All Power Comes From Within

The sixth principle of Huna is called "All Power Comes From Within" and it is related to the- hold your horses- the second-most important thing in life, according to the Huna philosophy.

Huna is very particular in this way. The most important thing bar none is love. Love is the end all and everything. Love is what everything is about, and even not-so-loving things are really only able to make love more recognizable no matter how mistaken they are or how hard they try otherwise.

But- big but- it's really hard to get that realization of love in your life if you doubt yourself. So if you don't doubt yourself, you can boldly give yourself permission to step up and do the unthinkable- chose to love yourself, either without any reason at all, or by deciding to pick a reason- any reason- all the time.

And if you do that boldly- chose to love yourself, chose you are deserving to love yourself and that you can and should- and chose not to listen to any ideas to the contrary- that is confidence.

In a way, you are always perfectly confident. You believe something. You- and physically, that you, your body aspect- that is a thought. Your full self's invention, if you will, with enough power behind it to physically exist. So no matter what you do you are always powerful enough to exist, which is no small feat. But it doesn't stop there.

The rough job is done by incarnating, if you will, and now you can use the same thought-energy process that brought you here to be here and do things- to surf the waves of life. And so you think your own thoughts that usually involve your previous bigger corporeal thought. And so when you think that thought, and when you think about it for a while, a certain amount of power builds up around that thought, thinking momentum so-to-speak. And this movement of unshaped, unseen energy pouring into a thoughtform, this is power. No more, no less. The energy is the movement. Not necessarily exactly the way our current physics describes it, but similar. A thought form vibrating stronger and stronger until it is dense enough to physically appear. Feelings come I from emotionally grasping this process of flowing energy, of thought movement.

Since this is a very mechanical process that happens in the unseen world I'm pretty sure it's going to be technologically observable eventually, not that it really matters.

So you think a thought, you think it for a while, you might start moving around because it's becoming exciting, you might start breathing more because it's really exciting, and you might start doing a little pantomime show for yourself expressing how the thought feels, jumping up and down, moving your arms, expressing what you feel that way. And you might see that thought before your own eyes. And yeah a lot of the time we do all of these things or some of these things spontaneously because we like the way this idea, we had vibes. Or we can do all of these things on purpose as magical techniques. Or we can do them all at once as the best magical technique around.

Now the thing is, if we do those things, we feel that way our thought feels, and eventually it will physically happen when it meets that magical energy threshold were it can no longer contain itself and bursts into existence on this level we all call our life in physical reality.

Now why are we perfectly confident? Because we are already doing these things. The question with the kind of confidence that we mean here, investigating the sixth principle- the Huna confidence- with this we mean, what are we confident in? Are we confident in those things that will make us happy, powerful and successful? Or are we confident in those things that have us living lives flinching from existence, expecting pain and feeling weak and inconsequential? Regardless- it's your power that's doing the job.

Now the good news is that it's a much easier job to redirect the ultimate confidence that you already have into subject matters that are more to your liking than to build up confidence that was never there in the first place. You don't have to pull confidence out of thin air. You just have to change the patterns you think by.

So if we are confident in the wider sense, how do we have to think to be confident in the Huna sense? The key attribute to well-developed confidence is consistency in your thinking. This is probably the most difficult thing to do in the world if you're not used to it. But- good news again- once you get used to it a bit it gets easier, and eventually, effortless. It gets more and more fun, too.

By far the most common way of thinking is to react to the world before us. It's for the most part the way we were taught to live. And it doesn't really matter what type of old school belief system you come from- king or pawn, so-to-

speak- as long as your thinking is reactionary you're going to get the strange mixture of chaos and the vaguely familiar with the occasional novelty coming from other people. This is the most familiar way of living for most of us in most of our cultures. But that is beginning to change.

So how you change that is you start imagining things like they are already there. In other words, instead of thinking in whatever way whatever is in front of your nose is already vibing- causing you to have very haphazard, very mixed, very chaotic and turbulent thoughts- you tone that down. You don't necessarily stop dealing with everyday events unless you are feeling extreme or want to visit an environment geared at helping you do that, like ashrams, monasteries and retreats. But if you don't want to go monastic, you can just kind of be a bit minimalistic when it comes to everyday events and deal with them while attaching as little importance to them as possible, which is the same thing as placing as little attention on them as is necessary to deal with them successfully.

Traffic ticket, ok, pay the darn thing, forgive yourself, quick check for important lessons ok no obvious ones there never mind- back to imagining living in great wealth and amazing success in your particular way. Feels a lot better than fretting about the ticket, doesn't it? It is that way because the fretting comes with emotions, and they don't feel so good, and that is because you are placing your confidence in the reality of unpleasant things.

Another activity that is culturally common but can be reinterpreted in a Huna confidence way is trying and failing. Commonly, you might muster up the courage to attempt a great thing and have it not work out the way you want on the first try and then you retreat in shame and never try it again. That was terrible! I'm never doing that again!

This reminds me of my first day snowboarding, the only place I could practice being the village hill where all the kids were who already knew how to do it. Hilarity ensued, but eventually I got the knack of it. I never really ignited my taste for winter sports that much but I liked longboard-skateboarding in the city so much I decided to repeat my snowboarding failures with surfing and I loved it. (Surfing was also nice because failing meant taking a swim rather than tumbling down an icy slope). So, after my first day snowboarding, I could have packed my board and said- that's it! No more of that. But I didn't. I never became a snowboarding master but for some reason I just didn't give up that easily even back then with things I wanted to do, so I just kept going until I could get down the hill.

In other words, what happens in your physical reality is not that important. You can play around with the subject of something you would like to be doing, and if it doesn't work, that's still good! I find it's good to make the best of it and see if there is something to be learned, but you don't even have to do that. You can let the energy buildup take care of that.

The important thing is that you keep thinking those thoughts that feel good, and it's good that once you've found some that are kind of general and feel really good to you that you just keep thinking those.

So if you really really really know deep down that you are good and loveable- simply because you started thinking those thoughts and it gathered momentum until it feels like a self-evident fact to you, at which point it is a fact- after all, facts are simply highly energized thought-forms that someone dreamed up. So if you believe that, and then you happen to be single and on a date and also distributing an expensive bottle of red wine all over your and your new friend's clothes for some kind of reason- now if you really really feel that you are very lovable, if you have absolute confidence in your lovability, then you might still feel embarrassed because it might be natural to feel that in those circumstances, but on the grander scheme of things it won't matter. It might be that that person might be completely put off by your bold display of conventional imperfection, and you might even feel a little silly, but those things are just human experiences. Whether there is love for you has absolutely nothing to do with that, and your feelings and people's general response to you will simply have no bearing on your emotions in the sense that you simply never were on a life-or-death game of questioning your own worth. Of course you will be emotionally effected in a natural and fluid way by your immediate environment, that's just playing the game the way it was meant to be played. But it does mean is that you are not guided in your grandest ambitions and direction by the passing remarks of a stranger or a show you see on TV... unless you chose to be. By all means use what you get when it reinforces something that you chose to believe about yourself. You can be selective and let in affectedness. But the point with confidence is that you don't have to and it is your choice.

Experienced a mishap? Ooooh yeah mishap feelings... whoopsie!!! Bumbleation nation!!! By all means make fun of yourself if you realized that you were a bull in a china shop and a situation is just really funny if you think about it. And the thing is, you can do this because you are confident in your worth. There is really no greater way to make sure you will feel flawed than to strive for perfection, because when disaster does strike, and it will, because the universe is spontaneous and growing and you never can account for everything, and don't need to- then it will be a matter of your self worth versus the world, because you bought into this idea that your worth depends on something. But you don't need to do that. You can make a choice to believe that your worth is infinitive, that your love is complete, and that you are absolutely amazing regardless of what happens. That is confidence, the Huna way. That is making use of your authority to take the bold step of deciding what it means when things happen. That is true confidence. Now the paradox here is that when you embrace those situations that previously had you feeling less-than-confident- or confident in unpleasantness- they might not immediately go away, but they will certainly stop meaning anything you don't want them to. So it's good to take a little bit of creative time- in other words, ask your higher self to come up with ideas- for meanings for situations that might bother you that feel good to you.

Oh no, I didn't get rejected outright at all. I just met someone who isn't comfortable being reached out to. That's okay, I'm fine. Now, once you start thinking that way- you might discover a few times that this is actually true, you might discover someone opening up on the self-help form saying "Help, I constantly reject people I like because they freak me out!". So at that moment you stop making things about you because you simply trust to believe your interpretation no matter what, and the nice part is you won't be particularly hard-pressed to be disproven because you're not out doing all the dances that one can do when one is trying to prove oneself by arranging circumstances by hand, so to speak- a very frustrating way of life and inherently self-defeating.

So these are just examples- you don't have to believe anything in particular that I mentioned here to be confident, you can chose all your own style of thinking and ways of interpretation, the point here with the confident is to chose the way you interpret things and base it on what makes you feel good.

Now feeling good might bring up with associations of junk food but that's not what I mean- emotional junk food, the "cheap thrill", that is not feeling good. That is just temporarily feeling good. That's not what I mean. That is a process of partially shifting a belief but then ignoring the bigger part of it on purpose because it is too painful to face. Now there's nothing wrong with that happening to you- and here I am giving a suggestion for reinterpreting again, chose your own as you see fit- it's just a part of finding out what you believe in the first place so you can use your confidence to change it. And what do you use your confidence to change things to? Anything you like, of course, but the generic suggestion for complete happiness in life according to Huna is: Chose something loving. Put some good in if there is none. That's the idea here- you use your confidence to achieve love. And you start with the stuff you've good and develop it in your unique style, but if you do it the Huna way, you will always be moving towards love by developing greater confidence. Of course, it all starts by being aware of your thoughts (the first principle, "The World Is What You Think It Is", which is about the skill of awareness), clearing out the really bad ones by rejecting them or redirecting them so you can function, as first aid (the second principle, which is about the skill of "clearing"), developing your ability to focus so you can bring your thoughts back to the ones you prefer (the third principle, which is about the skill of "focusing"), and directing your awareness into your surroundings in the present moment so you can charge your focus with all the energy of all your being (the fourth principle, now is the moment of power, which teaches the skill of "presence"), so you can love yourself and others (the fifth principle, "to love is to be happy with", which teaches the skill of loving, as in knowing what exactly love is and isn't and chose love), and then you can do all those things in a continuous way, without any possibility of being permanently distracted from it, and no wavering into thoughts that are different, which is this principle- all power comes from within, which teaches the skill of confidence. There is one more principle, and that is the seventh one- "Effectiveness is the measure of truth", which teaches the skill of harmony.

Now we talked a great deal about power. Power is about applying yourself in a consistent and persistent way and building authority- the boldness to decide how things are with regards to you and your surroundings, and act on it. You are the authority. You are the boss. You are in the driver's seat- or, if you prefer, the one who decides what goes into the navigation app (you can say take me anywhere if that's what you want but it might get old quickly, at least it did in my experience, but that one's very specific to me, others really like to be vague, or semi vague- the level of detail is entirely up to you. Anything from "take me anywhere" to "take me somewhere nice" to "take me somewhere refreshing" to "bring me love" to "bring me a short person with brown hair and a knack for playing the bag pipes to love me" is valid).

Now let's have a little look at the "within" part. Because what we so far entirely left out is this idea that someone else can come up and take that power away from you, or that you have to ask someone else permission to do what you want to do. Those are pretty common ideas, but they do have their roots with people who didn't necessarily have the best interests of your ancestors at heart. Or they might have had a limited idea of what the best interests of your ancestors might have been, well-meaningly guiding them into behavior that was all about there idea of goodness and not so much about every individual's. Think occasionally wise feudal lords and more-or-less benevolant theocrats. Those are the sorts of people who based all their activity on teaching about the power of that which is out there. Most benefited handsomely, and those who were taught these things, not so much. Most people who benefited in those societies might or might not have been openly peddling the ideas of power-out-there- such as God, or the kingdom, or patriotism, or whatever- but most certainly they weren't acting on them that much themselves. Well, they might have been, at least partially, but they most certainly made plenty of room for their own power as well, as when they were the one people had to go through to achieve the outer power, which is a distorted way of perceiving oneself to be self-empowered.

In a nutshell, Huna encourages you to simply chuck all those ideas into the trash. Sure there's God, and God wants well for you, in the same way you want the cells of your body to be good at absorbing oxygen so you can run around faster. But you're not going to get out a microscope and tell a cell they were bad, or they should give all their oxygen to someone else, that stuff is ludicrous. Now you can live in such a society and kind of go along on the surface and do your own thing on your own time, there is nothing wrong with that, but then you don't take it seriously so it has no effect on you. That is playing different games at different times- the important thing is which game you play with yourself- the one you feel most strongly about. The neat thing is the more confident you are, the less necessity you might feel to show people how powerful and free you are. If you are really really confident it doesn't matter that the local priest thinks he's in charge (the conventional types I'm talking about tend to be male, due to cultural reasons. in a lot of our societies...). You only really get in trouble when you feel the need to confront authority, which you can do if it is part of your plan to take over the parish, but if that's not what you are after, you're simply creating disharmony, not necessarily achieving anything. And you can achieve harmony in different ways as well, for example by gaining the parish's trust, if that's what you want to do. Then you can turn everything on its head once you're in charge, if you want to. But the easiest way to be your own person is to just go along with whatever in whichever way is easiest and just think your own thoughts and feel your own free self-chosen feelings and then the physical way into a freer existence can be trusted to appear. But when it does- when something really feels like an opportunity- it's good to act. But you might not even have to do that, a lot of great opportunities just feel like fun weird stuff.

So the idea here is simply that there is no one outside of yourself who is in charge. You are. And now we can take that one a step further, into a place where you can get into trouble for even mentioning it because a lot of people are invested in not being in control because they don't know how to forgive themselves.

Now the simple truth is- according to Huna, remember it's just a suggestion for thinking, but it is one that has made a lot of people happy and successful so it's good to try the way of thinking out like a new coat to see if it fits rather than having a long debate about it- according to Huna, the simple truth is that everything's your fault. Stubbed your toe? Subconscious mind was getting conflicting information. Pigeon pooped into the first bag of french fries like forbidden mayo? You might be having a hard time accepting good things coming to you! And so on. Everything, everything, that was you. The government is the way it is because of you.

Now that might seem like a terrible recipe for a horrible guilt trip, and it really is unless you combine it with the fifth principle: Love. The government isn't so bad. If you bought into certain ideas about it it might look that way, but things only get bad when you criticize them because they disconnect you. Now you might come across a few fellows who hold really terrible ideas that don't serve anybody, but you can trust that in the greater scheme of things they have their place in the grand evolution of thought. Remember that we chose this life by choice! If everything already started out as pure love, where would we go from there? That's why we've got both, and we evolve. But the good news is those things don't really have to concern you that much. They do also happen because of you, because you are participant in this reality, and taking a further view everything is you (the fourth level of reality) and at least can be experientially as well, so what you do is you give it its space and bless the things about it that are good, and if it even just is that they are serving as a bad example. But then you forgive them and move on.

And even those smaller irritations that come your way, they become a lot less terrible because you are a lot less effective when you don't withdraw yourself from the experience and when you accept that on some level, you are part of all this. For example I went down to the municipal government's office to fill out a form, and it honestly took about ten attempts to ask the lady there to change the phrasing on their web site to be more complete so people didn't have to go home to fetch things and come back. First I had to explain to her that I wasn't attacking her as a person, then that there was nothing wrong she was doing things I just thought there were always opportunities for improvement when you look for them, and then finally she realized I wasn't trying to get her fired, but that I just wanted her to jot down my suggestion and file it away. It took about 20 minutes of intense arguing and standing my ground, but she eventually did it, and this was not a pleasant back and forth- this was German government level misanthropic phrasing and hindmost-covering. But I persisted and eventually the lady realized that compared to dealing with me more, complying seemed really easy. And there I went. But why did I do that? I could have just performed the customary swearing on the way out. But I decided that, the government, that's me, so I can honestly say I have improved the German government in a small way, which is no small feat. It's called "civic mindedness" in common terms, but I realized that doesn't mean you have to be a sucker, quite the contrary- it's a form of love. It's about loving the people who live around you, including the way they are organized. That love comes back endlessly once you get the knack of it, and I come from a place where I mistrusted the government so much I decided anarchy was better, no matter what form. I changed my mind... I still would like a little more fluidity in how we do things but it's good to take one step at a time, and I realized I don't have to make such a big deal about the areas of government that used to bother me and I can really feel effective and confident about the areas that are good. And now, somehow, interestingly, since the episode with my suggestion to the government lady, I've only come across hyper friendly, super helpful clerks. I didn't know that would happen but darn this was worth it. I improved the government physically by making the suggestion, but I shifted to a better reality by expressing my love and confidence in the way I could.

So if the government, the (almost) only people whose job it is to use violence, can't stop you at being yourself and shifting to better places- no one can. So it's good to chose your action to express your confidence, because then you shift your world to places that reflect that. And then you realize more and more that there is no one else there who could stop you from doing anything that you consider important, because you can chose for yourself what to think, how to think, when to think, and how much, and your reality will reflect all those things.

Build up that confidence. Bring about the love. Be well!