When Your Grateful Life is Great

This months process was interesting for me because life has been quite chaotic.  And the thought of not doing it felt wrong, but I never was going to be able to be prepped to host people.   I've been so grateful of being able to share this that I just couldn't miss this month.  And in the tradition of the Pachakuti Mesa, the best way to express gratitude is to make a despacho, as an offering to the unseen forces. So the inspiration of doing the dream worker despacho came upon me as I am always impressed by the power of the inclusion and weaving of those who can't be there in person.  I like defying time and space.  As I was tweaking this months dream work assignment and thinking of the despacho, I heard a voice telling me to make origami hearts.  I figured how hard could that be.  Well it took me a few sets of internet instructions and practice. Origami is definitely not intuitive, at least not to me.   And then when the inner voice told me that the prayers for others should be origami birds, I thought uh oh.  Fortunately I figured it out but I truly want to know who thought up origami....  As they say practice makes perfect, so I printed the seeds on floral-like despacho paper and the prayers on colorful plain paper and folded my heart out.  The latter ones were definitely better, but I'm only practically perfect and spirit doesn't mind.

Although I felt your presence and know you get what happened, I figured I'd send you a few pictures of the despacho process and share my intentions behind it.

As you'll see I had your seeds in the South East aka Manfestation Corner of my mesa and the prayers were in the north the section embodied by spirit, who's animal ally is the condor and the eagle.  They stayed there as I opened the mesa and until they were added to the despacho.

Another FYI, is that I had decided to create my own despacho play list.  Choosing songs that remind me of my path and what I'm grateful for.  As many of you know, I tend to be a little untraditional so it's a combination of rock n' roll, country, gospel, show tunes....  And I trust spirit and put it on shuffle.  As I started, the spiritual Use Me by the Brooklyn Tabernacle (I don't make this stuff up)  kicked us off as I started by consecrating the paper with the traditional circle cornmeal, tobacco cross and coca kintu. 

Next came your surrender which was printed on re-cycled paper and then burned in my burning bowl.  Which burned hot and quick.

I then layered the consecration materials with the ash, so it would be compost for our prayers and reams.  I also doused it with a liquid Siete Poderes aka Seven Powers.  In my tradition 7 is considered the number of life embracing all so out despacho was blessed with great power and life force.  And the circule of ash with red and white carnations, showing what can blossom out of the ask.  Here's a picture (although I started added some salt on it before I remembered that I wanted to send you all the steps along the way)

I then made an attempt to fill the circle with a yin/yang symbol with some pink himilayan salt and organic raw sugar for healing and sweetness as they always go hand in hand.  Also in the center of the symbol is the traditional shell filled with llama fat and a cross.  I didn't have an actual cross in my despacho supplies, so I got creative and used some dried cactus buttons to form the cross. 

I squared the circle with a lot of other goodies that are traditional to despachos like, quinoa, spices, minerals (in the form of pebbles from a recent visit to Stone Henge), candy in the form of Hershey Kisses... 

Next was the circle of your hearts/seeds/dreams.  Each of your hearts was accompanied with a pairing of pink & white Good & Plenty (you get the metaphor there) and a pair of male & female huayuros.  In my tradition, hauyuros are seeds used to provide protection.  You may want to know how we know which are which.  The seeds are mostly red and some are plain and others have black dots.  That's how you can tell gender but to be honest I never remember which is which, but the intention is balance.

Well you can't see the black dot in this pair but trust me it's on the bottom.  Then in between your seeds, I added your prayers with the origami birds.  Each bird had a coca kintu in it's tail feathers.  (Coca Kintu basically means a set of three coca leaves.  We use the leaves to carry our prayers)

I wasn't that conscious of each song along the way; however, I do remember that at this point the song Everybody Rejoice from the Wiz was playing.  Before wrapping I added some confetti in the shape of balloons and streamers and wrapped it up.  In the package below rather than the typical garland of dreams, each of the flowers wrapping the despacho had each of the dreamworkers sombres/essences.

Despacho's are often offered to fire or water.  Off I went to the east river (no worries, all of the products in this were easily bio-degradble and non-toxic).  As soon as I dropped the in the water the garland came off and the entire despacho started to open.  And I thought I had tied it up as snug as a bug in a rug; however, I took as it was a very well received despacho and the unseen forces wanted to eat up all of the gratitude embraced in this gift.

As Always, Thank You, Thank You,  Thank You always and forever and I wish you all many blessings.