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Article by Joe Vitale
"Two years ago, I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who cured a
complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of
them. The psychologist would study an inmate's chart and then look
within himself to see how he created that person's illness. As he
improved himself, the patient improved.
When I first heard this story, I thought it was an urban legend. How
could anyone heal anyone else by healing himself? How could even the best
self-improvement master cure the criminally insane?
It didn't make any sense. It wasn't logical, so I dismissed the story.
However, I heard it again a year later. I heard that the therapist had
used a Hawaiian healing process called ho 'oponopono. I had never heard
of it, yet I couldn't let it leave my mind. If the story was at all true,
I had to know more.
I had always understood "total responsibility" to mean that I am
responsible for what I think and do. Beyond that, it's out of my hands. I
think that most people think of total responsibility that way. We're
responsible for what we do, not what anyone else does. The Hawaiian
therapist who healed those mentally ill people would teach me an advanced
new perspective about total responsibility.
His name is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. We probably spent an hour talking
on our first phone call. I asked him to tell me the complete story of his
work as a therapist. He explained that he worked at Hawaii State Hospital
for four years.That ward where they kept the criminally insane was
dangerous. Psychologists quit on a monthly basis. The staff called in
sick a lot or simply quit. People would walk through that ward with their
backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients. It was not
a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.
Dr. Len told me that he never saw patients. He agreed to have an office
and to review their files. While he looked at those files, he would work
on himself. As he worked on himself, patients began to heal.
"After a few months, patients that had to be shackled were being
allowed to walk freely," he told me. "Others who had to be heavily
medicated were getting off their medications. And those who had no chance
of ever being released were being freed." I was in awe. "Not only
that," he went on, "but the staff began to enjoy coming to work.
Absenteeism and turnover disappeared. We ended up with more staff than
we needed because patients were being released, and all the staff was
showing up to work. Today, that ward is closed."
This is where I had to ask t he mil l ion dollar question: "What were
you doing within yourself that caused those people to change?" "I was
simply healing the part of me that created them," he said. I didn't
understand.
Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your life means that
everything in your life- simply because it is in your life--is your
responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation.
Whew. This is tough to swallow. Being responsible for what I say or do
is one thing. Being responsible for what everyone in my life says or does
is quite another. Yet, the truth is this: if you take complete
responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste,
touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in
your life.
This means that terrorist activity, the president, the
economy--anything you experience and don't like--is up for you to
heal. They don't exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections
from inside you. The problem isn't with them, it's with you, and to
change them, you have to change you.
I know this is tough to grasp, let alone accept or actually live. Blame
is far easier than total responsibility, but as I spoke with Dr. Len, I
began to realize that healing for him and in ho 'oponopono means loving
yourself. If you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life.
If you want to cure anyone--even a mentally ill criminal--you do it by
healing you.
I asked Dr. Len how he went about healing himself. What was he doing,
exactly, when he looked at those patients' files? "I just kept saying,
'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again," he explained.
That's it?
That's it.
Turns out that loving yourself is the g rea test way to improve
yourself, and as you improve yourself, your improve your world. Let me
give you a quick example of how this works: one day, someone sent me an
email that upset me. In the past I would have handled it by working on my
emotional hot buttons or by trying to reason with the person who sent the
nasty message. This time, I decided to try Dr. Len's method. I kept
silently saying, "I'm sorry" and "I love you,"
I didn't say it to anyone in particular. I was simply evoking the
spirit of love to heal within me what was creating the outer
circumstance.
Within an hour I got an e-mail from the same person. He apologized for
his previous message. Keep in mind that I didn't take any outward action
to get that apology. I didn't even write him back. Yet, by saying "I love
you," I somehow healed within me what was creating him.
I later attended a h o 'oponopono workshop run by Dr. Len. He's now 70
years old, considered a grandfatherly shaman, and is somewhat reclusive.
He praised my book, The Attractor Factor. He told me that as I improve
myself, my book's vibration will raise, and everyone will feel it when
they read it. In short, as I improve, my readers will improve.
"What about the books that are already sold and out there?" I asked.
"They aren't out there," he explained, once again blowing my mind
with his mystic wisdom. "They are still in you." In short, there is no
out there.
It would take a whole book to explain this advanced technique with the
depth it deserves. Suffice it to say that whenever you want to improve
anything in your life, there's only one place to look: inside you. When
you look, do it with love."
Beyond Traditional Means: Ho'oponopono. An interview with Morrnah
Simeona and Dr. Stan Hew Len* by Deborah King -- frequent contributor to
the New Times
"We can appeal to Divinity who knows our personal blueprint, for
healing of all thoughts and memories that are holding us back at this
time," softly shares Morrnah Simeona. "It is a matter of going beyond
traditional means of accessing knowledge about ourselves." The process
that Morrnah refers to is based on the ancient Hawaiian method of stress
reduction (release) and problem solving called Ho'oponopono. The word
Ho'oponopono means to make right, to rectify
an error. Morrnah is a native Hawaiian Kahuna Lapa'au. Kahuna means
"keeper of the secret" and Lapa'au means "a specialist in healing." She
was chosen to be a kahuna while still a small child and received her gift
of healing at the age of three. She is the daughter of a member of the
court of Queen Liliuokalani, the last sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.
The process that is now brought forth is a modernization of an ancient
spiritual cleansing ritual. It has proven so effective that she has been
invited to teach this method at the United Nations, the World Health
Organization and at institutions of healing throughout the world.
How does Ho'oponopono work? Morrnah explains, "We are the sum total of
our experiences, which is to say that we are burdened by our pasts. When
we experience stress or fear in our lives, if we would look carefully, we
would find that the cause is actually a memory. It is the emotions which
are tied to these memories which affect us now. The subconscious
associates an action or person in the present with something that
happened in the past. When this occurs, emotions are
activated and stress is produced."
She continues, "The main purpose of this process is to discover the
Divinity within oneself. The Ho'oponopono is a profound gift which allows
one to develop a working relationship with the Divinity within and learn
to ask that in each moment, our errors in thought, word, deed or action
be cleansed. The process is essentially about freedom, complete freed o m
from the past."
Every memory of every experience, since the first moment of our
creation, eons ago, is recorded as a thought form which is stored in the
etheric realm. This incredible recorder/computer is also known as the
subconscious, unihipili or child aspect within us. The inner child is
very real and comprises one part of the Self. The other aspects are the
mother, also known as the uhane or rational mind and the father, the
superconscious or Spiritual aspect. The three comprise the inner family,
which, in partnership with The Divine Creator, makes up one's Self
I-Dentity. Every human being in creation, every plant, atom and molecule
has these three selves and yet each blueprint is completely different.
The most important task for people is to find his or her true identity
and place in the Universe. This process allows that understanding to
become available.
The purpose of Ho'oponopono is to: 1) Connect with the Divinity within
on a moment-to-mom ent ba si s; 2) To ask that movement and all it
contains, be cleansed. Only the Divinity can do that. Only the Divinity
can erase or correct memories and thought forms. Since the Divinity
created us, only the Divinity knows what is going on with a person.
In this system, there is no need to analyze, solve, manage or cope with
problems. Since the Divinity created everything, you can just go directly
to Him and ask that it be corrected and cleansed.
In the area of problem solving: the world is a reflection of what is
happening inside us. If you are experiencing upset or imbalance, the
place to look is inside yourself, not outside at the object you perceive
as causing your problem. Every stress, imbalance or illness can be
corrected just by working on yourself. It is important to mention that
this system is fundamentally different from other forms of Ho'oponopono.
In traditional methods, everyone who is involved in a problem needs to be
physically present and work it out together. In Morrnah's system
everything can be handled by you and the Divinity. You don't need to go
one inch outside yourself for answers or help. There is no one who can
give you any more relevant information than you can get by going within
yourself.
Morrnah especially recommends Ho'oponopono for those in the healing
profession: "It is important to clear Karmic patterns with your clients
before you start working with them, so that you don't activate old stuff
between you. Perhaps you shouldn't be working with that person at all.
Only the Divinity knows. If you work with a person and it isn't your
business, you can take on the person's entire problem and everything
associated with it. This can cause burnout. The Ho'oponopono gives the
tools to prevent that from happening."
Morrnah wished for our Western society that everyone would do things to
reduce the stress. "Western people have great difficulty in putting the
intellect behind. It is difficult for the Western mind to ge t a grasp of
a Higher Being because in traditional Western churches, the Higher Beings
are not made evident." She continues, "Western man has gone to the
extremes with his intellectualism it divides and keeps people separate.
Man then becomes a destroyer because he manages and copes rather than
letting the perpetuating force of the Divinity flow through him for right
action."
Morrnah works with her associate, Dr. Stanley Hew Len, who spent
several years as a consulting clinical psychologist at the Hawaii State
Hospital. He has had profound results by using this process with the most
dangerous, violently "mentally ill" criminals in Hawaii. Yet he never
talks to them, in fact, he never even sees them. He writes down their
name and then just works on himself. He cleanses his judgments, beliefs,
attitudes and asks the Divinity what he can
do for the person. As those attachments and memories are cleansed, the
patient improves. "The Divinity," comments Stan, "says it is time to
bring all the children home."
<* also known as Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len>
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