Adriana Jalife Castaños: Cacao Priestess / Café Owner / Divine Sister / World Adventurer

@tierrasantabcs

The scene:

We are in Todos Santos, B.C.S. (Baja California Sur), at Adriana’s house sitting on her covered outdoor living area with hot tea watching the sun set into the pacific ocean. Yeah WTF is right. Adriana graciously invited me to her currently-being-built-home, which is a bold move considering we just met. Within minutes of meeting, I asked if I could live in her shop (because I love it so much) and she said yes I could put my bed near the altar, and well, the rest is history. Adriana is one of the most chill, kind, easeful, and heart-honest humans I have ever met. Join us on the deck as our interview takes us into the dark (and back into the light).

Highlights:

• Hearing ourselves speak the words we want creates the manifestation
• Todos Santos is the beginning of the earth
• Passing the Baja test
• Numerology
• Spirituality being the thing you’re most passionate about in life
• America as in all the Americas
• Mishika traditions (Aztec)
• Mayan cosmology
• Native American practices in South Dakota
• Mishika had a very advanced culture and they mixed all the cultures they encountered
• The Mayan calendar Nawales are for self-knowledge and service to others 
• Archeology 
• Mythology and archetypes
• Moondance: 4 night ceremony of fasting, dancing, and temezcal (sweat lodge)
• Adriana’s Mayan animal medicine is Jaguar, who shines light into the darkness
• Life brought Adriana to cacao medicine so she could help others understand their own gifts
• Born in Durango, Mexico - one of the biggest and most unpopulated areas, where the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains and desert meet (there is snow in Mexico!)
• Feeling different and like you don’t belong
• At age 17, lived in Brussels, Belgium for two years (and speaks French beautifully)
• Studied “Mother Languages” for teaching and translation
• Went to a Montessori elementary school and used it as inspiration to teach language
• Grew up fast caring for her younger brother
• Learning to trust your own judgment
• Not working for anyone else
• There’s nothing more rewarding than doing what you believe in
• Community support has been essential to continuing her work
• Giving back to the community
• Staying open to how big your dreams can become
• Geographic places that feel like home
• The giving and receiving law of life
• Learning to relax into life, living in a place of collective conscious relaxation
• Making free time, changing family programming
• Being passionate about what you do makes it not feel like work
• Changing the pace of life by following the seasons
• We all do what we can with what we have 

A taste:

“Cacao is a beautiful medicine that is in the service of helping people reconnect with the real - with nature, and with earth - and with their gifts, and to break up the illusion of fear, and of being in this capitalistic system that isolates us and makes us believe we need to do things that are not aligned with our spirits.”

Favorite Song Line:

“Todos caminamos bajo la misma luna.” (“We all walk under the same moon.”) by Calle 13