Aloha!  It’s an easy breezy greeting – coming or going – that takes us to tropical places in our minds and always brings a smile.

However in Huna Philosophy, it means something much more.  Out of the seven Huna tenants, this one especially applies to relationships, and relating to others.

Aloha
To love is to be happy with
As love increases judgment decreases

Seriously now, read that again.  As love increases, judgment decreases.  Conversely, unfortunately, that means as judgment increases, love decreases.

Holy Hannah!!!

This means as I am judging my son because he is a slob I am loving him less.
As I am judging my husband for being moody I am loving him less.
As I am judging my father for being stubborn, I am loving him less.
As I am judging my little one for throwing temper tantrum, that’s right, I am loving him less.

You get the picture and honestly, it’s not always pretty.  To love is to be happy with is the pure and simple truth.  There isn’t love in judgment.  There isn’t love in contempt.  There isn’t love in fear.  However, in contentment, ease, peace, and good old fashioned happiness, love abounds.  It grows and thrives.  I caught myself a couple of days ago listening to a friend talk and pretty much every word she said I was judging.  We aren’t talking about positively observing.  We are talking about straight up, ugly, smellin’ up the room, judgment.  What the heck???  I love this person!!!  Maybe – maybe not.  Can I claim to love, when I’m in a space that is simply unloving??  Probably not.  Truth is, as we all know, love is way more then a feeling and it’s certainly more then a blanket declaration of how we want feel about someone.

Using Aloha as a compass point I have a tool to stay in love when I’m relating to others.  Most of the time it works.  Sometimes I fail.  However, I always know when I’m off course.  The commitment to love is a big one.  It’s a way of life.  However, it’s doable, and the rewards are too precious to slip off into the deep dark canyon of judging.

ALOHA!!!

In our continuing article series on Huna Philosophy we are talking about Makia.

Makia
Energy goes where attention flows.
Everything is energy.

Once upon a time I had a client. We will call her Sandy. Sandy had decided to leave her husband. It wasn’t in question, it was a done deal. She’d been finished with the marriage for at least a year, and had put off making her decision final hoping things would change. However, things had only worsened and she had made up her mind. However, and this is a big HOWEVER, she couldn’t walk out the door quite yet. There were some unusual financial concerns. Not to mention his mother was terminally ill and had been given just a few weeks to live. Timing couldn’t have been worse – but she was still resolute. So, although she didn’t tell him she was leaving, she did begin plotting her course out the door, hoping to be gone in three to four months.

As you can imagine she was miserable. Making the decision to leave didn’t bring relief. It only made her feel more stuck. That’s where I met Sandy. She needed support during the interim before she left. In conversation I asked her what she could find that she appreciated about Gary. Honestly, it took two sessions before she could come up with one thing. Finally she admitted that after work he would take the boys outside and play catch with them almost every night. This gave her the opportunity to get dinner on the table without them underfoot. I instructed her to really focus on that. Take that half hour to focus on enjoying watching him with the boys and thinking about how she appreciated the break. Sandy laughed – I insisted – she tried.

Within a couple of weeks she had added to her list. Gary was polite at the dinner table. Gary helped with the laundry. Gary mowed the lawn without having to be asked. Within a month the list totaled about a dozen items. Three years later, she carries a small black book that is full of the many things she loves and appreciates about Gary. They are happier together then they’ve been in years.

Was Sandy just wishy washy on her decision to leave? I don’t think so. Was it a miracle?? Maybe. Appreciation is a miracle maker. When Sandy begrudgingly started putting focused attention on her appreciation of how Gary was with the kids, it cracked open a door for change. She recalls gazing out her kitchen window laughing to herself at the joy of the boys with Gary and beginning to think about how she would really miss hearing that laughter while she cooked. During that one half hour a day she wasn’t angry at him, and in that half hour, yes a miracle happened. Energy goes where attention flows. If we can be disciplined with where we put our energy in our relationships we can create miracles too.

Lisa Hayes is the author of HOW TO ESCAPE FROM RELATIONSHIP HELL. She is a mother of two, yoga instructor, hypnotherapist, and internet project manager. Lisa likes long walks on the beach and naps. You can contact her at http://www.escapefromrelationshiphell.com

I have a framed copy of the Huna Philosophy on my desk. I love it. I saw it the first time more then a decade ago on a therapists wall. I read it and thought to myself, “This is everything I believe to be true about the world in seven simple points.” I loved it so much I wrote it on toilet paper, (it was all I could find to write on), and I carried it around in my purse for months. I look at it everyday and Huna philosophy does one thing for me. It helps me keep it real. Like most things, it is simple, but not necessarily easy. However, the more I try to apply it to my life the easier it is for me to find my way to peace in most situations. The place I find the seven simple truths work the most magic – you guessed it – relationships. For the next seven weeks we are going to look at the seven simple truths and how they apply to our interactions with others.

Week One:

IKE

The world is what you think it is.

Everything is a dream.

This idea is the master key to what most people view as Law of Attraction 101. Bottom line is you get what you expect. There is no relationship in my life were I experience that more acutely then with both of my sons. I have a 16 month old. If I walk into a restaurant with him, holding my breath, praying for mercy, you can bet your desert I’m going to be crawling on the floor picking up after him while he’s crying and throwing everything he can reach at the other patrons. Before we leave the restaurant, I am the one in tears. If I walk into the restaurant relaxed, ready to have a good time, expecting him to chill out and dig in, 99% of the time I get that. Kingston is a projection of what I anticipate. If I’m about to have a “challenging” conversation with my eighteen year old, that’s what he delivers for me. If I am going to work with him to solve problems and improve our relationship, that’s what he delivers me – cooperation served straight up with a smile. Am I psychic or am I the creator? I am certain it’s the latter. I create my experiences based on what I expect.

The world is exactly what I think it is. This holds true with my husband, my business partner, my friends and my family. It also brings up an interesting question. How much of what we expect is based on the past? “He’s always been angry. Of course that’s what I expect!” Basing our expectations of what we’ve seen before, or even what we are seeing right this minute, keeps us locked into an old reality. We cycle the same stuff, over and over again. Anyone seen the movie Groundhog Day? It’s what prevents us from getting law of attraction to do our bidding. It takes discipline to expect something different. It is a real skill. However, it is a muscle you can work out and get stronger.

To me, IKE is the place I like to start and end my day. Everything is a dream – and what better time to dream up new and different even better possibilities. So, as you are getting familiar with IKE I encourage you to ask yourself, “How can this get even more perfect?”

Lisa Hayes is the author of HOW TO ESCAPE FROM RELATIONSHIP HELL. She is a mother of two, yoga instructor, hypnotherapist, and internet project manager. Lisa likes long walks on the beach and naps. You can contact her at http://www.escapefromrelationshiphell.com.

This week I would like to talk about a subject that has been front and center in my life for the last few days. The question is, what is love? Maybe more specifically the question is, how do I know if they love me?? The answer is often illusive or confusing. I had a moment of crystal clarity with my son this week – if you are a parent, you know what those moments are like. We were in the car, having a discussion, pulled over at the side of the road, and I’m pleading with him. “If you only learn one thing from me in your my lifetime, let it be this.” If you are a parent, as you might imagine, I just got a roll of the eyes and a heavy sigh. So, my plea to you all is the same – if you get one thing I say – get this.

Love is a verb. Love is an action, a behavior, a way of being. Love is not a feeling.

To think love is only a feeling is a recipe for hurt and resentment. Love is simply not a tickle or an inkling. To tell someone you love them without being loving is dangerous and hurtful. Conversely, to hear those words from someone when you are experiencing careless, hurtful, or dismissive treatment from them, and expect to feel loved, is ludicrous. Sometimes we just long to hear those words. Sometimes we crave them like an addict craves a fix. However, when the words aren’t backed up in reality with behavior, that fix is short lived and just leaves us clamoring for more, more, and yet more. This week my son heard those words from someone who he desperately wants love from. However, when the words are flanked with behavior that doesn’t match up – DANGER WILL ROBINSON – DANGER!!!

I also see this in couples. I recently sat with a friend and her husband who were jabbing and sparring with each other all night at dinner. Little insults in the name of joking were followed by subtle barbs over silly things. The resentment and anger oozed out of them and everyone at the table could feel it. These are two people who profess to love each other – but the behavior says otherwise. Bottom line, you can’t be hurting someone on any level and loving them at the same time – period – end of story. Those two things are not congruent. They do not mix.

My challenge to you for this week is the “One Hundred Ways” challenge. The challenge is look for one hundred ways everyday to be loving or express love. Do this for a month This may seem like a tall order, but I guarantee it’s doable. This can include anyone you come in contact with ranging from your mate to your dry cleaner. I promise you that if you look for, find, and jump on the opportunity to be consciously loving one hundred times in your day you will start to shift your beingness to being much more loving. As you flex that muscle it is inevitable that all your relationships will improve. Just be warned, after thirty days of the challenge, the person you are most likely to love more, is you. I would love to hear back from you regarding your experiences with this challenge. Please email me at theomzone@gmail.com, with the words “love challenge” in the subject line.

Lisa Hayes is the author of HOW TO ESCAPE FROM RELATIONSHIP HELL. She is a mother of two, yoga instructor, hypnotherapist, and internet project manager. Lisa likes long walks on the beach and naps. You can contact her at http://www.escapefromrelationshiphell.com.

I was sitting with Casey in a coffee shop as she struggled to hold back tears. She was desperately trying to figure out how she was going to tell her husband. Her younger sister Amy, who had been in a very physically abusive relationship had decided to leave her boyfriend about six months earlier. Cacey and her husband emptied their savings account so Casey could fly across the country and help get Amy relocated to back to their home state. They set her up in a condo and got her back on her feet. Amy had walked a couple of times before and had always gone back to him. However, Cacey thought that by moving her across the country Amy would stay away from him for good. This morning Cacey had got a phone call from Amy. Amy was at the airport, on her way back to Florida, back to him, again…

If we were nothing but souls we would say to each other, “I’ll love you and you can love me and that’s what we will do for each other.” However, unfortunately we are walking around in bodies, bound by ego, and sometimes what we say to each other is much different. Sometimes, it seems more like, “Help me play out my dramas, watch me hurt other people and hurt myself, tell me it’s OK, to prove to me you love me.”

The greatest gift you can give another person is your unconditional love. But sometimes, the hardest lesson of love to learn is that love and judgment cannot live in the same place. When you are trying to love someone, but being a part of their life, or their drama causes you to judge them, right or wrong, or are no longer really loving them and sometimes you simply have to step away from them to offer them your gift, your unconditional love. Sometimes you have to love the people you love the most from a distance.

From a vibrational, feel good place, love is always the better choice. In the spirit of Aloha, to love it to be happy with. Being happy is a feel good place and feeling good always leaves us energized. When we are interacting with anyone that we are judging poorly, love has simply gone away. When that someone is a soul that we are deeply attached to detaching is a frightening proposition. However, if we are to continue to love, sometimes it’s the only path.

Fast forward six months. Cacey got her first phone call from Amy since she’d left. She called me and asked me to meet her for coffee. Amy had gotten a job in Florida immediately upon returning working for a marine broker. Trying to be smarter then before, she’d saved money just in case. Amy was flying back in on Tuesday. “What do you think will be different about this time?” I asked.

Cacey smiled softly as she pulled out paint sample sheets from her purse. They were pink and blue.

“He’s in jail. She decided she wouldn’t let him hurt the baby. She’s coming home. We are painting a nursery this weekend. Greg is excited to see her.”

Cacey was able step back and love Amy with all her heart without putting herself in a place where she knew she would judge her. Cacey did not allow herself to get back into the drama, but she didn’t love her any less. Cacey did not allude to Amy she supported her bad decision making any longer. She simply stepped away~she got really peaceful about it. Cacey stopped taking her anti-anxiety medication and got over her ulcer. Even without Cacey there Amy knew how much she was loved. Even from a distance she felt it. When she was ready she knew the unconditional love would be there for her.

And that’s what it’s all about…. Aloha.

www.moderngirlsguidetozen.com

Lisa Hayes is a mind, body, soul, practitioner who views the person as a whole – With meditation for the mind Yoga for the body and as an ordained minister, for the soul, Lisa works with women to help them achieve peace and bliss in the chaos of their every day lives.

Lisa is also a partner in an independent technology firm and is a single mother of a teenage boy, so she understands chaos. Chaos is a part of everyday life. It is a part of the contrast of life that makes the zen seem so much more precious.

Lisa began the pursuit of the healing arts more than fifteen years ago when she completed her degree in natural health and nutrition. She continued that path as a yoga and meditation instructor before becoming a life coach.

Lisa believes that zen is our basic nature. All we have to do is release it. She has dedicated herself to assisting women in finding whatever tools work best for them individually to become their most blissful and beautiful selves.

To contact Lisa email her at lisa@moderngirlsguidetozen.com.