Introduction to How to Live ALOHA
Aloha! My name is Kit Kanohoaloha Wynkoop. I am the author of the Substack publication called How to Live ALOHA.
This publication offers ancient practices and wisdom that point the way to living with an awakened mind toward bringing peace & joy to oneself and this chaotic world. According to Aunty Pilahi Pakī, Aunty Morrnah Nālamakū Simeona, and Aunty Nānā Veary, three of Hawaiʻi’s most beloved and respected wisdom keepers of the 20th century, that’s called “living ALOHA.”
A Little About Me
I grew up in Hawaiʻi in the 60’s and 70’s. When I was 10, I was hānai (adopted) by Native Hawaiian kūpuna (elders) down the block whose adult children had moved away to the continent. Over the course of several years, Tutu Kane and Tutu Lady taught me about Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian culture and, most importantly, about ALOHA. Those experiences inspired me to seek out the truth about life.
After college, I moved to live and work in San Francisco.
In my personal time, over 25 years in the Bay Area, I delved into, investigated, researched, studied, and often was initiated into many of the world’s belief systems, including: Catholicism; Born Again Christianity; Hawaiian spirituality & Hoʻoponopono; the mystic beliefs of Christianity & Judaism; the magic philosophy of Aleister Crowley; the philosophies of Hermes, Rudolf Steiner, and Edgar Casey; the Koran; Hinduism; the shaman practices of the Ainu (Japan), Diné (Navajo), Siksikáwa (Blackfoot), and Afro-Caribbean Santaria; Metaphysics; New Age spiritualism; Wicca; Quantum Physics; Taoism; Sufism; and Non-Dualism..
What I found was a common message to them all: there is a way to lead a consistently happy life; thereby bringing peace & joy to oneself and the world. Unfortunately, I could not find a thorough list of steps to get for the average person; there were always some steps missing.
After moving back home to Hawaiʻi, I eventually traveled back-and-forth to Northeastern Vermont over the course of a year, based on a wise teacher’s recommendation, to attend training programs at Karmê Chöling, a Shambhala Buddhist meditation center. There, I learned a millenia-old Buddhist meditation path that helps people live calm, centered, and focussed lives in the midst of chaos and helps them reconnect with and live from a place of compassion and wisdom – in other words, ALOHA.
Realizing that Karmê Chöling was an oasis of deep Truth, I moved and lived a lay-monastic life there for five years to deepen my practice, continue my studies, serve the community of staff & visiting program participants, train how to teach the teachings, and learn the business-side of running a successful meditation retreat centre. In that time, within Buddhism, I found a thorough roadmap called the dharma that points the way to living a consistently peaceful life.
I returned once again back home to Hawaiʻi and began receiving insights into creating a course which I eventually began teaching in 2020 and called The Path Of Meditation that Leads to Living ALOHA. That course and this Substack publication are based on all of my training, experiences, and studies over the last 50 years.
The Three Approaches to Understanding Reality
As a Substack reader, you are probably well aware of the importance of knowing where someone is coming from in order to truly understand what they are communicating. According to all of the belief systems I studied (listed above), there are three approaches to understanding reality and all human communications are based in one or another of them: the outer approach, the inner approach, and the ultimate approach. Below are condensed explanations of each one.
Outer Approach
In the outer approach, reality is what we’re told to believe is real. Newtonian physics is the main guide. Here, we primarily use our conceptual/ego minds (the “thinking” or “logical” mind) to get through life. Using the metaphor of the movie, “The Matrix,” this would be remaining in the blissfully ignorant state that is the comfortable simulated reality of the Matrix where we take what comes and deal with it in one material-world way or another.
Inner Approach
We begin to see there is more to reality than meets the eye and look to ancient wisdom traditions as a guide. We primarily use our heart-mind (the naʻau, the kath, the hara, the dantian) to get through life and yet still rely on the conceptual/ego mind when needed. Using The Matrix metaphor, these are the rebels who have taken the red pill to experience the surprising life-changing truth about reality: that they can manipulate their experience of the matrix.
Ultimate Approach
We finally see that reality is the only thing that actually persists: the underlying foundation of All That Is. People refer to it differently according to cultural and language differences: Source Energy, Mind, True Nature, The Self, Life-Force Energy of the Universe, Buddha Nature, Christ Consciousness, Infinite Consciousness, God, ALOHA, and the list goes on. Quantum mechanics and the advanced understandings of the world’s belief systems serve as the guiding principles. Here, one uses their heart-minds to align completely with Source; thereby becoming a beacon of peace, love, & joy in the material world. Using The Matrix metaphor, this is the “real world.”
Why Living ALOHA Is So Important
It is said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting to get different results. Well, that’s what most of the world is already doing but that won’t be what is advocated in this publication.
Our world needs optimistic leaders who foster meaningful connections with others, have a sense of clarity about their purpose & values, and believe that they can affect positive change.
I believe everyone is a leader.
But nothing can be truly done about the problems in our personal lives, families, communities, cities, states, country, or the world until we each first change our way of thinking. If our current outer-approach-of-reality way of thinking worked - even with all our outer-approach attempts to improve on it - we would already be experiencing a better world.
“The thinking that got us to where we are is not the thinking that will get us to where we want to be. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
~ Albert Einstein
Our current way of thinking is a result of our habit of relying on our conceptual/ego mind – what many people refer to as the “thinking mind” or the “logical mind.” As the label implies, the conceptual/ego mind is where our ego is formed. The appearance of the conceptual/ego mind is only a tendency of our human experience; it is not inherent to it.
The conceptual/ego mind’s beginning is not obvious until a child begins saying "no" - around age two. Its active usage doesn't appear until age six or seven although it can begin earlier if encouraged by parents. And its development isn’t complete until age 25.
And yet from between birth and age six or seven, we are living predominantly free of the conceptual/ego mind and navigating life and the world around us from our True Nature, our heart-mind. We’re using our senses and our inherent human qualities are active: we are conscious, aware, mindful, curious, kind, loving, joyful, creative, confident, we can feel, we have insights, and we use our imagination.
These qualities are also the experience of the natural resting state of the adult mind that is reached through ancient meditation: open, fresh, alert, aware, and pure (unadulterated by conditioning).
But, at some point, we’re told to stop acting like a child and get more serious. This drives us to switch our allegiance from who we naturally are to a manufactured “adult” experience of the conceptual/ego mind and society.
Over time, we begin to experience struggle, anxiety, depression, emotional reactivity, and suffering - all the while thinking this is what normal adult life is. After all, everyone else is experiencing the same thing. So we deal with it all as best we can and pine for the happy moments that eventually dissolve leaving us to experience struggle, anxiety, depression, emotional reactivity, and suffering all over again.
Back and forth we go: happy then suffer, happy then suffer, over and over again.
This kind of life was best described in the first Deadpool movie where the main character says during the prologue, “Life is an endless series of train wrecks with only brief, commercial-like breaks of happiness.”
"Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don't know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress."
~ Paramahansa Yogananda
When we look at human behavior over the last thousand years, we see that the majority of people a thousand years ago lived in sync with nature or Life or the flow of the Universe or ALOHA – call it what you want.
But as time progresses, people are living stuck in their conceptual/ego minds and its way of thinking more and more until the 20th century when that sky-rockets with the industrial revolution. Now, in the 21st century, we’re clearly stuck in our conceptual/ego minds.
“The greatest addiction that you’ve never read about - because the people who are addicted to it don’t know it - is the addiction to thinking. It’s actually addictive. You can’t stop thinking: it’s like you can’t stop drinking, can’t stop smoking, can’t stop eating - you can’t stop thinking.
Thinking is the greater addiction than any other because 1) it’s a drug (you get hormonal hits of adrenaline & cortisol); 2) it’s been around for so long; and 3) it’s a pseudo sense of self. Despite the fact that it is the sole cause of struggle, anxiety, depression, emotional reactivity, & suffering, there’s a great reluctance on the part of most people to let go of thinking because, in most people’s minds, doing that is equated with the state of sleep.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
But nothing could be further from the truth. Mindful presence is what remains. Doing still happens, interacting with the conceptual/ego mind still happens (when needed) but from a foundation of freedom, peace, and immense wellbeing.
It’s a scientific fact that when we are busy or stressed or worried or using devices, certain organs excrete chemicals throughout our bodies like cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, glucose, dopamine, and others. Over a relatively short period of distracting ourselves from the present moment by using entertainments and craving a different now, we can form an addiction to these chemicals. This is why people can’t put down their phones, why they canʻt stop worrying about things, or why they say, “I’m way too busy to meditate.”
Did you know science has proven that an emotion - any emotion - lasts for only 90 seconds? That’s a minute and a half. If it lasts any longer - which it can do for decades - it’s because we keep feeding it with thoughts and storylines.
When we were very young, we didn’t have these experiences. I don’t know about you but I remember a time when I was engaging in the freedom and joy of spontaneous learning through play. Then I started being in my head to learn things – which I loved. Until I HAD to be in my head in college and eventually post-college life with a job, relationship, career, a place to live, responsibilities, etc., etc. Until I found myself being fully reliant on my conceptual/ego mind – addicted, if you will, as I seemingly couldn’t stop. AND I had become so serious. I had left behind my True Nature.
It’s a sad story, for sure.
But, according to global belief systems and indigenous wisdom traditions, there is a way to get back to our True Nature, our natural way of being; recapture our inherent qualities; be successful in our earthly endeavors; and positively impact the world simply by living consciously, with an awakened mind - living ALOHA.
This publication offers ancient practices and wisdom that point the way to living ALOHA (how to live consciously & kindly with an awakened mind).
Why live ALOHA? Because living ALOHA not only brings peace & joy to oneself; it is the ultimate force in dismantling the madness and chaos created by ego-centric personalities.
How can ALOHA do this? It can do it because madness and chaos is manomaya (mind-made): whatever is made by the human mind can be unmade by the human mind.
What you read may seem unconventional but if we don’t start doing things differently, we can’t expect fresh, new results.
Now, as always, you have a choice to make: do you continue to live and see the world and experience your life as you have for the last how many decades? Or do you subscribe to this publication to rediscover your inherent way of thinking and being that brings harmony, joy, peace, & wellbeing to yourself and the ability to work together with others cooperatively – free of ego – on any issue that is for the highest good of all sentient beings and the planet?
A contemplation well worth feeling into.
No matter what you choose to do for yourself, I wish you well and may abundance & good health be constantly yours.
This article is the first in a series of three. Click here to continue: The Deeper Meaning of ALOHA.