“No event has the power to steal our peace. The way we deal with our emotions is what defines the torments or the calm of the soul,” reflected Starry Song, the shaman who had the gift of teaching the ancient philosophy of his people to new generations. He added a bit more tobacco into the red-stone stummel of his unmistakable pipe, waited for the lighter’s flame to ignite the smoke, puffed a few times, and for a moment became distracted by the smoke dancing in the light breeze of a cold autumn afternoon in Sedona, in the mountains of Arizona. Seated in the rocking chair on the house’s porch, he talked with me and with Doba, a young teacher at the local school who, like the shaman, belonged to the Navajo people. Cheerful and kind, she liked to wear dresses printed with patterns that alluded to the rich culture of her ancestors. That day, she was not well. The reason she had gone to speak with Starry Song was Tayen. The boy’s parents, mountaineering instructors, departed to the High Lands in a tragic accident when he was still a child. In the absence of close relatives, he was taken in by the House of the Elders, a lovely community formed by grandmothers who cared for children in situations of abandonment. Two decades later, he had become a man known for his maturity, character, and generosity. He was loved and respected by everyone in the city. A few years earlier, he had been accepted to the United States Naval Academy, in Annapolis, near Washington, on the East Coast. He was only one semester away from graduating from that renowned institution, which had limited access due to the small number of openings and the rigorous selection criteria. He had returned to Sedona the previous summer to see his friends and thank everyone who helped him during the most difficult period of his life. That was when he met Doba again. Their friendship went back to childhood. Her grandmother was one of the founders of the House of the Elders. During that vacation, through conversations and meetings, they fell in love. Tayen asked her to marry him. The young woman was certain he was the person with whom she would like to build a new family. They shared an animic affinity. She loved him very much. She admired his noble character manifested in simple gestures. She had been enchanted by the gentle and loving way he treated her. The issue was that, with marriage, the young man’s military routine would take her from Sedona forever. Every two years they would move to a different naval base in various parts of the country and the world. Until then, Doba had never considered living anywhere else. She adored the city where she had always lived. Visiting the mountains of Arizona would only be possible when Tayen’s work circumstances allowed it, something not always possible. Besides that, the frequent moves would make it difficult for her to get a job at a school. Doba loved teaching. She feared the emptiness she might feel and how that could affect the marriage. As if that were not enough, she would move away from her parents and grandparents at an age when they would soon begin needing her. Although she was a beautiful and healthy woman, she had been a fragile and sickly child, requiring much dedication from them. She questioned whether it was fair to leave at the moment when she could finally repay the love they had given her. On the other hand, if she did not accept Tayen’s proposal, she feared never finding another person she loved with the same affinity and admiration. The marriage proposal involved questions that made her oscillate between fear and guilt.
I wondered whether Tayen was willing to collaborate so they could together find an intermediate solution that would satisfy both. Doba said she had discussed this with her boyfriend. She explained that the military routine did not allow negotiation, at least concerning settling in a single city or living near Sedona. Beyond that, he would be flexible and support her in whatever she needed. Tayen had studied a great deal. They were years of great dedication and effort. Giving up a naval career would be destroying a dream on the verge of becoming real. The young woman did not consider it fair to ask or demand that from him. Tayen loved Doba, his profession, and the life he had chosen for himself. He wanted all his loves. The young woman loved her boyfriend, her family, her teaching career, and the city where she had always lived. The loves were irreconcilable, she said with sadness. Being part of his dream was a choice that belonged to her. If she accepted, she would have to deal with serious losses in her life, among them giving up her own dreams. If she refused, the losses would be of another kind, no less important. Any choice she made would bring irreparable harm. She felt angry for finding herself inside an existential maze where she believed no door to happiness existed. The situation brought hostile and destabilizing feelings such as fear, guilt, anger, and sadness, depending on the decision considered. She felt incapable and lost in the face of the dilemma life had presented her. She suffered because she did not know what decision to make, she confessed.
“Do not make any decision,” Starry Song suggested, then added: “At least, for now”. He puffed the pipe and explained: “There are no difficult decisions. There are immature decisions. Once ripened, choices become stunningly simple”. He offered an analogy: “When unripe, fruits are sour and difficult to pluck from the branch. Once ripe, they become sweet without requiring any effort to detach themselves from the tree. They land gently in our hands like a gift from life”. Doba disagreed. Whatever choice she made, the losses would be bitter and painful. In her situation, there was no easy or simple decision. This caused her a pain she knew had no end. It would be better to get used to living with suffering. Over time, it might even serve as company to ward off loneliness. They would become intimate, the young woman considered, not without some doses of drama and fatality. The shaman reflected: “What makes you suffer is not the situation itself, but the way you interpret events and deal with reality. The manifestation of suffering , its intensity and its duration , only reflects the way someone processes lived experiences. One of the essential factors in the process is the way one understands the emotions arising from the facts. Feelings greatly affect free-thinking, either expanding or shrinking your capacity to understand all things, people, and situations. From this we can conclude that reality is not a text meant for literal reading. It is interpretive. Understanding changes according to the perception and sensitivity of the reader. There are many colours and amplitudes, as well as many layers of depth, depending on whose eyes read it”. He furrowed his brows and whispered: “The exit door from the labyrinth of pain is not in the world, but in the soul”.
The young woman said it made no sense. If it were that simple, no one would suffer. She claimed that fear, anger, guilt, and sadness, the four basic agonies, are determining and unavoidable to unpleasant situations, never the result of a mistaken choice of perspective , a view that observes without understanding all the possibilities offered by events. Starry Song furrowed his brows and argued: “Although the world is the same for everyone, there are a thousand ways to move through it. Suffering imprisons more than iron bars and concrete walls. If I understand as true that reality changes depending on the observer’s eyes, with a sharpening of vision I transform narrow ideas into expansive thoughts and dense emotions into subtle feelings. I begin to see reality differently. From pain comes healing. Bars melt, walls disappear. Walls fall, passages appear. The world remains the same, but life changes. Debased emotions and hostile feelings not only obstruct peace and happiness. In truth, they are also crucial impediments to freedom. The clarity of one’s gaze defines the elements of light or shadow with which the individual processes experiences. However, the way one will move through the days will not depend only on the ability to process the experience, but also on the courage to make use of the result of the equation one has managed to reach so far. Something not always easy. There is an abyss between knowing and doing. Truth is never kind to the proud, the vain, and the cowardly, but generous to the humble, the simple, and the courageous”. He shrugged and said: “Thus, suffering results from the choice of filters used to refine emotions and from the lenses through which reality is observed. As well as from the willingness to deal with the truth found”.
Doba was on the verge of irritation. If suffering were a choice, everyone would be happy and would live in peace with themselves and with others. No one would choose the continuous torments of the soul. Unpleasant situations are a constant in everyone’s life, giving rise to feelings of fear, anger, guilt, and sadness, or some of their variants such as anxiety, depression, hurt, a sense of powerlessness, among others. The young woman said she knew what she was talking about. She recognized these feelings taking root in her heart at that very moment. She didn’t want them because of the discomfort they caused, but she couldn’t pull them out or free herself from them. She would have to get used to the pain. Suffering was inherent to life. Better to learn to live with it.
The shaman shook his head and said: “Yes, there is more wisdom in recognizing and accepting them than in denying or ignoring them, when they then roam freely inside us and end up dominating and destroying us due to total lack of control. No one defends themselves against what they believe doesn’t exist. However, it isn’t about learning to live with them, but living with them in order to learn. The order of the verbs changes the outcome of the experience”. He took a long puff from the pipe, as if searching for the best words, and explained: “Learning to live with them leads us to accommodate suffering as if it were an inevitable guest of the heart. Convenience and conformism mean comfort and giving up. A crude mistake for those who halt their own evolution, the origin of discouragement and emotional exhaustion that steal joy and snatch peace. These behaviours differ from resignation. To resign oneself is to accept the accomplished fact. There is nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, there is wisdom in understanding what cannot be changed. The mistake lies in confusing resignation with peace. Every accomplished fact closes doors, but also indicates new paths. The interpretation of the fact will define the dimension, the amplitude, and the clarity of the reality in which one will live. Experiencing the same situation, some see no way out; however, others are enchanted by so many possibilities. The way reality is interpreted establishes the torment or peace of the soul. It is at this point that understanding emotions plays a fundamental role, functioning as the pivotal character of a plot capable of altering the ending of the story”.
He paused briefly before continuing the reasoning: “Welcoming bitter and unwanted emotions, instead of repelling them, shows the intelligence and willingness to live with them in order to learn from them, to use in your own favour a content essential to self-discovery, the foundation of all existential evolution. The result is realities more receptive and prosperous for the development of talents and personal projects”. Doba asked him to explain better. The shaman was pedagogical: “We are conditioned to feel pain. At different levels, we suffer in the face of difficulties, adversities, and problems. Inevitably. We explode in unrestrained reactions or implode in silent disappointments. Every day a situation arises to upset us. From irritation to fury, from discouragement to melancholy. One way or another, we try to expel suffering from within. An exhausting and futile fight. It doesn’t work. The most we manage, after fruitless attempts, is to hide it in the basement of the house where we live, the unconscious. In a realistic analysis, each person lives within themselves with all the thoughts and feelings that inhabit them as a result of past experiences. Hiding an unwanted and unpleasant resident does not make them disappear nor diminish their power of interference and destruction. On the contrary, it intensifies it due to the lack of control and the inability to deal with the confusion caused by a guest who roams the halls and rooms in the shadow of night without any rule or supervision. We repress the painful memory in an attempt to staunch the pain. We deny, ignore, pretend to forget, or believe that time will take care of removing the suffering from within us. A common and vulgar fallacy. Time is just a road that leads nowhere while the traveller refuses to walk. In truth, wasted time only increases the damage. At some point, the house will be in ruins”.
The shaman paused again before continuing the reasoning: “Living with them in order to learn inverts the elements used in the equation. Bringing to light what was previously hidden in the shadows is like adding instead of subtracting. The result will be diametrically opposite. Instead of denying, ignoring, or trying to expel the painful feeling, or even trying to find some reason to explain the fact, try welcoming and listening to the emotion that manifested. It is yours. It always was. Stop treating the messenger as if it were an enemy”. Doba interrupted to say she did not understand that last sentence. The shaman clarified: “Fear, guilt, anger, and sadness manifest something still misunderstood and poorly processed within us. They are bearers of messages of healing. They didn’t come from the world; it was the soul that sent them. Although the facts are external, the feelings belong to the one who feels them. They are part of who we are. They speak of what is most intimate within us. Taking care of them is taking care of ourselves. They are far too precious. They carry the code of who we can become. For that, it will be necessary to understand their origins. Bitter emotions are born in dark corners, still averse to light, from bitter memories and poorly processed experiences. They show what needs to be understood and rebuilt. Believe me, there are hidden seeds of love and light behind every bitterness. Making them germinate ends suffering. Definitively”.
Doba liked the perspective offered by the shaman, but questioned what the dialogue with painful feelings would be like so that suffering would disappear. Starry Song’s eyes smiled as if he had been waiting for that question to complete the philosophical framework, and he explained: “Let us stick to the four basic agonies: anger, fear, sadness, and guilt. Remember that the problem does not lie in these emotions but in how we understand and deal with them. These are feelings that speak about ignored, underestimated, denied, hidden, or misunderstood aspects and characteristics that, until we bring them into the light of awareness to be understood and re-educated, will function as existential locks preventing us from going beyond who we are. They are codes for freedom and peace”.
Starry Song puffed the pipe and pondered: “The dialogue begins when we replace reaction, always immediate and filled with the shadows manifested by the unconscious , the dark basement where each one lives within themselves , with a reasoned response to the stimulus that triggers the emotion, possible only after a loving conversation with the inhabitants of the dark corners in the clear environment of a lucid mind moved by a serene heart”. The young woman interrupted again to ask how she could think with a calm heart when enveloped by anger or fear. Starry Song explained: “Stop treating dense emotions as unwanted or as enemies; treat them as messengers of your evolution. Changing the mind’s tuning alters the heart’s frequency”. Then he concluded: “The conversations with these inhabitants represent the most important encounters you will ever have in life: the Doba you know with the Doba you still don’t know within yourself”.
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Parte inferior do formulárioNext, he began to analyse, in theory, some of the meanings behind the messages carried by those feelings: “Anger may indicate that an important value has been violated. An intrinsic boundary has been invaded. Often because we granted an undue permission. Something internal needs better understanding and an urgent reconstruction. More careful boundaries become necessary. On another side, and equally important, when anger insists on remaining, it may show a tremendous difficulty in forgiving. Fear signals abandoned or depreciated personal potentialities, mistaken readings of reality, approaches to possibilities of movement that were neglected or improperly evaluated. Sadness shows the inability to deal with losses, to let go of the habits of thinking and feeling, to respond to the changes required by life, it speaks of the difficulty of releasing what needs to go and giving up what needs to stay. Guilt shows the inability to face mistakes, admit one’s own fallibility, learn from errors, overcome regrets, dissolve pride and, most importantly, forgive oneself. It can tell us about the limits of burdens we should or should not bear, the duties that belong to us and those that are not our responsibility, in the exact balance offered by the binomials responsibility-possibility and generosity-sound judgment”. Doba listened attentively and commented that unrestrained emotions, in truth, were wonderful teachers. Starry Song nodded and continued: “We react to the stimulus by automatism as if behaviour were immutable and suffering inevitable. The results of the many experiences lived over the years form the filters and lenses we use to refine situations and read reality. As previous experiences resulted in suffering, we continue to react poorly by using polluted filters and clouded lenses. As a consequence, suffering seems endless. We will live in an increasing spiral of pain and exhaustion. Until this practice is interrupted and reversed to generate a different, effective and healthy behaviour, happiness, peace and freedom will remain fictional images”.
The first star of the night appeared on the horizon. From the porch, Doba had a distant look as if she were seeing a door she needed to cross. Starry Song took the double-sided drum and invited us to sit under the leafy oak tree in the yard. He asked the young woman to close her eyes and chanted a soft ancestral song. He let the music loosen the bonds of mental and emotional conditioning so that, soon after, he could ask her to imagine an encounter with herself. As if they were two people talking about the dilemmas that afflicted them. While one spoke about the problems and doubts, evoking the emotions of fear, guilt, anger and sadness, the other pointed out possibilities based on the messages brought by those feelings. After an amount of time I cannot pinpoint, Doba whispered that although the emotions had not disappeared completely, she no longer felt oppressed or suffocated by them. She could already see them as allies willing to show important and unknown aspects about herself. The shaman asked her to continue the intrinsic dialogue. Although more subtle, the suffering remained because she was still not entirely sure about the choices guided by the soul. Many more hours were necessary. Dawn was breaking the night when the young woman opened her eyes and offered us a beautiful smile.
Doba said she had the solution to her agonies. She had no doubt that by putting it into practice, the last remnants of that suffering would be healed. With no trace of insecurity or imbalance, the young woman revealed her decision: I am going to marry Tayen. It is a love like no other. The good I do for myself will make up for what I leave behind. If something does not leave, nothing new will arrive. I will replace teaching with literature. The teacher will give way to the author. Writing novels has always been my greatest dream, never confessed for lack of boldness and courage. My parents and grandparents do not yet need my care and, if that day comes, they will be welcomed with all affection into my home, wherever I may be. They will never be abandoned. I will explain to them my plans, dreams, feelings and reasons. I cannot stop living my own story in order to keep static a reality that, in truth, is dynamic. The gaze of love and dignity is what frees, never what imprisons. If loves cannot be reconciled, it is because they are not loves. As for Sedona, it will always be here. It will be a beautiful city inhabiting my memories and stories, both the ones lived and the ones I will create. Whenever possible, and when my heart asks, I will come to meet it. She paused before concluding: I suffered because I refused to listen to the messages coming from the soul. To grow, I needed to close a cycle. A new story within my story needs to begin. For that, boldness and courage are essential. The seed must die to become tree, flower and fruit.
She turned to Starry Song and asked why the choices that had seemed difficult and complicated the day before now appeared simple and easy. The shaman curved his lips in a smile and ended the ceremony: “By listening to the messages brought by the emotions you rejected and considered bad, you were able to hear the voice of the soul, its needs and evolutionary yearnings. With the maturing of your choices, it became possible to find the exit of the labyrinth that kept you lost within yourself”. With her eyes shining, Doba thanked the shaman and left. She had a life waiting. I watched her cross the gate of the house. As if she had wings, it was impossible not to notice an indescribable lightness until then non-existent in her walk.
Translated by: Cazmilian Zórdic
