It’s a Ku Thing, Part 2
The Energy of Anxiety, Depression and Suicide –
Eight Steps to Move Toward Happy, Healthy and Free
Just this week the headlines about Kate Spade, the popular and famous New York designer of hand bags, sparked national conversation about suicide and depression. Then, not two days later, Anthony Bourdain, famous foodie, writer and host of the very popular TV show Parts Unknown, was found dead of suicide in his luxury hotel room in France while in the middle of filming another episode. Personally, I was stunned. I had not heard much about Kate Spade but I was quite fond of Anthony Bourdain. And now they are both dead, by their own hand. Suddenly the national conversation has taken on a more serious tone. The Centers for Disease Control reports that suicide rates have increased 30% since 2000, tripled for young girls, surges 60% for women 45 – 64. One stat said they are even higher in one age group then for car accidents and another claims suicide kills more Afghan/Iraqi vets then warfare! With a collective terror we all begin to wonder, who’s next? What’s going on?
Within the same week of these two high profile deaths, something happens to drive it home for me in a very personal way – my sister calls me in the wee hours of the night. We are on the phone for around two hours as says she “just wants it all to end”. While I can never claim to know exactly how she is feeling, I feel quite desperate. Other than passing on the crisis hotline number and hope she calls it, how can I help her?
Besides the fact that suicide can be considered needless, unnecessary and avoidable, the sting is that those around them typically feel guilt, like they should have known, could have done something, said something, anything, to prevent this tragic loss of their loved one. And then there is just the finality of it. All chances are gone…and so are they. Is there something we can do now, even if we don’t know of anyone we think would ever do this? Or maybe we do know someone who is “high risk”. What can we do to prevent this tragedy? What can you do if you are the person plagued with suicidal thoughts? Is there a solution to every problem? Is there a way to live without wanting to die?
THE ENERGY OF ANXIETY, DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE
A friend of mine who has also struggled with depression, posted on Face Book an essay written by a friend of hers which described the painful details of the horror of this disease. “Depression is a horrific disease. But that is a woefully inadequate description. It lurks in the wings always poised to spread its dark, life sucking tentacles and take over every aspect of the life of its victim. Some can manage to outrun it and some can’t.” she says. She talks about how diagnosis and treatment is a “crap shoot” and how the disease takes infinite forms. She talks about people suffering greatly, spiraling downward barely able to maintain the responsibilities of life and work and the accumulating damage fuels feelings of failure and self-contempt. They feel tremendous shame and feel forced to fake it to fit into society. “It is an interminable state of agony. When in the middle of an episode one is gripped with debilitating fear, absolute loss of all pleasure, painful dark thoughts, physical aches and pains, hopelessness, self-loathing and significant loss of energy. Everything is torture and the smallest tasks seem nearly impossible.” She talks about how like addiction, this disease is often attributed to weakness and the victim is blamed for not sucking it up as “the full horror of it is impossible to adequately describe.”
A PERSPECTIVE
One of the things she said really resonated with the perspective I have to offer, “And the problem is that these sick cancerous thoughts SEEM COMPLETELY REAL.” There are three key words here that can provide a clue to powerful Choices with the Perspective and Principles of Ho’ala Huna: “thoughts,” “seem” and “real.” While I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I am an ordained spiritual teacher, what I can offer is a way of looking at the Energies of Life that are empowering using the age old wisdom based in the science and metaphysics of the laws of mind and the Connection to Infinite Intelligence. In other words, discerning between what is Real and what is not Real, what is Life-giving and what is life-taking, can at the very least, map out energetic stepping stones toward that which is Life-giving and really REAL.
AN EXPLANTATION
Ho’ala Huna, a system of wisdom from ancient Hawaii, provides unparalleled Clarity for the purpose and meaning of Life. The ancient Hawaiians had a deep profound wisdom steeped in thousands of years of refined validation and articulation of applicable postulates and Principles. Simply stated, they had a world view that made complete sense, and a set of Principles that proved to bring Balance to any problem, situation or out-of-balance relationship (see It’s a Ku Thing, Part 1).
In their view, All That Is, their definition of God, created the World of Form for the purpose of allowing us to experience something other than that which we are a part of in the World of Spirit: Love, Light, Peace and Joy. It’s kind of like going to the movies, we get to go have experiences that we normally don’t get to have, and then go back to our normal life. It’s easy to go see a horror film, if that’s what you want to experience, if you know you are sitting in a movie theater while you have that experience. You know when the movie is over you can go home. It is the same with the World of Form. We are only here for a tiny amount of time, and then we go home, to the World of Spirit.
But even if there were movies that were just happy, happy, peace and joy, how many of us would go see that? It would be nice but a bit boring. The plot, the drama, the conflict, the challenge; give us the opportunity to feel and experience…a diversity of other things. When we come to the World of Form we get to have experiences that allow us to appreciate…Love, Light, Peace and Joy when we go back to the World of Spirit.
HOW FAR CAN WE GO?
Just like going to the movies, how far would you go if you knew there were no way to get lost? When you go to the movies there is a plot, challenge or conflict; and then a satisfying ending in which the protagonist overcomes the challenge by discovering his or her Strength, Courage and Determination against great odds to save the day. These are the things that make for a great movie. And it is quite similar when we choose to live a lifetime in the World of Form. We are here to experience the “dark side”, the life-taking energies of anger, fear, depression, sadness, jealousy, worry, greed, hate, etc. so that we can appreciate the Life-giving energies of the World of Spirit. Life-giving energies (Akua) are reflective of our Divine nature (as we are all a part of All That Is). Life-taking energies (malu) are an inherent part of the World of Form for the purpose of Contrast.
CONTRAST = MEANING = APPRECIATION
Life-giving, of course, include Love, Light, Peace and Joy; but what about Courage, Forgiveness, Patience, Strength, Determination, Humility, Grace? These are certainly “Life-giving” in this sense but how could we experience those things without it’s opposite? How could we ever know Forgiveness without something to forgive? How could we ever know Courage without something to be courageous for? Just like the plot and challenge of a great movie, our lives provide for us with unique opportunities here on planet Earth, to experience not only the opposite of Love, Light, Peace and Joy, but also those Life-giving energies which require a negative in order to express.
How far can we go? As far as you let the life-taking energies (malu) take you. And indeed, that is the purpose of malu, to provide that contrasting element upon which Life-giving energy can be expressed. Its job is to give you thoughts and feelings and take your power away wherever you are unconscious (don’t know any better) to get you to identify with it and therefore create pain and separation. The ultimate goal of a malu is suicide, or suicide/murder, or better yet suicide/mass murder (fly a plane into a building). The World of Form is set up to provide us with an authentic experience of pretending we are not Divine Beings so that we can go back to the World of Spirit, full of appreciation, for that which is REAL.
THAT WHICH IS REAL AND THAT WHICH IS NOT
They are just emotions and we all have emotions, right? Yes, we call them emotions but that really just serves to entrench identity with an energy. Beneath “emotions” is an energy and it is this energy that can and will invade your space with thoughts and feelings. Have you ever been angry? Of course, we’ve all been angry but the reasons we get angry can be completely different. If it was the reason that made you angry, why would the same reason not make the next person angry? As an Uber driver for two years I got cut off on the road all the time, blew it off. My daughter on the other hand, gets angry when people move too fast, too slow, cut her off or any other scenario she doesn’t like on the road. The malu of ‘anger’ just wants you to express anger. Just like the malu of sadness wants you to express saddness and will look for so called reasons to be sad; same thing for depression, anxiety, fear, rage, victimhood and blame. All of those energies will use every reason they can to get you to identify with them because this is how they take your power. Whenever we give into any malu energy, we give it our power and in return it gets to express itself through us. And this is all by Divine Design. If it were not so, we could not play The Game of Life to its greatest effect.
But here’s the thing: malu are not “Real”, they are just energies in the World of Form for the purpose of Contrast, and we get to experience Contrast because of those energies. Kind of like viruses in a computer are not “real” except in cyberspace but the damage they do can have very real consequences. At any time however, if you become more aware, more Conscious (know better) then you can see The Game for what it is and begin to play with finesse. You can Wake Up and realize you have a CHOICE. Even in the middle of an angry thought, word or action, you can have a moment of awareness…and stop. We have a saying in Huna, “When you take your power back from a malu…it goes poof! It goes back to being nothing more than an energetic “potential” looking for the vacuum of another unconscious person to sucker into accepting its thoughts and feelings. And like computer viruses; they can search the data system of your brain to find all kinds of reasons to become…angry, jealous, vindictive, envious, depressed…even suicidal.
POSSIBILITY + CHOICE = SOLUTION
What is the opposite of a malu? Akua! The opposite of a life-taking energy is a Life-giving energy. One is Real and the other is illusion. One has Real power and the other only has the power you give it. One brings Happiness, Health and Balance. The other brings pain, separation, isolation and death. One we must recognize and invite into our lives/hearts/minds, while the other bombards us with its energy. And again, this is all by Divine Design.
It may seem like a contradiction; if Akua are ‘Divine Energies’ and we are Divine Beings, why would we have to invite them, while malu, that are not even real, are able to invade our space at will? Because part of The Game of Life is to become Conscious, to learn, change and grow. A malus’ purpose is to deliver so much pain that we eventually wake up and take our power back.
Sometimes, people don’t Wake Up, they play The Game to the ultimate end, and take their own life. They end up back in the World of Spirit of course, because there is nowhere else to go, but that particular transition can be fraught with turbulence.
I have listened to many “Near Death” experiences where people have died and were brought back, or miraculously came back, to life. These experiences are predominantly exquisitely beautiful to the point of rendering the survivor forever free of any fear of death whatsoever. Being embraced by an all-consuming Love that is beyond description usually leaves the person begging to stay, not wanting to come back to this life on earth. For the victims of suicide however, the experiences are usually quite different. These folks talk of horrible, scary experiences in the afterworld. It seems the irony is that when people commit suicide to escape negativity they end up taking it with them. In the comprehensive accounting of near death experiences, The Dead Saints Chronicles, A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife, my now deceased very dear friend David Solomon, describes how souls are eventually helped on the other side at a “school” where they can learn better how to handle these situations to perhaps go back and get it right the next time.
I had a friend once, a very talented, spiritual guy who was a sweet, lovely person but after his wife divorced him went back to drinking, and the depression that had plagued him previously. After years on this dark path he still had a jovial attitude. Then one day, in a hotel room where he was living, he killed himself. A few weeks later he appeared to a psychic friend of mine and told her that his only goal for that particular lifetime was to NOT commit suicide, but he did, again, apparently. Such is the gravity of this lesson.
As discussed in Part 1 of this series, all negative energies, trauma, wounds, etc. become embedded in our Ku, that part of us that holds onto everything that has ever happened to us. It all gets stuck there, in the dark, fluid space of our heart. It manifests as dysfunctional patterns that repeat over and over again until…until we either do the spiritual work of learning, changing, growing…or we just get tired, worn out and give up. Indeed, this is the purpose of our lives, to make that Choice. Those thoughts “that seem completely real” are the malu lie! If any thought tells you anything negative just remember that thought is not you, you can choose a different thought! And healing starts with one simple thought: maybe I can overcome this…maybe, just maybe, I can.
On the Ho’ala Huna Altar is a symbolic representation of our human self and our Divine self. Opposite Ku, our heart, emotions, power; is Lono, our mind, thinking, direction. When we get lost in the ocean of emotions of our heart it works to look to our Lono, our mind, for the direction and structure that will provide some sense of containment. Just like children need structure to feel safe, so do we as adults. Indeed, our Ku is our “child self” and if we can engage, put to work our Lono, our mind, to provide that structure, our child self will begin to feel safer, more secure. While being tossed about by huge waves of emotion, if you can pick up pen and paper you can toss yourself a life saver in the form of a plan and direction. In other words it works to DO SOMETHING, take action, even if it’s just for 10 minutes a day. Here are some things to get you started in a process, a journey that if you are open to possibility, can and will, take you beyond where you thought you could go! Love is the most powerful Force in the Universe and is constantly available to you!
STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO MOVE IN THE DIRECTION OF HAPPY, HEALTHY AND FREE
- Invite the Akua Energies of Humble and Willing to help you see another option. Focus on those Energies and ask them for help and guidance. THEY WILL HELP YOU!
- Reach out and connect with someone, anyone. Call the national suicide prevention hotline 1-800-273-8255 or talk to a friend, sibling, pastor, teacher, coach, that person you see occasionally who always seems to have a really great energy. Share that you need help, guidance, support. And then let them help you.
- Get out your journal and pen and begin writing. List all the malu plaguing you and what they have been telling you. Trace them back through your childhood to see where they originated. Write letters to those you need to forgive or ask forgiveness of; send them or not.
- Write down all the Akua, Life-giving Energies in your life: Love you have for, and receive from people; Gratitude for people, things, experiences, accomplishments, abilities you have, Generosity you have shown others or others have shown you; Joyful moments; Peaceful moments; Special moments. Make a special note of all the wonderful things in your life and allow these thoughts to fill your mind; at least for small designated snatches of time during your day. Also, record your dreams and synchronicities (step 6). You can start a separate Gratitude Journal. Rhonda Byrne’s The Magic provides powerful daily exercises for transforming every area of your life.
- Choose a phrase that you can take to bed: “I am at Peace, peace is within me.” “The Universe conspires in my favor.” “I am healed, healthy and free.” “I am on my way to a better day.” You can make up your own or you can find them. Louise Hays classic, You Can Heal Your Life, has some of the most beautiful affirmations I have ever heard. And another classic, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy, Ph.D.,D.D. has many as well and describes the reason why they can be so powerful. But keep it simple at first. Choose something that feels good, rolls off the tongue and doesn’t require a lot of memory. This is quite a powerful exercise because you can totally reprogram your brain (replace malu with Akua).
- When you wake up in the morning, before getting out of bed notice a) feelings, b) thoughts, c) dreams, d) repeat your affirmation and e) say a prayer or affirmation of Willingness to see some sort of communication with Divinity today. Ask for, be open to, and pay attention to any special occurrences today. It could be a coincidence, maybe find a penny with your birth year, a bird or animal with interact with you, a friend will say something, the TV or radio will repeat or address what you are thinking; (all of these things have happened to me by the way) something special will happen today so make a point of paying attention so that you will notice when it happens and not miss it. If you begin to be open to, and allow your Divinity to communicate with you, IT WILL! Don’t believe me, just watch. And then you will begin to realize there is an Energy of Love all around you.
- When you try to “Choose” positive thoughts and you feel like you are not able to, that’s okay. The important thing is to know that you can, and you will, eventually. Keep a favorite affirmation with you at all times and pull it out whenever you feel particularly down. If it can move you up the emotional scale just one tiny increment, that’s progress! Celebrate any and all progress, any and all positive feelings, events, thoughts. Counsel yourself with positive encouragement.
- Choose a 10-20 minute time of the day that you can create a ritual for yourself. You could light a candle, burn some incense that you like, read something inspirational, pray, meditate, have a Starbucks, walk on the beach or in the woods, whatever; just do something that is just for you. And while you are doing this make the declaration: I AM WORTH IT! I LOVE ME!
This is just the beginning. It is a journey to recover from a period, or a lifetime perhaps, of darkness. There is Hope and there is Light. If you can be Open to discerning the energies around you and start exercising your right to CHOOSE you will soon find the darkness dissipating into Light, and that Love, Help and Support are all around you!
Aloha!