Hetepu (Peace) Family,
Something quite interesting just recently occurred where an individual felt like they were being harmed by another, which inspired me to write this post. I noticed that too often people make the concept and principle of Maa out to be something extraordinary and out of this world. When in fact, it is a very simple concept.
To get an idea of how Maa worked imagine this scenario. A man is with his wife and they are having a discussion. In the midst of the conversation, the man says something that gets him in the hot seat with his wife. He tries to apologize but it is too late, his wife is angry with him. Her anger is not to the point that she wants to divorce him, but she doesn’t want to be in the same room with him. So, our apologetic husband has to sleep on the couch tonight.
 
Seeing that he has seriously upset his wife, he decides to get out of the doghouse by buying her some flowers and candies. If it doesn’t work, he decides to go a step further by treating her to a romantic night out in town or taking her to a concert. If that doesn’t work, he tries to do something that she really likes in order to get out of the doghouse.
Now why would his wife accept his gift and his apology? If you were in this situation, why would you accept a person’s apology and gift after they have wronged you? It is because you sense that they are sincere, you will see that they have empathized with you and they realized that they have seriously hurt you. The purpose of the gift is an offering to right the wrong that they have done and to remove the stain of guilt. You see, if our apologetic husband didn’t give his wife a gift along with his sincere apology, she would never forget what he had done. Ok, so you see why some people hold on to an ill memory so long is because they have never let go of that negative energy.
So we see that Maa is really all about not hurting others with your actions and behaviors. When you hurt someone, you have sinned and created an injustice, thus causing the individual not to feel whole or complete.
 
The thing about injustices is that they don’t last forever. They always have to balance their way out. For instance, there’s a guy I know that was in dire straits awhile back, so he stole some things from his man he knew. He knew what he was doing was wrong but he did it anyway. Well, when he got on his feet and was doing a lot better. The guilt of him stealing still lingered in his spirit and made him feel bad, which caused him to sabotage himself subconsciously, thinking he didn’t deserve blessings because of what he did several years ago.  When he asked me what he should do, I told him that he had to make what was wrong right. So, he decided to replace all of the items that he had stolen and purchase some new items as well to give to the victim, so that the person he stole from didn’t feel like he was a victim.
You see, no one likes to be victimized and when we disrespect another, abuse, misuse or take advantage of one another, our sahu – lower spirit (subconscious), remembers it all, but it knows that since we wouldn’t want anyone to do the same in us. Our sahu creates in us a feeling of guilt and shame, which has us looking over our shoulders and wondering when we are going to be victimized.  When you are constantly thinking about something you did in the past, you worry which brings about stress and paves the way for accidents and illnesses.
This is why to right the wrong; along with apologizing we must do whatever is physically possible to make the person feel whole again and not feel like a victim. Â This is not only therapeutic for the victim but for yourself as well. Â So what we call getting out of the doghouse is actually a contemporary way of saying ridding yourself of karmic debt in the present. Understand, just saying “I’m sorry” is not enough when you have seriously hurt someone’s feelings, damage their reputation, etc. No, you have to make amends and if you don’t do it now, you will in the future or the next lifetime.
Hope that helps.