In our lives, even when we know that something “would be better done” or “will have to be done one day,” there are things we simply cannot bring ourselves to begin. Don’t we all have things like that?
It has been on our mind all along, and yet somehow we cannot move.
It stays in a corner of our mind the whole time, and yet the body keeps trying to avoid it.
Every time we see it, we think, “I have to do this,” and still we do not.
We see it again, and again we think, “I still have not done it.”
Haven’t you had an experience like that?
Of course, I have had such an experience myself.
On our land on the Big Island, there was one corner of the house that I had long wanted to work on.
I had actually wanted to fix it much earlier, and I had even made plans, but there was a flood, other things kept me busy, I could not find anyone to help, and so it hardly moved forward at all.
Every time I looked at it, I thought, “I want to do something about this corner.”
But the reason I could not move was not that I had no wish to do it.
Nor was it that I did not know what I wanted to do. It simply had not moved yet.
At times like this, we often blame ourselves.
Why can’t I do it? Why can’t I carry out what I decided? We feel guilty about not being able to put into action what we have decided in our own minds.
But when we practice Ho’oponopono, we sometimes experience something quite mysterious.
Something that would not move for a long time begins to move, at some point, all of a sudden. It began to move without any strong will on my part to finally get myself going.
It was the same this time. One day, we began to work on that place. It simply began.
It was not that we had decided from the start, “Let’s finish it all today.”
It was as if, all at once, something had begun to flow.
When one thing that had stood still there for a long time moved, the thing next to it began to move as well. And then the next one began to move too. We were the ones actually carrying things, and yet I felt as though I were simply lending my hands to a movement that had started on its own.
I sometimes feel that this is like a scorched pot. Something has been stuck to it all along, and no matter how much we scrub, it will not come off. We soak it in water, add detergent, and leave it for a while, and during that time nothing seems to change.
But at a certain moment, it suddenly begins to come away. Once one spot comes off, from there it peels away one piece after another.
I think there are times like that in life as well.
Times when nothing seems to be moving.
Times when the same problem stays there all along.
At such times, we think, “I am not managing to do anything.”
But is nothing really happening? In Ho’oponopono, we keep cleaning with whatever appears in front of us. If we look at that room and feel we dislike it, we clean with the self that feels that dislike. If we grow anxious, thinking, “I have to tidy it up soon,” we clean with that anxiety. If we blame ourselves, thinking, “Why can’t I do it?”, we clean with that thought as well. And there, right in front of us, is our daily life. Cooking, laundry, work, raising children. With those things that appear in front of us, too, we simply keep cleaning.
We do not clean “in order to tidy up this room.”
We cannot decide where the cleaning goes.
That is because we do not know what is connected to what.
All we know is that, through the experience that has appeared in front of me now, “I want to tidy up this place,” I am being given an opportunity to clean.
And as we go on cleaning, something that had not moved for so long may suddenly begin to move.
That is what makes it so fascinating. We do not know what is blocking the flow, but as we simply keep our hands moving, it is as if we had moved aside the rock that was blocking the flow. That is how suddenly, before we know it, things can begin to move.
Something that would hardly move forward no matter how strong a will we brought to it. Something that never quite came together even after interviewing many people. And yet one day the matter suddenly began to move, though all we had done was ask the same thing of the same person.
It began to move so easily that we wondered, “What just happened?”
Sometimes the way opens from a direction different from the one we had in mind.
Each time we experience that, we feel that we are not the sole designers of our lives.
Of course, this does not mean that we need not act.
It is only that “I cannot move yet” and “nothing is happening” are not necessarily the same thing.
If we judge our progress with our own mind alone, we will overlook what matters.
As we keep cleaning, something that has been there for a long time may quietly begin to move, as though it were finding its place of its own accord.
And I love that moment when I realize, “Ah, so now is the time.”
Perhaps something had been moving all along, including the time we thought nothing was moving.
