Continuing to explore different people’s view of Huna and what value it gives them, I present some words written by an old friend Peter Devine in response to the question ‘Tell me five things you love about Huna’. I hope this inspires you.
I was introduced to Huna on 8th June 2008. How do I remember so precisely? Unfortunately not because I have a fantastic memory, but because it was the day after my daughters birthday in the year I turned 40. And I know that because I was in England to attend my school reunion. I never actually made it to the reunion, but my best friend from primary school did, Pete Dalton. The next day we met up…
As a lapsed Catholic I’d abandoned any kind of spiritual practice, condemning all religious beliefs as false, and religions merely as archaic forms of control. However, 27th of February 1996 I’d had an experience that changed that. At home in Denmark, I was visited by my Grandmother, who had been placed in a morphine coma 1000 miles away in Birmingham. She told me that everything was now good. Two days later she breathed her last breath.
I consider myself a scientifically minded person, but nothing I knew from physics could explain this. It really did re-open my mind to the dimensions we cannot see, but nonetheless can experience, and I believe this openness is essential to begin studying spiritual practices, and to incorporate them in our lives.
Pete told me about Huna. He told me of his visits to Hawaii to meet Serge Kahili King. He told me of his many years of study, that had lead him onto this path. I’m a web developer, and Pete needed a website, so I started work on the first version of urbanhuna.org. Pete sent me Serge’s book “Mastering the Hidden Self” and it remains my Huna bible to this day. Before reading this book I had no model of the human being that I could use for anything apart from anatomy. It completely transformed my experience of life.
Huna has taught me many things, introduced me to new ways of “thinking”, and it’s really this that I would say I love.
The 7 principles of Huna, and model of the self gave me a framework to organise all my many thoughts, feelings and intuitions on life. I love that it is both compact and complete. While the concepts on the surface appear straight forward, it took me many hours of meditation to both begin to understand them and make them part of my life.
The realisation that truth is personal and not absolute has made it much easier to accept and understand others and has lead to better relationships. This manifests itself in being able to listen to someone I don’t agree with without feeling compelled to interrupt and disagree. I try only to express my personal opinion on things I consider important, which is far from everything.
Huna taught me the role of beliefs and how they work to shape our experience of life. Faith is one thing, understanding how faith works is another. Initially it is quite disconcerting and yet through experimentation becomes both obvious and powerful. You do have to be very careful when addressing this phenomena with others. For the uninitiated, a talk about beliefs can easily be interpreted as a personal attack. I find trying explain the nature of faith results in people thinking I’m trying to claim some kind of superiority. I’ve learned in any case, not to enter into it.
The dialog with the inner self is absolutely the most valuable, practical tool I have discovered through Huna. My mediation has been from the very start, with the explicit intent of strengthening the communication channel between conscious self and ku. I realise many practitioners think of programming their subconscious self. For me it was more a case of trusting it, listening to it and giving it more control.
I have chosen the belief that my ku knows best. I know it works out all the ramifications of a decision or choice very quickly, and gives me the guidance that is right for me. Previous to Huna, all choices were made very consciously and very deliberately, yet far from successfully.
I talk from the ku, not from the head. I no longer imagine my thoughts originating from my brain. The head is useful for adding social filters, etc. but I rarely have to think about what I am going to say. This is a massive contrast to the years before becoming a Huna practitioner. I used to consciously construct, judge and edit most of what I said and it was exhausting. When I am in flow, I use very little energy on thought, and this gives me more mental and physical energy for other things. I am known for my ability to sleep quickly and soundly, whereas there was a time I was an insomniac. The ability to switch off the mind can not be rated highly enough. I often find 4 hours sleep to be sufficient, even preferable. My body needs more rest than my head. I very rarely dream.
I can only theorise as to why this might be, and my theory goes something like this: if we experience with the conscious mind, and what we experience doesn’t quite fit with our subconscious model of reality, the mind and ku have a dialog in our sleep. If however that channel is open all day long, there doesn’t manifest any inconsistencies to be processed while asleep, where the subconscious is in charge.
Whenever I re-read “Mastering the Hidden Self” I realise that I have taken certain things and given them much emphasis, whilst others I have had no use for and ignored. Huna, allows for this in it’s last principle, let effectiveness be your measure of truth. And knowing that truth is personal, I have made my personal interpretation of Huna. So I would not expect my use of it to be like any others, or even my understanding of it.
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Being curious, I would love to hear your five reasons for loving Huna. Visit: Tell Us Your Five Reasons To Love Huna and let me know. I would love to hear from you.
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