Cigars, Hamburgers, and Killing the Divine

zero limits 13 : Cigars, Hamburgers, and Killing the 
Divine


Cleaning helps reduce the mortgage on your soul.
—Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len


One day Dr. Hew Len wanted to get something to 
eat. It was on a Monday evening.We were in my 
small town, where everybody is busy entertaining 
tourists on the weekend and often closes on
Monday to recover. There was only one place 
open that I could think of, a hamburger joint 
called Burger Barn. I didn’t want to even mention 
the place, as I figured Dr. Hew Len would not 
want unhealthy food. Plus with my lifestyle 
change and new eating habits, I didn’t dare even 
drive near a fast-food place. But I told Dr. Hew 
Len about it, anyway.

“A burger sounds great!” he said, obviously 
excited.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah! I love a good burger.”

We drove to the place and parked.We went in and 
sat.The menu didn’t have much on it of a healthy 
food choice nature.

“I’ll have a double meat, double cheese burger on 
a white bun,” Dr. Hew Len ordered.

I was stunned.That was heart attack food, in my 
opinion. Meat? Cheese? And a white bun? I 
couldn’t believe it. I also couldn’t believe that I 
ordered the same thing. I figured if it was good 
enough for the shaman it ought to be good 
enough for me.

“Aren’t you worried about the cheese and meat 
and bread?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” he said.“I have a chili dog every 
morning for breakfast. I love this stuff.”

“You do?”

“It’s not the food that is dangerous,” he explained 
to me. “It’s what you think about the food.”

I had heard that comment before, but I never 
believed it. I figured the solid trumped the 
thought. But maybe I was wrong.

He went on to explain,“Before I eat anything, in 
my mind I say to the food, ‘I love you! I love 
you! If I am bringing anything into this situation 
that would cause me to feel ill as I am eating you, 
it’s not you! It’s not even me! It’s something that 
triggers that I am willing to be responsible for!’ 
I then go on and enjoy the meal, because now 
it’s clean.”

Once again his insights startled me and awakened 
me. I had spent so much time reading about 
health issues and food warnings that I was so 
paranoid I couldn’t enjoy a simple hamburger. 
I decided to clean on it.When the food arrived, 
we ate it with gusto.

“This hamburger is the best I’ve ever had,” he 
announced. He was so impressed that he went 
and asked for the cook, and then thanked him. 
The cook wasn’t used to people acknowledging 
his deep-fried burgers. He didn’t know what to 
say.

Neither did I.

When I gave Dr. Hew Len a tour of my home, 
including my gym, I held my breath. I keep cigars 
in my gym. It seems ironic to work out in the 
morning and smoke in the evening, but there you 
go; that’s my life. But I worried that Dr. Hew 
Len might say something about my smoking.

I showed him my various types of equipment, 
pictures of famous bodybuilders on the walls, 
and the certificates I’ve received for the fitness 
contests I’ve been in. I tried to steer him away 
from the cigars sitting on a bench. But he 
noticed them.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Cigars,” I said with a sigh.

“You smoke working out?”

“No, no, but I do in the evening,” I explained. 
“It’s my meditation time. I sit on the deck, smoke, 
and feel gratitude for my life.”

He was silent for a moment. I was waiting for 
him to rattle off all the statistics showing why 
smoking is bad for you. Finally, he spoke.

“I think it’s beautiful.”

“You do?” I asked.

“I think you should smoke a cigar with your 
Panoz car.”

“What do you mean? Have a picture taken of me 
in front of Francine with a cigar in my hand?”

“Maybe, but I was thinking you can smoke while 
you polish her or dust her down.”

“I thought you were going to ridicule me for 
smoking,” I finally told him.“One person read 
my blog, saw I mentioned cigars, and wrote me 
that I was putting toxins into my body and 
hurting myself.”

“I guess that person never heard of the American 
Indian custom of passing the peace pipe,” he said,
“or how smoking in many tribes is a rite of 
passage and a way to bond and share and be a 
family.”

I was once again learning that the key for Dr. 
Hew Len is to love everything.When you do, that 
thing changes. Smoking is bad when you think it 
is bad; hamburgers are bad when you think they 
are bad. As with everything in the ancient 
Hawaiian traditions, it all begins with thought, 
and the great healer is love.

I was finally beginning to understand him, and 
how important it is to get to the zero limits state.

But not everyone felt the same as me.

One night I went on a tele-seminar and told every
one about my experiences with Dr. Hew Len, 
most of which I’ve told you here. They listened 
attentively.They asked questions.They seemed to 
understand what I was explaining. But to my 
surprise, at the end of the call they resumed their 
normal way of thinking.While all agreed that we 
need to take 100 percent responsibility for our 
lives, they were again talking about others.While 
all agreed that the cleaning method Dr. Hew Len 
taught me was powerful, they again went back to 
old habits.

One person said,“I don’t want to say ‘I’m sorry,’ 
because whatever I say after 'I am' is what I will 
become."

I wanted to say, “Well, we can clean on that,” 
knowing that her statement was just a belief. But 
I simply said,“Dr. Hew Len says do whatever 
works for you.”

I admit at first I found this frustrating. But then I 
realized I had to clean on this, too.After all, if I 
take 100 percent responsibility for what I 
experience, I am experiencing them.And if the 
only tool with which to clean is “I love you,” 
then I need to clean on what I see in others, as 
what I see in others is in me.

This may be the hardest part of ho’oponopono to 
understand. There’s nothing out there. It’s all in 
you.Whatever you experience, you experience 
inside yourself.


One person challenged me on this issue by 
asking,“What about the 50 million people who 
voted for the president I don’t like? Clearly I had 
nothing to do with their actions!”

“Where do you experience those 50 million 
people?” I asked.

“What do you mean where do I experience them?
” he countered.“I read about them, I see them on 
television, and it’s a fact they voted for him.”

“But where do you experience all of that 
information?”

“In my head, as news.”

“Inside yourself, right?” I asked.

“Well, I process the information inside myself, 
yes, but they are outside of me. I don’t have 
50 million people in me.”

“Actually, you do,” I said.“You experience them 
in you, so they don’t exist unless you look 
within yourself.”

“But I can look out and see them.”

“You see them inside yourself,” I stated.
“Everything you process is in you. If you don’t 
process it, it doesn’t exist.”

“Is this like if a tree falls in a forest and no one is 
there, does it make a sound?”

“Exactly.”

“This is crazy.”

“Exactly,” I said.“But it’s the way home.”

I then decided to test him even further. I asked,
“Can you tell me what your next thought will 
be?”

He was quiet for a moment. He wanted to blurt 
out an answer but realized he couldn’t.

“No one can predict their next thought,” I 
explained.“You can verbalize it once it occurs to 
you, but the thought itself arises from your 
unconscious.You have no control over it. The 
only choice you have is once the thought appears, 
to act on it or not.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You can do any number of things once the 
thought arises, but it’s being generated in your 
unconscious,” I explained. “In order to clean the 
unconscious so you get better thoughts, you 
have to do something else.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I’m writing a whole book about it,” I 
replied, referring to this book you’re reading.

“And what does this have to do with the 50 
million people out there?”


“They’re no more out there than your own 
thoughts are,” I said. “It’s all inside you. All you 
can do is clean in order to clear out the 
storehouse of programs in your mind. As you 
clean, the thoughts that arise get more positive 
and productive and even loving.”

“I still think all of this is batty,” he said.

“I’ll clean on that,” I replied.

Most likely he never got it. But if I’m to get to 
zero limits, I have to take total responsibility for 
him not getting it. His memory is my memory. 
His program is my program.The very fact that he 
voiced it to me means I share it with him. So, as I 
get clear of it, so will he. As I’m writing this, I’m 
saying “I love you” in my thoughts, behind the 
words, behind the typing, behind the computer, 
behind the scenes. My saying “I love you” as I 
work, write, read, play, talk, or think is my 
attempt to do nonstop cleaning, erasing, and 
clearing of anything and everything between me 
and zero.

Can you feel the love?

One morning Dr. Hew Len said he saw a logo for 
me containing a four-leaf clover.“The fourth 
pedal is gold, like a tongue,” he said. He spent 
several minutes describing what he was seeing in 
his mind, or in the air. I’m not sure where he was 
getting his impression. Neither was he.

“You need to find an artist to sketch the logo for 
you,” he said.

Later we went for a walk into town.We had lunch 
and then visited a few shops.The first shop 
contained stained glass art.We were both 
impressed.As we admired the shopkeeper’s 
handiwork, she said, “If you ever need a logo or 
a sketch, we can draw it for you.”

Dr. Hew Len grinned and leaned in my direction, 
as I grinned and leaned in his. Coming from zero 
meant synchronicity happened.

While I was writing this section of the book, I 
had to stop to be interviewed for another movie.
This one is like The Secret but focused on 
getting healthy with your thoughts. I began the 
interview by saying thoughts weren’t as 
important as no thoughts. I tried to explain the 
zero limits state of being, where you allow the 
Divine to heal  you, not you heal yourself. I 
wasn’t sure why I was saying all this. A part of 
me questioned my sanity. But I went with the 
flow.

After the camera was turned off, the woman 
observing it all almost blurted out that she heals 
people by entering the zero state. It turned out 
she is a physician who now heals animals by 
entering the no-thought zero limits state of being 
while in the presence of the ill animals. She 
showed me pictures of dogs with cataracts, and 
then the after photos where they are completely 
healed.

Once again, the Divine was proving that the 
Divine has all the power, not me. I can just clean 
so I can hear it and obey it.

Last night I spent an hour and a half on the phone 
with a best-selling author and self-help guru. 
I’ve been a fan of his for years. I love all his 
books. I’m a groupie for his message. Since he 
also likes my work, we finally connected and 
talked. But I was stunned by what we talked 
about.

This personal growth expert narrated a 
horrifying true story of his last couple of years. 
He had been victimized and abused by someone 
he loved.While I listened, I wondered how he 
could say he was a victim when his published 
message was about taking responsibility for your 
life.

It began to dawn on me that almost everyone—
even the self-help experts who try to teach us 
how to live (including me)—don’t have a clue 
what they are doing.They are still missing a 
piece of the puzzle.They get to a point where 
they think what worked in the past for them will 
work at all times in the future, and for everyone 
else. But life isn’t like that. We’re all different 
and life is always changing. Just when you think 
you have it figured out, along comes a new
wrench and your life looks out of hand once again.

Dr.Hew Len’s work teaches us to let go and trust 
the Divine while constantly cleaning all the 
thoughts and experiences that surface in the way 
of hearing the Divine. By this continuous work, 
we can clear the weeds of programs so we can 
better handle life with ease and grace.

As I listened to the self-help author narrate his 
journey of woes, I kept saying “I love you” 
quietly, inside my mind, to the Divine. By the 
time he was done talking, he seemed lighter and 
happier.

As Dr. Hew Len keeps reminding me and every
one else, “The Divine is not a concierge.You 
don’t ask for things; you just clean.”

I loved spending time with Dr. Hew Len. He 
never seemed to mind my questions. One day I 
asked him if there were any advanced methods 
for cleaning. After all, he has been doing 
ho’oponopono for more than 25 years. Surely 
he’s created or received some other methods 
besides “I love you” to clear memories.

“What do you do these days to clean?” I asked.

He chuckled and said,“Kill the Divine.”

I was stunned.

“Kill the Divine?” I repeated, wondering what he 
meant.

“I know that even inspiration is one step removed 
from the zero state,”he explained.“I’m told that I 
have to kill the Divine to be home.”

“But how do you kill the Divine?”

“Keep cleaning,” he said.

Always, always, always, it kept coming back to 
the one singular refrain that healed any and all 
wounds: “I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive 
me, thank you.”

When I was in Warsaw, Poland, at the end of 
2006, I decided to introduce the idea of zero 
limits and the zero state to my audience. I had 
been there speaking for two days about hypnotic 
marketing and my book, The Attractor Factor. 
I found the people to be open-minded, loving, 
and eager to learn. So I taught them what I’ve

shared with you here: that you are responsible for 
everything in your life and that the way to heal 
everything is with a simple “I love you.”

Though the audience needed a translator for my 
presentation, they seemed to absorb my every 
word. But one person asked me an interesting 
question:

“People here in Poland spend all day praying to 
God and going to church, yet we have had war, 
our city was bombed by Hitler, we lived under 
martial law for years, and we have suffered. Why 
didn’t those prayers work, and what’s different 
with this Hawaiian one?”

I paused to consider the right answer, wishing 
Dr. Hew Len was here to help me. In the moment 
I gave this reply:

“People don’t get what they say so much as what 
they feel. Most people who pray don’t believe 
they will be heard or they will be helped. Most 
people pray from a place of desperation, which 
means they will attract more of what they are 
feeling: more desperation.”

My questioner seemed to understand and accept 
my answer. He nodded. But when I returned to 
the United States, I wrote Dr. Hew Len and 
asked him what he would have replied. He wrote 
back the following e-mail:

Ao Akua:

Thank you for the opportunity to clean with 
whatever is going on in me that I experience as 
your question.

An American showed up in the class that I did in 
Valencia, Spain, two years ago. “My grandson 
was ill with cancer,” she said to me in a break. 
“I prayed for him, asking that he not die, but he 
died anyway. How come?”

“You prayed for the wrong person,” I said. 
“Better to have prayed for yourself, asking 
forgiveness for whatever was going on in you 
that you experienced as your grandson being ill.”

People don’t see themselves as the source of 
their experiences.

Rarely are prayers directed at what is going on 
in the petitioner by the petitioner.

Peace of I,

Ihaleakala

I loved his perfectly honest answer. Again and 
again, his theme is that nothing is outside of us.
When most people pray, they act like they have 
no power or responsibility. But in ho’oponopono, 
you are totally responsible.The “prayer” is to ask 
for forgiveness for whatever is in you that 
caused the outer circumstance.The prayer is a 
reconnecting to the Divine.The rest is trusting 
the Divine to heal you.As you heal, so does the 
outer. Everything, without exception, is inside you.

Larry Dossey said it well in his book, Healing 
Words:“We need to recall at these times that 
prayer, in its function as a bridge to the Absolute, 
has no failure rate. It works 100 percent of the 
time—unless we prevent this realization by 
remaining oblivious to it.”

One thing bothered me about my work with Dr. 
Hew Len.

As I kept growing and having insights, I worried 
that all my previous books were wrong and were 
going to mislead people. In The Attractor Factor, 
for example, I praised the power of intention. 
Now, years after writing that book, I knew 
intention is a fool’s game, an ego’s toy, and that 
the real source of power is inspiration. I also now

knew that agreeing to life is the great secret to 
happiness, not controlling life.Too many people, 
myself included, were visualizing and affirming 
in order to manipulate the world. I now knew that 
isn’t necessary. You’re better off going with the 
flow while constantly cleaning whatever comes up.

I began to feel like Neville Goddard must have 
felt. Neville is one of my favorite mystical writers. 
His early books were about creating your own 
reality by turning “feeling into fact.” He called it 
“the law” in such books as The Law and the 
Promise.“The law” referred to your ability to 
influence the world with feeling. “The promise” 
referred to surrendering to God’s will for you.

Neville began his career by teaching people how to 
get what they want with what he called “awakened 
imagination.” The short description of that phrase 
refers to Neville’s favorite quote,“Imagining 
creates reality.” His very first book was titled At
Your Command, which I later updated. In it he 
explained that the world is indeed “at your 
command.”Tell the Divine or God what you want, 
and it will be delivered. But by Neville’s later 
years, after 1959, he had awakened to a greater 
power: that of letting go and letting the Divine 
operate through you.

The thing is, he couldn’t recall his earlier books 
like a car manufacturer might recall a defective 
car. I have no idea if they upset him or not. I’m 
guessing not. He left them in the world because 
he felt “the law” was useful to help people get 
through the bumps in life. But I wanted to recall 
my books. I felt they were misleading people. I 
told Dr. Hew Len that I felt like I was doing a 
disservice to the world.

“Your books are like stepping-stones,” Dr. Hew 
Len explained. “People are at various steps along 
the path.Your books speak to them where they are.
As they use that book to grow, they become ready 
for the next book. You don’t need to recall any 
books at all.They are all perfect.”

As I thought of my books, of Neville, of Dr. Hew 
Len, and of all the readers past, present, and to 
come, all I could say was,“I’m sorry, please 
forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

Clean. Clean. Clean.