The drive to Austin felt like a vacation after months on the road with
the show. Leaving Houston behind was more than a 24-hour break
from the all-encompassing universe of a production on tour. It was the
juncture of a night of reckoning that would reorder my reality even
before the dinner presentation that Dr. Joe Vitale was hosting began.
It had been months since I’d last listened to one of Dr. Ihaleakala
Hew Len’s Ho’oponopono presentations—a year and a half to be exact.
Even though I’d never met Joe Vitale before, I felt grateful for the fact he
had brought Ihaleakala to a location within driving distance and I could
be part of the event in Austin.
As changing scenery and little Texas towns skimmed by the car
window en route to Austin, thoughts of other Ho’oponopono
presentations surfaced and things I’d forgotten came back to mind. I
flashed back to the first of many times I’d heard Ihaleakala speak and
had gotten chills down my spine when he read the Opening Prayer in
Hawaiian. I remembered how I’d landed a book contract two weeks after
taking my first Ho’oponopono training, virtually by just showing up at
a publishers convention, talking and leaving my card.Two days later a
publisher called and asked me to submit ideas for a book they were
doing. I had the contract by the end of the month.
As the distance to Austin grew shorter, I also reflected on a time
just six months earlier when a veterinarian in Montreal conveyed the
sad news that my dear cat Maya had intestinal lymphoma. It was
questionable whether she would live long enough for me to take her from
the clinic.When Maya was released, the vet thought that with luck, I’d
have a few weeks to “tell her good-bye.” I contacted Ihaleakala for help
with a special cleaning, something to clean whatever this precious little
creature had taken on of mine. It is now a year and three months since
Maya’s diagnosis. Little could I have imagined at the moment I was
prepared for her imminent departure that months and miles later she
would still be with me on tour.
Seeing Ihaleakala again in Austin was like breaking through the
surface after being underwater—one of those “back in the world” kind of102 Zero Limitsccc_zero_077-112_evid.qxd 5/4/07 2:21 PM Page 102