Huna Lesson #1 : Building Your Future

 

Lesson No. 1. For Huna Research Associates. Giving additional Huna and comparative materials for study, and tentative guidance for the experimental use of Huna, as now thought to be.
By Max Freedom Long, F.R.F.

Dear Friend and Huna Research Associate:

It is a great pleasure to begin work with you as you stand ready to put a shoulder to the wheel and do what you can to help get the ancient Huna system back into full working order.

As you must know, the very fact that you have claimed a part in this work sets you off as one in a thousand. Only a very few are able to stand on their own feet and make a calm study of what seems to be contrary religious or psychological beliefs. The vast majority of mankind becomes frozen mentally into the mold of one religion or other, or of one scientific approach. And, once their minds are set in those molds, they become blind and even violently antagonistic to all that does not agree.

This holds for politics as well as religion. It holds for race prejudices, and even schools of scientific thought. Psychologists are a fine example of blindness in high places. They fought the concept of the “subconscious” and they fight the facts of psychic science just as bitterly today as they did twenty-five years ago.

I therefore congratulate you most heartily on being in the fold, so to speak, and able to weigh the materials of Huna calmly and without that strange emotional flare of angry rejection which marks nearly everyone — without that flare-up that marks the intellectually childish and immature, even when they are most highly educated.

Of course, you will have accumulated a knowledge of certain materials in the psycho-religious field in which we delve. You will have found certain beliefs and theories more reasonable, more logical or more valuable to you than certain others. That is as it should be. However, it will be a simple matter for one who has come this far through clear-seeing, to understand that we are now taking up a quiet and entirely impersonal study of what the kahunas of ancient times and of modern Polynesia believed. Because the kahunas believed in this or that — which we may not wish to accept without much more study and testing for plausibility and workability — is no reason at all for one of us to become even faintly upset. We each have the rare ability to study Huna as a thing apart from our already accumulated findings, otherwise we would not be HRAs. Instead, we would be on the outside, possibly shouting hotly, “The old time religion is good enough for me,” (and willing to kick the shins of all for whom it is not “good enough”).

You will smile understandingly when I, in my endeavor to coach you in your  part of the experimental project with Huna, state things as facts, for you will know that I do this to make simpler the presentation of what I think the kahunas considered facts — but which may not turn out to be facts at all. In acting as coach, I presume to do so because I have studied Huna longer and more fully, not because I desire to have you cease to be the calm judge of all the materials which we will handle together and try to evaluate (my own extra-Huna conclusions and tentatives not excepted).

What most of our friends will be unable to understand, but what we each know, is that we are determined to find the truth, and at any price. We have to make over all of our most loved dogmas and closely held convictions, we will do it. We are not unique in this search. A few of the clear-seeing have, down the centuries, asked for the Truth at any price, and like them, we stand ready to sacrifice all of the familiar landmarks, if we find it necessary  and to dare strange approaches to the jungle-covered realms of mind and Being.  M.F.L.
 

Suggested Approach to Huna in the First Step

Our approach to the experimental phase of the 72-year old investigation of the ancient HUNA SYSTEM of the Polynesians (and their pre-Egyptian ancestors), is not a matter of following a broad road which has been well traveled. It is hacking a narrow path through the jungle of a new world.

I have asked you, as my friend of clear vision, to help me cut into this jungle because your arm may be stronger than mine, psychically or mentally or spiritually speaking — perhaps stronger than any of the arms now raised to cut new paths back to the lost LIGHT.

You will have the advantage of what we, your fellow Huna Research Associates, have learned in the time that has elapsed since we began our work. Acting as the director and gatherer of reports on efforts, I pass on to you all that we have learned thus far — all we have hoped for, all of our aspirations and inspirations. In passing on to you our findings, we will expect you to watch for the things we have overlooked and the mistakes we have made. Each of us, as the Torch is passed to him in this race against the World Night, must do his best to raise it a little higher before the darkening world. Make this the time in your life when you really give all you have of talent, of understanding, of courage and faith, to one glorious effort to win back for the world the greatest blessing which can be imagined in our most inspired moments. YOU may be the one to find the path to the ancient TRUE LIGHT that has been lost.

THE HUNA THEORIES WHICH WE ARE TESTING, as a beginning, are easy to grasp. They are much like those with which we are familiar in the older and newer religions which are current at this time. The chief difference lies in the fact that several things have been added to the more common methods of obtaining things by prayer to a Higher Intelligence.

1. The preparation for the act of praying is different in that careful consideration must be given to the NEW CONDITIONS which we wish brought about. In Huna the prayer is not made for the momentary need so much as for the needs of all the life ahead. Instead of drifting, we take as much time as is needed, and make up our minds in so far as is possible, EXACTLY what we wish the future to hold for us. We all will ask for health, happiness and prosperity, of course, but we must not forget to include service to others. There is much that is helpful in the ideals of the kahunas. In our text, SECRET SCIENCE BEHIND MIRACLES, (daily readings from which are needed to help one absorb the Huna point of view and impress it on the low self), page 188, 4th paragraph, we read: “The kahunas taught that there was an ideal condition to which the individual might aspire. It was a condition in which the aid and guidance of the High Self was requested, received, and then acted upon. The one rule of life that must be obeyed was that we should do nothing to hurt another unjustly. For those more advanced, the rule included loving service. Love can unite men and enable them to do great works for the good of all. Hate and fear can unite men only for war and destruction.” In CASE 29, beginning on page 336 of SSBM, will be found an excellent presentation of the need for and the method of deciding what one’s future is to be. A careful review of this case is urged. THE THEORY on this point is that we must decide on our future, then plan it in as much detail as we can. That done, we set about taking the next step, which we may call:
2. The second step. This is to build a complete set of thought-forms of the new future, through visualization and with the use of a physical stimulus to impress the low (subconscious or aunihipili) self.
3. The third step is to accumulate a sufficient surcharge of vital force, or the low mana of the kahunas, to send the newly created thought-forms along the invisible aka thread of connection to the High Self.
4. The fourth step is the follow up in which we daily review and strengthen the visualized future embodied in our thought-forms, and daily present them anew with a fresh supply of vital force to be used by the High Self, and its associate High Selves — the Poe Aumakua — to do what the kahunas symbolized as “grow the seeds (thought-forms) by sprinkling them with water (mana), until they bear fruit as actual conditions as the future becomes the present”.

As a part of the work of taking these steps successfully, one endeavors to remove one’s guilt or other hindering fixations.

Those, in brief, are the steps to be taken in our experimental efforts to use the “High Magic”. We begin with them because they include the basic things to be learned in the “low magic”.

THE NEW PART OF THESE METHODS needs to be stressed at this point, not the part with which most of us are familiar. We sometimes hear the impatient remark, “But all this is old stuff!”

The long-term scope of prayer and the more careful preparation is new.

The use of visualization is familiar in New Thought and related systems.

The use of visualization to create consciously a set of thought-forms to act as molds for the materialization of desired future events, is slightly  touched on in Theosophy, but is new in handling and intention.

The request to the High Self, asking that the thought-forms be used to create for us a new and more desirable future is new.

The accumulation of extra vital force and the sending of it to the High Self to be used in the creation of the desired future is new.

The invisible aka thread that connects us with the High Self is new; but a slightly similar mechanism to connect the conscious part of the man to the physical body, when out of it, as in astral travel or unconsciousness, is familiar to us as the “silver cord” of Theosophy.

The use of a flow of low mana to carry the thought-forms telepathically to the High Self is new. (And of the greatest importance.)

The fact that the aka thread runs between the aka or “shadowy”body of the low self and the High Self, and that it is the ONE AND ONLY means of contact between the lower man and his High Self, is not only NEW, but is revolutionary in the psycho-religious thinking of this century. It gives us, at last, an explanation of WHY the usual vocal prayer made by the conscious mind or middle self gets no answer. (The low self is not brought into play and the telepathic sending of the prayer is missing, to say nothing of a supplying of the needed vital force to be used by the High Self.)

There are a number of other new and vital points which we are borrowing from the kahunas and testing for ourselves, but they need not be listed here as some are slightly complicated for swift notation.

If this revealing list of new elements seems a little frightening now that it has been stressed, the assurance can be given that a daily study of SSBM and of these papers will soon make everything simple enough. In making the experimental approach to Huna, one must allow time for absorbing the new and readjusting the old concepts. The confusing new terms will soon be learned.

For the purpose of this first set of suggestions concerning your approach to Huna through experiment and practice, only the first of the four steps just given need be considered. Taking that first step is something that should not be hurried.

There are several angles to be studied with care before deciding on the general outline of the future you will begin to work to build. I do not know what your particular study background in the psycho-religious field has been, but because you will later, in all probability, be called on to explain these points to those to whom you may introduce Huna, no harm will be done by taking up points that cover a fairly wide part of the common beliefs and theories.

FOR WHAT MAY WE PRAY?

This question was made the title of an article written for N. Meade Layne’s “Flying Roll”, and later reprinted in his “Round Robin”, (a magazine of great general interest to students in this field). I will touch the high points of the article here.

A student who leans to the philosophies of India, asked, “Is it wise to promise people material gains as a result of, or to induce, spiritual endeavor? To me there seems a great danger in this approach, which is contrary to all true occultism and truly ‘higher magic’….”

This question brings up one of the rock-bottom theories upon which much in religion is built, but which psychic science and the semi-science of psychology hardly touches.

It is, in essence the question that has plagued mortals, since the dawn of modern times, and which has been answered in all terms, from those of hopeless materialism to those of the most impractical and bewildered idealists. It is the question of, “WHY ARE WE HERE?”

Now, if you have favored beliefs or tentative conclusions drawn from your other studies, put them on the other side of the fence where they will not come into the present discussion and get their toes trampled. We are going to begin from scratch and make a cool and clear-eyed survey of the materials in this part of the field. In other words, we will wash our slates so that we can better begin a new set of calculations and draw a better picture of the future about to be decided upon. Let me quote from the article just mentioned.

“So intermingled in the West are the dogmas and ideals of Christianity and of the religious systems of India (and elsewhere), that in the matter of praying for help to a Superior Intelligence, we find ourselves confronted by two warring factions. One faction demands that we pray for nothing but spiritual enlightenment. The other demands that we also pray for ‘our daily bread.’

“We are all familiar with the ideas current in India, where it is often believed that a man must reincarnate as many times as there are grains of sand by the sea, and in the process must wear out an immensity of karmic debts. To escape from this (endless torture of forced living) Wheel of Life, the process of making fresh karma, good or bad, must be stopped. This is to be accomplished by ceasing to desire or to strive for any material thing or condition. One must even cease to desire to escape from the Wheel, or to attain union with God.

“In this system the only grounds for believing any part of the dogmas, lie in the fact that some individuals seem to recall former incarnations, and in a few cases children have correctly recalled memories of one recent incarnation — the memories proving correct when checked, or sufficiently correct to give general proof of reincarnation for a single return.

This, on the other hand, is not proof the validity of reincarnation impressions covering a great number of past lives.”

As to the doctrine of karma, or even the Christian, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” this idea is based on incomplete observation. It is true that from wheat as a seed, one reaps wheat. But to decide that a wheat seed and the act of cheating a stranger, bring identically exact returns, is a fine example of the usual PLAY ON WORDS that makes a proposition sound logical and complete when it is NOT.

Even the dullest observer may see the cheat “flourish as the green bay tree”. All through nature the strong animal robs the weak, the big fish eats the little ones, and there is no trace of “karmic retribution”. DEEDS AND SEEDS are not identical. The ancients, when formulating the doctrine of karma, undoubtedly ran into this snag, for they tied karma and reincarnation together in a tight package.

They fell back on the unproven assertion (a guess, like the many other guesses which we must wipe off to get our clean slate) that if the cheat was not punished in this life, he would be in some other. In this way the human idea of what makes exact justice was forced by heroic measures to fit what was seen on every band in nature — and what in no way fitted man-made ideals of justice.

In every system of psycho-religious thought, we see some amazing structure built on a FIRST PREMISE, which, if accepted, seems to lead with great logic to the conclusions which follow. It is this first assumption that we are now examining as we inspect the various teachings which are supposed to tell us why we are here and for what we are entitled to pray.

If we depend on “revealed” knowledge as in most bibles of religion, we at once see that something is badly wrong. The ASSUMPTIONS of the different “revealed” systems DO NOT MATCH. They are sharply contradictory as a rule. Even the idea that there are Higher Beings (in terms of consciousness), is an assumption. However, it is an assumption so widely spread and apparently so based on the fact of often-answered prayer, that we are forced to accept it in one form or another, as Huna does, otherwise we would be forced to drop the element of religion from our psycho-religious concepts and studies. In passing, we do well to note that our use of “logic” is a very unreliable tool with which to measure the materials with which we are dealing. The doctrine of karma and reincarnation are beautifully logical, but ONLY if we do not look too closely at the first premise. The same weakness is disclosed in every system in which the idea of a Supreme Intelligence is well developed.

Take the example of assuming that God MUST be the sum total of all created things. It seems a good assumption, but then it follows, with terrible logic, that there is nothing outside of God and that He must, therefore, be ALL THERE IS. It follows that the evil and injustice we see on all sides, and the sickness, poverty and woe, are either a part of God, or that our first conclusion is wrong. To keep in step with our human idea (not nature’s) that God could not be just or even kind, if He allowed bad things to exist as a part of His Well-Being, we have to revise the first premise and make a Devil or consider all undesirable things illusions created by the improper thinking of “mortal mind”. Or we can have “original sin” or any one of the painfully evolved patches offered to make the first assumptions hold water.

The Huna way was to play safe and decide that the human mind cannot understand matters relating to the levels of consciousness above our own — thus allowing the basic premise of a Higher Level (or levels) of Consciousness to stand.

The professors in many of our classes in theology elect to remain blind to the insecure ground upon which religio-magical systems have been built. At Columbia University religion has been defined by one of the professors as, “Worship of a superior Entity without thought of any form of reward for such worship.” It is pointed out that when a reward is expected, be it salvation and a future life in heaven, or be it one’s “daily bread”, that mixes MAGIC with religion.

Man is incurably the idealist, even if he usually prefers to talk of his ideals of conduct and life instead of living them. Pure religion, without the magical element of prayer, is the farthest flight of human imagination as applied to idealism. It embodies the ultimate in loving and unselfish worship, and in unselfish service of other men as a further act of worship. It embodies the ultimate dream of entire desirelessness and chastity of body and thoughts. It is too bad that it is so utterly impractical and out of keeping with the demands of life as made on each of us by our surroundings and by our physical and mental NECESSITIES. If we all became desireless and began to give ALL our time to the selfless worship of the God Concept, we would have no humanity after as long a time as it takes to starve to death. India and Mongolia are a sorry enough example, and only a portion of their citizens put on the yellow robes and take up the begging bowl.

To be practical — as most of us are, fortunately — we must accept life as we find it and conclude that whatever Creator there may be, He was wise enough to make man pretty much as he wanted him to be and in pretty much the surroundings which were best for him. If we take this stand, we then have little trouble in becoming practical in the matter of mixing our religion with magic. We admit that we need and DESIRE many things to live normal lives. We have found that prayer to a Higher Intelligence is a practical thing in so far as we know how to pray correctly, and we go on praying for what we need — for what we need help in getting for ourselves, or our families or friends — even for the world.

This brings us back to the question of WHY ARE WE HERE? It appears that we are here to live normal lives and learn what we may while living them. We may safely guess that we are evolving in one way or another at the same time, but we CANNOT safely decide to throw normal living to the winds and give all our time and efforts to trying to force or speed up the supposed process of evolution, be this a growth of body, or a growth of the “selves” which may be ours.

It follows that, if we are correct in praying for swifter growth in mind or in our vague “spirit”, we are equally right in praying for bodily growth or normalcy. Continuing with our deductions we may decide that there is no logical limit to what we may be permitted to ask for. Logically, we may argue that if we may ask for and get a small amount of healing or prosperity, we can, by the same token, ask for a limitless amount of health and wealth. We might ask to be given the Earth. But again we see that something must be wrong with LOGIC or our basic assumption.

This leaves us in the same old tangle that has confronted our thinking for centuries. Again we are forced to invent an excuse, and make a patch to get our proposition to hold water. We suggest that the reason we can’t get the full healing or the Earth, is that we are not worthy, or that it is our karma to be ill and poor, or that one must ask first for the “kingdom of God…” etc. Or we may decide that our prayers are improperly made, or that we need rituals and chants and formulas in our use of magic. Or, we may just decide that we have no criterion to use to judge the conflicting assumptions and clamorous dogmas — and that we had better wash our slates of them all.

Fortunately, we can turn now to Huna, old as it is, for help on this point.

In looking to Huna for an answer to the question of “FOR WHAT MAY WE PRAY?” we, as Huna Research Associates, must keep in mind the fact that we have re-discovered the ancient SECRET, and that we are now testing what we know of it to see if it will work. We do not have to accept the basic assumptions or following dogmas of Huna. It is enough that we consider them quietly and accept them as the materials upon which we base our experimentation.

After agreeing to begin work under the assumption that there is a High Self and that it is the next level of consciousness above the conscious mind part of us, and that it can be appealed to by proper prayer, we are ready to ask what light the kahunas threw on our problem.

The kahunas were simple men, and their system reflects that same simplicity and practicality. They offer us no flights into the idealism of which we have cleared our slates. Their ideal was the NORMAL condition.

1. Normal health.
2. Normal supply of the necessities of life.
3. Normal relations between the three selves in the man – the low self, middle self and High Self. (And if relations with still higher Beings were required, the High Self would know what to do about that requirement.)

For the kahunas, the normal condition was the happy one. Love and helpfulness and the observance of the rule of non-hurt to others, with free normal intercourse between the three selves, made for the ideal of the NORMAL.

They well recognized the fact that the three selves of man were of different levels of consciousness and probably of growth and development. What was right and just for the low self, living as it does in the animal body, may not be right and just for the more advanced middle self and for the wiser High Self.

1. The low self was to be taught not to hurt others. (To be trained away from the animal way of the strong eating the weak.)
2. The middle self was to go a step beyond the rule of non-hurt, and learn to live and work helpfully with others.
3. The High Self was, supposedly, advanced to the point where loving and unselfish service is the rule of being.

In the light of these concepts, we may safely, in our experimental use of prayer after the Huna fashion, and using the Huna mechanisms, ask for anything that is normal and good for us and those around us. We MAY NOT ask for anything, the granting of which would violate the rules of the three selves and their levels of life and growth, that is, violate the rule of non-hurt, of helpful cooperation in family and group life, or of loving and unselfish service of others. We must live JUSTLY, as we, the middle solves, conceive justice, NOT as the low self and its animal companions of land and sea conceive it, in that the strong devour the weak.

If we look at the ideals expressed in action in the lower forms of life which seem to be guided by some Higher Intelligence, we can see that helpful cooperation is good. It has been demonstrated in ant and bee. We can see that love and unselfish service, and gentle sympathy and pity are also good. The dog and cat mothers demonstrate these ideals and more. The path is not wide at this point, but it is very straight.

In observing what nature has to tell us, we note also that on the animal level the other cheek is not turned. Nip is returned for nip. It is the middle self that learns the benefits gained from turning the other cheek, at times.

In what we call “religion”, an amazing amount of common sense has been used despite the fact that an even more amazing amount of impractical idealism has been preached. In Huna we have a return to the common sense with most of the impractical idealism left out.

Since the work of testing Huna was begun, a number of questions have come up as to what should be prayed for, or, to put it into Huna terms, should be decided upon and built into the future, either as a long-time building, or as a building for immediate needs.

Most questions could be answered by applying common sense. Only a few made the mistake of deciding to ask for the moon. The majority included in their picture of the future the wider canvass of world peace and betterment, with themselves and their home and families and friends happily set in the midst.

Where many had trouble in seeing clearly, was the situation in which the free will of a relative or close associate was involved. For instance, a mother might not wish her son to marry a certain girl, or a girl might wish to pray that a certain man would fall in love with her and marry her. Or a man might wish to cause a change in his wife’s attitude toward him, or in a son who drank too much, or a daughter who was wayward.

In making the decision concerning what things we will strive to have built into our future, we must keep always in mind the fact that when it comes to changes which others must share with us, we must not impose our will on them.

The kahunas apparently thought that the matter of minding one’s own affairs was most important. The Aumakuas were called, “The Utterly Trustworthy Parental Spirits”, and they seem to have been “trustworthy’ in as much as they could be trusted NOT to take from the middle self its FREE WILL. Blunder as it may, the middle self of each of us is to be allowed to learn in its own way. The only time that the High Self is allowed (by what mysterious Power, we do not know) to take a hand in the affairs of the middle self man is when ASKED TO DO SO.

This rule seems to hold to a lesser degree for us on our level of consciousness and life. We may force the children and the criminal and insane to obey our dictates, but NOT the normal adult.

Where another’s acts affect our lives, we are within our rights in asking that any bad effects of the association be changed. We can safely picture ourselves in the future freed from the bad effects. We may ask that others be guided and helped to better ways and better conditions, especially if we stand ready to help in what ways we can without trying to impose our Will on the one helped.

The group and the family represent a grouping of the High Selves of each individual, these being as extensive as the group, and known to the kahunas as the Po`e Aumakua, or “Assemblage or Company of Aumakuas”. One who offers to help the person over whom an Aumakua stands as Guardian, undoubtedly may ask help from the Guardian. The parents may appeal for the help of the several Aumakuas of themselves and members of the family. Collective work seems to multiply the force which is brought to bear on problems involving groups.

To ask anything that is hurtful to another is to set the Guardian of that person against you. (Also, possibly the spirit friends of the injured person.)

In trying to decide what we wish to begin building into our future, we may begin by asking for guidance and inviting our High Selves to take a hand in our affairs.

Another strange fact appeared as the experimental work got under way. Many of us discovered that we had been drifting. We had been taking things as they came, and had no definite ends or aims beyond the little plans for the immediate future. Our plans for the years farther ahead were either lacking or were so misty and subject to the change of our whims as to count hardly at all.

Some of us found it difficult to think of ourselves as we might be ten or twenty years later. Some found that they were inwardly trying to go back to happier days instead of work toward happier days in the future. Some could hardly face the responsibility of deciding on a future and working toward it. The tendency to mark time and drift was greater than had been expected.

After a number had decided what they wanted to do, to have, and to become, the old habits of drifting had to be fought. A letter came which said, “It is so easy to slip back into the old way of living aimlessly… and yesterday I found four correspondence courses in the garret, none of which any member of the family had more than half finished….”

With some of us the need for making changes in our lives has been great enough to keep us steadily at work. With others it has happened that at the moment everything seemed good enough. In the latter case, the experimental work would be “an ounce of prevention” instead of the “cure”. To keep things good enough, it is safe to set the face firmly toward a similar future, lest worse befall. In any event, one can do his part in helping build a better world condition in which there is peace and understanding.

Turn to Chapter IX of SSBM at this point and read it. Read the proofs I have assembled to show that the kahunas were right in thinking that the future of each of us is sufficiently fixed in advance to be seen through the various mechanisms of premonition. Study carefully page 168 under the heading, MAKING OF THE FUTURE, and get familiar with the Huna teaching that our futures are almost automatically (because of the free will) formed for us in advance from the thoughts we think — from our plans, hopes, fears, etc., and from the plans, hopes, fears and so on of our close associates.

Look back over your life and see the many times when you could have done much better had you been planning carefully and had you been building steadily in one direction instead of allowing yourself to be moved hither and yon by passing influences. Try to benefit by past experiences in deciding on the future.

For those of us who cannot help loving the lofty ideals of unselfish service, the way ahead is especially bright. My friend, W.R. Stewart, who found kahunas in North Africa, as I related in my book, was an idealist of this type. He wrote that he had discovered that when his prayer-actions included aid for others, they got faster and far more generous answers from the High Selves. At the shrine at Lourdes, we recall, the ones most often and most miraculously healed are those who have come to pray for others rather than for themselves. Go out of your way to help in any way the most unloved and unworthy, and you win the gratitude of the High Selves who yearn endlessly over them but who are not permitted to help except in certain small ways. Make ten such friends in high places and you have protection and help for the asking. Stand ready to do what you can to help the world, and you have the ear of the Great Company of Aumakuas. But you must be very sincere. Service is not to be taken lightly. It is one of the take-withable things which we carry with us when we go on. It is what we must use to build any enduring monument to our memories. After the death of W.R. Stewart I received a stained note from his old charwoman to tell me the sad news. It ended with the words, “He was such a kind man.” What an epitaph for a monument which will never be raised over the grave of one who would wish only for such remembrance. Plan also to Serve as you can.

DECIDING ON A NEW FUTURE is a very serious business, but it is laughably like going to select a new suit. One studies the lives of friends. One tries to remember the most worthwhile lives of great men and women. One tries to imagine oneself as like this or that personage.

Laughable or not, this is the correct way to find a future that will fit. Imagine one, then try it on. Look at yourself in the mental mirror and get the effect. Wear it for a time — become the person you imagine and project yourself into that “suit” long enough to see how you like it. See if you can be happy and comfortable in it for minutes on end.

Take an example. Suppose you think of being a great artist, author or teacher. Picture yourself as such, then go on past the peak of the thrill of triumphant attainment, and see whether the simple fact of BEING successful in the chosen line is, in itself, enough to make the effort to become THAT worthwhile. After reading SSBM you may be impressed with the dream of becoming a great healer. If so, pretend that you have become THAT. Look around in your imagination and see your office, or lack of one. See the waiting room filled with charming patients, or see a long line of poor and degraded patients moving slowly past you as you sit at a small table in a dusty yard — as Slatter used to sit fifty years ago. Or see a mixed crowd in [the] waiting room or line. See whether that Service would make you happiest of all.

There is room in the world for lives of every kind. Be practical. Above all be honest with yourself. If you find that you are uneasy in a velvet suit trimmed with gold braid, or in a doctor’s smock, lay them aside. Make your own choice. Take all the time you need. Make notes if you will, and change them over and over until you are satisfied. If you cannot decide on many points, decide on a few and add others later, when you are well into your building experiment. Rome was not built in a day, but stone by stone.

If you have a very dear, very understanding, and very trusted friend, you may talk over the matter betimes with them. But, be warned, if you talk with your friends at random, particularly if they are not as well acquainted with Huna as you are, they will build such a wall of doubt, laughter and confusion around you that you will never be able to make up your mind. Instead, you will probably give up the attempt entirely.

Another word of warning from the HRAs collective experience up to now. If you have rushed into Huna after a hurried reading of SSBM, and primarily because you have a problem which MUST be met swiftly, with absolute certainty, and in a certain set way, you had better try to solve that particular problem in some other way, and reserve your approach to Huna for matters to which you can take more time. A situation which has been building in your future for a long time is not often completely broken down and completely replaced in a very short time, particularly by a beginner. Don’t bank on a miracle. We are in the experimental stage. While some splendid results have already been obtained, we have not finished our work and cannot as yet obtain miraculous or instant results.

While there is a certain amount of help that may be given, once you have decided on at least the major parts of your future and have reported in and asked for that help, the final results depend largely on you and your ability to follow through the necessary period of practice and self-training. Now and then someone is healed or helped who does not know that help has been asked for them in the Huna fashion. Sometimes an HRA is aided who only sits with folded bands, expectantly waiting. But, as a rule, each of us rises or falls according to the drive behind the urge or the need. MFL