“Hello, sorry, thank you, I love you. » Would four formulas be enough to repair a life? It is the bet of a centuries-old Hawaiian prayer, which Céline Dion has just put back in the spotlight. On July 3, the Quebec singer unveiled her new single bearing the name of this prayer focused on forgiveness. It comes out a few months before the artist’s return to the stage, planned for Paris from September.
The Hawaiian word is broken down into two roots: “hoʻo”, which initiates an action, and “pono”, accuracy, righteousness. Taken together, the expression literally means “to put things in order”.
This content is blocked because you have not accepted cookies and other trackers.
I manage my choices I authorize
It was the Hawaiian ethnologist Mary Kawena Pukui who documented this oral tradition, in a work published in 1958 after decades of observation within her community. She describes a rite bringing together an entire family, sometimes under the authority of an elder or a kahuna, a healing priest.
Wrongs were exposed, long silences were observed to allow emotions to mature, then came the time for confessions and mutual forgiveness. The ceremony closed with a festive meal, symbol of a conflict finally resolved. Behind this rite, a belief shared in the Pacific: illness or misfortune finds its source in an unrecognized fault, a dead anger, a family disagreement with no solution. Healing then begins by naming what has been hidden.
A Polynesian spirituality, become syncretism
Ho’oponopono does not belong to any organized religion, but it remains inseparable from a cosmology that Hawaiian historians date back to precolonial times. In this tradition, a transgression could anger the gods or violate spiritual laws, the kapu; final forgiveness went to the deity or the offended person. The kahuna who led the rite played the role of both priest and healer.
This spiritual dimension changes nature with Morrnah Simeona, a Hawaiian healer. By adapting the rite in the 1970s, she injected it with her own Christian education, readings on Indian and Chinese spirituality and other esoteric writings by Edgar Cayce, an American mystic adept at trance through hypnosis. She also introduces the notion of karma, foreign to the original Hawaiian tradition, and invokes a “divine Creator”, a formulation closer to monotheism than to the Polynesian pantheon.
From a collective rite to a solitary prayer
Hew Len, a student of Morrnah Simeona, popularized in the 1990s the version known today of Ho’oponopono: the repetition of a short formula turned towards oneself, without the presence of the group or explicit reference to the divine. We find this same thread in Céline Dion’s title, where she evokes those who are shaped by errors and whom love soothes.
The mantra is broken down into four words, “Hello, sorry, thank you, I love you”, each corresponding to a stage. Psychologist Rosemary Sword and researcher Philip Zimbardo, in an article in Psychology Today, describe a movement from awareness to the sincere request for forgiveness, then to gratitude, before the expression of love offered without expectation of return.
A practice to be handled with discernment
Personal development practitioners sometimes warn against a practice that would lead to a “spiritual by-pass”, where immediate relief masks pain which sometimes resurfaces later, amplified. They also warn of the risk of slipping into self-blame, particularly among people who have experienced trauma.
