Serge Kahili King - Mastering your hidden self: a guide to the Huna way

Since my last book, Kahuna Healing, many people have asked me about practical applications of Huna insight into the nature of the self, which is the reason for bringing out the present book. They have also asked me about my own training as a kahuna. Since this has a great deal of hearing on your use of this book, I'd like to talk story a hit on that subject.

In my life so far I've experienced many different forms of training, including school and college, postgraduate studies, the military, special language and technical courses, and others. In my opinion, kahuna training was the hardest of all. Perhaps I can explain that better by relating a few incidents of such training.

My father was my toughest teacher. Before I understood what kahuna training was all about, I harbored a lot of resentment toward him for certain things he did. One occasion that stands out in my memory took place when I was fifteen. We were building a house, working in the basement, and he told me to get him an awl. I had never heard of an awl, so I asked him what it was. He simply said, Just go get one. Well, instead of applying anything I had learned the previous year about intuition and awareness, I got mad at how unfair he was. I blocked my mind to everything but my anger, and of course found nothing even resembling an awl. After a few more wasted trips and mounting resentment on my part, he went and got the thing himself.

You could say he should have described an awl to me so I could have found it and learned what it was. But the lesson had nothing to do with awls. Nor did it have to do specifically with using my extended awareness to intuit what an awl was or to pick it out of a tool box. If that were the case, my father would have said, as he had on many other occasions, Use your mind. No, the lesson in this case was about initiative. I knew how to be more observant in the present moment, which would have included being aware of what my father was working on and what would be logically necessary or useful to enable him to continue (e.g., something to make a hole with), and I knew how to let my mind bring images according to my intent and how to let my subconscious lead me toward things I might be looking for. What my father did was to give me an opportunity to use what I knew. What I did, in that instance, was to put my energy and talent into feeling sorry for myself.

In Africa once, a few days after my mentor, M'Bala, had guided me through a particularly powerful experience of becoming a leopard, he handed me a kind of large, stone bead, without saying anything. What's this? I asked. A stone, he replied. I can see that, I said, but what's it for? Is it an amulet? It could be used for one, he said, indifferently. Feeling a little frustrated, I asked, Well, what am I supposed to do with it? Anything you like, was his answer. So I just thanked him for it with a shrug and put it in my pocket. In all the rest of the time I spent with him, M'Bala never referred to the stone again. It wasn't until five years later, back in the States, that it occurred to me to apply the knowledge of the leopard experience for tuning in to the stone. Doing something with it was entirely up to me.

Fortunately, I wasn't that dense during all my lessons. By the time I started working with my Hawaiian uncle, Wana Kahili, I was doing a lot better. He would suggest a practice, and I would do it and extend it as far as I could and tell him my results; he would suggest refinements or further extensions, and I would follow those and add inventions of my own; he would either guide me further in that direction or suggest a new one. As long as I kept moving, he would keep teaching and I would keep learning. If I failed to follow up on anything, it was simply dropped and never mentioned again, until and if I did something with it. For the kahunas, self-development means that responsibility for your development lies with yourself. There is no limit as to how far you can go, and there will always be a guide of some kind available at every stage. But each person has to get there on his or her own two feet. There is no one to push you or pull you, coax or cajole you, force you or lead you along. And that's why it's tough.