CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO. ? Every Tuesday night, a small group of 10 or so people sit in the comfortable living room of Greg Boyd and Sherry Verdugo-Boyd talking about ancient Hawaiian secrets called Huna.

Cape Girardeau is the world headquarters of Huna Research Inc., an organization that estimates 1,000 to 2,000 people around the world are using Huna principles to try to improve their lives.

The methods, they say, are techniques Hawaiian shamans used before the missionaries came and the beliefs seemed to disappear. A man named Max Freedom Long, who wrote many books about Huna, is credited with breaking the code that hid the ideas within the Hawaiian language. Huna is the Hawaiian word for secret. Long claims to have traced the principles back 10,000 years.

E. Otha Wingo, a retired professor of foreign languages at Southeast Missouri State University, discovered Long’s work in the 1960s. After corresponding, Long made him executive director of HRI, an organization whose members pay $25 in yearly dues.

‘Hurtless and helpful’

Though prayer is involved, Huna is not a religion but rather a philosophy or psychology, Wingo says.

The Huna motto is: The Hurtless and Helpful Life.”

The first step toward the goal of helping without hurting, Huna members say, is to recognize that each person has three selves:

l The basic self, which exists at the subconscious level. Another, more current term for this self is the inner child.

l The middle self, which controls conscious behavior.

l The higher self, a part likened to a guardian angel who helps when asked.

All three selves work together in a human being who is functioning well, Huna teaches. When this harmony occurs, they believe, things happen that may appear to be miraculous but actually represent the ideal at work.

“We would say, ‘How usual,”‘ quips Vince Wingo, Otha’s son.

Key to the three selves working in concert is the Huna prayer, a series of eight steps that involves sending a visual image of the desired condition from the basic self to the higher self. Prayer is telecommunication, Vince Wingo says.

Many athletes use visualization techniques to improve their performance. Otha Wingo says this mental picture is exactly the same thing.

The prayer ends with the words “so be it” and is likened to planting a seed.

Under Huna beliefs, Greg Boyd says, the basic self prays through the higher self to a community of higher selves that are like parental spirits that exist on an etheric plane.

Unfortunately, the inner child or basic self often is neglected or ignored, Huna tenets maintain.

“Addictions are caused by being out of communication with the subconscious mind,” says Vince Wingo.

Concerns small and large

On the most mundane level, Huna principles can be used to assure yourself of a parking space. Huna practitioners also use prayers in an attempt to heal serious diseases.

Otha Wingo had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery a few days before the Huna conference in 1997. The Huna group did “a massive healing.” He attended the conference.

Sometimes the focus of the weekly meeting is on body work instead of holding a discussion.

“It’s all about using energy for healing,” says Robyn Fisher, a body worker who attends. “You’re shifting energy so that consciousness can be moved.”

If the Huna principles work and you really can get what you want through prayer, then why hasn’t everyone in Huna prayed themselves a big bank account? A few people have used the principles to become millionaires, they say. The Boyds have talked about the issue and decided to put their energy toward goals that are more important to them.

But, he says, “Everybody enjoys a quality of life higher than their socio-economic situation would qualify for.”

In 1980, Boyd says, he had ruined his career and was drinking and smoking heavily. Today he has a healthy lifestyle and is a professor of industrial technology at Southeast.

Vince Wingo, the vice president of HRI and the only paid staffer, carries a business card that reads “Rev. James Vinson Wingo, Huna practitioner.”

He couldn’t avoid learning about Huna. His father first heard about Huna in August 1968. Vince was born the following October.

“We didn’t keep it from the children and we didn’t push it,” says his mother, Ann. Members of the Huna group give many examples of situations in which they say the principles have shown to work. HRI members claim to have broken a drought in Mexico through prayer. They get e-mails and letters from people wanting to be placed inside a healing circle.

Huna has members in 50 countries. They come from many different occupations. Many are therapists and counselors because Huna requires the balancing of psychological states.

Some people have mistaken Huna for something other than an idea, Vince says. “We have had people go into culture shock.

“Some are concerned that Huna might be a Hawaiian religion.”

Says Otha Wingo: “There are no gurus and nothing you have to believe.” Once you know and understand the principles of Huna, it’s not something you stop and do, he says. “It’s your whole way of thinking. “… This is the natural state of the human being.”