Loving fearlessly through gratitude is one of the most courageous things a human being can do.
- Oprah Winfrey
To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees – these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. But, I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude and grace.
- Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
Gratitude Creates Oneness
The gratitude we feel for the people we love is a recognition of the unity we share with them. Love means overcoming the feeling of separation. It brings a sense of completion that is denied to the ego. So if you take a moment to say either silently or to someone you love “thank-you for sharing this life together with such love”, know that the two of you are connected at the deepest level where grace unites us all.
- Deepak Chopra
Marianne Willamson teaches us that there are only two emotions in life: love and fear. When we open ourselves to feeling love from a place of gratitude, something miraculous happens – fear starts to melt away. When you choose to love everything and everybody around you, you send a clear message to the universe: my love transcends fear, anger, rejection – I love even those who have hurt me, because they are the ones who need it the most. I’m thankful for every experience good or bad and for how it has shaped into the person I am today.
- Oprah Winfrey
As you may already notice, your ego, will object to this way of living. Our ego will argue and present ample evidence as to why loving and thanking everybody, especially the difficult people in our lives, is a very, very bad idea. It is helpful, at this point, to remember the true nature of the ego. The ego, by definition is the sense of separateness and it thrives on judgement and comparison. Because the ego evokes a very strong sense of “me” and “I”, the idea of extending unconditional love and gratitude towards others evokes immediate resistance. The ego will try to tell you that if you do this you will get walked all over, you will be letting them get away with such and such.
The truth is that the authentic gratitude opens up an energy exchange in which relationships can flourish, or if they need to end, they end with ease.
Relationships flourish when we are able to offer ourselves to one another with unlimited love, compassion, kindness and understanding. This ideal is impossible to reach without expanded awareness.
Our own desires and ego needs stand in the way, but our true self knows better…grace accomplishes what the ego cannot.
- Deepak Chopra
Compassion and Forgiveness Open the Pathway towards Relating with Gratitude
Compassion is the key to recognizing and honouring what links us together, it is the knowing that because you are human and I am human that we are really more alike than we could ever be different. When you judge another human being you deny the connection that ties us all.
- Oprah
Judgement is fuelled by a sense of righteousness that the ego enjoys to the fullest. It likes nothing better than to feel that it is in the right. Being thankful is the opposite of being judgemental – when you are thankful for something or someone you can’t be judgemental at the same time. This fact has healing power. Stepping down from the judge’s chair brings a complete shift in attitude, even the person’s worst faults become something you wish to help with, not condemn. The next step towards compassion is to forgive. In the absence of judgement there is nothing to resent – grudges start to loosen their grip. When you forgive your awareness becomes more inclusive – it expands beyond “I”, “me” and “mine” …this is when the window of compassion opens. You empathize with the common humanity that links you to everyone else on earth. This shared sympathy deepens our humanity.
True compassion purifies the soul and reveals the deepest truth:
When you stop judging others, you stop judging yourself…
and once you get to that place, you are in the state of grace.
- Deepak Chopra
Ho’oponopono: the Hawaiian Forgiveness Ritual
The Ho’oponopono ritual can be applied to any relationship or situation in which you feel disconnected or troubled. More often than not, you may find yourself saying these four sentences silently… they need not ever be spoken out loud. Please note that when saying sorry you are not blaming yourself rather you are expressing a heart-felt apology for being part of a situation or relationship in which there is disharmony. Ho’oponopono is about opening the heart and liberating guilt, blame and shame - it is a method of accessing the universal energy of unconditional love.
Ho’oponopono means a return to the Divine Plan…
Ho'oponopono belongs to a system of ancient Hawaiian teaching called the 'Huna'. 'Hu' means 'knowledge', and 'na' represents 'wisdom', and the guardians of this ancient teaching are called 'kahunas' - Huna experts.
The Hawaiians call their group of islands 'The Land of Aloha’, the Land of Love. 'Aloha' contains the essence of the Huna teaching of knowledge and wisdom, and it forms the basis of Ho'oponopono. Aloha has a single commandment: never to harm, always to help. The command to harm no one begins with not harming oneself. And thus, to love your neighbour as yourself. 'Mana aloha' is the essence of God's energy, the energy that penetrates and informs everything. The wise Hindu monks call this energy 'bhakti' , meaning 'devotion', and the Tibetan monks call it 'compassion'. By this, they did not merely have in mind an emotion, but a directly experienced energy that influences the environment and creates a new reality. Ho'oponopono is this compassion in action.
Ho'oponopono is a simple way of arriving at unity, inner peace and returning to harmony. It expresses the deep need to live once again in harmony with oneself and with humanity, nature and God. Ho'o means 'to make' and pono is translated 'right' or 'correct'. And so ho'oponopono quite simply represents to 'make rightly right'. To 'make anything rightly right' means to join oneself again with one's Higher Self and the Source of All Being - to be in one's own centre, returned to harmony, and balanced once again so that one is able to realign the environment and reshape reality.
The forgiveness ritual of Ho'oponopono is love in action. You forgive yourself and others for having inflicted any sort of hurt, or for having failed to help when needed. 'Making things rightly right' is a simple four-step procedure that helps you learn to forgive yourself unconditionally, to love, and, additionally to make things better.
I am sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
Thank you
These four sentences seem like a mantra or a magical formula, but they are rather a mediation and a prayer. They operate through time and space, beyond cause and effect, and transmit themselves directly to your Inner Family, the Higher Self, the Inner Child and your waking consciousness. After a short while you achieve inner peace and change from disharmony to harmony.
- Ho'oponopono: The Hawaiian forgiveness ritual as the key to your life's fulfillment, by Ulrich E. Dupree
What I most want to emphasize is the power of these four simple sentences when applied to oneself…anytime you feel regret, self judgement, doubt, self-criticism or are otherwise separated from Oneness (aka: Source, God, the Universe, Divinity, Energy, Qi, Presence)…simply pause and say to yourself and to Oneness:
You move yourself from separation to union while you say:
I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you.“I am sorry. Please Forgive me. I love you. Thank you.”
Mantra:
Aham Prema
My true essence is divine love
As you repeat this mantra, let your heart open and feel pure love flow through all your relationships and into every part of your life.
Unity
I Am Sorry
for thinking we were separate
for believing that I needed to earn your love
and you needed to earn mine
for treating love like a currency
that needed to be saved, guarded and cautiously spent.
Please Forgive Me
for forgetting that we are walking the same road
and for the hurt I have caused.
I Love You
the you that is the same as me
Thank You
for receiving me
and showing me
our shared unity.
- Patti Wardlaw