My
introduction to Ho’oponopono
My training in Holistic Psychotherapy was solution focused, rather than problem-led. Recognising that beneath the stress, beneath the problems, lies the Self that is always moving towards perfection, I would listen to the client’s problem, record the ‘presenting symptoms’ and help the client understand the underlying contributory factors. Between three and six sessions of therapy was the usual. At each session, the client would talk, I would record their progress and I would leave it up to the client to decide when therapy would cease. So far so good.
Then, about two years ago, I came upon something called H’oponopono and something inside me ‘clicked’. I had never heard about it before then, but somehow, it was familiar.
Here’s what I discovered:
Back
in the 60s, a therapist in
How could anyone heal anyone else by healing himself? How could even the best self-improvement master cure the criminally insane?
At face value, it doesn't make any sense. It isn't logical.
The therapist had used a Hawaiian healing process called Ho'oponopono. The therapist is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len.
Dr
Len worked at
Dr. Len 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.
Not only that, but the staff began to enjoy coming to work. Absenteeism and turnover disappeared. The hospital ended up with more staff than was needed because patients were being released! Today, that ward is closed."
Taking responsibility
Most people understand "total responsibility" to mean that we are responsible for what we think and do – as individuals. We're responsible for what we do, not what anyone else does. The Hawaiian therapist who healed those mentally ill people holds a more advanced perspective about total responsibility. "I was simply healing the part of me that created them," he has said.
According to Dr. Len, total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life - simply because it is in your life - is your responsibility; the entire world is your creation.
This is hard 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 something else. Yet, in actual fact, if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or experience is your responsibility - because it is in your life.
This means anything you hear about or see that is unpleasant: terrorist activity, political upheaval, a slump in the economy - is up to you to heal. In a manner of speaking, these things don’t exist, 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.
We find this hard to swallow because it is far easier to blame ‘them’/’it’ than take total responsibility for everything. But healing for Dr. Len and from the Ho'oponopono perspective means that if you want to improve your world, you have to heal your world, which is nowhere else, except in you. If you want to cure anyone, you do it by healing you.
So, what was Dr. Len doing, exactly, when he was going through at those patients' files?
"I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again," he said.
That's it. Nothing else!
How it works
According to the Ho’oponopono philosophy, the intellect working alone can't solve these problems, because the intellect only manages. Managing things is no way to solve problems. You want to let them go!
When you use Ho'oponopono, the Divinity, or Source takes the painful thought and neutralises or purifies it. You don't purify the person, place, or thing. You neutralize the energy you associate with that person, place or thing. So the first stage of Ho'oponopono is the purification of that energy.
Not only is that energy neutralised; it also gets released, so there's a brand new slate. Buddhists call it the ‘Void’. The final step is that you allow the Divinity to come in and fill the void with light.
Whatever is the OUTCOME of the energy clearing, that's the outcome we need to accept. In accepting the outcome, we can know without a doubt, that the ‘Universal Manager’ has the answer: the outcome that is best.
We can't see beyond our own reasoning, which is why the reasoning intellect alone cannot solve problems. When we can let go of what we think; how we think it should be, we create a ‘space’ for the Source to flow in and clean up – and sometimes the outcome is much more beneficial than we could ever have imagined.
Every day, I get an opportunity to ‘cleanse’ in this way. I am presented with problems. I overhear conversations and experience challenges. Anything that comes into my awareness give me the chance to look within. I personally find this so liberating; I don’t have to worry about whether the client/friend/family member/whoever is ‘getting it’, or ‘doing whatever it is they have come to me to resolve. It’s not about them! In short, there is no ‘out there’. Whenever you want to improve anything in your life, there's only one place to look: inside you. And, as Dr. Len says, "When you look, do it with love."
May 2007
My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.
- Bono
THE LOST DREAM
I always loved essays and stories, short stories, plays - anything to do with putting words together. I won prizes, ‘gold stars’ and sat, in terms of English grades, at the top of every class. I was told I had talent, that I was ‘an honours student’. If I had my life over again, I would have somehow gone to university and studied ‘English Lit’- or maybe philosophy - and become a ‘proper’ writer, or maybe got a job as a journalist. Back then, however, ‘English Lit’ and ‘philosophy’ were just words to me; words used by teachers or posh people on radio or television. Oh, I knew what they meant, but they were a long way out of my league and the idea of going to university such a huge impossibility, I consigned them - along with other ‘notions’, as my mother would say - to the realms of fantasy; just another ‘big dream’: a place to wander on a wet day, in winter, over a cup of tea and a cigarette.
As time passed and I drifted into the workplace, marriage and children, the ‘big dream’ drifted further and further out into space, light years from my reality. In its place, anger, frustration, bitterness, hard work, poverty and eventually sickness and depression grew. I didn’t know any of this – consciously – of course; all I knew was that I envied almost everyone and yearned for a different life.
A whole world of writers, journalists and artists smiled out of newspaper photographs, from the back covers of books and from television screens and I envied them, especially those who said they’d ‘never written anything in their lives’ - before their ‘big bestseller’, or their first novel! I hated them - and I longed to be them!
In 1983, I was diagnosed as suffering from depression and given anti-depressants. The drugs kept me awake for most of the night, so I stopped taking them. Exhausted, with my sleep pattern disturbed, I would write until late at night, until normal sleep returned.
For the next thirty years, I filled diaries and notebooks, wrote articles, did a bit of editing and wrote for other people; I suppose I became a ‘ghost writer’, by accident, while at the same time, doing ’real’ work - and I felt like a ghost: invisible, ‘appearing‘ only when someone came to me, asking me to write a letter for them - to a solicitor, a doctor, a government department, an article for a journal or a trade magazine, a newsletter, or a ‘publicity piece‘ for an event. Otherwise, no one knew I existed - beneath the surface – buried alive in a dark place, up to my knees in broken dreams.
As my solitary scribbling continued, something was happening; something more valuable than writing fancy prose for a living. As the journals piled up, as I flung my feelings onto page after page, I hit upon something; a nugget. Writing was throwing up ‘stuff’, little insights, glimpses into my own psyche - and it was not pleasant! I was angry and I didn’t know why. And then I did know - after thirty-odd years: I was sad because someone, somewhere had stolen my dream - and I couldn’t get it back! Writing was the one thing I enjoyed, more than anything else. Everyone said ‘do what you love and you will prosper’. Hah! I wrote, but didn’t prosper! Still, I couldn’t leave it unattended - out there with the rest of the world’s unfulfilled hopes and aspirations - I just kept on writing, in ‘secret’. It was all I had.
I didn’t confide in friends. Friends were people I did business with, exchanged information on where work could be had, or ‘kept it light’, ‘having a good time’, on social occasions. I had only one way of expressing how I was feeling, one outlet; one comfort: writing. I could put whatever I wanted on the page, say the most awful things about whoever had hurt me, abandoned me, betrayed me, whoever didn’t pay me enough. I could say the most beautiful things too, let the pen form the most delightful, inspirational words and half the time, I didn‘t know how they got there! I could ‘play’, even have fun!
I took a creative writing course in 1989. For seven of the ten weeks, I sat and listened to the literary efforts of the other course participants; bored, yet thinking I could never be as good! Finally, the tutor picked on me.
“So, when are we going to hear from you, my dear?” she asked, with just a hint of sarcasm in her voice. I was destroyed! I felt a fraud, taking up space in the room. The following Thursday evening, with about four hours to go to my second-last creative writing class, I sat at my typewriter, stuck a blank sheet of A4 paper into the carriage - and stared out the window. Maybe it was panic, but a scene suddenly came to mind and I began. I clattered away for a couple of hours and then ran out of time. At the end of seven or eight pages, I scribbled a note to my tutor, “I don’t know where this is going…” and when the class was over, handed her the ‘package’. A week later, she produced three pages of appraisal, in single-spaced typing. It began,
“I don’t know where this is going either - but it ought to go somewhere…The writing is evocative and very, very good… You should turn this into a book!”
In my naivety, I thought she would have given me the name of a publisher, there and then! She didn’t. I went back to my diary, still frustrated, not knowing 'where to go' with anything. Too busy working: doing 'real' work, I hadn’t time to think, never mind come up with ideas for a book! Besides, I hadn’t a clue how to go about looking for publishers. Anyway, it all seemed so ‘beyond’ me, just for ‘established’, famous people and business people - like the people I worked for. What would they think of their little Nobody PA writing a novel, getting published, for God’s sake!
Then, when I got a computer, I thought I had died and gone to Heaven! My fingers didn’t slip down between the keys and get scratched. They skipped across the quiet keyboard with ever-increasing ease. My typing grew faster and I could rest my wrists on the keyboard shelf, without having to ‘prod’ at the keys, like I had done for years! I could look at a screen, instead of a sheet of paper and I could go on and on and on, without having to change the paper and interrupt the flow. Magic!
Instead of diaries and notebooks, I accumulated 'files' and 'folders' and gave them names and they all sat in a tidy, box – a machine that could be turned off – when I‘d finished for the day. They would never yellow at the edges, curl up and grow tatty. Best of all, I could 'delete', 'erase' and 'edit', swap words and letters around at will, or start from scratch. Whenever my children wanted to use my computer, I could 'save', or 'back up' my work on 'floppy discs' and hide the secrets of my soul in a cupboard, under lock and key. But, as time passed and the children left home, I reverted to keeping a diary by my bed and penned my memories, the day’s events and how I was feeling, before I went to sleep. I didn’t know that a lot of the time it was catharsis; that I was learning about myself, healing old wounds - until I met a brilliant tutor and discovered something called 'Journaling'.
It was 1998, nine years after the short writing course and two long courses of study later, training as a therapist. I was on yet another - in mind/body medicine. One of my tutors was a clinical psychologist who runs ten-to-twelve-week programmes for patients with cancer, HIV and AIDS. Along with nutrition, gentle exercise, ‘cognitive restructuring’, meditation and relaxation, patients are encouraged to write - or draw - their stories, ‘map’ their lives, express their feelings. There is a scientific reason - a neurophysiologic reason - for this. To put it simply: the act of writing engages the kinaesthetic part of the brain and stimulates the release of emotional 'blocks', facilitating healing! I believe many people in these illness recovery groups have gone on to write for enjoyment - or a living. Some have found within themselves, a previously untapped resource to express who they are and ways to bring hope to others.
So, I discovered that in all my years of venting onto the pages of countless journals, I had been releasing chemicals into my body that kept me sane - kept me well - and helped me cope with the pain of losing my dream! Even in asking the questions: Why? How do I change/ exchange this for something else - something better? – just by 'voicing' the frustration, I was letting it go, instead of harbouring it all in the vessel of my being, to grow, spread and fester, putrefying, contaminating me and everyone and everything that I came in contact with. In the telling of my stories - even to myself - in this manner, I could release them into the Great Unknown; evolve. It was a revelation! I had been blessed.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have discovered the healing power of writing. Before training in mind/body medicine, I didn’t fully understand the process, but kept writing nonetheless. It took a few more years to really get to know the power of my thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes. I had never realised how much these had been moulded by my childhood experiences, my environment and the words and example shown to me by the people in my young life. As I continued to commit my observations, my innermost thoughts and current experiences to paper, my writing slowly began to take on a different 'shape'; it was becoming more creative, more expressive and with it, I began to emerge as a more vibrant being, less and less afraid, no longer hiding.
I discovered too, that back in 1983, I was misdiagnosed; I was not suffering from depression! I was stressed out of my brain; overworked, overburdened – and dealing with a recent family bereavement. I was good at hiding; my masks concealed a deep longing for something to lift the worries and responsibilities and someone to tell me that everything would be okay. Instead, people came to me with their problems (long before I trained as a therapist!) and I took them on – afraid not to, afraid to say ‘No!’
Over the past fifteen years, I have studied, trained and practiced as a therapist and teacher. I have read countless books, attended many seminars and workshops and even when I look back and join the dots, I am amazed by how subtly and powerfully I was led to all of these through opening my heart to my diary! Somehow, just expressing my angst, my wishes, my dreams and aspirations in this way, opened new ‘pathways’ in my subconscious and I found myself talking to different people – in a different way – people who introduced me to many of the courses of study I later attended – and thus I began the journey that led me back to my Self.
But it’s not about reading, training and studying. There is really nothing to learn! What we’re doing here is un-learning: shedding the masks and finding our way back to what we already know. We have already learned how to create masks – the persona– to please the world. We have already learned how to be pressurised, how to be timid, how to be afraid, how to lie to ourselves; how to smother the flame of life, the joy we were born with. I un-learned through writing and found that my dream was never lost. It was there all along, waiting to be re-discovered.
Imelda Duffy
2006
_____________________
A FEW KIND WORDS
“Now, she was remembering: all it takes is an affirmation: words - to ‘evolve’ anything - saying them, silently or out loud, writing them down for future generations of believers. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’. She had forgotten who’d said that - another phrase that had remained with her- a truism. Everyone should know it by heart, she thought. Words: penned or spoken - even a look, a subtle gesture - can wound or heal; create a miracle. More than forty years ago, Karen’s father told his little girl - probably in jest - her poem was ‘a load of horse shit’ - and shattered her heart. The human body is a mind solidified and every sight, every sound, every touch, every smell and taste impacts, forming into matter, shaping the person. Words had misshapen her, misaligned, fragmented her, depressed her, but Marianne had seen too much suffering - from a faded beauty on a bar stool, on Hollywood Boulevard to her own doorstep: the legacy of harsh words, unkindness, cruelty - to continue to hang on to the memory of harsh words: her own legacy, the belief that she was a malingerer, a depressive, looking at the world through crusted eyes, disempowered; a soul in pain.”
- from Into Angels
For generations, humanity has been operating at a frequency, based on words of criticism and debasement. This has led to disregard for and indeed,downright hatred of our fellow human beings, separating us from one another and from our innate divinity, dulling compassion. Words have kept us in ignorance: words and phrases such as, ‘they don’t believe in God; they are not human!’ As a result, our human experience has been fraught with turmoil, struggle, and pain.
Parents dismiss their children’s efforts – often without thinking – and unwittingly inflict hurt that leads to lack of self-esteem, lasting for the rest of their children’s lives. Criticism such as “You’re no good at maths”, or “You’ll never amount to anything, if you don’t do it this way…” undermines the child’s confidence and robs him/her of their innate, divine ‘knowing’; separating them from their Wholeness.
Teachers are the second worst offenders, criticising, ridiculing and even insulting the natural God-given intelligence of their pupils, failing to recognise that their job is to teach and not just cram in the largely useless information, provided by a flawed education system; believing that if students cannot absorb this, or fail exams, there’s something wrong with them.
The impact on health
People who are ill are even more vulnerable than most. Drained by their illness, they have few life-affirming resources. Doctors need to be aware that they are often ‘passing sentence’. When a patient asks a physician, “How long do I have to live?” the doctor has no right to answer “three weeks”, or “six months”. The truth is, the doctor doesn’t know! He/she doesn’t have all the information; there are other factors involved besides ‘statistics’, or even the doctor’s ‘experience’!
People who have been constantly put down, criticised or dismissed withdraw into themselves. Their physiology takes on the appearance of ‘inconsequential’; their shoulders hunch, they take on what they have been told; often using the same language as their parents or teachers. “I’m no good at…” or “I’m too small/tall/fat/thin” or “I’m a slow learner” or “I’m clumsy”.
The physical body takes on these ‘instructions’ and over time, ‘symptoms’ appear that lead to some form of discomfort and dis-ease. Only then will a ‘remedy’ be sought, dealing only with the ‘symptom’.
A few kind words
Words have power. When words are used with good intention, they have a profound effect on us, a deep transformative power. They stir us, resonating with something deep inside us. Great teachers have the ability to deliver the essence of their subject through their words. As we read their words, or listen to them speak, we begin to resonate at a different frequency. Like a powerful magnet, their words can draw us higher.
As individuals, we must learn to disentangle from the ‘hypnosis’ and use language to rise in frequency, back to the level of Wholeness; to encourage, praise, uplift and teach the truth that we now know: a few kind words have the power to heal!.
Imelda Duffy June 2006