Inner Shaman Adventures - Cacao Ceremony 21

I sent out a call to family and friends and they answered. On the due date of our second baby, my birthday, I chose to bring love in its physical form to my house, our home. My sister arrived on the Friday night and friends came the next day. We travelled and met in Bushy Park and started the process of returning to Old Mother Cacao.

Within the circle of trees, with a beautiful canopy to protect us, we created space, a circle representing the rhythms of life. As we smudged, hugged and spoke our intentions, we connected and communed, opening our hearts and lives to one another.

My intention was to create the space for fertility to blossom within me, naturally. Despite the myriad tests, vials of blood and urine, discussions with Doctors, there is a need to find a bloom within me that is beyond science.

As I lay down, I wondered how it had been so long for me to lie in nature again, to be with Old Mother, as she allowed me to listen to what my heart truly has to say. I saw the pattern of the leaves against the sky and soon closed my eyes as the warmth of cacao enveloped me.

She was there.

She came to me and looked me up and down.

  'What a mess, my darling. Look at you.'

She very carefully blew mapacho at my whole body. She then excavated each chakra and took out rotten cores - putrid, smelly, and scraped out what was no longer of use. Each area was cleared and cleaned and then the gaping holes were filled with mapacho and cacao. I stood in front of her allowing myself to be eviscerated and throughout she says to me, 'Where have you been? What have you been doing to yourself?'

I looked down at myself - my core now filled with cacao, splattered all over me, daubed brown, dripping, bitter tasting, I could feel the medicine at work, at play. The medicine carousing in my blood stream.

Humbled, I realised how far I had come from the natural world, how my journey had strayed from the Old Mother and her powerful teachings.

  'To be fertile means to be creative. You are restricting your creativity, if this cannot flow then fertile ground cannot remain.

  How often are you writing, my darling?'

I had picked up food instead of the pen and had been mashing, pulverising, blending, whisking, chopping and kneading on a regular basis - recipes that take hours to create and minutes to destroy.

  'It's not enough, you need your words. Your language is your most fundamental mode of creative expression but you do not take the time to sit and allow creative forces to arrive.'

I understood. Somehow, I had let writing and cacao take a back seat as other, more seemingly pressing areas seemed to take precedent. I knew I needed to allow creativity to flow back in my veins.'

She berated me, 'Darling, being in ceremony, being with me in this way, is a part of your journey so you can share the light with others and they can find their own truth. Share me, be a part of me, hold me in ceremony for others. Do not turn away from me, I'm also a part of your journey towards truth. Do you not remember what Aya said? You have been initiated. It is time. People will come.'

I nodded. I knew that I need to hold space for cacao to do her work for others, that the planet needed this more than ever as we face evermore destructive forces.

  'Try not to force life. Life will happen in the way that it is meant. If you have or do not have children, your creativeness is your fertility. Your round belly is a source of life, not just for children but for all birth.'

I picked the card, 'Intensity', 'You have not to be a follower, an imitator. You have to be an original individual; you have to find your innermost core on your own, with no guide, no guiding scriptures. It is a dark night but with the intense fire of inquiry you are bound to come to the sunrise.'

To do that I need to follow my heart, to allow my creative forces to arise from within and be allowed expression.

Aho.

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Cacao Ceremony facilitated by Carmen Saccone

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Expanding - Blog Post

It's been so long since I have written a post physically, yet, in my head I had written plenty.

Experiences and visions have continued to visit me but somehow there has been no space to sit and write, and allow them to unfold in the way they asked.

Space. In these last few months I have deeply craved the most open spaces.

I have desired the ability to stretch my body, my voice, my words... in a place I could call my own.

And even now I know these last few months have been about creating space, I have also realised I am moved by the ever present tidal pull of my childhood that continuously affects the rhythm of my life.

I had to go in before I could go out.

As we put a deposit down on a small cottage near the deer, my bank account decreased significantly as we invested our savings on the possibility of a new beginning. As I signed my name on the line, for a house I had seen for a short period of time, on my own, once, I felt crushed under the pressure of possible ramifications, haunted by mistakes I had made previously and wondering if I were about to make them again.

In the meantime, he had moved all his belongings in my noisy Wimbledonian bedroom. As our physical bodies and belongings jostled for space and the cars outside clamoured for our silence, I shrank and faced my own claustophobic demons.

In this time of transition, I moved along a rocky road from independence to partnership, and have slowly allowed myself to become an open-hearted companion to another on this life's journey. There had been times when I contracted in fear but then I could feel myself expand in vulnerability, as I consciously laid my heart open to another and allowed them to see the whole of me.

Now we have moved into our small cottage, near the deer, we are slowly creating small rituals of love. I can walk into every room and move. I wake in the morning, from entwined limbs, and extend. I feel his body next to mine but he allows me to reach for space and I reach, and reach, and reach, until I have stretched my body, my voice and now... finally, my words.

It's time to write again.

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Escape - Short Story

She sat at the café and placed her notebook on the table in front of her in case any thoughts or ideas needed to be written. She waited to see if a story would come. Practising patience, with her head held high, she looked at the people around her and watched.

She noticed a woman with her eyes closed, her head over the steam from her coffee. Her blonde hair was slowly falling in front of her face as the pushchair next to her rocked slightly from side to side as a child played with a toy. Exhaustion emanated from every bone in her body.

Across from her were a couple who were on their phones. They were smiling at the words or pictures on their screens, visiting a world that didn’t include the other. She watched the man quickly glance up at the woman in front of him and saw a faint crease on his forehead appear. She thought he looked puzzled; he took a sip of his drink and then dove back into the escape hatch he held in his hands, and smiled.

She moved on and contemplated a lone man reading a book, with a large mug and a half a piece of cake in front of him. His crutches had been pushed to the side and the plaster cast on his leg looked aging, blackened by the polluted streets he needed to swing through to get around. He turned the pages with intent, focused on the next stage in the story. She wondered how he had hurt his leg.

Slowly her eyes passed over people and she looked at each person until her eyes met a man across the room. He was looking at her and smiling. They looked each other as if they both knew a secret and nodded, then they both looked away and retreated into their own worlds.

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