How To Take Charge Of Your Life

Now that most of the techniques and ideas in Huna Kupua have been shared on this blog, we'll be focusing on a new kind of article- the How-To. In these, we'll be going through processes of getting specific things done using Huna, with examples of chosing a goal, picking techniques to use, meeting challenges and persistently following through until a change has been achieved.

We'll start with the biggest one- taking charge of your entire life.

Don't worry- this may sound intimidating, but it's not about forcing yourself to go somewhere you "should" go, that very idea is completely foreign to Huna. We will simply learn from you which things are already very important to you, and acknowledge them so you can be yourself even better.

To give yourself direction, it's good to chose a core philosophy of life. There are lots of different ones, and personally, I chose Huna's- nothing else has ever given me that much freedom and still that much power. Huna's core philosophy is in its first principle:

The World Is What You Think It Is

Think about what this means. If you adopt this as your philosophy, and gradually act and think more in terms of it, you will much more easily be able to change your other beliefs where they don't serve you, after all your core philosophy says that your experience adopts to your thinking. You don't have to do that of course, but it is the Huna recommendation. Feel free to phrase it differently but make sure you don't limit the meaning.

Based on your core philosophy, it's a good thing to recognize which things are very important to you. Since your core philosophy is so free, you don't really needs to worry too much about how it relates to it, so whatever comes to mind will do. Generally, harmonious values are recommended- if the world is what you think it is, it makes little sense to try and control anyone else, since it's much easier to shift ideas and watch them change their behavior or become completely unimportant to your existence. But aside of that- value whatever you value! Being healthy, wealthy and wise... having a wonderful circle family and friends... a deeply meaningful and enjoyable career... lots and lots and lots of money... people on earth getting along with each other and having very little impact on the environment... new and exciting technology... being deeply in touch with your spiritual family... having spiritual skills... being a healer... fiddle around with grouping them and see if you can get about seven values. Here's an example from yours truly:

Philosophy: The World Is What You Think It Is

Values: Family and Friends, Abundance of Good Things, Harmony With The Environment (People, Animals, Plants and Minerals), Artistic Expression, Quirkiness, Weirdness, Curiosity and Invention, Teaching and Healing, Humor and Physical Pleasure.

(Yup, I do value physical pleasure enough to include it! I highly recommend it, if you can help it)

So knowing this informs a lot of things. For example, I just received a letter asking me to vote in my original home Switzerland, and to me, it was pretty easy to vote "Grünliberal", because they embody three of my values: Abundance (they like economic growth), Harmony with the environment (they value environmentalism), and curiosity and invention (because that's pretty important to any economy). Now, if you completely disagree with all of this that's fine, you can have completely different values! You could put security, tradition and national identity right in there and all I'd want to do is help you have a good life with those. I wanted to illustrate here how quick and easy it became to make a decision.

As an side- don't be surprised to find this sort of rather intellectual, abstract exercise on a spiritual blog about Huna. In our culture, we usually over-emphasize intellectualism, and I've gotten a lot of pleasure from letting that go where it has no business. But, being intellectual- letting the Lono do its job- is still very much a part of Huna where it makes sense. And since it's the Lono's main job to direct your attention and make decisions, it's a good thing to do that well. And you will see that in this way, Huna aligns perfectly with the sort of strategizing and finding-of-identity you could also find with people who are running an organization, for example.

So, after you have chosen your values- and don't worry a second if you have all of them or phrased them right or whatever, just write down or remember whatever you have right now, you can change them later as your understanding grows. Also note I said chosen- if you've always thought you've had a certain value, but you're not entirely comfortable with it- feel free to leave it out!

So after you've chosen your values- the next step is to make up a set of goals that more or less align with them. You don't have to do all of them at once, you can pick a value and develop that for a while and shift later, or you can set one goal per value and go with those. There is no right and wrong way to do this! The whole point, in the end, is only to take charge and get you moving. That's what matters. How exactly is entirely up to you, and it will always be the right way to do it! Like an artwork.

So, as an example, I'm going to decide to focus on abundance, family, pleasure and artistic expression, and set one goal each:

Abundance: Have ten million euros in my bank account.

Artistic Expression: I have made a painting that is widely considered the defining artwork of my time

Family: I always have really enjoyable evenings, weekends and holidays with my family. 

I chose some pretty big goals there- I made sure that I didn't consider at all what might be considered conventionally realistic. After all, your sense of realism comes from the attitudes that you hold- and a big part of Huna- one seventh to be exact, principle number 2, "There are no Limits"- is about freedom. Freedom from your own current ideas.

Note there are a few general limits. You have a Human form (if you're a nonhuman reader, do let me know! :)), and unless you intend to quickly die and be reincarnated, or permanently shift your entire consciousness to a different life (both possible but I don't recommend it in most cases)- that's the form you are going to have. But you can change almost everything else about it: how thin or muscular or fit you are, how beautiful and attractive you are, how nice you are, how charismatic you are, and whether you are generally appreciated and beloved by others. Further, all your circumstances. It's not even particularly hard, especially after you've done it once or twice- in the end, it's all just beliefchanging. And it's not harder to change your beliefs in one direction or another, it's all just changing beliefs- so you might as well just go for the goals that you really want!

Again, it doesn't matter in the least where you are in relation to your goals. Preferably, you should chose goals that are by leaps and bounds in a completely different place as you are right now- otherwise, why bother?

So now that you have chosen three goals, you want to do two different things. One, perform active imagining to make yourself feel like you already have achieved your goal. That's great for two reasons: One, it feels amazing, and you will be much better off in wherever you are right now for it. Two, the reason it feels amazing is that it changes your habitual thoughts, your beliefs. In addition to determining how you feel, your thoughts also determine the events that happen in your life. Those are not coincidental- they do happen in accordance to the processes of the reality you are in, in the easiest way, but you do get pretty much exactly what you believe, within this reality. So if you did abundance affirmations in the 1780s, you might end up owning a really nice farm with beautiful crops and good relations to nearby towns, taverns and marketplaces. Today, you might decide to launch some kind of online company. We don't really know the specifics, but it doesn't matter- how to do it is not your job, and that is the difference between this Lono work and the normal kind of Lono work in our culture. We determine what we want done in almost the exact same way as that happens in our culture and in our organizations. But then we set the goals, and we stop right there. We don't do anything about it, for the time being, except perhaps symbolically. It's just not our job. What we do is we perform mind techniques- we use magic. This is, after all, a Huna blog. And the go-to technique to get things done is the Haipule. To recap, in a Haipule, you:

1. Imagine what you want done
2. Describe in words how it has been done what you want done (your affirmation).
3. Breath deeply and visualize bright light enveloping what you want done
4. Physically pantomime what you want done (or, but only on receiving inspiration, and when you're sure it's not a fea response- work on what you want done)

So you perform at least one ten minute Haipule every day towards each goal. If that's too much, still write down or memorize your goals, but pick fewer to focus on. Something else that works really well is to do shorter Haipules- maybe even 30 seconds or so- but do ten of them per day.

The first time you do your Haipule for each goal, it's good to take a little more time, flesh them out, play with the imagining, play with the phrasing of the affirmation, and try different ways of breathing light into it all- I like the light to come from the stars and the center of the earth and meet in the middle forming a big swirl about at my belly button's height with the imagined pictures and words in it. Find gestures that fit- clenched fist, like "all right!!!!" usually expresses the excited, confident emotion very well I get from a good Haipule.

You can also do each component of the Haipule individually throught our day, but I like doing them all at once very much. If I can't quite get it together I might just do the affirmation.

So that was step one of two for Huna-style goal achieving- directly shape your thoughts throughout your day, and don't worry at all about acting towards your goal, just do your best to not act in ways that directly contradict your goal. So for a money goal- don't hound yourself to save two cents, don't obsess over discounts (although you can enjoy something cheap being good or that it's nice to pay less if it happens to be what you already want). Express to the extent that you can that you have achieved your goal in your everyday life.

Step two: Get rid of contradicting beliefs. It is quite possible that if you set a large goal, you will feel very excited and absolutely terrible simultaneously, and might be tempted to put it off or find something else to do or something. Don't- keep it up, as much as you can, and enjoy the excitement- but expect and pay very close attention to your bad feelings, because avoiding those is the primary mechanism of unnecessary self-limitation. People happily endure horrors to avoid facing their own negative beliefs because then at least they can blame someone.

So instead of blaming someone- every bit of negative feeling you get from imagining yourself having your goal- that's just you. The world outside has nothing to do with it, it's an entirely passive reflection of your own beliefs. So just handle it best you can, in a very pedestrian way, no super-pizzazz required, that comes from the imagining- and don't worry too much about it. It's been set up according to your old beliefs, and it's going to go away and be replaced by a world of your new beliefs, anyway. It's just not particularly important any more.

Instead, practice feeling what you really feel. There is a lot of pressuring happening in our culture to conform, both emotionally and otherwise, and usually this results in a lot of numbness. Numbness is physically achieved by your body-mind, your ku, by chronically tensing up muscles. Then the emotion in their is stuck. If you're like most people, you have plenty of stuck areas in your body. This is a bit of a pain in the ass, literally for some people. (Pardon the pun!!!) But it can also be a great valuable tool if you use it that way.

What I would like you to do to experience this is to bring up your goal really strongly through imagination or affirmation, and watch very closely the feelings in your body. Where does it ache? Where is it out of whack? Where is it sore, tender? Flaming, pulsing, biting, tinging, dullely aching? Where is that strongest? Feel that. Really feel it, best you can, and then feel a little more. Practice feeling your body from the inside as much as you can- it will tell you where you've got a problem.

Then pick the biggest one, and ask yourself: Why am I feeling this? What is the belief that is causing this feeling? And blank your mind- best as you can- and take the first thing that comes to mind as your answer. You might need a bit of prodding- you want to insist on a clear, concise statement that's the belief in a nutshell. No hemming and hawing, no diflecting- you want an answer. Sometimes you get one when you decide you won't stop until you do. In any case, practice getting this kind of answer from yourself until you can.

Once something suitable plops in your head, you will probably also get a bit of emotional catharsis, and you will feel a change or a shift in the area of your body that you noticed.

If the pain just went somewhere else- that's good! It means you got rid of one limiting belief, and can now see and feel the one in the layer below it. Stuck belief complexes come in layers- you peel off the top one, you find the next one. You might even get the same belief several times- don't worry, it's not the same, it's just similar. Belief complexes often do that

If you have real trouble getting the belief to expose itself in words, you can try any other symbol, not just words. You can ask yourself to make up some kind of symbol and just take whatever comes to mind as your answer, as long it feels representative of your sore area and you get a bit of catharsis from it, the emotional release is the sign that things are happening.

If you get a feeling that the belief ran its course, that's great! It's most likely gone. What you can also do for good measure, to stimulate similar beliefs out of existance, is phrase its opposite, and speak it a few times, or you can change the symbol you got into something that feels good to you. But you can also just keep going with the uncovering work until you get enough release, both approaches are valid. Personally, I tend to actively visualize for my exciting goals, and do more passive, listening uncovering work to get rid of old beliefs, somehow it fits well for me. But I also switch things up from time to time and pray for "good things happening" and change specific symbols that represent aches and pains. Both are valid for both purposes.

The important thing, it seems to me, in achieving things through changing your mind, is that you (1) actively install new beliefs in yourself and (2) uncover and evaluate old ones.

This is probably going to take quite a bit of time- but it does involve setting the direction for your life and almost guaranteeing achievement. Personally, I think that this is one of the most valuable things you can do.

I also like doing it in a hammock! If only for an old habit of provocation I have given up in most ways but not all!

The question is- where do I make room for all this? I have found that the first few times of making room for this can be a bit challenging because our days can seem so full and our energy so limited- we're tired. But it gets easier. What works really well to get started for me is: Before going to sleep in bed, or before getting up in the morning. In-between anything- getting up from work to go get lunch, do a Haipule before, and then go. Walking to the store, do a mind-only Haipule, (I try not to look too loony since I'm doing it in public and people aren't usually used to seeing emotion not related to surroundings. If they think I look a little loony I don't care, just don't want to trigger insecurity, because that would result in displeasure, and I value pleasure, did I mention?). Getting glass of water- do a Haipule. You can also set little alarms and reminders to do your Haipule. For the belief-release work- I built the habit of doing it whenever I don't feel that great in some way, just immediately release. Can feel exhausting at first but is oh so liberating. Once you get these habits a little bit in place, you can expect to have a lot more energy, so doing the techniques is a lot easier as well! But usually, some resistance will always be there when you give yourself a new direction, that's just normal- but the stuff you get to do gets bigger and brighter and more amazing. That's growth for you!

So if you set up a plan like this for yourself, and set some goals, and either really memorize them or write them down somewhere private, and go over them from time to time, say once a month or so- and you do Haipules and release blocked energy every day- then you can expect to go from bumbling around to extreme achievement (by your former standards) in what might be couple months but will feel like overnight. (some things are literally possible overnight but it's not that important). And this is how to give your life direction with Huna. There will be many more articles like this on how to get into specifics. Basically everything works the same, it's just getting rid of old beliefs and adding new ones, and watching the results unfold, participating as inspiration goes. But there are certain cultural patterns to each area of life that can result in common experiences and gotchas as you manifest in each area of it, so we can go into those in each area's own article. And it's always good to have plenty of examples!

Now go, and take charge of your life!

Much love and blessings!