No Problems In The Present Moment

I've written a number of posts now about a major tenet of ho'oponopono, namely that all our problems in life come from our memories. This should be very clear to see as we struggle through bereavement. If you open a newspaper from a neighboring city to the obituaries, I'm sure you can find an obit concerning someone you don't know. Do you feel overwhelming sadness about their death? No? Why? You probably feel overwhelming sadness concerning the death of your spouse. But what is the difference? They are both dead people. The difference is, you have no memories of the dead stranger, but you have tons of memories of your dead spouse.

I was reading part of The Sedona Method yesterday, and I found a great section that takes this concept to a whole new level. It also teaches a powerful life skill that I feel will help you immensely in your grief work.

[from pages 268-270]:

Exploration: There Are No Problems

...I'd like to share one of the most powerful perspectives that we've been exploring in Sedona Method Advanced Courses with you: There are no problems in the present moment. I saved this piece for now, because I know this may be hard for you to accept, but — what if all the supposed problems you have right now are only memories? I challenge you to explore this question for yourself and at least entertain the possibility. If you can even partially accept this notion, and work with it as best you can in the way outlined here, it will give you another powerful tool to transform your life radically for the better.

The reason that problems appear to persist through time is that, whenever they're not here, in this moment, we go looking for them. Yes, we actually seek our problems. We tend to filter our experiences based on the belief that we have a particular problem, unconsciously censoring anything from our awareness that doesn't support that belief, including the fact that the problem is not here NOW.

I have worked with this perspective in the background of my awareness for many years; however it has only been in the last few years that I have used it in our classes and retreats. One of the first times I shared this perspective with a group was at a Seven-day Retreat a few years ago. Henry came to the retreat wearing a leg brace and feeling a lot of pain due to torn ligaments in his knee. His doctors had told him that the pain would probably persist for about six months until all the ligaments healed. So, he was quite skeptical when I told him that even pain is a memory. Yes, there were sensations in the NOW, but the pain itself was only a memory. He was so skeptical, in fact, that he spent the next 24 hours trying to prove me wrong. He was certain that if he got completely present with the sensations he was experiencing, he would still feel pain.

The next day in class, Henry shared that he was more than a little shocked that, despite the fact he had doubted what I said, every time he looked for pain in the present, he couldn't find it. He went on to explain that not only could he not find pain in the present, but there was no more pain to be found period, and his swelling had gone down about 85 percent. He also no longer needed his leg brace to walk!

I invite you to challenge your long cherished problems by embracing at least the possibility that they are only memories and allowing yourself to be open to what you discover.

To release the suffering caused by your perceptions, begin by thinking of a problem that you used to believe you had. (Notice that I have purposely phrased this sentence in the past tense.)

If you have a hard time accepting the problem as being from the past, allow yourself to include the last moment as part of the past. Most of us think of the past as at least yesterday, last year, or years ago. For the sake of understanding what I am suggesting, please view the past as anything that is not happening at this exact moment, including a second ago, or even a nanosecond ago.

Then, ask yourself this question: Could I allow myself to remember how I used to believe I had this problem?

The shift in consciousness that follows the question may make you laugh, it may make you tingle inside, or it may simply open the possibility in your awareness that, "Yes, even this is just a memory."

Next, ask yourself: Would I like to change that from the past?

If the answer is "yes," ask: Could I let go of wanting to change that from the past? Then let go as best you can.

Simply move on to the next step if the answer is "no."

The completion question in this series is: Could I let go of wanting to believe I have that problem again? Or: Could I let go of the expectation of having that problem happen again?

As always, just do your best to let go. If you find that you're still clinging to the memory of the problem in this moment, however, repeat the steps from the beginning until you can let go fully.

There are tons of excellent exercises in this book to help you let go of all your problems, anxieties, fears, and limitations. I highly, highly recommend it.

Feeling, Not Thinking

For the last month, I've been pondering the answers to two questions I was recently asked about grieving. The first one came as a result of a woman reading my blog posting about What We Can Learn From Grief and wondering how we can get out of the way mentally and let our body grieve. The second question was asked by a relatively new widow: how does one facilitate the grieving process?

I believe the answers to these two questions are related, so I'm going to attempt to answer them both simultaneously. First, let's start with the premise that grief is primarily a feeling process, not a thinking process. Why is this important? There's a big tendency here in the West, especially for men, to intellectualize grief. We can think about our grief all we want, but we're not likely to heal much that way.

OK, fine. I need to feel in order to heal. But what does that mean in practice?

I was very lucky as an early widower to be aware of a healing process called Focusing. The best book I found on the subject is called The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing. As a man, I found this technique to be very helpful as it taught me how to listen to what my body was trying to tell me. I highly recommend it.

I read recently that the primary purpose of our neo cortex is to produce thoughts, which lead in turn to movement. When I attended a Vipassana meditation course, this was elaborated on a bit as follows:

• First, a thought comes to our mind


• This thought produces a feeling or sensation somewhere in our body


• Due to this feeling, we react in some way

Can you see how intellectualizing grief is counter-productive? I don't know about you, but when I was in the throes of grief, I had more feelings than I knew what to do with! I certainly didn't need to have thoughts generating even more feelings. Instead, I needed a way to work with the feelings I already had. And I needed my brain to be quiet.

What I learned through 100 consecutive hours of silent Vipassana meditation was how to allow a thought to come to mind, feel the sensation, but not react to it in any way. This not reacting included not generating additional, related thoughts and perpetuating the cycle. By the end of the course, a thought could come up and pass away, and I felt no need to follow it or react to it. As a result of not being needed, my mind grew very quiet. I guess it didn't like being ignored ;-) With this quieting of my mind came a deep and healing peace. I finally met the real me, that guy who doesn't have any problems.

It was right after I came back from Vipassana that I learned about a Hawaiian healing method called ho'oponopono. It says that any problem we experience in our life comes as a result of a memory. The solution? Let go of the memory. I have written a fair bit about this method and how it has helped me.

In my next post, I'll explain more about how we can help our body heal from grief.

Memories Are Not What They Seem

In my last post, I suggested that part of Grief Recovery is being willing to let go of our memories of our dead spouse. I realize that this is anathema for most Westerners. As widow/ers, we are seen by many as the keepers of "the memories" of our deceased mate. Like this is our new profession now — why we are alive, our new reason for living. But memories are slippery things, and they change over time. Clinging to memories of our past married life is a recipe for much pain, especially as those memories begin to fade. It is easy to feel guilty, as though we are not doing our job as delegated by "society" (whatever that is).

As Thomas Blakeslee points out in his book Beyond The Conscious Mind, it is important to understand that the majority of our memories are in fact fabrications. That's right, our mind fills in a lot of detail for gaps where it never recorded the data completely. Out of the 15 million bits of data per second we are exposed to, we are consciously aware of maybe 15 of those bits (1 in a million). Subconsciously we retain more, but there is still huge gaps in between what we are exposed to and what we recall. But our mind does not like gaps or voids, so it fills in the missing data when we recall a memory.

Preposterous. When I first read this, I didn't believe a word of it. But Thomas provided a disturbing example. It turns out that our vision system has a blind spot where the optic nerve connects to the retina [pg 38]:

Close your right eye and hold the book about 8 inches in front of you while your left eye stares directly at the X. Adjust the book position until the hole in the text disappears. Your brain easily fills in words to cover up for the blind spot in your vision (where your optic nerve enters the retina). This tendency of the brain to imaginatively fill-in gaps to make the world seem normal is the cause of much confusion in the world.

He also states, "our mind does such a good job filling in gaps to create the reality we expect that we don't even notice the inconsistencies" [pg 37].

So what am I saying here? That our entire experience of reality is imagined? Made-up? A fabrication? No. What I am trying to point out is that our memories are not cast in stone, especially those of our dead spouse. Those memories change, and we do well as widow/ers to recognize that those memories change and go with the flow of that change. In other words, it is a normal part of being human, and there is no reason whatsoever to feel any guilt when we feel those memories slipping away.

I've also been thinking a great deal about what happens to our memories when we use a tool like ho'oponopono to modify our memories. When we recognize that we are replaying a memory and say "I love you" to that memory, we are expressing our total acceptance of that memory. I think it is important to understand that the memory is inherently flawed and incomplete, and that our mind is filling in missing detail each time we replay the memory. And yet we express our acceptance of that memory. That flawed memory is OK just as it is.

The second part of ho'oponopono is to say "I'm sorry for harboring this memory." Now we are no longer just passively willing to let go of a memory, we are actively letting it go and allowing ourselves to begin living in the present moment.

What I discovered in my grief was that letting go of memories and living in the present moment healed a huge amount of my pain. I strongly believe at this point that we feel pain in bereavement so that we will change our thought patterns and habits. Ho'oponopono provides a powerful tool for changing our thought patterns, which in turn changes our habits. Since my thoughts and habits have changed dramatically, I have been released from my pain. I wish that for you also.

Not-So-Sacred Memories

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions
— Leonardo da Vinci

We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them
— Goethe

I'm reading a fascinating book called Beyond The Conscious Mind that talks a good deal about memories. As I've described in several past posts about ho'oponopono, all our problems are caused by memories. So how do we resolve this fact with the Western mindset of memories being the source of our pleasure and the need to cling to the memories of our dead spouse? Over and over again, I see constant reminders that nothing is more important in our lives as widows and widowers than to honor their memory. As a result, those memories take on a kind of special, sacred status, and we the living are presumed to be duty-bound to be a kind of living Ark of the Covenant, carrying around these sacred memories of our deceased mate, housing them and safeguarding them.

Says who?

Again, let me be clear that I don't think we can erase the memories of our dead spouse — their essence permeates every cell in our bodies. What I do think we can do is let go of wanting to cling to those memories, and in doing so, we can heal and recover from our grief and focus instead on living in the present instead of the past. But if these memories of our past lives are sacred and we are to carry them around as a sort of living tombstone and memorial (after all, we knew them the best and are therefore the most qualified), isn't it paradoxical (if not sacreligious!) to suggest that we let go of these memories?

Tonight I just want to examine this idea about sacred memories of our dead spouse. This implies some unchanging quality to these memories, as though they have been cast in stone to be henceforth unchanged, forevermore.

As Thomas Blakeslee points out in Beyond The Conscious Mind, our memories do change over time. Each recall changes them in some way. One example he gives related to students being questioned immediately after the space shuttle Challenger exploded as to where they were and how they felt, and then a follow-up questionnaire 2 ½ years later. Consider the following [pp 77-78]:

NEXT DAY: I was in my religion class and some people walked in and started talking about [it]. I didn't know any of the details except that it had exploded and the schoolteacher's students has all been watching which I thought was so sad. Then after class I went to my room and watched the TV program talking about it and I got the details from that.
2 1/2 YEARS LATER: When I first heard about the explosion I was sitting in my freshman dorm room with my roommate and we were watching TV. It came on the news flash and we were both totally shocked. I was really upset and I went upstairs to talk to a friend of mine and then I called my parents.

Hard to believe these two accounts came from the same person! But was this just a one-off? No, in fact they were able to find 44 students who had filled out the original questionnaire, and all of them had substantially reworked their memories of the event.

In the next part of this article, I'll explain more about how these memories changed, as well as provide some shocking details about what our memories really consist of. I think it will become clear that the only thing we have to lose by being willing to let go of our memories is our pain.

Zero Limits Basic Principles

What happens in your life is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
— Joe Vitale

I've written at some length about a Hawaiian healing method called Ho'oponopono, and the more I use it, the more I like it. Especially in the context of Grief Recovery, I like how the simple expression of "I love you; I'm sorry; please forgive me; thank you," encapsulates so much of what I need to heal on a daily basis.

These simple yet profound words are based on some solid principles. Joe Vitale's Zero Limits explain these principles on pages 199-201, and I hope you find them intriguing. When we grieve, so often we don't have the wherewithal to remember new-fangled fancy mantras or breathing exercises or visualization techniques. But we can always remember to say "I love you."

---

Zero Limits Basic Principles

1. You don't have a clue what is going on.
It is impossible to be aware of everything happening in and around you, consciously or unconsciously. Your body and mind are regulating themselves right now, without you being aware of it. And numerous invisible signals are in the air, from radio waves to thought forms, which you have no conscious sense of at all. You are indeed co-creating your own reality right now, but it is happening unconsciously, without your conscious knowledge or control. This is why you can think positive thoughts all you like and still be broke. Your conscious mind isn't the creator.

2. You don't have control over everything.
Obviously, if you don't know everything that is happening, you can't control it all. It's an ego trip to think you can make the world do your bidding. Since your ego can't see much of what is going on in the world right now, letting your ego decide what is best for you isn't wise.You have choice, but you don't have control. You can use your conscious mind to begin to choose what you would prefer to experience, but you have to let go of whether you manifest it or not, or how, or when. Surrender is key.

3. You can heal whatever comes your way.
Whatever appears in your life, no matter how it got there, is up for healing simply because it's now on your radar. The assumption here is that if you can feel it, you can heal it. If you can see it in someone else, and it bothers you, then it's up for healing. Or as I'm told Oprah once said, "If you can spot it, you've got it." You may have no idea why it's in your life or how it got there, but you can let it go because you're now aware of it. The more you heal what comes up, the clearer you are to manifest what you prefer, because you will be freeing stuck energy to use for other matters.

4. You are 100 percent responsible for all you experience.
What happens in your life is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. The concept of personal responsibility goes beyond what you say, do, and think. It includes what others say, do, and think that shows up in your life. If you take complete responsibility for all that appears in your life, then when someone surfaces with a problem, then it is your problem, too. This ties in to principle three, which states you can heal whatever comes your way. In short, you can't blame anyone or anything for your current reality. All you can do is take responsibility for it, which means accept it, own it, and love it.The more you heal what comes up, the more you get in tune with the source.

5. Your ticket to zero limits is saying the phrase "I love you."
The pass that gets you peace beyond all understanding, from healing to manifestation, is the simple phrase "I love you." Saying it to the Divine cleans everything in you so you can experience the miracle of this moment: zero limits. The idea is to love everything. Love the extra fat, the addiction, the problem child or neighbor or spouse; love it all. Love transmutes the stuck energy and frees it. Saying "I love you" is the open sesame to experience the Divine.

6. Inspiration is more important than intention.
Intention is a toy of the mind; inspiration is a directive from the Divine. At some point you'll surrender and start listening, rather than begging and waiting. Intention is trying to control life based on the limited view of the ego; inspiration is receiving a message from the Divine and then acting on it. Intention works and brings results; inspiration works and brings miracles.Which do you prefer?

I've heard some misconceptions about grieving from some people who have seen The Secret. Instead of asking, "How did I attract the death of my spouse into my life?" we can now see that it is more helpful to say, "It is not my fault that my spouse is dead, but I am 100 percent responsible for my reaction to his/her death." By taking total responsibility, we are now in a position of power to change our reaction. We can't take complete responsibility and simultaneously remain a victim of tragedy. Responsibility is the path to recovery and healing. And peace.

To Live Is To Die

As I continue to tweak this Grief Recovery Tools blog to make it easier to find in the search engines, I often find myself re-reading my posts from when I first started writing. Today I was re-reading my post entitled "My Experience With Despair," and it struck me that I had written that grief is for life. I was struck for several reasons.

Firstly, I no longer believe that we have to live with unending pain for the rest of our lives. Certainly, that can be a choice for those who decide to become professional widow/ers, and 25 years can easily go by with little relief from that pain. I do remember that when I wrote that blog entry, a part of me was still against "settling" for a life of grief. At some level, it was unacceptable to me to settle. Probably, this was because I had made it a goal early on to reach the stage where I was totally at peace with Deb's death, and living with pain precludes being at peace. So, I continued to search for that peace. Since attending a free Vipassana Meditation course, I believe I have found that peace that I was seeking. The Vipassana website promises that "Life becomes characterized by increased awareness, non-delusion, self-control and peace," and I have certainly found that to be true.

Secondly, however, I was struck by the idea that grief is, in fact, for life. No, I'm not contradicting myself ;-) Grief is a healing process of letting go, and in that sense, we are grieving all the time. As humans, we like to live with this illusion that things can stay the same for long periods of time. The reality is that nothing stays the same for even one second. Everything is always changing. Even when we drill down to the atomic level of existence, we find that atoms are changing at the rate of billions of times per second. In fact, we use this principle to define what a second is.

So, this whole notion of stasis is really just a mental construct at a very high level of abstraction from reality. As the saying goes, "There's nothing as constant as change." The notion that I was married to Deb for 12.5 years exists only in my head. The Deb who died was not the same Deb whom I married, nor am I the same man today who I was on my wedding day. I'm not even the same guy who woke up this morning. Every cell in my body has regenerated trillions and trillions of times just in the last hour. Thus, when I talk about "me" in reference to my body and collected memories, there is in fact no such entity. It is an illusion.

So, while we constantly use these illusory terms to describe how long "we" have owned our house, car, dog, job, etc, at some deep level we are aware that these things are always in flux, always changing. And the determining factor between those people who appear to be always happy and those who appear to be always unhappy is often how they react to change.

Take the instance of a car breaking down. One person can be very upset because they remembered their car as working fine, and now they have a negative reaction to this new change in the status of their car. Another person can laugh it off, accepting the change and letting go of the idea that the car was working fine a while ago. Same scenario, two different people, two different reactions.

My friend Gary Scott tells of an instance he saw in northern Ecuador where a man who was walking down the street was passed by a truck and drenched in water from a resulting puddle splash. After the shock had worn off, the Ecuadorian started smiling and let out a big belly laugh. To me, this suggests a highly evolved perspective on change. Would you expect to see a similar reaction here in North America? I think not. North Americans tend to have rather negative reactions to events such as puddle splashes.

So how does all this relate to grief? Am I suggesting that we can get to the point where we can laugh off the death of our spouse? Hardly. However, I do believe we can begin to recognize that everything we hold dear is constantly changing, and that in fact we are not holding "things" dearly, but rather we are holding our memories of those things dearly. And, as we learned from Ho'oponopono, memories are the causes of all our problems.

What we need to learn to do is to let go of our memories, and, in a sense, grieve for those memories. As we develop this habit, we can become more aware of, and appreciate, life as it is, not as we wish it was. And with this new awareness, we can begin to find that peace we are seeking.

Memories

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

Memories. Now that our spouse is gone, memories are all we have of them. Never again will they laugh with us, cry with us, or comfort us. No new memories will be created with them. A big part of our grief is learning just how to come to terms with this awful reality. How does one come to terms with this? "How" questions are excellent Grief Recovery Tools and will guide you where you need to go.

As I mentioned in my last post about unbelievable healing, I'm reading Joe Vitale's Zero Limits. Before I share some of the startling insights in the book, be warned that they will likely go against everything you have ever learned about life and relationships here in the West. To say they are controversial, especially in the context of grieving, is an understatement.

It is important to recognize that life in Western civilization is one of acquisition. More money, a bigger house, faster car, prettier wife, smarter kids. A deep undercurrent of grasping greed pervades the newspapers, radio, and television. Your friends and neighbors likely chat about the newest thing they have bought or acquired.

And then one day, your spouse dies. You have lost your spouse, which makes you, by definition, a loser. People don't like to be around losers. If it could happen to you, it could happen to them. And life is just about what you can get, right? He who dies with the most toys wins?

You no longer have your spouse, but you do have your memories of your past life together with him or her. And no one can take those away from you! Whole industries have sprung up to help you memorialize your departed mate. Everything from the traditional tombstone to photo memory books, memorial websites, and charitable donations in their name. You can name buildings, awards, and children after him or her. Make a shrine in your house, hang pictures of them on your walls. Listen to the music they used to listen to. Keep their clothing so you can catch a bit of their smell to trigger the memories.

And then, as the years go by, you notice the memories beginning to fade. How can this be? So much has already been stolen from you! The life you should have had, together with your loved one, snatched away. And now the precious memories are beginning to recede. Their impermanent nature can no longer be ignored. Where is the fairness in all this?

I realize this is going to be a bit too much of a stretch at this point, but try to take the perspective, just for a moment, of looking directly opposite the view that receding memories is a bad thing. Dare to accept, just for a moment, that the day could come where this might not be a bad thing. It might even be a good thing.

Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, the therapist who cured the ward of criminally insane patients in Hawaii, says that every problem in our life, every one, is because of our memories. The majority of our thoughts are tied up thinking about our memories. The solution? Let them go [pg 31]:

"When you erase something from your computer, where does it go?" he asked the room.
"To the recycle bin," someone shouted out.
"Exactly," Dr. Hew Len said. "It's still on your computer, but it's out of sight. Your memories are like that. They are still in you, just out of sight. What you want to do is erase them completely and permanently."
I found this fascinating, but I had no idea what it meant or where it was going. Why would I want memories permanently deleted?
"You have two ways to live your life," Dr. Hew Len explained. "From memory or from inspiration. Memories are old programs replaying. Inspiration is the Divine giving you a message.You want to come from inspiration. The only way to hear the Divine and receive inspiration is to clean all memories. The only thing you have to do is clean."
Dr. Hew Len spent a lot of time explaining how the Divine is our zero state — it's where we have zero limits. No memories. No identity. Nothing but the Divine.

You were warned ;-) Before I go on, let me be clear: the essence of your dead spouse has been infused into every cell in your body. They are now a part of you. I talked about this in my early post about some photos I found of Deb in my basement. If the above passage has made you angry, anxious, or afraid, realize that you have literally hundreds of thousands to millions of memories of your loved one. All those memories are recorded in your body somewhere. If you aren't interested in this kind of healing, rest assured that it will take a very long time for all those memories to fade, and there's lots you can do to hang on to those memories if you choose to do so.

If the idea of all your problems stemming from your memories has resonated with you, though, I'll close here with the simple method Dr. Hew Len uses to "clean" his memories. He simply repeats four simple phrases:

"I love you."
"I'm sorry."
"Please forgive me."
"Thank you."

As an experiment, try repeating the four phrases every time a memory of your departed loved one surfaces and causes you pain. In my next post, I'll explain how, due to my Vipassana meditation training, I could immediately see the wisdom of this point of view, and I'll go into a bit more depth as to how I spent 10 days cleaning my memories without ever being aware that I was doing so. All I know is that I am more at peace now than I have ever been in my entire life.

Unbelievable Healing

I'm reading a phenomenal book by Joe Vitale called Zero Limits. In my quest for better and better Grief Recovery Tools, I'm always on the lookout for unusual healing techniques. When the following description came into my inbox, I was more than a little intrigued:

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 any 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 had 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 am 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. The Hawaiian therapist who healed those mentally ill people would teach me an advanced new perspective about total responsibility.

His name is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. 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 was not a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.

Dr. Len told me that 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 those people to change?"

"I was simply healing the part of me 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.

Whew. This is tough 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 — anything you experience and don't like — is up for 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 realize 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 just 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, your improve your world. Let me give you a quick example of how this works: one day, someone sent me an email that upset me. In the past I would have handled 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. 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 the outer circumstance.

Within an hour I got an e-mail from the same person. He apologized for his previous message. Keep in mind that 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 what was creating him.

I later attended a ho 'oponopono workshop run by Dr. Len. He's now 70 years old, considered a grandfatherly shaman, and is somewhat reclusive. He praised my book, The Attractor Factor. He told me that as I improve myself, my book's vibration will raise, and everyone will feel it when they read it. In short, as I improve, my readers will improve.

"What about the books that are already sold and out there?" I asked.

"They 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. Suffice it to say that whenever you want to improve anything in your life, there's only one place to look: inside you.

"When you look, do it with love."

When I had finished reading that, I just knew I had to read the whole book. The insights I'm getting are incredibly helpful. You can get a bit more info from the Zero Limits website More to follow...