“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”
These simple words originate from the profound Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono (HO-oh-PO-no-PO-no), Prayer for Forgiveness, a genuine pathway to self-healing, cultivating heart wisdom, and reconciliation.
Ho’oponopono is a transformative prayer practice that empowers you to restore balance and regain the wisdom to set things right in your life.
Our emotions color how we see and experience the world. An angry mind sees an angry world. A fearful mind sees a threatening world. But when the mind is stable, we see an open, fluid, workable, and moveable world.
In this blog, I will share how I created the vibrant Hawai’ian Refuge Ritual Essence and how it can help us evoke forgiveness to overcome conflict and negative emotional barriers. I will focus on the mindful practice of forgiveness, specifically through the Ho’oponopono prayer.
Join me in igniting your heart so it shines brightly for the benefit of everyone around you.
Hawai’ian Healing Practices
The rich tradition of Hawaiian healing practices has faced significant decline due to the overwhelming influence of Western culture on Hawaiian life. However, there is a renewed interest in traditional Hawaiian healing practices today.
Huna Hawai’ian healing practices address the spiritual, mental, and emotional body, all interconnected with our physical body. Healing emphasizes the significance of balancing three aspects of the self to foster inner wellness, which can ultimately contribute to healing the world.
Lokahi (balance)
Central to Native Hawai’ian understanding of health is the holistic concept of lokahi (balance or harmony), often called the “Lokahi Triangle.”
Vibrant health is achieved when a person’s physical, mental, and spiritual aspects are in harmony, creating a balanced and fulfilling life.
These three “points of the triangle” include the physical body and the environment surrounding that person, relationships with others, particularly family members, ancestors, and god(s), and mental and emotional states.
Furthermore, individuals must take responsibility for their healing by making amends for any past wrongs they may have caused. This journey can ultimately lead to profound transformation and forgiveness in one’s life for the better.
Conflict Within and Without
I have a cause at this time in my life to reclaim emotional balance. Like many in our community, I find the US election results deeply unsettling, and I can’t help but worry about the profound consequences unfolding in our society.
As I sit with my feelings and struggle with my emotions, I cannot remember when I felt this acutely aware of the structure and institutions that have held our country together.
I’ve been grappling with intense anger towards individuals who hold beliefs that I consider lacking in human compassion and understanding. It’s disheartening to encounter perspectives that dismiss our shared humanity.
And so I name these difficult emotions. I have fluctuated between shock, anger, sadness, disgust, and grief over the past few weeks.
Anger, Grief & Mourning
I acknowledge that there is grief beneath the feelings of anger and resentment. I grieve for past and future generations, including remarkable individuals who worked hard and contributed to our country’s evolution. And how marginalizing exceptional individuals compromises kindness and inclusivity to shape a future that benefits everyone.
I mourn for our daughters and granddaughters, who have fewer rights as women today than I did. The ability of women to make their own decisions about their bodies, lives, who they choose to love, and futures without violence or coercion is a fundamental human right that’s central to women’s equality, privacy, and bodily integrity.
I feel sorrow for our sons, who may be affected by misogynistic hate rhetoric that marginalizes individuals who are not white or male. I resent this mindset.
I can’t help but notice how the tendrils of patriarchy grant men power and privilege over women in politics, economics, and culture, rooted in the belief in male superiority. It uses both blatant and subtle forms of oppression and control, such as violence and discriminatory laws, to sustain a grip on power.
But here’s the thing – what makes anger and resentment uniquely complex to work with is that it can actually feel pretty good. Because when we’ve been wronged, that righteous indignation feels empowering.
However, I recognize that blaming others and holding onto grudges and grievances serves no one. Nothing good comes from nourishing anger and resentment. Whether it’s resentment towards yourself or others, you can’t fill your heart with self-love when poisoned by negativity.
The Impact of Conflict on Relationships
How we think our loved ones view us profoundly impacts the strength of our relationships. A positive perception fosters deeper connections, while negative beliefs can create barriers.
Conflicts and disagreements are a natural part of any relationship, and acknowledging this truth can lead to stronger connections and deeper understanding.
Essentially, conflicts arise from how individuals interact with each other rather than being focused on a specific issue or task. This type of disagreement occurs within the dynamics of a relationship, often involving personal emotions, unmet expectations, or incompatible needs, which can negatively affect the quality of the connection between them.
When unresolved, relational conflict can damage trust, intimacy, and the overall quality of a relationship. The inability or unwillingness to forgive someone who has betrayed, upset, or broken your trust can lead to bitterness, resentment, and a range of adverse effects on your mental and physical health.
If you are struggling with unforgiveness, you may experience bursts of anger, become petty and impulsive, feel the need to make the person understand your pain, engage in compulsive behavior, be unable to reframe your experiences, and blame others for your feelings.
Empathy is essential in this process, as it involves understanding another person’s perspective. Clear and honest communication is crucial for couples, as it fosters forgiveness and allows both partners to express their feelings and reach a mutual understanding.
Forgiveness is not merely accepting what happened or ceasing to be angry. Instead, it involves voluntarily transforming your feelings, attitudes, and behavior to free yourself from resentment and show compassion toward yourself and, eventually, the person who wronged you.
Encouraging forgiveness is a vital step toward healing oneself and improving relationships, especially for individuals dealing with feelings of shame and negative habits.
Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation
It’s important to distinguish between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is a personal journey that helps individuals find inner peace and release the negativity associated with past grievances. By embracing this process, one can experience emotional healing, a renewed sense of freedom, and greater balance in life.
On the other hand, reconciliation involves restoring a relationship to its previous state, which may or may not happen after forgiveness. This process requires mutual effort and agreement from both parties involved.
The path to meditative awareness that fosters forgiveness is available right now. Practicing forgiveness is a powerful experience that can significantly transform our inner dialogue and promote healing over time.
The Heart of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a profound healing process that can change your life by unlocking the emotional wisdom of the heart.
What if we made a simple daily choice to share heartfelt emotions? Imagine the ripple effect it could create that might enhance our well-being, strengthen our communities, and deepen our bonds.
When we truly listen to what our hearts are saying, our spirit inspires us to forgive and release energy blocks with each other and ourselves. Our hearts understand that by forgiving, we gain something precious.
Although we are all at different stages in our healing forgiveness journey, we struggle with the concept of forgiveness – for ourselves and others.
The difficulty may be because the principle of justice—”an eye for an eye”—has been central to many religious beliefs and legal systems. This principle asserts that individuals must face consequences that align with the seriousness of their actions, ensuring a fair and just system of accountability matching the severity of their offenses.
While our minds may resist forgiveness, our spirit offers energetic support and holistic healing as we sincerely commit to releasing the old, even if it’s just a little at a time.
Forgiveness, which emerges from the heart, makes heart transformation possible, regardless of the circumstances. It fosters love and encourages understanding, nurturing patience in our relationships. This deeper connection allows us to resolve conflicts with compassion.
Through positive intention and practice, forgiveness becomes more attainable when we understand that, by embracing it, we enhance our humanity and cultivate kindness toward each other.
La’au Kahea (Healing Prayer)
Central to Hawai’ian healing practice is prayer. As in other spiritual practices, the Hawai’ian belief is that we co-create our experiences. Prayer is a way to connect with your soul and strengthen the bond between yourself, others, and the earth.
The Ho’oponopono prayer is a conflict resolution practice that offers positive solutions to human problems. It encourages us to take responsibility for our lives and actions. Rather than asking for a supernatural force to eliminate our pain and suffering, this practice promotes owning our thoughts and emotions while accepting life events beyond our control.
Reciting the Ho’oponopono prayer from the heart creates a path to inner peace and nurtures a profound sense of self-love, helping you to
- Restore balance and harmony within yourself.
- Resolve conflicts in your relationships.
- Nurture your connections with yourself, others, and the environment.
- Identify core issues and emotional triggers.
- Recognize and understand your emotions and actions.
- Reduce stress, anxiety, and habits.
- Overcome Trauma.
- Cultivate Resilience.
- Heal transgressions and betrayals.
Ho’oponopono – The Forgiveness Prayer
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”
This beautiful prayer originated in ancient Polynesian culture’s village and clan communities. Ho’oponopono is an ancestral Hawaiian healing practice that helps cleanse your consciousness of negative memories, unconscious fears, and disempowering beliefs. It encourages forgiveness, peace, and love toward yourself and others.
The Ho’oponopono prayer has deep historical roots as a powerful tool for reconciliation that brings divided families (Ohana) back together. Embracing this practice can lead to healing and unity among loved ones.
In these communities, no one was considered an isolated individual. Every person was an integral part of a connected community and shared ancestry. Everyone represented their clan/family/lineage/village in some way or another. Together, they formed a vital network that thrived on collaboration and support.
Kapu, or sacred laws, were strictly enforced. Of utmost importance to Hawai’ian culture, breaking kapu had severe consequences, including death.
If one person behaved criminally, the whole family, clan, and village felt responsible for that behavior. A criminal action belonged to and was the responsibility of the entire community.
Therefore, if there were wrongdoing, the whole family and village would come out to take responsibility for it, redress it, and heal it.
Any fugitive who had broken kapu could seek refuge and forgiveness within the walls of the Puʻuhonua. The journey was not easy; many lost their lives to sharks swimming offshore or the sharp rocks that lined the shoreline.
If they accomplished the grueling journey to find sanctuary at Pu’uohana, the Huna priests would hold a ceremony of absolution and encourage the chanting of the Ho’oponopono prayer. The forgiveness ceremony allowed those who had violated the kapu to return to society.
Forgiveness is Compassion in Action
Today, the Ho’oponopono practice continues to be an effective mediation and conflict resolution method, helping individuals and couples navigate feelings of hurt and resentment towards others. It is also a powerful tool for enhancing one’s healing journey and stabilizing emotions.
It turns out that intense experiences themselves are unavoidable—they’re just part of being human. What we can work with is how we imprison ourselves in those habitual interpretations and feelings about those experiences.
Our inner beliefs significantly influence our outer reality. Our words hold considerable power; they can affect our brains, bodies, and relationships. Words repeated internally carry energy and move our thoughts. They can help, hinder, inspire, or hurt. They can create bonds, foster alienation, enlighten or humiliate.
Recognizing and understanding your feelings while actively noticing your mental and emotional patterns deepens your compassion and understanding for others in similar situations. As you practice understanding your own mind each day, you create space for empathy and compassion towards others.
While embracing forgiveness can be challenging, it is an active transformative process that profoundly acts as a healing balm, mending past wounds and promoting a renewed sense of harmony.
Healing Others by Healing Yourself
Practitioners of Ho’oponopono believe that healing must begin within ourselves. The practice is based on the belief that everyone is interconnected and that problems are a repetition of negative emotional memories.
The emotional burden of lingering resentment and remorse can fester over time, impacting our lives for years. The unwillingness or inability to forgive someone who has betrayed, upset, or broken your trust can lead to feelings of bitterness and anger that can fester for years.
For those who have experienced prolonged trauma, our brains may need to be physiologically rewired for complete healing, and forgiveness can accelerate that process.
Choosing to forgive means intentionally shifting our perspective, feelings, and attitudes without necessarily condoning the wrongdoing. Ultimately, forgiveness empowers us to change how we react to personal slights, helping us become better humans.
Incorporating Ho’oponopono into your life can lead to greater emotional freedom and healthier, more fulfilling connections with others, even those who may be different from us, regardless of whether they “deserve” it.
If both people are willing, reciting the Ho’oponopono prayer together can help dissolve regrets, resentment, anger, and remorse, allowing your hearts to return to a state of oneness and harmony.
Embracing the practice of Ho’oponopono empowers us to direct our energy toward self-healing, reprogramming brain pathways, reshaping our thoughts, and unlocking our inner vitality.
Here’s How to Practice Ho’oponopono
When you practice Ho’oponopono, you essentially apologize to yourself for creating specific experiences in your life.
Consistently repeating the Ho’oponopono prayer is a powerful way to cleanse the mind and spirit of guilt, shame, troubling memories, hostile intentions, or harmful feelings that trap the mind in negative thinking.
I personally enjoy listening to Craig Pruess’s beautiful and heart-centered rendition of the Ho’oponopono Prayer. I invite you to listen to it on my Refuge Ritual Essence product page or follow this SoundCloud link.
To practice Ho’oponopono, take a few deep breaths with closed eyes and center yourself in your heart.
- Close your eyes and turn your prayer inward.
- Begin by reciting the Ho’oponopono prayer out loud or silently to yourself.
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”
- Let the words penetrate your heart to resonate deeply within you.
- Repeat the prayer until you feel a sense of ease and calmness.
- Finally, take a moment to conclude the practice in silence, resting your hands gently on your heart. This simple gesture will help the prayer’s profound meaning resonate within you.
I encourage you to dedicate yourself to a daily practice for at least two weeks. Practice this regularly until you feel your grievances lift and your heart soften. This will create space within you to nurture self-love and reclaim joy.
Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau & The Creation of Refuge Ritual Essence
I created Refuge Ritual Essence during meditation on a serene and beautiful afternoon at Pu’uhonua, one of the most sacred sites on the Big Island, Hawaii.
The ancient Hawaiian “place of refuge” included a royal enclosure, a burial site for chiefs, and a sanctuary for those who broke the kapu laws.
A person’s only chance for survival after breaking kapu was to evade their pursuers, make it to a Puʻuhonua, and ask for refuge and mercy from the King. It was at Pu’uhonua that anyone who broke kapu would find forgiveness.
The energy at Pu’uhonua has tremendous spiritual power (mana). My heart guided me to a quiet spot away from other tourists inside the southern enclosure near the ancient fish ponds.
I set my crystal bowl and filled it with naturally pure spring water obtained from Kileaua. With reverence, I asked the spirits of the land and my guides to bless my intention to capture Pu’uhonua’s sacred energy and transfer it to the spring water.
I felt my heart open while meditating in the golden afternoon light with a gentle breeze from the ocean at my back. As I breathed, I heard the words “I forgive you. I love you” echoing in my mind.
Time and again, the words transformed into a chant resonating within me like waves surging from my heart. I felt tears rolling down my cheeks.
After some time, when I opened my eyes, everything glittered with light! Filled with gratitude, I sincerely thanked the spirits of Pu’uhonua and my guides for their invaluable guidance and the profound healing gift they’ve bestowed upon me.
Taking Refuge in Ho’oponopono
“We must open our hearts; then, we welcome forgiveness with love.”
I recognize the complex process of forgiveness is not an easy one. Fleur Refuge Hawai’ian Ritual Essence is a vibrational gift to those navigating this journey in their personal lives.
After bottling the mother tincture, I enhanced the essence through countless hours of the transformative Ho’oponopono chant, infusing it with the powerful healing energy of aloha — love.
Infused with the energetic Hawai’ian spirit of Pu’uhonua, Refuge Hawai’ian Ritual Essence embodies a profound spiritual energy of refuge, safety, charity, forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation, ultimately restoring self-love and balance.
Use Refuge Ritual Essence to accept and forgive yourself for any mistakes or transgressions, allowing you to start fresh and set things right.
Unlock the full potential of Refuge Ritual Essence by pairing it with the powerful recitation of the Ho’oponopono prayer; together, their effects are truly transformative.
Taking Refuge in Ho’oponopono
Owning our negative emotions and experiences is the first step toward healing, allowing us to release our hurts and move forward with renewed heart presence.
I invite you to integrate Ho’oponopono practice with Refuge Ritual Essence to enhance your emotional wellness and experience profound positive benefits.
- Reduced anxiety and depression
- Better navigation of emotions
- Increased self-esteem
- Healthier relationships
- Reduce feelings of resentment, regret, and remorse.
- Fewer physical health symptoms
- Lower mortality rates
- Improved heart health
- Stronger immune system
- Enhanced sleep quality
- Reduced fatigue and stress
- Greater empathy and compassion
- Broader perspectives that promote mutual understanding
- Encouragement of open communication while avoiding blame
- Heightened self-awareness of personal triggers and reactions to navigate challenging situations and interactions.
My Personal Experience with Taking Refuge in Ho’oponopono
I recognized I could take refuge in the Hawai’ian healing practice of Ho’oponopono to set right my internal conflicts and reconnect to my true nature. Honestly, it was unbearable to be trapped in a cycle of negative feelings and thoughts. I knew I had to find a way to break free.
I knew that it was my work to do. I focused my resolve on shifting my internal state by transforming my grievances and taking responsibility for nurturing a spirit of forgiveness. I began using the tools I had available in this endeavor.
In the past few weeks, I have adopted a morning ritual that includes reciting the Ho’oponopono prayer for at least 10 minutes. I also add Refuge Ritual Essence to my water, apply a drop or two to the crown of my head, and anoint my heart.
Although there are moments throughout my week when negative emotions break through like waves, I have noticed a profound easing in my heart. My thoughts are becoming more compassionate and understanding. I feel more at peace with accepting “what is,” taking ownership, and letting go of the burden of anger and bitterness.
As a result, I am cultivating a spirit of generosity that genuinely uplifts my soul and enhances my connections with others. I attribute these shifts to my practice of forgiveness through chanting Ho’oponopono and using Refuge Ritual Essence.
My commitment to personal growth and walking my talk has softened my anger and resentment, leading to a deep and lasting transformation within me from the inside out.
Empowering Yourself Empowers Others
In summary, one of the most essential things you can learn is training your ability to catch your thoughts, much like catching an ember before it ignites into flames. The self-perpetuating cycle of thought and emotion can be challenging to break out of without empathy and compassion.
By being aware of your emotional triggers before they escalate, you’ll empower yourself to manage your emotions when they are small before you retreat or express your feelings inappropriately. The instinct to hold back and the human struggle to extend forgiveness is a spiritual struggle.
Understanding and acknowledging these feelings is crucial for healing, just as recognizing the profound kindness and compassion inherent in the human heart can inspire actual change.
I encourage you to take refuge in the Ho’oponopono prayer to restore balance and make things right. Adding Refuge Ritual Essence to your forgiveness practice will energetically enhance your healing experience.
The freedom you experience will be a profound healing gift for yourself and others.
All my aromatic love,
Vidya
