Amita Schmidt

Meditation Teacher, Spiritual Coach

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Ancient Hawaiian Spirituality and Internal Family Systems Therapy

 

As part of his ancient Hawaiian spiritual training, Kahu (priest) Abraham Kawai’i taught about the internal family to his students in Hawaii in the 1960’s. This internal family understanding had been passed down from his elders, and his elder’s elders. This ancient Hawaiian spiritual teaching on internal family systems, is a reminder of the timeless power and interconnection of IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy). Although Kahu might have different approaches with these ideas, we are all one family in bringing these truths and understandings to the world. The understanding of internal family crosses centuries, nationalities, and cultures. Bless us all, and thank you to Dick Schwartz and Kahu Kawai’i for this timeless work we are all doing together. The following is Abraham Kawai’i’s ancient offerings on understanding and adjusting the internal family as a way to freedom:

Internal family as the true source of our spiritual power

  • Family, your internal family, is the source of your spiritual and emotional power. It is where your mana (spiritual power) is generated and expressed from. You adjust the members of your family so you stand powerful in your place at the center of your universe.
  • You will never be alone—there is always a member of the family there.
  • Family is the internal universe of You, and it is where your wealth lies and your spirit resides… Refine it with compassion and your life will become a living prayer.
  • This work is to find the dignity of the universe of Yourself. It is also about bringing those who want it to a place of dignity and joy within themselves.

Components of the internal family

  • Family is everything that you are. What are you? Who are you? You are every thought, emotion, idea, longing. Family is everything in your existence. Everything you touch, everything you hear and speak, everything you walk to, come from, or stand upon, every moment of your life.
  • You need to be aware of your space of existence all the time. What is your space of existence? Your space of existence is everything you see, hear, smell, touch or feel. Everything you walk to, come from, or stand upon. Every longing, every thought, and every desire; everything you speak, every part of your body, every cell, every hair, every movement, every moment of your life. If you are aware of your space of existence and claim responsibility for it, you are at the center of your power. There is nothing you cannot achieve, in this existence or any other.
  • Everything you feel and everything that is here is a member of your family. In your mind if you are angry, that is a member of your family. If you are sad, that is a member of your family. Grief or anger can only be an obstacle when you don’t recognize it as a family member.
  • Fear is a child of yours. The pathway through fear is the pathway to being One with oneself.

How to adjust your internal family

  • In a loving and unassuming way, understand yourself totally and completely. Approach your family members with dignity. To build and manifest the depth of yourself, you need to adjust yourself in a way that affects your internal family.
  • Family is always there to support you and move you forward. A family member is never an obstacle.
  • All members of your family need to be given time to express themselves. You might express anger, or fear for a moment or two, and anger or fear will be satisfied. They are never an obstacle in your life. The good, the bad and the ugly are all family. Members of your family are a gift to yourself, one that when not judged or labeled will contribute to the quality and the harmony of your existence.
  • The members of your internal family are never a burden to be crushed or eradicated. The members of your family are to be cherished and given a task to do, so you will find wholeness and completeness on your path in this life.

The effect of this work with biological family and loved ones

  • If one member of the family makes a great step and changes, the whole family changes as well. If you make a quantum leap in your consciousness, you become the tip of the spear and the family gets the ride too.

 

Mahalo to Jody Mountain for her teachings of Abraham Kawai’i (www.lineageoflight.com) and Tamara-Hrehorczak-Stephens for her book “Abraham Kawai’i: A brief history of the man, the kahuna, and kahuna bodywork” (2012) the source of many of the quotations above.

 

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Prayer or Despair?

In difficult times, choose prayer instead of despair.  Despair and fear lead to a freeze response in the body. Prayer unfreezes the heart and moves us towards connected action.

The immediacy of the world problems are our teacher now.  Many years ago during a retreat, my teacher Matt Flickstein asked me to carry a knife 24/7 for a week. I had to carry it on the toilet, in the shower, meditating, making food, brushing my teeth, at the dinner table, talking to others, and in bed all night while sleeping.  He told me, “Death can come at any moment. The knife will make sure you do not forget this.”  Carrying the knife made it clear that each moment could be my last, and reminded me to pray, be mindful, and express gratitude constantly that week.

In the weeks after I put the knife down, I soon forgot the fierce necessity of prayer and mindfulness.  Now, with nuclear and environmental destruction so immediate, all of us have a knife by our side.  It is not something we can “put away.”  The knife is here while we are on the toilet, making love, at the dinner table, or in the shower.  Rather than creating fear or despair, this can create a fierce reminder to be mindful, love and connect 24/7.   Prayer or despair?

 

 

 

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Waiting for the tsunami

“What are you going to do with your one precious life?”

Rapture, peace, prayer;

or confusion, anger, fear?

Waiting for the tsunami

happens where I live every year.

The earthquake on the other side of the world,

and thousands of miles away

we evacuate for the mountains,

not sure if the harbors, airport, and power station will be left in the morning.

People wait for a long eight hours until the wave comes,

not knowing will it be big or small?

Will it wipe out my home or not?

The way people wait is it’s own education,

in the inevitable.

Some empty the stores of liquor and cigarettes for tailgate parties.

Others listen compulsively to the radio, fear mounting as they prepare supplies for some unknown number of days to live on.

Others chose to pray and meditate and say “I love you.”

No way is the right way.

All God.

Everyone chooses their last moment of grace,

from the bottle, the news, or their one true religion.

I love the differences and have my preference.

“God I offer myself to thee,”

will be my one true offering,

as the water claims her rightful place at the center of things.

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Blessing practice

Our mind is a bit one track when it comes to emotions.  Give your mind anger, and it goes on and on about anger.  Give it something to bless or love, and it does that instead. Point your mind in an emotional direction and that’s essentially it’s direction.  This one track mind can work to your advantage as a channel-changer for difficult emotions.  When I find I am being angry or judgmental, I begin blessing someone, something, anything.  It doesn’t have to be the person I’m upset with.  Heck no, not yet.  But I can say a blessing for the earth, my neighbor’s dog, kids, someone driving by in a car, or anything else in that moment.  And after about three minutes of blessing I don’t really have an interest in going back to the anger.  Ditto if I’m in a car and someone in car in front of me does something that scares or angers me.  Instead of going on and on about the person who cut me off, I send a blessing to someone in another car alongside of me, or behind me.  This focusing on blessing another immediately stops the anger.  It’s not that anger is bad, it’s simply that if given the choice of having anger or having kindness, I prefer the latter.  And blessings can extend to neutral moments as well; the checkout clerk, sitting at a stoplight, waiting for an elevator.  There are always people around you to bless no matter what is happening.

This is a story given to me by the late Father Theophane, a Trappist monk who wrote “Tales of the Magic Monastery.”  This is an unpublished story in his genre of spiritual teaching reflections, and it relates to blessing:

She told me just to sit in the back and bless everyone. That’s what I did. It felt funny at first. Who was I to bless people? But I kept at it. Kept trying different ways. I assumed she’d give me more instructions about how to do it, but no, she never did. And I assumed she’d pass the job to someone else at some point, and give me some serious instructions in meditation. The others all seemed to know how to meditate—they’d sit there so still for hours. All I could do was bless them—one by one.

 I found myself thinking about them—what’s on this one’s mind? What’s that one like? How is he meditating? Is she happy? Judging was there too. Don’t judge—just bless. But some don’t seem to need blessing. That’s judging.

 It’s been so long now. Sometimes I wonder—does anyone know what I am doing? Does anyone appreciate me? Does anyone care? What would it be like to sit up front and do some serious meditating?

 

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Break the Trance

hooponopono_honi21Times of chaos and fear can create a trance state in each of us.  Last week I got together with some wise older woman healers and we agreed on a daily practice to decrease fear and separation.

To break the trance of fear and pain, look someone in the eye in a sustained and loving way for a few seconds each day.  It could be in a store, or at work, or in your family.  You’ll be surprised at how many strangers are willing to make eye contact.  Everyone is hungry for real connection.  In the right circumstances and with the right people it can also be nourishing to touch the person’s arm.

Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing therapist, related that when he was in a major car accident, there was one thing that prevented him from going into shock and having Post Traumatic Stress syndrome.  This one thing was that a total stranger came over to his side, made sustained eye contact, and held his hand before the paramedics came.  We are social creatures and eye contact re-regulates and protects our nervous system.  If this kind of connection can re-regulate someone during a severe accident, it can break the trance of fear and separation now.

Since we are all experiencing trauma at this time, please if you can, make some sustained caring eye contact with someone each day.   And, if you can hold someone’s hand please do that too.  This is why we are here. b69f27bb5fd71097f6a6e35545b29eef