Me ke aloha,
Jonathan
Part one
Introduction to Huna
chapter one
My Hawaii Story
Given that I am a Haole—a non-Polynesian white person—living in New York City, without a drop of Hawaiian blood in my body, it seems relevant to offer some clarification as to how I have found my way to Huna. My connection to Hawaii is actually something that I am still trying to understand—a perplexing web of crazy synchronicities, gut instinct, and happy accidents. And yet, as true as it is that I found Hawaii, I can’t deny that Hawaii somehow also found me.
Sharing my story is not an act of self-indulgence; it is a teaching in and of itself, one that is loaded with the hidden and mysterious realities that we often deny or refuse to see. Realities that, if we choose to be open to them, point toward the deeper tendrils of connectivity and intelligence that underlie all things. “Limitlessness,” or infinite connection, is one of the seven major principles of Huna, so as I introduce my Hawaii story to you, I will likewise introduce you to the seven principles.
To delve into Shamanism is to open to an inner knowing that lies beyond what we are able to learn from books, teachers, or the culture to which we believe we should adhere. “All power comes from within” is another major Huna principle, and following this inward direction became my path to this knowledge.
By the time I reached my late thirties, I had been on the spiritual and healing path for almost two decades—and I needed to be. I had been through periods of severe anxiety and depression, the difficult end of a thirteen-year relationship, and struggles with addiction. I did not have an easy go of things. The more I healed, the more I found myself unfortunately settled in a career that felt out of alignment with who I was becoming spiritually. I was restless, searching, and sometimes quite angry. Up to that time, I had spent the majority of my life as a professional actor, appearing on Broadway and on stages across the country, and I had done a little television as well. I loved being an artist, but I struggled with a lifestyle that was financially difficult, lacked opportunity, and felt disempowering.
Despite relative success, acting was generally a difficult slog. I often felt judged, rejected, and compromised. Even worse, it was becoming clear that I needed to compartmentalize and hide my spiritual life and my work as an energy healer. My theatrical agent told me that the “woo-woo stuff” made me a lot less marketable. There was a faint whisper within me that questioned whether I should stop acting. After all, since early childhood, it had been the only thing I ever thought I wanted. Giving it up felt like an identity crisis, so every time the idea of quitting came into my head, I would banish it immediately.
That is, until I went to Maui.
Haleakala Volcano
I had been to Hawaii a few times before the events that I am about to describe and had absolutely loved it. I can lose myself fairly easily being in Nature, and the sumptuous paradise of the islands provided unparalleled delights. I loved the emerald green hills and rainbow valleys, the crystal blue and indigo water, the delectable smells of wild flower perfumes, the misty sea salt sprays, the cleansing rains, the cloud-capped mountains, and the busy click-click-click of palm trees singing their songs through invisible tropical winds. If you haven’t been to Hawaii, I highly recommend it.
But other than my delight in Hawaii’s natural wonders, I had acquired no knowledge whatsoever of Hawaiian spirituality, language, or culture. The Hawaiian words on street signs or restaurants seemed cumbersome and almost too foreign. Like most tourists, I had a vaguely titillating awareness of the lithe, pretty girls and the tattooed, muscular men wiggling their hips in exotic Hula movements, but I was quite unaware of Hula’s deeper meanings, and I certainly never dreamed that the islands contained a spiritual philosophy that would become such an important part of my life.
Despite my lack of knowledge of many aspects of Hawaii, there was an internal experience that I had on those early trips to these islands, and have had every time since. I call it my “Hawaii feeling.” In my deepest being, it tells me, “These islands are the most magical place on Earth, and I am only complete if I somehow carry them with me always.” Many Hawaiian words contain hidden meanings or concealed references that are buried within them; these are called kaona. If you examine the kaona, of the word Hawai’i it is understandable why I and so many others are so drawn to return there again and again. Ha is the word meaning the breath of life to man, Wai means the water of life to the earth, and ‘I is the Supreme Being. Hawai’i, or Hawaii, as we more commonly spell it, is the homeland which all mankind continues to seek because it is there that life, Earth, and Spirit conjoin together.
My story begins on the volcano in Maui. Getting to the Haleakala Crater, Maui’s dormant volcano, which had its last eruption in 1790, involves a dizzying thirty-five-mile drive into the clouds, up ten thousand feet on a road that twists and turns so abruptly that speed limits often max out at ten miles per hour. Many tourists do this drive in the middle of the night in order to be at the summit for sunrise, which I find rather terrifying because one’s vehicle is sometimes only a few yards away from a thousand-foot drop.
On my first trip to Haleakala, with my husband Domenic, we reached the top after almost two hours. When we got out of the car we could not believe where we were and what we were seeing. Among the many lessons one receives from the land of Hawaii is just how small we are. At the Haleakala Crater, the hole, so to speak, where the lava once gushed forth, is the size of Manhattan. To stand at the edge is to view a gigantic, sparkling kaleidoscopic landscape of rolling rock and soil that appears to undulate in wave-like patterns of other-worldly greens, reds, purples, and browns for as far as the eye can see. It is breathtaking.
Being there makes you feel like you’re on another planet, or perhaps the moon, and the bright, shiny Haleakala Silversword plants, which only grow on the crater and nowhere else on Earth, add to the otherworldly nature of this magnificent place. You never know what to expect in terms of weather at the summit, and having been there many times now, I can attest to rain, snow, clouds so thick that you can’t see anything, freezing temperatures, and hot sun. But on the day I visited for the first time, it was warm and clear with high visibility.
In addition to the astonishing scenery, there is an energy at the summit that I have never experienced anywhere else. The land itself has a visible and pulsating aura or luminous field, almost like the heat waves that come of an asphalt highway in the desert, but mystically different. Pele, the volcano goddess of Hawaii, now lives on Big Island, where there are four active volcanoes. Although she is often thought of as ferocious and wrathful, her presence on Maui has a sense of sweet and tranquil luminescence, as if her work on this island is done and she is now at peace here.
In addition to the astonishing scenery, there was a strange sound in the air, an extremely high-pitched ringing—“zzzzzzzzzz”—that felt like it was the sound of silence itself. It had an oddly faint and deafening quality at the same time, as if it were somehow sonically cleaning my ears and sinuses. I couldn’t believe that none of the other visitors there seemed to notice this sound, but once I pointed it out to Domenic, he heard it too.
Before we began walking the long and well-worn path down into the crater, we found a posted sign explaining that the ancient Hawaiians considered Haleakala (which means “House of the Sun” in Hawaiian) an extremely sacred place. The sign spoke of a time when only the Kahunas, or Hawaiian shamans, were allowed to come there, because the crater held so much Mana, or