Truth has been obscured in different cultures for eons and for various reasons including power, control, and lack of trust.
In Hawaiʻi, the culture of the native people was deliberately obscured by the colonizing culture. Since the empowerment of religious colonizers, Hawaiian cultural practitioners began withdrawing to the valleys and hidden places to save their craft from complete elimination.
In attempts to re-integrate their practices into modern Hawaiian life mid-20th century, practice components were adapted in a way that would be accepted by the colonizing culture. Thus, the kahu of those practices became the keepers of the secrets withheld.
ALOHA had been lived as a spiritual practice in Hawaiʻi as late as the 1980’s, though in dwindling numbers. The late 80ʻs and early 90ʻs brought what had begun raging across the continent 10 years earlier: materialism and the adage of “greed is good.”
A steady creep of materialism has infected Hawaiʻi since then; first from haole, then joined in by locals themselves. Egomania personified.
ALOHA’s true meaning had begun to wane in the late 19th century but, by the turn of the 20th century and the onset of tourism, ALOHA had been completely co-opted by colonization. Its noahuna (secret/esoteric/spiritual) meaning had been all but forgotten to the average person.
To the average person today, ALOHA means hello, goodbye, love, kindness, compassion, or some combination therein. The energy of ALOHA is still very much present in their interpretation, though, because these same people feel there is more to it than what they can verbalize.
And, of course, there is.
The problem with the world today is that we don’t view or treat ourselves and everything we can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, sense, and imagine as the only thing that truly exists: the consciousness, intelligence, and life-force energy of primordially pure Isness.
Taoists call it the Tao. Jews, Muslims, and Christians call it God. Native Americans call it Great Spirit. Hawaiians call it Aloha. Wiccans call it Mother. Metaphysicals call it Source. Quantum physicists call it the Quantum Field. Every culture has a different name for it but, no matter what it’s called, it is all the same thing, the same energy, the same feeling, the same primordial purity from which everyone and everything emanates.
Everyone and everything is Isness experiencing itself. Period. End of it. There is no other story.
We need to start letting ourselves be lived by Isness, by Aloha, the Universe, the Tao, Great Spirit, Primordial Purity, God. THIS is what makes positive change in the world. It’s the HEIGHT of ego and sacrilege to think that we know better or “need” to interpret for others Guidance that arises from Isness.
ALOHA is the spirit of all existence. It is the life force energy of the universe. It is the True Nature of Reality. It is the underlying consciousness of all that is. And we are being asked by the keepers of the secret to return to it – to live ALOHA – which was how the care of everyone and the environment was perpetuated o ka wā kahiko.
According to Pilahi Paki and Nana Veary, Aloha is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. According to Thao Le & Pono Shim and others, Tibetan Buddhist mindfulness awareness meditation is a path back to living ALOHA.
Now is the time to act! Now is the time to return to the ancient ways: to live ALOHA, to be ALOHA – Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians alike!
Imua kākou! E hoʻi ka hā! E hoʻi ke Aloha!
