Spiritual Treatment

We are spiritual beings. Photo by Guy Holt.

“You’re not only working with the body,” Leilani reminds us, “you’re working with the person spiritually and with their mind, because it’s mind and body and spirit. So if a practitioner sees that the person needs to work through something in their mind, then that goes through what they call a ho‘oponopono process.

“There’s the modern-day clinical version of ho‘oponopono, and then the times of old method of trying to get to the kako, or the sore, that is in there, and releasing it to where it’s no longer there. It’s brought forth, it’s faced, it’s identified, and it’s worked with. Prayer is, of course, in the very beginning of anything that we do and practice. We offer prayer to be able to open our mind and being to do the work. Because without it, I could just lomilomi you, but if you still got all this stuff going in your head, and in your heart—in your na‘au especially, in the seat of knowledge within you—you’re only partly taking care of the problem. It’s like just doing a band-aid.

“So you want to look at the whole of the person and what needs to be addressed. It could require lomilomi, it could be lā‘au lapa‘au—which would be the plant medicinals—or it could be something else that needs to be worked on.

“In some of the old practices, ho‘oponopono is not just saying a phrase, but it’s a long process. You offer prayer, you have somebody that is respected that leads either the group or is one-on-one, and that will be able to bring forth from you whatever it is that is hurting.

“Then it would be the understanding of what work needs to be done and everybody taking their turn to have their say of whatever may need to be cleared up. So we have the mediator, a respected mediator there. The problem may not be about just having an argument, but it is about bringing forth what really hurts. And it takes you to be honest, to dig that deep. Many people don’t want to dig that deep. They just want to cut the surface with little short phrases and mantras, and that’s great if that works for you.

“But to really extract it from your being, it takes a process of dialogue and talk and prayer and understanding, and then releasing—and really releasing. And it’s like, ‘Auntie, I’m sorry for doing that but it hurt me because...’ and vice versa.

“The whole ho‘oponopono process, of course, is only as good as people who use it. So it could take just that moment to years of the process being done, to get really down—peeling that onion to get down to what the real root of what the problem is. It may not be something that just came up right then and there. It may be something that came up ten years ago, in an argument with somebody else. And somebody is all still hūhū about that. But that’s that process to get to a resolution.

“Then it’s something you never go back to. Its’ a hurt that you have truly worked out, then it’s never brought up ever again, it’s completely done. If it’s really been done right, it’s not something you cross into ever again. Otherwise the kako is still there. Sometimes that’s the hard part: we don’t forget. And if something similar comes up, then it’s like, ‘Argh, I thought I already just did all of that.’ I mean, it is part of your memory, it is part of your experience in life, and that could be used for constructive goodness. But if you’re going to still carry the source of the problem, that’s not pono. You’re still vulnerable to acting on it. And then you have to go through the whole process all over again.

“Nowadays everybody likes the quick, wikiwiki kind: ‘Okay, I’m sorry, I’m pau, okay let um go.’ Sometimes that works if it’s deeply sincere. But a lot times there’s still that kako in there. And in one of the lineages that I’ve been taught, it carries on to the ancestors, and sometimes you still have that with you. You may not realize why you’re all mad about this, or mad about that, because maybe in the past something wasn’t right and connected, so that just carries on. To me it’s like common sense, but it’s not common anymore.

“At a certain phase of the moon, it would be a time to cleanse in the ocean for purification. It’s a purification ceremony, pretty much, in the ocean. Some people do it in a group. Some people will do it with a kahu, or kahuna, or a kumu. Kahu being the guardian of that information, or a reverend teacher. It’s a purification done with prayer. Some will do that before they do a particular hula competition or meeting.

“Or if somebody has passed away, and there would be that cleansing process there. It’s used for many different types of protocols. But again it has to be done right, it’s not just ‘go over there and go ‘au‘au.’ It has to be done at a certain moon phase, with particular prayers, and always done in reverence. I was taught too if some things were ailing inside, then a lei made from limu kala would be worn, and when you go out into the ocean and cleanse, then that comes off. And all that kako—sores or things that you don’t need—would be sent off with it.”

“How I was taught about our health,” Guy relates, “is if you get sick, inside of your body, wherever it’s hurting, you can meditate and find where your wounds are or where you need to be healed, and you can put your blue light towards and it will heal it fast. And then you bring it back, and it will come back into the heart area, and it will be fine. It was how I was raised in hula, and hula my grandmother taught me the Hawaiian art of lua and its all martial arts.

“But she also taught me the art of huna, where if you can line your three selves, your ‘uhane, unihipili, and your ‘aumakua. Your ‘uhane is your self, and your ‘unihipili is your library from your ancestors before, where you can get any answer that you want to. All you got to do is ask in the correct way. And if they know you’re coming from the heart, they’ll give you an answer. Now if you can connect those two really good and you can come up for top ‘aumakua, then you can see out of the third eye. And you can be conscious and unconscious at the same time. It doesn’t matter where.

“You can refocus that into your mind there. That’s how you can fix yourself and heal yourself, because it’s taking negative words out and then replacing them with positive words. Here is your positive and negative: you increase your positive in life, and then your negative has to come all the way up to giving it any disease—or, dis-ease. And then you increase the positive so much there is no time for any negatives to come into your life. And that’s when we can live some more and share that with a lot of people.

“What Grandmother taught me was, ‘Come from the heart, come from the light, and you’ll be alright.’ It is important to increase your positiveness in life, so then there is less negative in your life. And then we can start healing with everybody else.

“Through the huna that I learned through my grandmother, there are different breathing techniques that you can also use to heal. But you can also use that to control the winds, the clouds, and the animals. And it’s all different techniques, but there are different frequencies on how you can use the breath also, in different tones for a lot of the healings.”

Uncle Tom tells of witnessing old-style instant healing: “My Dad broke his jaw coming up the hill from Waipa, around the bend. They were with the first government flatbed truck. All of these guys in the back, no more fence, nothing, they all go flying off the truck, and my Dad broke his jaw. So my Dad, when he was around yet, he had gold teeth lashed down to his jaw with silver wire, and lived his whole life like that. And the good thing about it, his Grandma fixed it, she wen fix his broken jaw, right away. Instant.

“And just like I tell you that story: this lady had fallen on the reef, and had one big cut on her shin. I wen take her to my other grandma from Waimea, in the taro patch right by the bridge. There used to be one house inside there, so I go inside there. My Grandma was fixing this lady. So my Grandma was praying at the same time she’s applying medicine. At the time, they get wooden stove to cook, and they had a place outside of the house like this, out-house, and use the ashes, because the ashes is hot. Just like sterilizing the kind with the ashes, because the ashes is like burning. It’s salty, yeah, and just rub it on the hurt place. You know what happened? The cut wen close up right in front of our eyes. And no more mark! That lady was good, right in front of us. That’s how powerful that time. I wen experience it in my life.”