14/04/2021
The rainy season in Guatemala is always such a potent time. When the first drops of rain start to drip on the Earth, usually mid-afternoon, you can start to hear her sing if you listen well enough. It offers a divine moment of silence, of that voidy space of timelessness when two people who are in love finally decide to take the leap and kiss each other. It’s the sky blessing the mother Earth with the precious elixir of life, so that the alchemy of Sun, Earth, Water and Air can start to take place and grow new life. It truly is a powerful moment when the rain starts to fall.
I often sit still and listen for a while to the first drops of rain, feeling the foreplay of earth and sky. Sometimes they take a long time, sometimes it starts pouring vigorously straight after. The ‘sexual’ life force energy that lives in everything becomes a friend when one lives in nature. The play of the animals and the interconnectedness of all things become tangible. You may have experienced this on nature walks or in your own garden. Life itself flows wildly through the animals, the plants and the soil, as they are in constant interaction and their ‘play’ is how the beautiful interconnected creation grows, (re)cycles, (re)births.
Plants are living beings just like everything else in creation, they have an awareness, purpose, connections with other plants and beings, and they have specific conditions in which they thrive. Plants have a spirit and a physical form, just like we humans are both soul and body. During my Cacao rituals and courses we are guided by the Cacao’s spirit. And when I talk about the Cacao spirit, I mean the spiritual-energetic being that decided to create a physical from, the Cacao tree. This spirit is the one that works together with us in the unseen realms, the one that goes into interaction with our soul and spirit, and how we can experience the healing of the plant teacher in our conscious and subconscious.
Cacao, just like any other plant, has its preferences and ways. And it *loves* wet and humid areas that are messy and warm. It loves the rainy season here in Guatemala. It likes a wild and hot environment.
Cacao is a plant that is hard to cultivate. It has tiny and intricate flowers that can only be pollinated by midges. The midges thrive in messy places with lots of disintegrating organic matter, and for that reason Cacao does not really do well in manicured monocultures. It is not a plant that is easy to domesticate, and also the strains of Cacao that offer a stronger psychoactive effect are even harder to cultivate and are more prone to plagues. Cacao wants to be in a diverse and interconnected environment.
You may have heard the saying of ‘As above, so below. As below, so above.’ Above and below are symbolic for spirit and matter. As a result, a bunch of these qualities of the Cacao plant are also qualities of its spirit. The idea is that the physical manifestation of the plant is a result of its spirit wanting to incarnate. For anyone journeying with Cacao as a plant teacher, I always recommend understanding this concept so that the ritual drinking of Cacao can be accompanied by an acknowledgment of the spirit being that came here to play with us. Whether that then becomes a formal invocation or just a moment of inner acknowledgment and respect for the plant and its spirit, depends on how a practitioner decides to go about things. The knowing that the spirit is there, and consciously opening up a conversation and interaction with the spirit is key to allowing the medicine to offer you portals of healing, transformation and play.
Every ritual is, in and of itself, a portal to receive and offer energy and to play and connect with spirit. If you want to know more about what ritual can do for you, and how Cacao can truly show up as a medicine for you in life, let me know! I have another Cacao Practitioner Program coming up in May, and if you feel ready to up-level your connection with Cacao and want to absorb the necessary knowledge and tools to create inspired rituals with her, this course is for you!
We’ve had an amazing group of people jump into more juicy connection with their own medicine and with their highest purpose and excitement just last March. We’re super excited to now be opening registrations for the next course starting May 23rd.
Find out about the training, and get lots more Cacao info and materials on my website www.onespiritworld.com
