Nanaue the Shark Man

Reflections on Remorse as a Tool for Transformation

Happy Aloha Friday Readers!

Not sure I mentioned it in my first letter, but my letters will appear in your inbox on Fridays, Aloha Friday here in Hawaii, and also the day of the week presided over by Venus, Goddess of Love, a befitting muse for us as we explore how to re-enchant our relationship to Earth through myth and story.

Here we are into the second week of The Corpus Calossum Chronicles. Thank you to those who’ve already subscribed and welcome to any new readers who have just found their way here. If ever there was a time we needed to tap into our brain’s potential, it’s now as humanity finds itself in a quantum leap that will reconfigure what it means to be human. The way forward is unclear, yet all the answers have already been given to us. The stories-myths and fairy tales hold clues on what’s being asked of us and how to ride the waves of this almost inconceivable transformation. Note, I said almost. We don't have to understand everything. Like the Hopi say, just acknowledge we are in the water and look around and see who’s with you-then let go.

This week I am going to share with you a recording of my version of a Hawaiian story that was first told me orally years ago when I lived in Waipi’o Valley. It may have been the first story I ever encountered orally. Before that I had only read stories in a book. It was definitely the first I ever heard from someone raised in an oral tradition, who in telling it, was speaking the language of his ancestors and the place where the story was born. The plotline of this story turned out to be prescient of the personal journey I was about to go through in Waipi’o. You’ll hear a bit about that in the audio, but the focus in my notes here is on what this story has to say to us as a culture in general, though perhaps it has personal resonance for you. If so, please share in the comments.

NOTE: The rest of this letter consists of reflections on the story so it won’t make much sense unless you listen first to the audio.

Here is the audio link:

Nanaue The Shark Man

Reflections on the Story

How do you feel after listening to this story? I know I was shaken by the end. Of course we are all afraid of man-eating sharks, but my sympathies for one, are not with the humans who clubbed the bound Nanaue to death and burned the dried strips of his flesh to incinerate him from the earth. My sympathies are with Nanaue, the Shark Man who was once a boy born with a so-called deformity who had to hide it so he wouldn’t be killed, whose father figure failed to initiate him into the power of his true nature, and instead out of pride to feed his own ego, sacrificed his grandson’s potential by feeding him meat which turned him into a monster. My sympathies were with the young man who was mocked until he snapped and turned against the people who refused to accept him for what he was.

Maybe some of you find my attitude shocking and feel there was justice in Nanaue’s execution. After all, he did kill many humans. I’d love to hear your viewpoint in the comments, no matter what it is, and I encourage you to take it as a starting point to examine your relationship to the non-human world.

This is a story that provides us with clues about how humans and animals may have originally cohabited on earth. In the story we learn that humans and sharks have a pact overseen by Nanaue’s father, the shark god Kamohoali’i. Sharks will not prey on humans. I was intrigued that the story, at least the versions I’ve heard, doesn’t tell us what humanity’s pact with the shark was) The obvious would be not to kill sharks in return, but if we look at the pact symbolically it could signify that each of us must take responsibility for our own emotional work, delving into our shadows and doing the dirty work of facing our darkest parts in order to become as integrated and present with each other and the world outside ourselves. Seen this way, the pact, when broken, could account for the culture we find ourselves in now where most project their shadows onto others without realizing that the only way to peace is to find it first within one’s self. That includes forgiving all of our most shameful acts and thoughts and ultimately coming to love them as the teachers they are.

In Hawaiian culture the shark is a powerful aumakua, an ancestral spirit guide that takes the form of an animal, element or plant. Manō represents our subconscious power, what patrols our edges the way sharks stalk the reef’s edge. Someone with manō as an aumakua who was in alignment with its power could have the ability to see into the subconscious and use what is found there to effect the outer world. This could be for good or ill. That is one of the reasons people find sharks so sinister. It’s not so much their teeth, it’s their ability to strike from below and snap a body in two in a second. Most people prefer change to occur more gently, or to remain deluded. What are we really afraid of? That the shark will kill us, or of what waits beneath the surface of our conscious thoughts?

Another question this story provokes in me is what makes a monster? Is it someone who kills or someone without remorse? In the story Nanaue isn’t born a monster, though his mother Kalei fears he will be deemed one because of the jaws on his back. This reminded me of when I saw the film “The Elephant Man” in high school and cried for 24 hours afterwards. I found the pain and isolation of being shunned and mocked because of something that was no fault of his own unbearable. The Elephant Man, however, did not become a killer. What’s different about Nanaue?

For Nanaue, though he has shark jaws on his back, biology is not destiny until his grandfather, giving into his own need to be seen as the progenitor of such a fine young warrior, feeds the boy meat even after his daughter Kalei has begged him not to and warned him of the consequences. His pride is more important than his love for his daughter and grandson. It is also more important than his regard for his community. He is willing to sacrifice the whole village in order to feel important. Sounds like a psychopath to me, though we never learn in the story if he does end up feeling remorse. Sadly, this pattern is still being played out by despots in the political realm who have no regard for the people who they are supposed to be serve and is also common in all rungs of society.

In this story, Chief Umi showed he actually still remembered the pact between humans and nature when he refused to give into the mob’s demands to kill Kalei and her family after Nanaue had been revealed as the killer. He was willing to share power with the shark god Kamohoali’i, who promises he will make sure justice is served by banishing his son Nanaue from the shores of Hawai’i Island. His reach, however, isn’t far enough and Nanaue finds a new island to terrorize, then another, until he is finally caught in the net that keeps him from shapeshifting back into a shark and escaping into the depths. Interestingly, this only happens because the villagers call on another god for help. Human will is not powerful enough to kill the subconscious without divine help. In saying that, I am not saying the divine is something outside ourselves. It is the potential of the fully integrated human and available to us all if we’re willing to do the raw and dirt work of becoming conscious.

When Nanaue is executed the subconscious is exposed--but whose? We are told the villagers drag him up to a hilltop on Molokai where his body is hacked to pieces and hung on drying racks so the sun can suck out all the life-giving moisture. Only then can his flesh be incinerated to the point that he will not be able to return to the seas through the power of water to turn another human into a killer. His blood is so toxic it destroys a bamboo grove and alters its genetic structure.

You may have heard that the standard definition of a psychopath is someone that doesn't feel remorse for her violations, a sociopath someone capable of feeling a little guilt or remorse for his heinous actions. At this point as we go on fiddling while Rome burns, most of us on the planet now are sociopaths.

But what makes a sociopath or a psychopath? Trauma. Every crime has a victim at its source.

Why would a world like that be created? I did a lot of spiritual bypassing in my attempts to come to terms with the violence and pain of living on Earth. I readily adopted the idea that all experiences are here to serve our growth and numbed myself to the pain by saying the soul valued all experiences as equal growth opportunities. I took a clinical approach and it worked. I was able to function in society enough to get by. Crying for 24 hours after watching “The Elephant Man” was not going to fly as an attempt for not showing up to work. Rent must be paid, food put on the table.

I’m not ashamed of my spiritual bypassing. It enabled me to push the pain out of my conscious mind into my body where manō stored it until it grew too large for even him to digest, erupting in an autoimmune disease that led me into finally going on the emotional journey my mind had not been ready for until I’d built up the strength to really feel the pain and let it flow through, bringing it to completion so that I could begin the next phase of my journey back to aloha mā: self: reflective love.

Aloha is the well known Hawaiian word meaning love. In a recent workshop my mentor Ke’oni Hanalei of Pohala Hawaiian Botanicals shared the Mū perspective on the purpose of human existence preserved and revealed in the teachings of pua’aehuehu, fern medicine. The purpose of human existence is to experience aloha. Love is an experience unique to the organic human. It’s why we are here, yet so many struggle to find it. Love is confusing. A word thrown about so cheaply these days it’s not only hard to define, it’s also hard to believe in. And betrayal has had its way with us, making us doubt its existence as something objective beyond our individual whims and desires. What is love?

Now I could take the easy way out and say there are no words for it-you know the feeling when you feel it-and you’d probably nod and agree, but I am a poet and I believe in words as holy containers for divine forces to pour through our bodies to bless the land and water that birthed and sustains us. Love is…

You tell me.

Love is bespoke, isn’t it?

Love is unique as each one of us.

What I can tell you is how to find love, and it won’t be through online dating or reciting affirmations to yourself about how you are a wonderful and perfect being despite all your faults.

Love is the destination at the end of the journey through all the emotions. That’s what Ke’oni shared. We have to-we get to-experience fury, grief, acceptance, glee, joy, compassion, innovation, rest, triumph, tenderness-and all the other known emotions and traits encoded in 103 ferns. In a way, each emotion is an initiation. If we pass the trial, we get to move onto to the next trial. Love hurts. That’s just the way it is. We are given life. Some could say we pay a price through suffering, but you can’t put a price on a true gift. A true gift requires one thing-you pass it on. That is love.

So how are you feeling about Nanaue’s fate now? I’m feeling the horror of his death and the terror of all those he killed, and remorse for how humans have violated our pact with nature.

You may have heard that the standard definition of a psychopath is someone that doesn't feel remorse. A sociopath is someone capable of feeling a little guilt or remorse.

But what makes a sociopath or a psychopath? Trauma.

Remorse: "intense and painful self-condemnation and penitence due to consciousness of guilt; the pain of a guilty conscience," late 14c., from Old French remors (Modern French remords) and directly from Medieval Latin remorsum"a biting back or in return," noun use of neuter past participle of Latin remordere "to vex, torment disturb," literally "to bite back, bite again" (but seldom used in the literal sense), from re- "back, again" (see re-) + mordēre "to bite. www.etymonline.com.

Remorse: a gnawing distress arising from a sense of guilt for past wrongs. Webster’s Dictionary.

Which world do you want to live in? “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” or “turn the other cheek?”

“Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” said Jesus of Nazareth on The Sermon on the Mount.

Interesting how he enfolds both potentials in this statement. We are given a choice. Which do you choose?

One thing I want to note in this story is that we are not shown any of the characters experiencing remorse. I think this ties into the aspect of free will granted to humans alluded to by Jesus in The Golden Rule. There is no remorse because the story is telling us the choice is ours-each one of us can do the work of diving into our subconscious depths and facing what we find there, no matter how ugly. Through images, it is asking us to understand the sacred purpose of the shark, the predator stalking the depths who kills with magnificent precision. What if we were able to kill our demons like that instead of dragging out our suffering through avoidance and delusion?

In today’s world sharks are wildly feared and are being hunted to extinction. This story shows us what could happen if we do-a world without remorse where we fail to be moved by our emotions. But the emotions won’t go away. They are a part of the human journey and the key to fulfilling the potential of the organic human. If we are ruled by our subconscious, we don’t allow our emotions to flow and we break the natural cycle of water. A house built on a foundation of resentment will crack when the ground quakes, will be swept away by the flood instead of rising to float.

I’ll finish by saying that when I hear a story I like to locate myself in it by meditating on what image grabs or even haunts me. In this one, I am most haunted by the image of Kalei, Nanaue’s mother, living out the rest of her life alone in the valley after Chief Umi spared her from the mob’s wrath. She was allowed to live, but shunned. How lonely she must have been. How she must have missed her son and her lover and the companionship of the village. What did she do for the rest of her life? I imagine her crying on the moss-slick rocks by the edge of the pool where her son first transformed into a shark. Her tears silent until they shatter the pool. Ripples spread out that travel all the way to the ocean. A shark’s fin breaks the surface. One day she will stand up and follow the underground stream back to the ocean.

May Venus the Goddess of Love watch over you until next Friday, my friends.

Kō aloha lā ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light,

Jen