THOUGHTS FROM A HAWAIIAN KAHUNA
Toward the end of his life, I remember the Hawaiian elder Hale Makua saying more than once that when we accept the calling that comes from “the deep” within us and we step onto the path of the inspired visionary once again, there is no knowledge of what will follow. He observed that at the onset, we have little understanding of what it means to participate in the shamans’ numinous worlds, for our lives have yet to be tested against the challenges that the shamanic life may present to us in our initiatory experiences. For those used to being able to predict and to some degree direct the course of their lives, this can be problematic, but this is also part of what it means to be living in a time of new beginnings.
I have come to understand that the ever-growing interest in the ancient yet curiously modern spiritual path of the shaman is very much a part of our own revitalization movement. Once we have had that direct transformative experience of the spiritual dimensions and the beings who reside within them, everything changes for the better.
Makua knew that when we come into relationship with our spirit guardians, we discover a constant dialogue between the physical and nonphysical worlds, and this may be illuminating, even thrilling, though it may also be frightening. As many have discerned, the borderland between a spiritual emergence and a spiritual emergency can be elusive, as most of us have not been raised in families in which communication with spirits is part of the given. However, the authentic experience of interdimensional contact can and does present us with levels of guidance that are advanced both in scope as well as intention.
Makua often observed that we are meant to work with dimensions of life far greater than those that can be seen or appreciated in physical form. In doing so, we come to understand that humankind is responsible not only for the quality of life on planet Earth, but equally for the quality of our thoughts, emotions, and actions affecting each other, as well as the life force in all its manifestations. And it is through this collective planetary interaction that we all discover how important and precious each of us is to the greater whole.
As we move into the new era, life in all its beautiful and challenging aspects is morphing into new patterns. At the personal level, our life lessons continue to challenge us as our souls unfold and grow. Those who choose to walk the shaman’s path discover that those lessons can be enormously enhanced in response to our relationships with our helping spirits and spirit teachers. For as I have observed, once we are in connection with our spirit friends, we’ve got power in our corner.
Makua spoke often of how this experience may also touch us deeply where we are most vulnerable, for as we progress, we continue to be exposed to the multidimensional worlds of other people’s fears, desires, needs, and conscious and unconscious attitudes. Our reactions to their belief systems and emotional states can bring us moments of inner turmoil, as well as opportunities to both change and heal.
Along the way we discover that we are rarely asked to handle more than that from which we can immediately learn. Our lessons and the lessons of others seem to be offered to us in direct relation to the issues we need to see most clearly. In response, we are progressively led into the higher spiritual levels of our being. These inner recesses are calm and filled with a soothing energy, in contrast to the constant edgy crises, demands, and agitations of daily life. And they can be accessed through shamanic meditation.
When we become aware of our oversoul’s dreams, Makua affirmed that the spiritual light within our hearts, though very private and very tender, can also be amazingly persistent in drawing our attention back to our own true selves and to the special qualities that are ours and ours alone. We discover that our connection with our spirit guardians offers the solace and the healing energy necessary for us to grow so that we understand who we really are and where we are in our long voyage across space and time. And as we continue to connect with our inner sources of wisdom, power, and healing, he said, we are constantly encouraged to re-evaluate our lives, and we may experience inner stirrings that urge us to move in strange and unfamiliar directions. These stirrings flow into us from our oversoul as causal impulses that increase our opportunities to grow and learn and become more than we were.
In The Bowl of Light, Makua revealed that when we are in alignment with our oversoul’s dreams we are on the path of our destiny. This seems to be what the whole game of life is all about: a co-creative relationship between our transpersonal oversoul self and our personal embodied self. This relationship is and forever will be about a partnership through which we realize the presence of the divine within ourselves and within all things. This partnership offers each of us the gift of freedom, our personal sovereignty from which all other gifts flow. Yet true partnership can be achieved only by whole beings who retain their separateness, their uniqueness, even when it involves union with the divine. When we step onto the shaman’s path of direct revelation, we have the opportunity to experience this fully, and in doing so our life may expand in unexpected directions.
As we move beyond those seemingly safe places and faith-based belief systems that can and do sustain us in the short term, we enter unknown territories through direct experience where we may encounter other worlds and other ways, including universal wisdom and the energy of love that will carry us through our most vigorous and painful of journeys across time and into what Makua called the Sea of Light.
Finally, Makua revealed that the best way to measure how far we have come or how much we have learned is to look back to where we began in order to assess the significance and magnitude of our development and progress. Those who walk the shaman’s path are involved with the conscious teachings that come from nature, our mother planet, Earth. This means that in receiving these teachings, we interact with the whole.
Shamanists know that this planetary whole that we call Earth is both conscious and sentient and that the soul of our world is located within the biosphere, the part that contains life. Earth has a physical presence (planetary body), a means of processing information (planetary mind), and a commitment to a divine path (planetary soul). It has a purpose, as well as issues of delusion versus truth, just as we do, and we discover through direct experience that Earth is taught, as are we, by the collective energetic streaming of the life force that Makua called mauri ora. The word evolution simply means “change,” and change, as we all discover, is the texture of the universe that is in no way punitive or disciplinary, but rather creative and growth producing. The state of change is ongoing and continually redirects our attention toward that which is true versus that which is transient. In this sense, the geosphere and the biosphere of nature are the collective fields that are always and forever true. And our human cultures? Hard to say. They are restless, always changing, always shifting, and much of what makes them up is questionable.
When we consciously form our thoughts into intentions devoted to goodness and direct our intentions into appropriate actions accordingly, this allows us to live life to our fullest capacity, existing for our own greatest good and for the greatest good of the whole. Makua often said (wistfully) that it is only when we are in the positive polarity that we may connect with our spirit helpers and spirit teachers, with our ancestors, and with those higher organizing intelligences who will help us grow into our full and complete magnificence. This is what is meant by our re-enchantment, an experience that will contribute, person by person, to the revitalization of our culture and our world.
It is in this way that we can experience the joy of being in service to each other and to the world soul, Sophia, and in doing so we may become what Makua called Navigators of Light. This is the path upon which we may choose to walk as we journey into the next cycle of ages and out toward the distant, dusty horizons of the unknown.
And it is there, just there, that we often find ourselves in very good company.