Huna Article

Huna International

Martian Newbies
by Jo Danieli

Recently I kicked a guest out of my house.

To tell you the truth, I never felt better than I felt afterwards. Why? Because it had been the right thing to do. How do I know that? I have been living in a "Huna"understanding of life for many years, and my action was the very best solution for my guest and for myself according to my na'auao, my inner wisdom, carefully supported by my conscious judgment. My role in that person's life obviously was to demonstrate boundaries and request respect.

She had been referred to me by a well-meaning friend who knows about the many things I am able to teach people, about my good heart, and at the same time my outspoken honesty. She had felt that the lost young woman, very troubled, much longing for companionship, could get a lot of good stuff out of staying with me. What she did not tell me was that the young woman was a "newbie" in spiritual things.

Many people will know what that means - but for all those who don't, it's a big drag for spiritual "veterans" who are not dedicated to teaching first grade. Spiritual "newbies" can be compared to children who have just sort of understood the alphabet and now believe they know how to deal with the adult world. The "newbies" are those who are just discovering spiritual and - inevitably connected - psychological and metaphysical "truths" (but really theories and schools of thought), and the "veterans" are those who have been dealing with and living deeply conscious of the "subtle" part of human existence for a long time.

The newbies can be people of almost any age, especially those around thirty who had been living a life oblivious of spiritual and energetic basics and who suddenly fall into a vortex of spiritual teachings, mostly pushed by friends or pulled by some karmic threads, are mostly very intelligent and very dedicated to their new found rescue from all the bad stuff that had happened in their lives before. They use everything they learn to blame something else for all their problems. That's the main trait of a newbie. The self-realization and their own role in creating one's own fate in relation with all eras and dimensions, comes later - if it comes.

It's great that young adults "turn spiritual", because at least they don't carry on within the mass of superficial system-supporting war-loving ignorants. But what's not so great is that the newbies are so new at "spiritual wisdom", that they believe "they know it all." After a few workshops, lessons, experiences, and whatever school of thought they have immersed in, they will try to project all they have learned on other people. All that their well-meaning teachers have tried to make them understand about themselves, they will try to see in other people.

It's like a blanket of thought that lies over their everyday-life ways of thinking, and their intelligence and especially awareness are muffled and suffocating underneath it. They will try to teach the veterans about their wisdom, not realizing that they are just projecting newly learned contents and that they are actually NOT the great teachers they think they are.

The veterans know that everything and everyone is a teacher anyway, it's not necessary for a newbie to recite a psychologist's or shaman's lore to anyone a newbie meets. That is not to say that information coming from newbies can't be incredibly valuable for veterans and can in itself be something that the veteran needed to know. But that's not the point. My point is - that newbies pour their new wisdom over everybody and can be a big auwe ma ka okole (pain in some rear part of the body).

My guest would go on and on about her bad experiences and kept blaming and badmouthing everyone in her life - now that she "knew" how much she was a victim. I was wondering what sort of teachers she had had, but I know from a lot of experience, that the best teacher can't turn a stubborn mind stuck in deep patterns around just like that. Revelations, realizations and reliefs often come later for the newbies - and that's why it's so important for veterans to not let them get away with their crap (excuse the language), and simply speak veteran-wisdom, whether or not the newbies agree. The point is not to convince the newbies, it's only to share thoughts - and then it will be up to them what to do with them. Maybe later in life a veteran's honesty will turn out to be a great blessing for a person.

That's why I kicked my guest out, and while I watched her pack, I felt so clear and good that I almost sang a song.

Not only will newbies often behave in ways as if they had the key to making gold, they will try to tell you that you are doing everything wrong in your life and will - mostly - actually turn away from their own situations and problems to "doctor" on you and others and try to "help" you. Again - a veteran recognizes help when it comes, but the "help" that a newbie has in mind is just the expression of the urge to prove and practice the new found contents of thought.

In the movie "Martian Child", about a little boy, Dennis, who believes he is from Mars and gives his loving adoptive father David (played by John Cusack) a hell of a time, the situation is similar like between newbies and veterans: Boy Dennis knows it all, and but new dad David sees the overall picture and tries to help Dennis to not end up in troubles because of his delusional behavior. He wants to keep him from ending up in psychiatric treatment, because he does understand the boy. Veterans understand newbies, and want to help them, but the newbies think they are Martians, and everyone else is wrong.

Newbies often show delusional behavior, because they mistake spiritual or psychological theories for actual truths. My guest kept spilling out spiritual and psychological terms all day long, but what she lived was just that - spilling out those terms, mixed with horrible stories that made her look really ignorant, stupid and self-distructive and to a painful degree naive and reluctant to see any sort of bigger picture.

My guest was constantly expressing pity for me (I am healthy, easy-going, happy and live exactly the live I want) and tried to analyze my situation - which I had not asked her to do.

When I said "Hey, I got a call from an agent"(I am a screenwriter, too), she hugged me and expressed that I just had to believe that it would all be good. When I looked at her somewhat surprised - after all I had brought the agent's call about - I realized how much at the beginning she was. Trying to explain myself to her, I encountered a blank stare and a sweet sweet smile, and I knew that she was not even willing to follow what I was saying. Good enough for me - I didn't consider myself her teacher.

Well ... that was more difficult than I thought, because she kept sharing things with me, and yes, I listened, and her stuff was so drastic, that I did offer comments. I gave her examples from my life and other people's life, and she would listen, smile and never ask a question back.

Veterans - that's a big signal: If a newbie doesn't ask questions when you offer some valuable content, they don't listen, and you can spare yourself the effort. Maybe they will come back later and ask, but if they never ask back in hours of conversation, they either worship you as a guru, or they are thinking their own stuff while you are talking and are not willing to follow your train of thought. They are so green that they can't handle the talks about ripeness yet.

My guest misbehaved so badly in my house that I was truly startled by my obvious "need" to go through that, and I had the insights I was supposed to have - and when I told her about my boundaries, she accused me of not letting her know. I told her that if she entered the present moment for a sec, she'd realize that I was currently talking to her and saying what I had to say, in a loving, calm manner meaning to make life easier for her and for me.

What followed was a swirl of outpours of disrespectful newbie-arrogance. This woman was on the end of a decades long series of incredible painful physical, emotional and mental problems, and the string of patterns that she moves along is clearly visible - to everyone. Except to her. But she tells everyone that she had studied with this shaman and that kahuna and this teacher and that master, and that she knows all the reasons for her troubles. (In her view, most everything is the fault of the people who had done wrong to her in past lives.) Her throwing around of psycho-terms simply pissed me off, because there was no substance behind the words, no insight, no real living the understanding. That woman had not understood at all what she was supposed to learn about herself in all her spiritual teachings. Because she told me the kind of problems she had had that had lead her on her spiritual trip through workshops and countries, but the exact same problems were ongoing, and the past catastrophe was only two weeks back.

Before she was referred to me, she had come from a sabbatical trip around the world (her profession involves teaching young children - and yes, I feel sightly nauseous too, at this moment, thinking about it), and already on the first evening she had flooded me with stories of bad experiences during the trip that was meant to be healing and clearing for her. Whenever I tried to direct her attention to underlying patterns, she would stop talking for a moment and then continue in her ever-the-same-wishy-wushy-babbling as if I had said nothing.

We all know that people choose the authorities they are willing to accept due to a variety of reasons (in "the system" they are mostly based on threats and fear-evoking conditions)), and I was not anyone this young woman would have recognized as a veritable source of advice. Big mistake, but I realized this right away, and I did not try to "heal" or teach her.

The problem was - she did. She took everything she could find out about my life and tried to find a problem in it. She wasn't aware that she was doing that, but she turned everything I did and said into a negative example and a proof of some psychological/spiritual theory she had learned. She did that with other people too. For example - fulfilling her wish to see certain places on Maui was turned into an "attempt to keep her on Maui". In reality, she had told me that she did not want to leave and felt that she "had something more to do on Maui". I mentioned those special places, and her "spiritual" insight told her that she had to go there. So I showed her around a bit because I happen to like those places too. Of course Maui was a "dreadful" place like all places she had been at. She generally had no good words for people she met, behaving grumpily and very condescendingly towards most people she met, no matter what kind; While watching television she would criticize and ridicule everything and everyone, and to "make up" for this negative and judgmental attitude she broke out in overly sweet mannerisms whenever she took a break from talking about her problems or about how other people suck and always make her feel bad.

I am a very quiet and reclusive person at this point in my life because I am finishing up a big documentary project, and I am preparing for a big change in my living-situation. Of course I am constantly working on my focus-image, these days - and that's why I manifested my guest. I know that she was here at the right time and that I needed to deal with her for my own good. And I did. She taught me a lot in the days she stayed in my house and behaved like an adolescent Martian Child with a lot of foul language.

The point of this story is that the true help for the Martian newbies comes if people like me and the veterans are HONEST. We must act from our deepest feeling of pono in our na'au, the gut-area, the center of inner wisdom, and then it will be right for both us and the persons we are dealing with. If we try to find excuses for them, the mess only gets deeper.

David in "Martian Child" said something immensely true to Dennis, the boy (and I watched the movie the same night after I had kicked my guest out) in a situation where the boy just played out his game and the adult was at the end of his own rope. David to boy Dennis: "You know, adults get their feelings hurt too (not only kids/Martians)." And guess what? They boy actually understood and learned a valuable lesson. David had hesitated with his criticism of Dennis and had been incredibly patient and understanding, but enough was enough, and then was the time to act. And it was the right thing to do.

This sentence wiped away any doubts that I had done right: Veterans can get their boundaries hurt too, and no newbie is allowed to do that. It doesn't help either one of the two parties if one is allowed to get away with abusive and disrespectful behavior.

I simply told my guest that I resented that she never asked me if it was okay for her to stay longer than agreed, that she never answered my questions about her plans and then simply give me a date when she planned to leave without asking me if she could stay on until then, completely ignoring my previously expressed wishes. She told me that I was "sick" because I could not handle her being a free spirit who wouldn't plan her life or her trip, and that I was not open and not loving ... and yadayada. Not once and in no way did she ever address my wish for clarity and my demand for her respect in my house. She did not even deal with the point I was trying to make. She just drove over it like a steam-roller.

I looked at her very heated face and asked her to leave right away, after she told me bluntly: "I will go for a swim now until you get your act together." In reality I believe that she was very embarrassed and couldn't handle me being outspoken, but that was not my problem.

Since I felt my act was all good and needed some respect from my part too, I asked her to leave right away. She turned away several times to go for her swim, and I had to repeat my wish that she'd leave the house. Still - she would not make one step back and relate to the situation I had mentioned. She never dealt with it. And that's how she treats a lot of things in her life. I did my best in helping her - I did not let her get away with it.

Spiritual blabla and the "readings" of experts about somebody else's nature are no healing tools for people like her, I realized that once more. It was like: Somebody drops an egg, it breaks, and the somebody then blames you because you gave her the egg, and she won't deal with the egg any more at all but asks you for a new one. I learned a lot about myself during those days. And about those eggs.

Henry Opukahaia, sometimes called the "first Hawaiian Christian," once wrote when he was being educated in a Christian school in New England, "Our first care should be to keep our own thoughts right, and then our outward conduct will also be good." How true is that.

Copyright Huna International 2009