The Cacao Journals: Element Earth, a Home Coming

April 11, 2019April 11, 2019 ~ nicole

I arise today
In the name of Silence
Womb of the Word,
In the name of Stillness
Home of the Belonging.
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

In life, as we take on identities, responsibilities, expectations, attitudes, opinions and defenses, we often lose our truest self, our deep soul. This loss happens slowly over time, so we don’t notice until we find we are “living” a joyless life, one that lacks a sense of wonder and abundance. We become dissatisfied, disillusioned, and ungrateful. We trudge through life and relationships thinking is this all there is?

What remains deep inside of us is a sliver of hope, an untouchable essence that despite hurt or neglect is pure in its light. How do we rekindle that and grow that sliver into a shining, radiant light? We begin by reclaiming who we always have been. That reclamation may look like an archeological dig or even feel like an uprooting as we pull up what took root, shake off the clumps of dirt, and see what’s left to sustain us, which may just be a few spindly, seemingly fragile, tendrils. Those tendrils, while tender hearted, are resilient; they have lasted this long, so they must be.

How do we tend to them, nourish them, give them what they need to grow stronger and push up toward the light? We have to get back to the ground of our being, to the earth of ourselves, to our home. We do this through stillness and silence, dropping deeper into the self by inviting the sacred in.

We begin at the beginning with the element, Earth. Earth as ultimate mother, as nourishment and abundance, as an unconditionally loving and compassionate being, who provides and sustains. Honoring and connecting to the Earth reconnects us to our deep self. This is the indigenous way, the original way of being for us all.

Two questions arise when we look more deeply at our soul loss. The first, “Who am I?” opens us to a sense of rediscovery, curiosity and innocence. Turning our attention to and tending to those spindly roots. The second, “What brings me joy?” allows for exploration, adventure and wonder. The light of joy that nourishes our new/old roots and allows them to flourish. In this space of openness and allowing, we come home to something new and yet familiar, a remembering of who we truly are. Begin by simply asking.

Stilling the mind and dropping into that space through sacred ritual and ceremony, meditative practices, being in solitude or on retreat, contemplative movement, and plant medicine gives us a way to come home to ourselves again and again until home is just where we always are.

The Cacao Journals: Full of Wonder

November 25, 2017November 25, 2017 ~ nicole

We had the experience, but missed the meaning. – T.S. Eliot

Most of us have experienced wonder at some point in our lives. It shows up as a peak moment of aliveness or awareness when we let go of all thoughts and are overcome with joy in the moment. We might be riding a horse at a full gallop, lying under a night sky full of stars, standing in a majestic redwood grove or participating in ceremony honoring the sacred.

Some call this state of wonder, a sacred, spiritual experience; and see life through these eyes. Others see and forget, or even suppress, the experience in a blink of an eye and return to a life preoccupied with other matters.

For a moment we touched a live spark, but did not fan it into fire, we let it go out. – Brother David Stendl-Rast

According to Brother David Stendl-Rast in his foreword to Meister Eckhart’s from Whom God Hid Nothing, the flash of this experience challenges us to embody, remember, and endure. He shares that “those brave ones who rise to the challenge endure the blinding vision, remember it in whatever they do, and so embody vision in action.” This “experience of communion with the Ultimate” provides them with a “sense of ultimate belonging.”

This sense of ultimate belonging is a foreign concept to many of us. We live such autonomous, fragmented lives. We have become disconnected from our inner selves and we feel as if we don’t truly belong. That inner fragmentation, disconnection, and sense of rejection (as that is what not belonging is at its core) is reflected in our outer lives. And this makes us feel very alone.

Autonomy is simply looking at life as though we are a world unto ourselves. As though we did it all by ourselves…. But the reality is, we are connected. The opposite of autonomy is gratitude. – Michael McKinney

How do we recapture this sense of wonder? How do we feel gratitude for this fleeting experience? How do we begin to embody it, so we then become the expression of wonder, of the sacred?

We start by noticing its presence. We acknowledge it. We remember it. We begin to allow it to guide us. And as we express our gratitude for it, it shows up again and again. As we attune to this, we begin to embody it; and as we embody it fully, we cannot but feel more connected to ourselves and life itself. We become the expression of it, which creates even more wonder.

Feel into how your life would be if you walked around in a perpetual state of wonder and gratitude. The word “sweet” comes to mind for me. Now feel into how others might respond to you as you express the very thing for which you are grateful. They might just see someone full of wonder and light, someone who IS gratitude.

As wonder would have it, in my inbox this morning was a post by Michael McKinney, who writes the Leadership Now blog, titled, Unconditional Gratitude.

He shares in his post, “Real gratitude doesn’t appear at moments in our life, but it is a disposition we have towards life. Real gratitude is unconditional.” And it endures, well beyond Thanksgiving.

I am grateful for my life; my work, which allows me to touch the sacred every day; my family and friends; and for you, dear reader as you grace me with your presence here.

Copyright ©2017 Soulscape Coaching LLC.

The Cacao Journals: Catalysts and the Unknown

September 21, 2017 ~ nicole

We do not fear the unknown. We fear what we think we know about the unknown. – Teal Scott

So, what awaits after surrender…? The unknown. Scary stuff for those of us who always want to know; for those who need to be fully in control; for those who struggle to have faith in themselves or in life itself. At some point in my life, all those control scenarios were me….

I’ve had my own fears of the unknown, and what I discovered as I surrendered is that the unknown is simply a path I have not taken, something I haven’t yet opened myself up to, or an aspect of myself and life that I did not yet know, but came to know and embrace. It’s a place of truth and trust and mystery, and nothing to be afraid of.

In The Book of Truth, there’s a beautiful passage that captures it completely:

To lift to the unknown, to the unpredictable, to what may be but cannot be seen is a challenge for the small self….The True Self abides there, not in uncertainty but the unchosen–the unchosen, that which was not chosen in prior time but may be chosen in the moment you sing. – Paul Selig

Being curious about the unknown is a big, first step. That’s how I began with cacao, I simply wanted to know what it was all about. It reached out and called me to get to know it. That’s what certain kinds of catalysts do: they start a conversation with you, then they introduce you to the unknown, and then you get to see what the fuss is all about.

Some of us only need gentle catalysts like cacao; others need stronger plant medicines like ayahuasca (I like to call it the two-by-four of plant medicines :)) or other entheogens (which literally means “generating the divine within”).; and still others need nothing at all except sitting on a park bench like Eckhart Tolle (mind you, he did this for a whole year) or a deeply, devoted meditation practice. Heck, life itself is a path too, just a long, arduous one.

All these catalysts can give you a glimpse of the divine within and of your connection to life. It’s there and always has been, we’ve just somehow forgotten. Once we’ve had that glimpse, we want more and that’s the beginning of a beautiful inner journey.

Each catalyst we choose, or that is chosen for us, can lead us to this state of inner and outer connectedness (what some call oneness) and all paths are valid. It’s easy to remain unconscious in this disconnected world of ours. It’s only when we integrate and embody the message of the catalyst and its medicine that we are truly transformed. We become its message.

To be free means to open your heart and your being to the fullness of who you are, because only when you are resting in the place of unity can you truly honor and appreciate others and the incredible diversity of the universe. – Ram Dass

The unknown shows us who we truly are. It teaches us to be adaptive, creative, resilient; to be accepting and forgiving of ourselves and others; to be at peace and to love unconditionally; and it allows us to experience the pure joy of being in a constant state of wonder. We can ask from this place of unknowing: I wonder what’s going to happen next? I wonder who’s going to come into my life? I wonder what my clarity and light will attract?

Notice what comes into your life when you are curious about the unknown. Drop your expectations. Let go of “controlling” life for a moment. Trust what comes and that you will know how to respond. There’s such beauty there.