Do you ever get weary pouring over the world news headlines?

You know, all the stories of horrific violence, ethnic cleansing, harrowing tragedies and severe poverty that proliferate the news ticker daily. Do you ever suffer from “compassion fatigue” while surveying these messages and feel like you just can’t take anymore? Or worse still, adopt a more dispassionate stance of: “Why do I need to watch this? It has nothing to do me with anyway. I’m a good person living a good life and am not to blame for any of this.”

Well I have news: Maybe it does have something to do with us; and maybe we don’t have to feel so helpless and hopeless where changing the “state of the world” or anyone in it is concerned.

A couple of years ago I read an account of a Hawaiian psychologist, Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, who accepted a position (no one else would) at the Hawaii State Hospital. He took the position of Resident Psychologist in the hospital’s “special department” for the criminally insane. This ward, occupied by severely mentally ill patients, murderers and rapists, had a chilling reputation for many years; although many patients were shackled, violent attacks still occurred on almost a daily basis. Many doctors and nurses did not report for work or simply quit their jobs, causing severe staff shortages because of the extremely stressful and unpleasant conditions.

Shortly after his arrival, the staff became curious about this odd psychologist who kept reading the patients’ files without ever talking to the patients. Dr. Hew Len explained that he was treating the patients by treating himself with the consistent practice of Ho’oponopono. He believed that everything that was wrong in the outside world—including the ward’s patients—only proved that there was something wrong within himself. So he repeatedly used the four key sentences—I am sorry; please forgive me; thank you; I love you—to remedy what appeared to be wrong within himself. The staff, of course, was skeptical, but three years later, all of the ward’s patients who were still present had been cured.

Dr. Len believes that total responsibility for our lives means that everything in our lives—simply because it is in our lives—is our responsibility.

In other words: Anything that falls within the orbit of our experience is not unrelated to us. It is to some degree a reflection (or projection) of the state of your consciousness; the emotional and mental patterns that we create and pander to daily.

I know, I know, this on some level may sound like some kind of Voodoo mumbo-jumbo. I get that, but I think on a deeper, more reflective, level there is real credence to it. We know that at the subatomic level everything in the universe is essentially energy vibrating at speeds we cannot see: nothing is solid. Everything and everyone is a “consciousness form” that we perceive only in a very limited way.

Nothing is solid and all forms of consciousness energy are interwoven-ly related.

So, we hear a news story about a suicide bomber who takes out half a shopping mall of innocent civilians. Are we to blame because this news item falls within the orbit of our experience? No, not exactly, but perhaps the approach to healing this kind of negative energy in the world—because it happened on our watch—is to pray the four sentences: I am sorry; please forgive me; thank you; I love you. In this way we are not praying for the healing, forgiveness and conversion of this suicide bomber’s soul; we are praying for the healing of whatever needs healing within us. This in turn expands our awareness, deepens our compassion and ultimately contributes to the overall health and well-being of human consciousness.

The healthier human consciousness as a whole becomes, the more aligned we all become with our divine and angelic origins.

And that, my friends, is good news!

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Apprentice Editor: Alicia Wozniak / Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: John Ragai/flickr