Ho’oponopono – the internal cleanup

Ho’oponopono is a practice that originates from Hawaii where instead of trying to rectify problems ‘out there’, we do an internal cleaning, a wiping of our inner emotional slate and allow the effects to filter from the inside out. It’s super simple: you think of the disturbance that has come up, it can be an action, an emotion, a person, and you say internally, in no particular order:

 

I’m sorry

Please forgive me

I love you

Thank you

 

You don’t need to know to whom you are addressing this, it could be the other person, it could be your inner child, it could be divine intelligence, it could be someone from your past that you have wronged in a similar way. But it’s about realising that something within you has attracted that situation, that it has served a purpose to bring it to our consciousness and that deep down we all do have love for each other and gratitude for the lessons we bring each other.  Then we ask for forgiveness and give thanks for what that person or experience has brought us.

Sometimes a couple of the phrases will resonate more than others. Ihaleakala Hew Len, a therapist who used the practice with patients in a psychiatric hospital, simply reviewed his patient’s files and repeated: I’m sorry, I love you. He saw remarkable changes in the patients and the hospital as a whole within a few weeks.  You can see some videos of him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL972JihAmg

This works on the theory that we are in a large part creators of our reality and beginning to accept full responsibility for what we find in our lives. Certainly, the people we can find most problematic often strike an inner chord with us, possibly through painful memories, or similarities they have with us.  If we work on what we still hold within, clean up that resonance, there is nothing there for that chimes with that previous pain any longer.  In this way you become free from that particular turmoil, and on your way you go!  A clean slate.  You may even get inspiration to do something you might never have had before, what Hew Len calls new data.

It is common experience to find ourselves repeatedly attracting troubling people or situations into our lives until we are able to resolve our particular issue. It may once have been your mother, but if she is no longer around, she will be replaced with a boss, or a mother-in-law with curiously similar characteristics.  What we do is cleanser our internal energy around that

It ties in with clearing the energy done by EFT. You can keep the memory, but you clean up the intense energy and emotion around it. Hew Len also talks about how these ties and energies reside in our unconscious, so conscious thought, trying to ‘manage’ or analysing a problem or an issue, is not where we are addressing this practice.  It is at a level where we recognise we may not know completely where this has come from and where the problem is being undone, but we offer up our love, thanks and forgiveness to wherever it is needed, and allow that cleansing, or erasing, to occur, trusting that it is happening where it will reap true healing and resolution.

And then when we are empty, we can allow new information, inspiration, to flow in. Then you’re free.  There’s no old ‘data playing’ and a new sense of clarity in the present moment emerges.  I this way we can find ourselves moved by perfect information instead of dead information.

The Course in Miracles says that when we make ‘mistakes’ or are unforgiving, we always have the chance to choose again. And we will always get a chance to choose again as we will attract a circumstance to ourselves again and again until we are able to clean that particular energy up.

I’ve been doing Ho’oponopono for a while now, not consistently, but when it occurs to me and it has had a remarkable effect on me. People that routinely annoyed me I now use as a signal to realise old material is being triggered.  And following taking responsibility in this way, I have ended up feeling much more inner peace around them.  It has been incredibly liberating and empowering, because you aren’t asking anything of that person, you are taking responsibility internally and then the effects really do show up ‘on the other side’ to reward you for your hard work.  And consequently some profound shifts in my ‘reality’ have occurred, and I have been moved out of situations I thought I would be stuck in and suddenly found myself emerging, as if from a cocoon of my own creation.

It also ties in with Byron Katy’s The Work, where she asks us to turn situations around to look internally at what we are accusing others of, leading to a similar enlightenment and means of liberation.

I can highly recommend giving it a go.