Hoʻoponopono
[1][2] Similar forgiveness practices are performed on islands throughout the South Pacific, including Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti and New Zealand.
[citation needed] In many Polynesian cultures, it is believed that a person's errors (called hara or hala) caused illness.
In Pukapuka, it was customary to hold sort of a confessional over patients to determine an appropriate course of action in order to heal them.
[9]: 217 [10][11]: 242 Hoʻoponopono is defined in the Hawaiian Dictionary as: (a) "To put to rights; to put in order or shape, correct, revise, adjust, amend, regulate, arrange, rectify, tidy up make orderly or neat, administer, superintend, supervise, manage, edit, work carefully or neatly; to make ready, as canoemen preparing to catch a wave."
(b) "Mental cleansing: family conferences in which relationships were set right (hoʻoponopono) through prayer, discussion, confession, repentance, and mutual restitution and forgiveness.
[15]: 184–185 Although the word hoʻoponopono was not used, early Hawaiian historians documented a belief that illness was caused by breaking kapu, or spiritual laws, and that the illness could not be cured until the sufferer atoned for this transgression, often with the assistance of a praying priest (kahuna pule) or healing priest (kahuna lapaʻau).
[12]: 34 The aim of Hoʻoponopono is to correct, restore and maintain good relationships among family members and with their god(s) by getting to the causes and sources of trouble.
They cut off the past (ʻoki), and together they close the event with a ceremonial feast, called pani, which often included eating limu kala, symbolic of the release.
[13]: 60–80 In a form used by the family of kahuna Makaweliweli of the island of Molokai, the completion of hoʻoponopono is represented by giving the person forgiven a lei made from the fruit of the hala tree.
[20] "Aunty" Malia Craver, who worked with the Queen Liliʻuokalani Children's Centers (QLCC) for more than 30 years, taught courses in traditional hoʻoponopono.
[22] In the late 20th century, courts in Hawaiʻi began to order juvenile and adult offenders to work with an elder who would conduct hoʻoponopono for their families, as a form of alternative dispute resolution.
The hoʻoponopono is conducted in the traditional way, without court interference, with a practitioner picked by the family from a list of court-approved providers.
[24] In 1976 Morrnah Simeona, regarded as a healing priest or kahuna lapaʻau, adapted the traditional hoʻoponopono of family mutual forgiveness to the social realities of the modern day.
Simeona's version is influenced by her Christian (Protestant and Catholic) education and her philosophical studies about India, China and Edgar Cayce.
As the Law of Cause and Effect predominates in all of life and lifetimes, the purpose of her version is mainly "to release unhappy, negative experiences in past reincarnations, and to resolve and remove traumas from the 'memory banks'.
Her teachings include: there is a Divine Creator who takes care of altruistic pleas of Men; "when the phrase 'And it is done' is used after a prayer, it means Man's work ends and God's begins.
In contrast to Simeona's teachings, the book brings the new idea that the main objective of Hoʻoponopono is getting to the "zero state — it's where we have zero limits.
