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 medita-
tion 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 fi-
nally 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.Cigars, Hamburgers, and Killing the Divine 167ccc_zero_163-176_cigs.qxd 5/4/07 1:00 PM Page 167