Being the Captain

There is a teaching in Universal Kabbalah around Victory. It is the opposing virtue of Splendor. And the two are located at our hips.

Hmmmmmm… Victory and Splendor. Victory over what?

Some would call it evil, or anything created by you or another that messes with your splendor, your glory!

Then there is a declaration: “I am the Captain of my ship!”, affirming that all evil has “no place here!”

I am the captain of my ship! Inner and outer.

As a real-life boat captain, I have always loved this. I think about it when I’m at the wheel of Blue Star, my sailboat. With my ex, I sailed her to Alaska, in some appalling wind, rain, and chaotic currents and waves, to Haida Gwaii, and down the outer coast of Vancouver Island, where the bow came up over countless bottomless waves and flopped her belly down hard over and over. Crash!

Or in being jostled in untamed seas around the Brooks Peninsula, we put up the sails and gave Blue Star the sail of her life! Like a team of racehorses going for the win! She settled into those waves like a fulfilled purpose.

And I’ve come around a corner in a narrow inlet and had a close encounter with a tug towing a huge tow of logs.

I’ve heard that a tugboat captain’s life is 95% boredom and 5% terror! I’m sure I added to the 5% that day!

Being a captain of anything requires your best efforts at staying attentive and maneuvering in tight situations. A tug with logs can’t maneuver… That was up to me! You better believe I figured it out, tight space or not. This is a continuing metaphor for responding to life. Something breaks, it gets fixed. Someone falls overboard, I gather them up. They must have a life jacket before we leave the dock.

You don’t get your captain papers without experience and training.

I’ve had plenty of goof-ups. Going aground when the tide was going out. Going across the wake of a huge ship with hatches open and burying the bow. You just have to deal. Nearly running into a sleeping humpback whale.

The ex once belly-flopped on a telephone pole and chopped the thing in half! No damage to the boat! Luckily it was water-logged.

Wearing the captain’s hat doesn’t mean I am perfect, but adventuring on the sea is its own spiritual practice. Most days are blissful and mellow, with a good dose of intuition and constant vigilance. A huge gratitude for the glories of the elements, the fresh breezes, the beautiful skies, and the ocean. The whales!

On a good day, we are going about double a fast walk and the marine highway is vastly wide. You usually have lots of time to respond to a passing ferry boat, or to avoid hitting a log.

Docking Blue Star always elicits a “calling upon” to the docking angels. Since I’ve known I could do that, my docking has gotten ever so much better! Docking must address a convergence of wind gusts, surprise currents and limited visibility, incompatible cleat placement on the dock. Prop wash which means when I throw her into reverse to slow her down, the stern is pulled to the port, either towards or away from the dock.

Docking a boat is not like parking a car! All the mix of forces is unique and variable in the moment for each docking experience. The docking angels, bless them, know how to bring all relevant forces including the captain into synch which makes docking a breeze!

So when I read “I am the Captain of my ship”, I know what that means in real-time and on a real boat. Overcoming the obstacles at sea helps me know I can overcome other obstacles to be the Captain of my life.

For most of the blessed time with Blue Star, I have been on an exceptional spiritual path which has shown me how to be that captain.

If you want to discuss how it might work in your life, let’s have tea.

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A Mystic Afloat

A Mystic Afloat

Sailing along the outside, that is the wild ocean side of Vancouver Island is like nothing else. The scenery, the wild waves and sometimes weather… sea otters, whales, there is nothing like it. We have sailed to SE Alaska and out to Haida Guaii, visited the upper fjords. Nothing holds a candle to V.I.’s outside.

Our ninth and most recent visit was just pre-Covid and after all this time, I feel it is beyond time to start sharing the experience with more people. Thus is born “A Mystic Afloat”. My original intention was to bring you an account of our travels every week or two, but I never succeeded in finagling cell or internet and for weeks at a time, there was none. I’m not kidding that this is the wild side. We typically see only occasional other boats and thus very few humans. Even the first peoples have moved inland to send their kids to school.

So let’s pretend that it is still summer and that we are still out there. These writings were spontaneous, usually the same day. There are pieces about the sensuality, the water, the quiet, the lessons and the adventures, descriptions of inner and outer space. Wildlife, life at sea. Rain. Rainbows. SPIRIT.

So please enjoy this vicarious adventure of life at sea on the wild side of amazing and awesome Vancouver Island. My constant shipmate, husband Jimmy.

Capt Marnie

 

Log 1: Setting sail…

Every year around March I have commonly a brief sense of fear at the risk we take heading into the wilds of British Columbia, but it gets subdued by the inner call of the Sea which grows over April and May and by June the Call is master.

So much changed in me over the winter months, fears melted, new joys bloomed.

Especially after May Programs in Toronto, where I studied the deeper essence of Kabbalah with Founder Gudni, and was handed down some very inspiring new rituals by Ipsissimus Dave and from a day where the ladies had a day all to themselves, while the men learned Viking magick.

For years, Founder Gudni has told us the women hold a critical key to the cosmic shift we need to make as a species. As the ingrained tomboy that I once felt I had to be, I was given so much to process and I have started to see through new lenses, new archetypes and even through the new experience of being a priestess in the tradition of the Earth magick: Wicca.

So much new inspiration and I so look forward to weeks and then months at sea to integrate all this! And, of course, to experience the glories of nature: whales, dolphins, seals, sea birds, big and little fishes, seaweeds, beaches, bears and breezes as they whisper through my hair and the waves as they lick the hull of our dear Blue Star.

How I fell in love with sailing…

My first memory of the Sea was, of course, from the beach at the age of five and the calm waters of Nantucket Sound(Cape Cod, MA) which featured splendid crystalline sands and cute little shells, some of them translucent orange and yellow that we called toenail shells and the little “boat” shells. An occasional trophy, a knobbed or channeled whelk, would wash up after a storm. I still have one I found when I was eight.

The beach was one thing. The excitement of gliding over the waves, pushed only by the wind was a whole other thing and by the time I was eight, I was single handing our little 12 foot Waterbug. Freedom at eight! What was there not to love about that? I was smitten!

I had gotten over the terror I had felt in a small boat at five, when she heeled over in the wind and I thought we would all fall into the water!

The glory outweighed my fright pretty quickly.

For all the years after that, I remember so well that first sail of the year, which was dangled like a carrot in front of us, as our little wooden boats all needed scraping, sanding and painting and in those days of oil-based paint, each of at least 3 coats took a whole day to dry. My kid brother and I did all or most of the work, encouraged by our dad. That several days seemed like an eternity.

So we really worked for that first sail which was nothing short of emancipation into a divine freedom! I’d set the sail, get out a ways and throw one leg over to drag it in the water. Destination? Who cared!!! Ahhhhh! The wind in my face, the peaceful sounds of the water against the boat… And home again… Total BLISS!

 

Blue Star, our cruising sloop, is too large to drag a foot over the side. She is very comfortable for several weeks. After my many smaller boats, Blue Star is a palace with her sizable fridge and freezer, hot shower and plenty of headroom for my very tall husband, Jimmy. The bunks are queen-sized. The main cabin causes people to gasp it is so large. Blue Star seems to be “at the ready” for the chance to spread her wings in a good 30 knot breeze. She was built for ocean sailing and I love to feel her take on the wild outside of Vancouver Island.

So off we set out from our Vashon Island, WA slip, heading north. Ship is well provisioned, water tanks full. I can feel any stress I have melt away as I take in a deep and luxuriant breath of fresh air and set my eyes on the far shore of Quartermaster Harbor. Round the peninsula and north towards the vast Pacific Ocean.

 

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“What is a Mystery School?” part 1, by Marnie Jones

Read more
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“BLOOD PRESSURE, STRESS and TRANSFORMATION: Getting Younger…”

 

What makes us “old”? How can we change to get younger? Lo-inflam food, bodywork and the ancient spiritual path of King Salomon work for me. For details: https://mmspnw.com/article/marnie-jones-koenig/blood-pressure-stress-and-transformation-getting-younger/

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Hugging in the #MeToo Era

In the Mystery School, we hug a lot. That might sound “woo woo”, but it really isn’t.

We hug a client who comes to us for healing work, to establish a heart connection. We hug when we see a fellow Mystery School compatriot. Always, it is mutual, wholehearted and genuine. A natural expression of our shared humanity and spiritual essence.

Let’s unpack what a hug really is.

All sorts of research has been done on how great hugs are for your feeling of connection, your nervous system, your immune system. How it helps people feel connected and less afraid of dying. We are blending our energy with that of another for a moment of connection. A hug is a little recess from life, a moment to remember you are one with the light, because there in your arms is an ally, with their peculiar human foibles and glories just like you have yours. And for that moment, none of that even matters.

There are all sorts of hugs. We hug our children and normally these are acts of comfort and affection. We embrace our shared innocence. We are both nourished, renewed and strengthened.

Probably all of us have had other kinds of hugs. Hugs which by design keep people separate, like the “A-frame”, where the heads and shoulders touch and nothing else. The bear hug, which if it is too hard actually hurts. The sidecar.. I hope, for you, these are rare.

Healing Hugs

You can “read” where a person is at through their hug, especially if you are spiritually aware, which is true of anyone who has been around Mystery School for even a short while. Is the person’s heart open? Do they want something from me, besides what I am willing to give? Is their inner child feeling unloved? Do they feel “sexual” around me? Do I feel sexual around them? We also have a measure of ourselves when the mirror of that hug reflects on “me”. A hug can just be a quick reminder that “I am OK”. If that hug radiates from my heart, all that human stuff is relegated to a distant last place over the moment of presence in the hug.

I go into my hugs with a sense that love is radiating just past my edges from a deep pool in me. I am in the moment and I am there to share our common divinity. PERIOD. I am not rushed, I am listening with my senses and without judgment. I hold them in sacredness. People love to hug me and be hugged by me. I love hugging!

What a gift is the hug!

As a nearly 70-year old woman, a member of the baby boom generation, and having come of age during women’s lib and the sexual revolution, I have had just about every sort of hug! The sexual, groping hug. The “do I have to” hug. The stinky hug (b.o., halitosis, cigarette smoke..). The sidecar (“don’t want to get too close”) hug, which is one version of the “do I have to”. The “come up behind you” hug. The “deadpan”, “not home” hug. The overly enthusiastic vice grip, probably because the person wanted to appear “enlightened” about hugging, but wasn’t really comfortable with it. Maybe they were afraid to be seen. A real hug will expose who you are. The joy is in letting yourself be seen and in seeing the other.

I have been hugged by Amma. People stand in long darshan lines to be hugged by Amma. This Indian spiritual master uses hugging to remind people they are sacred. One day, I stood in her darshan line with my infant son. After a long wait, we were at the front of the line just as he needed to nurse. She invited me to sit next to her while I fed him. What an honor! She hugged several people and then she hugged us. WOW!

Sometimes I teach through my hugs.

“Lighten up your grip…a little more…there! Feel that?”

I think there is something of Amma in my hugs. If you are afraid to be loved, don’t hug me. Or… do! I promise it won’t hurt!

When we hug, we are meeting heart to heart. When I hug, I meet their eyes first and something in that connection starts the hug off on a very personal note. If you are hugging a room full of people, it is very important to make each hug personal. One beautiful divine spirit acknowledging and sharing with another. Each of us is uniquely divine and each is strengthened when that uniqueness is seen and appreciated.

Timing is Important

As a lightworker, I am aware that the timing is important. If I hug a new client as he or she walks through my door, I have not yet built rapport. Lightworkers work primarily in the aura and that is very intimate. Rapport first, a hug and then the work.

Although I am glad the me-too revolution is happening for all we women have had to endure over time, I worry a bit for the men. Hey, sisters and brothers… be careful, but try a respectful, nourishing, consensual hug! Those who are deserving of our trust, which is probably most of them, even those who have had to mend their ways, will start to know we forgive and accept them. Now that’s healing!

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Whole God, She Too!

Under the tree, in the early dawn,

I spoke to God:
“I can’t accept you as only male. I’m sorry, I just can’t.
That is too much like my angry father.”

There was silence.

“If you are All, please show me the feminine part of you.”

I felt a powerful energy as sweet and pure and accepting
as ever I have felt.

Then, I wanted to feel the union, the male and female joined.

There it was, strong and clear, bright and whole!

“Yes, God, thank you!”

I have been aware for decades that the male model of God put me off because it reminded me of my father when he was young and I was a small child. Although he softened over the years, he hurt me and scared me when I was little and if God was our “father”, I just assumed that He would be a bigger version of Dad, that huge hammer in the sky! That has been difficult to get over.

That God was our Father I was taught in the Episcopal church when I was growing up. He knew all our secrets and we couldn’t hide from Him. Sometimes, in Unity Churches I have attended and presented music in, they would say “Father Mother God”. That sounded cumbersome and superficial, and separate. “Goddess” doesn’t quite do it either!

But that morning in the woods, I discovered that I was the one who limited my own concept of God to be purely male. But, I wonder how many generations of women have felt marginalized by the depiction of God as a Father, almost never a mother or anything of the female nature?

I am changing “God” to an all-inclusive name. Whenever I utter “God”, I actively remind myself I mean the WHOLE God, not just the male God. Truly a relief! A spiritual breakthrough!

We women have a critical role to play in the birthing of the new consciousness. And yet we have been trained to the male models because that was how we were taught to build our success in the world.

But the true power in women is really quite different and must be reborn. Within that process, we must know the female aspect of God and then in union with the male, the WHOLE GOD, and not just as a concept, but the experience of that balanced godhood in ourselves, as women!

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