REMARKABLE PEOPLE, serge king
reprinted from the May 1996 issue of Thresholds Quarterly
Making the Good the Most Important
Serge Kahili King is the founder and executive director of Aloha International, a non-profit worldwide network of peacemakers. He is the author of several books including Kahuna Healing, Imagineering For Health and Urban Shaman. Dr. King has dedicated his life to the study of shamanism, healing and mystical traditions. He was trained in the shaman traditions of Hawaii and West Africa and has a Ph.D. in psychology. Based in Kauai, Hawaii, Dr. King brings his wisdom to the world through seminars and lectures. His message is quite simple in that everything that exists is based on our system of beliefs. As belief changes, the reality of our world also changes. |
The Aloha Spirit The Aloha Philosophy 1. IKE: The World Is What You Think It Is. 2. KALA: There Are No Limits. 3. MAKIA: Energy Flows Where Attention Goes. 4. MANAWA: Now Is The Moment Of Power. 5. ALOHA: To Love Is To Be Happy With 6. MANA: All Power Comes From Within 7. PONO: Effectiveness Is The Measure Of Truth |
Global Karma & the Coming Earth Changes
What we have in the physical world comes from the inner unseen world. Its based on your individual beliefs. The collective belief...and youre of course sharing and reinforcing the belief systems of others. So, its not the collective belief system that forms reality, thats a separatist kind of thing. But you tune into a collective dream. Lets assume for instance that this is a dream right now and all four of us are sitting in this room, in this dream. We are each having a different dream of this room. But because our dreams are so similar, we can talk about the same things and have a pretty good idea of where everybody is sitting and share some ideas about everything. But if we each went home tonight and wrote a report about our experience, wed come up with four different reports. With a lot of similarities. But theyd be different. Theyd have different perspective, different things that each person would have remembered as important. It would be a different experience for each person. Well, you can explain that in any way you like, we explain it by saying were each having a different dream, but these dreams that were having have a lot of connections. There are people walking around, apparent to us on the streets, that, theyre having a totally different experience than we are. That doesnt invalidate their experience. Theyre just seeing and feeling and sometimes communicating with different things than we are able to be aware of. Typically, such people are thought to be crazy by the other people who are sharing a different dream.
Thresholds: Do you believe that ... well, I am kind of asking the same question that I did earlier about the divine plan...
King: Well, lets bring free will a little bit in here... because of this. From this tradition that Im coming from, from these ideas, the whole idea is to be practical. And to use and to do what works. And for us, the aim is harmony. So, to do what works in producing harmony. Free will, lets say...this is not something that you can prove in any kind of analytical way. But, in a practical way, it makes a lot of sense. If there were not free will, whats the point? And the whole thing then becomes a bad joke. And I just happen to think Gods capable of telling good jokes. So not having free will produces a limitation that makes nonsense out of everything. Whereas if you introduce the idea of free will, that we have the choice, its our choice how to respond, how to react, to direct our activities, to influence events. Well now! Now things make a lot more sense and it can be a lot more interesting as well as a lot more fun. And that seems to be a much more reasonable way to go, so because it looked like a much more practical idea, thats why we use it. Who knows! Theres no way we can get outside of ourselves because there isnt any outside. We cant get outside of ourselves to find out. This is the one that seems to give us a greater sense of purpose, a greater sense of satisfaction, a greater sense of sensibleness in our activities and our... and gives us something to do when we want to change something. Extremely practical idea! So we use it. The other one doesnt seem to be very useful.
Thresholds: What do you think happens after you physically die, after your body is no longer useful?
King: Oh, thats two different things. In Hawaiian theres a word for death and that means to live in another direction. So you just have another dream. We can go in and out of certain dreams and sometimes we can just drop certain dreams. And not have them anymore. And so you can say something like that. We just dream a different dream. And our body, which is made up of all kinds of other entities and spirits that have collected together for our benefit. They start to have their own dream and go their different ways. Its like, we dont, in one sense create this body, but its a joint creation. And we are kind of like the organizing spirit for that. And once weve decided we dont need it anymore, or weve had enough or weve accomplished our particular purpose for this dream, why then the others say, Okay, see you around, and go dream something else.
Thresholds: In one of the books I glanced at... something about forecasting the future with stones? Tell me about that.
King: Well, the stones are one of many methods of casting. What you do when you cast stones, or the I Ching or tarot cards or any of these things, these are ways of communicating with the subconscious. So you set up a kind of alphabet and a vocabulary. You either accept someone elses teaching or you create your own that these patterns mean certain things. Like we do when we learn reading. Reading and writing, these are just patterns that somebody has made up. You ask an internal question, or a question of your subconscious, or a question of the universe or anything, it doesnt matter and you allow your subconscious through your body to present this pattern in a way that the conscious mind can interpret. And so thats essentially what it becomes, what it is. The stones that we use come from a couple of systems that I learned and that I combined and simplified that work very well. And so there are many systems... its a very good thing that there are many systems, because each system is like a different language. And there are certain things that can be described in French that just dont come across in English. There are certain things that the I Ching can do as far as giving you information that cant be done by runes. On the other hand the runes can do something that the I Ching cant do, give you a different perspective, and the stones can give you other forms of information.
Thresholds: I want to talk more about our relationship with the elements? In calling them the elements.
King: Thats fine.
Thresholds: When for example, there is a hurricane or tornado or something like that, can you discern what the elements are trying... is there an attempt to try to communicate something?
King: Oh, I dont think necessarily. There can be, but they can also simply be doing their natural thing. You know, lets take Hawaii, just for example. Theres a volcano there. And the volcano was there before the people came. So now the people come and they live on the side of this volcano. Whats the nature of a volcano? To erupt. And it does. So now there are people living on the side of the volcano and the volcano starts to tremble and erupt, you know. And the people say, Oh, what does this mean? The volcano Goddess is angry with us. No, shes erupting.
Thresholds: Shes doing what shes supposed to do.
King: Shes doing what shes doing! You live in a place where they have winds coming down off the lakes. Now, people could say, Oh the old wind God is after us, weve been bad... No. Its windy here. There are tornadoes in some places of the world, there are earthquakes in other places. Now people tend to go to places of high energy. Every major population center of the world is a place of high energy. Most of them are major earthquake centers. Other ones have a lot of volcanic activity. Sometimes both. There are other places where there are traditionally, I mean just in the nature of the environment, lots of tornadoes and things like this. Human beings can alter the environment. And nature will respond to that. If you remember the dust bowls of the thirties, that kind of stuff. So, human beings can influence their environment. And therefore nature, the elements will alter their behavior in response to that. That doesnt necessarily mean theyre trying to say anything except, perhaps, youre out of harmony.
Thresholds: Using the example of the dust bowl, where there were some choices made by human beings that werent productive. Do you believe in karma? Are you familiar with the term?
King: Oh, sure.
Thresholds: Do you believe humans experience repercussions?
King: Well, of course human beings always experience repercussions from what they do. Right here and now. This is your karma. Here. To be sitting with me doing this interview. Yes, of course. Everything in your life has led to this point. Every day of every moment we are experiencing our karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word; it means action in translation. And by extension, reaction. It has nothing to do with time. Now, some people interpret it as if you do something at one period of time, youre going to get your comeuppance at another period of time. But if you accept the idea that all time is now, like in my tradition, well, then heres your karma right now. Based on what youre thinking right now, believing right now, this is what youre going to experience right now. So if you do a particular act, lets say the dust bowl, well take an external act. The thing that people did that was later on going to produce all of these effects, there wasnt a jump from, lets say overgrazing, to the winds coming and blowing the soil away. There wasnt a jump. It was every day, there were decisions made and there were actions taken. Every day and every day and every day and EVERY DAY changes occurred. It wasnt like you had too many cattle grazing and woke up the next day and you had a dust bowl. Karma changed every day. Until finally, the change was significant enough that somebody paid attention. And then thought back on what had been done early on as if what had been done in the past caused this event to happen today. No, it was the whole series of things, every day, that brought that about. Karma is a now time kind of thing.
Thresholds: Would you relate the same concept to an internal thing? You said lets use an external thing. Can you share an example of an internal...?
King: Well, okay, sure. For instance, the idea that a decision creates events. This is very popular. So, we can zero down on, why did this happen to me... Ah! Its because my mother criticized me, or because I made the decision to be here. Okay, heres a good one. People will go to a certain place, travel to a particular place lets say or take a particular job, a career, and it doesnt work out. And they say, If only I hadnt decided to take up this area. If only I hadnt decided to move here. Its when I made that decision that everything went wrong. If only Id made a different decision, this would not have happened. Well, from my tradition yes it would. It might have taken a slightly different form but if you had done the same pattern of things that you had done, day by day by day by day, this would have been the same result. Wouldnt have mattered. Theres an old story -- maybe youre familiar with it -- from New England, of a man driving along who stopped and asked a farmer what the people were like in the next town because he was thinking of moving. The farmer said, Well, what were people like in the town you left? He says, Oh, they were nasty, backbiting, rumor-mongering, no-goods. And he says, Thats what theyre gonna be like when you get to the other place, too! Okay? We carry our karma with us. Its in our beliefs, our expectations, our reactions, our decisions of every moment.
Thresholds: Well, that could be of something very good happening too.
King: Absolutely! Same thing. Exactly.
Thresholds: Do you have any comments on Earth changes?
King: Sure, she changes all the time. Anything specific?
Thresholds: Well, I...
King: I know... People are talking about all these great big things that are going to happen. Usually not to them and usually to cleanse the earth of all the bad stuff. Well, these people have problems, and what theyre doing is projecting their own inner turmoil out on the earth. I like to say that, I talked to the earth last night and she doesnt have any plans like that at all. Shes going to keep doing her thing. So, yeah, well have the stuff that weve had all along. But, that the earth is going to turn over in a human society? Wait a minute, you have to figure this is a living planet, okay? A living planet! What would be her benefit, because not only the earth as a whole has to be involved in such a decision, but all the plants, and all the animals and all the bacteria and all the insects and everything... All the wind and all the mountains... theyd all have to say, okay, lets do this. Why? Human beings are so egocentric! You know. In the sense that theres this tendency to forget that anything else exists. Especially that anything else might be alive and have a world of its own. If the earth wanted to get rid of human beings, it would be so easy. She wouldnt have to get rid of everything else at the same time. I mean, you know, one little disease will do it. And it could be a disease that she could create that would just do us in. I dont think thats going to happen, because the way I look at the world right now, I see several things. First of all, I see us as playing a very important role for the earth as a living entity. We are developing her communication system.
Thresholds: In what way?
King: Well, with all the communication systems that we think that we are developing for ourselves, its got to be benefitting the earth as well. In the same way as your liver is doing its best to maintain itself in a healthy state, is affecting your body entirely. And yet, its not thinking of the whole body. Its trying to feel good. But that affects the whole body. Okay, so here we have human beings doing some remarkable things as far as communicating over the whole Earth, in setting up this whole incredible network, using natural energies to do that, mind you. This is not artificial in the sense of created separate from nature. Were using nature, nature therefore is cooperating in this process. And so, I think that were playing a very important role in the conscious evolution of the planet. As long as we are serving a good purpose for the Earth itself, why were going to be sustained.
On the other hand, and in the process also, this is one important thing to think of, we are learning from our errors. Which any good cell does and were learning what works, what doesnt work. Right now, there are some terrible things happening to the planet, but they are no different than terrible things that have happened through our given history. On the other hand, we are having some experiences that have never before happened on this planet. Ever, EVER. Even in any metaphysical history that we know of. The concern for the environment is a radical departure for human beings, on a world-wide scale. This has never occurred before. The love that human beings are showing to each other in terms of helping each other. Nations helping other nations, the people of other nations helping other nations. You know, quite a number of years ago, there was a small country... I cant quite remember the name of it, but it was near Russia and Turkey. And it had an earthquake. And the people of the United States sent a lot of stuff there to help them. When San Francisco had its last bad earthquake, that little country sent help to San Francisco. These are incredible things that are happening all around the world. We have teachers sharing knowledge, we have more books on how people can get along and succeed and heal themselves and help themselves than ever before. There are things happening that are just astounding in term of changes in human patterns that make it seem to me like were doing the best weve ever done. And if the Earth is smart, this is no time to get rid of us.
Thresholds: Thats a great way to put it. Is there anything youd like to add to what weve talked about. Anything I havent asked about that youd like to share?
King: Well, the only thing Id like to share then in addition is the value of what we call the Aloha spirit. In Hawaii, Aloha doesnt just mean hello. The word actually means love. And so the traditional greeting of these people is to greet someone with love, to say farewell with love. To act toward each other in a loving way as much as possible. Hawaiians are human beings, they are no more perfect than any other human being. But they do have this cultural ideal, and they do their best to work with it. And its something to always come back to. In its simplest terms, in its very simplest terms, its a process of encouraging the good rather than fighting the bad. So that means in personal relationships, [it is] far, far more effective to praise someone for the good they do, than to constantly point out what you dont like. If we can, and this can affect our relationships not only with each other but with ourselves and with governments and with nature. And so this is something that were promoting quite strongly, not because its nice to love, but because if you use it there isnt anything that works better for accomplishing what you want. For helping people to heal, for making this a better planet. And it can start with something just as simple as that. Notice whats good, acknowledge it, praise it, strengthen it, encourage it. Deal with the rest of it as you have to deal with it, but dont make that part the most important. Make the good the most important.
©1997 Vol. 15 No. 1
©1996 Vol. 14 No. 4