Hoʻoponopono, the Hawaiian prayer of forgiveness and reconciliation, can release your creativity
by Carole Dean
Forgiveness is a higher vibration than love
“My enemy has come to ask me for forgiveness.”
I was in the hospital with my father who had just had a stroke. We did not know if he would live. Dad was staring at the door to his room when he said those words.
I said Dad, you have to forgive him and let him go. “Darling”, he said, “I forgave him long ago. He must forgive himself.”
That was one of the most important moments in my life. Since then, I have learned that forgiveness is a higher vibration than love. It is the vibration that we all want to reach while we are on this planet.
Then, I found a wonderful Hawaiian prayer. It has been an important tool for healing myself and forgiving others. It brought balance in my life and I owe much of my success to its lessons.
I teach it to filmmakers in my Intentional Filmmaking Class. It has helped them move past the frustrations and anger artists encounter.
It’s allowed them to be heard, be creative, and get funded.
Hoʻoponopono
‘I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you’.
Those are the few and powerful words of the Ho’oponopono prayer. The literal translation of the prayer from Hawaiian is ‘to put to right; to put in order or shape, correct, revise, make orderly or neat.”
Many people believe Hoʻoponopono to be a mantra of mental and spiritual cleaning that could be compared to Buddhist techniques for clearing karma. According to the Hawaiian worldview, “errors of thought” are the origin of problems in the physical world. The prayer begins the process of cleansing them.
When we forgive others, we are really forgiving ourselves.
Money Has Ears
Ok, how can this help you fund your film? If you feel like you have a strained relationship with money, you can use this powerful meditation to break through personal blocks. Creative differences, funding falling through, or family issues distracting you from reaching your goals? This prayer can help get all of that behind you.
With Hoʻoponopono, you take total responsibility for your own actions and everybody else’s too. You must let go of your ego when using this prayer. Connection, clearing, and forgiveness are much more important than ego concerns about who is right and who is wrong.
This will move you out of any feeling that you have been victimized. It will release anger that is blocking you from moving forward.
Rejection is a Daily Occurrence for Filmmakers
Each of you has to deal with rejection on a daily basis. Healing and forgiving are partners in this Hawaiian prayer. When you have been rejected by a donor or a grant, this can help you accept it and move on.
There is power in release of trauma, power in release of anger, power in the release of frustration. All of this power you have is now being used to handle, to keep in place, all of these emotions.
You can heal yourself and remove any unpleasant situations, rejections or loss, with Hoʻoponopono. This is asking a lot from a prayer and I believe it works.
Bring up a rejection of a donation to your film or bring up a confrontation with someone. Then, say this prayer daily for a week or until you feel you are in balance with this person or issue.
You will begin to heal that hurt and soon you can say their name without any hurt feelings. That is when you know you’ve forgiven them.
Give it a Two Month Try Out
Those of you who want to try this, please join me and let’s do it for the months of August and September. This would give us lots of prayers to forgive people including ourselves.
You might use a memory trick to tie new things to some habit. For example, like when you brush your teeth, remember your Ho’oponopono prayer!
Give yourself time to start saying it before the day comes on you or when you go to bed. Pick someone, some event, that you want to heal and begin your forgiveness prayer. Say it at least 5 times for one person.
I will do it with you. This opens up our creative forces.
Look Online for a Guided Ho’oponopono Meditation
There are prayers on line from 7 minutes to over an hour that you can use. I suggest you find one that works for you.
I am a long-time meditator. I put myself into a quiet place or I do this when I go to bed. In my mind, I bring up the person or event. Then I say Ho’oponopono, their name, and then I slowly and sincerely repeat these words:
I am sorry, please forgive me, I love you, I thank you.
I suggest you do this 3 to 5 times for each person. I send them forgiveness with each prayer, even when I think I am the wronged person! It does not matter, I know I must forgive them and I must forgive myself.
Forgiveness is the highest vibration on the planet and that’s where creatives want to live, where we are vibrating with the resonance higher than love.
Carole Dean is president and founder of From the Heart Productions; a 501(c)3 non-
profit that offers fiscal sponsorship for independent filmmakers. She hosts the weekly podcast, The Art of Film Funding, interviewing those involved in all aspects of indie film production. She is also the author of The Art of Film Funding, 2nd Edition: Alternative Financing Concepts. See IMDB for producing credits.
