[AkAngel]

This is super long and I've no idea where to put it... so I'm guessing here. If I've made a mistake in where I'm posting it, would a moderator please move it and accept my apologies.

Once upon a time, which is how all good stories should start, while exploring various religions and philosophies, I discover Huna. Huna is a philosophy/religion that has a shamanistic flavor and traces its roots through Hawaiian history and Polynesia before being lost to history.

A key tenet of Huna is the idea of three selves; the lower self, middle self and higher self. These correspond to what modern psychotherapists call the id, ego, and super-ego, or unconscious, conscious, and super-conscious. New-Agers would refer to them as the inner-child, inner-adult, and God-consciousness. In my personal journey, healing, recovery, growth – whatever you want to call it, I believed, and still do, that the key is self-awareness. Huna taught integration and peaceful co-existance of the three selves which is no different than what psychology is aiming for but it taught it in what I found to be a fascinating way.

What Huna says is that the doorways between the three selves is linear. Imagine a train in which the first car is the dining car, the second is the coach and the third is the sleeping car. If you wake up and want to go to breakfast, you must first pass through the second car – through the coach car to get there, there is no other way to the dining car. Likewise Huna teaches that the only way to the high self is through the low self – the middle self cannot talk directly to the high self. The middle self therefore must build a repoire with the low self in order for this to happen.

It was, ‘you must come to me as a child’ all over again. I like themes between religions and philosophies; to me, themes make it more likely I’ve stumbled upon truth. Okay so, I’ve got to get in touch with the lower-self…but who is the ‘I’ that has to do the ‘getting in touch’? That would be the middle self – or conscious self or the ‘adult’. There was a problem though. My logical-minded, large-and-in-charge ‘adult’ had silenced, repressed and done everything in it’s power to squash the emotional and needy ‘child’. There were serious internal trust issues but I mean, that’s what I was doing right? Looking for integration, healing, recovery?

Two days later I got a package from an American Indian friend of mine. I am half Navajo and we share a lot of the same beliefs. Anyway, the package was a stuffed baby mountain lion… a representation of my spirit guide.

I had been trying to speak to the ‘child’ within – to my lower self, but it wasn’t going well. I didn’t know where to direct my thoughts nor how to listen – it seemed like I was just talking to myself and was getting nowhere. Then I had an idea. I would direct my conversation toward the stuffed mountain lion. Since it was my spirit guide, it felt like it was part of me already and yet it gave me something external to focus on thereby gaining the separation I was looking for - hopefully. Too, it was a baby mountain lion – which worked well with the concept of ‘child’ within. I was excited by the idea and committed to a month. The excitement didn’t last.

Twenty-nine days of fiteen minutes a day and nothing. I lay down on my back, my head resting comfortably on the pillow. I sat the stuffed animal on my chest for what promised to be our last evening together. Our last evening. Emotions began to fall like hail in a sudden storm. I would no sooner recognize that large and menacing something racing toward me as a feeling, when another would pummel me. Soon they lay all about me: disappointment, anger, pride, wistfulness and more, melting away as I raced to understand them before they were gone. I looked up into its glass eyes and tried to explain the feelings I was having to both of us.

Of course, I was proud of myself, and justly so I explained. I had committed to fifteen minutes a day for thirty days and had stuck to it. Good for me. Disappointed because I was left feeling as if I had wasted 450 minutes of my life, which I was never going to get back. Anger for judging myself so harshly; I tried – that was what was important. There were other feelings too, feelings that I was having trouble naming. I had believed I would meet another part of me and found myself missing the relationship I hoped would have existed but never actually manifested itself. Enough.

I set the stuffed animal aside on my pillow and sat up. It had been a long, exhausting day; physically, emotionally and intellectually and I was ready to get some sleep. I pushed off the bed, walked over to the light, reached out and flicked the switch to darkness. It was met with both a terrified and terrifying scream. Stunned as I tried to sort through what was, I threw the light back on. The scream came from a baby stuffed mountain lion sitting both on my pillow and somewhere deep within me. They were the same. Who to run to? The pillow. Instantly with the scream came the lucid understanding of why the scream. He was afraid of the dark?! But that meant that I was afraid of the dark! How could I not know that? I thought for just a moment about turning the light back off again to test the theory and was hit by a bolt of terror. I immediately apologized. What would you like me to do? Hold me. I sat there on the bed, cradling this stuffed mountain lion and wondering what to do or say next.

Thoughts, not random, as if in conversation formed…

“Do you have a name?”

“Sons’see’arae.”

“That’s…” I started. “Morning Star,” we said together.

I was surprised at the time that I had remembered so suddenly. The name had come from a character in an old movie I hadn’t seen since early childhood and then only once. Beyond the surprise that I remembered, there came another. The character was a girl.

“You know, I don’t care really – it’s a nice name, it really is – I like it a lot… but did you know it’s a girls name?”

I immediately felt pain and it wasn’t mine. Regret and shock – those were mine.

“I’m so sorry… I didn’t know… but how is that possible?”

“I dunno.” I felt her shrink from me a bit.

I found myself trying to process that without a template from which to do so. New templates? Well that’s what I was doing here right? Fighting a need to explore that with a need to respond to her hurt at my incredulousness and I knew, her fear that she was being rejected as a result. I could think later, but... I mean… she’s me too right? What am I doing? I can’t stop and think cause I have to take care of me? Did I just hurt my own feelings and need to go make amends to myself? Right. New template.

“Well, this might come in handy. If I have women questions I can just ask you, huh?” I suggested.

Silence. Not ‘nobody home’ silence. Cold silence. So odd to feel someone else’s reactions. Mental note – not someone else’s. Maybe. Oh hell, they’re someone else’s. Great Angel – fracture your personality on purpose. There’s a whole host of dissociative disorders to choose from. There was a very clear, very calm and very measured response to that outburst that came from that part of me that I trust unequivocally. Trust this, it is for your highest good.

“Sons’see’arae, that’s not at all what I was feeling. I just said that because I could tell that you were uncomfortable and wanted your discomfort to go away so I made a joke. I do that a lot. What I am feeling is a tremendous sense of wonder and curiosity. I want to know everything there is about you. I want you to know everything about me – but I don’t know what you know and what you don’t. I haven’t known about you – have you known about me?” I felt her guard drop almost immediately as I began talking. “Note to self - games aren’t going to work here.”

And so, that was the beginning of that particular inner self-exploration. The results have been anti-intuitive but just what the kahuna’s predicted. By lovingly ‘parenting’ the child, the adult got to enjoy a more peaceful ‘home’. Each part is healthier and hence stronger and so the whole is stronger. When that part of me that I know as the lower self recognized you for instance, the middle self listened. Years ago, it wouldn’t have heard and if it did, I would have done the equivilant of telling that still, small voice to ‘shut up and stop being stupid.’

I found it of interest to learn, that the method of projecting onto an inanimate object or ‘empty chair’ is known as the Gestalt method. It is used as a tool to repair the damage caused by relationships in which a primary player can’t or won’t participate. For instance, a relative that has died or someone whom it is not safe to be around. I’m fairly certain the way I adapted the method is unique though, or at least not commonly used.

Anyway, this has been long and if you have made it all the way to the end then I don’t know whether to applaud you or send my condolences, however, since you made it this far…thoughts?

Whatever works for you, AkAngel.

welcome and interesting story. just my opinion, but it sounds more like a spirit than an inner child you were talking to.