Hey, we all wake up some days “dealin with the Funk”… whether it’s self imposed funk or accidental funk, we get the funk, and that funk feels… feels….. sorta… funky…

So, “whadda we gunna do bout dit”

The funk is the funk…

Funk means heart attack. Yes, that’s right, heart attack. It’s either the real heart, the love heart or the spiritual heart.

So, when we have the funk, it’s a heart attack and if we ignore that, or try to get outta that funk without taking a break, we gonna escalate that funk to real trouble.

Instead of gettin out of da funk, we need to give in to it.

Funk don’t last. Funk maybe lasts a day, sometimes a week. In that week we need to repair de broken heart, and so we need to change some shit.

Lets take a look… at what we need to do when we surrender to da funk…

1. Check for Physical Funk Heart Attack.

Now, in Chinese medicine all the organs end up leading to the heart. So, even if your anus is sore, that’s got something to do with your heart. So, when the funk is here, it’s a heart attack. Now we know we’re having an attack on our heart on the physical side, we need to trace it back to the source.

That’s not tomato sauce it’s the root source, and it might be kidney, liver, lungs, arteries, prostate, ovaries (if you are female only) and more. So, the attack on the heart causes the funk, but the attack comes from remote locations.

I once had a heart attack that bought on the funk for six months. I did more yoga and went to doctors and they x-rayed my testicles till I glowed in the dark but still they did more tests. One time they put electrodes on my fingers and send shocks through my body and asked, “did that hurt?” They should have worked at Guantanamo Bay.

In spite of all those tests and the new Lamborghini the specialist got from all my bills, the funk didn’t go away. But one day, I bent down to pick up a coin and shzzaaaam I got a pain through my body like I was giving birth to the incredible hulk.. and I don’t have a vagina… so, they rushed me to hospital and there was a kidney stone the size of the engagement ring on a Masai warriors ear lobe. It had been screwing with my kidney for six months and now decided to make it’s way out to the world.

Getting that stone down my urethra was like trying to suck a contestant from the Biggest Loser up a straw on a milk shake.. or even worse, trying to drink a McDonalds Thick Shake through a straw….

After a week on some pills that made the world look very good, even my ex, then they sonic blasted that rock the size of a meteor into little pieces that they asked me to collect in a strainer each time I peed for the next two weeks. Well, it wasn’t hard to know when to reach for the strainer, in fact my neighbours could have done it with the screaming and shouting I went through as pieces of coral travelled down freddie and exited my body…

Suffice to say, some months later, there was no funk.

Funk is a heart attack and you know that more than one funky day a week is a heart attack. You just don’t know the source… If you are a bloke over 50, check your cholesterol, send a submarine in to check your heart is not blocked, then ask a nice doctor to send a finger where fingers don’t usually fit to check your prostate… then, if they can’t find something, look somewhere else, blood tests etc.

My kidney stone could have been detected but I backed off too quick.

Once you’ve done an MRI on your whole body, and the whole of your body.. move to step 2.

Step 2. Check for Love Funk Heart Attack

De funk is also depression. Depression is a bad word because it’s sort of “stereotyped”… “hey, he’s got depression” is akin to “he’s got the plague – stay away, wear a mask.”

So, lets call depression “Love Funk”

For women this funk is not common. Mainly because most women are emotionally honest (especially those who hate men)… and there are allot.. but that’s another topic.

For blokes, “Love Funk” can come months and months after a love funk moment. Like a break up or some bad news like “hey, did you know you wife has been shagging your neighbour?”… Many men aren’t in touch with their feelings so, although they experience the shock of the Love Funk incident, there’s a delayed reaction like an earth quake aftershock that can take months or years to surface.

I remember breaking up from a partner way back before I became enlightened… (only joking).. anyway, it was a while back. I got hurt but didn’t even know it. I went on as if nothing had happened and then I got the Funk… Love Funk… about 2 years after.

I went to the doctor and described my symptoms and he suggested I needed psychological counselling. (which is still true) but that aside, I had Love Funk about a past relationship even though I was happy in the new one. Seems I hadn’t been all that honest with myself and, as my Dad used to say, “toughened up and be strong” So, here I was, with Love Funk.

I didn’t take the pills, I took some herbs…. St John’s Wart… Which is the worst branding for an anti depressant I ever heard. Who is St John and why would his Warts be better than mine…. Anyway, I took that stuff and then set about working through my attachments, hurts, guilt’s (there were allot of those) and anger about the whole old relationship. Crap that’s such a waste of time but I had the Funk and there was no way I was going to live in the Love Funk world for long.

Step 3. Check for Spiritual Funk Heart Attack

Spiritual Funk has nailed me to the wall more times than I’d like to admit.

Spiritual funk means lost hope for some dream I had about the future.

When I was 17 years old I wanted to be an AFL football star, I trained every morning, every night, I slept with a footy beside me, I had pictures on my walls and I loved playing footy. Then, one game I jumped to reach for the stars to take a mark and came down on my bent ankle. It tore the ligaments from the bone. Back in those days, they plastered plaster on everything, even snake bite, so, All I ended up with was a ligament attached ankle that couldn’t tolerate grounds rougher than a bowling green. I sprained that ankle over 100 times over the next years, including in Nepal on Himalayan walks. It took five years of yoga to get me reliable again. Suffice to say, my football career was over.

I got the Spiritual Funks and went to the doctor… he said, “You got depression” but I was a hero, laughing, funny guy. No depression for me. But he was right, when my dreams of being a sporty hero collapsed, so did I. I got the Spiritual Funk.

Years later after my marriage exploded, and my three children sailed off around the world to, as my ex wife put it, “get as far away from you as possible”.. I got the Spiritual Funks again… This time I was so Funked out that I went to a cliff top to jump.. I wanted no more funk… I didn’t jump – obviously.

Many, many, many, many.. people I meet have spiritual funk… You can tell a person with Spiritual Funk because they feel old to be around, lack lustre in their eyes, and are obsessed about what other people think.

Spiritual Funk is a bad funk… and to deal with it, we use four substitutes:

Food and Booze and Drugs… We can escape the Funk by shovelling food on it, pouring liquor over it or transporting our brain away from it. So, obesity, drug addiction, alcohol addictions, diabetes, high blood pressure and colon troubles and more, can be directly linked to Spiritual Funk… Lost dreams, lost hopes and attachment to the past.

Greed… The poorest man I ever met was the wealthiest. A billionaire who lived in fear of losing it. Greed is not measured in asset wealth or frugal spending, it’s measured in competitiveness, tension, stress and fear.

Sexuality… When all else fails, bonk. That’s the mass consciousness that’s saved the planet from extinction for thousands of years. Many – allot – most sex on the planet happens because there’s nothing better to do.. and lucky for us it does because otherwise we’d run out of people to buy iMacs. Clothes, fashion, restaurants, holiday resorts and more all function on Spiritual Funk for significant core business. When the Lights go Out at the End of the Tunnel, people light a match, it’s called sexuality. A match light in front of your face makes the light at the end of the tunnel invisible anyway… It’s a great metaphor…

Spirituality… My friend is married to a guy. I feel sorry for him. She meditates 4 hours a day and thinks that something great happens as a result. But really, the spark is gone and her hiding place is just being legitimised, cross legged on the floor eyes shut, in no-MANS-Land…

My friend is in Spiritual Funk and has been there for 20 years. In the last five she’s been getting fat as well so, now the spirituality is not blocking the world enough, she’s eating.. my goodness, she eats enough to feed a third world country… And then has a colonic… as part of her spiritual cleansing… Recently her two boys have become teenagers, and they are under clinical supervision because of depression… remember my quote from Jung… “nothing affects the child more than the un-lived life of the parent?”

Conclusion

Ok, so there’s three sources of FUNK… all of which affect the heart.

There’s Physical Funk that comes from the body but ultimately attacks the heart. This is the first place we must look if we have The Funk because your body is Nature’s Bible… it’s telling you stuff and it pays to listen.

There’s Love Funk… Emotional stuff that’s gone underground and is eating at your energy… like anger repressed becomes depressive. Guilt, shame, blame, victim, anger, jealousy, are Love Funk triggers.

There’s Spiritual Funk. Spiritual funk is really ugly. And 90% of the world lives in this Funk. It’s dark, desperate and triggers people to act, breathe, eat, sleep, bonk and pray in some fanatical and weird ways. You can’t fight Spiritual Funk… if you have it, because some dream got shattered, then it’s high time you reinvented yourself. Hammering your head against a brick wall and feeling sorry for yourself might make an impact but this is not what nature intended, and it’s certainly no path to FUNK FREE LIVING.

Chris Walker