Traditionally, Ho’oponopono involved conflicting parties coming together to ask forgiveness for their respective actions. In this way, negative energies could be cleared in Hawaiian communities by elders or Kahunas using Ho’oponopono with conflicting individuals or communities. Traditional Hawaiian Ho’oponopono was first presented in a 1958 book by Mary Kawena Pukui. She described Ho’oponopono as the practice of families or parties involved in some wrong coming together to clear what was wrong between them by "prayer, dialogue, discussion, confession, repentance, mutual restitution, and forgiveness."
A more individualized and modern form of Ho’oponopono was introduced by Morrnah Simeona, a native Hawaiian Kahuna from birth, and developed further by one of her students, Dr Stanley Hew Len. This ‘modern’ form of Ho’oponopono has rapidly grown in popularity due to Dr Len’s co-authored book, ZeroLimits. In Morrnah and Dr Len’s version of Ho’oponopono, one is encouraged to take full responsibility for all that enters into one’s perceptions that is upsetting or disturbing. In an interview Morrnah explains:
We are the sum total of our experiences, which is to say that we are burdened by our pasts. When we experience stress or fear in our lives, if we would look carefully, we would find that the cause is actually a memory. It is the emotions which are tied to these memories which affect us now. The subconscious associates an action or person in the present with something that happened in the past. When this occurs, emotions are activated and stress is produced.
In this solipsistic approach to perceived reality, one becomes the creator of everything by drawing into their life, situations and people that bring up unresolved issues from the past. These issues may stem from earlier in one’s life or even earlier lives, and are more generally known as negative karma.
Dr Len’s popular but simple technique involves silently repeating the following words to oneself when confronted with any negative situation:
I’m sorry, please forgive me.
Dr Len used his technique while working as a staff psychologist at a ward for mentally ill criminal patients at
Some critics believe that taking on responsibility for the negative actions of others can do long term psychological harm by developing a massive guilt complex for all that’s wrong in the world. Such criticism acts as a warning not to take Dr Len’s technique to extremes. At the same time, such criticism promotes passivity in a large world where one is a distant observer of multiple deeply upsetting events where one cannot possibly directly intervene. By practicing Ho’oponopono, the distant observer becomes a proactive agent of change, at least as far as their own perceptions are concerned. If Dr Len is right, then the changes produced in one’s perceptual world may directly impact on what others are experiencing. In other words, changes in the ‘real world’ may directly arise from one’s internal perceptual changes.
This finally takes me to the alien abduction issue. Many claim to have been abducted in experiences that are often deeply traumatic. Others may know people who claim to have been abducted and traumatized by the experience. Finally, many read about or study about alien abductions and experience feelings of anger, fear, hatred, etc., that all this could be happening. The possibility that such abductions may be happening with the complicity of official government authorities or corporate entities only compounds feelings to anger, fear, etc. felt by many familiar with the abduction phenomenon.
If any of the above negative emotional reactions to the alien abduction phenomenon apply to you, then Ho’oponopono is a technique to clear these negative feelings and see if they produce any real external changes. At the very least, one can be proactive with the emotional filters we use in perceiving injustices occurring in the world around us. For those directly involved in alien abductions, Ho’oponpono may offer the means for ending what is occurring. If anything I have written in this article upsets you, “I’m sorry, please forgive me”.