فصل 12

Choice Is a Limitation

Dr. Hew Len flew to Austin,Texas, to spend a few days with me in October 2006. When I picked him up at the airport, we instantly began talking about life, God, programs, cleaning, and more. He asked what I was up to these days. I told him how excited I am.

“There’s a movie where a character says, ‘Some people are awake, and they live in a constant state of amazement.’ I am pretty close to that state,” I said. “I have magic and miracles and feel exhilarated by life.” “Tell me more,” he urged.

I told him about my new car, which I adore. It’s a 2005 Panoz Esperante GTLM luxury exotic sports car. They are made by the Panoz family. Each is assembled by hand, each is signed by the people who make it, and each is given a name. My car is named Francine. I knew Dr. Hew Len would appreciate the love put into the car, and the fact that it is treated like a living person. For him, everything is alive.

I told him about going on the Larry King Live television show as a result of my being in the movie The Secret. He wanted to know what Larry King was like. I told him. King is direct, friendly, street-smart. I liked him.

I went on and told Dr. Hew Len about the success of my books, such as The Attractor Factor and Life’s Missing Instruction Manual. After a few minutes he could see that I was just bubbling over with energy.

“What do you think is different now from you taking the first ho’oponopono training?”

I thought for a moment and said, “I quit controlling it all. I let go. All I do is clean, erase, and have the intention to get to zero.” He patted my shoulder and smiled, in a way anchoring the moment by acknowledging what he felt was right for me.

We started walking to my car, and after a few feet he stopped and stared at me.

“You have a bounce in your step,” he said, almost in awe. “You walk with springs.”

“Well, I am happy to see you,” I said.

We went to dinner and I told him I was disappointed that my book on P. T. Barnum, There’s a Customer Born Every Minute, wasn’t doing well.

“Joseph, you have to love it.”

I wanted my book to sell, so I didn’t understand what love had to do with it.

“Joseph, if you had three children and one of them was slow in school, would you tell it that you were disappointed in it?”

“No,” I replied. And suddenly an insight hit me hard. My book is a child of me, and I was saying it wasn’t as good as my other children. I felt this to such a real degree that I almost began to cry in the restaurant.

“You got it, Joseph,” Dr. Hew Len said. “You must love all your children.”

I began to feel terrible that I had alienated my “child” for not performing well in the school of life. I felt genuinely sorry. I began to say “I love you,” “I’m sorry,” “Please forgive me,” and “Thank you” in my mind to the Divine, while holding a sense of my book in my heart. Later, when I got home and saw my book, I picked it up and held it to my heart, hugging it, loving it, asking for forgiveness for not appreciating it just for being.

Later, driving Dr. Hew Len to my home area in Wimberley,Texas, he said he saw an elf in me.

“A what?”

“An elf,” he repeated.

I’m used to him seeing things that I don’t see. He wouldn’t call it psychic ability but just an unfolding in each moment.

“The elf has big eyes and big ears. He wants to stay inside and not go out in public.”

“That’s the part of me that wants to stay at home and work on my computer and not interact with people.”

“There’s another part of you that likes the limelight, though.”

“Two-thirds of me wants to be on Larry King and Oprah and get the attention,” I confessed, “but another part wants to stay indoors and be reclusive.” “Your elf will keep you sane,” Dr. Hew Len explained. “People who want nothing but stardom will drive themselves crazy. People who want nothing but living in a cave keep their light under a bushel basket.You have balance.” Later that day, I told Nerissa, my love, about my elf.

“What is the part of you called that likes to be onstage?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She reflected for a moment and said, “I think it’s called Sprite.”

“Sprite?”

“Yes, Sprite. It seems to fit.”

I laughed and had to agree. The next day, when I told Dr. Hew Len that Nerissa named my extrovert part Sprite, he laughed out loud and loved it.

“Sprite likes the light,” he sang.

The day after Dr. Hew Len arrived to my area, I drove over to meet with him. I found him sitting at a table with two retired Mexican women who seemed to be hanging on his every word. He motioned for me to come over. I got some coffee and started to sit in the chair beside him. He stopped me and asked me to sit in the next chair, one more chair away from him, but across from the two ladies.

“Tell these ladies what you do,” he said to me.

I told them about my books, my movie appearance, and how I try to help people find happiness.

“Tell them how you handle problems,” he said.

“In the past I used to try to solve problems, whether my own or someone else’s. Today I let them be, but I clean the memories that caused them. As I do, they get resolved and I’m okay as they get resolved.” “Joseph, can you give them an example?”

“My sister frustrates me,” I confessed. “She’s been on welfare, had her home broken into, had her identity stolen, and more. She’s not happy and it frustrates me. I’ve tried to help by sending her money, books, movies, and even the DVD player to play the movies. She doesn’t make any effort to change. But now I don’t try to change her.” “What do you do?” one of the ladies asked.

“I work on me,” I said. “Now I understand that the life she has isn’t anything she is doing. It’s a program, or memory, that is being played and she’s got in its web. It’s like she caught a virus. It isn’t her fault at all. And because I sense it, because I feel her pain, it means I share the same program. I have to clean. As I clean, the program will come off her, too.” “What do you do to clean?”

“All I do is say ‘I love you,’ ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘Please forgive me,’ and ‘Thank you’ over and over again.”

Dr. Hew Len explained that in the simple phrase “I love you” are three elements that can transform anything. He said they are gratitude, reverence, and transmutation. I went on to explain what I thought was happening.

“The phrases I say are like the magic words that open the combination lock to the universe.When I recite the phrases, which come out like a poem, I am opening myself to the Divine cleaning me and erasing all the programs preventing me from being here now.” Dr. Hew Len said he liked how I described the ho’oponopono method of clearing.

“Saying someone caught a virus is accurate,” he said. “It’s a program that is in the world and we catch it. When someone has it and you notice it, then you have it, too. The idea is to take 100 percent responsibility. When you clean yourself, you clean the program from everyone.” He paused and added, “But there are a lot of programs. They are like weeds on zero. To get at zero limits, we have more cleaning to do than you could ever imagine.” The ladies seemed to understand, which surprised me. We were talking about mind-bending concepts, yet they seemed to relate to them. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were simply tuning in to Dr. Hew Len’s vibe, much like a tuning fork sets a tone for everything around it that can feel its note.

Dr. Hew Len and I went for a walk. It was a half-mile stroll in the cool morning air on a dusty gravel road. Along the way deer walked around us. At one point we came across a group of dogs barking their heads off at us, but we kept talking and walking. Suddenly Dr. Hew Len waved his hand at them, as if to bless them, and said, “We love you.” The dogs stopped barking.

“All any of us want is to be loved,” he said. “You, me, even the dogs.”

One small dog behind the others gave out a slight yip. I couldn’t stop thinking he was saying, “Right on” or maybe “Thank you.”

Or even, “I love you, too.”

Our conversations were always stimulating. At one point Dr. Hew Len blew my head off by explaining that the only choice in life is to clean or not.

“You’re coming from either memory or inspiration,” he explained. “That’s it.”

I replied, “I’ve always told people that they have the choice to come from inspiration or not. That’s free will. The Divine sends a message and you can act on it or not. If you do, all is well. If you don’t, you may have problems.” “Your choice is to clean or not,” he said. “If you are clear, then when inspiration comes, you just act.You don’t think about it. If you think about it, then you are comparing the inspiration to something, and what you are comparing it to is a memory. Clean the memory and you don’t have choice.You just have inspiration and you act on it without thinking. It just is.” Whew! That insight truly shook me. I felt bad that I’ve been writing and speaking about choice being free will and now I learn that free will means you are still stuck in memory. When you are at the zero state and there are zero limits, you don’t do anything but what is there for you to do.That’s it.

“It’s like we are in a grand symphony,” Dr. Hew Len explained. “Each of us has an instrument to play. I have one, too. Your readers have theirs. None are the same. In order for the concert to play and everyone to enjoy it, they need to play their part and not another’s. We get into trouble when we don’t pick up our instrument or we think someone has a better one.That’s memory.” I began to see that a concert has stagehands, promoters, and cleaning crew. Everyone has a role.

I also reflected on the different people I knew who seemed clueless to their own method of success. There’s James Caan, the famous actor from The Godfather and the TV series Las Vegas. I’ve met him several times. His stardom is as much a mystery to him as it is to you or me. He’s a brilliant actor, even legendary. But all he’s doing is being himself. He’s playing his part in the universe’s script.

The same could be said for me. Some people who meet me act like I’m some sort of guru. If they’ve seen me in the movie The Secret or read any of my books, especially The Attractor Factor, they think I’m plugged into God’s hotline. The truth is, I’m just playing my instrument in the concert of life.

When you play your role and I play my role, the world works. It’s when you try to be me or I try to be you that problems arise.

“Who set up all these roles?” I asked Dr. Hew Len.

“Divinity,” he said. “Zero.”

“When was it set up?”

“Long before you and I ever showed up as even an amoeba.”

“Does that mean there is no free will at all? That we’re just stuck in our roles?”

“You have total free will,” he said. “You’re creating as you are breathing, but to live from zero you must let go of all memories to be there.” I have to admit I didn’t fully understand all of this. But the part I did get was that it’s my job to play my instrument. If I play mine, then I am a piece of the puzzle of life that found its slot. But if I try to fit myself into another area of the board, I won’t fit, and the entire picture will be off.

“Your conscious mind will try to understand it all,” Dr. Hew Len clarified. “But your conscious mind is aware of only 15 bits of information while there are 15 million bits happening all the time.Your conscious mind doesn’t have a clue what’s really happening.” That wasn’t very comforting.

At least not to my conscious mind.

As I mentioned earlier, I taught a seminar one day called “The Secret of Money.” I told everyone that they will have money if they are clear. If they are broke, they aren’t clear. I told Dr. Hew Len about it and he agreed.

“Memories can keep money away,” he said. “If you are clear about money, you’ll have it.The universe gives it if you will accept it. It is memories playing that keep it from you or you from seeing it.” “How do you get clear?”

“Keep saying ‘I love you.’ ”

“Do you say it to money?”

“You can love money but it’s better to just say it to the Divine. When you are at zero, you have zero limits and even money can come to you. But when you are in memory, you will prevent it. There are many memories around money. As you clean them, they get cleaned for everyone.” We went into a deli and ordered coffee. The place was quiet as we sat there, but slowly people streamed in and the place got busier and louder.The energy in the place grew.

“You notice that?” he asked.

“There’s a buzz to the place,” I said. “People seem happier.”

“We came in and we brought our cleaner selves and the place is feeling it,” he said.

He told me about going into restaurants in Europe. Their business would be slow but after he visited, business increased. He tried this in a few different places to see if the same thing happened. It did. He then went to a restaurant owner and said, “If we come in and your business improves, will you give us a free meal?” The owner agreed. Dr. Hew Len would often get free meals from just being.

I noticed that he gave money freely. We went into a little shop. He bought a few stained glass items for friends. He then slapped a $20 bill on the counter and said, “And this is for you!” The clerk looked surprised and naturally so. He added, “It’s only money!” Later, at a restaurant, I gave a large tip to the waitress. She stared, openmouthed. “I couldn’t accept this,” she said. “Yes, you can,” I countered.

Still, later, I got an idea for a product that I knew would make me a large amount of money. Dr. Hew Len pointed out, “The universe rewarded you for your generosity.You gave so it gave back. It gave you that inspiration. Had you not given, it would not have given.” Ah, and there was the real secret to money.

“We Americans forget that it says right on our money, ‘In God We Trust,’ ” said Dr. Hew Len. “We print it but we don’t believe it.”

At one point Dr. Hew Len asked me about the nutritional company I had founded with a physician and a nutritionist. We created it to market a cholesterol-lowering natural formula we call Cardio Secret. (See www.CardioSecret.com.) Dr. Hew Len had consulted with me a while back about the product name as well as the name of the company. He was curious to see where we went with it.

“It’s on hold right now,” I said.“I hired a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attorney to review our web site and our packaging, and we’re waiting on him. But as a result of working on this product, I got an idea for an even more exciting product, something I call Fit-A-Rita.” I went on to explain that Fit-A-Rita is a natural margarita mix. (See www.fitarita.com.) I received the idea for it while out drinking with friends. I was in yet another bodybuilding fitness contest at the time, so having a margarita was a rare and special thing for me.While drinking one, I said, “What we need is a Bodybuilder’s Margarita.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was a good idea.

“Good for you, Joseph,” Dr. Hew Len said. “You weren’t attached to the first product and wanting things to go your way, so the Divine gave you a new moneymaking idea. Too many people lock onto an idea and try to force it to fit their expectations, and what they’re doing is blocking the very wealth they want to receive. Good for you, Joseph, good for you.” He’s right, of course. As long as I stay open to ideas from the Divine, they keep coming. Besides the Fit-A-Rita product, I also received an idea for “clearing mats.”These are mats you place your food on to clean it and you before you dine. (See www.clearingmats.com.) But I didn’t stop there. Dr. Hew Len received an idea, too.

“I’ve never seen a web site that cleans people while they sit and look at it,” he told me. “Let’s make our web site for our book just that. When people go there, they are being cleaned by what we infuse in the site.” We did just that, too. See it at www.zerolimits.info.

There’s no end to the amount of ideas and money you can receive once you let go of your need and allow it all to come to you. The key, as always, is to just keep cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

“What should therapists do when they see clients?” I asked, wanting to probe for specific methods in helping people to heal.

“Just love them,” Dr. Hew Len replied.

“But what if someone comes to you because they were traumatized at some point and they aren’t over it?” I asked, wanting to back Dr. Hew Len into a corner and force him to squeeze out some method I could use.

“All everyone wants is to be loved,” he said. “Isn’t that what you want? It doesn’t matter what you say or do as long as you love the person.” “So I could be a Jungian or a Freudian or a Reichian or anything else?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he stressed. “What matters is that you love the person because they are a part of you, and your loving them will help erase and clean and clear the program activated in their life.” I wasn’t settling for that answer, though I could see his point.

“But what if someone is certifiably crazy?”

“I had a woman come to me who was considered schizophrenic,” he began.“I asked her to tell me her story.You have to understand that whatever she or anyone tells me isn’t the real issue.Their story is their conscious interpretation of events. What’s really happening is out of their awareness. But hearing the story is the starting place.” “What did she say?”

“She told me her story and I listened. I just kept repeating ‘I love you’ in my mind, to the Divine, trusting whatever needed to be cleaned would be cleaned. At one point she told me her full name, which was one of those hyphenated names.” “Like Vitale-Oden or some such?”

“Exactly. I knew that was part of the problem. When someone has a split name, it creates a split personality. She needed to own her birth name.” “Did you ask her to legally change her name?”

“She didn’t have to go that far,” he explained. “By telling herself that her name was one word, she began to relax and feel whole again.” “But was it the name change or your saying ‘I love you’ that made the difference for her?”

“Who knows?”

“But I want to know,” I said. “I started a Miracles Coaching program at www.miraclescoaching.com. I want to be sure my coaches say and do the right thing so they truly help people.” He went on to explain that therapists think they are here to help people or save people. But in reality their job is to heal themselves of the program they see in their patients. As those memories get canceled in the therapist, they get canceled in the patient.

“It doesn’t matter what you or your coaches say or do as long as they keep loving the person they are with,” he explained again. “Remember, the person you see is the mirror of you.What they experience is shared by you. Clean the shared program and you’ll both get well.” “But how?”

“I love you,” he said.

I’m beginning to sense a theme here.

I’ve been trying to figure out how the world works since I was old enough to read children’s books and then comic books. “Superman” and “The Flash” were pretty easy to understand. Today I have to deal with science, religion, psychology, and philosophy as well as my own mental wanderings.

Just when I think I have a handle on things, along comes another book to disturb my view of the world. This time I was reading Consciousness Speaks by Balsekar when I started to get a headache.

If I had to sum up its message in words from a man confused by reading the book, I’d say that nothing we do comes from free will. It’s all being prompted through us.We think we are the conscious actors. We’re wrong. That’s our egos talking. In some respect, we’re puppets with the Divine as the energy in us pulling our strings.

Now imagine this:

I’m the guy who wrote The Attractor Factor, a book that explains a five-step process for having, doing, or being anything you want. I and others have used the method to attract everything from wealth to cars to spouses to health to jobs to, well, you name it. It’s all about declaring your intention and then acting on what comes your way or bubbles up from within to make it manifest. In short, you’re the puppeteer and the world is your puppet.

So how do I fit these two apparently conflicting philosophies in my head without going bonkers?

I think it works like this:

First, we are living in a belief-driven world. Whatever you believe, that belief will work. It’ll get you through the day, at any rate. It will frame your experiences into perceptions that make sense to you. And when something comes your way that doesn’t seem to match your worldview/belief system, you’ll find a way to rationalize it and force it to fit. Or you’ll take valium.

Second, I can’t help but wonder if both philosophies are right: We’re the puppet and the puppeteer. But that only works when we get out of our own way. It’s our minds that drive us to overdrink, overeat, frolic, steal, lie, and even spend too much time worrying about how the world works. Our minds get in the way of the natural flow of things. Our minds know they are doomed and they can’t stand the thought of it, so they construct feel-good addictions to help them survive. In reality (whatever that is), your mind is the interference to experiencing the bliss of this moment.

If this is so, then all the techniques to get clear—which I talk about as step three in The Attractor Factor—are there to help you take the interference out of the Divine plan.

For example, when you use a method like the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)—the tapping your troubles away approach to life—you dissolve the issues troubling you.

But then what happens?

Then you take a positive action.

Well, weren’t you going to take that positive action anyway?

Isn’t that why you knew there was a problem to begin with?

In other words, the nudge to take action was sent to you from the Divine, and your anxiety over it was the interference. Take away the interference and you’re back to being one with the Divine, which means you’re puppet and puppeteer again.

So let me try to sum up what at least makes sense to me today: You came into this world with a gift within yourself. You may know it right away or not.You may not even know it right now. At some point you’ll sense it within you. Now, your mind is going to judge it. If your mind judges it as bad, you’ll seek therapy or methods or drugs or addictions to handle it, hide it, resolve it, release it, or accept it. But once you have removed that interference preventing you from acting on your gift, you’ll act on that gift. In short, you’ll be the puppet of the Divine but you’ll be the puppeteer of your life.

Your choice is to go with the flow or not.

That’s free will. Some call it “free won’t” because your real decision is to act on the impulse or not.

Even the great showman and marketer P. T. Barnum, whom I wrote about in my book There’s a Customer Born Every Minute, knew this. He took action. He did things on a grand scale. But he was always obeying some higher order. His gravestone marker reads, “Not my will but thine be done.” He acted on his ideas without interference from his mind, and he allowed the results to be what they were, trusting that it was all part of the universe’s bigger picture. He was able to let go while taking action.

And that’s step five in my book, The Attractor Factor.

Tonight I have the world figured out. (I think.)

Tomorrow I’m not so sure.

I long for comic books again.

“Everyone has a gift,” Dr. Hew Len told me on one of our walks.

“What about Tiger Woods?” I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to lead to a deeper question.

“He’s playing his role in the Divine play.”

“But what about when he starts to teach others how to play golf?”

“He’ll never succeed,” Dr. Hew Len said.“His role is playing golf, not teaching golf.That’s someone else’s role.We each have our part.” “Even a janitor?”

“Yes! There are janitors and garbage collectors who love their work,” he said. “You don’t think so because you are imagining playing their roles. But they can’t play your role, either.” I suddenly remembered a line from an old self-improvement course: “If God told you what to do, you’d do it and be happy. Well, what you are doing is what God wants you to do.” The point is not to resist your role. I might long to be a song-writer like Michelle Malone, or an actor like James Caan, or a body-builder like Frank Zane, or a writer like Jack London. I might even get pretty good at writing songs, or acting, or working out, or writing novels. But my role is inspirator. I write books to awaken people, or to be exact, to awaken me.

As I awaken me, I awaken you.