Mahalo, Dr. Yew

E komo mai, Dear Ones! As we continue with Hawai’i Week on Whirled Musings, I feel that the time has come to reveal to you one of the truly astonishing discoveries that inspired me to host this very special week on my blog.

A couple of years ago, I heard about a psycho in Hawai’i who cleared out an entire hospital of therapists with an AK-47. No, wait, that’s another story. The story I want to tell you today is the one about a psychotherapist in Hawai'i who cured an entire ward of criminally insane patients – without ever having any contact with any of them. He would simply study an inmate’s chart and then work on himself. As he improved, the patient improved.

Well, I have to tell you that when I first heard this story I thought it was an urban, or at the very least a suburban, legend. How could anyone heal anyone else, particularly a ward full of dangerous nutters, just by working on himself? How could even the most introspective, insightful self-improvement expert improve other people just by improving his own self? And most importantly, was there a way I could make a few bucks by telling this guy’s story? Even if it turned out that the story wasn’t actually literally true?

On the one hand, the story didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t logical. On the other hand, there was that money angle. But I had other things to tend to, so I put the story on my mental back burner.

Then I heard the story again a year later. And I knew I’d better jump on it before someone else did. I heard that the therapist had used an ancient Hawai’ian secret self-healing process called Boto’o’popopopo. I had never heard of it, yet it would not leave my mind. If the story was at all true, or even if it wasn’t, I had to know more.

The therapist's name is Dr. Ihavascama Fer Yew. We must have spent an hour or more talking on our first phone call. I asked him to tell me the whole true story of his work as a therapist. He explained that he worked at Hawai’i State Hospital for about four years, or maybe it was four months; he didn’t quite remember. And it was either in the late 1960s or some time in the 1980s. But heck, those are just details. The important point was that the ward where they kept the criminal nutters was pretty dangerous. Psychologists were always quitting, and the staff was always calling in sick or just not showing up for work. Folks would make their way through that ward with their backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients. It was a horribly unpleasant place to live, work, or visit.

According to the stories I'd heard, Dr. Yew changed all of that. Today, that ward is closed. And ever since then, love and light and peace have prevailed throughout the entire Hawai’i Hospital system.

How did Yew do it?

I told him I'd heard that he never saw patients; he just agreed to have an office and to review their files. As he looked at those files, he would work on himself, and as he worked on himself, patients began to heal.

"I heard that after a few months, patients that had to be shackled were being allowed to walk freely," I told him. "And others who were on seriously heavy meds were getting off of those meds. Most amazing of all, I heard that those who had no chance of ever being released were actually being freed."

Dr. Yew laughed. "Yes, you’ve certainly heard some stories," he said. "And I suppose you also heard how the staff began to enjoy coming to work, how absenteeism and turnover disappeared, and how we ended up with more staff than we needed because patients were being released, and all the staff was showing up to work."

"That’s right!" I said. "And it is true that today that ward is closed, right?"

"You got it, Toots," said Dr. Yew. "You don’t mind if I call you Toots, do you? By the way, are you really as blue as your picture? I like blue women." **

"Just call me Con," I told Dr. Yew, sensing that the nickname was about to take on a whole new meaning. "And I’m not really blue; that’s just a cheap special effect."

"Damn," said Dr. Yew. "You would have so fit in with that whole ‘Blue Hawaii’ theme."

In an attempt to get him back on track, I asked the million-dollar question: "What were you doing within yourself that caused those loonies to change?"

There was a long silence. And then Dr. Yew said, "You’ve probably heard that I was simply healing the part of me that created them."

"Yeah, something like that," I replied. "It’s all over the Internet. But I’m sort of spiritually challenged, and I don’t really understand the concept. Can you explain it to me?"

There was another long pause. Finally Dr. Yew said, "Well, I might as well come clean with you. The truth is, I wasn’t exactly looking at the patients’ files."

"Oh?" I said, all ears now.

"Well… okay, I’d pick a random file up once in a while and say an ancient Hawai’ian prayer over it, just to make sure I had all my bases covered. And I always had piles of files on my desk, so on the rare occasion when one of the hospital administrators or a real doctor would pop their head into my tiny little office, it would look like I was really busy. But for the most part they left me alone. And I…well…"

He paused again. I detected a little bit of reluctance. "Go on," I urged.
"For the most part," he finally continued, "I studied…ah…magazines."

"Magazines?" I asked. "You mean, like Psychology Today or The Annals of American Psychiatry?"

"Well…no."

"Oh!" I said. "You mean news magazines like Time and Newsweek, to give you perspective on what was going on in the world, and therefore help you in your prayer and meditation?"

"Um…no. I was looking at…well…you know…skin magazines."

"Dermatology journals?" I inquired, puzzled.

"Look, lady, you can’t be that dense," Dr. Yew said, clearly getting impatient with me. "I meant… you know… THOSE magazines, the kind with those foldout pictures of ladies…"

"Oh, now I get it," I said, a little taken aback. "So let me get this straight. All this time – four years, four months, whatever – you were looking at Playboy instead of patients’ files?"

"Oh, no, actually I preferred Swank and, later, Hustler. And occasionally Penthouse. I really liked those true stories people sent in."

"But the point is – you weren’t studying patients’ files," I said.

"No," he admitted, "but I was working on myself. And I got very good at it."

I didn’t think I wanted to hear any more, but I was curious about one thing. As your intrepid blogger, I needed to find out the answer to the question I know all of y’all would want me to ask.

"So how did those criminally insane patients get healed?" I asked. "Or should I say, how did that ward get cleared out? Did you have anything to do with it at all?"

"Well… indirectly I suppose I did. One summer, a young patient was admitted, some guy from the Mainland. I don’t know what he was doing in Hawai’i, but I think he’d been a member of some religious cult or other. I don’t think he was getting proper counseling or the right medications. There was a lot of that kind of negligence at the hospital. Anyway, this guy was a pyromaniac – liked to set fires, you know. He called himself ‘The Fire Guy,’ or ‘Doctor Flame,’ or ‘Mister Fire’...something like that, as I recall.

"One day when we were particularly short-staffed, he set fire to the whole ward. People were running around screaming that the place was on fire, and they were paging me and calling me on my office phone and telling me to come help evacuate patients and equipment. But heck, that ward was on the first floor and my office was on the fifth floor. It wasn’t my problem, you see. So I locked my door. Still they kept calling for me, and a couple of guys came up and pounded on my door. ‘Dr. Yew! We need your assistance! Please!’
"Bunch of whiners," he snorted.

"You didn't try to help them?" I asked.

"No, I knew it was more important for me to maintain my state of tranquility. Besides, Miss October had these beautiful big…ah…eyes. I had to keep concentrating on what was at hand, so to speak. That’s what total self-responsibility is all about, Miss Connie. So I kept on studying my magazines and working on myself while all of that was going on."

"Very impressive…I guess," I said. "What happened next?"

"Eventually the fire was put out, and no one was seriously injured, but the whole ward had been destroyed, including some very expensive medical equipment. The hehenas – the lunatics – were relocated to another branch; the Hawai’i State Hospital is a pretty big system. That particular ward never re-opened. So yes, I guess you could say I was partially responsible for the ward closing down."

"What happened to the pyro who started the whole thing?" I asked.

"Nobody really knows. He escaped during the fire. They never caught him. I don’t know if he’s still setting fires or not. Someone's been setting fires at the Hawai'i State Hospital, but it's probably not him. But I think I saw him in some big infomercial not too long ago."

The lasting lessons
Well, that was some story. Yet I was a little concerned. The story was so different from the one that people were babbling about all over the Net that I wondered if there was still some income potential in it. I asked Dr. Yew what he thought.

"Oh, sure!" he said enthusiastically. "There are some very important spiritual principles in this story that I think the world is waiting to hear."

"Like what?" I inquired. "What about that ancient Hawai’ian healing art you were supposedly practicing? Is there any truth to that?"

"Most definitely, Miss Connie. The practice, which is thousands of years old, is called Boto’o’popopopo. It’s from the word boto, which among other meanings is kind of pidgin Hawai’ian for…"

"Yes, I know what it means," I said. I’d done a little research between the time I’d first heard the stories and the time I called Dr. Yew.

"But it’s not just about the…ah…boto. And there is more, much more, to the practice than just sitting around looking at magazines and…ah…working on one’s self," Dr. Yew continued. "That is just one aspect, one way to enlightenment and fulfillment. The point is to engage in any pleasurable activity that keeps you focused on yourself even when it seems that the world is falling apart around you. For some the path to this focus might be looking at pictures of ladies in magazines. For others it might be buying very expensive watches or sports cars and blogging about them. You have to find the path that works for you."

"I see," I said.

Dr. Yew was really getting warmed up now. "The whole point of Boto’o’popopopo," he continued, "is to reach something I call Nero State, after the Emperor Nero, who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned. Of course he didn’t really do that, but that’s the story everyone believes so it is a good metaphor for the state you want to reach. The way I look at it, things are only getting worse, and there's nothing you can do to stop that. You have to look within yourself to find the peace and the happiness you seek. You can still be happy and have fun even as the world around you goes up in flames. At least your world won't be destroyed. That is really The Secret to a happy life."

"I guess you could call that state of being ‘Yew State,’ given that you were sort of…well…fiddling while that ward was on fire," I suggested.

Dr. Yew laughed. "As a matter of fact, there is a Yew State, but that is something different – a higher level of Boto’o’popopopo, at least according to the modern form that I teach. The Yew State is the level at which the student learns to engage in any activity that keeps their focus on me. At its core, Miss Connie, the Universe is really all about Yew."

"It’s all about me?" I said, surprised and delighted. Being the insufferable narcissist that I am, I’d always suspected as much, but it was good to have it confirmed by a Hawi’ian wise man.

"No, no, it’s about me," he corrected. "Y-E-W. I am Yew."

"That’s right, we all are one," I murmured, but I knew what he really meant.

At first I was not quite sure about the profit potential of trying to convince people to focus their adulation on a little old Hawai’ian dude. But I could easily see the potential mass appeal of the first level of Boto’o’popopopo – getting people to focus on themselves. And I could certainly grasp the potential of the Hawai’ian angle too. There hadn’t been a real Hawai’i craze in the US in decades, and I figured that it was high time for another one. And the New-Wage spiritual aspect could only mean extra profit potential. If we promoted this thing right, even Paris Hilton might be interested. After all, I did read somewhere that her grueling 23-day prison experience had made her vow to "work on herself," and that alone would be good for at least a couple of videos, I thought. We could probably sell a few before they got pirated and put on YouTube.

I have to admit that I was starting to get really excited about the possibilities. And I did like Dr. Yew’s views on responsibility. Dr. Yew explained that if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in your life. So if you don’t want to be responsible for it, if you don’t want it in your life, just ignore it.

This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy – anything you experience and don’t like – is up to you to ignore. These things don’t exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections from inside you. The problem isn’t with them, it's with you. If you don’t think about them, they don’t exist…at least not for you. (And certainly not for Yew.)

I know this is tough to grasp, let alone accept or actually live. Because of the guilt-trip way most of us were brought up, taking responsibility and wondering if there’s something you can do to make the world better is far easier than turning away from the bad things in the world. But the more I spoke with Dr. Yew, the more I realized that Boto’o’popopopo means loving yourself, whether or not you are in possession of an actual boto. If you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life. And the only way to do that is to ignore what you don’t want in your life. Don’t worry about the wars, the diseases, the natural disasters, or even the criminally insane people. They’re someone else’s responsibility.

I had one more question for Dr. Yew. I had heard about some magical Boto’o’popopopo phrases that supposedly have powerful healing effects.

"That’s right," he said. He explained to me that in English the phrases are:  "Thank me," "I love me," "I'm not sorry," and "Give me money."

"You just say them over and over and over and over and over again," he explained. "Mostly you say them to yourself, but you can say them to other people too – to everyone you encounter – from your family and friends, to your customers, to the cop who pulls you over for speeding, to the Universe."
"That’s it?" I asked.

"That’s it."

Wow.

Follow the profits
I later attended a Boto’o’popopopo workshop run by Dr. Yew. He’s now in his seventies and is considered a grandfatherly shaman type, and is somewhat reclusive. He has long scraggly hair and disturbingly long fingernails and toenails, and is otherwise rather ill-groomed – much like Howard Hughes was in his later years, except alive. But he is very wise. He praised my BLP (book-like product), Cosmic Relief, and told me that as I improve myself, my book’s vibration will raise, and everyone will feel it when they read it. In short, as I improve, my readers will improve.

"What about the seven or eight copies that are already sold and out there?" I asked.

"They aren’t out there," he explained, once again blowing my mind with his mystical magical wisdom. "They are still in you."

"Oh, and I thought it was just acid reflux," I muttered.

The point that Dr. Yew was making was that there is no "out there." And there’s no "there" there. And rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. And it ain’t over till it’s over. And it’s déjà vu all over again. And so on.

It would take a whole book to explain this advanced spiritual wisdom with the depth it deserves. Fortunately, Dr. Yew and I are writing that book. It is called Nero State, and it is coming out very, very soon.

I was still a little worried about the possible disillusionment when readers learned the true story about the mental patients and their alleged healing by Dr. Yew. "Oh, don’t worry about it," he said. "People will still continue to believe that stuff because they want to. It doesn’t matter if it gets debunked a thousand times. You saw how long that hundredth-monkey thing has lasted. I have learned that people do not really care about facts. But they do care about themselves, and Boto’o’popopopo encourages them to do that."

Suffice it to say that whenever you want to improve anything in your life, there's only one place to look: inside you. And then when you’re ready to go to the next level, look to Yew. Or to me, since I’m the one who’s writing the book with Yew.

Well, that is quite enough wisdom for one blog post. Next we will dig a little deeper into Boto’o’popopopo, and I will reveal some hidden messages that were revealed to my friend Blair Warren by the entity Ralph.

Honi ko'u 'elemu,
Cosmic Connie

PS – The Hawai'ian Shirt Image above has special hypnotic powers. Stare at it long enough and you will see a message from the God Kanaloa. (And you may find yourself craving a heapin' helpin' of fried calamari with a tangy marinara sauce...)

And here is another special healing bonus just for you. This hula graphic has been infused with cleaning, clearing energy to free you of all negativity, anger, sadness, and unpleasant odors. It is one thousand times more powerful than the other leading brand of magical cleaning website. As you stare at the dots, you will find yourself feeling lighter and smelling sweeter. But this little graphic has even more potential than that – if you’re ready for it! There is an optional subliminal module that, if added to the graphic, will hypnotize anyone you want to hypnotize, and put them into a buying trance. Send it out to your entire email list and you will be amazed at the positive responses! And there’s more. There is also a "sex-slave" module that will work on anyone.


Interested? Send me $5,0000.00 USD, and a few Amazon gift certificates, and I will send you some more information when I get around to it.

** Back when this post was originally published, my profile pic was a head shot with a blue filter. ~ CC

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