Chapter twenty-one

Zeke often visited his favorite bookstore in town, The Bookworm, so he could learn more about the world and discover hidden truths. The memories of Draco, the Reptilian Army, and the destruction they had wreaked upon the Lyran kingdom would return to him as flashes that haunted his young mind. Nevertheless, they kept him focused on his mission.

One day, when he was at the store looking for more books to read, he saw an old man sitting silently on a bench near the street across from the store. The man was wearing a dull, white robe that looked old and shabby. He had snow-white, unkempt hair, and a long, equally white beard. The wrinkles on his face made him look a hundred years old. He held a long string of brown beads in his hands. The man was sitting with his eyes closed, murmuring to himself as if he was chanting a mantra or meditating upon something.

Zeke was intrigued by the presence of this old man, so he walked out of the store and positioned himself at a safe distance from the bench. He didn’t expect the man to look back at him at all. Yet right then, and to his utter amazement, the man opened his eyes and looked straight into Zeke’s. His eyes shined with a wonderful light that reminded Zeke of the divine light of his homeland. The old man looked like the very embodiment of wisdom. He had a strange smile on his face as if to say, “I know who you really are.” The man then closed his eyes and went back to his meditative state.

Zeke felt a strong urge to talk to him, to ask him questions, but he did not want to bother him, so he decided against it. But just then, the old man opened his eyes a second time. He motioned for Zeke to come closer, he reached out his hands and took Zeke’s hands in his own. He smiled at him and pronounced, “Healer, heal thyself. Seeker, seek the truth!”

His words sounded like some sort of prophecy. The man then released Zeke’s hands and returned to his trance, leaving Zeke utterly confused. Taken aback by the strange encounter, he practically ran back home. That night, Zeke went to bed early and, once again, had a strange dream. In his dream, a distant voice said, “Healer, heal thyself. Seeker, seek the truth!”

Zeke opened his eyes to find that his dream had taken him to a sandy beach on a tropical island. It was early evening, and the sun was just about to go down. He was sitting on the sand and saw the same old man sitting a little further out. As Zeke stood up, the old man did the same and walked towards him. He looked at Zeke with kind eyes and lovingly asked, “Won’t you participate in this evening’s prayers?”

Zeke looked at him as if his words had hypnotized him and began following him without a word. The old man guided him nearby where a large group of people had gathered in a circle. They looked like tribal men and women in traditional regalia who seemed native to the island. They had torches burning around them that lit the entire beach as the sun went down. Then, the nightly ritual began. There was a large fire at the center of the circle. Zeke looked around and could see little huts in the light of the torches.

He was in a clearing inside a tribal village. Zeke realized he wasn’t anywhere in today’s world; he wasn’t in the present. He had somehow traveled into the past, yet the old man still looked the same. Zeke and the old man joined the group, taking their place in the circle. They all held each other’s hands and sang a soul-soothing song, more like a chant. It consisted of a single word, “Ho’oponopono,” that they kept repeating and singing as if they were all chanting a mantra.

“Ho’oponopono, Ho’oponopono, Ho’oponopono.”

• • •

Zeke suddenly woke up in his bed as the morning sun kissed his cheeks. He could hear Ziggy twittering from his window. She was singing “Ho’oponopono” as well.

He looked at her and smiled. “Good morning, Ziggy Bird. Where have you been all this time, and just how do you know “Ho’oponopono?”

Just then, something scratched his chest. Zeke almost screamed only to find Zag sitting there, bouncing like a ball. “Ahem!” The second their eyes met, Zag laughed and winked at him and began doing somersaults up and down his chest. After a few moments of this tomfoolery, he rendered, “I am sorry, Mister Tartal. Please forgive me, sir.”

Just when he was about to speak with Zag, his eyes fell over Zoom, standing by his bedside. She gave him a small kiss and pronounced, “Thank you. I love you.”

“Zoom, Zoom! Is that you? I need to talk to you!” Zeke rubbed his eyes and jumped out of bed.

But as soon as he did, he found his room empty. No one was there. Zig, Zag, and Zoom had completely disappeared. He was alone. “Were they part of my dream?” he asked himself.

Whether just a dream or something else, everything that had happened was pointing towards these questions: “Who was the old man? Where did he come from? Where did he take him? What was the song those men and women were singing? Why was Ziggy tweeting the same song? Why was Zag asking for forgiveness and Zoom saying thank you? What were Zig, Zag, and Zoom trying to convey to him by appearing in his dream?” All these questions and more rang through his mind, and he would soon have the answers.

The unexplainable dream made Zeke feel extremely restless. He was unable to sit in one place for more than a few minutes that day. He didn’t know what to do or where to go. He had no idea how to find the answers he needed. After a while, he went to his mother’s room to check on her. She was awake and lying on her bed, blankly looking up at the ceiling.

“Mom, there’s a word I just heard about. Can you tell me what it means?” he asked her.

“What word, my boy?” She felt weak, and it was hard for her to speak, but she knew her son well enough. She wanted to answer his question, so she endured the pain.

“Ho’oponopono. Do you know what it means?”

His mother smiled at him and said, “Where did you hear this special word, Zeke? It’s a lovely word. Yes, I know it. I learned about it years ago from a book. It means ‘to correct.’”

She was very sleepy and dozed off soon after telling him that. Much of Zeke’s interest in books and his wisdom had come from his mother. She, too, had been an avid reader and was drawn to higher truths. She had a lot of answers and was a wise woman, though life had been unjust and cruel to her.

She always said, “If you want to know more than others about the world around you and how it works, read books, Zeke. Books hold magical secrets.”

Zeke let her sleep and went straight to The Bookworm where he had met the old man last evening. He went to the store manager, Miss McDowall, and asked her if she had seen an old man sitting outside her store. The manager said the man had been sitting there on the same bench every evening for the past seven days as if he were waiting for someone. Nobody knew where he lived or who he was.

That fateful evening, he asked the manager to give Zeke a string of beads and a book he wished to leave for him. Nobody had seen him again since. Zeke instinctively knew the book would have all the answers he was looking for, so he wasted no more time. He went straight home and opened it. The book was about healing techniques practiced in different parts of the world. It was an ocean of wisdom from ancient cultures and traditions. Everything he had been searching for was right there in front of his eyes. The book had all the information about the magical healing powers of the word “Ho’oponopono.”

The word had come from the Kānaka Maoli, indigenous Polynesian healers of the Hawaiian Islands, who originally practiced Ho’oponopono within extended families in Hawaii as a method of reconciliation and forgiveness. It was considered a cleansing process for putting things right and rectifying mistakes. According to the book, a man maned Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, a Hawaiian therapist, miraculously cured an entire ward of criminally insane patients by simply using this technique.

The incident marked the official entry of the traditional practice into the modern world. The book told Zeke everything about the way this technique worked. The age-old practice was perhaps the simplest yet most amazing of the magical power of words he had discovered. It used the concept of taking responsibility for everything negative happening within and around oneself and not passing the blame.

He continued to read, “Everything begins with us, within us, and hence, the course correction must begin with none other than ourselves. Once we start, our vibration shifts. The universe reads this positive shift within us and begins responding accordingly. Four simple steps help us achieve this highest state of positive vibration: showing repentance for all our previous conscious or unconscious mistakes, asking forgiveness for them, expressing gratitude for being forgiven, and sending out love in return.”

“I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you,” used in this practice, denotes these four steps. All we need to do is recite them repeatedly, aloud or in our minds, really meaning them from the bottom of our hearts, so we address each of these emotions within us. This simple practice, used as an everyday morning or nighttime ritual, can magically transform our lives. The true healing power lies in feeling the words and the willingness of the universe to forgive and love.

Zeke read through the chapter with a smile on his face. The real reason behind Zig, Zag, and Zoom’s appearance that morning, and the words they had uttered in his dream, were clear to him now. They were bestowing upon him the secret power of this magical practice. He smiled, looking at the string of beads he held in his hands. Like a lightning bolt, something he had read in a random book years ago flashed through his mind: “When the student is ready, the master will appear.”

The old man’s prophecy, “Healer, heal thyself. Seeker, seek the truth,” made sense to him now. No wonder it was a tool used by ancient Hawaiian healers. Not only did they heal themselves before they healed others, but the secret wisdom they carried was “to heal themselves, to heal others.” The string the old man gave him contained a hundred and eight beads, a number that, when simplified, adds up to nine, signifying the completion of the cycle of spiritual enlightenment. The wise old man had left it for him so he could count the number of times he practiced the healing technique he had just learned and to keep focused on his goal.

He began his practice by saying “Thank you” to his cosmic friends Zig, Zag, and Zoom, who appeared whenever he needed guidance and protection on his earthly mission. He said, “Thank you,” to the wise old man. The master did appear when the student was ready to learn. He had come to visit him from a faraway land, from an ancient time, to hand him over the powerful magical healing tool Zeke could use to heal himself, so he could heal the world around him. This was the first magical gift of wisdom he had received after his return from his homeland, Lyra. Ho’oponopono. It would become a magic wand, a tool he would use to heal many, the first of his many gifts.