What does it mean to Get Pono?
What does it mean to Get Pono?
Original Post: March 2, 2017
Essentially, it means being ‘at one with everyone and everything’.
The spiritual journey is often times a lonely one. Not lonely in the sense of being alone, rather lonely within a relationship for example, but unable to share the experiences in a way that the other one understands. We have companionship in that relationship, but at some point that is no longer enough to keep the spark alive. And often we reach that point, but continue in the relationship, basically hoping something will change, but not knowing exactly what needs to change.
After a period of waiting for change, we come to the point of understanding nothing else is going to change so I must change. If I am feeling stifled or not able to express myself fully, I need to change my environment and place myself in one of authenticity and love. Someplace where I can feel 100% comfortable just being who I am in this moment, whatever that moment is. That is what it means to live pono. Just be real. Be you whomever that is in any given moment. This is not so easy to do, especially in the environments within which we grew up.
What does it mean to be ‘real’? It means to live in or within your feelings, from your heart at all times. This is very difficult to do when we are surrounded by, let’s just say ego, for the sake of argument, i.e. running around doing our best to become the success we ‘think’ someone else wants us to be. And most, if not all of us go through that because that is what we learn – “follow in your Father’s footsteps”, go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a degree, get a good job, stay with it until you retire, build that retirement fund so you can do whatever you want for the rest of your life.
Why not do whatever you want for the rest of your life starting now?!?
At some point we just have a desire, a passion, a command almost, to just be our self, follow our heart, trust in that, it will never lie to us. We learned growing up to follow certain paths and guidelines as laid out by pretty much anyone older than us at the time. We made agreements with ourselves that it must be so because they said so. And we look around and we see everyone else doing the same and we all learn to connect on that level of understanding. By doing so we are strengthening that very belief system because we are reinforcing it within one another.
And then at some point in our lives, usually early, pre-teen years, something happens and we have a question or questions that cannot be answered or we present ideas that are not at all plausible and many of us are reprimanded so to speak for having those thoughts or ideas and we learn to shut that part down and keep it to ourselves. Thus begins the loneliness that is often associated with a spiritual path.
Because we learn this behavior at an early age, it is easily transposed throughout our lives. Those memories live in our unconsciousness and in our muscles and because they happened so long ago and had so much reinforcement, they became automatic – it was the energy we were expending that attracted the people into our life to help us experience and re-live those memories. For many of us it is like the proverbial ‘walking on egg shells’ where we are careful what we say and especially careful about expressing our feelings, pretty much about anything of importance.
There is something that happens to us, for us, when we come into living from our heart. It is difficult to explain and understand until you experience it. However, I will do my best to explain it as best I can so that if you have a friend or loved one that says they are on a spiritual path, please understand that in some respects it is not truly a choice, for us on that path we realize that is what we came here to do in this physical form.
Pretty much all the ancient texts refer to us as spiritual beings having a physical experience. That being so, then we as spirits chose to come into the lives we came into in order to experience life under those circumstances. We all know this at some level, but as we came into this existence we conveniently forgot why we came here and spend much of our lives doing our best to understand that. Then, at some point, it all makes sense, but only to self and of course others that have walked that pathway and come out on the other side.
One cannot truly understand how any given situation feels unless and until one has been through something similar in their own life path. You cannot truly understand what it means to have your house burn down and all that goes with that unless you have lived through your own house burning. We can imagine what it feels like, but cannot truly know it except through experience.
Herein lies the difficulty for someone doing their best to explain how it feels to come into their heart-calling, knowing that whomever they are explaining to cannot possibly understand at the same level because they have not yet felt that same calling.
When we listen to our heart, we soon become aware of always knowing – feeling – truth, for self. When we first come into this heart-awareness, a lot of things do not make sense and we often ask ourselves, “Why would I do THAT?!?” and then we go and do it, whatever it is – and when we do that, we are met with multitudes of blessings. Always. It is not long before we recognize this to be our intuition, our unconscious mind doing its best to communicate with us on a conscious level through the language of the heart – feelings – the language of ho’oponopono.
All this to say, when we are living fully from our hearts, we are living pono, for we are indeed at one with everyone and everything, understanding that everything is in its proper place and time. The trick is staying pono.