I love working with plants and animals via animal spirit medicine, flower essences, and the creation of personal teas, herbal blends and energetic elixers. I began with herbs when I was very young. My first herbal infusion was a blend of flowers as a devotional offering to the goddess. My first intentional oil was a homemade salve wih comfrey for my skin.
My herb cabinet at home is a little bit obscene in the breadth and depth of its stock considering that I do not in any way retail my herbal concoctions, at least not within the last few years! However, I'm always tinkering around. Since space in my kitchen is nonexistent, the simplest creation can mean a sea full of glass jars and packaged herbs everywhere in less than five minutes as I hunt for that jar of "xyz" at the back of the cabinet. It takes forever to put things back.
I really enjoy these plant medicines, and the reference books I have half memorized to go with them. I am perfectly content, so much so that I even decided not to buy any more rare or hard-to-find metaphysical herbs for at least 10 years. And I love shopping!
However one day I was sitting at the low coffee table that faces my kitchen when this inner voice suddenly popped into my head. It said, "You need to do a Cacao Ceremony."
Now, I know I was in the hot spot. That is, I was sitting on the couch tucked between the location of my Isis Altar and my whole wall bookcase, 25 years in the making, with reference books on healing and a strategically placed altar to Oya, the African Goddess of Transformation. I have done so much ceremony and personal healing in that exact spot, that I really should know better than to sit there! FYI, do not sit between a transformational altar and a personal calling altar unless you want your butt kicked.
"I don't want to do a Cacao Ceremony," was my instant reply to this intrusive inner voice. The last time I had a pushy inner voice come up like this, I founded my healing practice, so I know that simple thoughts like this can become a rollercoaster ride with Spirit.
However, the energy behind this thought was very persistent. I was given a very clear recipe for how to prepare the Cacao, and what the ceremony should entail. Isis (the Goddess of 10,000 names) was suddenly very present with me, her warm, feminine energy sharing a vision of women, and sometimes women and men, gathered, stirring a pot of deep, velvety looking chocolate. A stream of instructions filtered through my head like music, a background track to the high vibration of love that this inner movie reel was illustrating. Details popped out at me in saturated color.
"No way," I insisted.
Movie reel--screeching halt.
"I don't care if I'm a Priestess of Isis and this is an Isis idea. I don't understand what Cacao has to do with Egypt. I don't see why you are insisting. I don't want to sit here talking to myself on the couch about something I know nothing about."
And that is the hard truth, friends, about being a Priestess channel: God says crazy things and if you're the guy next door you get to ignore it and move on with your life until a mack truck nearly hits you and you finally agree to take notice. But if you've devoted yourself to God as a Priestess, Priest, healer/lightworker, or other spiritual type, then you probably took vows of some sort to at least listen when God comes calling.
So I listened.
I wrote down the ceremony that was channeled. It seemed suspect at best, especially when I compared it to what little I knew about Cacao ceremonies, which seemed to be in conflict. It didn't look like any ceremony I had ever heard of, and there is still a tiny part of me in these moments that regresses into the grade schooler that just wants to fit in and be like the rest. If I have to do a Cacao ceremony, why does it have to be different from the others? (Yes, I realize this was all ego, illusion, and fear playing out in monkey mind)
I also did a little bit of research on Cacao. What IS it?
It's chocolate, before it becomes chocolate.
It comes from this tree that is native to the tropical forests of Central and South America:
Chocolate has a long history; Cacao, the raw source for the sugary European delicacies that evolved from it, has a history that is even longer and more interesting.
I don't quite have energy to go into that now, but there on the couch, I learned a lot about the simple cacao bean. Reading stories of conquest, love, hope, and the human experience (all related to Cacao), I thought it was amazing how this particular plant has taken the whole world by storm.
That inner voice continued: "Yes, a ritual in which your community can drink cacao together and enter the depths of their own human nature. Be taken to the door of your deepest desires. Be led into the most creative part of your cosmic center where dreams lie in wait to be brought to light..."
At that point I thought of:
Reiki at the Butterfly Gardens
Reiki Master Beach Day
Reiki Master Training
Regular classes
My beloved private clients that I so enjoy working with . . .
. . . and 3 or four other as-yet unrevealed plans I have been brewing.
Then I thought about the fact that I have never held a Cacao ceremony in my life, and I have never brewed it for a large group of people. I didn't even know where to get it, but I knew it wasn't the same as the stuff in the grocery store.
"It doesn't matter. We will show you," that voice insisted with the same confidence and light as when I was first led to my office, to the peers of my healing community, and to my beloved mentors and healers that I turn to when I need human healing care.
"Yes, I'm sure you will show me!" I frowned. I knew I was not just talking to myself. I mean, sometimes I do talk to myself (like we all do), but I knew with clarity that this was the cumulative group of my closest spirit guides who watch out for my well being and highest good. They seemed to have decided together that cacao was on a collision course with my future.
And at that point, dear reader, I got up OFF of that couch and left the little spirit den behind. I felt very good about using my free will to say no to a spiritual intervention I simply didn't have time for.
"I'm not doing it." Score ONE for Dailey. I walked away. I made myself a cup of hot chocolate in my kitchen just to be snarky.
But of course it didn't end there. I mean really, does ego ever win when pitted against the benevolent loving energies of the universe that are simply asking you to do something healing for your own highest good? I could not see how cacao could have anything to do with my highest good, but I was about to find out! ;-)
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Dailey Little is a teacher and healing practitioner at Healing Heart Reiki of Santa Rosa. She can be reached for in-person and phone sessions at www.SantaRosaReiki.com.
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