The Darkness Around Us Is Deep

Since 2014, ‘ōhi’a lehua trees on the Hawaiian islands have been succumbing to a newly identified fungal disease called Rapid ‘Ōhi’a Death. These endemic trees are highly significant in Hawaiian culture. Found growing in wet and dry environments from sea level to heights above 5,000 feet, the abundant plant has many practical, medicinal and ceremonial uses. It also appears in many mo’olelo.

According to the stories, ‘Ō'hi’a, a beautiful young man, rejected Pele’s advances because he was in love with another woman, Lehua. In revenge, Pele turned him into a twisted, gnarly tree. Desolate, Lehua begged the other gods to help her and they turned her into a red flower on the tree. Many Hawaiian rain names include Lehua’s name to signify the tears of the two lovers, and it’s still said it will rain when an ‘ōhi’a blossom is plucked.

In pua’aehuehu, ‘Ōhi’a Lehua is known as the mother of all ferns. This is because the twisted tree with the red flowers is the first to appear after a lava flow. Its gnarled roots pushing down through hardened lava eventually create soil where the ferns can once again root and unfurl.

If you’ve been following this newsletter, you’ll know that in pua’aehuehu, 103 ferns carry the original source codes for emotional qualities as created by Ka mea ni hana, Source. The purpose of the human journey is to experience all 103 emotions culminating in data collapse and freedom from existence in unification with aloha, love.

‘Ōhi’a Lehua is the avatar of Divine Pain. Pain as something to be valued can be confusing for contemporary cultures conditioned to consider comfort in all its forms-physical, mental and emotional-as the highest goal and measure of a successful life. Most of us view pain as something to be avoided and strive to create lives where we experience as little of it as possible.

However, deep inside we all know pain is unavoidable. ‘Õhia is here to tell us, not only is it unavoidable, it is the foundational emotional experience of human existence, the first principle of aloha.

Things become more clear when we consider what the Mū Hawaiians meant by pain. According to the Mū, pain is better understood as sensation, not just the suffering we’ve come to associate with the word. It means to feel. To not push suffering (or joy) away-one’s own or someone else’s.

I cried many times this week looking at news reports of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I cried looking at the faces of the children holding honor roll certificates, at the girl who told the story of how her best friend tried to call 911 and was shot right next to her, of how one teacher was found with a dead student in her arms, at how the teacher’s husband died from a heart attack the day after the shooting leaving behind 4 children. I’m crying writing these words now.

I haven’t cried about a mass shooting since Sandy Hook, in Newton, CT, near where I grew up. That was 2012. Not one. Not Buffalo or Parkland or Las Vegas or Christchurch. Close to 3,000 mass shootings have occurred in the US since then. I didn’t pay much attention at all. It was too painful.

‘Ōhi’a says, “You must feel.”

What happens when a civilization stops feeling?

One thing that happens is Rapid ‘Ōhi’a Death. In conversation with ‘Ōhi’a, Ke’oni Hanalei of Pohala Hawaiian Botanicals, learned why this disease is killing this sacred tree. ‘Ōhi’a Lehua is leaving because so few value her gift. Not even extreme pain, the horror of mass shooting after mass shooting, the death of little children, has been enough to wake us up. The pain has become too much.

What do we do at this point when so many are overwhelmed and numb?

I always begin with compassion-Laukahi Hou, who teaches us that we must first attend to our own suffering.

When I close my eyes and consider that, I feel the weight of generations of trauma, my European ancestors who lived through centuries of constant war; women burned at the stake, men beheaded for standing up for what they believed in, casual violence at every turn, death in childbirth and children dying infancy. I feel hunger. Not enough food. I feel the disruption of immigration, the severance from family and culture, the struggle to create a new life on a new continent, chopping down trees, killing the natives or looking away as they were killed or died from the diseases my ancestors brought. I feel the guilt and how it was pushed away by the survivors so they could go on.

And I see the incidents of this lifetime that resulted in trauma I have devoted my life to releasing and integrating, both public and private. Scenes flash before my eyes like a movie. Am I dying? I witness them.

“I see you,” I tell them. I cry. They are crying, too.

“We didn’t want it to be like this,” they tell me….”But you wouldn’t listen.”

“We just wanted you to wake up.”

“What am I supposed to wake up to?” I ask.

“Your objective.”

“My objective? That’s it? What about the rest of the world? What can I do about all this suffering?”

“When you wake up to your objective and harness your willpower toward moving toward it, you will be tending to the rest of the world.”

“I’m not sure I understand. This sounds like it might be spiritual bypassing.”

“Let me simplify-your objective is your highest potential. Do you know what that is?

“You’re telling me all the suffering is to wake us up to our highest potential?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why does it have to be like that? I don’t understand. What kind of god does that?”

“There is no god outside of you. Only love.”

If you feel angry at that, or angry at me, I offer you this as taught to me by Ke’oni:

Mantra of Ho’oponopono Kahiko’ano

This is who I am.
I am available to accept that to whom I say I am
Thank you, and I love you.

This is who I am.
I invite you to accept me
Thank you, and I love you.

This is who we are.
We invite you to support us.
Thank you, and we love you.

My objective is to be a steady light. My highest potential. is to be a steady light. That is why I am writing these words of faith grounded in safety at the end of a week where so many are overwhelmed by darkness. I am here for you.

I am not my traumas or the traumas of my ancestors. I accept that, and in so doing stop trying to change the past and come more fully into the now. In the now I am safe, but I feel the grieving world, as much as I can without going numb. I resolve to stay as awake as I can, acknowledging I live in a world where an 18 year old boy walks into a school with an AR-15 and kills 19 children. Their deaths will not be wasted.

Where do we go from the acknowledgment? What happens when we fully accept our world?

That will be a different journey for everyone.

Don’t let the fear take root in you. Real danger may come, but if we who in this moment are safe and secure don’t live as if we are, keeping our hearts open and grounding in our creative powers, we will be refusing the hard-fought gift of our ancestors. We are the ones who can complete the trauma. You-with a living body that can feel pain, a heart that can mourn the losses.

I leave you with a poem by William Stafford.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors around us storming out to wreck through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail, but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Amama ua noa

Now the prayer has flown

Kõ aloha la ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light,

Jen, A Steady Light

In collaboration with:

‘Ōhi’a Lehua, Divine Pain

Wā’wae’iole, Divine Acceptance

Laukahi Hou, Divine Compassion

Palai Hinahina, Divine Grief

Ka’ape’ape, Divine Grace

Photo by Lauren George on Unsplash