwillingness to forgive, let go, and move on?
Isn’t it up to each of us to personally identify the internal paradigms that are quietly churning in the background of our lives, running the show of our thinking, and silently programming our behavior response triggers to day-to-day situations? Isn’t it up to us to personally slay our own paradigms and cease fire on the countless ways we invisibly slay one another?
To do this, we have to be at least a little willing to face ourselves and tune into what is actually driving our feelings, thinking, and actions. This takes an incredible amount of valor.
I believe we are all capable of this.
Valor.
Let’s pause here.
REFLECTION MOMENT:
I realize I unloaded a lot on you. A lot of heavy stuff. Possibly some triggering stuff. Triggers offer information.
How does what I just said make you feel?
Let’s offer it up to Ho’oponopono.
What is Ho’oponopono?
There’s a lot of information available on Ho’oponopono, and I would not do it justice by explaining it here. I invite you to do your own research. Here’s a website to get you started:
In the meanwhile, I’d like to share my Ho’oponopono prayer with you. I learned this prayer after leaving Boulder and have offered it in response to many difficult circumstances and relationships since. I offer it to you—the reader—right here, right now:
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
For me, the practice of Ho’oponopono shows an incredible amount of valor.
I believe we are all capable of this.
Valor.