Cacao Ceremony Yosemite July 2015

Transition from Darkness to the light,
A journey from the lessons of Jaguar to the medicine of Hummingbird......

We have just come from our Cacao Ceremony and my body is vibrating, my mind is flowing, my soul and spirit are free.  Trust in the process and allow yourself to walk through the door, this is the strongest I have ever felt the energy and Spirit of Cacao within me. 

Like most ceremonies, there is some plan and at the same time no plan, the most amazing things cannot be planned and the following reflection is proof of the power of the flow.  

We started our Cacao Ceremony like so many other ceremonies we have moved through so far in this 200hr teacher training.  We set our sacred space with gongs and bells, drums and rattles, flutes and singing bowls, tingshas and wooden song makers.  We smudged ourselves in ceremony with white sage and we stepped into the power of the Om Barn, on sacred Mono land, the land of the Nim.  

You could feel the excited nervousness in the air of what was to come.  With the beat of the drums we moved into a favorite song of the training “Heya Hey Yo Ya Heya Hey o”, the rhythm carrying us forward and upward with it’s vibration.  We then introduced the Spirit of Cacao to the group, the mythology, the use, the practice, the story of rediscovery leading us to this moment.  

We were moving from the Jaguar energy into the Hummingbird energy and there might not be a better teacher in this moment then Cacao.  Cacao medicinal properties are said to open you to the experience before you.  Sometimes we are using the Cacao to work through our “Dark Shadows” our suppressed emotions, fear, hatred, aversion, the energy of that the jaguar helps us to face in the darkness of night.  Other times Cacao leads us to the Power of the Light helping to facilitate love, heartfulness, creativity, the essence of the Hummingbird.  Along with Cacao we added a very special mushroom, Rishi, for creativity and manifestation.  We would move from Jaguar to Hummingbird with the help of our friends Cacao and our brother Rishi.  

After blessing our own cups of Cacao we began to drink, pungent and astringent at first, the back of the brain tingles all the way down the back of the neck, you can feel the healing energy at the first sip.  We continued to drink.  It was time to release the Jaguar, the guitar played on, “I am here, to release all of my fears, come to peace with all my tears and discover what it means to be alive, “Om dum durgayaaa om nama shivaya.”  We sang till the energy built to the max, bringing the rhythm down we need with silence and a sigh, we move into meditation, guided by the energy flowing in the heart, spreading outward to the entire body, the Cacao begins to take affect.  We sing to the hummingbird “En el centro es del templo vive calibri.” 

We move back to silence, and into the sound healing.  Dings and chimes slowly enter the space guided by the drum, I dance around the room with countless instruments drawing sound from all directions, I am supported by my co-leads.  The sounds move and swirl through the energy of the space, building ethereally with the chimes and bells and gong, moving up the pole of sound to the grounding drums and flute, to the sound of the wooden music makers, we move through the circle of sounds, healing here, drawing the sound around there.   Icharos pour from my heart in Shibibo, Quechua, Spanish and English. We continue for hours the room building with creative energy, a drawing here, a poem there, words floating through the air, the music build, we build, we laugh we cry.  “I was born in the river of the light, I ain’t afraid to love cause I ain’t afraid to die”

After sometime the silence creeps on of it’s own accord, the spirit of the Cacao guiding the flow of the ceremony, the ceremony a co-creation of our collective energies.  I pick up the guitar, “Jai ambe Ma” calls itself to the strings.  The song builds and builds, suddenly a flash of lightning a crash of thunder, sounds that haven’t settled on this land in sometime.  They are sounds foreign at first to our ears, followed by another foreign sound, tip tap tap tip tap tap tap taptaptaptaptap, the RAIN!  The energy of the ceremony breaks the clouds in a down pour of rain, harder then any rain we have encountered in over a year.  Tap tap tap “Jai ma kali, ja mahadevi.”  the students rise and begin to pour their souls into the rain, the guitar straps itself across my neck, I am standing in the rain, guitar playing on, the coolness, the wetness, in the rain we sing with our hearts and souls, we build and build with emotion and delight, tears of joy flow down our face, rain, rain, rain!

We are ecstatic, we are ecstatic, we are pure light.  The joy within us was bursting forth, dancing in the rain, no shoes, hugging trees, exploring our inner hearts.  At the height of all our joy, our dear friend Jessie Fairlight pulls a kitten from her shirt, she had been hiding it for fear it was a distraction, as our Hummingbird hearts soared we took in the love of the kitten, too small to be away from it’s mother, but it has no choice in this matter.  

We finally return to the sacred circle of our Om Barn, more music pours from our hearts, “I want to let the sunshine, shine down on me, I want to let the rain cloud, wash over me, Expansive lands won’t you carry me, I wanna let the strong wind, set my spirit free” on and on the songs flow “we all come from the goddess and to her we shall return….todos ninos de tierra, y ya ella regresso.”

The energy still soaring hours have past, the sun has set and we are still together.  We energetically close our ceremony, but recite our new poetry for each other and continue to embrace the love of the Cacao.