Ho’oponopono And The Law Of Cause And Effect

The Law of Cause and Effect is one of twelve laws universal laws. It’s a scientific law which states that all actions have corresponding reactions, or consequences. Consequences may be perceived as either negative or positive, scientifically they are neutral. Hit a billiard ball from this angle and it goes in this direction. Hit it from that angle and it will go off in that direction. In this sense, it’s predictable and physicists have used it to mathematically calculate the beginning of the universe as coming from a ‘big bang’.

If you’re familiar with Newton’s Third Law of Motion, you’ll understand this law. Objects move according to Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion. This particular rule is commonly referred to as the “action-reaction” law, and it appears quite simple to most of us. The opposite is true. Although this concept appears simple, it can be confusing and difficult to apply in the real world.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion tells us about the nature of the force, what happens when a body exerts the force on the other body, what are the directions of the forces during the interaction of two bodies as well as what will be the magnitude of the forces in relation to each other.

Imagine pushing the wall of your room. No matter how hard you push, the wall of the room remains in place. You may even wonder whether this constitutes a violation of Newton’s Third Law of Motion. No, you have exerted action on the wall, and the wall is also exerting reaction back on you. Yet, the action and the reaction are not cancelling each other out. A wall’s force is balanced by the force being exerted on it from the ground (after all, the wall is tied to the ground).

So much for science. In the world of ho’oponopono (and other spiritual disciplines), it gets even more complicated. Every action (even inspirations and thoughts), is thought to be connected to others with which it’s had contact via what are known as AKA cords. These also has its equivalent in science where it is known as Bell’s Theorem. They have been confirmed in experiments by the Aspect Experiment.

There is no doubt that Bell’s theorem plays a significant role in the theory of quantum mechanics from a philosophical and mathematical standpoint. Quantum theory predicted correlations between entangled electrons’ spins, but local hidden variables theory could not explain them. Although philosophical debates rage over this topic, a common conclusion of the theorem is that quantum theory is inherently nonlocal.

Quantum-mechanical reality is often demonstrated through the Aspect experiment, which shows that nothing in the universe, whether it is photons, electrons, neutrons, atoms, or the universe itself, has a defined form until it is measured. An even more disturbing prediction of quantum mechanics is the instantaneous impact of a measurement on another many light years away.

If you think about this, it follows that although two particles may have been bonded by a ‘past’ event, either may be influenced by another (such as a collision with a different particle). This makes for a dynamic, unpredictable universe.

Similarly, although the AKA cords we imagine in ho’oponopono link one event to another, they are in turn connected to others. We will end up with something which resembles a spider’s web, in which the pressure of one event will get dispersed (to a greater or lesser degree) across the entire structure.

Although you may not feel these effects immediately, lying, cheating, or stealing will eventually have an effect on you. Depending upon what was done, this ‘return’ can occur in another lifetime (in which you are conscious). Roger Woolger sometimes talked of ‘saṃsāras’ in which events recalled of a past life bear a resemblance to those occurring in this one. The problem with the so called past-life therapy which Woolger promoted, however, is that it may easily be tainted by subjects remembering movie scripts, or egocentrically imagining themselves to have been grander in past-lives than in this one.

Ho’oponopono

Ho’oponopono seeks to get beyond the problems of being enmeshed in a cause-and-effect reality by removing ourselves from it by deleting the data (programming) which connects us via our various AKA cords.

Once we’re released from such Karmic Data, others who connected to us are also released. This is only a problem when we think that by performing a ho’oponopono we are healing someone, or something. We are not.

Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len (a popular teacher of ho’oponopono in its current form) used to say: ‘There is no out there. It all happens inside of you. When something comes up, your job is to clean on it. You have no way of knowing what is really going on. Just take 100% responsibility and you’ll be fine.’

When he made this statement, he knew that each of us perceives ourselves to be within a bubble of perception onto which a seeming ‘objective’ world seems to be constantly projected. He knew that when you burn your hand it hurts, and that if you try to fly by jumping from a church’s tower, or a skyscraper you’re likely to die.

He also recognised that each of us is folded within each other, as well as our ancestors, and any past lives that influence us. It’s these that occur within us (much as how the tones of music, the grace of dancing and the colours of a rainbow are all contained within us as potentials and come to life when connected in a relationship with something that stimulates them).

Yet, all of that is too complicated to use as a teaching tool, so he taught simple 100% self-responsibility, various cleaning tools, and his well-known ho’oponopono prayer.

The Law of Cause and Effect is just one of twelve other karmic laws. They must be the subject of another post 😸