فصل 6

I Love You

I absorbed Dr. Hew Len’s message as best I could, but there was so much more I wanted and needed to learn. I’ve always been good at being a sponge and “getting” the ideas by just allowing myself to be open to them. As I sat in this first event, I began to feel that my sole job in life is to say “I love you” to anything that came my way, whether I saw it as good or bad.The more I could dissolve the limiting programs I saw or felt, the more I could achieve the state of zero limits and bring peace to the planet through me.

Mark had a little more trouble grasping the message of the seminar. He kept wanting to put it into a logical framework. It was becoming clear to me that the mind doesn’t have any idea what is going on, so trying to find a logical explanation was in itself a recipe for failure.

Dr. Hew Len repeatedly stressed that there are 15 bits available to the conscious mind but 15 million bits happening in any one moment. We don’t have a chance of understanding all the elements at play in our lives.We must let go.We must trust.

I admit that much of this was sounding insane. At one point in the event a gentleman said he saw a portal open in a wall and dead people float through it.

“Do you know why you are seeing that?” Dr. Hew Len asked.

“Because we had talked about spirits earlier,” someone said.

“Exactly,” Dr. Hew Len acknowledged. “You attracted them by talking about them. You don’t want to look into other worlds. You have enough to do to stay in this moment in this world.” I didn’t see any spooks. I didn’t know what to make of those who did. I liked the movie The Sixth Sense, but as a movie. I didn’t want spirits showing up and talking to me.

Apparently this is normal for Dr. Hew Len, however. He told the story of working at the mental hospital and hearing toilets flush at midnight—all by themselves.

“The place was filled with spirits,” he said. “Many patients died in the ward in previous years but didn’t know they were dead. They were still there.” Still there using the bathroom?

Apparently so.

But if that weren’t odd enough, Dr. Hew Len went on to explain that if you ever talk to someone and notice their eyes are almost all white with a cloudy film around the edges, then they are possessed.

“Don’t even try to talk to them,” he advised. “Instead, just clean yourself and hope your clearing will remove the darkness taking them over.” I’m a pretty open-minded guy, but this talk of spirits and possessed souls and ghosts who use the toilet at night was a bit much for even me. Still, I hung in there. I wanted to know the ultimate secrets to healing so I could help myself and others to wealth, health, and happiness. I just never expected I’d have to walk through the invisible world and enter the twilight zone to get there.

At another point in the event we were lying on the floor doing exercises to open the energy in our bodies. Dr. Hew Len called me to him.

“When I look at this person, I see all the starvation in Sri Lanka,” he told me.

I looked at her but only saw a woman stretching on a carpet.

“We have so much to clean,” Dr. Hew Len said.

Despite my confusion, I did my best to practice what I understood. The easiest thing to do was simply say “I love you” all the time. So I did. When I went to the bathroom one evening, I felt the beginning of a urinary tract infection. I said “I love you” to the Divine while sensing the infection. I soon forgot about it and by morning it was gone.

I continued to say “I love you” mentally, repeatedly, no matter what was happening, good, bad, or different. I was trying to do my best to clean anything in the moment, whether I was aware of it or not. Let me give you a quick example of how this works: One day someone sent me an e-mail that upset me. In the past I would handle 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. Hew 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 or attracting the outer circumstance.

Within an hour I got another e-mail from the same person. He apologized for his previous message.

Keep in mind 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 the limiting hidden program that we were both participating in.

Doing this process doesn’t always mean instant results. The idea isn’t to achieve results, but to achieve peace. When you do that, you often get the results you wanted in the first place.

For example, one day one of my employees disappeared on me. He was supposed to get some work done on an important project with an urgent deadline. Not only did he not finish, but he seemed to vanish from the planet.

I didn’t take this very well. Though by then I knew about Dr. Hew Len’s method, I found it hard to say “I love you” when all I wanted to say was “I want to kill you.” Whenever I thought of my employee, I felt rage.

Still, I kept saying “I love you” and “Please forgive me” and “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t saying it to anyone. I was saying it to say it. I certainly didn’t feel love. In truth, it took me three days of doing this process before I got anywhere near a point of peace within myself.

And that’s when my employee surfaced.

He was in prison. He called to ask for help. I gave it, and I continued to practice “I love you” as I dealt with him. While I didn’t see instant results, my finding inner peace was enough of a result to make me happy. And somehow, at that point, my employee felt it, too. That’s when he asked a jailer to use the phone, and he called me. Once I had him on the phone, I was able to get the answers I needed to complete my urgent project.

When I attended that first ho’oponopono workshop run by Dr. Hew Len, he praised my book, The Attractor Factor. He told me that as I clean myself, my book’s vibration will raise and everyone will feel it when they read it. In short, as I improved, my readers would improve.

“What about the books that are already sold and out there?” I asked. My book had been a best seller and gone through numerous editions, and was coming out in paperback. I worried about all the people who already had copies of my book.

“Those books 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—which is why I am writing this one with Dr. Hew Len’s consent. Suffice it to say that whenever you want to improve anything in your life, from finances to relationships, there’s only one place to look: inside yourself.

Not everyone at the event grasped what Dr. Hew Len was talking about. Near the end of the final day, they started bombarding him with questions, all from the logical side of the mind, such as: “How can my cleaning affect another person?”

“Where is free will in all of this?”

“Why are so many terrorists attacking us?”

Dr. Hew Len was quiet. He seemed to look right at me, and I sat in the back of the room. He looked frustrated. Considering that his entire message was about there being no “out there,” that it’s all inside you, he probably felt that everyone’s lack of understanding reflected his own lack of understanding. He looked like he was going to sigh. I can only imagine that he was saying within himself, “I’m sorry. I love you.” I noticed that many people at the event had Hawaiian names, yet didn’t look Hawaiian. Mark and I asked them about it. We were told that if you felt the urge, Dr. Hew Len could give you a new name. The idea was to identify with a new self on the way to having no self and merging with Divinity at zero.

I knew the power of a new name. Back in 1979 I became Swami Anand Manjushri. It was a name given to me by my teacher at the time, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. At that time in my life, when I was still struggling with my past, contending with poverty, and searching for meaning, the name helped me start fresh. I used the name for seven years. It was natural to wonder if Dr. Hew Len would or could give me a new name.

When I asked him about it, he said he checks in with Divinity. When he feels inspired, he says what he gets. A month or so after that first seminar, he wrote me: Joe:

I saw a cloud come up in my mind the other day. It began a transformation of its self, churning slowly into soft, soft yellow. It then stretched its self out like a child upon waking into invisibility. From the invisibility the name Ao akua, “Godly,” surfaced.

I received this quotation as part of an e-mail message today:

“O Lord that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.”

I wish you Peace beyond all understanding.

Peace of I,

Ihaleakala

I loved the name Ao Akua, but I had no idea how to pronounce it. So I wrote and asked for help. Here’s what he wrote back: Joe:

A is the sound for the letter a in father.

O is the sound for the letter in Oh.

K is the sound as in kitchen.

U is the sound as in blue.

Peace of I,

Ihaleakala

I was able to figure it out and enjoyed my new name. I never used it in public, but I did when writing to Dr. Hew Len. Later, when I began my blog online at www.JoeVitale.com, I would sign off using “Ao Akua.” Very few people questioned it. I loved it, though, because it felt like I was asking Divinity to clean my blog by using a phrase that meant, to me, the parting of the clouds to see God.

While the weekend training installed “I love you” in my head, at least temporarily, I wanted more. I wrote and asked Dr. Hew Len if he would come to Texas and talk about ho’oponopono to a small group of friends. This was my plan to have more of him to myself. He would fly to Texas for a small talk, and stay with me. While he was with me, I’d pick his brains about what he knows, including how he healed that entire ward of mentally ill criminals. Dr. Hew Len agreed and wrote the following to me: Joe:

Thank you for taking the time to call me. You didn’t have to and you did. I am grateful.

I would like to propose to you an interview “format” for the informal visit in Austin in February. Perhaps the backdrop for the interview could be a kind of survey of problem solving approaches that you covered in your book, Adventures Within: Confessions of an Inner World Journalist. I see you being more than the interviewer and me more than the interviewee in this arrangement.

Clarity is so important in conveying information, be it in whatever art form it takes. For example, there is much fuzziness as to what a problem is, much less its cause. How does one solve a problem when one might be unclear about it? Where is the problem to be found to be processed? In the Mind? What’s that? Or in the Body (where most people put their bets)? Or both? Perhaps it’s not in any of these venues.

There’s even the question of who or what does the problem solving.

As you mentioned in your book, it is difficult to keep judgment at bay even as one attempts to problem solve using such methods as the Option or Forum. Are judgments or beliefs the real problem? Let the real problem stand up for all to see.

The informal interview would not be about good or bad, right or wrong methods or concepts. It would be a way of teasing out recurrent unclarity. You and I would provide a tremendous service if we cleared the waters only one iota.

Of course, each moment carries its own peculiar rhythms and tides. In the end, as Brutus says (paraphrasing) in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, “We will have to wait till the end of the day to see how it all turns out.” And so will we.

Tell me your thoughts about the proposed interview arrangement. I am not married to it as Brutus to the end.

Peace,

Ihaleakala

I quickly announced a private dinner with Dr. Hew Len and myself. I thought five or six people might show up. Instead, almost 100 people showed interest. And 75 people paid for a nice dinner to reserve their spot at the table.

Dr. Hew Len surprised me by asking for a list of everyone who would attend the event. He wanted to clean on them. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I sent him the list. He wrote back, saying: Thank you for the list, Ao Akua.

It’s only about cleansing, the chance to get clear of stuff and to be clear with God.

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms Divine in selling hours of dross;

Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

Peace be with you,

Ihaleakala

When Dr. Hew Len arrived in Austin and I picked him up, he immediately started asking me questions about my life.

“The book you wrote about your life (referring to Adventures Within) shows you did a wide variety of things to find peace,” he began. “Which one really works?” I thought about it and said they all had value but maybe the Option Process was the most useful and reliable. I explained it’s a way to question beliefs to find out what is real.

“When you question beliefs, what are you left with?”

“What are you left with?” I repeated. “You’re left with a clarity about choice.”

“Where’s that clarity coming from?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

“Why can a person be wealthy and still be an ass?” he suddenly asked me.

I was taken by surprise with the question. I wanted to explain that wealth and “ass” aren’t exclusive. There’s nothing written that says only angels are wealthy. Maybe the obnoxious person is clear about money, so he can be wealthy and still be a cuss. But I couldn’t find the words in the moment.

“I have no idea,” I confessed. “I don’t think you have to change your personality to be wealthy.You just have to have beliefs that accept wealth.” “Where do those beliefs come from?” he asked.

Having been in his training, I knew enough to answer,“They are programs people pick up from living.”

He again changed the subject by saying I am truly a hypnotic writer. He was beginning to entertain the idea of a book by me about ho’oponopono.

“Are you ready for me to write the book now?” I asked.

“Let’s see how the weekend goes,” he said.

“Speaking of that, how are we doing this dinner?” I asked. I’ve always wanted to control the situation to be sure I do well and people get what they want.

“I never plan,” he said. “I trust Divinity.”

“But are you going to speak first, or me, or what? And do you have an introduction you want me to read for you?”

“We’ll see,” he said. “Don’t plan.”

This made me uncomfortable. I like to know what’s expected of me. Dr. Hew Len was pushing me into the darkness. Or maybe to the light. I wasn’t sure at that time. He went on to say something more wise than I knew at the time: “What we humans are unaware of in our moment-to-moment existence is a constant, incessant resistance to life,” he began. “This resistance keeps us in a constant, incessant state of displacement from our Self I-Dentity and from Freedom, Inspiration, and above all else the Divine Creator itself. Simply put, we are displaced people wandering aimlessly in the desert of our minds. We are unable to heed the precept of Jesus Christ, ‘Resist not.’ We are not aware of another precept, ‘Peace begins with me.’ “Resistance keeps us in a constant state of anxiety and spiritual, mental, physical, financial, and material impoverishment,” he added. “Unlike Shakespeare, we are unaware that we are in a constant state of resistance instead of flow. For each bit of consciousness we experience at least one million bits unconsciously. And the one bit is useless for our salvation.” This was going to be one fascinating evening.

He asked to see the room where we would be holding the dinner. It was a huge ballroom on the top floor of a downtown Austin, Texas, hotel.The manager was polite and let us into the room. Dr. Hew Len asked if we could be alone in it. She agreed and left.

“What do you notice?” he asked me.

I looked around and said, “The carpet needs to be cleaned.”

“What impressions do you get?” he asked. “There’s no right or wrong.What you get may not be what I get.”

I allowed myself to relax and focus on the moment. Suddenly I sensed a lot of traffic, a weariness, a darkness. I wasn’t sure what it was or what it meant, but I voiced it to Dr. Hew Len.

“The room is tired,” he said. “People come in and out and never love it. It needs acknowledgment.”

I thought that was a little strange. A room is like a person? It has feelings?

Well, whatever.

“This room says its name is Sheila.”

“Sheila? That’s the room’s name?”

“Sheila wants to know we appreciate her.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

“We need to ask permission to have our event here,” he said. “So I’m asking Sheila if it is okay with her.”

“What is she saying?” I asked, feeling a little foolish asking the question.

“She says it is okay.”

“Well, that’s good,” I replied, remembering that my deposit on the room was nonrefundable.

He went on to explain, “I was in an auditorium once getting ready to do a lecture, and I was talking to the chairs. I asked, ‘Is there anybody I’ve missed? Does anyone have a problem that I need to take care of?’ One of the chairs said, ‘You know, there was a guy sitting on me today during a previous seminar who had financial problems, and now I just feel dead!’ So I cleaned with that problem, and I could just see the chair straightening up. Then I heard, ‘Okay! I’m ready to handle the next guy!’ ” He’s talking to chairs now?

Somehow I left my mind open to hear more about this unusual process of his. He went on to explain:

“What I actually try to do is teach the room. I say to the room and everything in it, ‘Do you want to learn how to do Ho’oponopono? After all, I’m going to leave soon. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do this work for yourselves?’ Some say yes, some say no, and some say, ‘I’m too tired!’ ” I remembered that many ancient cultures regarded everything as alive. In the book Clearing, Jim PathFinder Ewing explains that places often have stuck energies. It shouldn’t be too crazy to imagine rooms and chairs having feelings. It was certainly a mind-expanding thought. If physics is right, that there is nothing but energy making up what we perceive to be solid, then talking to rooms and chairs just might be a way to rearrange that energy in some new, cleaner form.

But chairs and rooms talking back?

I wasn’t quite ready for that at that time.

Dr. Hew Len looked out the window at the downtown skyline. The huge buildings, the state capitol, the horizon looked beautiful to me.

But not to Dr. Hew Len.

“I see headstones,” he said. “The city is full of the dead.”

I looked out the window. I didn’t see graves. Or death. I saw a city. Again, I was learning that Dr. Hew Len used both sides of his brain in each moment, so he could see structures as metaphors and speak them as he saw them. Not me, though. I was just asleep in my shoes, with my eyes open.

We stayed in the hotel room for maybe 30 minutes. As far as I could tell, Dr. Hew Len walked around cleaning the room, asking for forgiveness, loving Sheila, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

At one point he made a phone call. He told the person on the other end where he was, described it, and invited her impressions. He seemed to get confirmation about his own impressions. After he hung up, we sat at a table and talked.

“My friend says this room will let us do our dinner here as long as we love it,” he told me.

“How do we love it?”

“Just say ‘I love you’ to it,” he answered.

It seemed silly. Say “I love you” to a room? But I did my best. I had previously learned that you don’t have to actually feel “I love you” for it to work; you just had to say it. So say it I did. After you say it a few times, you begin to actually feel it.

After a few minutes of silence, Dr. Hew Len spoke more words of wisdom:

“What we individually hold, memories or inspirations, have an immediate and absolute impact on everything from humanity to the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms,” he said. “When a memory is converted to zero by Divinity in one subconscious mind, it is converted to zero in all subconscious minds—in all of them!” He paused before continuing:

“So, what happens in your soul moment to moment, Joseph, happens in all souls at the same moment. How wonderful to realize this. More wonderful, however, is appreciating that you can appeal to the Divine Creator to cancel these memories in your subconscious mind to zero and to replace them in your soul and the souls of all with Divinity’s thoughts, words, deeds, and actions.” How do you reply to that?

All I could think was, “I love you.”