In the midst of my heart fluctuations I received an invitation to be a Cacao Goddess. An extremely bright eyed young man was creating an event with a strong intention of building community and turning people on to the delight of raw chocolate. The idea was for three Cacao Goddesses to prepare copious amounts of raw chocolate in a variety of forms, conferring their blessing to the assemblage through delicious treats and anointment with cacao butter. Along with the chocolate, the line-up for the evening included Indian temple dancing, singing crystal bowls, sacred music, presentations by visionary artists, a Mayan calendar specialist, raw foodists and cacao enthusiasts. And all this unfolded on Asher’s birthday, a gathering we didn’t plan or host, created for his enjoyment.
I made chocolate for two days. When I thought I was done I intuited that we still needed more and whipped up another batch of truffles. I had a large supply of materials, yet went through my entire stock of cacao butter and powder. I even used some of my ingredients from afar -- lucuma, mesquite, goji, blue green algae -- medicinal superfood treasures unavailable in Bali.
The beautiful people gathered, a fascinating collective of souls who have been drawn into the vortex that is Bali, spanning the generations and the continents. Displayed as a mandala or on overflowing platters, a table brimming with cacao tempted the guests to sample more and more and yet more still. Cacao with cayenne, cacao with cashews, cacao with mint, cacao with macadamias, cacao with tahini... As the temple dancers invoked the Goddess Kali, as the speakers shared from their depth of wisdom, the Cacao Goddess had the pleasure of passing trays of filled raw chocolate cups and cinnamon sprinkled truffles, connecting with each grateful recipient. With sparkler candles firing atop a raw chocolate brownie cake, the collective sang happy birthday to Asher in multiple harmonies.
As a bookend to the weekend, as if that was not already enough chocolate, Daniel Aaron, yoga trainer and raw cacao bandleader, hosted a housewarming at his new abode. His Balinese staff prepared a wide assortment of cacao delicacies. Having previously attended a dinner party at Daniel’s where his pembantu created a magnificent raw spread, I was curious to talk to this woman. While the party pulsed outdoors around the pool, I made my way into the kitchen -- surprise, surprise -- I must spend more time in kitchens than any other room. Three Balinese women and I had an in depth conversation about raw food preparation. Then I asked them if they eat any of the raw food. Nervous giggles all around and a resounding NO. In Bali, it isn’t food if it isn’t rice. White rice, that is.
Amidst all this cacao and high vibrations I continue having heart episodes. No longer one major heartquake or a single wave of them, it has become an ongoing storm of turbulence. I don’t know when it will hit next, lay low, don’t plan much with confidence. In the past couple of years I have lived with much uncertainty, but could reliably count on my physical strength. Now I don’t know when my body will give way or what will happen when it does. The terror is immense and mounting. I become afraid of being afraid. I have never lived on such shaky ground.
On the Balinese calendar it is New Year and the entire island has been preparing for the Nyepi ceremony. For weeks every village island-wide has been creating Ogoh-Ogoh, elaborate, larger than life size sculptures representing demonic or negative tendencies. The night before Nyepi begins, each village marches their Ogoh-Ogoh through the streets carried by the village men on a grid work of bamboo. They don’t march in a straight line but move forward, then abruptly sideways and backwards, in a crazed trancelike motion to the rhythm of the pulsing gamelan orchestra clanging on metal percussion instruments. During the procession and throughout the night homemade noise makers, created by exploding volcanic ash in a bamboo tube, thunder like bombs. The next day is a contrasting silence. No one leaves their home, uses fire or electricity. Not the sound of a single motorbike on the road. It is a time of introspection and fasting,
facing and transforming the inner demons, balancing light and dark.
We have plans to spend Nyepi with friends, witnessing the dance of the giant Ogoh-Ogoh in Ubud, sleeping in our friends’ home for the day of silence. As Nyepi approaches I cannot leave my house. For three days I hardly leave my bed. Generated from my heart and shooting through the electrical circuitry of my veins, I ride out wave after wave after wave of physical experience linked to emotional memory. I am terrified to go through it alone. Asher talks me through each episode, telling me the truth about my eternal being. In heightened sensitivity and connectivity, each village’s mediation with their demons has merged with my own. I am facing the heart of darkness, the appearance of evil in the world. It feels like a black SS boot is standing on my chest. A dark, amorphous blob is laughing at me. I use every tool in my box and every fiber of strength to love myself and the world and all of existence through this, to see love in the face of evil, to find peace in the midst of physical discomfort and uncertainty of my own survival.
In my first 50 years I did not give death much thought. I have carried a knowingness that I would live a long life and I have not had many encounters with the death of others. I have always been healthy, my parents are healthy, I still have two grandparents living, one of whom is about to turn 100. Now the subject is up for me. Regularly.
A bit of a respite and it returns. A pressure or burning in my heart leads to nausea, a tingling spreading down my arms and legs to my fingers and toes and a feeling of impending doom. I don’t know if I am about to die. I thought I had given up my fear of death; I have died and come back, have experienced life beyond the physical many times and know it to be exquisite. I know that life is eternal. I KNOW it. I have experienced the bliss beyond the body. I know that we choose when it is time for us to shed the body. I KNOW this, too. Somehow it does not stop me from experiencing fear, enormous fear, terror in fact, not so much of death but of death overriding my desire to live, sheer terror that I will suddenly leave my body for good at a time not of my choosing, imposed upon me by... ? I don’t know what. The mere thought of it frightens me.
Asher says, essentially, why don’t you just go ahead and die. That seems cold, but he’s been on duty with me for quite a while by this point and has some fatigue and frustration with the situation. He says he knows who I really am and it is not this quivering, extremely vulnerable little child. Beyond that, he was encouraging me to go ahead and fully surrender into whatever this thing is. He asked if I was holding on out of a sense of responsibility and told me I am always putting everyone else before myself. He has work to do, leaves and I am alone. I surrender into the sensations in my body as best I can. I tell myself it is a good day to die... and an even better day to live. I relax a little and find a little relief. The sensations subside. I live.
It returns again. And again. I get to the point where I am afraid to go to sleep. When I start to fall asleep I jolt back awake, afraid that I have stopped breathing. I seem to be in an extended pause in between breathes each time. (It is something I have been noticing for quite a while now, that I seem to be able to hang out for a long time after an exhale before breathing in again.) Or I doze off and pop awake with my heart racing. I must be absolutely vigilant about my thoughts; even the slightest movement into a negative stream of thinking can trigger an onslaught. This surreal movie cannot possibly be starring me. The walls of this old paradigm are closing in on me. Something must shift. I have heard that the aphid, after hatching, eating and demolishing its food supply, at the moment when it looks like survival cannot continue, suddenly grows wings and moves on to new leaves. I need to sprout wings and fly.
The next night it continues. I’ve been a do-it-myselfer most of my life but now I need help. I decide to magnetize to myself everything I need to help me. I feel it happening. For starters, I take a valium I received weeks earlier at the hospital and finally get some sleep. In the morning I wake up feeling fabulous. Truly fabulous. It is fabulous to feel fabulous. I am grateful to be alive. I am enjoying every bird call, every insect sound, the sensation of the breeze on my skin.
The lovely couple I connected with synchronistically in front of the photo of the Lubavitch Rebbe in a Penang, Malaysia museum call me, out of the blue, and are visiting Bali. We have lunch together. They have completed a few months on the Thai Burmese border working with traumatized Burmese refugees. He is a psychologist, she teaches English. I do not often pour out my innermost darkness to anyone other than my closest of friends, but my heart leads me to tell them my story. They are compassionate listeners and have experience with post traumatic stress. He tells me the low dosage of valium I took is not dangerously addictive and encourages me to take more when necessary. He emphasizes the importance of relieving symptoms. I could not agree more.
Later that day I visit a local apotek (pharmacy) to buy more valium. I try 5 apoteks in various villages but none have valium in stock, so I call my friend who had offered me some of her supply. She has just returned from surgery in Thailand with an excess. It turns out she has her own history of panic attacks and likes to keep a supply of valium, just in case. She lets me know there are plenty of other moms we know in common who keep themselves stocked, too. This is a whole new world for me. At dusk she meets me by the side of the little bumpy dirt road beside her house for our drug exchange. In my head I hear the Rolling Stones singing about “running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper...”
Driving my motorbike at night down a steep pockmarked road used to scare me, but it is a breeze compared to what I have been facing inside myself. I feel light. I still feel fabulous. Instead of going straight home, making sure I’m there to read my daughter to sleep, I decide to take myself out to dinner in Ubud. As I descend the stairs into my favorite little Japanese restaurant I see the friends I met in Penang, Malaysia are having dinner with my friends from LA (who have lived in Bali a number of years). Another synchronistic meeting with these wonderful people. We laugh and enjoy another meal together, two in one day.
Fabulous lasts about a day and a half. Some symptoms return and some fear creeps back in. I skype with my cardiologist in America who, of course, recommends an angiogram. The angiogram machine in Bali is broken, so that means flying to Singapore. My network of gorgeous friends here kicks into high gear and within a short time they have assembled medical referrals, flight schedules, someone to accompany me, someone volunteers a place to stay, someone else to take me to dinner. Then I remember that our family’s passports are at Immigration for visa extension and even to expedite the process means I won’t have my passport for another week. That message tells me to reconsider, at least for the time being, the medical route which I feel can only tell me about the mechanics but not shed light on what is happening in my being. I watch closely.
I visit a Balinese homeopath. A friend kept suggesting I see him and, in my desire to be open to help, I make an appointment. I have never before seen a homeopath and decide it is worth a try. Tjok is a sensitive, intelligent, humble young man with an unpretentious elegance. He is a balanced hybrid; his father descends from the Ubud royal family and his mother is Australian. I open up to him immediately and sense his understanding of every word I speak. Throughout our dialogue I notice an old photograph on his wall of a Balinese elder. Before I leave I ask him if the photograph is of his grandfather. Yes. I ask if he was a balian, a traditional healer. Tjok pauses, then says his grandfather was beyond a balian. He could transport himself psychically all over the island for various ceremonies, before the time of automobiles. Then Tjok gives me two remedies; one is from a highly poisonous Amazonian snake and the other is phosphorous. I take the snake remedy the first week and then start in with the phosphorous. I don’t know how they work or why, but I notice the volume has gone way down on both my physical symptoms and my anxiety. Perhaps it is just the placebo effect. Frankly, I don’t care. I am interested in relief. Every day I feel better.
One night I am in bed. I have been asleep for several hours but have awakened. After just a bit I notice our bamboo house rolling right and left, gently dancing. Sofia sleeps through it. The earth has stretched and moved and shifted. I have ridden out many earthquakes in Los Angeles far more powerful than this one and I do not feel alarmed.
The next day I learn about the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami. I find it curious that I have been referring to my heart experiences as heartquakes and heartwaves and now the earth has quaked and the ocean has thrown a tsunami upon the Japanese coast. A letter from an American living in Japan circulates the internet (and I receive it from several people) telling stories of heart openings in Japan following this hardship, of people coming together, taking care of each other, caring. We are all realizing, we are all remembering, how interconnected we are.
This time of earth changes, this time of awakening, has been predicted by numerous cultures. The time is now. I feel I am recalibrating from the inside out, fine tuning every system, every cell, to be able to hold more love. My voltage has increased from 110 (US) to 220 (Indonesia). I am doing less, stuffing less, feeling more. I am feeling... everything. And with my supply of valium in place, I haven’t felt the need to use it.
Now I have become a seismic instrument. I wake up yet another night, after sleeping a few hours, feeling so much energy going through me it is almost overwhelming. My skin is itching madly and huge energy is pouring through my entire body. Asher has been awake and suggests we lay down together to work through it. When we do, our bamboo house gently sways and dances again. Another earthquake. The epicenter of this one is in Singaraja, Bali on the other side of the island. My body calms immediately.
When the earth’s crust moves, it creates seismic waves. I believe we are all experiencing these quantifiable vibrations whether we are conscious of it or not. The waves are furthering us on our evolutionary paths.
Along the way the Cacao Goddess receives special acknowledgement, as if the Universe offers me a treat for diligently walking the path of fire. A sincere (very) young man who feels it is his calling to honor the Divine Feminine in all her human female forms gifts me with a Goddess empowerment massage. With cacao butter. I know, I know, it sounds like something more suited for the back roads of Bangkok, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was adoring. It was a prayer. Throughout the session this lovely young man channeled words of affirmation, telling me how beautiful I am, how important I am, calling me an ageless angel, calling forth my gifts into the world. Every woman is a Goddess and every Goddess deserves this.
