Maria Farfan

The Art of Soul Tending

I have sought in shaman’s counsel, held my prayer in many altars, and asked the stones, crystals, amulets and figures ladden with sacrosanct qualification. I have asked meditators, breathed with yogis, searched in moshpits, sat at the feet of elders and stretched the limits of my mind, body and soul with medicine, to still find confusion, more questions and puzzling answers, after all. Why do we seek? No longer do I ask “what”, but “why”? I have found many what’s, but why?

I don’t know the answer, but I know the right question isn’t what. I know that the burdens we carry need release, the weight we press into our shoulders and the pressure that makes our chest cave in needs to lift. We spend our entire lives shifting the weight around. Boulders on the shoulders, straitjackets for the chest, bulletproof vests for the back, ball and chains for the ankles, handcuffs that constrict the pulled wrists back, gags for our mouths, blindfolds for our eyes. We live in shame, in self-deceit, we mourn the losses, not of the ones we’ve left or have left us, but the parts of us that have died, or in the best case scenario been left mangled on ventilator support. Countless flavors of suffering. Countless temporary reliefs. Countless steps forward and even more steps back.

We cower at our own strength, we shy away from our inner regal nobility, we shame the princess and imprison the knight. Why? We find comfort in disguising this pain, we find ease with burying our burdens in others not knowing that they barely have room for their own burden, let alone the ones we dump in them.

That which lives inside, that which holds the answer, can not be found elsewhere but within my self, my own self awareness. Not as the witness looking in, but as the uninhabited space between the pieces of fragmented personality, the vibrant energy that permeates the synapses of my living experience. I do not witness myself, I am myself, I am that high voltage electrifying energy. The fractured parts each tell a story, and they all create the mosaic of being, without them there is no substance, but with them in shards there are only fragments to understand. What is the energy that binds them together? What is that force that gravitates the pieces to each other in a way they best fit? Now thats a good “what” question! The only what that matters… but why does it matter?

The only reason life breaks us is because we are hardened by tension. Tension created by that very same energy that binds our internal puzzle pieces together. The same energy that binds watery droplets and creates earthquakes. This energy is conscious and it seeks awareness. This is one answer to a “why.” Without proper direction it simply goes where our attention goes, and frequently that is towards the suffocating burdens that pin us against the wall of our very resilience, because that is where our attention is directed most of the time, to our burdens. This energy is curious and it moves and shifts, because it seeks that miraculous moment when, through our embodied experience it becomes aware of itself. And what do we do? We give it duality and matter, we offer it a polarized experience rather than a multifaceted and open ended possibility for creativity. So why do we seek? Because this conscious energy that courses and rides us seeks to experience itself through our being, so do we let it ride us or do we rise to it and turn the lens on itself? We may just get a chance to experience ourselves through its infinite and unlimited potential, rather than it gets to experience itself through our limited and burdened self.

We are a prayer in movement. We are energy dancing in the costume of our personality. We are vibration densified into matter. We choose the frequency that we want to tune into. We are transmuters, take it all in, but don’t hold on to it, let it pass right through. We don’t know it consciously, but we feel it pressing and spilling through our pores.

So why do we seek with all external avenues, be they sanctified or mundane? Because we have been told that the holy grail lies somewhere and that somewhere is outside of us. Because we can find more comfort in letting the energy ride us that in taking the reins and getting electrified, transmuted… Because turning lead into gold is a full time job for the rest of your life. Because somehow, somewhere we got the notion that trusting something or someone outside of ourselves was a better idea. Because somewhere along the way we were told we couldn’t trust ourselves, that we didn’t know what we were doing and we needed someone else to guide us. We were told this as children because we were novices at our bodies, new recruits for the adventure of this newly handed body. Do you believe this to be true? Do you believe someone else holds the keys to your liberation? It all starts with love, love of the best kind, the love that emanates from your highest Self to permeate the rest of you, the love that soothes your wounds and lightens your burdens, the type of love only you can understand, because this love is the same energy that inhabits all of creation, that explodes supernovas and beats in your heart.

So before you lose yourself in the wisdom and experience of others, before you surrender your disciple to others’ teachings, find your own discipline and find the teachings of your own Self. You are enough, you have the answers, you have all that you need! No one else can unburden you but you. You seek the peace of the meditator? Learn the power of stillness in your body and mind. You seek the strength and caliber of the yogi? Embody your physical experience and feel the power of your breath, become the perfected vehicle for the energy so it may pass without resistance. You seek the innervision the shaman can cure with? Cultivate your inner healer, learn the plants, study your Self and heal yourself. You seek the wisdom of great sages? Study, apply, forgive, love, fall, fail, overcome, rise, step back, refuse, indulge, become the sage. No wise person ever became so because they already knew what to do, wisdom is evolution, it is the path, and no path is ever free of obstacles, challenges and victories. Be humble. Certainly, you can work with many allies, healers, shamans, teachers, teachings, practices, plants and so many other amazing help you can find on your journey, but there comes a time you must embody it all and become. Surrender. Stay strong. Persevere and above all, be compassionate, stay calm, and be clear. Who are you? Who is that sacred being that resides inside you? Who has all the answers to all your questions? Befriend this energy that resides within you and your inner wisdom will unfold.

So vent, breathe, let the air in, become porous, so porous that you are transparent. Be the sponge, get drenched in the experience, but dry out in the sunshine and don’t hold on to anything. Be the vehicle, let the energy of creation permeate every pore. Become aware of how porous you are. How holy, full of holes. Let it all pass right through, don’t hold on to anything. Know that it will change, every time, so it is futile to hold on to anything. The less you painfully cling to on to, the more Spirit can hold you, the more you can become aware of this shifting, curious, playful, transforming energy that is Spirit embodied as Self through you. Elevate to your unlimited potential, crack yourself open and let the highest frequency vibration break in and break you out of your self imposed prison.

-Maria Farfan