The Kingdom of Water

Kealakekua Bay, photo by Jen Lighty

“Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” John 3:5

Aloha Readers,

Not all of you know I’m an aquatic bodyworker as well as a poet. This realization also made me realize how close I feel to all of you, which is true for a few readers, but for the majority of you, not. We haven’t actually met in the physical world. Where did this feeling of closeness come from? When I invited the feeling to come closer, I learned it’s because I share so much of my inner world in these weekly newsletters. This sharing may not always be in the form of confession. Intimacy does not always require spilling one’s guts. Rather, it’s a closeness constructed from the catharsis of emotional discharge. Whatever I write here is always close to the bone. I don’t plan it. It rises up from my core like a whirlwind and keeps swirling until I write it down. So you may not know every detail about me, but by reading these newsletters (funny word for soul revelation!), you are witness to my primal essence, the pattern that binds the cells of the being known in this incarnation as Jennifer Lighty.

The reason I’m sharing this is because I still haven’t been able to write the next edition of The Art of Spell-Casting. I’ve been too preoccupied with getting myself together in the mundane to tap into my essence and channel it into an expression worthy of the subject. That energy has instead been directed to building a new website for my bodywork practice, Regenerative Bodywork. Out of the great blue, I was offered an opportunity to share space with another aligned bodyworker and will be transitioning from an employee to a fully self-sustaining entrepreneur in the next few weeks! Of course, the website must be a work of art.

And then I thought of you—maybe some of you were crushed because you didn’t get a letter from me in your inbox last Friday. Maybe you’ve been waiting with bated breath to learn the art of spell-casting.

And then I remembered an essay I wrote a few months back on swimming in the great blue, the astonishing water of Kealakekua Bay where my body carries me into the depths of my soul every time I enter that sacred water.

I wrote the essay for a journal submission call. It was rejected. I was disappointed, but not surprised. Not that I think it’s bad. I think it’s a decent, solid essay. I was not surprised the essay was rejected because I didn’t write this essay for and from my soul. I wrote it from a place of ego because I wanted it to be in a journal that would hopefully help me get more readers.

I’m not upset with myself for this. It’s been a good lesson and I doubt I will be answering many more submission calls from journals. Submission is a word I’ve been erasing from my vocabulary. Being rejected by this journal helped me realize how far I’ve come in relying on myself as my own authority. Substack has helped a lot with that. Being able to write what I want, and most importantly how I write it, not worrying how it will be received by editors whose tastes may be shaped by mainstream journalism or academia, has refreshed my spirit. That itself would be wonderful, but what delights me most is that I have readers—you, sitting somewhere absorbing these words by the light of your phone or computer. Thank you. By receiving my words, you give back to me a thousandfold, opening channels to my heart and beyond to the world’s.

And just for kicks you get to read the rejected essay! I think you’ll see a notable difference in style between this and the usual whirlwind that apparates on this screen when I’m writing at my best! I promise as soon as my website is done I will summon the next spiraling storm and carry on with The Art of Spell-Casting. Until then, dear readers.

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The Kingdom of Water

Marina and I stand on the bulkhead at the edge of Kealakekua Bay, barefoot in bathing suits, scanning the water for telltale fins breaking the impossibly blue surface—dolphins. The pods come into rest in these protected waters after hunting all night by sonar and stars in the open ocean.

Beneath our feet, the water is turquoise—seductive—but I know if we swim toward the center of the bay where it’s hard to see bottom, it will be a dark lapis, the color of a mosque dome that lifts the viewer toward Allah just by looking up, or Mary’s blue robe, something rare and holy that can only be worn by royalty or a goddess. Star of the Sea, Mary is sometimes called. Storm-tossed mariners would call out to her. Maybe they still do. Stella Mare.

But here, Mary is not the mother of God. In this bay on Moku o Keawe, the traditional name for the Big Island, this water is Lono-i-ka-makahiki’s domain. According to history books, Lono is the Hawaiian god of fertility, agriculture and peace, and traditionally, from November to February each year, the Hawaiians ceased all warfare and celebrated him with rituals, feasting and games. In recent times, the Hawaiian cultural renaissance has seen a return to honoring Lono’s time. The life-giving rains of Makahiki are once again invoked, acknowledged and celebrated through ritual.

Marina and I on the bulkhead scanning for fins are not thinking about Lono, or of how the ruins of the Hikiau heiau are right at our back, a temple where humans were sacrificed that emits such a strong force field it’s almost invisible to the cars parked at its base. Kapu, reads a sign—keep out—but it’s not needed. The only time I went near the heiau was when a visiting friend wanted to check out the backside. When we  climbed up the hill and got within six feet of the stacked stones we both knew when we’d taken that one step too close. Without a word we both stepped back through the band of gooey air and walked back down the hill, a pretty gentle reminder actually. Her boyfriend erased the drone footage he’d taken of the heiau from above when we told him. Every now and then we haoles get it right and don’t have to spend the next two hundred years collecting bad karma our ancestors will have to make corrections for in two hundred years.

 In the old days, the water of this bay itself was actually kapu, and was called Kapuhakapu, the “Forbidden Flower,” so beautiful to pluck it was an affront to the gods. Only the ali’i—chiefs and priests— could swim in Kapuhakapu, not the maka’ainana, the people of the land whose job was to keep the chiefs and priest well fed.

Although we may joke and call each other goddess, Marina and I are the common people, and today we are going to scramble down the black lava rock slope and hurl ourselves into the break, swim out and spin with the dolphins if they appear like we have every right to. (Note: I wrote this essay before the ban was passed on swimming with the dolphins if anyone is reading this in an uproar.) After all, it’s been over 200 years since Lihohilo, Kamehameha’s successor, sat down and ate with some women, declaring the kapu system over. It’s not Marina and my fault the missionaries came in to fill that gap. The main sustenance of both parties was subservience. Marina and I were having none of that.

I first began swimming in Kealakekua Bay thirteen years ago. It was scary at first. The first year I never went further than 200 yards from shore and hugged the pali. I avoided the deep water where I could just barely see the bottom. Slowly, over the years I swam farther and farther from shore until I found myself in the middle, and then it wasn’t so far to the other side.

Fins help, and a mask to see what could be coming up from below, but swimming across the bay is still an experience equal parts eeriness and triumph. Beams of diamond light made visible seem solid, but when you swim toward them remain just out of reach. I know there are scientific explanations for what light is and where it comes from, but when I look into those beams I know I am in the presence of something that can never be explained no matter how it’s measured by science. Maybe the best synonym for holy is beyond.

Sometimes in the open water I’ll encounter a bait ball, a swirling mass of tightly bound fish, and when it suddenly breaks open see a shark calmly swimming through the hole. The first time my panic response kicked in—I froze—denying the fear as I kept on across the bay toward the pali, but over time I shifted from mindless reaction to measured response, and now I can say I am glad when I see a shark. I breathe calmly through my snorkel and greet it as a brother, though I am still thrilled by its slick grace, and I always pray to the shark god Kamohoali’i when I swim over the reef’s edge into the deep water.

Kealakekua means “pathway to the gods,” and the whole area from the pali on the north side of the bay to the Pu’uhonuanua o Honaunau a few miles south is known as the Golden Triangle, a place of potent spiritual transformation. All of Moku o Keawe feels powerful. Sometimes the magnetic pull of Kī’s iron core is so strong on this island I have a hard time lifting my feet, the land calls me down to worship it on my belly. But this triangle of land feels especially holy. It has changed me over the years in ways I never could have expected when I first entered the blue water, pretending I wasn’t afraid, but willing to swim through my fear because I was, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “beckoned by blue,” the feeling of a color calling to the mysterious depths of my soul, beyond beyond.

My surrender to blue was a calling and a choice, inevitable and so easily couldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had the courage to do so many things before that first day I stood on the rocks looking down at the water.

Is surrender the pathway to the gods? It would have been much easier to ignore the call and build a life in Connecticut and never stand on the shore of Kealakekua Bay with my knees quaking and my soul begging me to dive in and bring it up to the surface.

Or is the bay, Kealakekua, a literal pathway to god? To say it’s a metaphor or a concept denies the potency of the physical and leads to its desecration. So many desecrations ripple through this water and echo through the ruins of the villages and heiaus that once ringed the shore. Thinking of this, I understand why the ali’i declared the bay kapu. There’s also the practical matter of who’s going to till the crops and weave the clothes if everyone is blissed out swimming all day in the waters of god.

What would happen if everyone was a god and there was no one to worship?

What is a god if not this blue water? Even the mother of Christ was adorned in it, Mary in her blue robe, Stella Mare, the Star of the Sea. When I swim in this once forbidden water perfumed with the scent of ghostly plumeria leis laid as offerings on its undulating surface, I know god, not as a word, certainly not capitalized; not as a noun or an adjective, but as a verb; hand over hand churning the wheel of life, legs flutter-kicking best as they can, having lost their ability to glide when some ancestor gave up her fins to walk on solid ground.

According to the Mū doctrines, water is an experiment of  the Sirian Lineage, known in Hawaiian as the A’ā, or “Shining Ones.” Many traditional cultures still speak of coming to Earth from the stars, in particular from Sirius and the Pleiades. According to the Hawaiians, there are four primary star lineages we can all claim as ancestors. Each of the lineages seeded experiments on Earth, and we as their descendants carry the responsibility of the recognition, participation, completion and exultation of these experiments.

The other two experiments of the Sirian lineage are sonar/frequency and memory. Having been scanned by the dolphins and swum in their squeaks and clicks, I can attest to the mystical power of sonar to change frequency. I was forever changed from swimming with them. I remembered myself in a fundamental way it’s hard to put into words. I guess you could say I remembered I was a mystic with access to all the intelligence of the cosmos, although that sounds pretty grandiose. I’m not trying to set myself up as a new goddess, even on Instagram where women in flowing dressed with soft, seductive voices hold court and have a lot more followers than I do. Compared to them I’m a bull in a China shop with an alley cat’s sarcastic yowl. I can’t read the Akashic records, at least that I know of, but I can read waves and currents and smells. I wish I could read the Akashic records, don’t get me wrong, but it appears my fate is to make shit up, which means I’m an artist writing my own book, not reading what happened in a book written by someone else, even if that someone else is an Archangel.

I don’t want to diss Instagram goddesses and people who read the Akashic records. Like I said, I wish I could. I also wouldn’t mind being softer around the edges, willowy and photogenic, but I’m not. Instead of seeing myself as blind where others are gifted, I’m going to value my own gifts, which means I might write about levitating a dolmen in Atlantis, but I will make sure to tell you I’m making it up. Maybe it will actually be a recovered memory. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is I’ve conjured an image and communicated it. The image itself has its own work to do and I will let it.

If we let these ancient images work on us, I suspect we’ll remember things beyond our current consensual reality. We may remember so much we don’t even need memory any more and will have completed the experiments of the Sirian lineage. Will water disappear from Earth after that? If so, I’m not sure I want to be here. Maybe it will pour out of our atmosphere onto a new planet in another dimension. That’s where I’ll go.

I’ve heard people say their memories of Lemuria return from immersion in Hawaiian waters, and while I have never remembered anything that specific, I do know the feeling of connecting to something far more ancient than anything described in written history. I feel it in my bones when I cross the bay; my arms and legs churning the water awaken these primordial memories. I don’t need to remember the specifics. In fact, it would probably be an ego trap if I did, something to make myself feel special. Better to let the knowing just seep through my pores and settle in my marrow to radiate outward toward others like the dolphins’ sonic joy.

Back at the pier, Marina interrupts my reverie with a gasp.

“What’s that?”

Something in her voice makes me know it isn’t dolphins.

Mesmerized by amorphous aqua,

incantation of breaking and reforming,

endless suss and sigh of the sea-

she sees it first, speaks-

summons my gaze

to the surf line.

Like a bullet

commanding the waves to open

it hurtles toward us on the bulkhead,

flip-turns at our feet,

white belly a lightning bolt

that rattles the ground beneath us—

a radio dropped in a bathtub—shark!

Electrified and numb

I see its teeth and

forget the sight

immediately.

“Whoa!” We both exclaim.

“That’s at least eight feet.” Marina says.

More, I think.

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We would have been in that water if Marina hadn’t been slow to get going this morning. I was impatient— (There was a huge joint involved)—but grateful I’d slowed down to her rhythm driving back up the mountain.

We went back the next morning, crossed through the live wire left by the shark’s passing, let the water polish our human skin until we were sleek as dolphins and the pod welcomed us as if we were one of them, bathing us in clicks and whistles, drumming our cells with sonar, literally seeing right through us. All our fears of yesterday dissolved in the holy blue. Stella Mare, Star of the Sea, every breath, every tear, brings us closer to you.

Sometimes I just float in the middle of the baby looking up at the pali where chiefs’ bones were buried in caves. Kealakekua, Pathway to the Gods: Ku, Kane, Lono, Kanaloa. I dare to chant their names knowing sharks sense blood from more than a mile away.

I know there are sharks in the water, even though I don’t always see them, but I’m less afraid. By entering the water knowing they are there, I become part of their memory. We come to know each other best as we can, and I, for one, am less afraid because of that.

The Hawaiians tell of a pact made between the shark god Kamahoali’i and humans that ensured our safety. They say to this day there’s been no known shark attack on a Hawaiian. Maybe someday all humans will remember and honor the pact between humans and Kamahoali’i. The vicious campaign to push our shadows away will cease— sharks will no longer be feared and slaughtered as trophies and status food like shark-fin soup.

Through the ritual of swimming across Kealakekua Bay, I have encountered my fear of death, and while I can’t say I’ve overcome it completely—I certainly don’t long to drown or be eaten by a shark—death seems friendlier now. Water helps me remember I am far more than this body and also allows me to experience its exultation, my arms and legs in synchrony carry me across to the other side I can see, the solid fact of the pali, very much not beyond, ascending 1,000 feet above me. Bobbing in the bay I watch koa’ae, white-tailed tropic birds, disappear into slits in the cliff where the chiefs’ bones still emit the mana of humans who lived with ears attuned to the needs of the beyond human world, able to guide their people in navigating relationships that sanctified each step on the sacred Earth.

May we all draw strength from the chiefs who came before us to become them, leaders on the pathway to the gods within us. And if you’re in doubt or afraid, remember Marina and me stumbling out of her battered truck to stand on the bulkhead, never expecting an eight foot shark to flip turn and flash its white belly right beneath our feet.

Near Hikiau Heiau, photo by Jen Lighty

Kō aloha la ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light