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The Goddess Within

www.goddesswithin.com.au

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, but that’s wrong.

“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 the million-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.

This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy or 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.

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.  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 greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, you 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 ho’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.” 

Included in the book ‘The Miraculous Life’ © by Julie Way

And the answer came quietly and immediately. In the past 2 weeks I had promised myself to not approach next door from anger as I had previously in the past 9 months and consequently had that anger come back immediately in aggressive behaviour and repercussions of suffering for me.

Instead, in the past 9 months when I had handed over my response to the noise and disruption next door to the Higher Self to reveal to me what to do, if anything – (because sometimes when I handed it over I did not need to do anything, it ceased immediately.) – I always received an intuitive prompting of either approaching them in a gentle, loving, peaceful, friendly manner and received a positive, co-operative, friendly response or the disruption just stopped or the communication between me and the young man who rented next door, improved miraculously and he apologised and managed the situation peacefully and responsibly.

Last weekend I did not keep that pledge and I had it come back at me in such a shocking, upsetting experience of suffering for me. This was where I was responsible, not as blame on me, yet as a call to put into action and act from the integrity of what I know – that I am 100% accountable for everything in my life even if I do not like it and this gives me the power of choice to have it/experience it differently by my attitude to anything. I always have a choice.  The moment that music started blaring the first time I had an opportunity of choice – to either react from a level of anger, projection and feeling the victim (the ego’s response of defence and attack) or to pause and allow the response to come from my Higher Self when I handed it over and asked what to do, if anything. I create my reality and experiences of safety, love and peace or suffering – With either my ego identification as a defenceless victim of circumstance or the indescribable Love, peace and power within me.

Last weekend I was being given the opportunity to either react from my ego/fear, or awaken and practice surrender over to the Higher Self-and allow myself to be guided at that level and then have a peaceful resolution come of it. Everything I see is a mirror of me in some form. The level of anger in me was the level of anger I saw outside of me in that angry man that was being presented to me as a learning experience revealing my unresolved and unforgiven fear, guilt and anger  – which only requires love and forgiveness and from that miracles happen and things change.

The world is set up to wake us up.

I wrote on page 39 of Personal Mastery ‘Most people are pressured to grow and change. …most people will not take responsibility for everything in their lives until they are forced to by circumstance. They only act (outside of what is familiar) when it gets so uncomfortable that they have to pay attention to what is happening and what they are feeling.”

There comes a point in our growth and evolution that we are not cut the slack anymore to act out of integrity with what we know –when we are called to account to act from what we know and speak about. When I listen to the voice of my Higher Self from my intuition then I receive only loving, peaceful and empowering experiences. When I do not listen to that intuitive, wise voice within me, I experience something I do not want. Not as punishment but as feedback. By taking responsibility for all of it and not judging myself or the situation I can trust it all, bless it, forgive it all by handing it over to the Higher Self to heal and thank it and the people concerned for teaching me so much and thus I am free from pain and suffering as this choice and healing shifts me into the real world where only the Love is real and anything that is not love has no power over me.

By Julie Way, Copyright 2008