By Jennifer Elizabeth Masters
In my practice, I encounter many people stuck in unforgiveness. We don’t have to like what was done to us to forgive. We certainly don’t have to talk to our perpetrators to forgive them either. The best and fastest path I have found in over thirty years of healing is the Kahuna healing prayer from Hawaii, the Ho’oponopono Prayer.
How Healing Ourselves Heals Our Relationships
The way to use the prayer is simple.
- Repeat the words slowly, forgiving yourself for anything you have ever done to hurt you first.
- Always begin any healing practice with you first.
- Think about any time you ever put yourself in harm’s way.
- Repeat the prayer.
- Think about any time you ever beat yourself up verbally rather than loving and accepting yourself.
- Repeat the prayer.
- Spend about fifteen minutes repeating the prayer slowly until you feel complete.
- Think of the other person.
- Think about what the other person did to you.
- Breathe.
- Thinking about the past may bring up old feelings or hate, anger, indignation, confusion, conflict and even pain.
- Be compassionate toward you.
- Repeat the prayer slowly for about twenty minutes or more.
Why Forgive?
Forgiveness releases us from the burden of suffering. Forgiveness is for us, not the other person. We feel lighter and can let go of the past trauma once we have forgiven.
What Happens If I Don’t Forgive?
Holding onto old hurts can cause diseases like cancer. Cancer is caused by deep hurt, longstanding resentment or a deep secret eating away at the self or carrying hatreds. Breast cancer is from holding all of the aforementioned plus a refusal to nourish the self, putting everyone else first, overmothering, overprotection and overbearing attitudes.
Holding onto these old hurts does you no good. Letting go and forgiving is healing for you. To be happy in life we need to forgive those who we feel have hurt us, including ourselves. Otherwise, we end up feeling the need to be rescued. Being a victim is disempowering.
Healing A Relationship
I gave this prayer to my daughter ten months before her father died, she was fifteen at the time. She was very angry with him for many reasons. I told her she needed to get over her anger and heal her relationship with her father. I printed the prayer on a post-it note. She took it and went inside her bedroom and prayed the prayer for about forty minutes. She told me she had a huge catharsis and breakthrough beyond the anger.
After doing the prayer, my daughter went on to have a very close relationship with her father until the day he died.
This prayer is magical and can heal past hate, and trauma. I highly recommend it to everyone.