Aloha: My brother responds to my book

Posted on April 29, 2012 by admin

Many of you have asked me what my brothers’ responses were to my book.  I hadn’t heard from my brothers except via email since our mother’s funeral.  Several weeks ago I sent them all an email asking how they were and got no response.  That pretty much told me what I needed to know about how they felt about me.  My cousin had told me to expect little to no contact from them with my parents both gone and my cousin’s predictions have been accurate until yesterday.

One of my brothers called yesterday and informed me that they had all read my book and that my two other brothers felt stabbed in the back by my book. He went on to say that he could dispute many of the facts as inaccurate.  I asked him to name them and the only one he could come up with was that my father wasn’t sixteen years older than his sister. I told him that was what I had always been told but really, what difference did it make anyway? He went on to say that he felt stabbed in the back, too.  His last words before I terminated the conversation were:  “If Mama and Daddy were alive today they would disown you.”  I told him I was going to hang up, good bye, and that’s just what I did.  He immediately called back and left a voice mail that said only “aloha.”

This brother lived on Oahu one summer and I wonder if he knows the true meaning of the word. I found this definition from www.huna.org: ” Aloha is being a part of all, and all being a part of me. When there is pain – it is my pain. When there is joy – it is also mine. I respect all that is as part of the Creator and part of me. I will not willfully harm anyone or anything. When food is needed I will take only my need and explain why it is being taken. The earth, the sky, the sea are mine to care for, to cherish and to protect. This is Hawaiian – this is Aloha! ”

Aloha was lacking in my upbringing and something I strive for today in all my relations.  I hope my brothers are going in that direction in their lives too.  I did not write my book to hurt them or stab them in the back.  I intentionally protected them in many ways as I wrote the book.  The book was about me and my life, and they were characters in the story that was mine.  I long ago forgave my brothers and love them.  After yesterday I am back to the Hawaiian practice of ho’o pono pono with them.  Ho’o pono pono is an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. It is done by taking full responsibility for my actions and knowing I brought this situation to myself and then repeating with a pure heart these words: I love you. I am sorry.  Please forgive me. I thank you.

Aunty Pua Mahoe teaches that aloha is our birthright.  I believe that is true and I will do the best I can to build families and communities on that foundation.  Ho’o pono pono is a powerful practice for maintaining aloha in all our relations and clearing troubles and possibly karma.

Aloha dear readers.

 

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Want to buy a signed copy of my memoir?

Posted on February 12, 2012 by admin

Aloha readers, I am sorry I have neglected the blog but I have been busy writing my book.  Here is the link to the ebay site where you can purchase a signed copy.  It is also available on bn.com and amazon.com.  Mahalo nui for your interest!  book purchase

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It’s a Book!

Posted on January 23, 2012 by admin

Please come to my book release party!

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My first book has been published!

Posted on December 30, 2011 by admin

Aloha to all you dear readers. My memoir has finally been published and you will soon be able to buy it here through pay pal. Stay tuned for more information! Bright blessings and aloha for a stellar 2012 and thank you for reading in 2011!

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Empathy

Posted on December 17, 2011 by admin

Aloha to you dear reader and mahalo nui loa for reading my blog.  My husband and I have just returned to beautiful Kauai from a two week Panama Canal cruise with a brief layover in Arkansas to check on our retreat center there and see our children.  On the cruise we stopped in Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Grand Cayman.  The international contacts were wonderful.  I found that we are all on the same page about oppressive governments world wide.  This is an exciting time to be alive.  For the first time in history freedom seekers are united world wide.  This force is unstoppable.  The people will not be held down and we will be allowed to live in accordance with our true natures: free.

What astounded us the most was the number of unconscious and entitled cruisers.  We saw jaw dropping behaviors.  One lady in her fifties began to beat a young marine regarding her viewing position of the Panama Canal transit.  People were pushing and standing over people and walking across possessions to get a better position.  Many people broke in line at the buffets.  One lady grazed the buffet picking out what she wanted with her hands, eating with her hands, then putting food she didn’t want or like back in the buffet.  A man in his early sixties was going through the buffet line and his shorts dropped to his ankles revealing his tightie whities.  He continued through the line with his shorts at his ankles until his wife came and pulled them up.  These are people that when the center of the universe is found will be surprised that they aren’t there.  We saw the same kind of behaviors on our plane flight from LAX to Kauai.  It seems that many people are having a hard time seeing outside of themselves.

The upcoming unity consciousness that has already begun in my opinion requires us to step outside ourselves and think of others.  Empathy is a skill we all need to strengthen for without it we will have difficulty developing compassion . Empathy is the ability to recognize feelings of another and to some degree relate to them or feel them.  It is the capacity to step into someone else’s skin and experience the world through their eyes. It is developed at both a mind and feeling level.  Children should be taught this skill from a young age.

One privilege I have had as a result of counseling others for twenty-three years is the ability to strengthen my empathy.  Many many people have shared with me how it feels to be them at the deepest most private levels.  There are ways you too can strengthen your empathy and teach it to others.  Imagine how you might feel in another person’s situation.  Suspend all beliefs, judgements, and preconceived ideas.  When you find yourself judging a person, say to yourself:  I am that too, because given the same set of circumstances that person is experiencing you might do exactly as they are doing.  And, as in every difficulty in life, heal your own unhealed wounds because they are what cause you to react rather than act.  People love to talk about themselves.  When you find yourself having a hard time understanding someone’s behavior, ask for clarification.  Ask them what they are thinking and feeling.  They will be happy to share.  My father always told me God gave me two ears and a mouth for a reason.

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It is my duty to protect my rights

Posted on October 12, 2011 by admin

It’s a natural part of life and we all expect our parents to die before us and that it shouldn’t be any big deal, right?  Well, from where I sit, it’s a big deal.  I am sure there are many factors that play into how a person experiences being parentless, such as their age when they lose their parents, their relationships with their parents, their other sources of support, etc, but I am convinced that being parentless at any age is hard.

So many voids have appeared since the recent death of my last surviving parent, my mother.  One is the fantasy of having a close relationship with her.  I clung onto that dream until the very end.  I have a picture of us the night before she died that I will always cherish because it is the closest we have ever been, mainly because she could no longer resist. It is so raw and personal I have only shared it with a few close to us.  I coached her to let go.  Maybe that’s why my two oldest brothers believe I murdered her.  I dunno.  Some things are unfigureoutable.  Like why my daddy changed his name from Will D. Jones, Jr as shown on his birth certificate to William David Jones in 1976.  Along with the death of my mother went my family archives.

Mama’s death created the void of the birth family.  I dont suspect I will ever have those fun extended family holidays again.  There is too much harbored bitterness and greed.  I grieve that loss.  There were good family times and I choose to cherish those memories.

The passing of my last surviving parent created a void of history, expectations, lack of approval, and somebody else’s road map to follow.  It freed me from the fear of ever being committed to a mental institution again.  At this same time my children are becoming adults and I also don’t have to fear the loss of them to the system or to their father.

For the first time in my life I am not controlled through fear and am free to be who I was intended to be all along: me.  All the other jobs are taken anyway, right?  It is both scary and liberating to be able to start today and create the person and life I want for myself.  Actually, it was my birth right and it was taken from me.  Never again.  It is my duty to protect my rights.

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Out With the Old

Posted on September 30, 2011 by admin

Happy aloha Friday!  I can not wait to say sayonara to September.  It has been a very difficult month for me and I know for many others too.  It seems like everything I have known and relied upon is gone.  My children are grown and on the mainland so I am not “Mama” anymore and with the passing of my last parent, my mother, for all practical purposes my family of origin is gone.  Here my husband and I sit on Kauai with a whole present and future in front of us.  You say, I get to live the dream why is life not perfect?  Believe me, I ask myself the same question.

I had no idea how much time  and energy went into my mother until she was gone.  I also didn’t realize what hope I had that my family of origin would reconnect again until my mother was gone and all hope left with her.  Bless be the tie that binds, and my mother was the last tie.  My brothers and I are involved in a family business together, but that’s what it is, business.

Hanai (adopted family, children, etc) is a big part of Hawaiian culture.  Everybody is an aunty or an uncle and even haole’s (white people) have adopted the tradition.  I always called it “family of choice” vs family of chance.  We have many hanai already on the island but the loss of the nuclear family and family of origin is a loss of history.  Can it be replaced?  Should it be replaced?

I think in order for unity consciousness to become a reality, all the old paradigms have to shift and maybe this loss is what that is all about for me so I can create anew.  I know my children will be more active in my life once they get about the business of creating their own adult lives and I love them enough to take my hands off and trust them to do just that.  I have never felt comfortable in limbo, though, and I have also learned the error of taking action for the sake of taking action just to get out of the state of limbo.  Learning to sit with ambivalence and ambiguity and be comfortable in it’s awkwardness until the path clears in front of me has been a hard lesson for me.  I feel the paradigm today is more about being receptive than active…allowing, accepting, and accessing.

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Communication

Posted on September 25, 2011 by admin

A friend of mine asked me on Facebook to write about healthy communication between couples.  I think productive communication between couples is the same as that between any two people but we often find ourselves having the most trouble communicating with those we love the most. Would we talk to the clerk in the store the same way we talk to our partners when we are angry?  Often the answer is no way!  Why do we give ourselves permission to be ugly to the ones we most care about?  I think there are many factors behind it.

Often one partner has more invested in the relationship than the other and the one that has the least invested has the most control.  Control is a difficult dynamic in relationships and can kill a relationship quicker than anything, including infidelity.  Control stems from fear and is nothing but an illusion.  There is no way to guarantee another will stay with you and behave in any certain way no matter what.  The only thing you can control in a relationship, and that itself can be difficult, is you.  Control is the opposite of what is needed to form a healthy relationship and that is trust.  And all trust of other stems from trust of the self.

Relationships provide us with mirrors of ourselves.  This includes not only our significant other but our friends, childrens, and parents.  There is no blame or change out there….it’s all inside. Change you, your thoughts, change the relationship.

Appreciate your loved ones.  Focus on what’s good about them, not what’s missing.  The more you focus on what you have rather than what you don’t have, the more of that you will have.  Catch them being good and look for opportunities to praise them.  Focus on what you can do to make their lives better.

Now about communication.  Basics.  Wait until both parties are calm and 100% present and available to talk before talking about sensitive issues. Make I statements, not you statements. Do not interrupt each other. Make sure you each heard each other right by restating what the other said.  My husband and I find we can often resolve through writing what we cant resolve through talking.  Something to try.

In Hawaii there is a tool called the aloha breath that can be done individually or between couples, where you bring your foreheads together and synchronize your breath while holding each other.  If you practice this before you talk, it’s awfully hard to argue.

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Don’t let your compassion become your victimization

Posted on September 21, 2011 by admin

My friend Rhonda Roberts asked for help for those of us who feel intensely to protect ourselves from the pain of others.  It’s a hard subject to deal with for us healers, therapists, and lightworkers.  It’s even harder when we haven’t dealt with our own issues from childhood.  The first and most important step in helping others is to heal ourselves first.  Too many therapists go into the profession to avoid their own issues and get caught up in the codependency trap of trying to rescue others, not realizing it’s their own pain they can’t tolerate, not their client’s.  Their compassion and empathy get in the way of helping the client and can become their own victimization.

I realized recently that I have carried a life long pattern of being overly sympathetic to others, placing their needs above mine, especially those closest to me.  It started as a small child at my mother’s feet.  As an adult it played out as me being more concerned about my partner’s or my children’s well being and then getting burned and eventually resentful.  I had to learn to put myself first, counter to what I had programmed to do as a child.  Those close to me balked at first but soon saw how this made for better relationships between us.

Detachment helps.  I believe this act should be taught in school.  We all need to learn how to separate ourselves from others with love.

Your belief system is also critical. I believe that before we are born somewhere out in the cosmos we decide what we want to learn on Earth School which makes it easier for me to see others in pain.  I also believe that my own pain has been the fertilizer for my abilities to help other people so I don’t see pain, tears, or hardships as bad at all.  I see them as opportunities to advance.

Finally, protect yourself on an energetic level.  Visualize yourself surrounded with white light or a teflon bubble.  Keep your aura in when working with energy vampires.  Ground yourself to the earth and call on the archangels for protection.  They are always there to help us but we have to ask.  Archangels 101 by Doreen Virtue is a great primer in working with the archangels. They will always help when asked.

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Got Aloha?

Posted on September 20, 2011 by admin

Yesterday I did a big picture reading for myself from my Mana Card deck of the power of Hawaiian wisdom.  My friend Sandi also suggested the topic of this post.  In my reading I pulled the Aloha card in the position of Unity, what I need to do to communicate with spirit.  In Hawai’i aloha means hello and good bye but it has a greater meaning too,  that of love.  The reading said that in order to experience true love (aloha) I must be honest, patient, kind to all forms of life, humble, in harmony with my true self, God, and all of humanity.  Tall order huh?

I am not sure I can ever achieve a permanent state of aloha but I do  my best on a day to day basis.  To me the root of it all is harmony with my true self, because when I have that, all the rest seems to unfold naturally.  I am getting there, a work in progress.

This island is full of aloha spirit.  It also has the opposite. Driving down the road I often see things people no longer want on the side of the road with a sign saying “free” on them.  I am not just talking junk.  The table on our lanai came from the side of the road.  A quick perusal of Craig’s List Kauai will show that there are many items for free or barter. Fruit and flower stands adorn the roads at affordable prices with an honor box for payment. Gifting and bartering are common practices, as is helping your neighbor.

I like the aloha spirit;  it’s much of the reason we decided to build here.  There is a sense of community, enlightenment and sharing here we couldn’t find except in pockets on the mainland.  There is a respect for individualism but also for teamwork.  There is less duality.  This is the beginning of the new world we are here to help create and I am excited about the future here.  I didn’t feel that on the mainland.

May we all live aloha to our best one moment at a time.

Malama aina,

Marianne

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