Thanks to Chris in the great state of OHIO for asking about this Hawaiian healing process that Joe Vitale wrote about in 2006:

HO'OPONOPONO
By Joe Vitale

"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—but that's wrong.

"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 or 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, you improve your world."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

When I first read of Joe Vitale's account of ho'oponopono some years ago, I couldn't help but say the word, repeatedly, aloud. What a melodic, lovely sound.

As for the results that Dr. Len got from using ho'oponopono (there's that lovely word again) with the "criminally insane" in Hawaii, well, I can't argue with that, although perhaps further studies could be done.

As we take a look at this healing method from an Abraham perspective, we'll find a wonderful truth:

"Turns out that loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, you improve your world." Bingo. As we cherish ourselves enough to say, "Nothing is more important than I feel emotionally good," and live from that place, we are loving ourselves profoundly. From that place of feeling consistently good by deliberately choosing good-feeling thoughts, we thrive and are models of thriving for anyone who observes us. Also, from that place of thriving, we have much to offer others when we choose to help. As we become happier, we inevitably bring happiness to the planet. 

OK, here we get into the murky territory of misunderstanding:

"'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."

Whew is right. I must say that when I first read that, I had to re-read it in order to believe my eyes. So everything "out there" is my responsibility and is up for me to heal?????? Oh my heavens! That seems like a huge onus indeed. Mind-boggling. Let's take a look at what Abraham says about the nature of existence.

We came forth into physical expression because we wanted to experience the exaggerated contrast of this time and space continuum. That means that we wanted to live in a world with many things we would like and want and many things that we would not like and would not want. We knew that this contrast, as Abraham terms it, would elicit from us deeper desires than we would hold in non-physical. Whenever we have an intense desire, our Inner Being/Source energy actually EXPERIENCES the happy culmination of that desire, whether or not we get up to speed with that desire by choosing good-feeling thoughts. Our Inner Being/Source Energy actually EXPANDS as we have desires. And we always have the potential to live our desires, too, as we focus more on what we want than on the lack of it.

We came forth for this contrast. Period. Paragraph.

This world is not broken. We did not come forth to fix or heal it. We came forth to use it as a platform to form desires, let Source Energy "ride the rockets of our desires," as Abe aptly puts it, and then to get up to speed with our desires by following our emotional guidance system and choosing thoughts that are congruent with what we want.

"This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy or 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."

Heavens to murgatroyd, let's juxtapose this statement by Joe Vitale with what we know from Abraham.

Again, let's remember that this is a world of contrast. There will always be things we like and things we don't like. It is not our job to fix this place! Nuh-uh! It's our job to have desires (inevitable), allow the Universe to respond to our desires (inevitable), and then to get up to speed with our desires and let them manifest by focusing on WHAT WE WANT AND WHAT WE LIKE. This is the Art of Allowing that Abraham presents.

So, the question isn't how can I heal myself and thus heal the world, but how can I direct my focus so that I rendezvous with the parts I WANT of the world and sidestep the parts that I don't want while allowing everyone else to do the same?

Everyone is getting exactly what they are asking for vibrationally. Everyone is receiving that which is in the vicinity of where they habitually place their mental focus. 

As ho'oponopono (gosh, I love to say that word) teaches us that we create our own reality, it is spot on. Through our habits of thought, we magnetize everything that crosses our path. But as ho'oponopono teaches us that it's a broken world totally of our own creation and that it's up to us to alter the world by altering our thoughts about ourself, it goes out on a limb that is shaky at best.

I've learned from Abraham that I am not responsible for one other being on the planet other than myself, for I cannot think and thus vibrate for anyone other than me. I might just as well "take everybody else out of the equation," for we are individual creators. Previously, before Honest Abe, we thought that we created mainly through our words and action. Now we know that we create predominantly through our mental focus. 

Ho'oponopono is accurate about the power of mental focus. It is utterly accurate about the value of self love. But to assert that we are personally responsible for everything that supposedly goes wrong, well that's just plain (do I dare say it? - haha) criminally insane.

But wait a minute. What if it is my goal to, like Dr. Len, help others? That's a valid desire, and I can play a vital role in others' well-being as I envision them as whole and go on about my business, modeling thriving.

And if they ask, I'll tell them it's all about focus. It's all about mental focus. It's all about that.

        

I'm learning to pay attention to what I pay attention to. Courtesy of the universal Law of Attraction, I'll get more of the same or similar. This is huge.

        

Animals don't fear death. They know — far better than we know — that they're pure Source Energy. They know that life is a revolving door — they come in, they go out, they come in, they go out. It's an unending process, and it's meant to be fun.

        

Thanks to my dear friend Barbara for this question:

It's been a wild year - Chile - Haiti - Turkey - earthquakes. Did I miss any?  Tsunamis.
What does Abraham say about natural disasters? 

* * * * * * * * *

The Earth is a living thing, Abraham says, and it is ever bringing itself into balance. The great tectonic plates beneath the earth's surface are in motion as part of this balancing act, and sometimes their motion is felt in dramatic ways by those of us who live here.

I conjecture that the Earth is not, overall, experiencing more natural disasters than throughout history. It's just that our news media alerts us to them, almost before they happen! And then, of course, there's up-to-the-minute coverage from the site of disasters. Armed with technology, broadcasters are very good at what they do, but all the vivid coverage of disasters can dramatically distort our notions about the perils of the planet, causing us to forget that most people go about their business without harm each day.

It's so important to know that storms and earthquakes are natural phenomena. The Earth is not fragile. The Earth is not in distress. There is untold well-being and expansion happening here, and we humans could not begin to make a dent in that well-being. It is THAT immense.

OK, should we forget ecology? Should we waste resources and simply eat, drink, and be merry?

I don't know about you, but I love the idea of recycling. I love the idea of taking care of wetlands — and dry lands, for that matter. I like keeping our beautiful planet clean, tidy, and welcoming for future generations. But every plastic container I recycle, I do out of love for the planet, not out of fear for her future. Her future is secure. Abraham is emphatic about that.

Here's Abraham in their book, A New Beginning I, from years ago: "The earth, and all that surrounds it, was set into motion by a great and powerful wanting, and part of that wanting said, 'We want this earth to exist for a very long time.' It is a living earth. It is living, as everything upon it is living. And as it is living, it is growing, and just as you are growing new skin, so is this earth growing new 'skin.' And as it is evolving and changing, it is continually seeking its balance."

And here's Abe from a workshop held on 10/6/1996: ""Everything you see is reborn again and again as the eternal non-physical energy continues to flow forth to sustain it."

So, it's pretty much business as usual for our planet. All is well here and, for that matter, to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Whew, that's one big chunk of well-being.

If that's true, the logical question now becomes: How do I stay safe from natural disasters that occur when the Earth is doing her balancing act?

If we don't want to rendezvous with natural disasters, the most important thing to do is to think thoughts of safety and security and FEEL safe. When our vibration is tuned to a frequency of well-being, we will not be in the place where unwanted events — large or small — occur. Law of Attraction is the great orchestrator, and it will forever match up problems with those who are a vibrational match to them, and it will always deliver safety and security to those folks who line up with those. As Abraham points out repeatedly, we just can't buck the current of what we've set in motion via our habits of thought and feeling.

Well, what about Haiti? Were all the people who were affected by the recent earthquake there thinking long term negative thoughts, feeling bad, and thus magnetizing a problem of great magnitude?

Not exactly. We could see the Haitians who were in the throes of the earthquake in at least three different categories: (1) Those, as mentioned above, who had a habit of focusing predominantly on what was wrong and bad with their lives and thus co-created something considered wrong and bad on a very big scale. But category (2) would consist of those who were just plain ready to make their transition to non-physical and chose this way to do it. As Abraham has pointed out, we humans can be very creative in our ways to leave the planet. Category (3) would be those who benefited from the earthquake. Our local news in Orlando showed planeload after planeload of refugees disembarking at Sanford airport to a warm welcome and the promise of a better life — at least for the time-being — in America. And many Haitians orphans will be adopted by Americans and others as a result of this emergency situation. Many who lived in Haiti and held happy hope for a better life are finding it.

Years ago, before I moved to Florida, I used to research where I'd like to live, focusing on what I would imagine to be the safest areas of the country. Now, after nine years in this verdant (but hurricane-prone) state and nine years into the study of the Abraham-Hicks perspective, I realize that there is no place on the face of the earth that is inherently safe and no place that is inherently dangerous. If I'm thinking unhappy thoughts and feeling consistently miserable, I will rendezvous with unwanted events in due time. If I'm thinking predominantly happy thoughts and feeling secure, I will be as safe as if I had ten protective armies surrounding me always.

We live on a benevolent and resilient planet in a benevolent and resilient Universe, but how much of that well-being we experience is up to us.

It's all about focus. It's all about mental focus. It's all about that.

        

Negative, disgruntled people—they're all over the place. But so are joyful, inspiring folks, too. Which sort do I want to rendezvous with—at work, in traffic, while shopping, on the phone, online? I choose whom I invite into my experience via my vibration (mental focus), and I always invite those who are feeling similar to how I'm feeling. As I choose better-feeling thoughts, I choose better-feeling people.

        

People vary in the extent to which they desire. Those with intense desires have a potentially more thrilling life as they focus on their desires & allow them to manifest. Those same folks have a potentially worse experience if they don't use the power of mental focus & rely on action alone. Enter workaholism, eating disorders, & extreme parenting.

        

I don't try to escape negative, downer-type people. Courtesy of Law of Attraction, anyone or anything I focus on, whether wanted or unwanted, will continue to show up in my experience — that or something similar. Better approach: I practice choosing good-feeling thoughts and put myself on a different vibrational wavelength from the whiners of the world. Then I'll be zigging when they zag.

        

I wouldn't stand at a buffet table and stuff my face on food, such as candied raccoon rump, that tastes terrible. So why would I keep thinking thoughts that feel awful when I think them?

        

How can I ever figure out who's right and who's wrong in every dispute or conflict that gains my attention? And why would I want to try, for the more I focus on conflict, the more I'm inviting it into my personal experience. I release my tendency to take sides and jump into forays. I'm just too busy being happy.