Time is an Experiment

Revelations on legacy and lineage from the time before time

Aloha from La’aloa in Kailua Kona on Moku o Keawe,

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I began this newsletter in what I call “The Puna Portal,” on the east side of the island, and that last week I moved back to the land of sunsets in the west. I was delighted to hear that this particular area of Kona I’m residing in, La’aloa, means “sacred,” and that my street, Ho’oilina CT means “legacy or inheritance.” My housemate told me she was able to buy this beautiful home through an inheritance she received from her mother! I also like that I am living on a court, not a street, road or avenue, since courts are associated with royalty.

A few months ago I discovered I am a direct descendant of British royalty. Tracing my family tree backwards through centuries of farmers, merchants and mariners, I came upon someone in the 16th century with a title, Lady Margaret Bourchier. As I followed her line back through time the titles were in every generation until they reached what was for me quite a culmination, King Edward III! Lady M was his great granddaughter, descended from his son Lionel, The Duke of Clarence. Edward was of course, descended from the Plantagenet and Norman Kings before him, whose lineage can be traced back into Dark Age France.

I’m telling you all this not to claim superiority. In my life I am most certainly of the class the Hawaiians call, maka ‘ainana, the eyes of the land, as opposed to the ali’i, chief and priest class. I have been working physically hard my whole adult life in various service industry and agricultural jobs, and now massage therapy. It’s high time we abolish class distinctions based on economic position and claimed our inner chief and priest, the goal of the word sovereignty you hear mentioned so often in the spiritual community. What if being a king meant you took responsibility for every facet of your life and made decisions based on the good of your community, or that a priest was someone who could speak directly to the cosmos? To me, those are contemporary definitions of king and priest that have the potential, if embodied, to transform society from the inside out. It will take a collective effort, but it has to begin somewhere. As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

The reason I’m telling you I’m the descendant of royalty is because I think this information was revealed to me because I was being called to look at my lineage and consider my legacy, something royals do and that we can see happening right now in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s transition. Did you see the photos of the rainbows above Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace the day she passed? I’d say they were an affirmation she fulfilled her destiny, though I won’t speculate what that was, for destiny is something private and can really ever be known by the individual bearer, while legacy is up for those left behind to discover and carry forward through own lineages.

On a side note, I was blown away when I discovered Lady Margaret Bourchier was governess to Henry VIII’s three children, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I, was aunt to Anne Boleyn, and lady in waiting to Katherine of Aragon. These are all historical figures that fascinated me as a child, and still do. Pre-teen Jen spent hours at the local library reading books about Tudor history, a strange pastime for a junior high school student. In addition, right before I discovered Edward III was my great grand dad from back in the day, I had just finished a book about the scandalous romance between another one of his son’s, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Katherine Swynford, in which my direct lineal ancestor, Lionel, Duke of Clarence was often mentioned.

What are the chances a twelve year old in Connecticut would be obsessed with Tudor England? Or that a 54 year old would still be reading in minute detail, the story of Plantagenet lovers and their political squabbles? You may not be a believer in reincarnation, but I’d encourage you to listen to Horation when he tells Horatio, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet, Act I, scene 5

Which brings me back to “The Puna Portal,” a phenomenon I’ve experienced before, although not for as long as this time around. This time I made it almost nine months, the other times I was bounced after only a few. My theory is that, Puna, being Pele’s home, is an extremely intense transformation energy vortex. Pele is a goddess of destruction and creation. Those who live in her home will be transformed, often violently, whether the seek transformation or not. In Puna, Pele flows as liquid fire under the ground, itself made of old versions of her body, hardened into black lava that ripples in waves for miles, waves that have no give and will slash you open if you fall. She appears as steam in the jungle as you drive down the road, and she heats the waters that seep out and fill pools where I lay for hours waiting for the pueo to fly out of the trees and bless me at dusk. Sometimes, when we are too complacent, or perhaps out of line, or maybe for no human reason at all, she erupts in her pure fire form as lava that just four years ago destroyed around 800 homes. Pele is harrowing, and to live in her home is to be assured a visit from Death at your doorstep.

I knew all this about Puna before I signed my lease, but somehow thought it wasn’t going to happen this time, that I could live there just fine and be happy like so many of the open-hearted people in my neighborhood. I don’t feel like I failed-not at all-or that there’s anything right or wrong about the people who live their whole lives there. It’s more that I understand now that I am here to undergo rapid transformation in this lifetime as a role model for others. (My human design profile is 6/3, the role model/martyr, meaning my destiny is to go into experiences blind and learn by trial and error, which I will hopefully share with others as I gain wisdom through these experiences.) Everyone else will go through many deaths, leaving bodies to become spirit and then entering new ones. I just signed up to do that as many times as possible while staying in this body, the one that bears the name Jen who has these marvelous hands writing to you now.

So why did I enter “The Puna Portal” this time, just after learning I was descended from British royalty? Well, fulfilling my 6/3 profile, I didn’t have a clue until the very end of my stay there, but when it did come to me, I actively began to participate with the process through ceremony.

The purpose was to “refresh my lineage.” The quotations are because I received the concept from my mentor in pua’aehuehu,¹ Ke’oni Hanalei. During a session together, I noted that I felt burdened by the weight of my ancestors’ suffering, and felt my life was a sacrifice to their unfulfilled wants and desires.

Saying I was burdened doesn’t describe the depth of the feeling. I actually felt crushed by it, and angry, though the anger was buried pretty deep and didn’t make its way out in healthy ways. This is obviously not a good foundation for relationships or creations in any way, so Ke’oni advised me to “refresh my lineage,” while also considering that I could be the founder of a contemporary lineage. What did I want the legacy of my lineage to be? He also noted that I could also be the only member of this lineage, a sobering fact that was actually motivating. If I am the only member of this new lineage, it seemed even more important to articulate what I want my legacy to be, and to orchestrate my life to fulfill that as a contribution to the evolution of the cosmos.

I realize this letter is moving between a lot of paradigms, or ways of viewing the world, but that’s just the way I see things. Looking at the world through my eyes is like looking into a pool thinking you will catch a glimpse of yourself looking back, only to see yourself disappear and shape shift into a 1,001 other forms and stories. So, I’m going to trust that as a reader of The Corpus Callosum Chronicles, you are as thrilled by these leaps as me, or at least willing to consider them, and reveal another facet of my legacy that was revealed to me as soon as I left the Puna Portal after refreshing my lineage through ceremony in Pele’s sacred pools to reside once again on the dry side in Kona town, where mo’o-lizards, flit over the stones outside my bedroom and and frolic in the aloe plants that thrive in the hot, dry climate.

This new lens is the revelation of my primary star lineage, Draco, called Mata Roro, in Hawaiian. Draco is the constellation of the dragon, hence my notation of the lizards, mini dragons, that are a part of my daily life now, and it was the first of the four primary lineages with which we earthlings can claim kinship.² The Draco lineage is so old that it existed before the Big Bang, meaning it came before matter. What does it mean to be pre-matter? Well, being creatures of matter, this is difficult to know! One thing we can do is approach the concept indirectly through poetry and story, where metaphor gives us the feeling of what it’s like to be connected to everything in existence, where meanings keep opening up like a set of infinite Russian dolls or an onion without a center. Direct experience is possible, but you won’t be able to remember it, which is what happened to me at my first ayahuasca ceremony. Although I didn’t know who they were, my Draco ancestors claimed me. While everyone else was having mystical visions of jaguars and snakes, or purging violent emotions, I was crushed into oblivion and pushed out of time by passing through a singularity, which I of course can’t remember because it is not possible to archive something that doesn’t exist in time. All I know is I went somewhere that I couldn’t see or remember, that I had been sitting upright and awake the whole time, and that afterwards I was filled with a greatest calm and feeling of home. Since I couldn’t remember it, I can only describe it in terms of what it’s not. I can, however, embody the experience non-verbally and people sometimes pick up on it and are either freaked out or fascinated. Over time, I’ve learned to relax into this non-beingness and now participate with it actively to help others, with their permission, navigate the death process. This inherent part of my nature was very confusing to me when I was younger, often disturbing, as people often rejected me for it. I know a lot of people say they feel like they’re from another planet, but being Draco I am literally descended from before the Big Bang and my oldest ancestors were pre-matter, whatever that is!

The acknowledgment of my Draco lineage has vaulted me into a new a way of being on Earth. Instead of resisting the gifts of my lineage, I know now my kiakahi, my purpose, is to make the three experiments of ritual, death and time, more friendly and contemporary, which is why I write and voyage into these difficult portals where safe passage is not guaranteed.

I have been reckless, not to leave Earth, but to learn. Something has settled in my bones and I can rest now in the Kona sun after my time with Pele in the rainy forests of Puna, but I will always be a seeker. Whether or not I’m a role model as my 6/3 profile states is up for you to decide. If I’m not, I’m fine with that. My job is to just keep having the experiences, creating with them, and let go. The rest is up to you.

I’m very curious to know what you make of these ideas. Up until this point I’ve masked some of my beliefs through sticking to a metaphorical lens, and I do believe that many of the conclusions drawn by the New Age spiritual community and conspiracy theorists that supports some of the ideas expressed here is too literal, usually from too much of an over-identification with the material. As a poet, I prefer the indirect and esoteric, one of the reasons I love so much the Hawaiian ‘ōlelo, that communicates through kaona, the hidden meanings within every word that demonstrate the multidimensional nature of existence through language. However, I feel that always staying within the metaphorical realm at this point perpetuates a fragmentation of my identity that is out of integrity. I want to be whole, and I want to be transparent with you, so I’ve taken the chance here of revealing some beliefs that may be outside your comfort zone. Please let me know what you think in the comments. As ever, I appreciate my readers so much, and if you’d like to share this post please do by clicking the link below.

Kō aloha la ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light,

Jen

1. Esoteric Mū Hawaiian fern medicine. A body of knowledge on emotional intelligence that are a potent, just, and illuminating guide to navigation human existence through the principles of aloha. For more info follow @pohala_hawaiian_botanicals on Instagram or see www.pohala.net.

2. Want to learn more about the star lineages? Pohala Hawaiian Botanicals just completed a video series on each of the four: Draco/Mata Roro, Arcturus/Hokule’a, Sirius/A’a, and Pleiades/Makali’i. I highly recommend purchasing the replays if you’re interested in how these lineages can be part of our contemporary lives and how the human species can fulfill its potential through participation with and completion of the experiments seeded on earth by each lineage. www.pohala.net