Increasing Intuition

If you've followed my website and newsletters for any time you know I am a student and Kumu of the ancient Hawaiian system of Huna. Huna is considered to be one of the more pure systems as it was untouched until the missionaries arrived in Hawaii and forced it underground. For years it was hidden in the chants and the hula. Finally, the Kahunas (priests & healers) felt it was safe to begin openly teaching the ways again.

Huna has fascinated me not only because it is a simple interpretation of ancient universal laws and thinking but also due to the Kahunas grasp of how the mind works. The more recent advances in physics and medicine correspond to the teachings of the earliest Kahunas.

The Kahunas said that everything and everyone was connected through what they called aka. Aka refers to the energy substance that surrounds us and connects us through "cords". We connect and communicate to others and to our Higher Self through these aka cords.

Their view of man was similar to Freud's with an Unconscious mind called the Low Self. A Conscious mind called the Middle Self and a guardian or Higher Self sometimes referred to as the Amakua. The Lower Self is the seat of emotions and memories and controls the body. The Middle Self is our mental decision making aspect. And the Higher Self is our connection to Divine Spirit and is able to perform miracles. We communicate with our Higher Self through the aka connections from the Low Self who then relays the information to the Middle Self.

The Kahunas believed that everything in our outer world had a correspondence to our inner world. By changing your thoughts you could effect change in your experiences. Fortunately, we have the assistance of the "god within us": our Higher Self. But like children, if we feel guilt or shame, we won't contact that part of us which is connected to Spirit. Our job is to discover that it is through love that we let go of this guilt and shame which then allows us to fully express that "god within us".

To the Hawaiians, there was no psychological illness. As the Higher Self of each person can do anything, then the only time there would be a problem is if our Lower Self was out of alignment with the Higher Self. Like a child, the Lower Self avoids the parental like Higher Self if guilt or shame is present. Since the only sin to the ancient Hawaiians was causing harm to self or another, forgiveness was of prime importance.

Since the Kahunas knew there was a connection between their inner world and the external world, they often used a classic shamanic vision quest of a garden to address a seeker's problem. The garden symbolizes the person. By healing the garden, we heal the person. The Kahuna would enter the underworld, search for objects and symbols to give him an understanding of the issue and then repair the garden as needed. As everything is alive and conscious, the objects would speak and relate what they stood for and how to repair them.

This is a great technique to gain insight into your own issues or to get needed information. If you’re a healer and have a client’s permission, you can use this to intuitively gain insight into their presenting problem. You might be surprised at just how "psychic" you are!

The Garden Path:

1. Begin by taking slow deep breaths making your exhale twice as long as the inhale.

2. Once you feel relaxed, imagine you're walking on a path and notice how it feels beneath your feet. Pay attention to the feel of the breeze on your skin and any smells in the air.

3. Eventually, you'll come to a garden gate. Enter and you'll find yourself in your own sacred garden (or another's if you're working with someone else).

4. Slowly move around the garden, noticing the symbols and objects you encounter.

5. Begin to focus on each symbol or object, asking what they represent and how can you restore them to health?

6. Be sure and give yourself plenty of time to get the answers you're seeking.

(If you're working with another person, you might verbalize what you're seeing and the responses you get. Rather than attempt to   interpret the meaning, you only need to relay the information.)

7.   If for any reason you don't get a response, ask your Higher Self for 

      assistance. After all, the Higher Self is our link to the collective unconscious.

8. When you have the information you need and know what's necessary for healing, you need to express gratitude to your Lower Self, the symbols and your Higher Self.

9. Then, begin to gently allow yourself to return to your waking state.

You may wonder how a simple garden visualization would help “heal” yourself and others. If we consider the fact that our unconscious mind or Lower Self doesn’t know the difference between what is happening now and what happened in the past, we can begin to understand the process better. For instance, imagine you’re biting into a lemon wedge and the juice is exploding in your mouth. If you actually do this, you’ll find that the saliva glands start producing more saliva and some of you will even discover your mouth puckering. Now, you weren’t really biting into a lemon, but your unconscious can only go by what you are thinking or imagining right now. Therefore, when we do the garden, we give our Lower Self the ability to talk with us directly. Then we “heal” the issues in the garden. To the unconscious mind, we are actually healing our bodies at the same time!

To learn more about Huna or other shamanistic techniques, please contact me, visit my web site or check out The Lessons of the ShamanicMasters© training.