At the beginning of a new year we have the opportunity to decide whether we want to carry on as usual or create something new. Of course, you can do that any day of the year but New Year’s naturally stimulates such thoughts in people.
Gyms love the New Year. You may have noticed that the celebration in Times Square this year was sponsored by Planet Fitness. That was a smart move on their part, as vast numbers of American people were already thinking I should make a goal to lose weight, which means I must also work-out. January is the best month for Gyms in terms of new sign-ups for this very reason. People take on a membership but have typically stopped going by February or March. Nevertheless, conveniently, the gym now has your automatic monthly payment.
Why resolutions don’t usually work
It’s a well-known fact that the vast majority of people don’t keep their New Year’s resolutions, so why do we even bother making them? I think it’s because we make our resolutions based on conscience rather than desire. I know I should lose weight or work out but in reality, I still don’t want to, so my resolution doesn’t go anywhere. A resolution based on “should” can’t be successful because it goes against our original nature. According to the Principle of God’s Creation we are born from God’s original desire to experience joy, through love. Our own nature mirrors our Heavenly Parent’s nature and we too want to experience joy. Any New Year’s resolution that is going to work has to be something we want for ourselves that will ultimately create joy rather than something we are doing because we “should.”
I can imagine there are a lot of people out there that will say, “In life there are many “shoulds” and we can’t just go around doing what we want to do all the time. That would result in a selfish universe, which wouldn’t benefit anyone in the end. My answer to that would be to say, “We have to find our original desire. Lots of people feel they “should” go to work because they need to make money to live. Honestly speaking, I sometimes don’t like my work. Nevertheless I want to go to work because through my work I am able to support my family and we can enjoy life together. In addition, I can also benefit society.” When I think like in that way, work becomes something I want rather than something I should do.
How to make a resolution I can keep
I started to wonder what I could say “yes” to for 2016. What do really I want? What resolution can I keep because it comes from my original nature and desire?
While I do plan to go to the gym and become more fit, my deepest goal and ambition is to create happiness and well-being in my family and community. The question is, how to I go about that, especially when I have no control over many factors in my life?
I found something of an answer from an example that Ron Pappalardo gave in his recent seminar in New Hampshire. I decided to research further and thought this is something to consider and experiment with. I want my New Year’s resolution to be a game changer, which means I have to change the game I play.
An ancient tradition of total responsibility
When I think of being responsible to achieve a goal to improve my life, I have been encouraged to think of responsibility as being concerned with the things over which I have control, which at the end of the day is pretty much limited to my life!
Dr. Joe Vitale stumbled upon a more refined and advanced understanding of responsibility that embraces the possibility that your reality can indeed touch others in profound ways. Dr. Vitale’s curiosity was peaked when he heard about a doctor in Hawaii who had cured a ward of criminally insane people through a Hawaiian practice called Ho’oponopono. (Ho oh pono pono.)
At first Dr. Vitale was highly skeptical and thought it was probably an urban legend and dismissed it. He couldn’t believe that a psychologist could help anyone without ever meeting them in person and talking to them. It didn’t seem possible. Nevertheless, it intrigued him and when the work of this psychologist, Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, came across his desk again, a year later, he felt pushed to investigate.
What he found surprised him. When he interviewed Dr. Len, he found that he had worked at Hawaii State Hospital for four years. The hospital had experienced a dismal turnover rate with staff and the wards that housed the inmates were incredibly dangerous places.
Dr. Len never saw his 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. I admit this sounds fantastical. But it happened. As patients improved, the staff turnover lessened. Today, that ward is closed as patients improved to the extent they could transition to better environments.
Philosophy in action
Dr. Len explained his philosophy this way:
“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.”
Dr. Vitale must have sensed my questions because he explained in his article “The World’s Most Unusual Therapist:”
“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 (the movement)–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.”
Dr. Len when onto to say that the way he did this was praying over the patient files one by one “I’m sorry, I love you.” He was simply evoking the spirit of love to heal within himself all that was creating the outer circumstances reflected in the world.
While it’s easy to read some article or book and then dismiss it as a nice idea, it’s much harder when the example is closer to home. A few weeks after Ron Pappalardo’s seminar (http://www.reconciledbythelight.com/) one of the participants from New Hampshire came to me and shared she had tried this approach in her family. She had projected “I’m sorry. I love you” over and over again directed toward her husband and children. As if by magic or a power beyond herself, she felt the walls between them coming down and a new connection being made. It wasn’t about finding fault or apportioning blame but a commitment to unconditional love.
I realized this unusual approach was in the pattern of Jesus’ life. You have probably heard of the Fibonacci sequence. This sequence appears throughout nature, such as in the branching of trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruitlets of a pineapple, or the uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone. Just as we see this recurring pattern in the physical world, so we see a spiritual pattern at play in God’s efforts to restore humankind. Jesus understood this principle well.
What does it mean to be the Messiah?
We all have an opinion about what it means to be the Messiah no matter whether we are Christians, believers of another faith, agnostics or atheists. What defines the Messiah? Is it someone who performs miracles, gives salvation to some and not others, or judges the “quick and the dead?” I struggled with this question as a seven year old child. It’s always amazes me what children think of. We assume they are just playing with their toys but in their minds, which have far fewer preconceived notions than ours, big thoughts are stirring.
This was the case for me. Our family lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. It was a multi-ethnic community and even at seven years of age I was aware of my Hindu and Moslem neighbors who daily searched thought our trash for vegetable peelings to make curry with. I became concerned with the inequity of life.
At school the Catholic nuns taught us that our neighbors were going to hell and described it in full Technicolor detail. It was scary! One day, in religion class, I plucked up the courage to raise my hand and asked, “What if a person was a really good Hindu, obeyed all the laws they were taught and led a good life, wouldn’t Jesus allow him into Heaven?” What they were teaching didn’t make sense in my seven year old mind. The nun curtly responded, “No!” I sat back in my chair stunned. I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, my heart is bigger than God’s. I would let them in!” From that moment on I had all kinds of questions about what it meant to be the Messiah.
The Messiah may perform miracles and have all kinds of qualities but ultimately the Messiah is the person who says “I will take full responsibility to heal this world.” The Messiah has to be someone who reflects God’s unconditional heart of love for all his children. The Messiah is someone who takes not just the list of names of people in a psychiatric ward but who prays over all humankind saying, “I’m sorry. I love you,” over and over again. The Messiah is a true parent who takes responsibility in front of God and therefore opens the path of restoration for every single human being who has ever lived.
We see this heart when we listen to the words of Jesus in Mathew 23:37:
“Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me.”
One thing I love about Rev. Moon is that he encouraged all of us to get up off the couch and become little Messiahs in our families and communities. Would Jesus be offended if there were thousands of community messiahs taking responsibility to heal people and build a world of true love?
What difference would it make if God could count on us?
Brunno Mars’ song “You Can Count on Me” reminds us that we find out what we’re made of when we are called to help our friends in need. Rev. Moon also spoke about 
what it means to be a friend to God. What difference would it make if God could count on us?
“When you offer sincere and true devotion, you must not offer it merely for your own work. Do you realize this? If you come to offer devotion merely for your own work, it turns out to be just that; then, although God tries to make the sunlight of the world shine over all the earth, you are asking Him not to shine it evenly for everyone, but to have it shine only on yourself.
Hence, you must have the presence of mind that you are praying, while representing all of humanity, even representing God. When you pray representing God, when you offer devotion representing God, you must try to imagine how much devotion God himself has offered and continues to offer throughout providential history.
Therefore, you must be God’s co-worker and comforter, one who prays that every fundamental root that is connected with the fall of humankind is rooted out from the heart of God. When you stand in such a difficult position, you’ll come to realize how precious your partner of faith, your spouse is. Such preciousness will be realized because God’s heart of love will be reflected in your spouse. Because God’s heart of love is reflected back, you will long for people, you will long for villages, and you will long for nations.
Therefore, you must always remember that God cannot be liberated from His worries or from His heart of pain until His hope is fulfilled…At the same time, you must think about what you can do should you be a co-worker with God.”
Imagine if God count on me like one, two, three and I could say to God, I can count on you like four, three, two. How beautiful would such a relationship with God be? Jesus said ‘yes’ to God. Rev. Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon said ‘yes’ to God and we all have the same invitation. Do you want to say “yes’ to God in this new year?
Love is the weapon of the future
Yesterday, a friend asked me “When you think of Christianity, who stands out to you as an amazing example of their faith?” I immediately thought of Mother Teresa. She is well known to me, not because of all the lectures she gave about Jesus or the Bible but because of how she lived. If you wanted to be taught by her you had to go and serve together with her; healing the sick, feeding the poor.
I wondered “What can I do this year? I decided that I would explore the Hawaiian tradition of ho’oponopono and discover God’s heart in this motto:
“Hurt people, hurt people. That’s how pain patterns get passed on, generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, Contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future.” – Unknown
What do you want to say “yes” to?
Each of us is on a journey and there is something within yourself for you to claim this year. If you choose to make a New Year’s resolution contemplate what your heart wants for you. Stay away from the “shoulds” and think about what your original nature desires for you. In this way, you will create a New Year’s resolution you can keep all the way through December.
If you would like, please email me your resolutions and I will be happy to pray for your personal success in 2016.
Happy New Year!
