The course you are starting is a profound, experiential journey that is based on my deep study of 24 of the world’s belief systems over the past 49+ years and points the way to living with a fully awakened mind. Today, we call that being mindful. According to Aunty Pilahi Pakī, one of Hawaiʻi’s most beloved and respected wisdom keepers, that’s called Living ALOHA.
Living with an awakened mind means being self-aware – of your thoughts, emotions, words, and actions – toward identifying long-held habitual patterns that no longer serve you or others. When you start to un-cover these habitual patterns, you recognize they were never yours to begin with which makes it easier to liberate yourself of them.
As you continue to free yourself of outdated beliefs, your True Nature of ALOHA (which has always been with you) fully reveals itself along with all of your inherent qualities (curiosity, humor, abundance, primordial confidence, insight, imagination, etc.). You begin to live your life based on ALOHA. Life’s struggle, mental agitation, anxiety, and suffering dissolve.
So Why is ALOHA our True Nature?
To answer that, we have to first define ALOHA.
According to the Pukuʻi and Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, ALOHA is defined as:
love, affection, compassion, mercy, sympathy, pity, kindness, sentiment, grace, charity, greeting; salutation; sweetheart, lover, loved one, beloved, loving, kind, compassionate, charitable, lovable; to love or be fond of; to show kindness, mercy, pity, charity, affection; to venerate; to remember with affection; to greet or hail.
These are the hoʻopukakū (outer or literal) definitions of the word. To get the noahuna (secret or hidden) meaning of any word, Tutu Kane and Tutu Lady taught me to define the word by its smallest parts. So with the word ALOHA, the parts we get are: A, LO, ALO, and HA:
A: luminous, to shine brightly like a star or sparkle like a gem
LO: front half of the skull
ALO: face, presence, to be with
HA: breath, life, the number four (which, in Hawaiian philosophy, is considered sacred)
What does that all mean? Three of Hawaiʻi’s kūpuna (elders) from the 20th century offer answers: Aunty Pilahi Paki, Aunty Morrnah Nālamakū Simeona, and Aunty Nana Veary.
Aunty Pilahi Paki:
“ALOHA is the word my kūpuna (Elders) attributed to the Universe. ALOHA is the Universe…ALOHA – the Spirit – is now hidden from us by a filmy veil of Eternity as revered Personalities. For ALOHA, as translated and interpreted by my ancestors, was an element of life. It was an element, vital and important to their daily habits in life. ALOHA for them was the spiritual essence endowed to man in his and her beginning. ALOHA was that tiny glow to life or spark in life, which enabled man to imply his thoughts, and apply his heart, to the imagination and passion of his and her Soul.”
Aunty Pilahi’s definition of ALOHA comes directly from her kūpuna and from her teacher, David Kahekili Kia. ALOHA is everything in the infinite Universe. It is the spirit or energy at its foundation.
Aunty Nana Veary, from Change We Must:
“When I asked [my grandmother] why she fed [a stranger], she got angry and said, ‘I was not feeding the man; I was entertaining the Spirit of ALOHA within him.’ The practice of honoring the other was so much a part of [our] culture that it needed no name. Today, we call it the ‘ALOHA spirit,’ but to the Hawaiians of old, it was inherent and natural. They lived it. To feed a stranger passing by – that is pure ALOHA. Today, we have to be taught it because we are so far removed from the Hawaiian culture that we’ve had to give it a name.”
And, this ALOHA of old to which Aunty Nana refers was indeed my own experience with Tutu Kane and Tutu Lady and growing up in Hawaiʻi in the 60’s.
Aunty Morrnah Nālamakū Simeona:
“Western man has gone to the extremes with his intellectualism; it divides and keeps people separate. Man then becomes a destroyer because he manages and copes, rather than letting the perpetuating force of ALOHA through him for right action.”
Aunty Nana Veary, from Change We Must:
“The consciousness of ALOHA in being human is the essence, the sum, and substance of all beliefs. It is the essence of the teachings of all the seers and mystics in the world’s history. To live ALOHA is the first essential of every satisfactory life. The second is to go out thinking, speaking, writing, loving, and living from this center to serve [that consciousness] in others.”
We don’t have to dig too far to understand that the people of Hawaiʻi in antiquity had an advanced understanding of their place in the cosmos and knowledge of life and nature in the physical realm. There is no doubt they knew what they were doing and what they were talking about.
But, if you have any doubt whatsoever, let me add a couple of things:
First, the 24 wisdom traditions I studied (which I’ll now call The Sources) ALL say that at the foundation of existence in the Universe is a conscious life-force energy from which everything unfolds and back into which everything enfolds. In other words, this energy is the foundation of all existence. There isn’t anything that isn’t this energy, they say. Everything, including us, is it.
Quantum physics agrees. At the sub-molecular level – quarks and the like – there is only energy in motion in the form of pure light. Quantum physicists call this energy the “quantum field” – a field of light in constant motion. It is conscious and everything emanates from it into physical form then dissolves back into it out of physical form. We, too, are it.
Buddhist logic says the same thing: We come into this world with a natural connection with the Universal consciousness because we are it. The reason we don’t experience it consistently now is because we’re allowing our mind to fill our time with worries about the future; anxiety about the past; and projecting what we think onto other people and situations.
As a result of being born human, we entered this world with a number of inherent and natural qualities: mindfulness, awareness, curiosity, humor, primordial confidence, feeling (an action verb), insight, imagination, and the ability to think using our original mind (our naʻau, our heart-mind, our un-conditioned mind).
Thinking from the conceptual/conditioned/ego mind (our “logical” mind), on the other hand, didn’t start until later in life and wasn’t fully developed until age 25. By that time, we were socialized into being fully reliant on it.
Before losing our original way of thinking to the conditioned/ego mind, we actively utilized our inherent human qualities and our heart-mind.
As we begin to let go of the habitual patterns held as beliefs by the conditioned/ego mind, our ALOHA nature becomes obvious to us. We remember and use our inherent human qualities again, we become beacons of ALOHA. ALOHA then radiates out from us and positively affects those around us and beyond (proven by quantum mechanics). In other words, the energy of living ALOHA spreads out concentrically like a ripple caused by dropping a stone in a pond.
The Fall
Thanks to Western culture, over the last two centuries, we have become more and more conceptual/ego-mind driven. In fact, we seemingly can’t stop. As a result, according to indigenous cultures around the world, we, our country, and the world are experiencing struggle, mental agitation, and suffering in all areas of our lives.
Buddhist logic says we’ve become addicted to and identify with our conditioned/ego mind and its thoughts (instead of our true nature, ALOHA). And we distract ourselves from the present moment – the one place we connect with ALOHA – by using entertainments, cravings, and endless lists of things to do.
Aunty Nana Veary, from Change We Must:
“Separation from [ALOHA] leads to deterioration. Anything or anyone separated from [ALOHA] begins to deteriorate mentally and physically and dies spiritually. Yet we stumble around in the dark. We create confusion and label it evil or call it demon. Neither exists in reality. We create our own evil and demons. We have separated from ALOHA and mistakenly invested confused thoughts with a power they do not have.
We need to repair the broken communication within ourselves. We must be honest with ourselves, forgive ourselves, get back in touch with [our] source, and all will be well. We can do it all by ourselves. In silence, we can.”
How Do We Realign with ALOHA?
According to the late native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, Pono Shim, and his colleague, Thao Le, the way to reconnect or realign with ALOHA is through Tibetan Buddhist mindfulness meditation. And the Tibetan Buddhist masters like H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama would certainly agree.
Nana Veary, from Change We Must:
“Silence was the secret power of the Hawaiians. Through silence, they communicated with nature. The language of silence salutes ALOHA in all living things. The silence that comes in meditation is a conscious acknowledgment of ALOHA’s allness. In that silence, one is beyond words and thoughts. The highest form of meditation is inner stillness. In meditation, let your mind and heart release…let your body and all that surrounds it be still…let the earth and sea and air and heaven itself be still. The deeper the meditative silence, the more powerful the connection with ALOHA. You are a dynamic center in the creative flow that is [ALOHA].”
When we simply observe our outdated habitual patterns, it loosens their hold on us. Then we can begin to truly experience ALOHA. From that point, as we continue to release old, out-dated patterns, we deepen our connection with ALOHA until we are living our lives from that place.
The more we live ALOHA, the more we experience peace and harmony. The more we experience peace & harmony, the more we treat ourselves with kindness & compassion. The more we treat ourselves with kindness & compassion, the more we treat others and the planet with kindness & compassion. This forms the basis of working together cooperatively – free of ego – on any issue that is for the highest good of all sentient beings and the planet.
