When I was a young man in the 2000s, I scoured the self-help sections of bookstores and sites in the earlyish Internet to find out how to feel better and become successful.
I found Huna- a philosophy of life that had a neat explanation for every subject I had ever wondered about- science, love, creativity, charisma, power, confidence, success, dreams, as well as things like telepathy and clairvoyance, which I have come to accept as real without a shadow of doubt- unpredictable as they can appear to be. I learned about who we are, why we are here and where we come from. Far from just satisfying my curiosity, Huna invited me to adopt a clear, consistent worldview, create my own path for my life, and then use practical, proven techniques to embark on it as a grand adventure. All I can say is it worked- I was able grow from a shy, angry and lonely youngster who was full of doubts and confusion into a confident, strong, happy and connected man living a life that feels like the adventure games young me used to love to play so much.
It can do the same for you- if you use it. Enjoy my blog!
Huna has a lot of different concepts, and it can be a bit confusing to know where to start. For us Westerners it's made worse because Huna doesn't tell you where to start- you're supposed to find your own way to learn them by asking the right questions. Like many other archetypes, Huna has integrated what is broadly known as the seaker's quest.
But there's no reason we can't make it easier. Here are all of the Huna concepts I have learned. See if you feel drawn to and follow up with the full article about them if you do. This will give you a full course on Huna and should get you to the point where you can anchor and deepen your practice directly with your own higher self- then you've got it licked!
In most of Western teaching you are not assumed to be in charge, so when you learn Huna, it can be very confusing that there is no one there to tell you what to do.
This is a feature, not a bug. The point of Huna is to make you free. So if you want to learn Huna, the best way to do it is to fix a problem in your life.
Broke? Pick this.
Stuck? Pick that.
Airheaded? Pick that!
Angry? Pick that.
Huna is a philosophy that will allow you to change everything about your life that is humanly possible. If you can't do it with Huna, there is a weird spiritual reason grafted to reality itself, and that is rare, friends. Everything else is fair game.
And now for the big one- how to get rich, using Huna.
To answer your first question up front- yes, I have!
When the news reaches you and that news is not good- it disturbs you, and you find yourself going into a spiral of feelings of violent rage- and I'm speaking from personal experience right now- then it is a good time to heal yourself, and do your part to heal a situation.
The first thing to know is that you- right now- don't have to do anything about those feelings. You can just let them run their course. If you're like me, and the unbearable made you think and feel thinks you didn't quite know you had in you- that's okay. You don't have to act on it. You can do things differently, but you you don't need to hold back on feeling these things.
After you've done that for a while, acknowledging what you feel, realizing it isn't pretty, and doesn't have to be pretty, and you don't need to do anything right away- you will reach a point where those feelings have run their course and you will feel more calm. You don't have to force yourself to get there, it will come by itself. It helps to know you don't have to do anything about those feelings, for the time being- but if they do stir you into doing something, and that is a good thing, like reaching out to people you love- go ahead! My point is that if you get really angry and you feel like harming people or similar- there is nothing wrong with you. This is a pretty normal reaction to harsh events. But it is important to know you don't have to do anything about this, you can let these feelings run their course and only act when you can tell that there is some sort of inspiration coming through from them and you will be acting in a way that is good, that helps.
Now that most of the techniques and ideas in Huna Kupua have been shared on this blog, we'll be focusing on a new kind of article- the How-To. In these, we'll be going through processes of getting specific things done using Huna, with examples of chosing a goal, picking techniques to use, meeting challenges and persistently following through until a change has been achieved.
We'll start with the biggest one- taking charge of your entire life.
Don't worry- this may sound intimidating, but it's not about forcing yourself to go somewhere you "should" go, that very idea is completely foreign to Huna. We will simply learn from you which things are already very important to you, and acknowledge them so you can be yourself even better.
To give yourself direction, it's good to chose a core philosophy of life. There are lots of different ones, and personally, I chose Huna's- nothing else has ever given me that much freedom and still that much power. Huna's core philosophy is in its first principle:
When you are using any sort of mind technique- affirmation, visualization, the super effective Haipule combination, meditation, belief clearing- you are changing what the subconscious mind believes.
This has two interesting effects.
One, you feel good right now. Your life energy is flowing through new, positive beliefs.
Two, because of this, the life events that are lining themselves up to happen reflect the new beliefs as well, so they will also feel good.
One of the most powerful and unique techniques I found in Huna is called dreamchanging.
Dreamchanging is a type of visualization where you take an experience you don't care for very much, and change it, in your mind, into one you do like.
You can use it to change the outcome of an unpleasant night dream after waking up.
But- strikingly- you can use it in your everyday life to change the way your everyday life unfolds.
Don't you just love arguing with people who already made up their mind?
No?
Me neither. Who does? It's like trying to walk through a brick wall by taking a running start.
Even worse- how are we supposed to know our own ideas are true? Any idea can feel true, ideas are designed to feel true if you act like it long enough.
The most straight forward solution to this problem is violence. If you seem threatening enough, people tend not to disagree with you very much, at least not to your face. But this approach has, among others, the disadvantage that you don't learn very much any more and are stuck with what you learned when you were more accommodating.
Then a group of people a long time ago came up with the idea that you could just stubbornly argue it out until everybody agrees. They put their ideas in writing and their students are still arguing about them to this day.
Another group of people decided they would carefully set up special situations to test their ideas and then, depending on the outcome, everyone would have to agree. They tried it with falling rocks and turning gears and it worked really well for a while, but then people noticed it's really hard to set this sort of thing up when humans are involved. You just can't draw many conclusions from one person to the next because everybody is different and is always changing.
Even if we can test human behavior there's this little catch that the more important something is, the less obvious it is to other people because it gets very personal and very specific and very emotional. In other words, it gets subjective: defined by experience and relationships and strong bonds and big ideas. Can you imagine a harder place to go looking for universal truth with an inquisitive mind than another person's psyche? Let alone many people! It's so hard that the idea-testing crowd usually just throws in the towel and reverts to arguing that individual experience just isn't all that important.
Huna has a really, really elegant solution to all of these problems. Huna says: If it works, it's true.
The sixth principle of Huna is called "All Power Comes From Within" and it is related to the- hold your horses- the second-most important thing in life, according to the Huna philosophy.
Huna is very particular in this way. The most important thing bar none is love. Love is the end all and everything. Love is what everything is about, and even not-so-loving things are really only able to make love more recognizable no matter how mistaken they are or how hard they try otherwise.
I had an interesting experience last night. I woke up about three thirty in the morning and couldn't really go back to sleep,and after about an hour I kind of collapsed, exhausted.
I didn't exactly go to sleep- I was fully conscious and I could tell what was happening. But I wasn't exactly awake, either- I could see an image forming in front of me- I could see a line of cliffs and ocean extending to it, and huge waves which interestingly were coming from the cliffs towards me, outwards and away from the shore line.
To Love Is To Be Happy With is the fifth of seven principles of the ancient philosophy of Huna Kupua.
You can bungle all the other ones, reinterpret them to mean completely different things because then they fit your habits better, because that's more comfortable, while pretending to have made progress, because that feels good. You can sputter your energy all over the place and make your very existence a hapless exercise of half baked perplexity. You can be dogmatic and rigid and self-serving and deliver morsels of self-righteous hubris to anyone willing to listen. You can cower under a table most of your time and just stay there because it's a great way to stay out of trouble. If you get love right, none of that matters- your life will be a good one. You can royally screw up all the other principles, if you get this one right, you're good. Intrigued yet?
Love. The alpha and the omega. The be all and the end all. The core of every spiritual teaching- even the ones that don't make it very obvious. The only universal principle. The reason to exist, build civilizations, and get out of the bed in the morning, to meditate, have relationships with each other, own pets, not own pets, go skydiving, surfing and whale watching, for music, for philosophy, for math- and eating pizza. Poems have been written, duels and wars fought, wars prevented and duels rigged so nobody gets hurt, nuclear missiles sabotaged, condiments spread on sandwiches, wheat ground and shaped into noodles (did I give away my Italian heritage with that one?), cows farmed, cows kept in sanctuaries, houses built, houses burned down, wolves shot, wolves protected, chemicals developed, forests guarded, books written, amulets crafted, clothes designed, yarn spun, floors swept, computers invented. In a burning, chaotic urge to feel better about ourselves and the world around us. For love.
I'd been feeling a little off for a while.
I usually keep myself in pretty good emotional condition but this time, no matter what I tried to get better, it just seemed to make it worse. My back was in painful knots, I was grumpy, touchy, looking out of my eyes like a hungry lizard out of his cave, ready to lunge at someone. I knew this wasn't going to go well for long, so I decided to use my spiritual power of last resort: Distraction! So after a really unsatisfying session of watching television I decided to try a spiritual technique that I'd ignored so far because I didn't know what it was good for: Astral Projection.
The most reliable technique that I found in Huna Kupua, and also the most flexible, is symbol healing. Most other techniques like the La'a Kea, the Haipule, dream changing or journeying be considered variants of symbol healing with different emphasis and different flavors. On the four levels of reality, which are four distinct ways of perceiving the world around you, symbol healing is entirely a third-level technique. You look at the world as a representation of something else.
The fourth principle of Huna Kupua is called: Now is the moment of power.
Like all of the teachings of Huna Kupa I have encountered, it is both a common sense, everyday experience, and profoundly deep spiritual knowledge.
Most spiritual teachings, no matter where they come from and when they came about, recommend some version turning your attention to the present moment. It is featured in almost all schools of self-mastery, traditional or modern- martial arts, marksmanship, academia, acting, rhetoric, athletics, dance, gymnastics or Yoga. You could fill entire libraries with the pop psychology books about it. And there is this very personal experience that when you're paying attention to what's happening, and you're not hemming and hawing- you feel better, and people like you more.
But why?
The third principle of the Kahili shamanic tradition explains just about everything that happens to you, ever.
Energy Flows Where Attention Goes
So in the traditional Kahili shamanic worldview, there is such a thing as energy- you can probably feel it tingling if you like to meditate, or listen to really good music, or are in a place where everyone is happy and relaxed, and even though, you feel like the place is bursting with energy.
It is also what you notice when you see someone and think that person has a lot of energy, and then you might be strongly drawn or strongly repulsed based on that person's ideas, but you're not usually unmoved. Or you can see that someone is doing really well at something, like sports, or art, and you are moved somehow, by witnessing it.
Or you can experience a place with not so much energy that can have an eery feel, like a room where people are feeling a little awkward, or an abandoned building, or someone having a hard time for whom the simplest daily tasks are obviously very difficult, like getting up a short flight of stairs or getting their wallet out of their pocket. Or people who are just being slow, and you can just tell that person just isn't likely to be doing a lot of things today. People say it casually, there isn't a lot of energy in that room, or they're worried about Joe, he's been low energy lately.
So there is such a thing as energy, and it matters a lot to everyone's life. That's great! But now what?
The great, practical secret of this principle is that your energy follows your attention.
That's big. Why? Because your attention is, and is probably the only thing that is, totally under your control.
I've been using- and teaching- a really simple technique recently, to clear up some pretty intense bad feelings I was having that came up while I was working on a really ambitious money goal of mine.
It goes like this:
Whenever you don't feel so good, pay attention to the body feelings you get from it. So you let yourself feel that a little bit until you get a sense of what that feeling is about.
And then, you ask yourself: "What would I have to believe in order to feel this?
Expect a straight, short, comprehensive answer. If you don't get it right away- keep focusing on that question. Sooner or later, something will come to your attention.
Once you've got it, you're done. Nothing else to do, it's gone.
Now this technique is really, really, really simple, and it's also kind of technical, but it works- really well. It's the only way so far I found to get rid of ideas I don't in a way that feels like a clean slate, completely gone.
The most fundamental idea in shamanism- to explain it to someone with a background in Western-style thinking, it would sound very differently to explain to someone indigenous because those things that go without saying vary so much around the world- is that consciousness is more fundamental than time and space.
We are not living in a physical world, and then consciousness erupts fully armed from someone's forehead (to quote a Western legend). We are blobs of consciousness, dreaming of a physical world, together.
Yeah. Groovy, isn't it?
I remember very well the first time I grasped this I spent hours staring at my feet running up the hill towards my university yelling to myself in my mind (I hope it was in my mind) "It looks so real! It looks so real! It looks so real!"
Now the kicker is that, once you've gotten over your initial reaction (provided it came as a surprise), it doesn't change that much. The dream is still there. You interact with your dream as your dream character the same way as you used to interact with your perceived real world as a perceived real character. Your dream still works the same way- it is still good to pay your dream bills and interact with your dream government departments at the dream appropriate times to avoid dream trouble.
You can still describe your dream world using dream mathematics to make certain dream predictions and use dream tools to build other dream tools to do certain things you couldn't to before, which results in having stuff in your dream like electric cars and the Internet.
If you want to dream-fly, it's still a really good idea try to lift off while standing on a level surface rather than after having jumped off a dangerously high area, in case you need more than one attempt. Because it is still possible to take a dream exit by using very familiar mechanisms for transforming your body into something the dream rules say will now blend into the environment.
In traditional Western magical tradition, it is very, very common to make some kind of deal with an external entity, who will then grant you some kind of power, but usually command a very steep price.
For example, traditional folk magic from Germany has it that you can marry a nymph. First you need to find a nymph, and call out to her, and then you woo her, and when she feels ready you take her down to the forest with actual witnesses and have a wedding ritual, and then you wear the ring, and you don't marry anyone else, and you most certainly don't commit adultery by starting anything informal with a human woman. If you do all these things, of course the nymph will help you with all that is in her power, as any loving life partner would, which in her case means to adjust coincidences so that you achive great success and fortune. Of course, the stories go, eventually the sacred vows are usually broken and great tragedy comes about. Look out for rich old (apparent) bachelors to find people who stuck to the deal.
Since I'm offering shamanic services now a friend of mine decided to jump on the bandwagon and book a consulting session with me. As with any good career move he started out by procrastinating and then formulating a concept document on Google Docs, which made me smile (don't tell him- oh wait, he's going to be reading this). The gist of the matter was that he felt incapable of letting go- which he took to mean that he felt unable to reduce the amount of gigs he was doing in his current occupation, in order to really get to business with his potential new occupation, which pays much better, but is unproven to work. He wanted to, like, really, really go for it. Like, really bad. Like, he wanted to let go so really very bad that he got pretty darned uptight about letting go. It all felt really confusing and when I felt that way just by reading his words- and they really felt like they had been hammered onto the computer screen by lifting keys on a keyboard made of marble bricks- I was like, okay he's in trouble. Not trouble trouble, but surely some kind of block towards where he wanted to go. But I couldn't quite tell what it was all about- did he he feel so much tension because this new thing isn't right for him? Or because he is resisting the old thing too much to get rid of it?
So one of the most wonderful concepts I came across in Huna Shamanism is the idea that there are four levels of reality.
I'm always harping how no matter where I turn for more spiritual knowledge, I check out Huna and I find a better, more complete version that works together with everything else I know as a well tuned system. It's really that good.
So one area where Huna really shines is the level of philosophy. A lot of traditions poo-poo intellectualizing, and end up with a bunch of thoroughly confused intellects among their students. Not Huna- Huna integrates intelligence instead, and comes up with just about the single most fantastically organizing idea so you can deal with just about any spiritual tradition you come across. And it's so simple I can explain it in a blog post. Ready? Great!
A while ago, it seems like along time ago now, I was practicing shamanism strictly privately, for fear that I might be branded a loon. I eventually gradually came to realize that the people who felt threatened by spiritual ideas were already put off by me, even if I held back on the label, and to the people I already clicked with, the label just made things easier to talk about. But accepting the label takes confidence, and that confidence took a while to build. This is the story of one of the steps.
So we were a friendly group hanging out in the kitchen, drinking beer, cooking spaghetti with tomato sauce and giving back rubs. Now in our society you usually only touch someone when it's a special occasion, but someone had decided to change that rule and everyone eventually went along with it. Back rubs are so nice! So one of my friends decided it was her turn and I reached out but it felt really uneasy. I didn't want to be rude so started kind of testing the energy with my fingertips and I could feel my subconscious jerk my hands back in revulsion and gasp. Whoa, what was that! Now my subconscious really enjoys her company, but touching her lower back- that's not fun, and tonight's about fun, so there.
Now she had been having all sorts of trouble with various kinds of conflict and was doing impressively well for herself in spite of it all. She was doing some work in politics and had- at least, that's what I thought- decided that the materialistic worldview was the one where she was least likely to have people question her sanity. I didn't push the issue, she knew I think of the world in terms of energy, and I always suspected her to be a closeted witch. So she heard me gasp, and she blurted out- whoa, what was that? What did you see?
One of my long term hobbies- I think even longer than practicing shamanism- is, hold your horses, everyone- playing foosball.
Of course, playing Foosball is a lot more fun when you win. The winning itself is very enjoyable, but it also raises your social status, and there is the added benefit that there is a social consensus that when you just won a game of foosball, you are allowed to pull otherwise cringeworthy stunts- like performing a moonwalk- while bystanders and losers alike have to pretend like what you are doing is completely normal. There is no joy quite like assimilating and then subverting the tribal customs.
Now I'm a reasonably strong player just by virtue of doing it a lot. For the most part, the people who beat me are competitive players, but occasionally, I'll meet my match. Normally I play simply by intending to win, and letting my subconscious mind take care of all of the playing. This results in fluid maneuvers but also unconventional and downright infuriatingly lucky shots.
Last week I faced off with a friend of mine who is much less experienced than me, but has built in himself a tremendous mastery of the energy around him by working in sales. I dived in expecting to toy with him a bit and then go for a quick win, but suddenly I could feel him taking control of the ball and even the table. That took me by surprise and I couldn't respond in educating my ku about dealing with this new challenge before he had beaten me down ten to zero and general gloating ensued.
Now today, I faced him off again and I concentrated rather hard trying to figure out something I could teach my ku in order to counter his unconsciously applied magic. A couple goals behind again, I found myself staring at the ball rather intently, and I observed that he couldn't get it into the goal. So I did nothing different- I just concentrated really, really hard on the ball, noticed details about it, and then added my conscious intent to charge the ball with as much energy as possible, and won handily.
Energy really does flow where attention goes, and when you're competing for something, having a lot of that energy coming from you is a really, really good idea!
I didn't nudge the ball, I didn't twitch his wrist, I didn't do anything specific- I just concentrated on the ball until I could feel a charge.
This goes to show how every good coach is teaching energy manipulation, but as shamans we have a working theory of why it works. Keep your eye on the ball, they say! The wisdom of that is much deeper than knowing where the ball is. You don't keep your eye on the ball to know where it is, you keep your eye on the ball to charge it with energy and cause circumstances to arrange so that you are the one who is, literally, in charge of it. If you have the most energy on the ball, your intentions will influence it, and everyone else, the most, and you will win! It helps, of course, to teach your ku valuable techniques to work with, but don't overdo that one. Ku will figure out how to win.
Maybe next time I'll add a little energy breathing, and I most certainly will concentrate more fully on my opponent while I perform my victory dance.
More is one of my favorite words.
I get lot of flak in polite society for appreciating more a lot, because of a widespread belief that there isn't enough, so anyone who wants more must be selfish enough to want, there it is, more than their fair share.
But I don't want anyone else's share, and I couldn't have it if I tried. I can have that experience, though, if me and someone else agree that I will simultaneously expand my sense of possibility, and others will contract it. Now if I were to persuade other people to contract their sense of possibility, asking them to limit themselves in a way that really does not tend to be in their best interest, okay well then I'm as close as you can come in this universe to the uncle scrooge character. Because the easiest way for that particular thought pattern to manifest in all experiences is, indeed, you giving something to me, and getting little to nothing in return, or from anyone.
But why on earth would I do that? What possible advantage could I get from limiting other people? I would have to believe in lack myself for that to make any sense whatsoever, and since I have the choice, why would I do that? I don't want a weird non-appreciative coercive-feeling limited above-below kind of relationship with anyone at all, thank you very much! Subjects are like followers, they're just too much trouble. Give me peers any day of the week. I consider my 8 month old daughter a peer, and she can't walk yet, but that's nothing a little practice and growing won't sort out. I mean, if I were to surround myself with my inferiors, and perhaps even try to influence them so they stay that way, how uninspiring can surroundings be? And I do tend to notice among those whom I perceive to enjoy unequally-designed relationships that inspiration tends to be in short supply. Whew. Thanks, but no thanks, empires are so 20th century.
So, more. Yeah, more is what I would like, right now, copiously, and I also would very much like to be aware of more areas to want more in. Here's a list: I would like
- More money
- More power
- More energy
- More strength
- More relaxedness
- More friends
- More collaborators
- More sense of purpose
- More leisure
- More effectiveness
- More healing
- More respect
- More inspiring others
- More listening to animals
- More ideas
- More wisdom
- More connectedness
- More experience
- More love
I would like to add to this that more is an art form. Let's take money because it's such an obvious one and so far-reaching. When I say I want more money, I'm not talking about the old "oh I have lots of money but no time to spend it" deal. That's not more money, that's poverty in disguise. When I want more money, I want more money with equally many or fewer obligations than I have now. That makes life really easy. I don't have to worry creating some hip project or finding investors, because investors' money comes with obligations for the future, and my criteria preclude those. I don't have to go find some illustrious career, because those would tie me up for many more hours than at present.
Mind you, I could still go and get an illustrious career because that's rewarding, or go find investors because that's what my project calls for, but I don't have to do any of those commonly associated things when all I'm after is more money. That's probably the most important secret right there- and it's an application of the as-of-yet-unblogged-about seventh's principle, spoiler, it's about flexibility- if you want more, get rid of all the ideas commonly associated with more, and just go for more. There will be very little resistance.
Here's a couple of techniques to stretch the mind, in order to possess, well, more flexibility. Because if you are flexible in the mind, then, guess what, you are much better able to imagine yourself having more of those things you want, and when you can do that, you will have more energy, which will give you more power, which in turn means you will experience more love, because true power always means more life to all and less to none, and it doesn't get any more loving than that. The beauty is that it doesn't really matter which more you go for first, every other area will get so much easier. Pick one that's hard for you. Try money, that's usually hard, and the world certainly can use a lot less "uncle scrooge screwed me over" vibes in the world, I think we had plenty enough of those, thank you very much.
I think I made a pretty good case that more is good and that calls for moderation are misplaced, quite simply because there are no limits, and if there are no limits, there is inherently enough to go around. So, aside from the Haipule, which is so good and flexible that it can be used to bring about just about anything, including more of anything, here are some suggestions for imaginary experiences are great and enjoyable ways to connect you with the idea of more.
Recently I decided my budding Shaman Blog had enough stuff on it to be considered started, so I decided it would be a good idea to share it with the pack, so to speak, and put it in front of the people who really know what I'm talking about- the Kahili Huna group- and then clean up my kitchen. First things first.
I'd only shared it online with what I would call "seekers", people who might be interested in various spiritual practices, and shamans of varying skill and different traditions, for whom this somewhat different blog was most likely to be peripherally interesting, just some shamanic articles to gloss over and come back to later or not.
What I didn't consider is that when you reach out to a bunch of the most powerful shamans in the world with something that's really relevant to them, you are getting a response. So while I was scrubbing away and piling dishes, I turn around and my back kitchen wall is gone, and there there are all these pairs of eyeballs checking me out, and I can see my ku happily taking questions in a kind of Greek auditorium. And I think, boy, I wish I'd cleaned up my kitchen beforehand. I could picture how this went down- OK, so who's the new guy, got anything on him? Wait, Let me check... I see a man... in an unhealthy environment... making it better... yeah, he checks out. He's doing some kind of healing, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.
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