It’s a Ku Thing, Part 1

Children, Healthy Boundaries and Adult Dysfunction – How To Raise Happy Kids and Heal the Child Within

I find myself in the land my spiritual origins, Hawaii, the magical place where an ancient culture managed to distill profound wisdom into the simple articulation of their primitive society. With words, phrases, postulates and principles, they made sense of their world. Indeed, it followed a logic that allowed the application of a postulate to reveal the validation of a Principle. It was in the Light of these guiding Principles that led them to live in Peace and Harmony for roughly 2,000 years.

OHANA, A FAMILY RITUAL

At the center of their spiritual tradition was a ritual called Ohana (Hawaiian for family), practiced by families and communities to bring Balance to whatever was out-of-balance. An Altar set up with symbolic objects to represent the Divine Being in The World of Form was at the center of this ritual. The North, South, East, West directional pattern of the objects which represent the “human” qualities of head/masculine, heart/feminine; and the “Divine” qualities of Light/Masculine and Life/Feminine served as a roadmap for the human experience in the earthly realm.

For the purposes of this discussion I will focus primarily on one aspect of this symbolism – Ku: the  heart/feminine/emotions/power aspects of the “human” experience, symbolized by a bowl of water in the West. From the perspective of our modern, technology-driven world, it may seem a bit silly but I assure you, if you will keep an open mind I will explain the depths of wisdom and understanding that were an inherent part of this ancient practice and how it can provide powerful insights for your own life.

KEIKIS (kay kees) ARE KU

As spirituality and psychology are often of complimentary interest to someone primarily interested in one or the other, I was no exception and read quite a lot about both. When it comes to children however, the Wisdom of Huna enhanced the overlap of spirituality and psychology for me. From my perspective and that of many others, Clarity is probably the greatest gift of the system of wisdom from ancient Hawaii known as Ho’ala Huna.

Before there is a “head” there is a “heart”, in other words, we are all born, all Ku. It is not until the age of 5-7 that we are able to actually think thoughts, to reason, understand and rationalize. Until we are able to use our mind to think and reason, we use our heart to feel. Children feel. Most animals are also all Ku. Animals are not able to demonstrate the ability to think and reason although there are a few exceptions: dolphins, whales, apes, chimpanzees and some birds. But the vast majority of animals don’t think; they feel, sense, intuit the energy around them.

Unlike animals who are born with survival instincts that give them a head start in the world like jumping, running, killing prey, etc., human children only have two: sucking and crying. Sucking allows them to eat and crying allows them to get the attention they need from their caregivers to survive. If they feel hungry, cold, wet or in pain; they cry. But they also cry if they feel scared, nervous or anxious. When they feel safe, secure, warm, fed and dry then they are generally happy and content.

Human children are probably the most vulnerable of all earthly creatures due to their complete dependence on adult caretakers. If the parents or caretakers are mature, responsible, loving, kind, patient people (big if) then the infant has the best chance to grow into a healthy child, and adult, with those characteristics. But it’s not just parents who influence children; anyone who comes in contact with a child during their developing years can either lovingly support or horribly abuse, a child. And we won’t even go into all manner of natural calamity, from bee stings to terminal cancer that can befall children. All of these things pose very real threats to the keikis, the children, those most innocent and vulnerable among us.

A DIVINE PLAN

From the Ho’ala Huna perspective of ancient Hawaii, everything has a reason. There is a reason bad things happen…even to children. All of us start out as innocent, vulnerable little beings and all of us have undoubtedly had bad things happen to us along the way, some more than others. Between birth and adulthood any number of things can and do happen. Why? What is the deeper reason?

The ancient Hawaiians thought that who YOU are includes the limitless vastness of the time before you were born, as well as after you die, here on earth; presumably the time you are one with All That Is (God), one with Love, Light, Peace and Joy in eternal time/space. If this is the case, what would you want to experience other than Love/Light/Peace/Joy? What would you want to learn, see and do on this little planet called Earth? What kind of adventure would you create for yourself if you knew there were no way to get lost, no experience would be wasted, all of it, the “good” and the “bad”, would be like a dream that you would ultimately awake from and look back on with appreciation? It would be kind of like choosing a good movie, you have in mind something you want to experience ranging from horror to comedy or some combination.

The things that happen to us as children have a lot to do with the direction our life takes and what it looks like when we’re all grown up. Perhaps it is all by design. Perhaps it is a design that we ourselves, participated in. And perhaps we designed it with other Divine Beings with whom we “contracted” to play “roles” in the lifetime we chose in order to have the experiences we want to have. In her book, Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential, Carolyn Myss delves deeply into this premise and how the energy of “archetype” serves to help us construct the design of our lives.

THE CHILD AND THE CHILD WITHIN

Ku, as symbolized on the Ho’ala Huna Altar, is represented by a bowl of water. If it could be represented by just water, without the bowl, that would probably be a much more accurate representation of Ku but a bit impractical. And indeed, even that bit of impracticality, contains a bit of wisdom and symbolism. Ku represents our feminine side, our emotions, feelings; our power. It is represented in the West, the place of the setting sun because our feelings and past experiences reside in darkness. This is where the bowl comes in.

While Ku is represented by the water contained within the bowl, the fluid, dynamic aspect of our nature; the bowl actually represents the fact that Ku contains all. In other words, our Ku contains every feeling and emotion we have ever felt which are, of course, tied to specific incidents in our past. All of our past experiences are embedded in our Ku but the ones which have the most effect on us in our present, daily lives are the one which have been punctuated with intense emotion creating an indelible impression. If these experiences were positive, they empower us in our adulthood but if they were negative and painful, we tend to resist that painful memory and bury it. These painful experiences, stored in our Ku memory, affect every part of our lives if, we have not healed them. (By “heal” I mean, Consciously choosing the process of addressing, learning from, reframing, forgiving, releasing malu energy, reclaiming fragments to become whole, and finding empowerment; from all aspects of a painful event.)

SURVIVAL SKILLS AND DYSFUNCTIONAL PATTERNS

When we are kids and have very bad experiences, what can we do? Not much, right? We all remember what it was like to be so vulnerable, so completely at the mercy of the adults, or even other kids, around us. If we had a painful experience and there was someone to help us process it in a healthy way then the emotional intensity would be lessened and have much less negative impact on our adult life. In fact, appropriate attention, action and subsequent healing has the potential to transform a negative event into a positive, a strength, a valuable asset in life. But if we experienced things we simply could not handle and there was no one who could help us process the event, then it stayed stored, unresolved, in our Ku, with the devastating combination of being both intense and hidden.

When negative events do not get processed, especially repeated events, children will deal with it the only way they know how, or better said, whatever way presents itself. This is where Huna Wisdom provides an interesting articulation of the energies involved.  According to the ancients, there are two kinds of energy in the World of Form: Akua, Life-Giving energy/spirits which reflect our Divine nature (Love, Peace, Kindness, Understanding, Forgiveness, etc), and Malu, Life-taking energy/spirits which are an inherent part of the World of Form for the purpose of contrast (hate, anger, jealousy, fear, greed, mean-spiritedness, etc.). When a child is in pain, especially from abuse, malu energy find an opening in which to get a child to identify with it in order to deal with the event. Anger can feel like strength, clueless oblivion/denial can be a way of coping (which was mine, by the way), manipulation can be a strategy. When these kids get older however, anger can easily turn into hate and rage, denial can lead to substance abuse or other forms of escapism, and manipulation can turn into obsessive control or mean vengeful vindictiveness. Malu pose themselves as survival skills to desperate kids but end up becoming dysfunctional patterns to unconscious adults.

DISCIPLINE IS STRUCTURE

It is an interesting coincidence that the Ho’ala Huna “creation story” is titled The Bowl and the Garden (order your copy from HunaWisdom.com). The “Bowl” is a very significant symbol for the ancient Hawaiians, because it is a container, and because of what it contains. As mentioned earlier, the symbol for Ku is water, but water must be contained or it will just go all over the place. This is where this symbolism works very well for understanding the dynamic whereby abused children become dysfunctional adults. (It’s also interesting to note at this point that the opposite of Ku is Lono, the place of mind/masculine/direction, is also the place of structure; implying the ideal of Balance.)

When children are young they are all Ku (water). Water must be contained or it will…go all over the place. Children need structure to feel safe because like water without a bowl, they go all over the place. Without appropriate structure, children do not know where the boundaries are and just like water, will go all over the place, in terms of behavior, to find those boundaries. Parents often confuse the terms “discipline” and “punishment”. Basically, discipline is structure and punishment is revenge. There really is no validation for the concept of punishment, whether it be for adults, children, animals or other societies with which we may have a conflict. “Punishment” is more about the “punisher” then it is about the “punished”. It is a self-serving, life-taking malu energy that has no place in a healthy, conscious world. All That Is (God), with Its Infinite Wisdom, contains all the natural consequences already built in to bring Balance without the need of a vengeful life-taking spirit reaping enjoyment from getting even. (In a future blog I will address how Healthy Boundaries can call for appropriate actions to deal with out-of-balance energies with any relationship, whether it’s personal or international.)

Discipline however, is simply structure, a boundary that contains that which cannot contain itself, at least where parenting a child is concerned. There is appropriate discipline for different ages of children and recently I had the opportunity to connect a couple of dots which seemed to be significant. My observation of a two year old who had obviously lacked appropriate discipline as numerous initial temper tantrums would suggest, taught me a valuable lesson about discipline/structure and subsequent dysfunction.

As a student/teacher of Energy Discernment, I was aware and conscious of my energy and made sure my initial engagement with this child was calm, soft, unobtrusive. He responded with relaxed comfort around me. As a student/teacher of Huna though, my energy was also firm i.e. contained appropriate boundaries as this is what Love is to me, especially where young children are concerned. There was no way I could not be firm, and still Love this child.

One of the most obvious ways to provide appropriate discipline, let’s call it Loving Structure, is to not reward bad behavior. If a two year old is whining, crying, screaming, kicking, biting, hitting, or any of the other forms of expressing temper a child can muster to get what he wants, a sure fire way to get the child to continue that behavior is to give them what they want when they act that way. Indeed, is this not what the adult is teaching the child when they reward that behavior? And this is not to say there aren’t other aspects of Loving Structure as well, such as routine and consistency that are also very important.

FROM SPOILED BRAT TO BULLY?

Here is the other dot: if a child is raised being given everything they want when they scream for it, how will this individual interact with the world as an adult?

Structure is crucial for children, not just so they are pleasant to be around. Structure is crucial so that they can feel safe. If they do not feel safe, know where the boundaries are, they will spin out of control. I wonder…if a child was constantly enabled to act out growing up, does he/she ever really feel safe? If a person is known to identify with malu energies of hyper controlling, manipulating and bullying, is it because they never felt safe due to a lack of boundaries? Indeed, I have witnessed behavior by people who act as if the world will come to an end if they do not get their way. Do you know anyone like that?

This is not about judgment, it’s about understanding. It’s about how to be compassionate with everyone we meet because there’s one thing you can be sure of: whenever people wear the malu mask of any stinky energy they are obviously unconscious in that particular area, i.e. clueless they are acting out a particular malu energy. And 99.99% of us have areas of unconsciousness to uncover and heal from our childhoods. If we are lucky, we have people who love us enough to offer us a Loving Mirror (future blog), if we are smart, we invoke Grace to help us heal on purpose (check out The Eight Sacred Steps to Healing, by Lono Ho’ala at HunaWisdom.com) and if we manage to accomplish this task we will be fortunate enough to help others do the same, our Loving Service (future blog). And even if none of this happens, then it is still a perfect part of a Perfect Plan (see blog post Me Too, Why Good People Do Bad Things).

THE GOAL OF PARENTING

The #1 goal of parenting is: heal yourself, preferably before you have kids, or if not before, then while you have kids, or even after you have kids. Obviously, the sooner the better to avoid passing your malu energies onto your progeny, otherwise you will perpetuate what Huna calls “generational malu”. A child who is acting out is not a happy child and an adult who is unconsciously still relying on the crutch of a malu to deal with as yet unhealed wounds, is not a happy adult. You are a Divine Being and you deserve to be happy!

I invite you to check out Supernanny on YouTube, Jo Frost, the British lady who comes to the rescue of desperate parents in need of guidance. She is an expert on appropriate discipline and structure for kids of all ages and provides many tools, techniques and strategies for containing the all over the place nature of children so that the whole family can live in peace and harmony. Similarly, Shefali Tsabary describes in her outstanding book, The Conscious Parent, how parents have the opportunity to learn alongside their children because it is only when the parents grow up themselves can they be good parents to their kids and not pass on to them their own dysfunctional patterns.

It has been said, It’s never too late to have a happy childhood and I invite you to use the myriad tools available to you to succeed in raising happy children, and healing the child within yourself. Your Ku will thank you!

ALOHA!