ASK

"Is there room for the unknowable?"  Well, if you don't make room for it how will you know."  I am an old woman.  Not so old that I don't find moments when throwing a kini into hopscotch squares eludes my memory, but there are days when I know time has passed. 

"You're more Hawaiian now then when you were living there!"  The short reply to that is, there's always more to know about 'being Hawaiian' and since I'm a curious gal I keep digging into things and have found a place where being curious is a very good thing.  Twisted in and out of this place in which I am where curious is good is the ancient belief, some call it 'protocol' that says don't be niele -- mind your business, curiosity killed the cat!  My real life has taught me to see both ends of that protocol and recognize that those protocol based on kapu had and have a place in a pono life.  There are many times when others' business is not my thing; it takes practice to stay freed-up of entanglements.  On the other end of that protocol and beyong the realm of kapu is the seed of exploration that lives in us, at least most of us.  Adventurous genes?  I think so, just read The Kumulipo and you see the evidence of that.

Here's a question for you, "being Hawaiian"  what's that?  Ahhh.  Hit that ARROW on the video above and chant along with Kumu.  Ask for yourself what 'being Hawaiian" means.  I've had a recent opportunity to engage in discourse and discussion with a friend.  The issue of traditional practices and fit arose during our discourse.  Similarly, my son and I have conversations about what is traditional practice and how does one know while reading Hawaiian-written material what to include or believe as real.  Like I said, I am an old woman now and in my life these questions have filled my head and my na'au again and again.  When my cousin Mokihana was still in the flesh I often turned to her, my elder cousin, to ask for clarification.  Sometimes I would get a straight answer:  "Tell the boy to carry ti leaf and Hawaiian salt on the job.  Keep the ti leaf fresh everyday ..."  Other times her answers were parable-like broad and open-ended leaving gaping holes for me to swing across in time:  "So, you found the mo'o."  This in reply to my question about the sacred meaning of our name.  Later, and then again after that the meaning of names or words lead from knowledge to wisdom.  Wisdom coming only after experiencing meaning with bite.

Many people will come up with answers to 'being Hawaiian', but few can give another the answer that fits.  During the past four months E HO MAI has become a daily or regular part of my spiritual practice, asking to have the unknowable accessible.  Saturn(control-freak) has a heavy hand in my birth chart, so authority figures big in my life.  As a girl those protocols were commandments I followed because!  Even then, there was a rebelliousness that would have to wait to be harnessed and I became facile with words.  Fortunately my blood includes the storytelling genes and that is how I move through the changing answers that I get while telling stories. 

All of us have that storyteller gene, and along with that gene are zillions of others that are talking and telepathing 24/7 or 30/10.  The trick I learned while sorting through all the stories I tell (witness the reality I have more than a dozen blogs) is to ask that storytelling gene.  I call my genie "She who watches [and listens]."  She among the zillions has eyes and ears for my best interest, and the only price for stories?  You got it, 'ASK .'

If you want help accessing "She who watches" click here.