Ho'oponopono

There are few true stories that never grow old and I tell this one in my yoga class every once in a while. With Covid being on the top of our daily news these days, we can take on a lot of stress, fear and anxiety about how we will go about our everyday living.  Some say it will take another two years before everyone can return to the office in full capacity. Navigating though this challenges us to be grounded mentally, yet it is an opportunity to tap into all types of resources that maybe we never would have thought of.  This true story with Dr. Hew Len is a wonderful example of how we  are sharing this struggle together and we can come back into harmony with both ourselves and others by honoring the 'Ho'oponono' mantra. 

More than thirty years ago, in Hawaii, at the Hawaii State Hospital, there was a special ward, a clinic for the mentally ill criminals. People who had committed extremely serious crimes were assigned there. They had committed murder, rape, kidnapping or other such crimes. No day would pass without a patient-inmate attacking another inmate or a member of the staff.

The people working there were so frightened that they would walk close to the walls if they saw an inmate coming their way in a corridor, even though they were all shackled, all the time –but more than once this wouldn’t stop an agression. The inmates would never be brought outside to get fresh air because of their relentlessly threatening attitude. The scarcity of staff was a chronic occurrence. Nurses, wardens, employees would prefer to be on sick-leave most of the time in order not to confront such a depressive and dangerous environment.

One day a new clinical psychologist, a Dr. Stanley Hew Len, arrived at the ward.  He would ask for the files of the inmates.

Little by little things started to change in the hospital. Gradually, the gardens started being taken care of, some tennis courts were repaired and some prisoners  started playing tennis with the staff. Other prisoners would receive less heavy pharmacological drugs. 

In the end, the athmosphere changed so much that the staff was not on sick leave any more. Actually, more people than needed wished now to work there. Prisonners started gradually to be released. Dr. Hew Len worked there close to four years. In the end, there remained only a couple of inmates that were relocated somewhere else and the clinic for the mentally insane criminals had to close.

Whenever a matter arises –and they arise incessantly– adressing the Divine within you, you only have to say: I love You, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank You.

Dr Hew Len explained, “I was simply cleaning the part of me that I shared with them.”
The only way I can explain it is this… Ho’oponopono recognises we are all part of one consciousness, and as such, everything that is in our experience is affected by our actions/reactions.  We are responsible for everything we experience!

Dr Hew Len explains,“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.” In other words, what he is saying is, we are living in a shared consciousness/a shared hologram  if you like, where if one person’s consciousness changes, it can change the whole. In a way, this is what Ghandi meant, when he said, in order to change the world,  “be the change, you want to see happen in the world.”  healingartcenter.net ; healingearth.info