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Peeled Cacao Beans 

All pages in this website are listed on the right>>>>>>>>>>>>>

... where you will find the 'International Cacao Sales' page to purchase cacao.

This is the site of the ‘Chocolate Shaman’ – tho this site is more about sharing information on using cacao/ chocolate as a facilitator for spiritual or shamanic purposes than it is about my work as a processing intuitive, which is often without the chocolate.  Sacred cacao/ chocolate is one of this planet’s major medicine-plant partners and facilitators, overlooked as it does not act as a psychedelic... but that does not mean it has no depth.  

Welcome to a different understanding of chocolate.  Original Ceremonial Chocolate.  Perhaps you have gone repeatedly to chocolate for something... that deep within... you Know is supposed to be there - in these pages I wish to resolve that on an individual and ceremonial level… and to provide the chocolate itself! 

“…it was PHENOMENAL! I was able to journey deeper, with powerful insights, clarity and stamina for the entire day.”  …getting to know ceremonial cacao

An Indigenous myth tells us whenever the balance between humans and nature becomes threatened, cacao comes from the rainforest to open people's hearts and return the planet to a state of harmony.  In one of my early communications with the Cacao Spirit, She referred to cacao as "The Food for the Shift". 

An Introduction from Keith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4zD_xWTzYs

Now… please understand… I am not talking ordinary processed or even much organic chocolate here.  And I am not offering more ‘raw’ cacao praises. Ceremonial grade cacao is cacao or chocolate that has the quantity and balance of compounds and energies to properly support the Cacao Spirit in partnering with you.

“She was so keen to find out more about your Cacao, that I cut her some off one of my blocks, and a week later, she journeyed with it in a … workshop she attended and wrote back telling me how profound her journeying had been and how incomparable it was to the Cacao powder she had used until now in her morning smoothies!”  …hearing comments like this often

A Story:

After using spiritual chocolate for several months under the direction of the Cacao Spirit, I offered some to a couple who had just had a private session.  Telling them about magical chocolate, they thought it was a joke.  I poured a moderate amount into a bottle and off they went.  Later they asked a friend of mine if I would have put some drug or something into it.

Overlooked, yes… one of the the planet's most significant entheogens/ medicine-plants, yes…  To those of you who know your connection with chocolate runs deep… this site is to share a very different dimension to that connection - a deeply spiritual or shamanic one.  Ceremonial Grade Cacao… experiencing chocolate as the magical partner it is.  The Cacao Spirit ‘returns’.

Hola, my name is Keith, and I live in the Mayan highlands of Guatemala, where over the years I became known as the Chocolate Shaman through a journey with the Cacao Spirit into the understanding and use of cacao/ chocolate for spiritual and shamanic purposes... with my teaching/ healing practice, with my personal inner work, and with others in their inner process and in cacao ceremony as a part of the ongoing planetary shift.  This is about sacred chocolate… about the Holy Bean.

To have the spiritual chocolate I wanted for cacao ceremony, I began processing it myself with instruction from the Cacao Spirit, using the cacao that She guided me to.  Within a few years I was buying cacao beans 400 pounds (180 kg) at a time.  It has been 7000 lb (3200 kg) this year.  I share my chocolate business with my Mayan worker and friend, Isaias, and we now ship ceremonial chocolate all over the world… see the 'International Cacao Sales' page, listed to the right.

Here I share my Chocolate Shaman understanding of:

•Cacao as a multidimensional partner and facilitator for creative, spiritual, or ceremonial purposes… artistic, new age, or shamanic.  Chocolate brings the door but doesn’t push you through it. 

•How to use the Food for the Shift for your creativity, productive focus, meditation, processing, emotional release, journeying, therapy, coaching, or cacao ceremony, etc.  Truly helpful... a major facilitator from inner change and play - to outer creativity and productivity.

•The information needed to use cacao as the profound group facilitator it is with the work that you do.  If you wish that work to be heart-centered, whether spiritual or not, try ceremonial grade cacao.

•Understanding the various perspectives out there on cacao, particularly the radically differing ideas among the raw folks.

•Understanding today’s cacao market so you know what to look for even if you are not using my ceremonial cacao.

•A little information beyond the medical headlines, and the links so you may decide for yourself about medical cacao as a daily food.

•International sales of Lava Love Ceremonial Grade Cacao… from beans that I am guided to buy... many tell me this spiritual chocolate is their preference for compound and energy content.  And some chocolatiers tell me that they prefer it's flavor over that of other cacao they have purchased.

May you find this information useful for anyone’s cacao. 
 
My personal orientation is toward the deep inner-work often called processing, shadow, pain body, or density work... where sacred cacao is a grand tho previously unrecognized facilitator.  Magic plant, delightful Spirit, great partner.

Those adept at meditation, processing, or journeying can, of course, do great work with or without sacred chocolate… some find delightful benefit.  Ceremonial cacao really shines with those relatively new to these depths, or who would benefit from some extra assistance where they are going.  Of considerable benefit to those facilitating others, individually or in groups... enough that this will change the therapeutic process, or the coaching process, for many... no hype... and particularly in non-mental/rational inner process. 

I have heard from many that reading spiritual books is a much deeper experience in understanding... and that depth is retained... with some cacao in the system (a full ceremonial dose is not needed).  The Food for the Shift.  I do not tend to be a horn-blower... get some spiritual chocolate and find out for yourself! 

These understandings are intended for those who are impulsed to follow an inner journey in partnership with cacao, and for those developing their own cacao usage in practice or ceremony with others.  Many use sacred chocolate as an assistant that is deep but gentle and in a very different way than a psychedelic.  Over the years i have met many... those never using drugs and those with extensive experience with the shamans of Indigenous psychedelic-using cultures... who have been amazed with the simplicity and depth of cacao.

“And you'd be proud!  …spirit guided me to hold my first mini-cacao ceremony ... We woke up early, prepared the Cacao as per your instructions on your website, and for the first time probably, I totally let go of any inhibitions or apprehension about ceremony and went full on.  I burned the Copal incense, drummed, called on the Cacao Spirit and the ancestors, spirit realm, guides and angels and set the intention for our journey. I truly wasn't sure what would happen, or whether I would know what to do and when, but I let it go, went in the flow, and remembered your words: Go to Glow! …Well.. it was an amazing experience! Both individuals got incredibly powerful messages and insights and understandings, and it has been ongoing since…”  …and it continues

Sacred Cacao was bypassed in the ‘60’s resurgence of medicine-plants because it does not act like a psychedelic – it does not take you on its trip, but facilitates your own.  There are Indigenous shamans in Central and South America who prefer cacao over psychedelics, but few have heard of them.  I am not here to speak for them.  I speak from my years of experience with cacao and cacao ceremonies since the Cacao Spirit began sharing and partnering with me in the metaphysical work that I do.  And I speak through sales of the cacao that She guides me to. 

So what do you want?  Do you want a leader who says, “I can take you to a really great place.”?  Or a partner who comes from a different Co-operation, Co-creation, and going With you?  Where you get the personal empowerment because you weren’t ‘taken’ or had it ‘done to you’ (empowering the doer)… and where you are doing your own movement within a beneficial partnership and building trust for expanding such relationships on many levels… “As within, so without”.  This is not the old doctor, old shaman, old psychedelic, old male, old age model.  Neither does it diminish that paradigm or those who have business there.  What do You want?

In the last few years, the Holy Bean has emerged and is becoming known for its medical benefits, as a ‘raw’ food, and with the ‘bean to bar’ chocolatiers, making chocolate much as it was made 200 years ago.  Here I discuss another emerging world: spiritual and ceremonial cacao as a connection and partnership facilitator with an open-heart centering.  The Food for the Shift.  On one level a creativity facilitator; on another a productive focus enhancer (the best one i know in, say, a corporate or workplace environment) that keeps you better connected to wherever you source your insight (unlike caffeine); on another level a practice facilitator, from yoga to meditation; on another an important ancient tool for journeying and shamanic use; and on another level a major multidimensional partner in accelerated inner transformation and emotional release with greater ease and depth.  Ceremonial cacao takes breath-work to another level.  Therapy or coaching, with individuals or groups, is easier and goes deeper.  Perhaps this is not the chocolate you are familiar with.

A cacao ceremony for me is an experience in multidimensional group energy… I could tell you about my cacao ceremonies (every one is different), but that would not tell you about anyone else’s cacao ceremony, because Cacao works with you where you are, and with the ceremonial facilitator through where they are.  Cacao brings the door but doesn’t push you through it.

A note: cacao is more often the name of the plant or its product, and chocolate the name of the preparation that you eat or drink… often these terms are used interchangeably.  Especially cacao is used to refer to something that has not been through regular commercial processing – which still means little in terms of the active compounds it contains - but more about that later.

"I have been giving it to coworkers in my office and I have really seen a synchronization of our energies and have been able to make a heart connection in a place usually filled with low vibes and stress." ...introduced to Ceremonial Cacao

"The cacao is gentle, but potent, and uplifted our community significantly."  …in Costa Rica 

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung used cacao to treat patients in their hospitals.

With thanks to Angela and Jonathan, there is a Facebook page called "The Cacao Tribe", that is our public presence.  https://www.facebook.com/CacaoTribe   Click 'like' to join.

  

About My Work 

When not traveling internationally doing ceremonies and sessions, I teach in Guatemala at one of this planet’s energy centers, San Marcos la Laguna, Lake Atitlan.  I conduct a school for healers, empaths, lightworkers, teachers, creators, and manifesters that does not primarily teach techniques in such subjects… techniques that you yourself designed to remember rather than learn.  I share a do-it-yourself process of getting out of your own way so more of the magic you already are can wake up, be recognized, and play… without the drama, scripts, and stories that can so limit and color it. 

“You stand at the threshold of a grand adventure. And the extent to which you are able to experience the fullness of that journey is determined by the extent to which you are able to let go of the scenarios that no longer serve you.”  Oneness through Rasha

These days I often see healing modalities awakening that are in no book or web page – they are too new.  So many others have the experience of hands tingling-hot-wet with healing energy that I generally mention this to the group so those who have never recognized the experience can validate the download of multidimensional potential being morphed by their heart center into a more-available form and streamed down the arms to be given through the hands as healing light.  We make use of this flow and extend it to using the heart center directly… all to assist in movement within self and others of dark shadow density or light shadow expansion.

My ceremonies/ classes (3-5 days a week dry season, 3/week wet… when I’m not traveling) provide an opportunity to put these remembered abilities into practice.  In the Chocolate Shaman’s school, the chocolate is optional – those who do not wish to use any drug for spiritual purposes do just fine.  For more information, see the 'My Ceremony Schedule and Visiting' page.

Many of the spiritual travelers here where I live experience that in the Lake Atitlan ‘vortex’ energy (as in any such place) their stories come up in an accelerated way.  Drama.  Some understand that no one goes wherever one would say we are headed in this shift… while carrying all their emotional and belief system baggage.  If you take such unresolved inner issues into the welcoming state of more effortless manifestation, they more effortlessly manifest.  Therefore most folks are not going to want to step into the already available dream of light until they drop some of their 'pain body'.

I am working all over the world with people, especially artists, teachers, and healers, that are downloading and using a lot of light energies - and finding that everything expands... they polarize.  The good gets 'gooder' and the bad gets badder.    They are manifesting emotional train-wrecks, intense craziness, or baffling medical symptoms in the projected mirror called reality... as they are manifesting amazing healing in their clients or art in the world (tho the debility may allow only one client a week).  This will become increasingly common as healers and artists called to further open their abilities find it is imperative to get out of their own way by cleaning up their inner world. 

I could put up an entire website on this part of my present work... but first i need to get one up about empaths - those who are sponges for the emotional or energetic density of others or of the environment - it's their training in 'pain body' density as expert healers who will be deeply needed in the near future.  Beginning as children, millions of them, they painfully ate and continue to eat those energies as a profound education so that they may, and it is now time, find empowering and fulfilling ways (without internalizing) to continue separating density from individuals, groups, or the environment, however they have specialized.  We assist a lot of them here.  A documentary is in the works... we have 2 professional videographers, have had 3 filming sessions, and have flown them to Guatemala for filming... we are open to donations to support this work.  That would really help!  An empath website beginning draft is up on this site under the 'Empath Angels' page.  We are, and we work with a lot of trained 'sponges' here! 

Peoples inner ‘density’ is increasingly coming ‘up’, because it must, because it’s time, and because you made this choice before you were born.  This process will continue to intensify over the next years.  Much of my work is with those who are actively moving their density in order to allow room for who they are to further awaken… and in order to understand the process by doing it so they may facilitate others through it.  Here, the Cacao Spirit offered partnership in reintroducing the Holy Bean as 'The Food for the Shift'.

You can feel and move your density internally through meditation or processing with assistance from higher energies, or you can objectify it in reality and feel it through trauma, drama, pain, struggle, suffering, and stories.  The later takes longer and is more painful.  Either way, the process is mandatory; how and when you do it is your choice.  Cacao can assist in the inner cooperation of connecting to that density, to Higher Self, to guidance, and to the divine light/love energy of transmutation and healing.  May we all finish skimming layers, learning non-attachment as we go, by repeatedly objectifying and cycling through our stuff!  Cacao can assist beautifully in whatever you wish to be more connected with!

A Cacao Ceremony at Diamante Verde Sanctuary, Costa Rica

Years ago, Cacao offered me this partnership… and I share the understanding from it with others.  I have been told by Indigenous shamans that i am the first non-Indigenous person to use cacao this way in 500 years.  I have become affectionately known as 'the chocolate shaman’, and as the ‘real Willy Wonka’… may you have as much fun!

You know, it is a circus out there on the new age banquet table... discrimination suggested.  For sure there are many out there who will help you with your inner-work when they haven't done their own.  People are welcome realize the amazing group facilitation potential of cacao and become instant chocolate shamans with their own cacao ceremonies… whatever… but please credit my writings when you use them!  Injoy!

Background on Cacao

Pacific Slope Guatemalan Criollo Cacao

According to both archeologists and Mayan spiritual elders, the Cacao Spirit was one of the most powerful deities in ancient Mayan cosmology.  While the ancient Mayans and Aztecs of Southern Mexico and Guatemala are best known, there are contemporary Indigenous cultures in Central and South America who continue cacao use in shamanic ceremony, preferring it to locally available psychedelics.  With today’s psychedelic buzz, you may not have heard much of them.  Although one of this world’s finest spiritual or shamanic partners, cacao was ignored in the ‘60’s resurgence of medicine plants because it does not act like a psychedelic – it does not take you on its trip, but facilitates your own.

Ceremonial details of how ancient cultures used chocolate are not known.  It is Cacao’s choice to return at this time, and I am having fun being part of Her flow.

Chaco Cacao Drinking Jars

About 200 cacao drinking jars dated 900 to 1000 years ago have been unearthed in and nearby 800 room Native American Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, northwestern New Mexico, USA.  The jars are the same shape as Mayan cacao drinking jars of the same period… the decoration is pure Chaco.  The nearest available cacao is more than 1200 miles (1920 km) south in Mexico.  At 8 to 10 servings per pound (454 gm), that much cacao would be heavy!  With a local psychedelic and 2 major psychedelics (psilocybin mushrooms and peyote cactus) much closer, why this huge expenditure of effort to obtain cacao… what did they know?  Were they simply using cacao for a stimulant as the researchers suggest?

There are contemporary Indigenous peoples who use cacao to facilitate a type of collective lucid dream where all journey together in another dimension.  A story: 

Invited to visit… walking in past the lower trail guardians (they don’t do tourists)… the shamans were not in the village.  A 9 year-old led the way up to the caves.  Through the limited Spanish on both ends, it was shared that before they went to war with another people, they spent a month meditating in those caves.  When does the war start?  Last week.  Over-shoulder glances to howling laughter.  So they used the term ‘war’ because that is how they understand we solve our differences with other peoples.  They sit in a circle, drink cacao as they have been doing, and as a group meet the representatives of the other people, who drank in another cave, in an adjacent dimension. 

Their spirits I have met connect in a similar way - in their world.  If one doesn’t work in this way, they can't participate - there is no ceremony to ‘learn’, and there is no psychedelic cacao to take one there.

In a working partnership with the Cacao Spirit, may I suggest you use cacao with that journey intent.  This site is not specifically oriented to shamanic use… I trust the profound opportunities should be obvious, or would become so on sampling some ceremonial grade cacao.  As a major overlooked entheogen that many are already deeply connected with, but are not using in these ways… Chocolate is calling… as the magical partner it is.

 For Sale in a Market… 125 lb (57 kg) Cacao Beans

The medical profession suggests you eat dark chocolate, but they rarely tell you (except in scientific papers) that commonly available chocolate has little of the compounds they have been studying.  Commercial processing developed during the last 200 years eliminates these compounds from real chocolate - 99% are missing in Hershey’s or Cadbury’s, 80% are missing in Lindt or Green and Black – so real cacao has been all but forgotten.  

The instructions below will work with anyone’s cacao… however: cacao beans themselves vary in the amount of active compounds they contain by a factor of 4 (I read that in some scientific paper)… so occasional hybrids (most of the world’s commercial cacao is hybridized) have only 25% of the goodies my cacao has… other hybrids are ok for ceremonial use (I haven’t used them in many years… they work but the older varieties are my preference).  The cacao we sell is sourced by asking the Cacao Spirit where to find the best beans with the compounds and energies for our work.  With many lots of beans something has not been optimal in the genetics, fermentation, or drying.  Cacao that I have seen for sale from Mexico to Panama is quite variable, and most of it I would not truck home if it were free... tho much of it could make a yummy chocolate treat!  The next batch from the same people and the same rainforest... and i won't want it... there is that much variability (much more so than wine!).

If you are buying 'organic cacao', sourced politically as organic and fair trade, it is often from larger seeded, easier processed, hybridized varieties - and may not be potent enough for ceremonial use, no matter how it has been prepared.  Any bar may have and say “85% cacao”, for example, but that has nothing to do with how much and what proportion of compounds affecting consciousness are present in that cacao.  I knew a great organic brand, but it changed completely when they sourced their cacao differently.  Try it to find out.  In my limited experience, most organic brands have delightful taste and texture, but are unsuitable for ceremony.  I have yet to meet a chocolatier who showed real interest in the active compound content of their product, tho I have known them to buy my cacao for personal use with their sweetheart… with several thousand pounds of prime ‘raw’ cacao in their storeroom.

The raw food folks usually pay attention to how their cacao feels… the widely available ‘raw’ cacao from Ecuador or Peru has 85-90% of the strength of native Guatemalan cacao that moved north through Central America with the shamans… or, others say that cacao originated in Central America – anyway, the botanists consider it a different variety.  Most larger seeded hybrids are a cross between these two varieties.  Most ‘raw’ cacao nibs work well in ceremony if you use a bit more.  The de-fatted 'raw' powder is much more variable.  Be cautious with nausea, the main consideration in eating more cacao containing more bitter to get the same psycho-active ingredients.

Many South American types have a thicker pulp surrounding larger cacao seeds and has been selected over the millennia by people using that sweet-tart pulp, which is a traditional fruit snack and premium smoothie ingredient.  Look at the seed size for the cacao you are buying; perhaps 10% of the world chocolate supply comes from the smaller non-hybridized beans.  Sure, i have seen the raw experts holding up the giant (high profit, easy peeling, requiring 2-3 times the fermentation time with it's higher heat) South American beans bred for millennia as a fruit snack and in the last several hundred years bred for chocolate flavor (the Ecuadorian's are proud of their 'Cacao Arriba Nacional' - proud for flavor rather than shamanic usage).   

The Guatemalan shaman-propagated local wild rainforest variety cacao I offer has a thin pulp and small seeds and requires less than half the fermentation time, generating less heat and acid in the process.  According to the research scientist in the AHA article on my links page, fermentation is one of the things that can have an effect on the compound content.  The Cacao Spirit tells me that her preference is the short time and small batch fermentation of small seeds and small scale cacao production… tho many would not notice the difference in the final product.  If I could go out and buy ceremonial chocolate this good, I wouldn’t be processing it myself!

Spiritual cacao, eaten as whole peeled beans finger-dipped in agave nectar, is used in high-end yoga studios to facilitate that focus.  There are ‘cacao bars’ that do not serve alcohol, where one drinks cacao/ superfood concoctions and connects with others in the open-hearted energy cacao fosters – so different than alcohol (which works as a social lubricant by suppressing fear - ‘shot of courage’).  [By the way, tobacco suppresses anger and resentment, marijuana suppresses sadness.]  I hear of traders on the stock exchange floor who prefer cacao to coke for the clear focus without the crash/ recovery.  A writer I know tells me he holds 3 separate story-lines in his head and weaves his paragraphs from that.  With a cup of this cacao he tells me that he has experimented with holding up to 9 simultaneous story-lines... and he produces easier quality.  Creative facilitation, anyone?

That's right; in the drug or medicine category, cacao with the goodies in it is one of the best productive focus enhancers and creativity facilitators on the planet.  An almost untapped market, but not the one I'm interested in… I help the creative folks move how they block their own flow.  In my experience, the addition of coffee to a cacao brew moves it out of the creative-as-connective department and into the straight-stimulant department… but then I don't have a caffeine habit.  As a stimulant, cacao synergy improves coffee… another market.  I remember experimenting for a visiting emotional processing student who was into coffee… you know mocha, this was woke-a!  I sometimes put coconut milk, cardamom, chili, and vanilla in it.  The Cacao Spirit tells me that it will be a few years before you will be able to find this type of cacao in Starbucks.  But you will...

For most plant medicine teachers, you can extract one specific compound and call it the active ingredient.  Cacao has many active elements working together… it is a very chemically complex food – various sources claim there are 300 to 1000 different compounds in cacao… extraordinary in the plant or food world.   In this site's pages of either 'Notes Bin and Recipes' or 'Links' there are links for those wishing specifics on the active compounds.

 

Tat Isaias with Cacao Snack – seeds covered with delicious sweet-tart pulp

Tat Isaias (Tat is the local term for a Mayan shaman), my Mayan friend and worker, and I have introduced our cacao to some Mayan shamans (that would be the Western term) who live about 2 hours away… to 2 women with whom we have been exchanging ceremonies and inner work.  It has become a beautifully rewarding friendship… they really like the chocolate and are deepening their own way with the Cacao Spirit.  There are very few practitioners of traditional Mayan spirituality using cacao beyond to occasionally nibble a few beans if they are throwing them into the fire, and couples who marry traditionally exchange cacao beans as we give chocolate on Valentine’s Day.

Using Chocolate for Spiritual Purposes

My story:

Years ago while living in Guatemala, the Cacao Deva/ Spirit impulsed me to explore cacao.  She reminded me I knew from most any guidebook that Cacao was one of the most powerful deities in ancient Mayan cosmology… I knew that chocolate was pretty good but no god… so for sure someone here didn’t know what they were talking about…  

From hours web searching, the local shamans (they use alcohol for altered states), a friend apprenticing in Mayan spirituality for decades (mostly in the Yucatan), the now retired anthropologist living across the lake for 55 years, Martin Prechtel’s books from his Lake Atitlan shamanic training in the 70’s (his teacher used alcohol)… nada… nothing on spiritual cacao out there that I could find. 

I told the Cacao Spirit I had drawn a blank, so would She help me from here?  Two weeks later I was volunteering on a botanist’s project in a little community 45 minutes sweltering walk up into the coastal rainforest mountains.  I recognized cacao growing on the way in and in the community from all the web illustrations.  After our days activities, i asked our hosts, “Can I buy some cacao?”  “No… but if you come back in a week we will have some made for you… how much do you want?” 

I took the buses and then the pickups back in a week, walked into the mountains, visited and bought my 5 pounds (2.3 kg) of cacao, and returned to the Lake.  Next day, I took half of what the Deva/ Spirit suggested, as it seemed like a lot.

In a few minutes I understood spiritual chocolate as an overlooked teacher, and to use cacao as a facilitator with the personal inner-work and processing that I had been trained to do and teach.  We have been having fun.  I often go deep without cacao… I often use cacao – one of this world’s wondrous assistants offered that I might enjoy using and re-introducing Her in this way through my work.  In the same way, She will partner with you in yours. 

“My partner and I just spent this afternoon experiencing our first cacao journey and are both amazed and touched by how powerful it has been. We are both long time meditators and inner explorers.”  …introduced to ceremonial cacao

 

 Drying Cacao Beans

Using Chocolate for Spiritual Purposes 

For me, a major advantage to ceremonial cacao is that participants, once beyond the novelty of having their brain flushed with the 30-40% greater blood flow that cacao brings, are able to hold a good multidimensional focus for at least 4-5 hours, allowing more time for deep work with much less mental or emotional fatigue.  Many find that as their meditational focus-holding ability improves and they learn to work on other levels, a full ceremonial dose is unnecessary.  

I haven't used a full ceremonial dose in years… even to test a new batch of cacao for public sale.  I used a full ceremonial dose along with everyone else for the first years; now I take 2/3 of what others are drinking.  As I write this I am taking a break from international ceremonial travel delighting in my own inner work, which is often without any cacao at all.  Today I am writing, without cacao - but often I use about an ounce (28 gm) with food to spread out the effect, perhaps in a green smoothie.  That's my flow.

A second major advantage is that ceremonial cacao makes it much easier (for those who are willing) to deeply access their emotional body, pain body, or density on the dark shadow side... or ready expansion and higher dimensional connection on the light shadow side.  Especially in a vibrationally supportive non-fixing and non-judgmental setting, many go considerably deeper than they otherwise would… and understandings tend toward more permanent changes than with many psychedelic trips… but because cacao isn’t taking you, you must be willing to go by your own choice.  The heart-centered anchor that spiritual cacao is, makes it much more likely that wherever one is going, it is with more love and less fear.

I know a fellow with an Ayahuasca website who ordered my cacao and wrote back that he took it according to my website directions and nothing happened.  He was expecting to be taken somewhere and so went nowhere himself.

“…it was PHENOMENAL! I was able to journey deeper, with powerful insights, clarity and stamina for the entire day.” …just getting to know ceremonial cacao  

"Mama cacao is teaching me so much as I sit with her, and even when I'm not drinking her."  ...from a few ceremonies and a couple blocks of ceremonial cacao

"Today's New York Times has an article citing a journal that shows an unusually high correlation between Nobel Prize winners and countries that consume a lot of chocolate!"  ...from the web with a good chuckle

For those with an agreement to teach and heal with love… who therefore are not going to allow themselves to learn without that love… sacred cacao makes it easier to set down the big-stick cultural paradigm of going within to annihilate whatever is wrong with them.  Metaphorically, with fear as a frightened kitten or puppy under the sofa, a big stick is only going to create more fear.  In the same way, even 'Positive Affirmations' just become more combative war… go find the negative and put your arm around it instead.  Expect that there is a gift within, or you wouldn't have put that negativity there in the first place…

Cacao as spiritual chocolate is also helpful for assisting one beyond the cultural conditioning that pushing down and remaining in denial of negativity is the way to happiness.  This belief is prevalent both from medically using antidepressants, to much of 'New Age' understanding where negative emotions are judged as undesirable.

You know the value of asking for help… try cacao with clear intent and experience the cooperative partnership of The Food for the Shift.  Experience cacao with the meditation or journeying you do.  Use, rather than judge… trust where this teacher takes you!  Use cacao to foster deeper intimacy with your mate – as a connection and partnership facilitator.  Use cacao for a good stimulant buzz, as an exceptional creativity facilitator, for good social heart-centered interaction or conversation, good yoga, good meditation, good sex, emotional or energetic intimacy, journeying or other shamanic connecting, and to change your reality – the choice is yours.  Use it for its excellent ability to foster emotional release.  Discover it brings another level in breath work.  Use it as an addictive stimulant… this teacher will take you there if that is a place you have inner business!

Drink chocolate - get high - go deep.  Certainly, I call cacao a drug, as are all medicine plants… and like anything else it is not for everyone.  I get occasional e-mails from people, often into raw foods, explaining that drugs aren't necessary or desirable for spiritual purposes - that the body can do this on its own.  However fine for them, I don't work like this.

Whether such a statement is a high truth or a belief system judgment isn't the issue for me.  If Higher Self is impulsing one to use cacao - be that for spirituality or to deal with addictive tendencies - that individual guidance takes precedence.  I follow, having no right-way to tell anyone.  Of course, discrimination between the voice of higher self, the voice of a belief system, and the voice of addiction is going to be required at some point…

Cacao For Innerwork

A Ceremony in San Marcos la Laguna, overlooking Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Cacao is a heart-centered cooperative partnership facilitator, assisting in conscious connecting wherever your intent or inner need goes.  If you find yourself with a repetitive thought or image… little daydream… about yourself or another… take it inside, receiving it as yours, then follow whatever your Higher Self is gently getting your attention about.  As one does with dream images, assume it is about you even if it is presented (so you can receive it) as about someone or something else.

A story from an early ceremony:  A fellow complained that he had a story-line stuck in his head, and if he could just get rid of it, he could get with what we were doing.  I suggested his Higher Self was trying to get his attention about something… so what's the story?  “I'm riding my bicycle along one of the canals in Amsterdam, going into a café, and smoking a big spliff.”  So what's the feeling?  “I'm totally free.”  In the moment… in the flow… in the magic.  We went inside and soon found that he had being free ‘hooked’ to smoking.  He wasn't smoking at this time, so therefore he couldn't be free.  After unhooking at this subconscious level he sat there… grinning… free.  I told him not to re-hook it to cacao.

A story from yesterday:  A fellow said he was feeling restriction in his throat and breathing... and then he bolted out of the circle.  I asked him to wait and said he was receiving a communication from within.  "What communication?"  About (breathing) restriction of life-force and (throat chakra) expression into the world.  "But i feel much better now."  Of course... you ran from your inner teacher and it is not going to chase you.  "But intuitively I was guided to leave."  Consider you may have the voice of fear, an inner liar, assumed to be your inner guidance.  "But i need to leave."  OK... and he did.

‘Dark shadow’ density (fear, pain body, blocks, issues, conditioning, belief systems, resistance, emotional toxicity) that needs to be released, or its location in your body, will be brought to your attention.  Whatever message you need will come… just like life!  Your even scarier ‘light shadow’ magnificence… where you are ready to open/ connect/ expand will also be more accessible, if that is what’s up.  Many in my ceremonies sit in the proverbial pillar-of-light and blissfully broadcast that higher-dimensional frequency, making my job easier – that’s holding space!  This place of downloading higher-dimensional energies and filling until you are overflowing is my standard group cooperative energy where we all assist each other in raising the resonance for whatever we are each here for.  For more on this, see the section on the Glow Meditation.  Engage.

"WOW. Everything has changed. and I do not exactly know who or where I am supposed to be these days, but it oddly feels in alignment.... does that make sense?

It feels as if 6 years of processing have occurred since last seeing you in July!  I think I am still a sane human being (haha) yet feel as though I have been “unplugged” from the program and learning to live in an entirely different way. Some days I feel powerful and others quite boggled, but I still have my love goggles on! 

My life got flipped upside down ... and is just balancing back out, everything and anything not serving my highest good anymore came up and out... with a fury!"  ...some do it gradually, some press a big engage button

Background:  What you come into this life to work on… you choose parents and childhood circumstances to lock it in… you play it out with parents then, selecting certain arenas, with friends, lovers, business partners, teachers, and with prosperity issues in health, wealth, creative expression… to gain experience … if you begin working with ascended masters or guides, you will play it out with them… because these are the basic issues you have with Source, with God-Goddess – your God Drama, Deity Drama, Separation Drama.  After sufficient processing at the parent/ inner-child and relationship (etc.) level, this core drama with Source surfaces and can be owned as the game one is committed to playing… a game Source unconditionally allows until one is done with it.  And then the love that was always available is yours… and in the other arenas, too.  

Ha... I could do another website with this biggie.  In over 20 years of working with this, i have observed that major life changes happen when the Diety Drama surfaces as being directly with God-Goddess (and not in one of the many arenas)... and is dropped!

“If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself.  If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself.  Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” - Lao Tzu

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” - Carl Jung 

Some advanced systems of healing can work through suspending disease conditions long enough for healthier patterns to be adopted by the whole system.  So here we are saying that change is temporary, and permanent healing doesn't happen unless an inner and personal change in beliefs or attitudes takes place.  Whatever the 'healer' does or doesn't do.

Cacao often, for example, suspends repression in a selected area (at the head of the queue from a Higher Self perspective) and allows what one needs to work with to bubble to the conscious surface as images, feelings, or through assistance from the body-consciousness as physical symptoms.  It can be metaphorically subtle or it can be flood-of-tears popped cork.

In using cacao, you work with the density that She helps bring, with Higher Self cooperation, to your attention.  In feeling it, or with awareness of its location in your body, get close to it, move to or into it… and let the knowing unfold.  Feel it to the bottom!  As much as possible hold non-attached surrender and pass on the judgment and fixing.  Then bring in the light.  Give the density to whatever portion of your higher reality or the guides you are working with… and it will transmute.  That transmuted energy and the higher energy you intentionally allow to flow into the newly opened space heals you.  Do both… transmute the old and call in the replacement.  These things are often in layers like an onion... when you do a layer you are done... the next layer will be up in its own time.

“that last several waves of da stuff... each one way bigger than the previous... and with maybe 1 day in between... yikes!”  …sometimes it’s that way… especially at the end of playing out a particular pattern  

“You will be guided from within, at levels beyond your conscious awareness to navigate the depths of some of the experiential rites of passage. The keywords here are trust and surrender.”  …Oneness by Rasha

Afterwards, remember to drink water!  It is a standard concept in release work that the physical analogues to the energies you moved enter the bloodstream… if you drink… you pee… they are gone.  Water is also a metaphor for flowing emotion and can foster your continuing work in the energies for the next several days after ceremonial use.  Many have density up next day and have an opportunity to follow it if they do not reject it as something negative… ignoring or repressing it as we are all trained to do.

This Sacred plant assists in accessing physical, mental, emotional, psychic, or spiritual arenas… as you require.  Set your intent, perhaps as an issue you choose to work with, and cacao will facilitate connection with wherever you source your guidance, internal and external… however you experience it… whatever window you feel comfortable to open.  The magic and a deeper focus flow; because wherever you are connecting, the real issue is… will you let it in?  Or out… if that’s happening. 

Chocolate brings the door but doesn’t push you through it.  If you really want to stay safe in your rational mind, nothing but a good buzz will happen.  For many, this fosters a significantly different trust and use relationship than with psychedelics.  The type of intimacy facilitated by such trust may be an asset in working through issues where fear is involved.  After all, the literal translation of 'xocoatl', the conquistador era Indigenous Aztec word for drinkable chocolate (pronounced 'shoco-latle' that became chocolate) was ‘heart blood’ (so I've read) - and isn’t the fluid that flows through the heart… love?  …"The food of the Gods".  This is the meaning of ‘Theobroma’ the scientific genus name for cacao (by Linnaeus himself, the originator of scientific nomenclature).  What would a god’s food be, besides love?

What would love do… help with your fear?  Find out.  Find some fear, or other density… inside… cacao, Higher Self, and your body consciousness will show you where it is... (possibly dense, dark, agitated, constricted, contracted, tight, or just painful enough to notice)… sit down with it and get to know it… listen to what it has to say to you, this is not the time to tell it where to go, or to fix it - enough of fighting against it or judging it… feel it… feel the fear… begin learning to trust this process… we are all taught by the consensus reality to shove it back down.  Then open to receive, bring in your light, or feel it as love, open your crown and bring it right down into your heart center… put your arm around your fear… let the light flow, it knows what to do.   

You don’t have to work with fear, or pull it to bits with rational mind understanding… just let it go - you might have to work with the part of self (like an inner child) that is holding on to the fear, however.  Eventually many can feel fear on the ‘cellular’ level… I call it ‘squeamy’… squirm + scream… feels like individual cells wanting to run right out of the body.  Some have experienced this in life; here it’s done consciously in meditation.

A note… there are several emotional processing techniques that promise you freedom from your emotional density without having to feel it… a workable introduction for those in terror of feeling what is indeed within them.  “If you can’t feel it, you can’t heal it.”  The higher dimensional energies are not going to transmute density that you are too afraid get close to… that would be a violation and would only create more fear.  Most people would rather die than look at it (no… fear of death is not the biggie… most would rather die from their disease than look at the issues behind it).  In my work, sometimes assisted by chocolate, many are a step beyond looking… feeling it… and then transmuting it…

We are all skilled density movers by creatively objectifying ‘external’ reality in the 'mirror' and then experiencing it through trauma, drama, pain, struggle, suffering, and stories.  You can go within and feel it in meditation, or you can manifest and feel it in the feedback called reality.  Your choice.  In these times, this process is accelerating - as many understand.  Imagine a blissful grin spread over your face while a wave of old often-played-out density is deeply felt with full loving non-attachment, then released/ transmuted with higher-dimensional assistance… first at energetic and emotional levels and eventually at core/ spirit.  Oh my… the gifts that are within that!

Spiritual cacao would help you experience this choice to partner with your own higher and denser energies, and the accelerated liberation this makes possible.  Cacao is in no way necessary for this process, but is an option to facilitate experience in what we already understand within… with open-hearted centering.  When you laugh and cry at the same time, you are very close… sample your mastery.

Intentional cacao use is a relationship, a partnership - you are dancing with a being whose physical expression is cacao.  And as with intimate or business partnerships, your issues, your emotional and energetic density, will come up… manifesting physically or emotionally.  Yes, you will play out your stuff with cacao, like any other parent-partner-lover-teacher.  With cacao density comes up relatively gently, and in a way you can work with it, or choose not to.  A natural tendency for many is to assume that the clearing process, if negative, is about the cacao… many in relationships think it’s about the other person as well - you may know this as blame.

Some into avoiding or repressing emotions are not going to be happy with regular cacao use, especially if they have completed much of their physical level purification and are otherwise ready to deepen detox in emotional arenas.  If you view cleaning up your emotional and vibrational toxicity as an imperative for these times, you might find cacao to be an asset.  Here’s to an open heart! 

Cacao Headaches and Nausea: 

•a. The theobromine in cacao is diuretic, and headache is a typical physiological signal for dehydration… 
•b.  Cacao may work with you through the emotional body, and water is often needed to “keep things flowing”, as literal metaphor and more… headache can be the re-hydrate indicator here as well…  I notice that with those who drink sufficient liquid in the hours after a ceremony, the energies are better able to continue working with them for the next several days.
•c.  Cacao is a partnership facilitator.  One of the things that it helps you communicate with is your caring subconscious mind.  As Carl Jung pointed out, the language of the subconscious is symbols, images, and metaphors.  (As you probably won't allow yourself to hear it directly, as native-language voices in your head.)  In this culture, a head-heart/ left-right brain disconnect is the norm.  Here a headache is the perfect metaphor - the head hurts because it is attempting to meet your expectation that it understand and solve reality - for which it is not the appropriate tool.  Even with heart and higher input, the head is not the tool for things like directing one’s journey.  Tho it may be the tool for getting the appropriate ticket once a destination has been chosen...

I often see headaches with cacao… who else tells this truth in such a direct way without a big trip.  Who else will stand up in your reality and lay what you need to receive on the line, straight.  In your face… from behind it…  Ouch.  Many headaches lessen or stop following heart opening or head-heart/ left-right brain integration work.   I rarely see the headaches with those allowing emotional release or higher-dimensional downloads.

More stimulation than you want is overdose.  Above that nausea begins.  A bit more cacao and you will throw-up and feel better.  More cacao and you will vomit and not feel better.   Even more and you will vomit repeatedly and not feel better.   Cacao is bitter… enough of any bitter will produce nausea, and with more become emetic, making you throw-up.  At around 3.5+ oz (100+ gm), the average person will be miserably awake and throwing-up repeatedly for hours, perhaps much of the night.  (I've had the occasional person in my ceremonies who doesn't listen to me, because they know that in the drug world, if a little bit’s good a whole lot’s better.  I have learned to strictly monitor cacao availability with certain groups.)

Consider also that lower-dose nausea may be a metaphor – for something one wants to throw out, or for something coming in: “I can't stomach/ digest that” - for whatever life issue cacao is assisting to surface.  The level of nausea drops as one releases or processes the relevant issue.  Those who have been resisting such messages from themselves for some time may get a rather forceful heads-up, especially if they are headed toward manifesting something far less desirable.  “If you listen to the whispers, you don’t have to hear the shouts.” (Lazaris)

I've known the rare person in a ceremony to leave early... throw-up... return open and without judgment... deal with their issue... have some more cacao... and continue ceremony in a powerful way.  Rarely, cacao in normal dosage will work along the lines of some plant psychedelics, where physically purging parallels purging on other levels.  This is quite unusual, but it can be lengthy and uncomfortable, however effective.  I see it every few years.

Your chocolate shaman says… Injoy!