KRT – Being Mindful of Heka

The Kemetic Round Table (KRT) is a blogging project aimed at providing practical, useful information for modern Kemetic religious practitioners.  This turn’s topic is, “How do you work with heka? How can you utilize heka more in your day to day life? Any tips for people trying to get started in using heka?”  For other blogs on this topic, click here. 

If you’d like to read more on what heka is before (or after) this post, you can check out the KRT on the basics here.

When I think of heka, I think of power.  Literally, the word means “activating the ka.”  The ka being the part of the soul that many would consider the actual soul.  It lives as long as it has a place to live, so when a person dies, it was extremely important to preserve the body so the ka would have a place to live.  The Ancients would make offerings to the ka to help sustain it as well.

Interesting little fact about the ka: If the ka acted, all would be well.  Spiritually and physically, things would be good when the ka acted.  So heka, in that regards, is activating spiritually and physically good things.

As a member of Unity Church, I fully believe in the five principles of Unity.  Number three states, “We create our life experiences through our way of thinking.”  We can, literally, make our life what we want it to be by thinking the way we should think to make it happen.  If we want to live a more positive life, we need to start thinking in a a more positive way.

This goes along with what I, as a Kemetic, believes about the ka: If we activate the ka, then we activate spiritually and physically good things, and if we don’t, then there are bad things, or an abomination of the ka.

So how do I work with heka?

I make sure that my thoughts, actions, and words work to activate the ka, or activate a more physically and spiritually positive world for me and my surroundings.  Sometimes, like with all people, I fail at this, but when I do, I try to be mindful of my failure.  I acknowledge my shortcomings, think about what I could do to make it better next time, and then try to make sure that I do that in the future.

If heka is “activating the ka,” and if we activate the ka to make spiritually and physically good things happen, then anything we do to make spiritually and physically good things happen would be considered heka.

I think my definition of heka is a lot different than many other people who are Kemetic in that I believe heka isn’t formal ritual practice, prayer, meditation or offerings to the Gods.  I think that heka can be those things if we want them to be, but I think it’s so much more than that.  It’s something we use, intentionally or unintentionally, in our ever day lives.  Imagine: if we utilized heka as our thoughts and actions to activate the ka in our every day life.  What would that mean for our future, our way of thinking?  How would our every day lives change?

How can you utilize heka more in your day to day life?

Mindfulness.  I think the best way to utilize heka every day is to be mindful of my surroundings, my thoughts about those surroundings, and how I react to those surroundings in action and it words.  If I utilize more positive speech and thoughts, then my surroundings will change to reflect that because I am activating my ka to make that happen.

Any tips for people trying to get started in using heka?

Mindfulness towards positivity isn’t something that’s easy, and as mindful and positive as I try to be about my life, there are times that I fail at it.  The key is to realize that “messing up” is something that will happen and that beating yourself up about that isn’t going to help you improve.  The best way to become more mindful is to realize how, when and where you’ve messed up (and by “messed up”, I mean to be negative in thoughts, speech, or action in regards to a situation in your life with or without realizing that you are doing it at the time).

When you realize you’re being negative or have been negative about a situation (and this could be an actual situation in your life or a person in your life), own that moment.  Read over it in your head and think about how you can improve next time that person or situation enter you life again.  Then, when that situation happens again, try to implement your new thought process.

Don’t sit around and kick yourself while you’re down.  That won’t help you.  Use positive thoughts and words, avoid saying things, “I’m so stupid.  I can’t believe how negative I was in that situation, and I am so upset about it.”  Instead, say something like, “I recognize that I was more negative than I should have been and that sometimes, I will fail at being positive.  Next time this happens, I’ll try to respond in a more positive and loving manner.”

This will help you to activate your ka to be positive, which will then lead your ka to act in a spiritually and physically positive way.  When this happens, you’ll start to see the results around you.