Loving our Enemy,
Healing our World
Challenges on the 5 year Anniversary of September 11, 2001
Getting Clear on what We Want
Spiritual Law Number Four (Manifestation) from my book The Laws of Love tells us that our consciousness is creative. We create most effectively when we know what we really want and what we care about the most.
If we have a strong desire to create a car or a nice place to live, and we know that we deserve it and are willing to receive it, all we have to do is keep our consciousness and our actions focused on our goal and we will move energetically toward it.
Caring and commitment are the primary ingredients of success in manifesting our desires. If we are ambivalent, if we don’t know what we want, or if we are not fully committed to achieving our goal, we will not succeed in reaching it. We must be clear on the goal and be willing to achieve it.
Let me be clear that the process of creation starts with knowing what you do want, not with knowing what you don’t want. Knowing what you don’t want can be helpful only if it leads you to knowing what you do want. Otherwise, it simply justifies your complaining and reinforces your powerlessness.
So please, don’t try to create out of a “don’t want” space. The way to create peace, for example is not to say “I don’t want war, because now your focus is on war, not on peace. Focus on the positive. Focus on what you do want. Get in touch with what peace looks and feels like. Get in touch with how much you desire it and are willing to bring it into your life.
Let’s be clear on another thing. Once you know what you want, you must believe that it is possible to create it. You won’t hit 50 home runs a year if you don’t believe that you can. That may sound like an elementary concept, but you would be surprised how many people don’t believe they are capable of doing what they want to do. That is a recipe for failure.
When we as individuals and as a society become clear on what we do want, believe that we deserve it and can achieve it, and commit to the mental focus and continuity of action required to create it, we become skilled manifestors. Not only can we manifest cars, houses, yachts, private planes and the like, we can also manifest healing, peace, and enough food and shelter to feed the hungry and the homeless.
In other words, the Source of healing, peace, abundance and everything else that we need in life is within consciousness itself. We are all powerful beyond measure. This is what Jesus tried to tell us in the Sermon on the Mount.
In his book The Infinite Way Joel Goldsmith tells us that peace is a gentle spirit which wells up within us and has no relationship to the state of our affairs, although, ultimately, it settles all our affairs.
Peace, healing and abundance do not come from the outside. They come from the inside, from consciousness itself. They come from the inner knowledge and experience of the Divine.
God is our Source, and Love, which comes from God, is our abundant supply.
Creating with Love
When we create with awareness of our Source, we create with love and what we create blesses and multiplies. It helps us and it helps others.
Love is abundant. There is no limit on how much there is or how much it can do.
Creating with Fear
When we create without awareness of our Source, we create with fear. We create with limited perception, seeking to benefit ourselves at the expense of others.
What we create with fear, we are always afraid of losing. We believe that resources are in short supply and that we need to appropriate them before others do. Instead of acknowledging our guilt for misappropriating resources or denying others reasonable access to them, we spend a lot of time defending those resources or our selfish actions in obtaining them.
It is not hard to see where our errors in manifestation lie:
1. We do not create what we want because we don’t know what we want and/or
we don’t believe that we deserve it or that we are capable of creating it.
2. We create not out of awareness of our Source and its inherent abundance, but out
of anxiety and fear and related scarcity consciousness.
Now, permit me to shift gears.
A Ho'oponopono approach to Healing and Forgiveness
My friend Donna recently sent me a lovely story by Joe Vitale that has been making its rounds on the internet. Vitale became interested in the traditional healing work of Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len at Hawaii State Hospital and contacted Dr. Len to understand more about what he had been doing.
Vitale tells us that for four years, Dr. Len worked in the ward for the criminally insane at the State Hospital, where psychologists quit on a monthly basis. Staff would walk through the ward with their backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients.
Dr. Len, however, never saw patients. He simply agreed to have an office at the Hospital and to review patient files.
Dr. Len used a traditional Hawaiian healing process called Ho'oponopono in which he took responsibility for healing the parts of himself that created the conditions around him.
“After a few months, Dr. Len told Vitale, “patients that had to be shackled were being allowed to walk freely. 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.”
Dr. Len explained to Vitale that taking total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life is your creation and therefore your responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation.
Vitale asked Dr. Len how he specifically healed himself when he looked at the patient files.
Dr. Len responded "I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again.”
"That's it?" Vitale asked in amazement. “That's it," Dr. Len answered.
So why am I telling you this story? Perhaps some of you already know.
Healing the Pain of September 11, 2001 and other Tragedies
If Dr. Len can heal the criminally insane by bringing forgiveness and peace to his own consciousness, can we not also heal the conditions that give rise to terrorism by healing the distress within our own consciousness?
Our atonement thus becomes not only a personal process, but a collective one. And what you and I do therefore becomes of critical importance. We are not powerless in this world but, as Jesus told us “powerful beyond measure.”
Today is the five year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC. Today, we are told that we are as vulnerable to terrorist attack as we were five years ago. Today, our news media and government officials warn us that Bin Laden and other Al Queda extremists are planning future attacks on us far worse than those that took place on September 11, 2001.
It is easy to go into fear. It is easy to create in fear. Our anxiety can motivate us to develop better defenses, better security measures. It can help us justify invasions of other countries, or military retaliation to send a message to the terrorists. It can even prompt us to “bite the bait” that has been dangled before us and proclaim our own holy war against the Muslim extremists.
Unfortunately focus on terrorism just increases it. Remember, one of the primary principles of manifestation is “don’t focus on what you don’t want. Focus on what you do want.”
Imagine if we tried the Ho'oponopono approach to Bin Laden. Instead of sending him thoughts of hatred and vengeance, we could tell him that we love him and that we are sorry.
We could do the same thing to all of the victims of 9/11 and their families. We could say the same thing to ourselves, because we too are wounded and angry.
One of my friends recently wrote to me about an experience he had while practicing awareness of this principle during the bombings in Israel and Lebanon:
”When I was trying to go to sleep, I was thinking about the pictures I saw in the newspaper of the bombings and suddenly the scene felt almost real as I was there in the wreckage carrying a baby, worrying about when the next one would fall. At first I was in Israel, then I was in Lebanon, then back in Israel, then in both places and everywhere. I got up to write down what was happening for me – I started with the anger, but then the whole thing shifted when I started asking myself “What do I want?”
When we ask this question it reminds us that we have a simple choice: we can amplify the fear in our own consciousness, or we can bring love. That choice will determine whether or not healing happens for us.
Even if the outcome of this decision only created peace for us and not for others, it would be a worthwhile practice. But as Dr. Len and others know, the healing extends to all who are willing to receive it.
One of the most remarkable healers of the twentieth century, Joel Goldsmith used a similar practice in his spiritual healing. When someone came to him presenting a particular problem, he would bring the problem into his mind and surround it with the love of God. He did this by establishing the awareness of the infinite divine love within his own field of consciousness and allowing it to permeate the problem until it eventually dissolved and all that remained was the pure vibration of love.
Many people think that the way we are going to stop terrorism is to hunt down Ben Laden and kill him. Others know better. The death of Ben Laden will simply fuel the rise of extremism. It will not make us safer.
What do you suppose Jesus would say to us about Ben Laden? Be honest now. Do you think Jesus would ask us to love Ben Laden or to hate him? Would he ask us to forgive Ben Laden or condemn him?
Jesus, I would submit, knew at least as much as Dr. Len did about healing and transformation. And just like Dr. Len, he wouldn’t need more than a desk and access to Bin Laden’s file. Indeed, that’s all any of us need. We can even skip the desk.
Every night on the news we are given access to the Bin Laden file, along with the Iraq War file, the Israel/Lebanon file, you name it. We are being informed of all of the suffering in our world. What do we do with this information?
Do we allow it to depress us and to make us feel powerless? Do we feel angry and hopeless and leave it at that? Or do we understand it as an invitation to heal our own consciousness, to forgive ourselves, to express our love.
Most Americans are angry at Bin Laden. Many are also angry at President Bush. But this anger does not serve anyone. Anger at Bush does not make him a better leader and it doesn’t uplift our own consciousness.
So now ask yourself a question that could transform your consciousness and the world you live in: Can you ask forgiveness from Bush and Bin Laden? Can you tell them that you love them?
Can you transform the enemy within into a friend and find peace in your heart?
Remember: healing the world and healing your heart are the same task.
The world has many problems, but none of them can be solved by a vengeful mind or a bitter heart.
If you are looking for a powerful spiritual discipline, practice love and forgiveness for fifteen or twenty minutes after you listen to the news or read the newspaper. Do the same thing whenever you are presented with any other tragic or stressful conditions. Take them into your consciousness and transmute them to acceptance and love.
That is how the world is redeemed: in and through your consciousness and mine.