فصل 13

Cigars, Hamburgers, and Killing the Divine

Cleaning helps reduce the mortgage on your soul.

—Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len

One day Dr. Hew Len wanted to get something to eat. It was on a Monday evening. We were in my small town, where everybody is busy entertaining tourists on the weekend and often closes on Monday to recover. There was only one place open that I could think of, a hamburger joint called Burger Barn. I didn’t want to even mention the place, as I figured Dr. Hew Len would not want unhealthy food. Plus with my lifestyle change and new eating habits, I didn’t dare even drive near a fast-food place. But I told Dr. Hew Len about it, anyway.

“A burger sounds great!” he said, obviously excited.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah! I love a good burger.”

We drove to the place and parked.We went in and sat.The menu didn’t have much on it of a healthy food choice nature.

“I’ll have a double meat, double cheese burger on a white bun,” Dr. Hew Len ordered.

I was stunned. That was heart attack food, in my opinion. Meat? Cheese? And a white bun? I couldn’t believe it. I also couldn’t believe that I ordered the same thing. I figured if it was good enough for the shaman it ought to be good enough for me.

“Aren’t you worried about the cheese and meat and bread?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” he said.“I have a chili dog every morning for breakfast. I love this stuff.”

“You do?”

“It’s not the food that is dangerous,” he explained to me. “It’s what you think about the food.”

I had heard that comment before, but I never believed it. I figured the solid trumped the thought. But maybe I was wrong.

He went on to explain, “Before I eat anything, in my mind I say to the food, ‘I love you! I love you! If I am bringing anything into this situation that would cause me to feel ill as I am eating you, it’s not you! It’s not even me! It’s something that triggers that I am willing to be responsible for!’ I then go on and enjoy the meal, because now it’s clean.” Once again his insights startled me and awakened me. I had spent so much time reading about health issues and food warnings that I was so paranoid I couldn’t enjoy a simple hamburger. I decided to clean on it.When the food arrived, we ate it with gusto.

“This hamburger is the best I’ve ever had,” he announced. He was so impressed that he went and asked for the cook, and then thanked him. The cook wasn’t used to people acknowledging his deep-fried burgers. He didn’t know what to say.

Neither did I.

When I gave Dr. Hew Len a tour of my home, including my gym, I held my breath. I keep cigars in my gym. It seems ironic to work out in the morning and smoke in the evening, but there you go; that’s my life. But I worried that Dr. Hew Len might say something about my smoking.

I showed him my various types of equipment, pictures of famous bodybuilders on the walls, and the certificates I’ve received for the fitness contests I’ve been in. I tried to steer him away from the cigars sitting on a bench. But he noticed them.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Cigars,” I said with a sigh.

“You smoke working out?”

“No, no, but I do in the evening,” I explained. “It’s my meditation time. I sit on the deck, smoke, and feel gratitude for my life.” He was silent for a moment. I was waiting for him to rattle off all the statistics showing why smoking is bad for you. Finally, he spoke.

“I think it’s beautiful.”

“You do?” I asked.

“I think you should smoke a cigar with your Panoz car.”

“What do you mean? Have a picture taken of me in front of Francine with a cigar in my hand?”

“Maybe, but I was thinking you can smoke while you polish her or dust her down.”

“I thought you were going to ridicule me for smoking,” I finally told him. “One person read my blog, saw I mentioned cigars, and wrote me that I was putting toxins into my body and hurting myself.” “I guess that person never heard of the American Indian custom of passing the peace pipe,” he said,“or how smoking in many tribes is a rite of passage and a way to bond and share and be a family.” I was once again learning that the key for Dr. Hew Len is to love everything. When you do, that thing changes. Smoking is bad when you think it is bad; hamburgers are bad when you think they are bad. As with everything in the ancient Hawaiian traditions, it all begins with thought, and the great healer is love.

I was finally beginning to understand him, and how important it is to get to the zero limits state.

But not everyone felt the same as me.

One night I went on a teleseminar and told everyone about my experiences with Dr. Hew Len, most of which I’ve told you here. They listened attentively. They asked questions. They seemed to understand what I was explaining. But to my surprise, at the end of the call they resumed their normal way of thinking.While all agreed that we need to take 100 percent responsibility for our lives, they were again talking about others.While all agreed that the cleaning method Dr. Hew Len taught me was powerful, they again went back to old habits.

One person said, “I don’t want to say ‘I’m sorry,’ because whatever I say after ‘I am’ is what I will become.”

I wanted to say, “Well, we can clean on that,” knowing that her statement was just a belief. But I simply said, “Dr. Hew Len says do whatever works for you.” I admit at first I found this frustrating. But then I realized I had to clean on this, too. After all, if I take 100 percent responsibility for what I experience, I am experiencing them. And if the only tool with which to clean is “I love you,” then I need to clean on what I see in others, as what I see in others is in me.

This may be the hardest part of ho’oponopono to understand. There’s nothing out there. It’s all in you. Whatever you experience, you experience inside yourself.

One person challenged me on this issue by asking, “What about the 50 million people who voted for the president I don’t like? Clearly I had nothing to do with their actions!” “Where do you experience those 50 million people?” I asked.

“What do you mean where do I experience them?” he countered. “I read about them, I see them on television, and it’s a fact they voted for him.” “But where do you experience all of that information?”

“In my head, as news.”

“Inside yourself, right?” I asked.

“Well, I process the information inside myself, yes, but they are outside of me. I don’t have 50 million people in me.”

“Actually, you do,” I said. “You experience them in you, so they don’t exist unless you look within yourself.”

“But I can look out and see them.”

“You see them inside yourself,” I stated. “Everything you process is in you. If you don’t process it, it doesn’t exist.”

“Is this like if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?”

“Exactly.”

“This is crazy.”

“Exactly,” I said. “But it’s the way home.”

I then decided to test him even further. I asked,“Can you tell me what your next thought will be?”

He was quiet for a moment. He wanted to blurt out an answer but realized he couldn’t.

“No one can predict their next thought,” I explained. “You can verbalize it once it occurs to you, but the thought itself arises from your unconscious.You have no control over it. The only choice you have is once the thought appears, to act on it or not.” “I don’t follow.”

“You can do any number of things once the thought arises, but it’s being generated in your unconscious,” I explained. “In order to clean the unconscious so you get better thoughts, you have to do something else.” “Such as?”

“Well, I’m writing a whole book about it,” I replied, referring to this book you’re reading.

“And what does this have to do with the 50 million people out there?”

“They’re no more out there than your own thoughts are,” I said. “It’s all inside you. All you can do is clean in order to clear out the storehouse of programs in your mind. As you clean, the thoughts that arise get more positive and productive and even loving.” “I still think all of this is batty,” he said.

“I’ll clean on that,” I replied.

Most likely he never got it. But if I’m to get to zero limits, I have to take total responsibility for him not getting it. His memory is my memory. His program is my program. The very fact that he voiced it to me means I share it with him. So, as I get clear of it, so will he. As I’m writing this, I’m saying “I love you” in my thoughts, behind the words, behind the typing, behind the computer, behind the scenes. My saying “I love you” as I work, write, read, play, talk, or think is my attempt to do nonstop cleaning, erasing, and clearing of anything and everything between me and zero.

Can you feel the love?

One morning Dr. Hew Len said he saw a logo for me containing a four-leaf clover. “The fourth pedal is gold, like a tongue,” he said. He spent several minutes describing what he was seeing in his mind, or in the air. I’m not sure where he was getting his impression. Neither was he.

“You need to find an artist to sketch the logo for you,” he said.

Later we went for a walk into town.We had lunch and then visited a few shops. The first shop contained stained glass art. We were both impressed. As we admired the shopkeeper’s handiwork, she said, “If you ever need a logo or a sketch, we can draw it for you.” Dr. Hew Len grinned and leaned in my direction, as I grinned and leaned in his. Coming from zero meant synchronicity happened.

While I was writing this section of the book, I had to stop to be interviewed for another movie.This one is like The Secret but focused on getting healthy with your thoughts. I began the interview by saying thoughts weren’t as important as no thoughts. I tried to explain the zero limits state of being, where you allow the Divine to heal you, not you heal yourself. I wasn’t sure why I was saying all this. A part of me questioned my sanity. But I went with the flow.

After the camera was turned off, the woman observing it all almost blurted out that she heals people by entering the zero state. It turned out she is a physician who now heals animals by entering the no-thought zero limits state of being while in the presence of the ill animals. She showed me pictures of dogs with cataracts, and then the after photos where they are completely healed.

Once again, the Divine was proving that the Divine has all the power, not me. I can just clean so I can hear it and obey it.

Last night I spent an hour and a half on the phone with a best-selling author and self-help guru. I’ve been a fan of his for years. I love all his books. I’m a groupie for his message. Since he also likes my work, we finally connected and talked. But I was stunned by what we talked about.

This personal growth expert narrated a horrifying true story of his last couple of years. He had been victimized and abused by someone he loved. While I listened, I wondered how he could say he was a victim when his published message was about taking responsibility for your life.

It began to dawn on me that almost everyone—even the self-help experts who try to teach us how to live (including me)—don’t have a clue what they are doing. They are still missing a piece of the puzzle.They get to a point where they think what worked in the past for them will work at all times in the future, and for everyone else. But life isn’t like that. We’re all different and life is always changing. Just when you think you have it figured out, along comes a new wrench and your life looks out of hand once again.

Dr. Hew Len’s work teaches us to let go and trust the Divine while constantly cleaning all the thoughts and experiences that surface in the way of hearing the Divine. By this continuous work, we can clear the weeds of programs so we can better handle life with ease and grace.

As I listened to the self-help author narrate his journey of woes, I kept saying “I love you” quietly, inside my mind, to the Divine. By the time he was done talking, he seemed lighter and happier.

As Dr. Hew Len keeps reminding me and everyone else, “The Divine is not a concierge.You don’t ask for things; you just clean.”

I loved spending time with Dr. Hew Len. He never seemed to mind my questions. One day I asked him if there were any advanced methods for cleaning. After all, he has been doing ho’oponopono for more than 25 years. Surely he’s created or received some other methods besides “I love you” to clear memories.

“What do you do these days to clean?” I asked.

He chuckled and said, “Kill the Divine.”

I was stunned.

“Kill the Divine?” I repeated, wondering what he meant.

“I know that even inspiration is one step removed from the zero state,” he explained.“I’m told that I have to kill the Divine to be home.” “But how do you kill the Divine?”

“Keep cleaning,” he said.

Always, always, always, it kept coming back to the one singular refrain that healed any and all wounds: “I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you.” When I was in Warsaw, Poland, at the end of 2006, I decided to introduce the idea of zero limits and the zero state to my audience. I had been there speaking for two days about hypnotic marketing and my book, The Attractor Factor. I found the people to be open-minded, loving, and eager to learn. So I taught them what I’ve shared with you here: that you are responsible for everything in your life and that the way to heal everything is with a simple “I love you.” Though the audience needed a translator for my presentation, they seemed to absorb my every word. But one person asked me an interesting question: “People here in Poland spend all day praying to God and going to church, yet we have had war, our city was bombed by Hitler, we lived under martial law for years, and we have suffered. Why didn’t those prayers work, and what’s different with this Hawaiian one?” I paused to consider the right answer, wishing Dr. Hew Len was here to help me. In the moment I gave this reply:

“People don’t get what they say so much as what they feel. Most people who pray don’t believe they will be heard or they will be helped. Most people pray from a place of desperation, which means they will attract more of what they are feeling: more desperation.” My questioner seemed to understand and accept my answer. He nodded. But when I returned to the United States, I wrote Dr. Hew Len and asked him what he would have replied. He wrote back the following e-mail: Ao Akua:

Thank you for the opportunity to clean with whatever is going on in me that I experience as your question.

An American showed up in the class that I did in Valencia, Spain, two years ago. “My grandson was ill with cancer,” she said to me in a break. “I prayed for him, asking that he not die, but he died anyway. How come?” “You prayed for the wrong person,” I said. “Better to have prayed for yourself, asking forgiveness for whatever was going on in you that you experienced as your grandson being ill.” People don’t see themselves as the source of their experiences. Rarely are prayers directed at what is going on in the petitioner by the petitioner.

Peace of I,

Ihaleakala

I loved his perfectly honest answer. Again and again, his theme is that nothing is outside of us.When most people pray, they act like they have no power or responsibility. But in ho’oponopono, you are totally responsible.The “prayer” is to ask for forgiveness for whatever is in you that caused the outer circumstance.The prayer is a reconnecting to the Divine.The rest is trusting the Divine to heal you. As you heal, so does the outer. Everything, without exception, is inside you.

Larry Dossey said it well in his book, Healing Words: “We need to recall at these times that prayer, in its function as a bridge to the Absolute, has no failure rate. It works 100 percent of the time—unless we prevent this realization by remaining oblivious to it.” One thing bothered me about my work with Dr. Hew Len.

As I kept growing and having insights, I worried that all my previous books were wrong and were going to mislead people. In The Attractor Factor, for example, I praised the power of intention. Now, years after writing that book, I knew intention is a fool’s game, an ego’s toy, and that the real source of power is inspiration. I also now knew that agreeing to life is the great secret to happiness, not controlling life. Too many people, myself included, were visualizing and affirming in order to manipulate the world. I now knew that isn’t necessary. You’re better off going with the flow while constantly cleaning whatever comes up.

I began to feel like Neville Goddard must have felt. Neville is one of my favorite mystical writers. His early books were about creating your own reality by turning “feeling into fact.” He called it “the law” in such books as The Law and the Promise. “The law” referred to your ability to influence the world with feeling. “The promise” referred to surrendering to God’s will for you.

Neville began his career by teaching people how to get what they want with what he called “awakened imagination.” The short description of that phrase refers to Neville’s favorite quote, “Imagining creates reality.” His very first book was titled At Your Command, which I later updated. In it he explained that the world is indeed “at your command.” Tell the Divine or God what you want, and it will be delivered. But by Neville’s later years, after 1959, he had awakened to a greater power: that of letting go and letting the Divine operate through you.

The thing is, he couldn’t recall his earlier books like a car manufacturer might recall a defective car. I have no idea if they upset him or not. I’m guessing not. He left them in the world because he felt “the law” was useful to help people get through the bumps in life. But I wanted to recall my books. I felt they were misleading people. I told Dr. Hew Len that I felt like I was doing a disservice to the world.

“Your books are like stepping-stones,” Dr. Hew Len explained. “People are at various steps along the path.Your books speak to them where they are. As they use that book to grow, they become ready for the next book.You don’t need to recall any books at all. They are all perfect.” As I thought of my books, of Neville, of Dr. Hew Len, and of all the readers past, present, and to come, all I could say was, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” Clean. Clean. Clean.