HEAL YOURSELF
[Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len]
Interview by Joe Vitale
courtesy of Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len
Two years ago, I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who treated an entire ward of criminally insane people without ever seeing a single one of them. The psychologist would study the chart of one of the patients and look inside himself to see how he had created that person’s illness. By improving himself, the patient improved.
When I first heard this story, I thought it was an urban legend. How could someone heal someone else by healing himself? How could even the greatest master of self-improvement heal a criminally insane person? It didn’t make any sense. It was not logical, so I shelved the story. In any case, I heard it again a year later. I learned that the therapist had used a Hawaiian healing process called ho ‘oponopono. I had never heard of it, yet I could not get it out of my mind. If the story was true, I should have known more about it. I had always understood “total responsibility” to mean that I am responsible for what I think and do. How much goes beyond that is beyond my reach.
I think most people think of total responsibility in these terms. We are responsible for what we do, not what any other person does. The Hawaiian therapist who treated those mentally ill people would teach me a new advanced perspective about total responsibility.
His name is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. We spent about an hour talking during our first phone call. I asked him to tell me the full story of his work as a therapist. He explained that he had worked at Hawaii State Hospital for four years. That ward where they kept the criminally insane was dangerous. Psychologists would quit after a month. Employees would often call in sick or resign directly. People walked through the ward with their backs to the wall, in fear of being attacked by patients. It was not a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.Dr. Len told me he never saw the patients.
He agreed to have an office and go through their files.
As he looked at their folders, he worked on himself.
As he worked on himself, Patients began to heal. After a few months, patients who had to be restrained were allowed to walk freely, he told me. Others, who were given large amounts of medication, would stop taking medication.
And those who had no hope of being released were being released.
I was dismayed. Not only that, he continued, employees began to come to work willingly. Absenteeism and continuous employee turnover came to an end. We found ourselves with more staff than we needed, because patients were being discharged, and all employees were showing up for work.
Today, that department is closed.
At that point, I asked the million-dollar question: What were you doing inside yourself that caused those people to change? – I was simply healing the part of me that created them, he said.
I did not understand. Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your own life means that everything in your life, simply because it is in your life, is your responsibility. Literally, the whole world is your creation. That’s hard to swallow! Being responsible for what I say or do is one thing. Being responsible for what anyone else in my life says or does is another!
However, the truth is this: if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or experience in any way is your responsibility, because it is in your life. This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy, whatever you experience and don’t like is waiting for you to heal her.
It does not exist, in a sense, except as a projection from within you. The problem is not in the thing itself, but in you, and to change it, you have to change yourself. I know it is hard to understand, accept, and live concretely. Blame is much easier than total responsibility, but as I talked 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 heal someone even a mentally ill criminal, you do it by healing yourself.
I asked Dr. Len how he treated himself. What was he doing, exactly, when he was looking at those patients’ charts?
I simply kept saying I’m sorry; and I love you over and over again, he explained.
Is that all?
All here.
It turns out that loving yourself is the best way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, you improve the world.
Here’s a quick example of how it works: one day, someone sent me an e- mail that upset me. In the past I would have dealt with the situation by working on my emotional hot buttons, or trying to reason with the person who had sent the nasty message.
This time, I decided to try Dr. Len’s method. I kept saying silently, I’m sorry and I love you. I was not saying it to anyone in particular. I was simply evoking the spirit of love so that it would heal, within me, what was creating the external circumstance. After an hour I received an e-mail from the same person. He apologized for his previous message.
I did not take any external action to receive that apology. I had not even responded to him. However, by saying I love you in some way I cured within myself what was creating it.
Later I attended a seminar led by Dr. Len, who is now 70 years old, is considered a benevolent shaman, and lives a secluded life.
He told me that as I improve myself, the vibration of my book rises, and everyone will feel it by reading it. In short, as I improve, my readers improve. What about the books already sold, out there, I asked? They are not out there, he explained, again opening my mind with his mystical wisdom. They are still inside you.
In short, there is no one out there. It would take an entire book to explain this advanced technique with the depth it deserves. Suffice it to say that when you want to improve something in your life, there is only one place to look: within yourself. When you look, do it with love.
Dr. Hew Len will be in Italy for the first time on September 12-13, 2009, to present and experience Ho’oponopono in the province of Verona.
All information on how to participate can be found at www.hooponoponoitalia.it email info@hooponoponoitalia.it or you can call 338 4370685 or 335 8295710,