Before we begin, I’ll share a few thoughts about cultural appropriation. You will see in the pages that follow that I use generalized terms such as “the Hawaiians” or “Hawaiian spirituality,” and so on. These expressions have a myriad of associations for people, and I am in no way suggesting that I speak for all Hawaiians or the entirety of their spiritual traditions, history, or culture. To do so would be incredibly presumptuous on my part, well beyond the scope of my knowledge, and antithetical to my efforts. Instead, I present universal shamanic truths that are prismatically demonstrated in the
Hawaiian paradigm.
This is really no different than Buddhist meditation, Qi Gong, or yoga, among many other spiritual practices finding their way to the West. Western teachers of these modalities seldom, if ever, claim quite the same “authenticity” as those teachers found in Tibet, China, or India, and the best Western teachers would never even attempt to do so. There are slight and inevitable shifts whenever the indigenous wisdom of one culture is translated for the psyche of another, and part of the Western teacher’s job is to make cross-cultural correlations as accessible as possible.
What makes any spiritual truth truly universal is its being substantive enough to be built upon, geographically transported, reinterpreted, and, most importantly, cross-referenced with other spiritual traditions. We all benefit greatly by “feeling into” other cultures through our own lens, for it is in discovering the overarching commonalities that we share that allows us to grow together as a global village.
I will never fully understand what it is to be Hawaiian. My hope with this book is to provide a loving portrait of some of the islands’ shamanic traditions, particularly those that are echoed cross-culturally, meanwhile, at the same time, remaining well aware that although there may be some who might take exception to my efforts, I make them in the spirit of celebration, reverence, and respect of a land, its people, and its traditions—which I feel Westerners would be wise to learn from and emulate.
My ultimate goal then, is not the impossible task of offering you a definitive vision of Hawaii, but rather to help you awaken an inner paradise of your own making, one that Hawaii exemplifies just by being Hawaii.
The Kahuna and the Student
Offering Huna teachings freely is to do something that it is not traditionally Hawaiian, and is actually contrary to the ways in which this wisdom was typically passed down from one generation to the next. You may have heard the axiom, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” While this is true, to a certain extent, from a Huna perspective we think of everything that we experience as a reflection of our thoughts, so the reverse is possibly more appropriate: As Serge Kahili King once said, “When the teacher is ready, the student will appear.” The Hawaiian word for “student” is haumana, which has an interpretive meaning indicating that the pupil’s willingness to learn gives Mana, or power, to the teacher.
For in Hawaiian tradition, it is the student, through his or her questioning of the Kahuna, or shaman, that guides his or her own path to the knowledge, and empowers the Kahuna to provide just the right curriculum for each individual. The Kahuna doesn’t volunteer information, but responds only to questions. I have heard Serge Kahili King say, “You want to be my apprentice? Okay, be my apprentice.” And then he’ll stare at you, waiting for you to make the
next move.
Traditionally, the wisdom-keepers of Hawaii were notoriously tight lipped about sharing Huna. But this wasn’t because of a desire to keep it secret. Rather, it was about preserving their culture and its wisdom by holding it in sacredness, imbuing it with value by carrying it close to their hearts with reverence. As with anything that is precious, it was believed that discernment is needed around where and when it is appropriate to allow Huna to be seen.
There was also the influence of discriminatory legislation against certain spiritual practices, instituted by invaders of all kinds and sometimes by the native Hawaiian rulers as well. It wasn’t until 1989 that all of the laws against “sorcery,” some of which were punishable by a year in prison and a thousand-dollar fine, were finally overturned. Given that Hawaii has historically been victim to much usurpation by the West—and has suffered its own fair share of native in-fighting—many islanders downplayed or even hid their indigenous spiritual knowledge over the years so that it would appear less valuable or powerful to those who would try to eradicate it.
There are stories of early missionaries and others from the West asking the Kahunas about their legendary magic. They would receive vague and shrugging responses from the Hawaiians, who told the Westerners that the ancient ways no longer existed, and possibly never did—downplaying Hawaiian “magic” to be nothing more than local folklore.
But for the serious student, there were practical benefits to this conservative guarding of the knowledge. The fact is that we can’t learn what we don’t want to learn, and we can’t know what we aren’t ready to know. Knowledge given at the wrong time is at best knowledge wasted, and at worst knowledge exploited or misused. You will find that to practice Huna effectively requires you to take one hundred percent responsibility for yourself—and this responsibility is not to be taken lightly.
Huna says that everything that happens to you is an effect of your thoughts. What exists within you is mirrored back to you by the outside world, which means that your fingerprints are on absolutely everything that you experience. The fact is, sometimes we don’t want to heal or grow, because that would mean that we would have to do something different. Healing and resistance go hand in hand, they are two sides of the same coin, and to take responsibility for yourself is to acknowledge that resistance, and carry on in spite of it.
Neuroscience has identified a default network in the brain that causes us to constantly replay the past and worry about the future. This is a survival mechanism that ensures a continuity of self that remains fixed and unchanged by keeping us in perpetual relationship to a rigid perspective of who we think we are. This is the reason why, when we attempt to make changes in our lives, to meditate, or even just center ourselves, our minds start to chatter incessantly. We are literally hard wired to resist change, even positive change.
Time and time again, I have seen how a client’s resistance to their own healing will energetically reveal itself and try to take over. Clients will manifest parades, accidents, traffic jams, or anything else that can prevent them from making it to my office. The proverbial story of “the car breaking down on the way to the healer” exists for a reason. Being on the healing path often leads toward shifts in identity, which can be scary—habits, friends, careers, relationships, and even family members may have to fall away. The biggest success stories that I have witnessed in my clients involve those who approach their healing with honesty, consistency, and care. The path of development is not a straight line, it’s a wave of ups and downs, expansions and contractions, and it is only by continually honoring our sincere yearning to grow and create that we stay on that path.
There is great wisdom, then, in the Kahunas not offering information, but only responding to the queries of the students. This puts the responsibility on the student to enter into a present-time process that requires them to feel into their own internal experience for guidance. The Kahunas were also meticulous about responding only to the exact questions being asked and offering nothing more. As the student gained readiness, subtle shifts in their questions would lead to further revelations of deeper dimensionalities embedded in the knowledge.
We each have an intuitive voice inside that lives deep within our body. The Hawaiians call this Na’au, which means “guts,” “intestines,” and, most pointedly, “the heart of the mind.” The Na’au is our gut instinct, the seat of our feelings—or, as it is sometimes called, “the second brain.” The ancient Hawaiians believed that the intellect and the emotions were essentially one and the same; because from their perspective, there was great wisdom in synthesizing thought and emotion to be in agreement