Hello,
This is Alessandra Ina from Dexter and Alessandra Ina.
The topic of today is forgiveness.
In the context of achieving forgiveness,
I'm going to talk about the Opono-Pono mantra and how this can help you really achieve a state of forgiveness,
Not as a mental state,
Really as an emotional state where you can free yourself from the pain and from the painful memories of the past.
In another video,
I'll be talking about the blocks to forgiveness.
I might refer to that briefly in this video.
Ultimately,
It really is most optimal to really address the blocks to forgiveness separately because they're quite extensive and complex.
Processing that is already a lot.
Today we'll just focus on the process of forgiveness itself.
If you enjoy this video and you enjoy our meditations,
You may also like to join our weekly development program and our live Q&As.
You can find out more information about those on our website.
So forgiveness.
First of all,
Let's talk about why it's really beneficial to forgive.
When we don't forgive,
Even if we tell ourselves intellectually,
Oh,
I've forgiven this person,
And any time that we think about them or something reminds us of them or their name comes up in a conversation or we see an object and it kind of is associated with them,
We can know from how we feel if our state of consciousness,
If our state of being,
If our emotions,
If our thoughts,
If the sensations we feel,
Well,
If those are different or they change as we recall this person,
Then we can know we haven't forgiven.
So the reason why I bring this up is that when we don't forgive,
We hold a layer or an area of tension in our physical bodies.
And so in a sense,
You could look at that as it takes up bandwidth because it uses up energy.
And it's also something that you may not be aware of.
It can be happening subconsciously and you're processing it all the time.
It's there underneath the surface and therefore there is somewhere in the subconscious an awareness of that.
And it's taking up resources,
Meaning bandwidth,
Physically,
Mentally,
Emotionally,
Chemically,
Because it's there,
It exists and it's being re-referenced.
Even if we're not conscious of it,
You know,
And aware of it,
It's still happening.
So ultimately,
It's very useful if we want to be conscious,
Present,
At peace,
Joyful,
And to have all of our resources available to ourselves to put towards our intentions and what's meaningful to us in the present moment.
It's very useful to let go of those things.
And so that's where forgiveness comes in.
It's a process of allowing ourselves to let go of the painful memories,
Of the painful interpretations,
Of the painful associations,
Of the painful emotions,
Thoughts,
Recordings.
You can see many different ways of calling all of these experiences and interpretations of experiences that we store in our system.
So letting them go means that you're more present,
You're more conscious,
You're more aware,
You're more free,
You feel better,
You have more energy,
And you're more creative because you're not stuck in the past.
So not forgiving means staying stuck in the past,
Holding on to something.
And ultimately,
When we're not forgiving and we're in the past,
It's important to understand that however we experience the past and however we interpret the past,
It's not actually reality.
So when we're holding on to the past and essentially re-referencing the past,
Whether consciously or subconsciously,
We're actually holding on to a misinterpretation and misinformation.
So sharing misinformation in our system,
In our energy.
And of course,
That's not going to be helpful because if we re-reference something painful that might have felt painful at the time and still feel painful because of the way we interpreted it,
And if we were to forgive it,
To heal it,
To clear it,
Then we could gain a completely different perspective on the person,
The situation,
The circumstance,
Or anything else that we're holding on to.
And by changing perspective,
The healing could occur.
So now we could be more conscious and we wouldn't have to be contracted,
Constricted,
Tense,
With limited bandwidth as a result of holding on to the past and the pain that's associated with the past.
So once you understand that,
Then it can kind of create the fuel to then move towards forgiveness and realize that forgiveness,
Not as a mental concept,
Really forgiveness as a process of transmutation of the energies of the past,
Of what was recorded of the past,
Transmutation of the pain into freedom,
Into pure energy that you can then apply to anything that you want in your life.
So liberation of energy.
Forgiveness is equal to liberation of energy.
When you forgive,
Not mentally again,
Really emotionally,
When you attain this state of energetic forgiveness,
You're liberating energy and you're allowing for something new to emerge in your relationships,
In your life,
In situations.
So opon opon o mantra,
Let's talk a little bit about the opon opon o mantra as it really relates to forgiveness and as it is applied to forgiveness.
Just to give you a really like a brief understanding of it,
The opon opon o mantra ultimately means to make right,
To make things right.
So it's very simple.
It's instead of staying in the wrong,
In the bad,
We make things right.
We re-understand,
We relate to things from a right way,
Meaning like from reality,
From what is rather than a projection,
An interpretation,
A misinterpretation of reality.
So this mantra originated in the Pacific islands and then it came into Hawaii and when it came into the islands of Hawaii,
The Hawaiian people started practicing it and really essentially mastering this practice,
Really they looked at it as something really beneficial.
They used it to heal illness and disease.
They used it to heal relationships.
They used it to heal certain aspects of themselves,
Of their personality.
They really used it to also heal their relationships to things because our relationships are not only to people.
We establish relationships to everything.
We establish relationships to money,
To success,
To career,
To authority figures,
To a certain type of energy,
A certain type of object,
An environment,
A location.
So everything is relationship and then we have also a relationship to ourselves.
So the opona-pona mantra can be applied to everything,
Not just relationships and it's often used for relationship to heal relationship and it's very effective doing it like it really works at that level.
It's good to be aware that you can use it in all aspects,
All dimensions of yourself,
Of your life,
In even character traits and qualities in yourself or in someone else that you dislike.
Even titles,
Meaning like for instance selfishness,
Like certain qualities that don't necessarily pertain to a person that says if you have a judgment of selfishness,
If you have a judgment of greed,
If you have a judgment of lust,
All of that you can heal your relationship with that,
With that label or that quality or that energy.
And when you heal your relationship with all things,
Since everything is,
We have a relationship with everything and everything is energy,
When you do that then you have a clear channel of communication between you and that which exists supposedly outside of yourself.
So one of the main person,
I believe his name was Dr.
Len or Dr.
Hugh,
I'm not sure,
He popularized the opona-pona mantra and he actually had a lot of success and just to give you a brief understanding,
He was actually working,
Well he was brought to work in a mental hospital,
In an institution that was actually I believe like in a prison setting and most of the people there were schizophrenic or they had like really quite extreme mental illnesses and there was violence in the ward and so they asked him to work on the prisoners at the time and the story goes that he did and he didn't even meet with them.
Again,
They were violent and they were prone to essentially not being able to necessarily have a conscious and let's say open dialogue with therapists.
So the way that he went about it is that he reviewed their files and by working on each one of them energetically within himself,
He was able to help each one of them and apparently they closed the ward.
So the reason why I bring this up is that the opona-pona mantra doesn't have to be actually applied externally to things or people.
It's really an internal process.
It's you healing your relationship to external things,
To what you imagine to be external things to be even more precise.
So it's healing within yourself your relationship to all the things you imagine to exist in the external world that you are in agreement with,
That you have a relationship with and when you heal that relationship and you have a relationship of love,
Of acceptance and of complete forgiveness all the time towards that thing that you imagine to be existing outside of yourself,
Now you are in neutrality.
There's not a negative pool,
There's not this kind of like grasping or attachment or glue.
You don't get glued to the energy of these things because you're actually in a state of equanimity towards them.
So really that's the intention of the opona-pona mantra is to get you to have a clear line of communication with all things,
Where all things are equal to you and you have a relationship of unconditional love,
Acceptance and gratitude towards all things.
And when you are in that state of unconditional love,
Gratitude,
Compassion for all things,
It really changes the way that you experience others reality,
That you experience your relationship to all things and people.
So this is a little bit like the history,
To give you a little bit of an understanding of the opona-pona mantra and why it works and how it works.
And now I'm going to describe how to use it,
What it is,
The statements in the opona-pona mantra and how to use it.
So the opona-pona mantra as it's translated in English is four statements,
Four sentences,
Short sentences and the intention in using those sentences,
It's not mechanical.
It's really a process of being able to change your energy,
Change your emotions as you repeat the statement.
So if it's done mechanically,
It won't work.
So for instance,
Just to give you,
Let's say a contrast,
An idea about the ways that it can be used.
Some people just use it and they repeat the four statements one after the other.
And I have found personally from my own exploration and also the ways that it's been taught by people who tend to go much deeper with the opona-pona mantra that repeating the four statements one after the other tends to take you into an unconscious process that's mechanical where you may not be as in touch with the energy,
With the emotions as is most,
Let's say optimal and effective.
So the statements are,
I love you,
That's the first statement,
I'm sorry.
Second statement,
Please forgive me.
Third statement and thank you.
The fourth statement.
So the way that I like to teach the opona-pona mantra and practice it and also share it in my meditations is to have each statement to work with the energy of each statement separately.
So for instance,
If you were to work on something and I'm going to explain how to then utilize it,
When you're working on something specifically,
If you work on something,
You would first repeat I love you and you would repeat I love you over and over again,
Not mechanically really feeling in your heart this feeling of unconditional love until you felt an energy shift.
What I mean by that is that let's say for instance that you're angry with someone and you hold the space of consciousness,
The vision of them,
An image of them or just you feel them,
You connect to them and you intend to forgive them and you use the opona-pona mantra.
So you would start by saying I love you.
And first if you are angry,
Well as you repeat I love you,
You might find some resistance and you might find that it takes a little bit of time to clear that resistance.
You would repeat I love you,
You would repeat I love you,
Understanding again based on what I shared with you,
The benefit of using the opona-pona mantra and how it's not really about the other person,
It's about you.
It's about what you're going to release in you,
Clear in you and what's possible from there.
So you're really focusing on yourself.
So you would repeat I love you and then once you felt a kind of relief or release,
A clearing,
Like you're more open,
Your heart is more open,
You're more relaxed,
You're more maybe you know there's more joy in your heart,
More compassion.
Once you feel that,
Then you would switch to the next statement and the next statement would be I'm sorry.
Now a lot of people get stuck with the I'm sorry part because they may feel like they've been wronged by someone,
By a situation that they've been victimized and if we hold that perspective of victimhood then we can't understand energetically how we participate in every situation.
Everything is 50-50.
Even when someone is being hurtful or has intentions that are not optimal,
Not loving,
Not caring,
When you recognize that that's unconscious and that there's an underlying dialogue between you and anything and again if you have an energy towards something you are communicating with that something,
With that someone energetically.
You're saying I'm against you,
You're wrong,
You're bad and so now you have that kind of communication.
So when you're saying I'm sorry,
You're essentially taking accountability for any part of yourself conscious or subconscious that is in judgment,
In rejection,
Not accepting the other person or the object or the situation or the quality,
The relationship,
Whatever it is that you're essentially having a conflict with internally even if you're not expressing it externally,
If you're feeling it and you're holding it in.
So you repeat I'm sorry and when you do that you're sharing this energy towards this object or this person or with a part of yourself because you can work with parts of yourself too and when you're doing that you're really just opening yourself up to what you don't know and what energies might be underlying in you that might be in judgment or in rejection of or against or in conflict with someone or something or a part of yourself.
So that's very useful because again that is going to start to these energies that you may or may not be aware of.
They can come to the surface and again as you say I'm sorry,
They start to process out,
They start to transmute.
That would be the second part.
So you would do that until again you feel a shift.
There's more openness,
There's more relief,
Relaxation,
The body feels like kind of open and relaxed and you feel good.
Once you're there then you would go to the third statement and the third statement is please forgive me.
So now what you're doing is you're humbly asking someone or something or a part of yourself for forgiveness and that type of vulnerability of compassion,
Of willingness to be humble in that way and to ask for forgiveness even if you don't feel like you've done anything wrong or that you're not aware of your own judgments or your own negative energy towards the thing or the person or your own self.
Just the mere fact of repeating that,
Of allowing yourself to be that vulnerable,
Again it creates a shift in your energy and in your energy with that external thing,
Within yourself,
With another,
With a situation or whatever it might be.
So when you repeat please forgive me again,
You feel,
You connect,
You're in your body,
You're allowing yourself to assess the changes,
Micro changes,
Where this changes,
Where energy moves in you in the same way that you did with the first two statements.
Once you feel a shift,
Once again once you feel an opening,
A relief,
A relaxation,
A clearing,
A tension just resolving,
Releasing,
Then once that happens again you can now go to the next statement.
So this progressive process of going stage by stage and really evaluating your energy state and being able to kind of like an explorer just be aware of what you feel and how your feelings and emotions change and how the energies are moving and what moves and how it moves,
That's going to be very,
Very helpful because you're really going so deep,
You're allowing the layers and the energies to bubble up to the surface and then they can clear.
So you're liberating energy and once you're there,
Now the last statement,
The last part of this is to really tune into feelings of gratitude and you,
So you tune into gratitude and the gratitude that you tune into as you say thank you,
You're saying thank you,
You're saying thank you to yourself,
You're saying thank you to the universe,
To god or energy or source,
You're saying thank you to the other person,
You're saying thank you to the object,
The situation,
The relationship,
The location.
Whatever it is that you're healing your relationship with,
You're saying thank you and you're not just saying thank you for the healing,
You're saying thank you for the lesson,
You're saying thank you for teaching me what I didn't know about myself.
Saying thank you for teaching me about my own energy,
About my own relationship to myself,
To others,
To the world.
And when you do that,
When you really connect to this deep deep gratitude within yourself and you feel this sense of deep gratitude and appreciation,
Another shift occurs.
And you could say that all of these shifts where you're opening,
Where you're relaxing,
Where the weight is just,
You know,
Dropping and there's energy,
You know,
That now begins to liberate and your energy field begins to expand and you're opening yourself up,
Very much so is your heart is opening when you're repeating the Oppono Po'o Mantra.
And as your heart opens to yourself,
To others,
To the world,
To location,
Situations,
Objects,
Qualities,
Character,
Traits,
Whatever it is that you're applying the Oppono Po'o Mantra to,
When that happens,
It's going to really change your relationship to yourself,
To the world,
To everything.
So it's a very very beneficial mantra.
It's very simple to practice.
The deeper you go,
The more you observe,
The more you're in your body,
The more you're really allowing yourself to be humble and to open your heart in this situation,
The better the results.
I have seen for myself when I've practiced it and also other people,
For instance,
When I'm,
Let's say I'm facilitating a client in person or on the phone,
All of a sudden their phone rings or there's a text message or there's an email from someone and that's happened to me actually in very complex and negative situations where the person texts you or calls you because the energy changes.
Dexter has a really nice metaphor for relationship dynamics.
He says,
Imagine that you're playing ping-pong with someone and all of a sudden,
So you've played ping-pong and you kind of know how you play ping-pong,
Which is,
You know,
Oftentimes in relationship it's like that.
We project an image onto the person and we have our own self-image and we play the same ping-pong game and so there's expectations of where we're gonna be and the other person is going to move according to that.
So Dexter likes to say that in relationship,
When one person moves in the game of ping-pong,
If the other person wants to stay in the relationship in the game and to be able to catch the ball,
They're going to have to move too.
So that's what happens with the Oppono Po'olu mantra.
You move,
They move.
Sometimes if the person is closed,
There might not be an immediate result.
It might take more times or they might not communicate with you and still the healing is happening,
It's occurring.
Sometimes there can be a delay.
The delay can be,
It can depend on the corners accumulated between you and the person,
Between you and the location.
It can depend on different factors that you may not be able to control and still a healing has occurred and if you stay with it,
If it doesn't happen right away,
If you'll just have another sitting and just go deeper and deeper and then maybe also be specific.
So that helps me kind of transition into essentially how to use it in terms of towards what.
So when I was explaining the four parts,
I was really helping you understand that you know you're essentially healing a relationship,
So an energy flow between you and something.
Really ultimately all the energy is really flowing you know together and it is not really that direct connection and it's also good to just have also this understanding that you know there can be flows of energies between us and other people depending on what the mind is doing,
What our emotions,
You know what we're feeling and all of that.
So the more we are aware of that,
The more we can work on that and so when you're doing the opponent opponent mantra,
You want to connect to the thing,
To the situation,
To the location,
To the object,
To the quality,
The character trait,
To yourself,
A part of yourself,
A part of someone,
Someone,
A relationship,
A relationship dynamic.
It's kind of endless the list because you can again you have a relationship to everything in the world,
Even words.
So when you can heal your relationship to everything and so once you've identified something where you know you're not completely open and free,
The energy is not just flowing naturally,
Then you can be intentional and decide you know choose to use the opponent opponent mantra to heal that relationship.
So when you heal the energy,
Now the energy in your field instead of being tied with that thing you know again grasping and having this back and forth nonverbal communication with someone or with something,
With an object,
You can have an open relationship to all things and just have your field expand and yourself in the field expanding and open to everything and then transmitting from your heart the energy of your intention of what's meaningful to you,
What's important to you.
And that's essentially instead of having you know all of these you know individual relationships that have some degree of judgment or expectation or belief or fear or conflict or reactivity or aversion or attachment,
You can clear that and then you're more conscious,
You're more present and you're able to function,
To interact,
To communicate and to be in the world in a very different way,
With a very different relationship to things because your relationship to things now is defined by your heart,
By yourself,
Not by the things and what you've associated with them and what you believe about them.
So the opponent opponent mantra helps you to clear that,
To clear the past and the pain associated with things,
The painful memory associated with people,
Locations,
Anything that you can imagine and then to be free to be operating freely,
Openly in the world consciously in the present moment and that's very helpful.
So that's my,
Well let's say that this is a quite a comprehensive understanding of the opponent opponent mantra,
We could get into you know like much more depth into it if we were to talk about one subject matter for instance and apply it to that and understand how it works.
Ultimately it's beneficial to understand that you can heal physically,
You can heal mentally,
You can heal emotionally,
You can heal spiritually and you can really start to transmute and change the energy within you as it projects onto all things,
All people,
All situations and so now you have a much more clear relationship and a much more equanimous way of life and of being and that's really beneficial.
That helps you be very focused,
Have the capacity to actually achieve the things that are meaningful to you much more rapidly with much more inner peace and joy and fulfillment.
I hope this is helpful and if you're interested in working with the opponent opponent mantra we have various meditations on our website for the opponent opponent mantra.
Some applied for yourself,
Some applied with you know relationship and others,
Some applied to victimhood and negative emotions so you know experiment with those,
See how it works for you and then just do it for yourself.
You know you can do it,
It's good to do it preemptively when you know that there's a conflict with someone pre-existing you know dynamic or or pre-existing judgment or aversion to something or location you can work with the energy preemptively rather than waiting for it to be triggered and then it's more difficult because then you have to work with all the resistance in your system because you're in a triggered state already and we'll talk more about that about triggered states and why it's difficult to forgive for instance when we're triggered because we're in a state of survival and when we're in survival it's difficult for us to move into the space of our hearts because we're in the root chakra and so it's not so easy whereas if you do it preemptively you go into your heart it's much easier you're not triggered you're going to get some triggering when you bring up the situation or the person or the location or whatever it is that you're bringing up and there'll be less resistance it'll be easier to work with it.
In addition to that if you have conflict or you have some aversions,
Some attachments or your relationship to money or to success or to certain people or situations or to yourself you have judgments of yourself and certain ways in which you feel and certain emotions that you feel if you if you want help with that Dexter and myself we help people really understand the level of their subconscious what is blocking them from forgiving what's preventing them again not as a mental concept really like in their emotions in their energy from clearing the energy of the past and moving forward so if that's something that you're interested in you can schedule a session with us on our website and and we'd be very happy to help you to clear the energy and to really get to a place where you feel better and you feel more love you feel more happiness and you can be in a state of harmony and and oneness with within yourself and with all things and all people I hope this is helpful
