"Aura farming," a term so popular nowadays among teenagers, is perfectly defined by three words: pose, ego, and superficiality. It reduces a person's authenticity, being, or wholeness to a simple scoreboard in a relentless pursuit of external validation.
Ultimately, it is a clear symptom of the spiritually degenerate times we live in, where everything is turned into a commodity, a facade, or a product to be consumed and "sold" on social media. The mystic Teresa of Ávila called the mind the madwoman of the house, which is now wilder and more untethered than ever, hunting like a junkie for what it is addicted to, feeding the persona and the ego. In the face of this constant urge to put on a show and rack up virtual points, the true alternative remains what it has always been: the simplicity of Being and the quietness of ordinary life, which require neither applause nor outside approval, neither pose nor stories...
Today, we are witnessing a total disconnection from reality and from Being itself. The madwoman of the house has found in mobile phones and social networks the perfect dealer to supply its daily dose of superficial validation. For this reason, recovering today the gaze of Western mystics like Marguerite Porete, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Brother Lawrence, Meister Eckhart, and so many others, or the yogis of the East, is not just a spiritual option; it is almost an act of pure sanity.
Fortunately, the worse everything gets, the closer our liberation is, as the Nazarene already warned us in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 21, Verse 28, when he said that when these things begin to take place, we should stand up and lift up your heads, because our redemption is drawing near.
A New Earth is ALREADY emerging, here and now, in the hearts of those simple souls who live their daily lives beyond the illusion of separation. These simple souls are nothing in terms of aura in the eyes of the world; they surrender and allow themselves to be consumed by the burning fire of Being. They are nothing and nobody. And the truth is, one must die to the small self to be reborn as one, so that there is no longer any separation between the lover and the Beloved, between you and everything that surrounds you. Ultimately, let us go beyond the superficial, as Marguerite Porete encourages us, to find ourselves in the mirror of simple souls, that mirror the mystic spoke of, a mirror reflecting God, the Whole, He who is LOVE itself, or whatever you wish to call it. There is no separation. There never was.
So-called spiritual seekers are not free from this. What's more, without knowing it, many of them are addicted to farming spiritual aura. The truth is, there is an excess of Christians, Buddhists, and a need for more Christs, more Buddhas... Less spiritual ego, and more Being.
Aura farming? Better to format the hard drive, and be nothing. In doing so, we are everything. And that is something you can do in your boring and ordinary daily life, which, for you who do not farm aura, is neither boring nor ordinary; it is all there is and all that is, you need nothing else. When you are nothing and nobody, stripped of any pose or disguise, you become one with LOVE itself, and its instrument in this world. Out of emptiness, which is neither a void nor an absence of things, you emerge as what you truly are: one with everything. We could say, as Thich Nhat Hanh rightly states, that we inter-are. We are One.
All spiritual currents, as opposed to mere religious ones, speak to us of this unity, of this absence of separation from Being. Advaita Vedanta reminds us of this through non-duality, pointing out that the individual self, Atman, and the ultimate reality, Brahman, are not separate, dissolving the illusion of the "I" into pure, undivided Consciousness. The Buddha teaches us the same through the realization of Anatta, showing us that there is no independent self, and that by emptying ourselves of the independent ego, we cease to resist life and awaken to interconnectedness with all things. Jesus himself speaks of this absolute union when he prays for his disciples in the Gospel of John, Chapter 17, Verse 21, asking that they all may be one, just as the Father is in Him, and He is in the Father, so that they also may be one in Us.
There is a beautiful spiritual story regarding this absolute surrender, recorded by the Jesuit Father Juan de Loyola in his work The Life of Father Bernardo de Hoyos published in 1734. During a mystical marriage experience, Jesus appeared to the young Spanish mystic and told him that from then on, he could call and sign yourself Bernardo de Jesús, because he was Bernardo de Jesús, and He was Jesús de Bernardo, sharing both his honor and his own. It is the total collapse of the boundaries of the self, where the drop completely dissolves into the Ocean, and the Ocean becomes the drop. There is no separation, there never was.
Stop counting points for a ghost that doesn't exist; format the hard drive, dissolve the pose, and finally dare to Be nothing, so you can Be Everything. It is simply about Being, right here, in your ordinary and daily life.
How do you see this trap of the ego trying to "farm an aura" or build a spiritual identity, instead of just dissolving into the simple mirror of Being? I would love to hear your insights.
Note 1:
The madwoman of the house is the term Teresa of Ávila uses to refer to the mind and the imagination. You can find her brilliant analysis of how it operates and distracts us from God's presence throughout her work The Interior Castle, specifically in the Fourth Mansions. In her original Spanish texts, she also uses other wonderfully vivid metaphors to describe this unceasing mental noise. She calls the restless mind a clacking mill-clapper because of its endless, repetitive grinding of thoughts, and a restless, flighty butterfly that refuses to stay still in the Silence of God.
Note 2:
"Inter-are" is a literal translation of the term "Interbeing", coined by the Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh in the 1980s. He created the verb "to inter-be" to express the absolute reality of interconnectedness famously stating that nothing can exist by itself alone; everything has to "inter-be" with everything else. When he wrote, "We do not exist independently. We inter-are," he was pointing to the exact same truth shared by the advaita vedanta (of non-duality) and the Mystics: the total dissolution of the illusion of a separate, isolated self.
