Imagine sitting in a quiet sacred circle.

The air is calm. The land around you is still. In your hands you hold a warm cup of cacao, the earthy sweetness rising softly with the steam.

Across from you sits Mama Jaguar.

Her presence is steady and watchful, the way a great cat rests in complete knowing of her place in the forest.

For a while nothing is said. You simply sit there, feeling the warmth of the cacao in your hands.

Then she speaks.

"Do not be thirsty."

The words land gently in the space between you.

It is an unusual thing to hear.

Most of us spend much of our lives reaching for something. Love. Security. Recognition. Health. Money. Even the opening of our spiritual gifts.

Jaguar watches quietly and then adds,

"You are the gift. Everything else is the expression."

The words move through you slowly.

So often we believe the gifts are the abilities. Intuition. Clairvoyance. Healing. The ways we sense what others may not see.

Yet what if those are not the gift at all?

What if they are simply the ways the soul expresses through a life?

You sit there holding the cacao, letting the words settle inside you.

And as you do, another image begins to rise within the circle.

You notice a small girl standing in the distance.

She is looking upward.

Looking up toward a father.
Looking up toward a partner.
Looking up toward work.
Looking up toward money.

There is quiet hope in her eyes.

A question she may not even know how to speak.

Will you help me?
Will you make things safe?

And in seeing her, something inside you recognizes the feeling.

The place where we look outward and hope something or someone will finally make the ground feel steady beneath our feet.

As you sit with the image, another one begins to appear.

Rain falling on the hard ground.

The water touches the surface, soaking only slightly before disappearing.

Beneath the surface the deeper roots are still waiting.

Still untouched by the rain.

And suddenly Mama Jaguar’s words return again.

"Do not be thirsty."

Perhaps the teaching is not about refusing what life offers. Love can come. Support can come. Money can come.

Yet when we look to those things to become the well itself, something inside can still remain unwatered.

What if the well is not outside of us?

What if the root drinks from within?

You lift the cacao cup again, feeling its warmth in your hands.

Across the circle Mama Jaguar is still there, calm and steady.

And the words she spoke at the beginning return one more time.

"You are the gift. Everything else is the expression."

Sometimes the deepest shift is not finding something new.

Sometimes it is remembering where the water already lives.

For a while the circle remains quiet.

The cacao warm in your hands.
Mama Jaguar watching peacefully across from you.

And something within you knows the circle has offered what it came to give.

And so it is.

Aho