A HUNA INTERPRETATION OF AN ART CARVING

First, lets consider this is a representation of an art form, just like modern artists may work within a style such as impressionist, so this artist is working within a style called for lack of a better phrase, West Coast Native Totem Art. This type of art has not been recognized as a "psychological description of human psychology." Now, the artist may not know this but is instead working with form and animal descriptions that are resident within the style but which he has no conscious knowledge of the encoded meanings. Still, using these forms in traditional ways will still convey the true message the ancients were portraying.

In this art form, the human figure represents the conscious mind and it's attachment to the body. The whale is representative of the subconscious mind. To use these Western terms limits our ability to understand and so to build up a new knowledge, it is helpful to use new terminology that has no deep structure meanings within your current knowledge base. This allows for new meanings to be attached that do not conflict with previous knowledge's you may currently hold around the words conscious, body and subconscious and it is for this reason, I will use the words Lono, to indicate the conscious mind and it's various attributes and Ku to represent an enlarged version of the subconscious. As an aside, the phrase unconscious mind is an oxymoron and has literally no meaning, for if it is not conscious, then how can it exist.

Now to the artwork. We see a description of a man apparently climbing the back of a whale and he is perched precariously half way up the whales back. Translating this into a psychological meaning I would say that this represents Lono, which exists within the body made by Ku, trying to achieve the proper relationship as understood in Huna, that the conscious mind is the master and Ku is the servant. However, in the uninitiated, where this understanding is unknown, the interpretation would not have these meanings.

Now, it is the contention of Huna that most of us do not act in a proper way to our ku because we do not recognize that there is a proper relationship. So, this artwork is bringing into focus the idea of Lono trying to attain mastery over his Ku. Ku, because it has never been communicated with and has developed its own pattern of existence, resists this attempt of Lono to regain the proper relationship.

So, let us look more closely at Lono and the precarious position he finds himself in. He has made some headway in dominating Ku but you can tell by his body posture and his facial expression that he feels he is in a very dangerous place and is hanging on by his fingernails and hoping that Ku does not buck him off.

Now, when we look at Ku, we find he is in a posture that could be best caricaturized by the idea of bucking Lono off his back. His facial expression is one of resistance to this imposition of control being attempted by Lono. According to a Huna interpretation, this gaining of mastery over your ku is a very arduous and dangerous adventure. The ancients realized, like Freud, that the subconscious can hold all of our base emotions and is a dangerous place to to go. But in Huna, we realize that re-establishing the natural order, actually gives Lono immense power in the real world, in his mental and physical health and in his development of his latent abilities and is the path to expanded experiencing.

While Lono is represented as a man/body, a sort of singularity, the image of Ku as represented by the whale shows that Ku holds a multiplicity of functions. First, if you look at the middle right hand side, you will see a figure of a face which may indicate reincarnational personalities still accessible through Ku and held within Ku. On the left hand side of the whale, you will see a face looking up which is the communicative aspect of ku that can communicate with Aumakua and with everything that exists. In the whales fin, you will see another face that represents those parts of us within ku that set up the operational behaviours that make up our personality and in the tail there is an indistinct figure that probably indicates our Ku's connection to Mother Earth. On the lower left side are three figures that I do not know what they represent, but rest assured, there are meanings to be discovered.

So, this coded art work is actually a part of a blue print that ancient man used to describe their understanding of the composition of man - and I might add is more complete and integrated than any description I have found in Western thought.

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