As important as it is to have a philosophy of life, it is equally as important to have some guidelines for practicing that philosophy. Here is a format that I use every morning to remind myself of my philosophy, to clear my mind and clarify my purpose, to stabilize and harmonize my feelings and emotions, and to relax my body and charge it up for the activities of the day. I do it as if I were a teacher to myself. Sometimes I do it very briefly on a very busy day, but whenever I have the time I work with it for awhile.

Be Aware that the world is what you think it is, so decide what you want to believe today. It is up to you, after all. No one forces you to think in a particular way. It is totally up to you whether you think the world is a place of struggle and pain and danger, or a place of beauty and light and magic. Outside events do not rule how you feel, but the way you interpret them does.

Be Free because there are no limits, so give yourself the right to change your mind. An amazing number of people limit themselves unnecessarily because they feel they don’t deserve to be happy or successful, due to something they’ve done or didn’t do in the past. If this is your problem you have to forgive yourself and move on, or forever be bound by the chains you’ve put around yourself with a lock to which only you have the key. It doesn’t matter who else says you don’t have the right, or even that you do have the right. You will never have it until you give it to yourself.

Be Focused because energy flows where attention goes, so increase your desire to live the life you choose. You’ll probably read this again several times in different forms, but the secret to increasing your desire to live the life you choose is to focus on the benefits of doing that and to decide that those benefits are really important to you. When the benefits become important enough then the focus will be automatic.

Be Here because now is the moment of power, so start right now with some kind of action to be, do, or have what you want. You can’t do anything yesterday, and you can’t do anything tomorrow. You can only do something right now. But “right now” is like a foreign country to people who spend most of their time dwelling on the past or the future. If you aren’t used to it, it isn’t easy to stay centered in the present moment, but the way to practice is to consciously breathe, consciously look at colors and shapes, consciously listen to the sounds you can hear, and consciously touch what is in your reach. And then consciously act, even in the smallest way, in a direction of your choice. The past and the future can be interesting places to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there even if you could. Your real home is here and now.

Be Happy because love is the source of power, so enjoy and acknowledge the good that is. If you aren’t happy, get happy. How can you do that when so many awful things are going on? Well, “faking it till you make it” is one way, but I’ll give you a simpler way that works for me and for thousands of others I’ve trained. A very ancient technique, it’s called “count your blessings.” You do it by actively seeking out and feeling appreciation for all the good things you can find. This includes all the good experiences you’ve ever had, no matter how minor they may seem; all the skills you’ve ever learned, and don’t forget walking, talking and dressing; all the beauty and wonder you can discover in the world around you; all the good things that you see and hear about that other people do; and all the good things that you want to experience in the future. I’m not suggesting that you pretend bad things don’t exist, because this is a practical teaching, after all. But the more you are filled with an awareness of goodness, the easier it is to deal with the bad.

Be Confident because all power comes from within, so always trust yourself. You can’t trust people to always do what you want, because they have their own priorities and agendas which may or may not agree with yours. You can’t trust the world to always be the way you want it to be, because there are so many forces and influences at work which may not be moving in the direction you want things to go. But you can always trust that you have the power to change what you can change, adapt when you’re unable to make changes, and increase your skills by study and practice. One of the best posters I ever saw was of a sailor at sea in his boat, with a caption that read “You can’t control the wind, but you can always adjust your sail.”

Be Positive because effectiveness is the measure of success, so always expect the best. Some people believe in preparing for the worst, so they won’t get any nasty surprises. There are two problems with that. First, they usually get nasty surprises anyway; and second, they seldom get any good surprises. Other people avoid optimism because they are afraid of being disappointed. Let’s take a hard look at that. Disappointment is being unhappy with the way things have turned out. So these people are not planning for success because their plans might not work and then they might feel bad. And they are so afraid of feeling bad that they’d rather not feel good. There’s something about that logic that escapes me. Yes, things might not turn out the way you want and you might decide to feel bad. So? If you still want to be effective you try something different and start again. Let me give you a quote from Serge Kahili King: “People don’t fail, plans do. People just give up or make new plans.”

Tags: Articles, Serge Kahili King

“Show some pride!” “Stand Up for yourself!” “Walk tall!” “Don’t be a doormat!” “Be proud of who you are!” “Stick out your chest and hold your head high!”

“Show some humility!” “Keep your head down!” “Don’t stick out from the crowd!” “Pride goeth before a fall!” “Learn to be humble!” “Who do you think you are?”

When I was a young man trying to find my place in the world, my mother once said to me, “Don’t think too much of yourself, or God will bring you down.” Well, that was scary. It was also confusing, because the world was full of religions, philosophies, psychologies, and cultures with diametrically opposing viewpoints on the issues of pride and humility, often within those same religions, philosophies, psychologies, and cultures themselves.

For many years I wandered through a maze of conflicting ideas, trying to figure out how to be humble without losing my self respect, and how to be proud without losing my sense of humility. Mostly, like a lot of people I’ve met, I bounced back and forth between arrogance and self-debasement, with all the variations in between, before I finally discovered what it was really all about.

In ancient Greece one of the worst sins you could commit was that of hubris, an excessive form of pride that’s also known as arrogance. The most serious form of it was when you thought you were the equal of, or better than, the gods. There are many stories in Greek mythology about mortals whose hubris caused the gods to slap them down. This translated socially into the very real danger of being slapped down hard by those who represented the gods, such as priests, kings, and government officials if you dared to think that you were their equal or, especially, better than them.

Eventually, this idea became an ingrained part of Western culture in general and was transferred not only to the gods or God of newer religions, but to the class systems that developed, such as nobles and commoners, or the rich and the poor. Then it was hubris to think yourself the equal to or better than your “betters,” meaning anyone perceived by your society as having a higher social or financial standing than you.

As if that were not bad enough, the problem was worsened by the word, hubris, going out of fashion and being replaced by the word, pride, whose dictionary definitions are very contradictory. Finally, we are at a point today where it’s good to be proud and it’s bad to be proud, and it’s good to be humble and it’s bad to be humble. Is there a way out of this conundrum?

There is if we are willing to think a little differently. First, we have to distinguish between true pride and false pride, and then we have to distinguish between true humility and false humility.

True pride has to do with acknowledging and respecting who you are and what you can do, without any outside confirmation or approval. False pride has to do with claiming that you are more than you believe you are, and that you know more than you believe you know. This kind of pride almost always requires outside confirmation or approval to cover up an inner feeling of inadequacy. Mind you, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with outside confirmation or approval. It’s only a measure of false pride when you cannot feel any self respect without it. Another aspect of false pride is arrogance. This is when you pretend that you are better than others in ways that cannot be measured by skill. It is one thing to be better at a particular skill than anyone else, and it is quite another thing to require others to acknowledge that or to pretend that somehow your level of skill makes you a higher type of human being. You’ll notice that I keep saying “pretend.” This is because no matter how good a person is at acting superior, to the degree that he or she needs outside validation for the superiority that person is pretending. Someone with true pride may or may not be a superior person, but that doesn’t matter to them.

True humility has to do with acknowledging and respecting who you are and what you can do, without any outside confirmation or approval. False humility has to do with claiming you are less than you believe you are, and that you can do less than you believe you can. This kind of humility almost always requires outside confirmation or approval to cover up an inner feeling of arrogance. The person with false humility has a driving need to convince others of how humble he or she is. Sometimes this is because a person believes that any form of pride is bad, and sometimes an essentially arrogant person is using false humility as a way of disarming or manipulating other people. A truly humble person has no need for others to know how humble he or she feels, nor any fear of others knowing. A truly humble person feels neither superior nor inferior to anyone else.

What are we left with out of all this? Just a very simple idea: true pride and true humility are exactly the same thing.

Tags: Articles, Serge Kahili King

As a part my training and development as an Adventurer Shaman, I have had to become very aware of my use of language, both consciously and sub-consciously. As a result of this, I have also become vividly aware of how negative we are when we describe even the most positive things, the result of which is to program negative and destructive sub-conscious patterns. When someone asks you how you are feeling, do you reply “great”, “very well thank you” or, “not bad”, “fair”, “not so good”? When you have just finished a really nice meal and someone asks you if you enjoyed it, is you reply “really nice”, “excellent”, delicious meal” or, “not bad”? When you have turned out a good piece of work or achieved something that really pleases you, do you prefer to hear “excellent effort that”, ” really good work”, “I am very pleased” or, “not a bad effort there”?

The sub-conscious mind works on pure logic and does not know about context when we use language. Unless we pay particular conscious attention to context, the sub-conscious will often pick out key words in a sentence and use those to generate experience or feeling. If most of the words are negatives, or have negative associations for your sub-conscious, then most of the experiences and feelings will tend toward the negative. Using biofeedback techniques such as muscle testing, it is possible to demonstrate the dramatically different effects that the two language patterns have on our energy levels and emotions.

When you are talking to someone and disagree with what they are saying, do you say, “I don’t believe that”, “that’s rubbish” or, “I believe something else”, “I have a different opinion”? When you are feeling poorly, do you say “I don’t feel well”, “I am not feeling well” or, “I am feeling a little off colour for the moment”? These similar statements are interpreted by the conscious mind as meaning the same thing, but to the sub-conscious they are quite different. To help the healing process you could say, “I’m feeling much better now”. Even if this is not true, the sub-conscious mind will begin to bring it about. Using the negative expression will keep us feeling unwell for longer.

Another aspect of this is how we have learned to ask for things. It is vastly more common for people to complain about something being wrong than for people to suggest a solution. I have trained myself to ask for the desired result rather than to complain about something and hope for someone to recognise this as a request - and possibly feeling disgruntled that it hasn’t been recognised. I teach my children to come and ask for a drink rather than to complain that they are thirsty - to ask for help with something rather than to state that they can’t do it themselves.

This seemingly insignificant rephrasing of descriptions and requests can have a tremendous effect on the way we experience life. We become more positive in our outlook and people around us begin to respond to us in more positive ways. Things tend to start working out more because we are choosing ways for them to work out rather than hoping that they will. People like to know what you want from them instead of hearing what they do wrong. Our own sub-conscious responds the same way - if a solution is suggested our sub-conscious will move to bring this about quickly. If we simply state that there is a problem then our sub-conscious will have no clear choice to move towards and is like to choose a less than desirable solution and create a new problem.

It has taken me some time to become aware of this process and to remember to change it. I still forget quite often but gradually more and more things in my life are working better and better. The effort to change has been well worth it for me and I am sure that you will see the same benefits in your own lives if you take on the challenge and stick with it.

A friend of mine uttered his disappointment, representing all the millions of people that feel the same way these days,that their positive focus could not prevent the war against Iraq. How come, that in spite of all the peace calls and the will of the people there is war ? …they want to know.

Dear people! You are expecting the Universe to work according to YOUR schedule. It won’t, though, as it seems. Sorry to disappoint you, but you are applying expectations due to habits to the situation. Don’t get trapped in the modern “timing”-thinking, in the “fast-clip”-attitude and in the stress of needing to accomplish more better and faster. The Universe doesn’t work like this. Why? Because beside YOU there are myriads of beings influencing the processes in the Universe with their “mana”. And: All that we think and ever have thought weaves the “aka”-web of our future, so to say. I am talking about that “web” of energetic patterns that show in our perception as material beings, objects, happenings, thoughts and views, as ideas and rays, frequencies and sounds, chocolate and radioactive garbage.

The idea of self-empowerment of the individual is not old, be aware of that fact! For centuries if not thousands of years, people were used to consider themselves being helpless in front of the authorities who told them how to think, to be and to act. Since the beginning of the New-age-movement early in the 1900’s, when people started to become aware of the effectiveness of shamanic views of the world including the understanding, that every single being has it’s own “mana”, a wave rose, a little, worldwide: People started tuning in their true nature as humans, as powerful self-responsible beings with creative power.

The wave is still rising, and some time it will start traveling and will eventually wash away those limiting views of the world that brought our race into misery … But it is not the time yet. The idea of the individual’s power is so young and fragile, that it is still overwhelmed in its effects by the old ideas of millions of people, that are still manifesting. The good news: This wave consists of innate wisdom, that every human being possesses without knowing it. So it has all chances to take over, soon, as soon as enough people are tuned in. In other words: That wave is irresistible and will grow and clean all the “inner factories” out of garbage - unless the wind from “above”, that presses it down, stays stronger. New ideas constantly infiltrate old patterns, but they need to be fed more and more with thoughts of self-empowerment and trust and love and great expectations - and not dropped because of some disappointments.

Forget about what you have learned if it goes like “Don’t expect too much, then you won’t be disappointed.” Always expect the best! How else could you count on experiencing something nice if you don’t make it very clear that you want to? Every thought about something that you don’t want enforces exactly that.

To let go of the idea “What we think and focus on makes a difference” exactly would support the intentions of the mighty, who already rule: We have to step out of the trap, immediately! They want us to waive our mind’s power and our rights or creating … again. No wonder, that authorities nowadays can grin over the population’s will, because that population had written them blank-authorizations over the centuries, saying “Do whatever you want with us, we need you to rule us.”

Our thinking was and is an active energetic power, the power, in fact, in the human Cosmos, and the stronger we think and imagine, the clearer and more evident the results will be. But maybe not tomorrow. Not next week. Maybe in three weeks or in some years - depending on the pattern of the “aka”-web and the strength and density of the positive energy that formed since about the beginning of the last century. What about the people in Iraq, the troops, that might die? It may sound hard - but they are, where they have to be, according to their “cosmic personality” and the paths their “Aumakua” figured out for them. We cannot help them by mourning about them ahead of time, as this focus on drama keeps us from focusing on what we want. It is terrible to see people die and loose dear ones (and believe me, I know what I am talking about), but building up that waves includes the understanding, that human beings are systems of energetic processes that can be perceived by other human beings as bodies. That is it (and this is true for many other forms of existence on this planet). We honor our divine nature not by hanging on to painful ideas about death and loss, but by nourishing ideas about the never-ending circles of life and the everlasting change which is life.

Yes, human thinking can and does influence any other form of energy. But how and when you will witness the results is not up to you to determine. You will be bound to your senses and ways of perception due to everything you ever learned throughout times and dimensions as long as you will live.

Let us face it: The old frustrating patterns are still out there. The millions of horrified thoughts and feelings of men in former wars. The feelings and needs, the fear and anger of mistreated women throughout the centuries. The pain of slaves and animals. The ideas of scientist who tried to be “right” with their ideas, putting down other peoples great discoveries. The fear of children finding, that they had to obey and surrender to the beliefs and ideas of the adults, although the kids felt that they knew better themselves … All that stuff is still manifesting. (Dig out some of your major thoughts of your childhood and teenage years and compare them with what went on in your adult life, you will see …) Isn’t easy to understand, that we better really hold on to our positive focus to neutralize that crap! No, sorry, I am not to say crap, because every human being always acts and thinks in a way that appears to be right at the very moment. Everybody is a product of everything that happened before … Okay, but nowadays, that we know so much about the power of focus, we already ran out of excuses not to take over our responsibility concerning the creation of our future. Recently a 70 year old friend told me, that she wasn’t going to clear up her sick family life, because “The Lord will figure something out for me, he will fix it.” Well, recognizing that “God” is a human idea, one has to shiver facing her way of dropping of all self-responsibility … but you know what? Exactly this millions of people have been doing all over the planet for millenniums! But, you know what else: The absolutely religious Jeanne D’Arc, the “Virgin of Orleans” answered, when she, claiming to be a God-sent savior and leader of the French army, was asked by the King, if what she presented as “messages of God” wasn’t just her imagination? “Of course,” she replied, “it is my imagination! How else would God talk to us humans than through our imagination?” Horrified because of the cold ignorance of that single man with the small eyes, the baby mouth and the big ears and his war in Iraq? No, sorry. Doesn’t count to waive your responsibility on the Earth’s development.

“Oki” stuff like that, whenever you hear it (that means, say or think the positive contrary to give out a new order): “Oh now, it did not help anything, all that thoughts about peace and our hopes and peace-marches and thoughts!” Don’t help the evil authorities to win again! Exactly that was taught by them over and over again: “Experience our power and feel like sheep that need to be lead!” (I apologize, sheep …) The true meaning was: “Give up your personal power of influence so that we can use you for our interests.”

Americans, face it: YOU are financing the wars with you tax-money, for instance, on the cost of infrastructure, education and health-care that makes sense. You chose to. Now it is about time to choose the right focus, to really gain safety and health.

What do you think, how the idea of peace shall get strengthened if you drop your focus at the first best disappointment? You experience the turn down of your wishes in the Here and Now, but it is still up to you to influence your future.

Let us weaken the power of those up there (who must suffer serious penis-issues, or what, as they are behaving like they have to show attitude to make up for something …) and let us support the wave of self-empowerment to build up.

Let us stubbornly visualize a peaceful, beautiful planet, where love is all over. Yes, there may be social life that is unknown to us now waiting for us, but, hey, we need not try to figure that out right now (as we can’t, due to all that we know and believe to be possible). Let us just choose a symbol for the perfect life here on Earth, for instance, a sunflower, a heart or a shining crystal, the little striped stocking of a baby or a dolphin jumping, a cat purring in the sun or a smile. Let us hold on to it whenever we find ourselves in doubts, fears or worries. It will help us to step out of the trap that evil forces built.

We know, what we want, right?
So let us go for it.