Announcer 0:27

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, John Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's John.

John Moore 0:48

Hello, hello, hello, everyone,

I hope you're doing very well. And today I'm talking about something called Ho'oponopono. And if you haven't heard of this, it's become much more popular. It is a, it comes from an ancient Hawaiian practice, the form that most people know it in these days is not quite as old. It's from the 1980s. And I'm going to talk about it, it's, it's a simple practice, that can be incredibly effective. And the practice is so simple, that it's a little bit deceptive. And I'm going to, I'm going to teach you, I'm gonna teach you how to practice right here. Let me teach you how to practice how oponopono but I'm gonna give you some background information and give you a little bit of history. And we're going to talk about some of the metaphysics behind how it works. Why, why, if it just works, why? Well, I think we can actually get a deeper experience with it if we kind of understand what we're doing and who we're talking to, and that sort of thing. So I want to give you enough of a background that, you know, you could explore more information on your own. And if not, you can, you know, at least have have the knowledge when you're practicing where it comes from, who created it, what you're doing that sort of thing. So let's get into it, let's get into whole oponopono whole oponopono it's kind of a cool word. I love saying that whole pono pono is, again, it's an it comes from an ancient Hawaiian practice. And the word I don't speak Hawaiian, and I might mispronounce a lot of words here, and I apologize for that. But I'm not Hawaiian speaker. And, but I'm gonna do my best. So as far as I can tell the word itself, you know, it's like one of those things in English, it can have sort of multiple meanings, but it means to bring things into balance or to make right. And so as an ancient Hawaiian practice, not the version I'm going to teach you today, this would normally be done when two people are in conflict. Two or more, I guess, and then you would have somebody who would, who would be a mediator who would try to bring forgiveness and peace into the situation and make things right again, okay. And a lot of cultures harmony within a group. Setting a group that lives together or, you know, works together or whatever is incredibly important. It you know, it's important for survival to have that harmony. So, there are a lot of cultures where, you know, peacemakers might be shamans or some other role in this case, I believe that the the role is played by the Hawaiian version of a shaman now there's a Hawaiian word called Kahuna and that will that will come into play. And I believe that Kahuna means like keeper of the secret, but a Kahuna in Hawaiian. Generally they have specialties right so there are Kahunas who specialize in different types of healing. And there are Kahunas who might specialize in fishing or navigation by stars or you know that sort of thing. So, something to keep in mind as we get into this a little bit. So, hoh opponent has become whole oponopono has become very popular in the past, I don't know 10 or 20. The years or so, as a spiritual practice that has been opened to people outside of the Hawaiian culture. I don't want to confuse people by you know, thinking it's, you know, we're appropriating culture or something because we're not practicing the traditional method or teaching the traditional method. And, you know, traditional Native Hawaiian religion is still traditional Native Hawaiian religion. And that isn't what we're doing here. Right. But what we're doing is a practice and why why because it, the practice went from this, you know, method of bringing peace between people to bringing peace within somebody within individuals. And that happened, we know, around 1976, this conversion to this new style, this new type of hole opponent, opponent, we know who did this. Because she presented it in 1980, at a meeting of practitioners, and then had a student who went out and you know, she's got, she probably had many students, but one of them went out and taught this to the world. And I'll talk about him as well. So this begins with a woman named Morrnah Simeana. I think I'm pronouncing her name correctly. And my sincere apologies if I am not Simeon, or Siona. More now, she was a Kahuna, plant healer. So she specialized in plant healing, right using herbs for healing. Her mother was a Kahuna who specialized in healing with words, so using words to heal, and was a handmaiden to the last queen of Hawaii. So very important, obviously, very important role. A heritage of Kahuna is passed down through the family. And this woman developed it into, you know, camera and said, you know, what, if we used this process in a way, what if I modified this process so that people could use it to heal themselves from things like trauma and grief and to have more peace within themselves. And that's really what it's good at. Although it can be used for a wide variety of things that sort of like, if you know, EFT Emotional Freedom Technique where they tap on different meridians to do things, they bring up feelings about something and tap on it. It's a lot like that. It provides emotional freedom as one, you know, one of the things that it does, but it has a metaphysical effect as well, and I'm going to talk about that, so mourn as most famous students was a man and I might butcher his Hawaiian name again, I'm gonna stop apologizing for potentially butchering, butchering Hawaiian language. Just know that I apologize for anything I mispronounced was a man named or is a man he's he's still around, named Dr. Ihaleakala Hew, Len, and many people just know him as Dr. Len or Dr. Hew Len. He is a clinical psychologists. He works in the the ward for the criminally insane in the Hawaiian State Hospital, Wayne State Mental Hospital. And the story goes that when he got this job, he came in onto the ward and said, I'm not going to see any patients just bring the everybody's files. And he sat with everybody's files, everybody in the wards files and did ho'oponopono while he was reading their files over and over and over again. And the story is that people were healed and were released without, you know, they were doing whatever their therapy was during the day and stuff. But you know, this was kind of unheard of and how does this work? How does this work without even talking to these people or seeing them or whatever. And so I will go, I will go into that. So Dr. Len has become well known for this. There are books that he's co authored. He probably still teaches seminars and things out there. You can find videos of him talking about this It's widely available. If you're interested in ho'oponopono, definitely check out Dr. Len. And just, and just a fascinating story and a great guy to listen to. And just an amazing presence. I have not met him in person, but I have seen many, many videos with him. someday maybe I'll meet him in person. So great, right? I mean, sounds sounds amazing, we can heal people without even working with them in all, you know, stuff. And we can heal situations within ourselves, and we can heal our own emotions.

So how does it work? How do we do it? How do we do whole ho'oponopono. And if you've, if you have studied whole upon upon at all, for any length of time, you know, there are four phrases that you repeat, and you can repeat them out loud, you can repeat them silently to yourself, you can repeat them as part of a group, there are, there is a whole pono pono song, at least one maybe more than one out there, you can find on every streaming service out there, if you want to listen to it sung for phrases, very simple phrases. First phrases, I'm sorry. The next one is forgive me or please forgive me. The next one is thank you. And the last one is I love you. Now that's the traditional order. But you can change the order that you say these phrases in. And once your practice that ho'oponopono. Some people say you don't need all four phrases, you can just say thank you, I love you. And the other things are kind of, you know, the other phrases are assumed. But I when I do it, I say all four phrases, and I say them in whatever order I am struck by but the traditional way is to, you know you have a situation has come into your consciousness, right? Maybe you feel sad, maybe you feel scared, maybe you feel angry. And you say I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. All right, so what's going on? What What, what's happening here, talking about how ho'oponopono we say these four phrases? How do they work who they who we saying them to. And I think I think the idea of how they work, maybe not like knowing every detail of how they work right? On like, I turn on a light switch in my house and the light comes on. And I have a basic understanding of how electricity is generated and works. But you no need to know every detail of it for it to work. But having a little bit of a background knowing that, you know, electricity flows through wires and it's generated. And all of these things, you know, helps it when the power goes out, or, you know what whatever, you know, whatever happens. So let's talk a little bit about this. So I need to go into the a, I don't know if it's the only one but a model of the self, the multi part self or the multi part soul that comes from the Hawaiian spiritual tradition, known as Huna. And this is, you know, same root word as Kahuna. All right. And so let's talk about this multi part self. And there are many, many cultures with a multi part soul or a multi part self. One I'm particularly familiar with is the Norse version, the ancient Norse version, which, you know, considers the physical body part of the soul and the shadow and the there's a part of you that is responsible for luck. And then this, the part of you that is the life force that you have when you're alive and your mind and your memory that's one we also know that the ancient Egyptians had a multi part soul right, they had the con, the BA and all these different parts that separated when you died. And if you did good parts of them were reunited, and that's very complex. But in this this this multi part self is quite is is simpler than that, although it may you know, it may get more complex than this, but this is this is what I know of it. And again, it's not important to understand every aspect of this and some people who teach whole ho'oponopono are some books I've read and that sort of thing. Don't actually talk about this, but I think understanding it a little bit is helpful. So in this model of the self, there are three selves. So there is the Uhane, the Uhane is the middle self. This is our conscious mind. Right. So you, you probably, you know, you don't have to be a PhD in psychology to know that you have a conscious mind and you have an unconscious mind, you know that your memories are stored away. And they're not, you know, they can be brought to the conscious mind. But they're mostly unconscious most of the time. So for example, if I asked you what color your refrigerator is, or what color your mailbox is, you would probably remember that and bring that to your conscious mind right away. And, but that's stored away in the stored away in the unconscious, you weren't thinking about it until I asked about it. Just as you're probably not aware of your big toe, write the feeling in your big toe until I mentioned it unless it was sore or something. Okay. So the Uhane is the conscious mind, it's what we pay attention to think of the conscious mind a little bit like the captain of the ship, it sort of sets general direction, it holds what we are currently attending to. And the conscious mind because it's the part that we're conscious of, sometimes feels like it's all there is, but it's actually the smallest part of us, the conscious mind can only hold a very limited amount of information at any given time. Right? There's something like, through all of your nerve endings, and your sense organs, and all of these things, there's something like 11 bits of 11 million bits of information coming into your system at any given time. Now try to hold 100 items in your conscious mind at any given time. Not possible, right? That's why you know, the the the old study is seven plus or minus two digits or bits of information can you hold at one time? That's why phone numbers were seven digits or nine digits right? So you could you could remember them you could hold something and tell you that tell you a phone number and you could dial it in maybe you forgot it immediately. But you know, you could hold that in your in your conscious mind in your working memory and obviously these are you know, these are simplified structures of the mind and the consciousness so that's Uhane the conscious mind. So then you have an unconscious self This is known as the lower self. And this is in Hawaiian is that Uniihpili, I'm certainly may be pronouncing that wrong, I promise I will stop apologizing for pronouncing Hawaiian words wrong. This is your unconscious or subconscious mind. It is your stored away memories that you're not thinking about right at the moment. It's also the source of your emotions. Right our emotions arise from our unconscious mind. Frequently they catch us by surprise, right? Unless we're like, I'm gonna go watch a sad movie. So I know I will feel sad afterwards. Or I'm gonna go on a roller coaster and I might feel scared or exhilarated. Right our emotions are stored away there. Our intuitions come from there. Right so there's a lot of stuff that stored away in our unconscious mind. And then there is this concept of the higher self or the super conscious, this is the Aumakua. The Aumakua is considered the connection between us and the divine. In this in this particular system, can be thought of as the soul connecting to the spirit of the divine spirit. It's one way to think about it. And so when we are clearing which is what Dr. Len calls us cleaning or clearing, right we're clearing these whatever's coming up for us and I'll I'll talk about some of the ways to use this in more specific ways in a moment. But when when we are doing this when we are saying these phrases we are saying that our honey, our conscious mind is saying them to our outcome Akua who is cleaning out our, our lower consciousness, our lower self, our subconscious, with the help of divinity, right with the help of our divine connection that's worthy, I love you, you love me, forgive me, I forgive you.

That's who we're saying these things to, we're saying them to ourselves, but we understand you. And you don't even have to understand that there are different aspects of yourself, I think it makes it a little clearer, I think it makes it a little more powerful. If we're like, Okay, I'm intending this to go to my higher self to do this to help me do this work. So, I want to go back to Dr. Len using these to cure patients. And I'm going to, you know, I obviously am not going to use his words to describe how this happened, or the concept behind it. So I'll explain it from my perspective. So Dr. Lin opens up a file on a patient and it says this person has, you know, psychosis and whatever disorders, right, they've got. And this is coming into his experience, right. And there's the concept of radical responsibility here, meaning he is taking responsibility for whatever is coming into his consciousness. So the fact that this person exists and has these diagnoses, and whatever came into his consciousness, so there is something within him that is bringing these experiences to his consciousness, the idea is that we are creating our reality. We're creating this. And so he does his clearing. This can be challenging when looking at the actions of other people. So somebody does something that's hurtful to us or somebody does something that is horrible or hurtful or whatever, we are not taking responsibility for that other person's actions. So this is a clear and important distinction. We are taking responsibility for the part of us that experienced this, right? So somebody hurts me hurts my feelings, whatever. That experience happens in my consciousness, I say, oh, my gosh, I am sorry. I'm sorry, that whatever part of me, in whatever part of me this arose, I am responsible for my experience of this. It makes responsible for feeling the hurt and having the experience I didn't do it, and then do the thing that hurt me, but it arose in my consciousness. And that can be a little that was a little tricky for me in the beginning. So I understand if that is tricky for you. And if it's not tricky for you, fantastic. That's great. But that can still be a little tricky for me, right? I'll give you an example from my own life. So very recently, I had a long term relationship end, and it ended amicably. We are still friends, we are not living together anymore and not you know, in a, you know, committed relationship anymore, but we're still friends, but it was it still hurt. It hurt a lot. There's grief with the end of any, you know, there's a grief process with the end of any relationship and then with the grief process. There's anger, there's depression, there's hurt, right? There's denial, all of those things, all those things came up from watching them happen. Wow, I feel really angry. Feel really angry. I am not responsible for the decisions this person made. I'm certainly responsible for my part of the relationship or anything that I did that you know brought about the end of the relationship. Um, but I am responsible for my feelings. I'm responsible for the experiences that I'm having. Right? So very often, somebody does something and we have a reaction to it. And we blame that person for our reaction. How dare you make me angry? And the reality is that that person didn't make you angry, they did something, whether you agree with what they did or not, they did something. Your anger is your reaction to what they did. So I was feeling angry, I was feeling hurt, I didn't want to feel that way with this person, I want to remain amicable. But with the end of the relationship came grief. And also, you know, it stirred up some trauma that I have about abandonment, and that sort of thing, some stuff, deep stuff from childhood. That's my stuff. There's nothing to do with this other person, other than the end of the relationship triggered it. Right, that's my stuff, my reaction is my stuff. So I started doing whole pono pono, you know, the, you know, on a day where I was feeling significant amount of anger, and, you know, I didn't, I didn't lose my mind with anger, I didn't break things in my house, or, you know, what kicked my dog or anything like that, I wouldn't do anything like that. But I was feeling it, I was, I'm like, God, you know, I don't want to feel this way. And I don't want to feel this way towards this person. They did what they did. They said what they said, they you know, but they made, you know, they made whatever choices that were appropriate for their experience, their life experience, when they really want to do is I really want to forgive, I really want to let go of these hard feelings. You know, I don't carry that around, that just makes things worse. You know, it's not necessarily going to get the relationship back, but it is going to make me feel better. And so I started doing these clearing statements, and I'm intending them towards myself, and I, you know, really, really, almost right away, I started to feel much, much better. That's one example of using whole hooponopono for healing. If I had hung on to that anger, you know, I don't know, I don't know what it would have happened. But I would have been uncomfortable. It's not, it wasn't a pleasant feeling. You know, but also, it is a signal. That is a signal from my unconscious mind, Guney hippie Lee, that there is something going on that there's something wrong, there's something in me that is unhealed, there's some you know, there's there's some wound there from a long time ago. And so how ho'oponopono can help me not be as reactive to my triggers, meaning that you know, the wound is affecting the less and probably healing. You can do it with your wounding to no think about your wounding feel what you're feeling, do not repress your feelings. This is not about repression. This is about clearing and letting go. repression is worse than expression. Expression is worse than letting go. Right? Don't swallow your feelings, that really, really unhealthy for you. Don't push them down, feel them, name them, you know, do work to let them go. And this is one way to do it. Right? I'll never forget, there was a time where I was meeting with a friend of mine who is a shamanic, and other, you know, spiritual teacher as well. And one of her students, man named Kevin, and I don't remember his last name, and I probably wouldn't share it without his permission anyway, but we were talking about wounding, right, like psychological, spiritual wounding, stuff that happened that traumatized you that left you wounded. And I was talking about triggers things that happen, that touch on our wounds that are unexpected. So, you know, you've probably heard the expression getting triggered, it's become this again, this sort of pop notion of anybody who has an emotional reaction to something. But you know, being triggered by something is usually having a surprising and overwhelming emotional reaction to something that you're in. You don't necessarily know where that's coming from. Although you can you can you know, ventually figure out where that's coming from. Triggers are always pointers to a to a deeply held unhealed wound, a wound that we're carrying around. So you know, something happens, somebody says something to you, I'll give you an example from from my life maybe

years ago, there was a family member. She passed away recently, actually, a family member by marriage, who, I don't know why, but she, well, I know why, because of some wounding from her childhood, she always tried to start trouble with people in the family, so and the way she did that was she would look for buttons to push. Right, she would always have the most snide, the most rude the most just, you know, just one of these people that was always trying to make somebody angry. And then then when she did when she got a reaction, there would be this like, secret satisfaction of not so secret satisfaction with her, right, because of her wounding. That's, that's what she did. She had to get these reactions out of people that maybe weren't safe for her to feel she probably had this anger, and hurt and lack of self love from her childhood. And it was safer for her to see those expressed and others than to express them herself. Herself. ourselves. She definitely had multiple selves. And so she would just say these, like, biting off hand, like just, you know, one of the meanest, you know, I would describe her as a very mean person. And, um, you know, she said something to me one day, I had we had tried to plan a vacation with some family members. And it never worked out, you know, we were going to, you know, I forget, maybe go to New York or something. And I kept asking him, like, Oh, what about this weekend? No, no, we've got plans this weekend. And it just, it never worked out. I tried four or five times to get it together. And she was involved in and never, it never happened. And so I see her one day. And she comes like the first thing she says, she comes right up to my face, and says, You're not a man of your word. And instantly, I was triggered instantly. She had almost this sixth, sixth sense about what she could say to people to set them off. But I stopped myself. I knew that's what she was doing. I had this instant, like angry reaction. And then I breathed for a second. Drop that and said, What do you mean? And she said, You said we were gonna go on vacation together and you blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Look, you know, I'm sorry, you feel that way. I tried three or four times to schedule something. And it never worked out. But that doesn't mean I'm not a man of my word. And and she had nothing to say to that. And, you know, she would I was married at the time when we were hanging out, and my wife at the time every year for her birthday, and sometimes for Christmas or whatever she would, I would either I would buy her or she would buy herself a new purse. She really liked purses. Which is fine like a no judgment on my part. But that was her big Christmas gift. She wanted a purse from she liked coach or whatever. And that was her thing. She would have a new purse a couple times a year. And and she liked nice purses and nobody was going broke over them and she wasn't shopping every other day and it wasn't crazy or anything like that. And I just remember she would get really mad this person would get really nasty about you got another new purse must be nice. Must be nice to be you. It should be really nasty. And I remember going over there when one time and and my my ex wife had a new and it was one of those times where she had a new purse that this person hadn't seen another new purse. How many of those do you have like 50 I let you go? Oh no, she's got way more than that. She's got like 150 don't you don't you've got like 150 Isn't it cool? Is this purse? Awesome? Right? I had just taken what she said I knew there was gonna be this reaction. I took what she said. And I kind of did fused it, but this was this was this person she was trying, you know. And it was something that before the fork, she was around, my ex wife was not really self conscious about this stuff, but she wanted people to be self conscious. And she wanted people to be uncomfortable and she wanted to she wanted that. So she would touch these wounds and people, she would find them and touch them. Which is neat. Which is neat, because, um, you know, these triggers are pointers to something inside of us that is unhealed. So, back to my original story, I realized I've gone down a couple of rabbit holes. So I'm talking to my friend who's also a teacher and her student, Kevin. And I said, you know, somebody said, I was talking about how triggers were pointers to back to our wounds that needed to be healed. And my friend said, you know, what, if instead of wounds we call them teachers, because they're teaching us things about ourselves, I Oh, I like that. That's a nice reframe. And this guy, Kevin said. So triggers are like bread crumbs from the teacher. And I was like, whoo, I like that. That sounds amazing. I want to steal that. I said, I'm going to start using that phrase, I'm going to talk about you when I use it. And maybe someday I'll write a book called bread crumbs from the teacher talking about our wounding and talking about our triggers. But that's what it is. That's what's going on with our triggers. So when we're triggered, then, is a perfect opportunity. As I was, as I was feeling angered by this recent breakup, this is a great opportunity for me to do some cleaning. Why? Because I'm being given bread crumbs from a teacher a wound that I have a wound. Now I know, I'm pretty positive. Where this wound isn't mean, what it is, and in when that happened, and all of these things I have, I have wounds about being abandoned from childhood I've wounds about not being cared for I've wounds about being rejected. You know, that I work on that I have worked on, that I've, you know, worked on for a very long period of time, and probably will continue to work on for the rest of my life. But this is an opportunity for you to heal your wounds do not need to know where they came from. You do not need to remember your trauma to heal it. This is an important lesson that I learned in my own life. I thought, if I'm going to heal my trauma, I need to remember everything that ever happened to me that was traumatic in excruciating detail. And that was a road to hell, for me. That made things much worse for me. I mean, when I was going through, and to begin beginning of my trauma healing, stuff was coming up anyway, like flashbacks were happening and you know, nightmares and things were popping up that, that, that I was starting to remember. And I was like, I have to remember more, I have to remember more and really kind of forcing myself and I find actually, in my experience, it's not, it's not critical. It's not it's not critical to re traumatize yourself to heal from the trauma. Because we can, you know, even on just a brain level. We can create new neural pathways around those wounds, or through those wounds or past those wounds without invoking their memories. They can affect us less. And that to me is healing. You know, I still have you know, it's interesting. I was talking to somebody recently who was talking about talking about their anxiety, they're like, oh, you know, I feel bad. I have you know, I have anxiety I'm on anti anxiety meds I'm like, Yeah, you in 95% of the planet are on anti anxiety meds. In fact, I think I have to put my dog on anti anxiety meds You know, it's tough. Everybody has it, we live in a world that is not very, not very good when it comes to, or is very good at producing anxiety. But we live in a world where there is a tremendous amount of anxiety producing stimulus.

We have exposure to media, we have social media, talking about something that produces anxiety, you can go in there and see, you know, I talk about social media that it's people's highlight reels like people only put people either put stuff on there, that is like making themselves look really amazing. Right there, you know, oh, just got into a relationship just got married, just got a new house, right. That's their highlight reels. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, you know, people want to share the stuff they're proud of. And, honestly, I love to see that I love. You know, some people don't. But I love to see, I love to celebrate people, when they get new jobs when they get a new house, new relationship, whatever, when they're doing well, I love to see that. And then you get other people that is that our doom and gloom and anger all the time too. And both of those things can produce anxiety. I find, you know, it's either like, I'm Doom scrolling, I'm reading for horrible stuff, which is making me feel horrible. Or I'm seeing everybody, you know, living comparatively amazing lives. And why don't I have a beautiful house like that? And why don't I have a beautiful relationship like that? And why don't I have that fancy car? Why am I not eating? at that restaurant? I'll tell you what made me jealous. A friend of mine. A friend of mine is visiting New York right now. And she was posting pictures of the pizza. And that made me jealous. I want that pizza. It's making me hungry. It's making me hungry to look at that pizza, I want it. Right. So it's, you know, it's tough. It's tough. So these kinds of things, I think, produce a lot of anxiety in us. And not to mention the fact that, you know, some of us are just wired for that. And so anyway, this person was telling me, you know, I feel I take anxiety meds, and I feel bad. I don't know, she feels bad about it or not. But I'm like, you don't have to feel bad about that. I understand that. And I said, and I lived with symptoms of PTSD for decades. You know, when she said, Oh, I'm sorry, can you need to do want to tell me about it, I'm like, well, I'll give you an overview, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to trauma dump on you either. Because that can be you know, there's such a thing as secondhand trauma, where we pass our trauma on to other people. But when stuff comes up for me, now I have different I've more tools to deal with it. Those wounds are still there, but they just don't have as much of an effect. So let me give you a little bit of a metaphor for these psychological wounds. And, you know, speaking of these things as psychological wounds, is a metaphor. They're not like physical wounds, but so I was born with birth defects. And one of those birth defects required me to get my lower leg amputated when I was a toddler, basically 18 months old. And so, that amputation is unless you know, tech, you know, biomechanical technology leaps ahead in the next decade or so and is able to attach, you know, grow me a new leg or something. That wound will be with me for the rest of my life, that that missing part of my body will be with me for the rest of my life. Like the psychological wounds that I have from trauma, whatever, but that doesn't mean it has to affect me in extremely negative ways, right? So there are things that are a bit more challenging for me because of that, but I did you know, I wound up you know, as a kid, I wound up playing football and baseball I do a lot of sports. When I was a kid I played football, baseball, racquetball and tennis. I play basketball at home and some other sports and I would skate and play pickup hockey and stuff and some very active, very active. And most of the time, I don't even notice or think about it. So it's not like this thing is holding me back. The bank drawback these days is when I go through airport security. And because my leg has metal in it, and I go through the backscatter X ray I gotta get, it's a little better these days, normally, I just go through and they do a little swab to make sure there's nothing explosive or something in my prosthetic leg. But there were times where I had to, you know, receive what's called an enhanced pat down. very invasive. I was in the beginning of the TSA, like, some of the first times I flew, I was sent to a back room to have my leg x rayed, like x rayed not, you know, not going through a metal detector, not the backscatter X ray that you you know, go through that you put your hands up, and it looks for foreign objects on your body x rayed, like medical X ray. I've been through all of that, and that, you know, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is tough, but, but I manage and they work within and I work around that. So it's the same thing, it doesn't affect me very much. And, you know, there are there are some things that I have to consider. But, but that is sort of like, the psychological wounds as well, the psycho spiritual wounds, there's stuff there. And then there are parts of it that give me certain abilities that I'm able to use to help other people, right. So I practice shamanism. And in shamanism and many shamanic cultures, one has to have gone through some trauma, or even been born with a birth defect, to become a shaman. Right, that's an important aspect to it. You have to be the wounded healer, you have to understand trauma, but it also changes you energetically. I am energetically different than most people from birth. Simply by virtue of having a different physical structure than most human beings. I have fewer bones in my body than most human beings. I remember, I would joke like this, this you know, having a prosthetic leg and all this stuff. Like, when you're a kid, you gotta have fun with it, you really do. So I remember being in class and like biology class, and high school or something, and they're like, oh, you know, there are 206 bones in the human body, and I'd raise my hand and they go, he has not me. You know, stuff like that. Um, you gotta have, you gotta have some fun with it. But that's the thing, it doesn't have a it doesn't have a strong negative effect on my life, nor do my psychological wounds anymore. From time to time, something comes up. From time to time, something comes up, like when I go through a breakup, and I feel devastated by it for some period of time. But now I have tools like her ho'oponopono, where I can work through the emotions, and I can handle things that can become less reactive. That's a big thing. Right? When we're reactive, we interact poorly, we make bad decisions, right? Because we're not in our right mind when we're triggered, and we're reactive. So I find that the more that I work with myself in triggered states through ho'oponopono and other practices, the less reactive I become. And the better choices I can make. Even though these emotions can still come up from time to time, emotions come up. It's not that they go away. It's that I feel them. They don't stick around as long and they don't lose my head. Right? So don't feel them as intensely. And I also learned to give myself grace. This is an important consideration as well. Right? Remember the four phrases of hope on opponent I'm sorry, I'm sorry that you're feeling this way. I'm sorry that you have this experience. I'm sorry that you know this, for whatever part I played in this experience. Forgive me, forgive me for one holding on to this, you know, mistake or forgive me for holding on to this rough feeling. Thank you, thank you for giving me the wherewithal to

take care of this. And I love you. This is important. Self love, give yourself grace, stop being so hard on yourself, you are a human being, we all fall down. We all get up. And again, this is, you know, this is part of the problem with social media. And you know, that sort of thing is that we see people's highlight reels, we think, oh my gosh, so and so just has a perfect life. Nothing ever goes wrong with this person. And that's just not true. And I don't care how amazing people are, how wonderful they are, how much how, how wonderful they seem. Everybody's got problems. Everybody has wounds, everybody has trauma. Everybody has stuff that happened in their background. Everybody has lost people. Everybody has been turned down for a job or a relationship. Everybody has had somebody say hurtful words to them. It's it, you know, it's happened. We've all got ups and downs. We're all living our own experiences. But, you know, this is universal. And that can make us think like, we're unique. We're alone in the world. We don't have you know, we're the only people with these problems. We're the only people with these experiences. It used to feel that way for me when I was first working through PTSD. When I first was diagnosed with PTSD, and I'm like, Well, I'm the only person who's feeling this No, no, that's an actual written symptom. It's part of the diagnosis. That means everybody has this. Everybody who has diagnosed with PTSD has the same symptoms that you do. You know, they're expressed in different ways. They have them to different degrees, but it's the same. That was eye opening. For me, I had no idea I thought it was, you know, thought I was completely alone, it can feel that way. So when it feels that way for you just know that you're not alone in the world. So with that I am going to wrap for the day, but I will, I'll give a couple of things. So as I record this, it is April 20. It's for 20 For you cannabis users. I do have something coming up at the end of this month, you can go to my website for more information. It's a 28 day course, called energy body alchemy. It is online, it's delivered through email and videos and a private Facebook group. And if I don't say so myself, it is absolutely amazing. It's an amazing course, I have given it once before this is the second time I'm delivering it. The feedback from the first cohort was amazing. People had great experiences, you will be surrounded by amazing spiritual seekers. And it'll be it's a completely transformative experience. And it is very reasonably priced. It's priced so that most people can't afford it. So you can go to my website main shaman.com about that. The other thing that has happened recently, that is pretty cool. Maybe I should lead with news, I don't know. The other thing that's happened for me recently that I'm very grateful for is I have been studying with the International metaphysical ministry I've been studying to become an ordained minister with them, I have just passed my exam I have, I have some things to do. Like I have to take some vows and sign some paperwork and you know, that sort of thing and send it in. But then I will be becoming an ordained metaphysical minister. And I am thinking about offering ministry. So there would probably be some sort of online forum. It'll be announced on my website as well and probably through through email. So if you go to my website and get on my email list, follow me on social media, whatever. You know, think about doing a regular ministry now this would not be a denominational ministry meaning you don't have to be Christian or anything to join in. It will include things like meditation, and you know, the whole idea of metaphysics is just to connect with Source consciousness which you might say, God or what have you, and that's fine. But this will be open to everyone and it will include practice in a group setting. So I will I'm still thinking about the format and delivery mechanism for that but that's coming up something I've been very interested in doing for a very long time so I'm excited to offer that. And I have also have two free classes coming up on learn on the Learn at Live platform. Those are on the calendar on my website, main shaman ma i n e sh a mn.com you can check that out. With that. I will leave you my friends. This has been an episode about Ho'oponopono we'll talk to you very soon.

Announcer 56:16

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John more. For more info or to contact John go to main sherman.com That's maimeshman.com