As we evolve, we recognize that it’s the heart which holds the great key to our collective healing, real civility, the courage to face our own shadow and true progress.
~ James O’Dea, The Conscious Activist

Can you imagine newly landing on this planet from some peaceful place (like any newborn) to discover that humans living here have created a world where it seems like there’s something to be feared around every corner?

You might not have enough to eat, and if you do, it’s probably poisoned. If you watch TV news, you may feel the need to lock every door and you’d better have a weapon at hand. If a nuclear power plant doesn’t kill you, enemy missiles will. It’s no wonder that 30 million Americans take antidepressants.

My inbox fills daily with contrasts…. from warnings about climate change, pending environmental devastation, and epidemic health disorders stemming from chemically-laden, genetically altered food to scores of viable solutions for clean energy, healthy food, wellness care and the power of loving one another. When we consider the billions of individualized realities of people cohabitating on the same planet, it makes us wonder why we can’t all experience the love and harmony, safety and peace humans thrive on.  

As I contemplated this month’s theme, Working Together, Editor Linda Sechrist’s feature story, “Awakening the Global Heart: Compassionate Activists Unite to Write Earth’s New Story,” and today’s threatening issues, I felt inspired to share a process I’ve been using in my life with good success.

When I first heard the story years ago of the therapist that helped heal an entire ward of mentally ill criminals without professionally seeing them, I knew I had to learn more. In Googling the source, Joe Vitale, the bestselling author who appeared in the film The Secret, I discovered that the well-documented story in the book Zero Limits, co-authored by Vitale and therapist Ihaleakala Hew Len, Ph.D., is true. Four years in his office of just looking at patients’ files from the Hawaii State Hospital resulted in all of them being healed and eventually released. Today, the ward is closed.

Vitale and Len explain in their books, the latest being At Zero, how by applying the Hawaiian Ho’oponopono process, practitioners say they reconnect with the Divine (termed “Zero” state). The basis of this healing process is the belief that we are 100 percent responsible for everything that shows up in our life. From a challenging personal friendship to a refugee crisis we somehow hear about, if it shows up in our experience, it’s our job to “clean” our thought, to delete the programs and beliefs (mostly unconscious) we hold that are creating it by making it real for us. By repeating the phrases, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you”—we clean ourselves and get closer to Zero, the state of magic, miracles and no limitations.

This means that terrorist activity, political maneuvering, economic busts—anything we experience and don’t like—is up to us to heal. They don’t exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections from inside us. The problem isn’t with them, it’s with us, and to change them, we must change ourselves—clean ourselves—constantly. That’s the path to worldwide healing.

It happily turns out that loving our self is the greatest way to improve our self, and as we improve our world improves. To realize any desired change, there’s only one place to look: inside.

I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

Sharon