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#2634 - Sunday,
November 5, 2006 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nondual
Highlights
This entire issue is a reader's contribution. As I read it, I saw many similarities with the Buddhist practice of tonglen, and many other practices from different cultural backgrounds.
"We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment."
--Pema Chodron http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/tonglen1.php
If this sounds to you like some hocus-pocus or magical thinking, I invite you to read with an open mind and heart. Exactly how working on on our own heart benefits others may not be obvious, it may be difficult to pin down. It also may be way better than trying to fix "them". I have seen amazing transformations in a relationship when only one person manages to forgive the other. And people heal emotionally in the presence of a person who first and foremost accepts them as they are. The following is Miriam's letter.
Have you come
upon the (it seems to me) very non-dual ho'oponopono
process/philosophy? This
article, posted to an online newsletter sent out by http://www.scienceofbeingwell.net interested me:
"...
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 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. 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 greatest 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 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."
So I went to the website:
http://www.hooponopono.org and looked
around. How
about this?
"I"
AM THE "I"
OWAU NO KA
"I"
"I"
come forth from the void into light,
Pua mai au mai ka po iloko o ka
malamalama,
"I"
am the breath that nurtures life,
Owau no ka ha, ka mauli ola,
"I"
am that emptiness, that hollowness beyond all consciousness,
Owau no ka poho, ke ka'ele mawaho a'e o
no ike apau.
The
"I", the Id, the All.
Ka I, Ke Kino Iho, na Mea Apau.
"I"
draw my bow of rainbows across the waters,
Ka a'e au i ku'u pi'o o na anuenue mawaho
a'e o na kai a pau,
The
continuum of minds with matters.
Ka ho'omaumau o na mana'o ame na mea a
pau.
"I"
am the incoming and outgoing of breath,
Owau no ka "Ho", a me ka
"Ha"
The
invisible, untouchable breeze,
He huna ka makani nahenahe,
The
undefinable atom of creation.
Ka "Hua" huna o Kumulipo.
"I"
am the "I".
Owau no ka "I".
Years ago in New Zealand I had an amazing healing from an ancient Maori elder who had spent years of his youth training with the Kahuna. He was in a kind of trance when he spoke to me in the Kahuna language. I'll never forget the way I knew what he was saying - even though I have no conscious knowledge of that language. In my years of 'long teeth' it all begins to make sense ...
gratitude
contrition
love
are the outpourings of
this little faltering heart
miriam
(YOU ARE THE WORLD! remember how Krishnamurti kept saying it ... ?)