Freedom

Wanting, yearning, needing sovereignty

Why won't America let us be?

Set us free!

We don't need America to say

We're not asking America to stay

We shouldn't be crying for them to tell

When they're an illegal entity from hell

We don't need permission to be

The only prison is our minds, 

Set yourself free.

The Difference Between Loyalty, Love and Enabling

So many of us have a loved one who is struggling with sobriety.

Did you know there was a difference between loving that person and enabling that person?  No need explain what love is, we know that.  But enabling is when we love someone so much, we don't see that we are helping them stay in their situation longer.

When we love someone, we can get angry and confuse that love for hate.  We don't truly hate them, we hate what they are doing.

When we are loyal to someone, we won't leave their side no matter what.  We all have loyalties, whether they are genuine or not.

When we continue to feed a person who we know is probably stealing or manipulating our families for money or something, we are basically helping them damage their lives.

So many of you are sitting there scratching your heads right now.  

What are you supposed to do now?  Well, we are not in the business of telling you what to do, we are simply exploring a different approach to our common issues because so many of us are lost trying to be found.  

If you go to church, you hear the word discernment a lot.  If you go to your kupuna, they will tell you to follow your na'au.  This is basically the same thing.  Discernment is knowing when to say yes or no.  It is following your gut instinct on a basic decision.

Sometimes you have to let the person you love suffer their consequences.  But that doesn't mean for you to be cruel about it, throw it in their faces, or make them suffer.  Let their choices sink in and give them time to figure it out.  This is true love and loyalty because instead of them making the bad choice and your ohana suffering the consequences, they suffer their own consequences which will ultimately help them get out of their situation sooner.

This does not mean for you to stop encouraging them to do better.  This does not mean that you get fed up and cut them off.  It simply means that you sit them down and explain to them that no matter how much you love them, you have to protect everyone they are hurting, with their choices, and you let them know to call you when they just need to talk it out, when they need to hear your voice and in dire emergency.  But you stand firm that you will not be able to finance any part of their choices, as long as their choices hurt their loved ones.

Make sure they know that so many people love them and are hurt by their choices.  Try not to raise your voice or show anger.  Remember that you are only talking facts.  They already feel the emotion, trust that.  Then excuse yourself quick, so that can be the lingering part of the conversation.  They are going to need time to really sink that in and process it.  Go, leave, pray and love on your family.  That person will be back when they are ready.  

Bringing Balance

Aloha Kekahi i Kekahi

When you think to care for others, do you think you have to be a nurse or something?  Does that mean that you are supposed to become like one genie in the bottle?  No way! That simply implies a gentle way to share common unity.  Some things, people have to deal with on their own.  

If you are a true friend, if you are a loyal person, if you follow our cultural models, if you are a Christian who is his brother's keeper, then your loyalty comes with a kuleana and that is to align your choices with what is pono.  

That's not always giving someone what they really want.  Sometimes, people are really wanting things that aren't good for them and even though we all have choices, you can change those choices at any given time, if only you realized both your gifts and responsibilities.  

Sometimes, teenagers get into some really dark behaviors whether it is drinking and driving or something we might not want to refer to here, for subject sensitivity.  Rather than tell you the truth, they act out in behavior.  You are left to guess what they mean, based on what you know.  Um, they're teenagers.  You only know what you know.  
By giving into their threats when they throw a hissy fit, is not loyalty. Its like giving them a license to do whatever it is that they are running from you to go do.  You don't know what danger they are putting themselves in and you are unable to protect them if you don't know.  

When we have a family member who is out there wrecking their life, we have to look at each interaction with them as a new one and make our decisions based on what we are seeing now.  So many of our families are all falling apart, due to supporting those who are falling apart, that we are going to have to look into something different.  Something that doesn't cost, something that doesn't stretch us thinner, something quick and easy to make it just one step easier to deal with and keep moving.   We don't all want to analyze everything for hours every day just to get our point sunk.

So after spending hours looking for solutions, it came that all we need to do is to change our approach on things. Of course, everything in life comes with a due process, practice and circumstances.  But who would have thought that we can solve a lot of our issues for free? 

Let's give the little things a try.  Somewhere in the modern world, we've lost the little things... Let's try to spend one hour each week with each member of our family, and send them to do the same with another loved and cherished one.  Please don't block someone from loving someone else that you don't like, in the family.  Just let the love flow and keep practicing it for a few months.  After 6 months, take a deeper look to see if there were any changes in behaviors or relationships.  

Lokahi

Forgive and Forget

Aloha Kekahi i Kekahi

What does that mean to you?
There are many ways to describe or translate that phrase.  One Biblical way to describe it, would be to say that yes, you are your brother's keeper.  What does this mean to you?

Aloha Kekahi i Kekahi
 It does mean to forgive & forget, but let's really look at what that means:  To forgive & forget means to let go of certain things so that you are able to move on with greater things in life. 

 Understand that you are letting go because you cannot change what already happened.  The pain happened once and it is not healthy for you to live it over & over again. 

Understand that the forget part does not mean you pretend it never happened.  It simply means that you don't bring it up constantly and that you don't dwell on it.  This too, prevents you from living the trauma of the experience over and over again.  No need, once hurt enough.

After a bad experience, you are faced with a number of choices concerning your future.  You can twist as many choices into this part, if you like being confused, but for the most part, you will either walk away or you will forgive and forget.  Anything outside of these two choices will likely cost you more damage.  Think about that right now.  Use the first situation that comes to mind.  No matter how you plan any other option in your head, you can easily come out with more problems, a higher cost, more work, more of something you don't care to deal with.  Now look at the 2 choices I gave you.  It really does boil down to this, doesn't it?  

No matter which you choose, your feelings still have to be dealt with, you only handled your choice.  Now about your feelings.  Even if you love someone enough to forgive and forget, you will have to get rid of the bad feelings before you let go.  What do you do?

Once again, you have a million ways you could handle stuff, so lets go through elimination of the bad ones, to see what choices are left.  

Choices like revenge aren't too smart.  That shit comes back even harder than the last time you got it and it hurts.  Don't be one dummy and hurt yourself, while trying to hurt someone else! 

Overcompensating is like agreeing to mind-fuck yourself in the long run.  Then you get so caught up in your own lies to yourself, that you end up losing yourself and your relationship with the other person.

Drugs and alcohol are the worst.  Never take it there, especially when you're upset about something! That part of the addiction is the worst part! 

We need to stick with coping mechanisms.  Something that is going to put us on top of where we really want to be, in the long run.  

Where's that?  Well when I wanted to be a musician, every emotion and situation deserved a song.  Who knows? Maybe my third album would need a filler song and I could take an old song and make it new?   When I was an aspiring coffee shop owner, I crafted new lattes to go with my mood.  When I lived in the country of a cold place, I used that energy to cut future firewood and when my temper was still ugly, I used to go to the gym and box it out. But the whole point is that I found something to dig my energy into, that would be positive later.  I didn't know that would be a good thing, I was just afraid to catch dirty lickins if I got caught doing anything else lol.

After a few years in college and church, I learned that this was the best possible thing I could have done, but let the psychologist try telling you this, with their textbook words! I swear that all the textbooks in the world couldn't say this if they tried.  They make it all sound so clinical that you can't relate to it, or you walk out feeling like a diagnosed idiot of some sort.

I have been working with people of all walks of life for 30 years now, and after all the stories and patterns I watch, I know what I said above to be pretty sound.  Its not the only way, but its an effective way that we all can handle.  Malama pono, hoaloha. 

10 Things That Are NOT Hawaiian

1. Drugs & Opiates
2. Alcoholism
3. Plastic Aloha
4. Fast Food
5. Unbalanced Diet
6. Polluted or Stolen Water
7. Unexploded Ordinance on our islands
8. Companies that poison our keiki by their schools
9. Missile interception facilities between the islands
10. Chem-trails

This is the inside of a Chem Trail plane. 

Those are the planes that leave the criss cross patterns 

across the sky, spraying us with pesticides. 

For your safety, the government has been hiding this information, 

as not to cause alarm to the fact that 

they are spraying you with poison.

Prohibition

Undoubtedly, lecturing by temperance advocates began soon after Captain Cook’s arrival, but early attempts at stemming the flow of alcohol were haphazard and inevitably failed. The situation changed when local organizations began to ally themselves with the national temperance movement.

1901 — Formation of the Anti-Saloon League of Hawaii, a local adjunct of the Anti-Saloon League of America. By 1916 the Hawaii League has a full-time lobbyist in Washington, but faced with opposition from Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, Hawaii’s representative in Congress — and an ardent supporter of “home rule” — Territorial legislators repeatedly fail to enact prohibition.

1918 — Finally, after being pummeled with criticism and pressured by his financial supporters, Kuhio declares in favor of federally imposed prohibition and President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill that turns Hawaii dry. Liquor doesn’t flow (legally) in Hawaii until prohibition is repealed in 1933.

What Have You Been Upto?

Have you been noticing lately there's been a whole lot more suicides in our lahui?  Have you also noticed that our teenagers are still getting into ice, as well as a plethora of other pills & drugs?

What's going on?  What happened to our ohana systems?  Generations of simply trying to hold it together are falling apart. Solutions that used to work, no longer work. 

Modernization makes everything breakable these days.  Cars don't run like they used to.  People don't cook like they used to.  And life just isn't what we're used to.  Sure, the struggle is always going to be there, but how we relate and get through the struggle are what's changing.  

Life is not a race or competition.

Please go camping alone in a secret location for 3 days before thinking about doing that to yourself.  Sometimes, all you need is to separate from everything to be able to get a grip on yourself.  You are far too valuable to be hurting yourself, but less you forget how to treat others.  

A lot of our families have forgotten how to overcome things.  We've forgotten what true ho'oponopono is, and have mixed it up with modern mind sets.  Look deeper within, k? 

There is no real finger to point and no one person to blame.

Problems like this and people in those positions are almost always faced with plenty of problems and no one is listening.

How do I know?  

I'm so messed up that I couldn't even die right when I committed suicide, because I was found and saved.  I didn't want to be saved, I wanted to die.

The hospital people told me people cared about me.  They lied.

The mental health people told me all kinds of things that were wrong about me and my life.  They didn't really know, they work in a practice - they practice.

Some people in my family even said they cared. 

I guess they sort of cared, but my being saved didn't help anything.

Nothing changed, except now people threw that in my face for years.

Did anybody start listening?  Not at all.

When they saved me from suicide,

I was not thankful and I am still not.

I tried to be thankful.

I tried to stop feeling bad about my situation.

I tried to not see how messed up my family was.

I tried not to see my loved ones fall apart.

But nobody tried to listen.

Nobody saw what I saw.

Nobody heard my voice.

Nobody was concerned like I was.

That was 30 years ago.

What happened since then?

Every concern I had, happened.

My family continued to fall apart around me.

My peers continued to get killed daily.

Everybody felt something, but everyone hid their feelings in hopes that nobody else would see, in hopes that nobody else would know.

People were too worried what somebody else was thinking.

People were too worried about local gossip.

When I was trying to overcome my feelings of wanting to die, everyone told me I was selfish.

Now there's reasons that people don't want to live and usually, they are anything but selfish.

Most of the time, the person who wants to die, wants to die because they don't want to say mean things to the people around them, who often don't listen because they don't have to, they don't want to, its somebody else's fault, etc.. 

When a person wants to die, it is usually because they already know that the situation isn't going to get any better unless something drastic was to happen, to wake people up.

The person who wants to die has been trying to tell everyone around them how they feel, but there is always a reason nobody hears them.

And nobody else can see this until the damage is done.

But have we forgotten that we all have gifts? 

Have we forgotten that some people can see things from their perspective, that we might not be able to see? 

Usually, those are the people we ignore and the reason is this:

We don't see what they see because we don't want to see it.  We would rather close our eyes to it and continue as if there is not a problem.  We don't want anyone to know that on the inside, we have things tearing us down! Can you imagine what our neighbors might think? What if our enemy saw that and enjoyed our suffering? 

What if we had a past that we are shame of and don't want people to pry into an area of our lives that hurt us the most.

But what if we decided to take on a few small things at a time with one another, so that these things don't happen? 

What if we began a few small baby steps in our own households, that just might be a good glue to hold us together?

Since committing suicide some 30 years ago, not too many days have gone by that a small part of me didn't wish it happened.

It has nothing to do with self pity, really.

It has more to do with the same exact reason I did it in the first place: nobody listens and everyone is way too busy worrying about something of lesser importance than what is hurting the person who wants to die.  People are worried about reputations, gossip, birthday parties (that they can't afford) and other menial things, rather than the most important things in life, to which most people would call boring and not special.

To make my point, try tell your family you like spend your kid's 3rd birthday just with family.. 

They will complain from the high holy moon and then try to win your kid's love by telling your kid that they did something better than you - the parent did.  Then the family is going to talk about that.  Before you know it, you got half the family talking bad about you and the other half defending you.

The sad part is that they ALL failed to ask your child what your child wanted, and they failed to see that you're relationship with your child is valuable & important to you.

So even thought they only mean to be loving and fun, they don't realize how deep their actions affected the relationship between you and your child.  When that tiny misconception issue blows up, it can cause a full on family war, bringing up all the other little crumbs that have successfully been swept under the carpet unto this point.

Nobody saw this coming, and those who did only gossiped about it anyway.  That's because people don't realize how their choices affect those around them.

So this small changes we are asking people to explore, are so small, so easy to say or write, but so hard to follow through with.  They challenge you to mind your manners - something that we as a people do not know in this generation, as a result of having to sort through so many lies of yesterday's generation, who had to sort out hewa from the generation before, which all stemmed from political oppression and American wars, for the last 150 years.

Think about it.

We don't have to all become each other's therapists, but just as the voice of God or our Ancestors can be found in the gentle hum of the whispering wind, so can the light of faith, the light of knowing things will one day be alright.

Let's look at some ways we can small kind lighten the mood, without really going out of our way.  I'm telling ya, being nice isn't always nice.  It can be hurtful sometimes, but if we keep something funny in our own head, we will never run out of reason to smile.

I might not be thankful to have been saved from my own disaster, but in being kolohe, I have learned how to change those feelings.

I wasn't working on being nice, I wanted revenge on all the things that took me there to begin with. 

The only revenge I found that worked on everything, was the simplest thing I could have ever and never figured out.

None of my revenge tactic worked. 

Being upset all the time was only killing me anyway, but slowly.

But one smile, huh... one smile did the trick for everything.

That smile made those who did care, happy. 

It made my haters wonder what I was doing wrong.

It made gossipers wonder what I was doing altogether.

It kept my secret, making spectators believe I was doing better than I was, because they all thought I was well put together.

That stupid smile actually put me one step above everyone else because it gave me a power I didn't have when I cried.

I could see when my haters were lost in their own hatred.  Oh pity them! ha ha

I could see how my smile inspired others to want to be around me. 

I felt better, knowing these things, not that I wanted to be crowded, but just knowing that I gave all kinds of people good vibes, was a new feeling inside. It eventually made my smile real.

And the love behind it grew, even though I wanted to remain cold, I just couldn't. I was already transforming into some kind of teddy bear or something.

But don't get me wrong... If someone crosses that line, the tita is still inside.  She is just more content now ;)

Here are some ideas:

- Remember that you have 2 ears and only 1 mouth for a reason

- Try listen before speaking

- Try think before speaking

- Take 15 minutes a day to practice nice face in the mirror

- Try answer your family with the word "yes" and not "what"

- Think before you react altogether

- No judgment means that you don't call people names when they do something stupid.  You can call the action stupid, but not the person.

- If you drive, let 3 'idiots' go today, on your new "3 Idiot" rule. Trust me, this one can make you laugh to yourself all day too!

- While out, do a random nice thing for one random kupuna each day, that's out of your normal kupuna nice thing that you do

- Once a week, pick one "complainer" and set a timer for 30 minutes.  For 30 minutes, try listen to them without talking much.  Give them 30 minutes to get it off their chest, and if they don't like hang up, you are welcome to charge them after 30 minutes have passed ;)

- Spend 1 hour each week with each kid, one-on-one.  This is the single most important thing you can do with your children that will keep trust, honesty & the bond alive between you & them. 

- If you have a significant other, turn everything off and spend one hour per week just on one completely undivided attention kind conversation with them. 

- If you normally go to the bar after work, try go to the hospice or old folk home and play one game of chess with one kupuna, or take the women flowers or something.  One hour per week, one day per week.

- If your parents are getting old, or your kupuna, try spend a one hour date with them per week.  This could be something like taking them to the movies when you take your family, or bringing them to one of the kids' games or recitals. You could be their special after church ice cream date or something.  Go take pictures or something.

- Designate once per month to be family photo day.  Those actually get creative & fun after awhile! Especially with filters! But the trick is that its a family photo day, so everybody has to participate! We just got a bunch of those red noses from Walgreens for our Christmas pics. 

- Hold the door for the random person behind you when you go to the store.  When they walk by announce something silly like "Monday Morning Door Service" and share a random laugh.

- If nothing else sounds good, or you enjoy being a rebel, here's the best one ever... 

Smile.. It makes people wonder what you've been up to.

Your Ohana Lands

When was the last time you checked on your lands at the tax bureau or
with the bureau of conveyance?

Today for the third time with the third family in a row, I went to
Real Property Tax Office to see about their land & tax situation.
Today for the third time, something they didn’t know about happened
to their land. Today, I am advising you on behalf of NAHKR to please
go run your name in the tax offices or in the Bureau of Conveyance.

Even if you don’t know anything, go run your name and check.

Today, while accompanying one kupuna to seek information regarding

the two lands he has now, only to find out that he lost two other plots

of land that he did not even know he had. One of those plots of land has

some of the dirtiest and disliked foreigners crowding it and making

money off our culture. The other plot of land is currently an ice haven.

The last trip to the RPT Office left us angry. Another kupuna went to pay
taxes a few months ago and was told that her ohana land did not exist.
She contacted me, came to Maui and checked in the office to discover
that they had “cut & pasted” (on the computer) her land on top of
someone else’s. She had been paying her taxes on time for 39 years
on this plot of land and was going to build her retirement home on
it this year. When she went to check the land before having it surveyed, it
was a construction site. Someone in the BoC had to have deliberately done
that in some dirty deal.

The trip prior to that, to the same RPT Office another kupuna’s land had
been illegally sold and they found out when their tax money was returned
to them. When we went down to the office, they were told that it was
sold due to negligence (failure) to pay taxes. So when our kupuna pulled
out a wad of receipts for over the years, the office was shocked. She had
been paying her taxes all this time and now how are they supposed to undo
what they had done? Unfortunately, that kupuna has passed and her
family is not interested in the fight. They feel as though they will lose
anyway, so why even try? This is more common than you think.

On all three occasions while there, I had asked for the “Kuleana” paper
to file. On the first two occasions, they did not know what I was talking
about and they even had me questioning myself. But the second time,
I managed to get the lady to look hard enough and she found it,
citing that this must be something new because she never heard of
it before. She stated that she had been working there for quite some
time and this was the first she ever heard of it.

When I told her that I had seen a copy of one filed in 2012, she was
completely baffled. In conversation, she told me that she knew
Hawaiians were in a predicament over our land but she did not
understand much about it. So I happily gave her a copy of my
resources and she wearily accepted.

She must have read and learned more because this time, the third
time, she was more knowledgeable about what she was talking about, but

I had one point question of another debate to ask. In a debate amongst
ourselves the other day, someone tried to tell me that they could leave
the lands to whomever they wanted to, whether or not it was RP lands.
I explained to them how these lands differ from lands regularly titled
through some real estate transaction. I explained to them that one
should NEVER take these lands out of the hands of the direct lineage,
no matter what.

I know its not considered ‘sovereign’ to file state papers, but if its going to
save you land tax money, go for it. You don’t know if your descendants
are going to be responsible enough to keep it. By filing kuleana, you
are assuring that it will be in their hands for a few more generations.

Please continue to communicate with your family, that they need to stay
on top of these things and check on behalf of their children as well.
Always be sure that as soon as you receive the land, that you find one
akamai kanaka who is unbiased, to help you make sure you leave the
land behind in a way that will save the land for future generations.
Always make sure your ohana knows to keep the filings current.

For the greater information of all, the Kuleana filings have always
been around, so don’t let your local office tell you different. Its one page
and you need your genealogy only back to the person it was given to -
now do you see why you can only leave it to your lineage? One has to prove
that they are lineal descendant to that property, or it loses the
adjudication (seal) of the Kingdom, and can be lost at anytime for any reason,
after that.
Please feel free to send any questions to kanakafreedom@gmail.com
Aloha Kekahi i Kekahi

NAHKR