shamanic

The Cacao Journals: Journeying with the Drum

~ nicole
Pray with me before we start, we’ll journey deep into your heart, invoking trance, awake the soul, We drum as one, until you’re whole. – Barbara Meiklejohn-Free & Flavia Kate Peters

My first journeys were with ceremonial cacao, and as I deepened into those journeys and encountered my spirit animal, the black Jaguar, again and again, I found myself becoming curious about shamanism and shamanic journeying with the drum. What I was most curious about was finding out who my Power Spirit Animal really was….

Your Power Animal, or any spirit animal for that matter, always chooses you; you don’t get to choose it. So, while I knew that the Jaguar was one of my  many spirit animals, who bring the medicine we need in that moment, I wasn’t sure if it was my Power Spirit Animal.

At a shamanic workshop, I learned how to journey with the drum to reconnect with my Power Animal and then my Higher Guide or Teacher. Once I had successfully reconnected with both I was then able to journey and ask questions to which I wanted answers, and I also could journey to my guides on another’s behalf, receive and bring back an answer for a vital question in their life that they had been struggling to answer.

The voice of the drum is a spirit thing. – Mickey Hart

Not only did I confirm that the black Jaguar was my Power Animal–believe me I let go of any attachment to that outcome–I also met my Teacher for the first time. Let me share a bit of each journey with you.

In my Power Animal journey, I went to my place of entry into the Lower World, which is always a real place such as a hollowed out tree or cave or  contained body of water like a lake or pond, and journeyed on the beat of the drum to meet my Power Animal.

When I arrived at an underwater cavern, I looked up and saw bats. Really, I thought? My Power Animal is a bat? Strangely I was open to it because I knew that the bat in shamanic cultures symbolizes rebirth and transformation, which is so much of what my work is about. And then I sensed something behind me and heard a swishing noise. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big black cat’s tail going back and forth on the cavern floor. I turned and the black Jaguar was there. Her sense of humor and playfulness have been such a delight every time I journey with her.

My journey to meet my Teacher was stunningly beautiful. When we journey to the Upper World, it is via a tree, a staircase, the smoke of a fire, anything real that we have experienced in life that takes us upwards. I emerged into a beautiful garden and my Teacher was sitting on a bench near a Chinese pagoda. He had a long white beard and was wearing a white robe, which I thought a bit cliché, but again, who I am to decide? He has been the most wonderful, kind and gentle master.

Both were powerful, affirming journeys for me, and my journeys with my guides since them have been nothing short of profound. My questions are always answered more deeply than I thought possible. I now offer group and private 1:1 journeys as a way for you to reconnect with and develop a relationship your guides, who can guide, problem solve and heal you on this sometimes messy, Middle World (Earth) journey.

In my next blog post, I’ll share a few almost unbelievable experiences I’ve had journeying on behalf of my clients. I offer these both as private in-person sessions and as virtual sessions (we talk on the phone about your question, I journey offline, and then I share what I’ve received with you on the phone or via video conference so we can record it). The messages are always so spot on. Come journey with me….

Copyright ©2018 Soulscape Coaching LLC

The Cacao Journals: Meditation while lying down…?

~ nicole
Each journey is considered sacred…. [T]he ancestors and helping allies reveal to us what is needed for our current healing and guidance. – Angeles Arrien

I love meditating while sitting up and lying down. Yes, you read that correctly, lying down. My lying down meditative practice began when I started working with cacao in personal ceremony.

My teacher provided us with a beautiful, guided meditation where we lay on the floor to relax our bodies for the journey with cacao; and then sacred music accompanied us on the rest of our journey, which almost always meant more lying down (or we could dance or sit or write or draw, whatever we felt most called to do).

I lay on the ground a lot, opening, allowing and receiving messages, guidance and healing as that was what I most needed. It became a healing, meditative practice for me.

This posture of “lying meditation” is actually an ancient shamanic practice according to Dr. Angeles Arrien, an anthropologist who studied ancient shamanic cultures and shared her learnings in the book, The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary.

“The lying posture is the most healing posture that the body can assume. The body equates this posture with rest and the nourishment that comes from receiving and giving love. It is the posture of surrender and openness. The lying posture assumed in the journey is way of placing the body…in order to open to guidance and to receive healing.” – Angeles Arrien

This was certainly my experience with cacao journeys, and it became even more evident as I began my work with drum journeys. Drum journeys are another shamanic form of lying meditation, one that allows for direct connection with spirit guides to receive healing and guidance. In this form, you can ask a direct question of your helping spirits and receive an answer while listening and journeying to shamanic drumming. My journeys with the drum for myself and on behalf of others tapped us into a wisdom beyond our minds.

We usually think of meditation as a practice of witnessing the mind and accessing a deeper state of awareness; as a sitting posture with specific positions for spine, hands, legs, chin and gaze; and as a practice that connects us to our breath. There is a meditation form called Yoga Nidra, where the savasana (corpse) pose is held while being led through a guided meditation. All forms are calming and clarifying.

Lying meditation with cacao or the drum embodies those same qualities, but what’s received is qualitatively different based on my experience with both forms. In order to explain it beyond my own experience, I Googled it, of course.

Scientific studies have been conducted to understand the difference between “regular” meditation and shamanic journeying. Here’s what those studies found, according to Sara Violante, a Shamanic Practitioner, Journey Meditation Instructor, & Reiki Master: “During ‘regular’ meditation the brain slips into a Delta state, but during Shamanic Journey meditation, the brain slips into Theta state.”

It’s the drumming at a certain rhythm or the ceremonial cacao that allows us to access this Theta state. Sara shares on her blog post: “Theta brainwave state is known to foster creativity. It is that space between being awake and being asleep…the state where there are no barriers between the spirit world and our brains. Entering into a theta state the mind is open, aware but at rest; there are no pesky barriers of consciousness throwing up “rational” road blocks for what presents itself….[W]e connect to spirit in this state and then the mind interprets this connection and translates it via imagery formed through the imagination – we receive imagery.” Thank you, Sara, for explaining it so well.

Both sitting and lying meditation are each beneficial and complementary. I practice both (not at the same time, of course) depending on what I need in that moment. While I have received clear messages while sitting in contemplative meditation, when I’m looking for a boost in imaginal creativity, deep inner healing where what’s being healed is beyond my awareness or direct messages from spirit, I lie down :).

Copyright ©2018 Soulscape Coaching LLC

 

 

 

The Cacao Journals: Jaguar Medicine

~ nicole
In times of renewal, it is the Black Jaguar who rules. – Arkan Lushwalla

Have you ever held onto something or someone too long out of habit or comfort or even fear of change, and then suddenly the decision is made for you? That’s black jaguar medicine. She brings you just what you need, even when it hurts.

My encounters with the black jaguar in cacao ceremony showed me the range of her sacred power: her love (lots of purring and cuddles), her force and grace (running as her was the most ecstatic experience I have ever had) and her fierce compassion (like a mama cat swats her kittens for their own good). Her power is a sacred one that awakens, purifies and renews life when it becomes stuck or sick.

Real, profound change according to Arkan Lushwalla in his book, The Time of the Black Jaguar, happens in three ways: 1) through a gift of grace or Spirit, 2) by connecting to our Munay, the will of the heart, and 3) when the black jaguar says, “Enough!” and makes the decision to protect and keep life in balance. These are black jaguar times….

…be like the graceful jaguar, the balancing force of the rainforest who serves as the internediary between the seen and unseen worlds…. –Alberto Villoldo

The black jaguar sees beyond this world as she walks between all three: the middle world (what we know as earth), the lower world (where plant and animal spirits reside), and the upper world (where our ancestors and spirit guides live). Her power is often associated with shamans, who are able to walk among these worlds, and bring knowledge and wisdom back from these realms to heal. She brings us her medicine, her “fast healing.”

When we aren’t “seeing” life with her eyes and making the necessary changes fast enough, she’s going to make them for us. It’s what we know as having the rug pulled out from under us. Only now there are rugs upon rugs upon rugs. The floor beneath us is pretty bare and slippery, isn’t it?

When the black jaguar gets to this point, there’s no turning back, no negotiation. It’s all about living in alignment with who we truly are at the deepest level–believe me, it’s way deeper than you think and can even imagine. She will adjust you and adjust you and adjust you until you are there. Resistance in any form–whether it’s procrastinating or struggling–is futile against her.

So, what are the necessary changes we need to make? Letting go of old, unhealthy patterns in our minds and our behaviors; looking deeply at old wounds that are keeping us stuck; shedding things, people, titles, opinions, beliefs that are not in alignment with truth; trusting our inner guidance and our wisdom guides and bravely walking into the unknown.

None of this is easy. But it can be done. Be your own witness. Catch yourself when you say something that doesn’t feel right and ask yourself, “where did that come from?” More than likely you are speaking with someone else’s voice, not your own inner one. The only way to trust yourself and your response is to connect to your inner voice, which means you first need to recognize it. It takes practice and persistence, and forgiveness when you slip.

Resource yourself with your spirit team. Wisdom lies in those who have gone before us. Through journeying with cacao or other plant medicines or with shamanic drumming you can connect to your animal spirit guides, who have so much deep knowledge to share; and with our ancestors and spirit guides, who are wise beyond this world. Find someone to lead you through a journey process. Once you have developed a relationship with your guides, they will always be there for you and will bring you answers based in Truth. Trust them to guide you.

It may be hard to see and accept, but the black jaguar is taking us through a time of purifying chaos into a time of renewal where life will be based on truth. If we wake up and do the Work now, we can dance and co-create with her and with Spirit.

Copyright ©2017 Soulscape Coaching LLC

 

 

The Cacao Journals: Surrender

~ nicole
The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins. – Marianne Williamson

For the longest time I had no idea what surrender really meant. It was only when I had to let go of so much in my life over more than a decade–a career or two, a long-time relationship, a home several times over, my native land (my Canadian readers will get this), all my furniture, my ego, my shame, many of my fears and more–and thought I was relatively “unattached” that a chasm swallowed me whole, and I had no choice but to surrender completely.

So when does the chasm open up? For some, it’s facing death, losing a loved one, or becoming disabled; for others it’s experiencing failure of an extraordinary kind; or it’s losing a deep connection to Spirit, which was what happened to me and was a loss that affected me as deeply as losing my Mom (and the two came in rapid succession). I had lost touch with everything that had saved me from myself.

What I did not realize at the time, but do now, is that I was experiencing another dark night of the soul. The first one I experienced was merely a prelude, and one that I willingly chose as I dove into the waiting embrace of Mama Cacao. The second one came out of nowhere, unbidden; and the more I resisted, the more it persisted.

The signs were all there, of course, that all I had to do was surrender completely and unequivocally to Spirit to be with Her again, but I did not know what surrender truly required. When I first connected to Spirit in cacao ceremony, I opened to Her, I celebrated Her, I honored Her, and I asked for Her guidance, but I never ever gave myself over to Her completely out of pure devotion. And that’s what surrender is….

Surrender is a journey from outer turmoil to inner peace. – Sri Chinmoy

In despair, I finally prayed and asked for Her help. It’s hard to believe that I had never actually prayed to Her. I had asked for guidance and received Her wisdom hundreds of times, but I had not asked for Her help from this place of absolute surrender. You see, we never prayed in our family. We didn’t ask for help. We relied on ourselves. Clearly this was another something that I had to let go of….

So, I prayed, and I prayed hard. And She sent me an answer, one that I did not understand at first, but followed, and which has since led me to a devotional path. I surrendered to it. (Note: this is so new to me that I’m not quite ready to share more, but will when I am.)

After my mother’s death, I came to understand that I had to stop resisting what I was being asked to do and be. In an earlier post, I mentioned that I had been “called to cacao” and that in a shamanic drumming journey my spirit animal had told me, “Everything cacao.” Not dabble in cacao, not share a little cacao ceremony every once in a while, not include it as an add on to my coaching, but full on cacao. Hello! How much more clear could that be? I surrendered to it.

I also remembered what Tomas, the Mayan shaman, said to me in Guatemala last year, “You will teach about life, but first you must teach about death.” Well, I struggled with that one for about a year to the day, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that my last three Cacao Journals have been, you guessed it, about death. I surrendered.

Then, just three weekends ago, I decided, at the very last moment, to attend a shamanic journeying workshop. Something whispered to me to go and when I asked my spirit animals in a guided meditation led by my brilliant, soul sister, Gina Vance at Soulstice Mind + Body Spa (yes, that was a shameless plug :)), they danced in joy. And I discovered something about myself at that workshop. I have journeyed so much with cacao and have such a strong relationship with my power spirit animal, that drum journeying is a perfect complement to “my” ceremonial work (“my” is in quotes because it’s not really mine, I am merely a messenger for Spirit’s work). I surrendered to that too. And I just bought the most beautiful Buffalo hide drum.

So, you are the first to know, after my husband, that I am no longer a soul’s path coach (please know that I will still call on my coaching skills as needed). I’m hesitant to call myself anything at this point, and I’m pretty sure that calling myself a messenger of Spirit would draw some attention on a business card :), so for now I’m a cacao medicine guide and shamanic practitioner for journeys to wholeness. And that may change too, but for now, it feels true as it comes from a place of total surrender.

I’m feeling a huge shift after all this surrendering. Remember that crystal birthed out of molten fire and pressure I mentioned in last week’s post? That’s me now.

Whew, that was intense. So, how do I end this post? Like this: life begins with surrender.

Copyright ©2017 Soulscape Coaching LLC, soon to be known as Soulscape Journeys LLC.