How to take your power back by consciously disengaging from thoughts and judgements about appearances.
by Heather Smith and Yanni Charalambous
In part 1 of this article series, we addressed the important distinction that we are spiritual, not physical, beings, and shared an exercise that enabled us to become more consciously aware of our true identity. In this month’s installment, we’re explore how Joel Goldsmith’s mystical teachings and the wisdom of Ho’oponopono can help us navigate the world we experience through our senses.
Heather: Barbara Muhl, one of Joel Goldsmith’s early Infinite Way teachers, found that her students were having difficulty “seeing through” the appearances presented by the senses to the spiritual truth that was actually there. This led her to write a book, The Royal Road to Reality, in which she explained that thoughts are a collective phenomenon—they’re not our own. We don’t create thoughts, and they don’t belong to us. We simply witness them appearing and become hypnotized into believing them. In Truth, we are Spirit, changeless and eternal. We’re not a physical body, and we’re not the sum total of a human life experience.
Yanni: Thoughts, feelings and emotions have nothing to do with what You are…They are arisings out of the collective field of consciousness. You are the witness of them, but you are not them. Our practice is to let the harmony of Mind become apparent by perceiving clearly and resting in the very Presence that we are.
Heather: Barbara Muhl explained that the carnal mind (or “collective consciousness”) is so ingrained, we take onboard beliefs unconsciously until we learn to discipline ourselves to become fully present as the Observer—as Yanni just said, the Witness of all that’s arising in our field of Awareness.
Thoughts are magnetic and attract circumstances of a similar vibration. For this reason, we often mirror and reinforce each other’s beliefs (or “scripts”, as Muhl called them). Muhl explained that Joel was teaching how to take our power back by consciously disengaging from thoughts and judgements about appearances. This, in turn, enables us to remain as the Observer, thus revealing the purity and perfection that’s always there as the underlying substance.
Yanni: Dr. Hew Len shared a similar approach in his transformative work based on Ho’oponopono, an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation, self-healing and forgiveness. It involves taking responsibility for one’s thoughts and actions and practicing forgiveness, repentance and gratitude to restore harmony and balance.
Dr. Len was a trained psychologist who believed that attempting to work one on one with people when endeavoring to resolve their problems was never effective. He first discovered Ho’oponopono when his mother took him to a seminar by Mornah Simeona, an early pioneer of these Hawaiian teachings. His passion for this method eventually guided him to the Hawaii state hospital, where he was commissioned to work on the patients in a mental health, criminally ill, insane ward. He never actually saw any of his clients in person. Instead, using the notes given, he worked in private on his own reactions, mentally asking for their repentance, forgiveness and love. He also spoke to their subconscious minds while they were asleep. The purpose of this was to allow the healing process to take place without any conscious rejection that might have occurred if he’d seen them face to face. Whatever emotion came up within him regarding these cases, he embraced fully and viewed these shared memories of people and situations as an opportunity to let go. He understood that doing so released the error from the person in whichever area of life they’d been experiencing issues.
Within three years of this inner work, patients—who’d previously been shackled and violent in the ward and to the staff—were making cookies and playing tennis. His work was so successful that eventually the ward was closed and all the patients released.
Heather: Dr. Len understood that our outer experience is a reflection of our inner thought patterns. In essence, just as Muhl described, we have shared collective memories through our perceptions and senses that have been created, accepted and accumulated. Our thoughts are memories that have been replaying in the subconscious over eons of time, from this life and past lives.
Yanni: We have 11 million memories replaying per second and are conscious of only 50,000 thoughts a day, so we don’t really have any idea what will arise into consciousness. What we do have is the choice to take 100 percent responsibility to mitigate these collective memories through repentance, forgiveness, love and gratitude, thereby transmuting and releasing blocks that bind and attach us to the past.
Here is one translation of the Ho’oponopono prayer that can be used: “I am sorry for whatever we have done. Please forgive me for the memories that we have manifested. Thank you for giving me one more chance to make amends. I love you”.
Thus, we release and cut the akashic cords.
When we forgive, we release the burden within the inner child of our subconscious mind to connect with the mother aspect, or “Divine Mind”, within. This takes us back to “Zero State”, transmuting the situation and allowing the right inspiration to appear. In this way, we are forgiving everything: the land, buildings, places, animal kingdom, mineral, vegetable kingdoms, etc., of stuck vibrations.
Heather: Let’s address the question: “Can I reach a place of forgiveness by rising above thoughts I might be having about someone?”
Yanni: Yes, absolutely, by taking 100 percent responsibility for the thoughts within us.
Heather: Joel referred to this as the principle of “Impersonalization”—the understanding that all thoughts are appearances and impersonal. They’re not “our” thoughts. We didn’t create any of them. Our perception of another is based on shared memories (which Joel refers to as the “carnal mind”).
When we’re expressing love and forgiveness for any thought that arises, that’s the first step in becoming conscious conduits for Divine Mind, the very mind that constitutes our Being. The next step is to surrender and rest in the conscious awareness of that. This is what Joel means by “letting go”, and thus it’s the Light of our Consciousness that appears to transmute the problem. By seeing through the lens of Mind, we perceive the non-reality of any sensory dissonance, and it dissolves.
Joel often cited the example of Hitler. Despite his own inner work, he felt unable to forgive Hitler. But he came to the realization that he humanly wasn’t required to do the forgiving. His role was to be a conscious avenue for Divine Forgiveness to flow through. In Absolute Truth, there are no personalities—there’s only One: Spirit, and therefore nothing and no-one to forgive, just the presence of Love. The key is to live in conscious awareness of that inner radiance.
Yanni: Let’s mention here our Oneness. When a problem is released from us, it’s released from all of us because we’re all one. We’re no longer in a place of reacting because we know we’re only ever experiencing our own Omnipresence. There is no “other.” Ho,oponopono means to correct an error in me, the subconscious mind, so it all begins with me. Peace, healing and abundance do not come from the outside, they come from within—within my own Consciousness. Therefore, we focus on our Soul and rest consciously in that Presence, the Essence of what we are, which is the peace we’ve been seeking all along.
Suggested reading:
The Infinite Way, by Joel Goldsmith
The Royal Road to Reality by Barbara Muhl
Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len
Join the Online Class
This article series is based on a special online course designed to bring healing and positive change into your life. It explores the art of living from “Zero State” Mind, letting go of thoughts that serve no purpose, gaining inspiration, taking right action and finding lasting inner peace.
Drawing on the spiritual wisdom of Joel Goldsmith’s Infinite Way teachings together with the love and forgiveness principles of “Ho’oponopono”, authors Heather Smith and Yanni Charalambous presented the first class in April and the second in May. You can join the third class online: June 28, 2025. Audio recordings for each class are available either as a compilation of the whole course or as individual recordings. One-on-one private consultations also are available throughout the course and beyond. To register and for more information, contact Heather via email at: mysticalmeditation@yahoo.com.
Dr. Heather Smith is the Founder of “Mystical Meditation,” an online platform used to share Joel Goldsmith’s work. She has been studying and practicing The Infinite Way teachings for over 30 years, and hosts spiritual talks, meditation groups and events online and in person, in London and America. Contact her via email at: mysticalmeditation@yahoo.com. Find out more at: https://www.linktr.ee/mysticalmeditation.
