I yesterday read a press release by the German organisation “Target Human Rights” about a conference they had organized at the Al Azhar University in Cairo about the delicate topic of female genital mutilation (FGM). This is a crime against women practised in many African countries, regardless of religion and nationality.

For two days internationally renowned scholars and doctors discussed the topic and came to the result on November 23rd: “Female genital mutilation is a punishable crime and offends against the highest values of Islam”. Before that scholars had discussed the different theological dimensions and agreed that genital mutilation has no roots in the Islam. Then doctors had presented insights into the horrors of the mutilation practice.
At the end of the conference the Great Mufti of Al Azhar, the highest authority for legal decisions, gave a decision which equals a Fatwa, a binding legal expertise. It says that the lawmakers are asked to declare this cruel deplorable custom as a crime, which has nothing to do with Islam.
This decision is a theological sensation, for every day about 8000 girls especially in the countries of the Sahel influenced by the Islam. Hopefully this decision will help strengthening the fight for eradicating this monstrous habit.

Yesterday I came across an article in the NZZ (New Zurich Newspaper) about the missing co-operation between doctors and building biologist (in English they also use the word Baubiologie, as the word was coined in Germany). Often general practitioners don’t recognize morbid environmental influences and see the causes of unspecific functional pains as psycho-somatic diseases. The people don’t fimd themselves taken seriously and turn to paramedicals or building biologists. There is a whole spectrum of possible influences, from asbestos, radon to electromagnetic pollution, which building biologists take into account. Electromagnetic pollution, from mobiles, computer micro-waves and the like is much disputed and the pro-advocators of mobiles see the symptoms of diseases often just as existing psychiatric diseases.

In Switzerland an association of doctors for environmental protection has just been formed who is trying to sensitize medical practices in the whole of Switzerland for the questions of building biology. If you would like to know more about the spiritual dimension of buildings you might read the issue on “Body and House” (pdf) of Good Will in Action.

Some days ago I came across the website of Slowfood.com, a world-wide movement “counteracting fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”

Under the title “Terra Madre” they are organising a world meeting on food communities from 26-30 october in Turin, Italy. 1600 food communities from 5 continents and 150 countries, 5000 farmers, breeders, fishermen and traditional food producers, 1000 cooks and 200 universities will meet to share experiences and discuss the development of a new concept of agriculture and good, clean and fair food.

A very good initiative for finding new ways for better qualitative food. You might like to read the text on “Food and Drink“(PDF) from our series “Good Will in Action“.

Yesterday early morning when I just stood up around 4.40 am, my youngest son (14) stood radiating in the hall and told me he had just finished programming the four language version of the website Paracelsus – Health and Healing. He had been working on it the last weeks, and since we are leaving today for some days holidays, he wanted to get it finished – and it was, after this night’s sprint. It was the first bigger project for my son, who had acquired quite a lot of web-skills over the last two years. Last night we did some final “polishing”, and now it is ready for launch. (You might read also the blogpost on Paracelsus’ Birthplace.)

It has been a long story getting the site ready, and several friends had helped with it. The Paracelsus magazine for which the site has been made gives interesting insights about new an old knowledge about medicine and healing art in the east and west. Look here if you like to see a sample issue of the magazine.

Today I got an e-mail from a friend with the following text of a newsletter, which I put below, because it is quite interesting. Thought the authors website might sound a bit ballyhooing, it shows up principles in accordance with the wisdom teachings. There was also a reference to a website on huna and ho’oponopono mentioned in the text, a very ancient wisdom conserved on Hawaii. Enjoy the text:

“Truth is often stranger than fiction. Anyone who is aware of recent research conclusions in frontier science (such as in entanglement physics, quantum mechanics, astronomy, astro-biology, etc) would readily agree. Actually, recent frontier science can be used to, at least, partially explain the „strange“ technique of the „World’s Most Unusual Therapist.”

PS If the article seems to you to be complete fantasy without even a 5% probability of possibility, try these phrases (copy and paste each line, separately for each search, as is written below) into your Internet browser’s search engine (such as WebCrawler, Clusty, or even Google) on the World Wide Web; very interesting “stuff!“ Then reread the article.

• “entanglement physics“
• „action at a distance“ „physics“
• “Time reversal symmetry“
• „neuro synchrony“
• “water molecules” “Emoto“
• „Evoked potential“
• “Biology of Belief“
• “role of the observer in scientific experimentation” “physics“

All truth goes through three stages.
First it is ridiculed.
Then it is violently opposed.
Finally, it is accepted as self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The World’s Most Unusual Therapist

by Dr. 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. 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–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, your improve your world. Let me give you a quick example of how this works: one day, someone sent me an email that upset me. In the past I would have handled it by working on my emotional hot buttons or by trying to reason with the person who sent the nasty message. This time, I decided to try Dr. Len’s method. I kept silently saying, “I’m sorry” and “I love you,” I didn’t say it to anyone in particular. I was simply evoking the spirit of love to heal within me what was creating the outer circumstance.

Within an hour I got an e-mail from the same person. He apologized for his previous message. Keep in mind that I didn’t take any outward action to get that apology. I didn’t even write him back. Yet, by saying “I love you,” I somehow healed within me what was creating him.

I later attended a ho ‘oponopono workshop run by Dr. Len. He’s now 70 years old, considered a grandfatherly shaman, and is somewhat reclusive. He praised my book, The Attractor Factor. He told me that as I improve myself, my book’s vibration will raise, and everyone will feel it when they read it. In short, as I improve, my readers will improve.

“What about the books that are already sold and out there?” I asked.

“They aren’t out there,” he explained, once again blowing my mind with his mystic wisdom. “They are still in you.”

In short, there is no out there.

It would take a whole book to explain this advanced technique with the depth it deserves. Suffice it to say that whenever you want to improve anything in your life, there’s only one place to look: inside you.

“When you look, do it with love.”

This article is from the forthcoming book “Zero Limits” by Dr. Joe Vitale and Dr. Len. Copyright © 2005 by Joe Vitale. All rights reserved. You may forward this in its entirety to anyone you wish.

Yesterday I was at a staff forum of my office (I’m working here and I like it). There were several presentations called “market places”, and I was among others at a presentation of two doctors of chiropractic, who spoke about the effects of workplace effects on your body and the importance of micropauses (this is not just what they distributed and showed, but gives you an idea).
I found it an important topic for me – at my office I’m working for hours at the desktop, and in my freetime as well… The idea of interrupting the work from time to time for a micropause, to do some special movements to relax the body and counteract tensions convinced me. This was not new for me, but in practice I’m doing very little pauses. Now I fixed the paper at my workplace at the wall just in front of my eyes – and will do it at home as well – hoping that this will help me to interrupt the work for a micropause here and then.

From time to time in my life I had come into contact with persons with psychic difficulties. For over 10 years I had been working with refugees and migrants, partly as head of a psycho-social counseling centre, where I saw the effects of flight, torture or disturbed social and family relations. Also on my spiritual path there had been encounters with persons whose inner balance was disturbed for a time, and over 20 years ago a friend of mine had committed suicide out of a state of confusion, mixed with spiritual concepts. And there was a recent encounter with someone who, through an imbalance in life was irritating a group. It is not easy handling such situations, where an entire system is touched, and the gradations from normalcy to borderline and medical situations are often not obvious.
Two weeks ago I had a talk about such problems with my spiritual teacher, Dr. Kumar, whom I had observed how he dealt with it in a very attentive way. He explained that often medical people also don’t know how to handle such cases, where often fear and irritation in a person is causing agitation, and where psycho-pharmaca seem to be the only way to “slow down”.
Furthering inner and outer silence for calming down the emotional waves is helpful, also homeopathy can be of use, however it has to be adapted to the individual situation. Especially the use of silver, related spiritually with the emotional world, can have a stabilising effect. Dr. Kumar also recommended dietary aspects such as using milk and yogurt, since milk, in an untreated form, has subtle smoothing effects not yet medically recognised. A rhythmical living as well as a loving, understanding attention from the people in the surrounding might be of help, stigmatising is not.

In yesterday’s issue of the Neue Züricher Zeitung (New Zurich Newspaper) there was an article about a management forum on “Leadership and Health”, which targeted at sensitising� executives to the consequences of the big social problem of work load and stress. The tenor was that it is not enough to do some jogging or relaxation exercises or to distribute fruits to the employees to promote health. This is just fighting the symptoms. A holistic approach includes developing an awareness of the unsatisfied needs of what is really good for the individual and the social system.
Many are suffering from not having a right to say, of missing possibilities of development and of fear of losing one’s job – much more than of the work load. Creating an awareness in the management is seen as a first step for health prevention. The 13th century theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas already said: “Health is less a state than an attitude and thrives with the zest for life.” You might also see in this context the booklet of Dr. Kumar on “Spirituality in Business and Management“.
For furthering the joie de vivre, the vitality, and at the same time staying balanced you have to be connected with the source of life force. Therefore a holistic approach to solving these problems of work life and helve absolutely needs to include the spiritual dimension.

I just� came across� an article in The Cancer Blog of Chemotherapy.com about “Ancient art of yoga has true healing power”. It says that results from a pilot study� show that women going through treatment for breast cancer feel better, sleep better, and have less fatigue when they practice yoga. A very interesting finding.

Yesterday afternoon I went with a Bulgarian, Indian and Spanish friend to the birth house of Paracelsus, where our group has a little room for commemorating the life and work of the great initiate and� alchemist� Paracelsus. It is a beautiful place surrounded by hills and forest, near the old Devil’s Bridge. Paracelsus had had a deep impact on medicine and opened the way for a holistic medicine. Today many people still are inspired by his ideas.
Friends of us have started 3 years ago the Paracelsus Health and Healing magazine, where my wife is also helping with proof-reading part of the English translations.
The room in the Paracelsus centre is also used for full moon meditations, an ideal place to link-up with� with cosmic rhythms. We stayed there for a� while, had a short meditation and enjoyed the serene atmosphere.