Image: Overhead view of a cup of Ceremonial Cacao
Blog post written by Annu Tara, published 13th August 2018
Where I Am Right Now…
I’m not sure how to start this post other than by saying I’m going through changes. Big changes. This is a very specific process that began in May 2018 and what I can say about this right now is that I’m being pushed down into the very roots of my Being & Life.
This is the Opening of Eyes deep down in the belly sphere, in my biological and creational core – and the process is ushering in the birth of my second life.
Some folk know what I’m speaking about as the Uranus Opposition or when in its unacknowledged shadow-state, more commonly understood as the mid-life crisis.
My midlife rebirth is reducing my past and what I’ve previously been into ashes. And I’m aware that if I turn the soil of this with truthfulness, then maybe it can provide the nutrient-rich foundation for what’s coming next.
It’s taken me two years of deep, conscious, dedicated effort to find my way into the real ground of my Life. Since my dark night of the soul and awakening into Truth in 2014, and the two years of integration necessary after this, the past couple of years have really been a downward journey of piecing together and reclaiming my humanity that underwent a shattering at that time.
What’s clear to me now is that there are many pathways of awakening. There is the awakening out of the Dream of Life that occurred for me in 2014 – and there is the awakening into and within the Dream of Life that seems to be what is occurring right now. How this unfolds is different for every single one of us because if there’s one thing we can rely on, it’s that nothing can be standardised. The possibility is Universal but the journey itself is utterly unique.
All I know is that I had to die (whilst staying biologically alive) before I could actually Live – it’s a truth for me, right there.
The death I’m speaking about is the death of identification and as it strips away all of the fillings we insert and construct around the nature of Reality, what is left is an ever-purifying, strengthening Silence that infinitely wraps around the hand of our Becoming, and eventually simply is the embrace of our Being. My identification with life has been very strong and I’ve found it to be an immensely challenging process of letting go. Awakening into Life is a process of arriving and I understand deeply now why this is sometimes considered to be even more challenging than the leaving.
Awakening into Life is a cross between a crash-landing, an underworld descent and the uncoiling emergence of our spirit, our infinite nature and our creational life-force energy through which we meet and purify the programming of our humanity, our personal and collective brokenness, our shadow realms & exiled aspects, our divisive polarisations, our ancestral pains and patterns, the unconscious elements of our body, the pure power of the deep Earth-Being, and the fractures of our togethering.
Although it’s a terrain saturated with grief, suffering, pain, trauma, fracture and immense vulnerability, this is also the richly fertile ground of our natural instinctual self, our true enjoyment & pleasure, our indestructible grit, resilience & rooted capacity, our meaning, embodied purpose & the opening of our Dream-seed, our deepening in intimacy with the vibrant, breathing depths of the living Mystery, and the breakthrough of our real freedom into form, which is the game-changer for the fulfilment of our individuation, sovereign unique life.
I’m sharing this with you because I believe that this naked arrival into the living ground of Life is important for what I want to share next.
My Journey With Ceremonial Cacao
I first started my explorations with ceremonial cacao as a personal practice in 2011. I had receive these cryptic inner instructions to work with the plant spirit of cacao as a healing and transformational guide at the point of completing my apprenticeship with another plant medicine I’d been initiating with for serveal years.
The instruction to work with chocolate as a transformational aid was curious, enticing but also perplexing for me. Ceremonial cacao as a practice or form was relatively unknown in 2011 and (unlike today!) there was very little information about this available. There was certainly no-one to my knowledge available in my own city or country publicly offering such work with this plant teacher. But the strong directive inner guidance to apprentice with this plant medicine came as an overwhelming internal instruction of truth, and I could feel that the plant spirit itself was calling me to listen instinctually, directly and somehow find my own unique way to work with it.
After scouring the internet for any kind of information I could gleen about this medicial plant teacher, I did come across the website of a man living in Guatemala named Keith who called himself The Chocolate Shaman – and it was from him I was able to purchase my first shipment of ceremonial grade cacao liquor.
I picked up a few guidelines from his website on how I might possibly work with cacao as a medicinal ally but I was full of questions and knew I needed to find my own way of working with this medicine and open directly to the plant itself to receive what it was so eager to share with me.
I spent 9 months fumbling around how to prepare the medicine, how to create a container of practice and engagement with the plant spirit, and learning the ways in which it shared its consciousness and wisdom with me. And through this process I was able to establish my own personal daily practice before finding the courage to share this with community, which resulted in yet another huge deepening in my learning with this plant teacher. A friend once reminded me that you practice to benefit those that you teach, and you teach what you most need to learn – and what a truth this is!
I spent two years drinking/ingesting the medicine almost every single day as the fulfillment of my apprenticeship with the spirit of the cacao plant, and spent several more years teaching what I’d learned with others.
Notes From The Field
Welcome, I’m Annu – and I write about embodying Truth, Love, Sovereignty & Liberation as our full-spectrum being; harmonizing our deep humanity & infinite nature that sprout the seeds of our New Earth living.
“Much of the ‘education’ during my apprenticeship with the cacao plant spirit was really about unlearning and undoing what the ‘societal outer world’ or ‘outer authority’ had inserted within me regarding the true nature of Life, of my female form, of my relationship with my physical & stellar bodies, of my relationship with nature and the Earth-Being herself, and about the Feminine Principle as the raw stream of sovereign, enlivened, undomesticated, inter-connecrive life-force Wisdom.”
What Ceremonial Cacao Taught Me
The teachings I received directly from the spirit of the cacao plant were so rich, visceral and deep – at times it felt like a constant stream of instruction and inner guidance that was flowering through me. This generous, sensuous plant taught me how to open into my own fleshy body, how to listen & communicate in the realm of soul, nature and our inter-connectivity, how to come into and thoroughly enjoy my own life-force essence through my embodied form. It felt like coming home to myself as a woman.
So much of the ‘education’ during my apprenticeship with the cacao plant spirit was really about unlearning and undoing what the ‘societal outer world’ or ‘outer authority’ had inserted within me regarding the true nature of Life, of my female form, of my relationship with my physical & stellar bodies, of my relationship with nature and the Earth-Being herself, and about the Feminine Principle as the raw stream of sovereign, enlivened, undomesticated inter-connective life-force Wisdom.
Cacao also taught me about authentic connection – between myself and everything – and that Life/Love is relational in its essence. This was a constant reassurance as I dropped deeper into self-intimacy, in opening up to the creative field, and widening my receptivity and embodiment of Universal Source energy. The plant spirit quite literally demonstrated through me how to plug into the Motherboard through the channels of inner guidance, inner authority, frequency precision and enlivening the deep instinctual body as the foundation of my unique GPS system.
It showed me how to get down into the bowl of my belly-sphere and develop my sensitivity, resilience and self-honesty there. The cacao spirit taught me how to open and cultivate intra-connectivity and collaboration between my deep womb consciousness and my universal heart consciousness as the wider, deeper and vaster sphere of embodying my Being and full-spectrum self.
I had been struggling to connect with my own gnosis and depth-embodiment prior to this, often abdicating my power, inner authority and integrity through mistrust of my own body and what it was feeding back to me.
It’s clear to me now that we actually have to remember how to be our self through the dismantling and unlearning of our personal, societal and ancestral conditioning, pains and patterns. And in some ways, we actually have to learn how to be human – how to become a True Human.
Until each of us discover what it actually means to be a True Human, we are basically living and enacting through a distortion that has been inserted into us – either through the illusory nature of the world and the construct of the Matrix itself, through our genetic databanks and bloodlines, or through the societal programming and control agendas.
Our identifications and abstractions are part of the illusory constructs – and purification through our own infinite nature as direct experience is the universal antidotes available to each and every one of us right now.
There have been many different facets to my own process of purification, realising my inherent freedom, reclaiming my sovereignty, and embodying my multidimensional spectrum but the sweet and beautiful spirit of the cacao plant has been a very deep and significant teacher and ally along the way.
Creation Of The Alchemical Chocolate™ Practitioner Training
As I mentioned previously in the post, 2014 was both a critical mass and ground zero point for me.
I came to a crossroads in my life where my internal reality was roaring into Truth – and yet I found myself entangled in an outer life that I’d created based on my conditioning and not-self patterns.
I was being cleaved in two by this, and it was agony. At a certain point, I simply couldn’t hold these two different realities anymore because it was breaking me apart. It was possibly the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make but I chose to walk away entirely from the not-self life I’d created – and chose that roar of Truth within me instead. I retracted myself from my old life and the outer world, and entered an indefinite period of silence, stillness and retreat in the mountains of Spain.
In the midst of dismantling my previous life, I received inner instructions to write down everything I knew about working with cacao as a plant spirit ceremonial guide and transformational embodiment ally. I felt an authentic responsibility in this, and that everything that had been shared with me should be preserved for the benefit of others. What I ended up creating was the very first online training for practitioners of ceremonial cacao (as far as I’m aware), in which I shared what I’d learned through my journey of initiation and apprenticeship with IxCacao that could support others who also felt called to work with this plant spirit.
Then I entered what was to become a life-changing two-year retreat and throughout this time the training I’d crafted was able to sustain me financially, and more than that somehow kept alive a thread to my humanity during this awakening and dark night of the soul. When I look back, I can see how ceremonial cacao served to plug me into deep existential teachings, and the period of retreat offered me the silence and stillness to be able to stay present with that depth. And I’m still integrating this.
It’s taken more than I could possibly have imagined to begin orientating balance and the cosmic divine order of my own Being, and to begin integrating this into the living ground of my life.
Even though my steps in this feel small and baby-like, I’ve come to realise that they aren’t. They aren’t even steps – they are quantum quasar pulse-points of rapid expansion and purification.
And this is why I take in these teachings to such a deep level, metabolise them, and move on so rapidly. It’s simply part of having a fixed destiny life design – if you have this too, you may recognise what I’m describing.
But what’s clear to me is that the plant deva of cacao has played a significant role in my process of getting free to become fully me and I’m forever grateful.
Simply put, the devic Earth Medicines are here to help us incarnate, to strengthen our own source energy and inner authority, so that we can be present, sovereign and fully embodied to the best of our ability.
And Now?
I stopped drinking ceremonial cacao about two years ago, in 2016. It was a gradual organic move from insatiably ingesting cacao every day to a natural decrease as I entered into personal retreat and simplified my life. In the slow emergence from retreat, I would occasionally enjoy a glass of ceremonial cacao – but in honesty and hindsight, it was always just a listening to see if this medicine had anything more to share with me.
Right from the beginning, I allowed my instinctual body to be my guide regarding how often I drank. And, at a certain point, my body informed me that it was now toxic and harmful for me to drink ceremonial cacao. It became clear that my initiation with the cacao plant spirit was complete and that because the work was done, it wasn’t good or accurate for me to continue to ingest the medicine just because ‘I liked it’.
Over the past two years (2016-2018), my earth medicine work focus has been with Kambo, Rapé and some other plant spirit teachers – but none of this has been on the scale or depth of what IxCacao brought to me. It’s taken up to the early spring of this year (2018) for all other work with plant medicine to completely cease as well.
I was immensely reluctant to enter this work with plant medicines, which first began in 2008, and it seems I’ve also been reluctant to let it go, even though I’ve ironically longed for my plant karma series to complete.
I also acknowledge the straight-forward moments of fear I experience in facing the Unknown without the aid of such tecahers and allies – this is a naked, sober presencing with Reality exactly as it is right down into the dark of the underbelly and root system. No teachers or guides to point the way and run to when sh*t hits the crazy-fan.
Free-flowing in the River of Truth demands stability of mind, my unwavering indestructible Love, the consistency of not-leaving and not-moving just for the sake of it, of choosing to abide by Reality no matter what, to be present and be met by Life at depth-Source. So, it’s time to let go and remove my hand from the sweet medicine jar so I can open it up for what Life is initiating next.
In one form or another, I’ve been in working-relationship with the plant spirit of cacao for 7 years and I’m so clear that this devic intelligence has been one of my core teachers and allies through this immense Rite of Passage of dying to the world and being reborn to the Earth. My departure from this teacher and beloved friend is poignant and tinged with sadness but utterly saturated with my gratitude, profound appreciation and boundless love.
I’m here and the medicines have been gracious friends and kindreds in working me through and out of the matrices of harm, on behalf of the living Mystery to which I fully belong. The work/play is on-going in my unfolding and evolutionary process, and how I choose to creatively and purposefully show up in the world.
I’ve always instinctively understood that our apprenticing and work with plant spirit medicines is supposed to have a shelf-life, and it’s our job as practitioners and guides to ground and fully integrate the transmissions we receive and bring the realisations offered into form before the time is up. The medicines have purposful healing intentions, which includes our coming home to our true infinite nature, and to transform the ways in which we are personally out of balance with our own unique design, the principles of Nature and the Earth-Being herself. But they are not the destination in themselves. Many folk either forget this or choose to ignore the fact. This is the advantaged of seeing from a fixed destiny life path I guess – because there’s no room to linger wantonly.
Simply put, the Devic Earth Medicines are here to help us incarnate, to strengthen our own source energy and inner authority, so that we can be present, sovereign and fully embodied to the best of our ability.
The plant medicines are not here to be endlessly consumed, and for their pithy wisdom and healing capacities to become the product of spiritual materialism and indifference.
This is a signature of the very imbalance itself – the upside-down, back-to-front posture we often arrive at the ceremonial table with. The same imbalance that is foretold in the prophecies of how the cacao spirit will emerge from the rainforests and into the hearth of the world as a guide for our pilgrimage back into the eco-sphere of the Earth and our True Human Nature. So, there we have it… least we forget.
Hopefully, we find a way to listen deeply, honestly and authentically to the song of the Great Mother as the clear ring of Pure Love cutting through the cacophonous babble of disassociated mind, suffering and destructive energies.
May that true harmonic sound the thread of our navel-cord, which beckons us to turn inward, and to properly begin investigating the nature of what we’ve materialised into, and purifying and unwinding discovery of what it actually means to become properly initiated here as a True Human.
Closing The Alchemical Chocolate™ Practitioner Training
I’ve been in dilemma with the Alchemical Chocolate™ Practitioner Training for quite some time now.
I’ll be honest – the old part of me has felt called to support those coming into this kind of apprenticeship with the cacao spirit. But integrity demands that I let this work go now because my personal initiation with medicine is complete.
I recognise that there is now an open door before me – it’s the other side to this Rite of Passage of dying to the world and being born to the Earth and I choose to walk through with my whole and full Being.
As I arrive nakedly into the roots of my life, I’m experiencing this as a kind of shattering process – a shattering that has an apocalyptic awakening quality because this Arrival at depth is inextricably woven with the choice to not-go anywhere else. I choose This by saying no to the deluge of other options available to me. I arrive because I no longer go anywhere else, and day by day I’m doing my best to stay sober in this – without medicines, without grasping at other people’s truths, without immitation, without external authority or guidance, without projecting my need for rooting onto other indigenous wisdom traditions, practices and peoples, without grasping at spiritual bliss and bypassing, without self-harm and violence, without reacting and pushing away Otherness. I could go on… what is necessary in order to root authentically in Truth, Love, Sovereignty & Liberation is quite the shocker.
And it’s also a process, best tended with compassion and graciousness – to Be Here and abide in the belly of Reality. I’m newly arriving in the awakened root system, so I’m learning day by day. Sometimes I can speak fiercely about this, other times with tenderness, and right now there’s also a lot of grief and despair. I’m trusting I’ll stabilise in that. Maybe not, who knows…
So, this is my own way of publicly paying homage to the family of plant spirit guides that have been my kindred allies into the Roots of Life and Truth, and an extra-special bow to our beloved IxCacao that has been one of my closest and dearest heart-friends over the past several years.
I deeply thank all of the beautiful humans and more-than-humans who have shown up on this amazing journey too – those of you who have attended ceremonies in person and online; to those of you who heard the call of IxCacao and chose to deepen your relationship with this devic plant teacher through my practitioner training and have since begun blossoming in your own practice and are bearing-forth your own fruit in this; and also gratitude to those rare lights along the way that offered me some kind of reflection that yes, this is a key on the path of Life and I can trust it.
I will no longer be offering the Alchemical Chocolate™ Practitioner Training or Crafting Ceremonial Cacao after the end of August 2018. I will, however, keep my Practitioner Facebook group open until August 2019, with the option for it to continue if students are willing to run it themselves. And if you have purchased either one of the trainings prior to the end of August, the materials will be available to download until 31st December 2018.
My closing sentiments on this topic..?
Listen to the medicine – receive the actual teachings and begin applying them in your life for real. Don’t just be another spiritual consumer – do the work (it will ask everything of you), make the changes (hold the integrity of your inner realisations and actionable outer life), tell the truth (always), locate your actual proper roots (your body is the key), stop consuming other indigenous cultures and their spiritual traditions (learn & acknowledge – don’t steal & colonise), and find out what it means for you to wake up here and be truly, authentically you (clue: it’s already blueprinted inside you).
Here’s to Wholeness, Truth, Love, Sovereignty & Liberation, whatever it takes.
With Care…
P.S. If you’re still here on the page, that’s amazing! Thanks for reading through – leave a comment below and let me know I’m not just whistling into the Void…
Content Copyright © Annu Tara, 2018. All rights reserved.
You’re totally not whistling into the void! Even if No-one commented. Thankyou always for your unflinching-standing strong in your integrity and authenticity. You’ve taught me so much simply with your honesty and saying it how it is amongst the muck and mire…
Tears of gratitude for our paths crossing wherever and whatever the future holds. ❤️
oh beautiful Sam, you really are one of the gifts IxCacao has brought into my life. You are such a strong mirror of that unflinching quality – your staying-power in the nutrient-rich mud is an anchoring force for so many, including me. Thank you for that! May the journey continue ❤️
Much gratitude for your raw and lush wisdom weaved into the fabric of wise words. This training is truly wholeness. Thanks to the spirit of Cacao who has chosen for a glimpse of time in space your vessel to manifest its medicine.
To truth & integrity,
Maryz
Beautiful words, Maryz – thank you. So glad you found connection with this training to support you in deepening with IxCacao.
Ahhhh Annu, I feel your journey so much through this post. Thank you for laying it out so deeply. It lands right at a moment of me being asked to reflect on my feelings towards indigenous medicines, & amongst deep confusion & sadness as to why there’s such a huge lean & fuss towards it & yet for many I feel no deeper return to themselves. So many blessings to you. It’s also clicked me in to the beautiful musical sharings on your site. Thank you SO SO much for those, I’m unfolding in them now & feeling very drawn to the wisdom of you right now. Love, Jill xx
Thanks for your feedback, Jill – and great that you’re enjoying the playlists!
I hear you in that concern and share it, and also have to admit to the logic of evolution. Plant teachers aren’t that different from human spiritual teachers, in terms of consciousness teaching consciousness. But they are beyond-human so that element is, of course, missing. I think that human-learning element is the integration and deeper return you speak. As plant wisdom propagates, we are learning trial by fire where the integration and balance-points are needed, mostly by experiencing the opposite. It seems to me something new is being born out of that tension of opposites… that we are realising we need to learn how to be Human in a way that doesn’t dismiss Universal Source. Thanks for witnessing this part of my journey… Love to you x
Annu, with deepest respect I thank you for your raw and real outpouring of describing where you’ve been and where you find yourself now. Definitely not just blowing in the wind….(IMHO)
Your sharing makes me self reflect and ask questions and see myself in relationship to my life past and present and to my relationship with other sources of wisdom, including the plant medicines and other cultures. I especially appreciate the guidance to “not be just another spiritual consumer”. I too have worked with and let go of many plant and other culture medicine paths that served me so well as teachers and richly informed my life. I’m inspired by your personal growth work that you’ve so generously shared here. I’m about 20 yrs ahead of you on the midlife path yet feel like such a youngster in all that still is yet to be delved into, unlearned /learned and to unfold. Blessings on your journey forward. Much love to you my fellow human being. Anessa
I appreciate your wealth of experience and wisdom, Anessa – you have worked with and let go of so much, and I remember being struck by that quality of you when we first met in the Homecoming Conversations and your sharing about archetypal energies. Thank you for sharing and responding with me here, always a joy to connect with you.
Annu, you have been and continue to be a shining teacher on my path. Thank you, as always for an honest transmission! Filled with deepest respect for you and the journey we are all sharing. It’s in the quality of the light that the wisdom shines!
Love all ways
Hadhee, so glad to walk and weave with you! Thank you for your words – so much respect and appreciation for you as you carve your own path against the grain of what others would shape you into. All power and softness to your Being You… and yes to the quality of light, I hear you ❤️ Strong Love for our meeting.
Dearest Annu, thank you for sharing. Meeting you and IxCacao has been one of my pivot points on my journey. Thank you for this connection. You can only ever follow the path of your journey, whatever the route. I am so glad I have met you, IxCacao, recieved the training and joined the amazing community that is out there. The words of a practise from my teacher spring to mind “Beloved one, you have appeared. You are surrounded with divine love and absolutely beauty”. Now you are travelling onward on your path. Safe journey wherever the road leads you…
I remember our first meeting, Judy – drinking cacao in the Death Lodge held in that house that killed me, lol. It was a joy for me to witness you and IxCacao to connect in-body, and I wish you so many blessings for your own journey too. Thanks for your kind words.
Grateful to be here. Thank-you for sharing this journey that we also walk alone. Paradox’s turning inside, outside, upside down…to let go of that which has served you so very well…I bow down to your knowing. May the ground appear beneath your feet as you continue to walk in truth. I love you.
PS. The invitation is open for you to come to South Africa and share whats’s opening and rooting in you.
I love you, Rhianne… thanks for your blessing. Here’s to the continued weave of our flight-paths, and the forms this may take in our Becoming ❤️ And thank you for the open-invite. What a teacher SA has been for me, as land and tribe.
Blessings for you and thanking you for sharing your wisdom and your teachings.
Thanks, Arya – and I wish you so many blessings in your work with IxCacao!
Dearest Annu,Thankyou so much for your naked heart and womb wisdom.i have felt moved by you today as I did when I first came to the cacao diet a two and a half years ago.I felt challenged by you in Spain and I felt your love and the grace.
I resonate and feel your call to truth ,to the unknown and the authentic.not to imitate .i stand here with a shake in my body ,an ache in my chest,with so many young arms reaching out to hold on and yet I know the only holding on is to the knowing in my body in this moment.
Cacao still is a teacher for me,a warm mother opening me deeper into my body and the call of the wild.She helps me to feel the earth and I witness her bringing deeper intimacy to self and others as we share her in circle and in the moment.
I’m extremely grateful that you brought this gift through and I also have no idea where she is leading.
So much love to you and your journey,and thankyou from the bottom of my heart for your integrity and beauty.
Love kanchanx
I’m really touched by your share, Kanchan – I remember our first connection and also witnessing your deep meeting with IxCacao as your relaxation into the Mother’s arms through her. It touched me then too, as it’s doing now. I acknowledge the mirror between us. What I’m appreciating right now in my life is the tenacity developing in the relationships that know beauty and grace, but also know challenge and grit. I feel we meet here in this place, and I humbly thank you for it. You reflect to me the truth that I’m not easy. It means a lot to me that in light of this, you are willing to show up anyway.
I imagine that your circles and gatherings around the hearth of IxCacao are rich, deep, compassionate, healing, forgiving and embracing. Such beautiful & meaningful work I feel you doing ❤️ Love & Blessings for it and for you dear soul.
Thank you love.
Dropping deeper in gratitude after reading your sharing.
Appreciate you being here, Claudia – thank you for connecting ❤️
And, exhale …. 🙂
Feels good to see you share intimately in your space again, Annu – I expect it feels really good for you to arrive here, also. It’s been quite the journey.
Welcome to your second life! I expect it’ll also be quite the adventure.
Loving you xo
Oh it does, it does, love! On so many levels, as you rightly imagine 😀 What it takes, eh?
So endlessly grateful to be walking along with you, in all the tears and hilarity, the depth and sweetness ❤️ I so appreciate and love you for that.
So fascinating to read your journey. I am just at the beginning of my exploration with cacao, thanks in part to your course. So useful to read your perspective from further along. I really appreciate the reminder not to be a spiritual consumer. thanks!
Thank you, Sam – wishing you blessings on your journey and work with IxCacao ❤️
Dearest Annu,
Deepest gratitude to you sister, I feel your heart felt honesty its a joy & truth to hear this. thank you
for everything you have shared. IxCacao is a beautiful goddess she has been a wonderful teacher to me. Your immense work with Ixcacao & sharing is such a blessing I am so happy
I found you when I did. I am at a cross roads too in my life with the medicines, I feel the great mother is asking for dissolution of all the stories, programmes & imprints – inviting me to dive deep into her Yin dark waters surrendering into the unknown – I really do understand where you are, its perfect. Sending you a huge loving hug & love always xxx
Wishing a deep, silent surrender for you, Jackie. Love to you ❤️
Dear Annu…I recognise so much in your journey…so much…& yet…your clarity & determination is breathless..& Inspired…I wish you All that you Are..In this wonderful arriving into our own precious Life..and I have such faith…to feel such resonance…in so much of your insights & sharing…Tis mad, that it is all there…..our precious…blueprint…That we dedicate our time & Love to this unfolding..& Listening in..& breathing ourselves through it….& all the madness’ that passes our way…or took up residence along the way…to obscure our worthiness..& deep knowing…& Trust…You reflect way to much..for my own ongoing shattering to come to close it would seem…but dep respect. Much Love
Thank you so much, Makaela – I feel your blessing. And appreciate your words here that I know are coming from depth as well. Much Love to you.
Wow! Such beauty, integrity and authenticity in all of your writings my love; it’s who you are through and through, even if that truth causes pain for you.
Will watch with huge love and interest where you land next… in your second phase of life.
What I know is that wherever that is it will be hard earned and true…. you are truth!! Loving you x
You’ve witnessed a lot of it – I so appreciate your support. Here’s to the next cycle… Loving you too x
Thank-you for sharing your incredible journey. I purchased the training yesterday and I will start this week. I can’t begin to explain how much your words have just filtered through my entire Being and beyond. This message is exactly what i needed to read, especially as i take my journey with Cacao deeper. Thank-you for your honesty within all of your experiences. I have already learnt so much before even opening the first page to the training and something very real has just shifted within. Big Love x
Oh Charlotte, this is so good to read! Thank you for saying so – I’ll admit, I was wondering how the people who have recently purchased the training would feel to hear that I’m stopping. Your words help me understand that it can still be supportive and not just like I’m bailing ship 🙂 Love and welcome to you x
Thank you so much for this beautiful, authentic post that resonates a lot with my own experience.
It inspires me a lot <3
I've been struggling so much about this topic of the use of plant spirits as guides & teachers, I've felt for so much time that the over-consumption of them is a way of avoiding applying the teachings in reality. I use myself Cacao and Hapé as teachers and I am very connected to their spirits, it has given me so much so far, and my heart has been literally washed since 2 years when I first met the cacao. But I also start to hear there will be a time to let them go, as what matters is to fully accept the human experience. So, thank you for bringing this topic up, it activates the good question on my path 🙂
Good to hear your instinct on this too, Brunchilde – everything has its season and I’m finding its simultaneously opening and consolidating in the letting go. But it’s all in the listening to that place where truth instructs. Wishing you a good unwinding when the time is right for you.
I love you so much! Thank you! xo
Nina! Great to see you here – loving you x
Thank you for everything you’ve taught me. My journey with Ixcacao has been rich and full of teachings and healing. I am also closing this chapter and look forward to meeting new teachers. I wish you the best.
Dear Aline, lovely to hear from you. Good to hear you received what you needed – here’s to the next cycle of Life. Blessings for your way.
So much gratitude to you Annu for the immense courage and love you possess to be able to go to the depths you have gone to for your own healing, lessons, and for the benefit of others. You are a rare diamond, polished by the roughness of life. Your spirit has always inspired and encouraged me to go deeper and listen to my own truth- with all the joy and pain that brings. Thank you for all of your love and all of your tears. Holding you with all of mine too. We all came here so blessed… It’s all inside waiting to birth… Here’s to the next adventure! xxx
Thank you, Emma – I’m touched by your words and feel seen. I feel you – grateful to share my tears and joy with yours. Much Love to you, beautiful x
Hearing , feeling and receiving you in your realness Annu. Your words find me and echo. Thank you
Thank you, Helen ❤️
Ahhhh! Beautiful Sharing Annu, its wonderful that you
Are listening and are surrendered so deeply to the mystery that continuously unfolds in life. I look forward to watching your new adventures. Much Love Celeseah & Elandro xx
Big love to you both – remembering our time together 🙂 xx
Very beautiful, Annu! I love and appreciate all that I learned from witnessing you on your journey.
So many blessings to your work & path, Dailey – thank you for being here.
Wonderful post. I love your openness, honesty and integrity. There is so much you say here that echo my own views and understanding especially in regard to plant medicines only being used for a limited time and the teachings being integrated into reality. That is often not the case for many seekers. I applauded you
Dear Tiffany, I remember reading a post of yours many moons ago about your feelings on Kambo. At that point, I was still in my work with it and it was activating for me. But a seed landed within at that point and gathered with other seeds collecting in my consciousness to bring me to the place where I just couldn’t work with it any longer.
Isn’t it funny how our eco-system moves and educates itself?! It really doesn’t take much to make one small cog turn that impacts the whole system. Something for us all to remember I imagine.
Anyway, thank you for that and for showing up here ❤️
Thank you Annu, for putting your truth so beautifully into words. And for using your public platform to give such sound and pithy advice. I wonder how we make our livings, now the veils have dropped and chopping wood/carrying water is all we can do authentically… I don’t remember ever hearing that life would require me to be so simple and quiet… Maybe I wouldn’t have listened if it were said. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me- I feel lucky to have been able to receive the many gifts from your cacao retreat. Love to you.
Lovely to hear you, Chloe. It’s also been my experience of having that space of Silence where all that’s to do is the metaphorical (and often literal) quiet groundedness of chopping wood/carrying water. This was the dying phase for me, and yes, it also carves out the simplicity, which is so necessary and on-point.
But in the right-relation rebirth into Life, the Passion is also Truth. And it lives, and moves and breaths us in pure creativity, joy and meaningful purpose. There are so many cycles and phases – each one so necessary for our deeper and truer unfolding. Be in touch if that ever feels helpful for you – and thanks for your sharing here. Much Love to you.
You’re not whistling into the void, you sang from your heart and it reverberated throughout the Universe and into the hearts of others. We thank you. May you continue to shine brightly and beautifully, may your heart always be full and may you have a prosperous and abundant life. xSx
Thank you, Shannon ❤️
<3 Dear Annu ~ love to you for your Precious honesty ~ Celebrate ones inner landscape and journey <3
Thank you for being here, Anna ❤️
Thanks a ton for sharing all of this Annu. I appreciated reading every last bit, and particularly enjoyed the encouragement to “listen to the medicine” in your closing paragraph, along with the words that followed. It has been a wild ride to watch the world of ceremonial cacao explode into what it is now over the last few years, and it will surely be mind-boggling to watch it continue to evolve over the next few decades. Thank you for sharing your thoughts in such detail, and thank you for encouraging all of us to explore integrity on a deeper level… And most importantly thank you for leading by example. I hope you continue writing and sharing on whatever medium you’re called to do so on, whether its about plant medicine or some other topic entirely.
Brain, you’ve been one of the rare lights on my journey that assured me of my path with Cacao, when there was so little outer reflection of this and not yet enough direct experience. I still remember how much passion you spoke with about cacao as an entheogen teacher at Burning Man. I so appreciate you for this – and also your deep integrity and artfulness that you seem to infuse into everything you create with cacao. You’re a light in the field – thank you. And also for encouraging my writing, I’m really enjoying it 🙂
Hi Annu
I literally just purchased the course last night after feeling cacao around me for months but needing to work with her with integrity. I’m amazed and inspired by your honesty and truth, it’s such important teachings to let go of the things we love if it’s right and not be spiritual consumers. I’m so grateful I found this course before it ends, to learn in this way. So many blessings to your heart.
Lucy
Dear Lucy, so glad to welcome you to this training and hope it serves you well in your own direct relationship with this amazing plant teacher. So often She calls in this way – and now you have answered 🙂 Blessings to your practice ❤️
Dearest One, so many blessings for all that you do and have given. Cacao is with me still but on a shifting way as well, I hear your words and send much love and look forward to new offerings in new forms in time xxx amanda
Thank you, Amanda 🙂 We just had the Edinburgh Festival here and I thought of you and when we met at your wonderful chocolate show xx
This was beautiful read, Annu. It took me until now to gte a chance to read the whole piece, but I found much richness and inspiration in your words. x
glad you enjoyed it, Amy – thanks for saying so. Hope you are well x
Definitely not whistling in the void!! I am hearing you and feeling you. Thank you for finding words for the unwordable. I have been experiencing so much of this in similar but different ways and having been unable to articulate it, so Thank You! Blessings in abundance dear one, I am so grateful our paths crossed in this incarnation. Much love, Catherine xoxo
Glad this spoke to you, Catherine – very interesting to hear you’ve been experiencing similar threads. Thanks for your words ❤️
Interesting read, I am quite fascinated by the whole chocolate adventure you were on. Interested because, I really am not a chocolate consumer. We all have interesting lessons ahead of us. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge.
Best to you