Huna Healing-2

 

II. The Elements of the Individual

Earlier we told you that Huna has a unique way of looking at who we are. Clearly it is important that while we can divide who we are up into various component parts, these component parts are never really separated from each other. This division, unlike the way Western medicine divides up the human being, is simply an expediency for communicating about each aspect. The reader should always remember that there is no separation of one from the other in Huna. They all work and operate simultaneously and depend on each other. For this exact reason Huna integrates mind, body and spirit into a whole that can operate to heal us and help prevent future illness.

1. Each individual has three Selves, consciousness or minds:

a) There is the Subconscious Mind, more commonly referred to as the low Self or Lower Self
b) There is the Conscious Mind, more commonly referred to as the Middle Self
c) The Superconscious Mind, more commonly referred to as the Higher Self (In Huna referred to as our aumakua).

2. There are three types of Mana or life force energy, one for each of the three selves:

a) The mana, life force energy, of the lower self, also referred to as mana
b) The mana, life force energy, of the middle self, also referred to as mana-mana
c) The mana, life force energy, for the Higher Self, also referred to as Mana Loa

3. Each of the three selves also has its own Aka Body:

a) The aka body and aka cord of the lower self
b) The aka body and aka cord of the middle self
c) The aka body for the Higher Self

4. There is the Physical Body

5. There is the soul of the individual
 

Each of us therefore, is made up of three selves (a lower self, middle self and a Higher Self), each of these selves has an aka body (one for the lower self, one for the middle self and one for the Higher Self), each of our three selves also has its own type of life force energy (mana for the lower self, mana-mana for the middle self and Mana Loa for the Higher Self). Finally, we each have physical body and a soul.

These component parts create who we are and how we function in the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual realms of life. In the next section, we will look briefly at each of these component parts and eventually we will show how they interact in causing illness and in healing it.

The Lower Self

The symbol of the lower self is the grasshopper. This same symbol was used by the Egyptians to represent their version of the subconscious or ka aspect of the person. The lower self was thought of by the kahuna as a "spirit," it is also the "automatic" self. It is awake 24-hours a day, day and night. It never sleeps. It merely lives inside of our physical body and uses it as its home. In turn it manages all of the biologic functions of the physical body. It beats our heart, but is not our heart, it tells us when we are hungry, it digests our food for us, it governs our immune system, it is the stress mechanism and it is in charge of our defensive and healing systems.

When Freud referred to it as the subconscious he knew only a small portion of what it did and yet even with knowing this very small portion, knowledge of its existence substantially changed the way medicine was ultimately to be practiced forever. The Huna master uses the knowledge of the lower self to heal and solve problems in a way that Freud could only have dreamed of using. With a clear understanding of the function and manner in which the lower self works, problems which were previously unsolvable suddenly become much easier to solve.

The lower self has several roles. At its most basic level it is responsible for our survival. Since it is always alert and working it can protect us even while we sleep. Many people believe that our dreams are messages from the lower self to the middle self, trying to communicate, trying to solve problems, or trying to educate and inform the middle self. Dreams may be simple coded messages or images which can represent themselves or are metaphors created by the lower self to inform the middle self what it wants it to know or believes it needs to know.

The lower self is the intelligence of the body/mind. It is made up of the reptilian brain and the autonomic nervous system and hence is also the driving force behind the stress mechanism, the immune system as well as the defensive, healing and repair systems of the body. In fact, we can say that the lower self is the stress mechanism as well as the immune system, defensive, healing and repair systems of the body. When it is functioning optimally, we are healthy. When it is thrown out of balance or when significant disharmony is created by the environment, other people, or wrong actions of the middle self, the lower self will first attempt to communicate this to the middle self, and then, if the middle self, or better still, if we do not solve the problem, it will begin to create one or more signs or symptoms as a form of intelligent communication to tell us what the conflict is and possibly, even how to solve it.

Take for example sitting on a tack. We do not usually just experience pain alone. Generally when we experience pain, we also experience one or more emotions at the same time. We may experience shock, fear, guilt, anger or surprise. These emotions exist within the lower self. They are in a sense our teachers. They are used by the lower self to teach and communicate with the middle self. When the lower self sends fear, it is telling us that there is potential danger. When it communicates anxiety, it is telling us that we are confused we have two pictures of the future or past that are inconsistent and it is not sure what is desired of it. Love tells us that we feel a positive sense of caring, an association with the person or object that the middle self is involved with. Each emotion has its own meaning. Each is formed as a physical and chemical response to a positive or negative situation, a memory of the situation or of an associated belief system. Without these beliefs, which are held in storage within the lower self emotions would be meaningless.

The lower self holds all memories for the middle self. Western science is having great difficulty at this time trying to figure out where memories are held. Initially, they believed that memories were stored in the brain, but time and time again parts of the brain would be damaged and memories would still survive. A later theory told us that memories may be stored in our muscles. The twentieth century Psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich believed that by working on muscles memories could be purged. To the Huna master memories are stored primarily in the lower self in a holographic form. The lower self can in turn store these memories in the aka body and possibly even in various parts of physical body. The brain merely acts as a memory manager much like a disc operating system acts to remember where bytes of information are stored on a computer memory disc. (Did you ever wonder how someone came up with the idea of a disc operating system to manage memory--there is nothing new out there only people who recognize how life really is made up?)

The Middle Self

This second "spirit" was often referred to as the Uhane or the spirit that talks. It is the consciousness of the middle self or conscious self. It could best be thought of in simplistic terms as our personality, the who we believe ourselves to be. This aspect of us is for the most part, the only part of our self that we will really ever know. To the medical profession this aspect has long been perplexing. The average medical doctor has great difficulty understanding why people do, what they do. The Huna master, however, had several thousand years to learn, grow and understand what modern physicians are just trying to understand.

The middle self is our conscious awake self. It can operate only for limited periods of time and then it needs to shut down to rest or sleep. It knows of the world only by what our senses tell it. If at any moment ALL input from the world around us, from our body, from the spiritual realm or from the Intelligence of the Universe were to be let in all at once, we would almost instantly be overloaded and unable to function.

Since our sensory system belongs to the lower self and since the lower self is always trying to protect the more fragile middle self, the lower self will only permit small amounts of information go up to the middle self at any moment in time. Scientists are aware of a part of the brain that acts as a filter, filtering out all sensation or information that is not essential to our aware self. Hence, the middle self lives in a kind of dream world limited by the scope and range of the body's sensory system and by what the lower self allows it to know and what it believes about what it does know.

You might have noticed that I refer to the lower self as "it" and the middle self as "we" or even as "I." This is no accident. We do not really know our lower self very well. Often we hear people say, "I am trying to get to know myself." Or we may say, "I am trying to find myself." Generally this really means we are trying to understand our lower self and its relationship to the middle self and the outside world. Most of us know our middle selves, for example, I am Allen. I know what I like, I know what I look like (my physical body that is), and I know what I don't like. What I don't know is how the lower self has reacted to my past memories, what it likes and what it doesn't like. I do, however, have some hints mediated by the way I feel.

For example when I eat escargots I don't feel good. "Why," I ask myself. "I can eat octopus, scallops, shrimps and I have no problem?" There is not much difference between these foods except in the belief systems and memories stored in the lower self.

I learned to eat octopus, scallops and shrimp and they had no negative connotation since they are all sea foods and "good for me!" But garden snails, "Yuck, they are slimy. I have seen them in the garden leaving a trail of slime and disgusting stuff after them." This belief system, held in the lower self, will trigger both emotional and physical changes that make me feel sick (which is, of course, not often) when I think about trying escargots.

This is the way the lower self works for us. It sounds negative, but it isn't. Remember when you just started to walk? One day you ran toward the street and your mother screamed, "No! Don't do that, come here at once." "You can get hurt, running into the street like that." Well your mother's negative tone, her anger, her drama impressed upon you that you shouldn't run out into the street and you probably never did it again. Now, whenever you come to the edge of the street you stop, look and listen both ways and then, only when it is safe, walk across or into the street.

You see this process was ultimately developed to help protect us. Unfortunately when we do not understand it or know how to use it, when we don't learn from it, it can also work against us. In Huna we say that blocks are created. These blocks act to protect us, but unfortunately when they are indiscriminately created they can work against us. They can work to activate the stress mechanism, undermine the defensive and protective systems of the body and lead to physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual illness.

The interaction between the middle self and lower self is quite unique. The lower self operates like a robot doing whatever the middle self tells it to do. Besides holding all medium and long term memories for the middle self, the lower self has two additional functions directly related to the middle self. It carries out the orders of the middle self, and it maintains the physical body, its biologic processes and regulatory mechanism working smoothly and effectively.

Because of the lower self we do not have to think about how to make our heart to beat or how to digest our food. We do not have to worry about regulating our body temperature, releasing hormones nor maintaining the well-being of our organs and bodily tissues. The lower self maintains and regulates all biologic processes. It also memorizes all physical actions like walking, eating, driving a car, opening a door, writing, etc. Without the lower self we would be unable to survive for very long.

The middle self, on the other hand, is the command consciousness. It looks for food when the lower self tells it food is required (when we get hungry). It directs where the car we drive is going. It decides what is to be learned. It makes the decision when to go and tells the lower self to open the door. The middle self experiences the awareness of traumatic situations while the lower self moves the body to fight or flight from them.

The Higher Self, Our Aumakua

We mentioned briefly that our Higher Self is our Totally Trustworthy Totally Benevolent Parental Spirit. To the Hawaiians it was often represented by a deceased family member or a tribal symbol such as the shark. In some cases our aumakua is a deceased family member, in other cases it may be a nature spirit or an evolved being from the spiritual realm, a guardian angel. This is a subject discussed in many different philosophies and in most there are clear rules of who or better, what can be an aumakua. In Huna, who is not important. Rather only that it exists and it is there for us; to be used to help us and protect us. It is also our teacher and our personal connection to the spiritual world.

This third level of consciousness is usually entirely dismissed by the medical profession because it often reminds them of their primitive beginnings, as shamans and witch doctors. They will often refuse to acknowledge its existence claiming that it is religion and not part of the scientific process. The Huna master, however, knows that the Higher Self could not be separated from the other two selves or from the living body. They know that we can be called upon when needed to protect us, heal us and gives us anything we ask for. They understand that it is our connection to rest of Mankind, to the Godhead and the Intelligence of the Universe. In a time when so many people already suffer from poor self-image, unworthiness, loneliness, addiction and stress, knowledge of the Higher Self could make an enormous difference to all of us. Once we know how to call upon our Higher Self, our ability to heal our self is greatly increased.

Since the Higher Self does not need the body or its sensory systems, it is not blocked or limited in what it can see or do. It can see, or better still, "know" everything. Unlike the lower self or the middle self it is directly connected to the Intelligence of the Universe, hence it knows what the Intelligence of the Universe wants and it knows it directly.

In some disciplines each person is said to have more than one Higher Selves, possibly as many as seven, or even ten, aumakua. Again this is not of great importance in Huna. There is always at least one, but there can even be more aumakua watching over us. In fact, each of us has two types of aumakua. There is our personal aumakua (the word aumakua, like kahuna, is both singular and pleural at the same time) and there is our Poe Aumakua - our Totally Trustworthy Totally Benevolent Family of Parental Spirits. They can be thought of as our own personal company of angels or our heavenly hosts.

The Poe Aumakua is made up of many spirits which watch over us and act as resource for our Higher Self. While they are dedicated to us, they work primarily through our Higher Self. Our Higher Self can ask the Poe Aumakua to help us directly. They will usually agree, if what is asked for is deemed to be in our best interest. They can refuse, however, if it is not in our best interest. They cannot cause us harm for just as we commonly think of angels they can do no harm. They live the hurtless life is not just for humans as the Higher Self and Poe Aumakua live this life in spirit as well. While this is a spiritual law, it also a law for humankind.

Both our Higher Self and Poe Aumakua can see not only the present, but also the future and the past. They have no fear or negative feelings about death as they recognize that death is merely and illusion of physical existence. Nothing is born, nothing dies everything is energy and always in a process of evolution.

According to Huna, spiritual law tells us that we can ask our Higher Self for anything we want and if it is in our best interest our wish will be granted. This is not just a benefit but rather it is an integral part of Huna. We are here to have everything we desire. There is nothing that we cannot have, if we know how to ask for it. Our Higher Self can help us anytime we ask it for help. The reason why most people do not get what they want is because they either do not ask for what they want or they ask for it incorrectly. In another section we will discuss the basis of Huna prayer. Huna prayer is a powerful process which we can all use to bring to ourselves anything and everything we desire, with only two provisos as long as it cannot cause hurt to anyone else and it must be in our best interest that is, it will not in anyway, either directly or indirectly, cause harm to us.

To reinforce that Huna is not a religion we merely need to look at the Hawaiian word for God which is ke akua. It is a verbal directive. The concept of an all powerful God was relatively unknown to the Hawaiians in a sense they believed that such an all powerful God was much too far away and above them that He (or She) had little or no interest in them. In a sense, their belief in the Higher Self suggests that they believed that God had created the Aumakua system and gave them the role of being there for us as our Higher Self and Poe Aumakua.

Jesus clearly fit this concept of an Higher Self. He calls God, Father, and he tells us that he is the way to the Father. He could see the future and the past and he could give people whatever they ask for. It was simple for the Hawaiian people to see Jesus as an Higher Self, one with great power, who talked of love and the Aloha spirit. It was therefore easy for most Hawaiians to accept Jesus. Unfortunately most of the missionaries believed that the Hawaiian way of looking at things was primitive and that the Hawaiians were heathens who believed in ancestor worship, most never fully understood the power and beauty of the real Hawaiian belief systems.

To read the next article in the series, Huna Healing-3, click here.
 

©Allco Medical Enterprises, Inc. 2011