Ho’oponopono, Perfectionism & the Wrath of God

I learned about Ho’oponopono sometime last year. I was recently handed a book by Dr. Joe Vitale and Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, PhD, called Zero Limits.

Ho’oponopono is a Hawaiian ’system.’ It’s a teaching and it’s a healing process. Wikipedia defines it as “mental cleansing.”

Dr. Hew Len defines it in Zero Limits like this:

The Updated Ho’oponopono, is a process of repentance, forgiveness, and transmutations, is a petition to Love to void and replace toxic energies with its self. Love accomplishes this by flowing through the mind, beginning with the spiritual mind, the super conscious. It then continues its flow through the intellectual mind, the conscious mind, freeing it of thinking energies. Finally, it moves into the emotional mind, the subconscious, voiding thoughts of toxic emotions and filling them with itself. p. 67

I’ve been using it this week more than I ever imagined I might need to. Anytime I feel uncomfortable, jealous, judgmental, angry, or bitter, I do the practice. I say the following to the part of me that is creating the experience: I love you. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Thank you. I do this slowly. And I breathe while I’m doing it.

And tonight I was sitting at the dinner table with my partner James and I noticed myself feeling fear about some little detail not being perfect on the table. I realized that my fear of things not being perfect is really a fear of being punished. And while this might stem from corporal punishment in my home growing up and in my school (I grew up in rural Tennessee), now that fear is projected on god.

My perfectionism is about my fear of the wrath of god.

To the part of me that creates my god as a judgmental, wrathful big white guy in the sky, I love you. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Thank you. Thank you for showing me that I create my god. God is in me. After 11 years of releasing my Southern Baptist faith, I’m still a recovering Christian.