Ho'oponopono healing

This brings us back to an old principle in psychology:

• Projection

Projection is one of many psychological defense mechanisms we use when we try to avoid something that is too painful for us to handle or even acknowledge. We then try to avoid it noticing our own issues in other people rather than in ourselves.

By telling you that you have an ugly nose, I could be projecting my own concerns about my nose onto you, trying to escape acknowledging my own perception of my own ugly nose. 

I might even tell you that I think you are pathetic. Once again, I might project my own issue with my own feelings of being pathetic unto you.

What we see in the world around us, is just a projection of our own thoughts (our own internal world).  We might see only war and disruption instead of peace and stability. This might perhaps just reflect the war and disruption in our own mind, our own set of feelings.

Ho’oponopono boils down to the fact that if I can identify that part of me that causes the issue or challenge, I can heal it.

Any issues, problems, challenges – any crime, any misfortune whether it be the government, the economy, the weather or whatever – anything you experience that you don’t like, is always within your control and up to you to heal. These things do not exist in reality, as they are just projections from your own mind. The challenge is yours as you can decide to see it differently or not. To change it means to change yourself, although it does not make sense at all. 

The world around us is just a reflection of what is happening inside of us. If you are upset or feel an imbalance, have a look inside yourself, not outside at the object or person you perceive as the cause of your challenge. You can heal your stress, imbalance or illness by just working on your own challenges.

Do it and do it with love.

It boils down to the next presupposition:

• People get better when you get better

Brian Tracy, American motivational speaker and author once said: people get better when you get better.

Once you see other people in a different light, you may realise they are not out there to get you.

It might even happen that people react differently to you because your behaviour or attitude toward them has changed, or it may simply be that they get better because you got better!

This is in line with Plato’s idea that you create your own reality and that people’s responses to you are simply the result of your own reactions and attitude.

• Many parts of one body

Even in the Holy Scriptures, known as the Bible for Christians, it states in 1 Corinthians 12:12 that the body composed of various distinct parts. As a congregation consists of many members, each member is actually just a different part of the same body.

Whether your challenge is your foot or your hand, it remains the body’s problem. The hand’s problem cannot be ignored by the foot, since the foot also carries the consequences of the challenge of the hand.

We, as human beings, are all just a part of one body with many parts.  If we hate another person, whether it be due to the fact that they are different from us, whether due to racism, sexism, or whatever – it remains just a reflection of a part of ourselves that we hate.

• Autoimmune diseases

Our disease as humans, can be compared to an auto-immune disease. 

Summarised, an auto-immune disease is a condition where the body literally starts attacking itself, and the differentiation between good cells and hostile cells gets lost.  It’s almost as if the body starts to perceive its’s own healing cells as hostile external agents, and starts to attack the body itself.

The more we try to defend ourselves against these foreign invaders, the more we are causing a war within ourselves. Our body mistakenly perceives that part of ourselves that we want to heal as the enemy and consequently destroy ourselves.

Ho’oponopono presupposes that people are in constant conflict with themselves, more specifically with their own subconscious negative memories.

Ultimately, the essence is that much of what we dislike in others is, in fact, the aspects we disdain regarding ourselves.

The paranormal might just be normal

A study was conducted in 1993 under the direction of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM).

During this study, white blood cells (leukocytes) were scraped from the mouth of a volunteer and placed in a test tube. They also placed a polygraph (a lie detector) into the tube. The donor of the cells was then seated in a room, and the donated cells were placed in a different room. 

The donor was exposed to a television program with many violent scenes.

Being in a different room, separated from his donation, the donor and his donated cells have shown exactly the same reaction as the donor was watching scenes of fighting and killing. The polygraph detected extreme excitation in the mouth cells and the donor, even when they were separated from one another. Subsequent repeats of this experiment with donor and cells separated up to eighty kilometers and, even up to two days after the donation of the cells, showed the same results. The donated cells remained energetically and non-locally connected with their donor and seemed to remember and stayed connected to their origin.

More than seventy studies on intercessory prayer have shown the same nonlocal energetic connection effects as detected in the abovementioned cheek cell experiment. One example of such a study was conducted by Dr. Randolph Byrd in San Francisco. This study showed that patients undergoing heart surgery, who were being prayed for by people all around the world, did significantly better in their recovery than those who were not prayed for. Time and distance did not make any difference.

Does it make sense that Dr. Len could heal his patients, even though he has never seen them physically, even if they were in different rooms, or in this case, their cells?

Take total responsibility for your own life

You are responsible for your thoughts.

One of the most crucial lessons you’ll learn is that you hold the reins of your life and you alone are responsible for your own journey. 

Taking responsibility for everything you say or do is one thing. Taking responsibility for what everyone else says and does to you and about you, is a totally different story. Yet, the truth is that you are completely responsible for your own life, everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or experience, as it is your own life.

It is much easier to blame others or circumstances, rather than to take total responsibility. Healing for Dr. Len and ho’oponopono means loving yourself. If you want to heal anyone – even a mentally ill criminal – you should first of all, heal yourself by loving yourself.  

Responsibility happens when I realise that I am responsible for all the issues in my life, even if there may be clear evidence that there might be a different cause or reason.

This means much more than to just take responsibility for your own action, but to also take responsibility for the action of others.

We must, however, be willing to accept that we are taking full responsibility for our own problems, situations, or challenges without blaming anybody else – even if the situation was in reality created by the other person. 

The fundamental question one should ask is: what is going on inside of me that is causing me to experience this stress? The purpose of the process is to identify the internal cause of your stress and to let it go.

Dr. Len just kept on saying: I love you, I’m sorry, forgive me, and thank you.

Love yourself first

Loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself.  As you are improving yourself, you are also improving your life and the world around you.

Someone one day, sent me an e-mail that really upset me. Instead of getting angry about this, I decided to try Dr. Len’s method. I kept on silently saying, I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, and thank you. I didn’t say it to anyone in particular. I was simply evoking the spirit of love to heal within me the external hate that came to me.

Not even an hour later I received another e-mail from the same person, apologising for his previous message. Keep in mind that I haven’t taken any action to initiate an apology. I didn’t even reply to him. Yet, by saying I love you, I healed myself. I have also healed him.

This strange and peculiar theory even corresponds with the Christian theory of self-love (I would love to hear members of other religions and convictions’ ideas about this).  When one looks at the scripture in Matthew 22:37, it says in the original Greek that you must love yourself first before you can love your neighbor (secondarily) and God. Quite different from what the church has taught Christians, namely that we must love God first and then your neighbor as yourselves.

To add to the Scriptures, we all are just parts of the same body.  The anger we feel towards someone else could be a projection of our internal anger, as if one part of us is upset with another, leading to self-directed negativity. Forgiving ourselves, by forgiving others can be a starting point to healing ourselves.  The world is probably just a reflection of what is happening inside of us.  The most surprising, inexplicable fact of it all is that people’s behaviour towards us, even strangers, can change – yes, even strangers that you don’t even know or have never met.

Why Ho’oponopono is powerful

Throughout the history of mankind, human beings have been divided by language, culture, religion, as well as class- and economic differences. Since we all are different people, we will always have different and sometimes opposing perspectives and opinions. The real power of Ho’oponopono resonates with the fact that the vast majority of people agree that they don’t agree.

The words: I love you, I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you are all valuable, important, and accepted concepts across all cultures.

As with other Shamanic traditions, the Hawaiian tradition teaches that all life is connected to one another.  Ho’oponopono is, therefore, not only a way of healing ourselves but healing others and the world around us.

The process of Ho’oponopono healing

On the surface, many people have understood Ho’oponopono to be a mantra where one repeats the words: I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you as a form of mental, spiritual, and even physical cleansing and healing.

The literal meaning of Ho’oponopono can be translated as: to put to right; to put in order or shape, correct, revise, adjust, amend, regulate, arrange, rectify, tidy up, make orderly or neat.

The ability to utter these words means to accept responsibility for your own life, even if it just entails forgiving another person as if this person is in some way just a part of yourself.  To forgive another person means to forgive yourself, or an aspect of yourself.  Everything you perceive around you is merely just a projection of yourself and your thoughts. 

As Alice May once said: to cherish revenge, is like swallowing poison in the hope that the other person will die.

Ho’oponopono teaches us that we can do it by ourselves – we don’t need anyone else to be there and we don’t need anyone to hear us. You can say the words privately and inwardly to yourself. There is immense power in the feeling and willingness of the Universe to forgive and to love.

All your disharmony, problems, and issues, will come to the surface by repeating those words.  Not only do all these issues surface, but the inner chaos in your mind will find silence, stillness, calmness, and tranquillity.

The steps explained:

• I love you

I love you is an act of gratitude and gratefulness.

To love means to love yourself first (refer back to our presuppositions).

Keep on saying – I love you. Say it to your body, your mind, your soul, and God (The Greater Thought). Express your love to the air you breathe, to the house that shelters you. Say love to your challenges. Say it over and over. Mean it. Feel it. There is nothing as powerful as Love.

• I’m sorry

When you say you’re sorry, you are not necessarily expressing regret for you what you did wrong to somebody else, you are in actual fact apologising for what someone else did wrong to you, it is actually a part of you that has done something wrong to another part of you, even if it’s not your fault. By saying sorry means that you forgive yourself. 

Someone once said: to forgive someone is the most selfish thing you can ever do.  An inability to forgive implies that all the hate, envy, pain, and uncomfortable emotions, are imposed by you on yourself.  The person you are angry with, may not even be aware of the fact that you are angry with them.

• Please forgive me

It does not matter whom you’re asking. Just ask: please forgive me. Say it over and over. Mean it. Just be sorry and ask forgiveness, even without asking questions about why you have to ask forgiveness.

Remember the statement: to forgive is the most selfish thing you can ever do.  Please feel free to read my article on forgiveness on my website, to get a better understanding of this concept.

By forgiving someone else is to forgive that part of you that others represent inside of you.  You are actually forgiving yourself. 

• Thank you

Just say thank you – say it over and over again.  It doesn’t really matter who or what you’re thankful for.  You can just live a life of gratitude, and gratefulness. Please feel free to have a look at my article on gratefulness on my website. Thank your body for everything it is doing for you. Thank yourself for being the best you can be. Thank God. Thank the Universe. Thank the Great Mind. Thank forgiveness. Just keep on saying: thank you.

Can Ho’oponopono affect more than just our internal world?

At the core of Dr. Hew Len’s perspective lies the idea of taking responsibility for your personal self, since you are in me as I am in you.

The very core of his theory is that the wrong we see in other people is as a matter of fact only projections of the wrong we perceive in ourselves that we don’t want to admit as a way of denying our own shortcomings.

Ho’oponopono can only be fulfilled when you stop blaming other people for your challenges, and accept responsibility for yourself.

It does not make sense

I can understand that this theory is not making sense for most of us, especially not to our conscious mind, but it makes perfect sense to our subconscious mind. Just keep on repeating these words: I love you, I’m sorry, forgive me, thank you.  You don’t even have to do it in this precise sequence.

You might even be able to see for yourself what these words can do for and mean to you.  Although you don’t even have to understand it.

This is exactly how hypnosis and other limbic system therapies work – you are getting better without any idea of how and what it is that is causing you to feel better, to heal.

Just keep on repeating these words and see for yourself.