Let me start with an introduction to Zero Limits,
The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth,
Health,
Peace and More by Joe Vitale and Ihalikala Hulen.
He starts off saying,
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 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'd 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'm 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 these mentally ill people would teach me an advanced new perspective about total responsibility.
His name is Dr.
Aihalikala Hulen.
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 wasn't a pleasant place to live,
Work or visit.
Dr.
Len told me 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 these people to change?
I was simply healing the part of myself 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.
Phew,
This is a tough one 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,
Or anything you experience and don't like is up to 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 realise 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 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.
That was an introduction from the book Zero Limits,
The secret Hawaiian system for wealth,
Health,
Peace and more,
By Joe Vitale and Ihalikala Hulen.
We are responsible for manifesting everything in our lives.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that because we are responsible for manifesting everything in our lives,
It's easy to create change.
I'm not responsible for the pain and suffering in your life until you share it with me.
At that moment I have manifested it into my own life,
And therefore I am responsible.
And by the way,
Here's an easy path.
Dump all your pain and suffering on the nearest enlightened master and let go.
Now it's all their responsibility,
And as an enlightened master they can deal with it.
Only two tricky steps there.
The first is finding the enlightened master,
And the second is truly 100% letting go.
Having said all that,
It's not necessary to accept this idea of being responsible for Ho'oponopono to work.
So here's my,
Trevor's,
Wording of Ho'oponopono.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for having created whatever it is that is disturbing me,
You,
The world.
Please forgive me for having created it.
Thank you for forgiving me.
I love you.
I love you,
Me,
God,
For being in my world.
Love is good.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
There are various alternative forms,
Including the shortest form,
Which is simply,
I love you.
Find whatever works for you.
So what has this done for me,
Trevor?
It's created a whole new space for creativity,
Created a space where I'm about to increase my income tenfold,
Improve my relationships with my family.
Before I started using Ho'oponopono,
I couldn't have envisaged being able to cope with my mother emigrating from England to live near me.
Particularly,
It's improved my own self-acceptance.
Dr.
Len talks about Ho'oponopono as a cleansing technique.
It cleanses the system.
For me,
It has become an anchor.
Feel some discomfort,
Some agitation,
Immediately practice Ho'oponopono,
Feel better.
Ho'oponopono and other people.
Forgive the people for what they've done to me.
Forgive the people for what they haven't done for me.
Forgive the people that are out to get me.
Forgive the people that are complete morons.
Forgive the people that are just taking up space on my planet,
Which is,
As my creation,
The centre of my universe.
How dare they take up my space in my universe!
It makes driving down the road a whole new meditative experience.
Using Ho'oponopono avoids being sucked into the other person's energy.
It avoids being hooked by their stuff.
It avoids the emotional trap.
So here's an exercise.
What do you want to forgive other people for?
Who or what gets you hooked?
Salesmen?
Politicians?
Telemarketers?
Road rage?
You may have difficulty wanting to forgive somebody for something big.
That's fine,
Let it be.
Pick something small.
You don't have to walk into a gym and pick up the biggest weights in the room.
Start with something small.
We are building up a whole new set of muscles that you're not used to using.
You may have difficulty asking for forgiveness from other people.
Are you worthy of being forgiven?
Can you ask forgiveness from God,
If not from others?
Politicians are wonderful practice material for Ho'oponopono.
By practicing on our political leaders,
You get to clear yourself,
The politicians,
And through you and them,
You're cleansing the whole country.
Eyes open or closed?
My personal take on this is that if the thought comes up with your eyes open,
Practice Ho'oponopono with your eyes open,
It only takes three seconds.
If you're lying in bed with your eyes closed and the irritation comes in,
Let it go by practicing Ho'oponopono with your eyes closed.
And if,
At this stage,
You still have doubts about this mumbo-jumbo,
And me,
And my strange accent,
Please,
Please practice Ho'oponopono on me.
You can say to yourself,
I'm sorry for bringing this weirdo into my day.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
And who are you saying it to?
Me,
The other person?
Yourself?
To God?
Of course the answer is,
Yes,
All of the above.
Releasing the other person.
Stepping outside of Ho'oponopono,
But still well within the scope of forgiveness,
The following is a great declaration for releasing someone out of your life.
I'm releasing you.
I'm letting you go.
I am without reason to hurt you,
And you are without reason to hurt me.
I'm declaring any contract,
Any karmic debt between us to be null and void.
I'm forgiving you,
And we are both set free.
I am free to go my way.
You are free to go your way.
I'm choosing differently from past choices,
Starting now.
Ho'oponopono and yourself.
Forgiving oneself for having created this situation.
Letting go of past regrets.
For me this was the biggie.
I tend to live in my head and get caught up in my thoughts.
So once I start beating myself up,
It used to be a closed loop of beating myself up,
Beating myself up for beating myself up.
And again,
What was it again that I was beating myself up for?
Ho'oponopono works great as a pattern interrupt.
An exercise here.
What do you want to forgive yourself for?
What have you done in the past that you wish you hadn't?
What haven't you done in the past that you wish you had?
What health challenges do you have that you wish you didn't?
If the concept of forgiving yourself doesn't work for you,
Try disassociating.
In a disassociated state,
Seeing yourself in the situation as another person,
You can forgive that younger version of yourself as a separate person from you,
In the same way that you forgive other people.
Ho'oponopono and God.
And if the concept of God doesn't work for you,
Fill in the blank.
I'm talking about the divine,
A higher power,
The universe,
Your higher self.
Fill in the blank.
Whatever works for you.
One way of thinking about Ho'oponopono and God is that because we're not separate from God,
There is nothing to forgive.
The original sin may be the sin of thinking of ourselves as something separate from God.
Our experiences of life in this world around us is all an illusion.
No more than we need to forgive anything that happens in a dream.
All this is an illusion.
And much as I personally have an intellectual concept of everything is an illusion,
I'm still human.
I have to admit that on a day-to-day basis I don't have a strong connection with.
It's all an illusion.
When I stub my toe,
It still hurts.
For those of us that still see ourselves as being separate from God,
It may be important to ask for forgiveness from God.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
Sharing Ho'oponopono.
Keeping rapport.
Ho'oponopono is first and foremost a personal technique.
When someone is annoying you,
The only place to go is internally.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
Cleanse yourself first for creating them in your life,
Before even thinking about correcting them.
That said,
Once you start noticing the changes for yourself,
You will want to share the technique with your friends and family.
And isn't your family a perfect practice ground for Ho'oponopono?
But when you do share,
Keep rapport.
My own mother dismissed Ho'oponopono on the grounds of,
Been there,
Done that.
She was very much into blessings and thought nothing of standing in public places with her hand on somebody's head to bless them.
However,
In conversation she could be very negative about people and events around her.
To keep rapport and still introduce her to Ho'oponopono,
I started to interrupt her with,
Bless them,
Every time she talked negatively about someone.
After of course saying,
I'm sorry,
Please forgive me,
Thank you,
I love you in my own head,
For her first.
For her,
Bless them worked much better than Ho'oponopono.
Practice,
Practice,
Practice.
Have fun with this.
Use it.
On some days I'm probably using Ho'oponopono many times a day,
Especially on those occasions when I catch myself in the middle of an internal mental argument with myself about someone in my life,
Trying to prove to myself why I'm right and they're wrong.
Use it as a mantra.
Share your life with it.
Share your home with it.
In fact,
While you're at it,
Take a shower with it.
Drive with it.
Watch the news with it.
Use it all the time.
Your life will be different.
A quote from Oprah Winfrey,
True forgiveness is when you can say,
Thank you for that experience.
And from Louis B.
Smedes,
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that that prisoner was you.
Thank you for listening.
Blessings to you.
