Granite Sustains Everything

Yosemite Valley Granite View

A map of the soul from Yosemite National Park — July 2025 by Hugo Infante

It is not necessary to die physically in order to cross the soul’s realms related to levels of consciousness. Every stage of life can become a transformation, a fall, a surrender, a doorway into another way of living — a death into a new life; ultimately a step, a Passover. Yet there are still those who believe physical death is required to experience or cross these levels of consciousness, only when our matter ceases to walk. This is a petty way to understand the kingdom of God. It is here and now, given certain conditions and attitudes — from the body, from the landscape, from sensitivity, from love or pain — and through an opening of spirit that we can feel, even if only in gasps of air, the promise today of a Garden of Eden; of course, still with certain limitations inherent to our current physical nature.

That is what I lived on this trip. What seemed only a family tour of California revealed itself to me as a map of the soul — an ascent, a descent, a contemplation. And everything was there: the cities, the countryside, the farms, the forest, the lake, the rock, the cliffs, the vine, and the garden. All sustained by an invisible presence — the granite as heaven and God as the eternal sun, always making everything possible.

Of cities, saints’ names, and the numbing of the spirit

We left San Francisco, crossed San Mateo, Modesto, Merced… Names that resonate like virtues. Passing through on the road to Yosemite Park, I couldn’t understand how heaven could allow people to walk alone, disoriented; we saw bent, invisible field workers. We saw empty businesses, nameless silos, and hundreds of olive trees tended by torturing machines of unknown design. After beginning the reading of "La divina comedia" on the flight to San Francisco — still in the first canto — I was surely perceiving from that angle a spiritual perception: everyone existed, but no one looked at one another. And that is the most dangerous fire: the one that does not burn the trees but the soul — when faith becomes structure, when virtue is appearance, when the other no longer matters, when they become transparent because I have considered myself the center of everything, deserving everything. When faith is perhaps only evident as an exchange with God, or for others maybe as a transaction for a needed favor or miracle, or a purification probably not lived through the body — as if experiencing Faith were not necessary — until one stops looking the other in the eyes… and right then the soul stops searching. Some call it disconnection, others absence of consciousness, and the more theoretical call it hell. Let those who feel this will be an attack on some Faith remember that Pope John Paul II redefined hell as a decision to distance oneself from God, just as the Vatican also redefined heaven and purgatory. Thus, what was lived in California could be shown as a contemplative experience in which one could have perceived: an active, bodily choice of closeness to God; a decision to move away from Him; or the process of being purified — heaven, hell, and purgatory respectively.

The forest–purgatory: the vulnerability that burns

Further along, already entering Mariposa County, the road changed: endless pastures began, though dry and with little cattle during the summer; also some trees, later tall pines, winding hills. Signs of old fires appeared, as if on the road from the city through a mechanized field toward the beginning of transformation the inner fire had become visible, or the body in its push of wisdom began to perceive it as a symptom of the start of a path or of a Passover — like when the skin burns, the heart pounds faster, or the air hardly fills.

By the time we reached Oakhurst the fire was evident. It is the fire of purification, of awakened consciousness, of the soul that pushes, while the body also longs for the status quo or the shortcuts that promise to avoid the flames.

The trees are beautiful, tall… but still fragile. That burned tree still standing, whitish and leafless, used for birds to rest on its thin branches; that tree, like wandering walkers without direction, still serves as evidence that the path does not end in a breath of expansion during a retreat, a revelatory session, or in a rite that grants the Grace of the Holy Spirit. A single lightning strike can burn a lush forest. A neighbor aflame can spread their fire. An intentionally chosen companion can steer toward a misunderstood “liberation,” toward the transactional abuse of ancestral medicines given by God to generate awareness but not to distract; even the patriarchal, rigid, hierarchical, or manipulated interpretation of the Gospels, without an application to life, body, action, and spirit, can distract the path that is only beginning. There are many distractions — it is the body doing its work, it is the egoic need to avoid complete transformation, as if it came in software to be updated remotely or as if a pill were a definitive solution. It is the decision between the easy path and the thorny path; it is the cross that must be carried; it is the metamorphosis from stone to fertile soil to be able to receive the mustard seed…

This is the forest–purgatory. The soul’s stage where one begins to seek but still reacts, still inflames, still complains about suffering but does not accept it, hoping a tantrum will change life’s course. Here one prays tiredly, awkwardly, and yet prayer is more real than ever. If done with consideration — that is, with a focused mind, trying to avoid mechanical repetition — it opens the door to the attractive abyss of our interiority. It is like picking olives from the tree by hand. Looking at them, touching them, feeling them, taking them at their optimum ripeness and not before, not with a mechanical shaker that shakes everything down, dropping fruit, leaves, and branches. By hand, or with consideration, you achieve the best quality oil.

Like Jesus in Getsemaní - Lc 22:44 (Mount of Olives, Gethsemane means “oil press”; Jesus faced the pressure of his humanity, surrendering to his destiny as Savior not from disconnection or automation, but from such deep meditation—facing such pressure in his calling to be—that he even somatized it in his body, sweating blood.) Through this prayer from the body, from the lived experience, we connect inevitably with our path and our calling to be.

Without needing to die in life — neither spiritually nor physically — here the soul begins to put down roots like a tree that wants to live. Many do not achieve it because that inner abyss is still perceived as a “threat”; others, sheltered in prayer with consideration, from a different view, from action, advance like the pines of Mariposa County — they begin to seek the living water. Faith pushes to action; there is an impulse, a push to do — for if there is no behavioral change initiated from within, you will not move mountains!

The soul’s nutrients are the same as those of those vulnerable pines: humility, silence, presence, body, action. One tree does not make a forest; universal connection is needed — the perception that we are all in this boat; that we need one another; and that wars, whether between countries, invaders, or within families or political philosophies or within you at the border of your abyss, are the most violent fires that only sow disdain, pushing souls into silent suffering — that is, we throw ourselves into the gray cities described above or into a generalized senseless blaze. How easy it is to send others to fight! To blame others... The hard part is to go in front of the armies. To go toward the forest head-on, to lead the conquest of consciousness becoming a testimony. But manipulation from the gray cities lies in power, not in advancing toward transformation through the forest, toward unity of all in the Spirit. From purely patriarchal power framed in limited sensitivity to the other, others are sent to give their lives; life is not given for others. One is not a witness of the fire that pushes forward but rather consumes itself and spreads a senseless personal fire — like when only power and money matter as imposed gods. Without meaning, illness and self-destruction come, returning to the gray, leaving only whitish ashes.

Realizing this is not easy; at the same time it is a revealing vision, the body conspires. One feels the burning that moves across the skin, emotions express themselves, and fear arrives subtly wanting to distract. Whether it is the fear of having done something wrong (guilt from the past), of an uncertain destiny (fear for the future), or a cliff approaching the car door as we head toward Yosemite Valley — in short, the body sharpens its ability to sabotage the path toward illumination, toward the consciousness of self-knowledge and closeness to the light of God within.

But against prayer there is nothing that can prevail, and it kept me on the path. Contemplating a horizon full of trees and its endless deep blue sky with clouds perhaps painted in the Renaissance, making my wife laugh and entertaining my children with stories already told. Returning the mind to the road and then to another brief mental prayer that reconnected me.

Suddenly the playlist, without my knowing, was playing the songs that have accompanied me on this path toward my abyss, starting from my forest to the the abyss of consciousness. At last we entered the tunnel that connects to Yosemite Valley, and I remembered how during my meditations in past workshops I visualized my interiority as that tunnel. A couple of tears ran down my cheeks as I heard the songs, but they overflowed when we came out of the tunnel and saw the indescribable work of God in that tremendous Valley and granite Mountains!

May Lake: Heaven that cannot be inhabited

We descended quickly because we had to arrive in time to reunite after 30 years with my school friend Titi at White Wolf Camp. The plan was to picnic at May Lake after a “simple” half-hour hike. After a big hug we headed to the trailhead toward May Lake. We began the hike and the landscape became rockier, more bare, more essential. And also more demanding. I grew tired going up and my breathing slowed. I fell behind and they had to wait for me. Unbeknownst to me they informed me we were at 8,000 feet (2,600 meters) and I thought that more than four months earlier I had paused my daily bike training; I remembered my last trip to Bogotá (2,400 m) when I climbed Monserrate with my Dad and saw the dark, fallen Cristo redentor, suffering on the ground.

All of a sudden the mind started to throw me off balance… What happens if I can’t make it, if I feel bad and there’s no cell signal, two hours or more from any town — how would they get me down? I was facing a potential irreversible scenario... Contemplative prayer kept me uphill, helped by focusing on deep breaths and some pauses, jokes, photos and, of course, laughter as well.

Contemplation helped me realize that there were no longer so many trees; the granite became our path, the rocks and the vestiges of old fires. The trees were much more spaced from one another and I noticed it was less likely that one would infect another with its fire because of the distance between them, even though their foliage was denser. I noticed that these trees could anchor their roots through the granite as if this new scenario were only for a few capable ones; still we saw some burned trees, perhaps more from lightning than from contagion from a neighbor.

Once there, we picnicked and I rested; later I put my feet and head in the icy water. I played a while with my wife and children; we took photos. And then… the body said enough! Tachycardia, dehydration, vulnerability (Cai, cai, cai… this expression will be the subject of another blog post…). I had to lie down. Breathe. Be held. Amid it all I had to reassure my family. My dear friend Titi, as a testament to the hand of heaven and as he had done decades earlier in Buenos Aires, accompanied me to the May Lake basecamp. He guided me and helped me reconnect with the infinite power of meditation or prayer and to lower my pulse. A brother in life, an incarnated angel — such are God’s gifts on earth.

And then I understood: Heaven — is the granite — exists, but it is not to stay in. It is too pure for what the body can sustain. It is not a dwelling. It is revelation from this nature and it is only in gasps.

But also, that cold, extreme lake is a source of life. From it rivers are born that descend to the forest, nourish the valley, hydrate the city, the plantations, or the livestock. The water of the sky forgives, transforms, accompanies, nourishes, and blesses. The lake cannot be inhabited… but its water transforms everything.

Our heaven as the granite is seen up there at May Lake, where you are only with the water and below you the granite. But as in the garden (Yosemite Valley), which I passed through without realizing it in my haste to see my childhood friend, as in the forest, the meadows or the cities; the granite, already turned to rock, is like our heaven that sustains everything from below. It is the invisible action of God. It is like when you meditate feeling that your body is being sustained by something. You attribute it to gravity, you feel it as common and ordinary, but that weight of your body is actually sustained by that granite, that rock with its constant and almighty action. Heaven is the one who subtly sustains you in your darkest night and in the flash of your soul.

Heaven is our invisible foundation that sustains everything. It is God’s fidelity, who does not impose Himself, but is never absent. Therefore, whoever insists on reaching heaven for an earthly glory must understand that heaven is in our interior — in the here and now, at the bottom of our abyss, in May Lake where our nature cant stay longer than possible — and the external, although comfortable, is an extension of the ego and the flesh that does not endure because it ends up rotting. There I understood that penetrating smile of one who is totally free — my Aunt Lelita, a nun of the "hermanitas de los pobres in Zipaquirá Cundinamarca Colombia", who radiates a unique mixture of wisdom, peace, joy and tenacity.

Like that tree seeking to send roots between the granite, so are we when we pray from our desert, when we meditate contemplatively and ask trusting that there is an answer, when we believe without seeing, or when our transformation uses the external but does not live for the external. Entering the path of contemplative prayer we acquire an armor that protects us but does not forget our delicate human nature. It does not eliminate pain but makes it more bearable because it has been given meaning — as Jesus in Getsemaní.

Some manage to stay the course and others fall to the reality of the body. Anxiety, stress, or depression are symptoms that push us to understand the path of the soul. Some let everything go and isolate themselves, “get lost.” Others cannot bear it and entangle themselves in addictions — to chemical medicines, alcohol or to psychoactive substances, to the impulses of the flesh making erroneous use of money or power. The best and most powerful medicine is Prayer: to believe and live feeling that there is an almighty God by your side, always and even in the darkest night of the soul.

The rock does not bear fruit but sustains the tree that insists. So the sky sustains those who do not let go of their root, even though everything seems dry, arid; even though others seem distant on your path inward. Whoever loses the path of the soul but insists like that tree brushing the rock will soon find their way. A hobby like writing, a dinner with the homeless, a rite from the heart, contemplating nature, the smiles of your children, or simply a family vacation full of laughter, new flavors, music and many, many photos…

The city, the forest, the valley, the lake and even the fire are resting on the granite. And when night comes for well-deserved rest… the soul still remains anchored in the rock like that tree that insists in the light of the sun-God reflected in the moon and the stars. How much wisdom ancestral cultures must have had that contemplated the firmament even on the darkest nights — they say the darker, the better, even to observe thousands of stars, like the star that guided the 3 Kings through the desert toward the birth of the way, the truth and the life: Jesus Christ…

The garden: Yosemite Valley — the sky habitable for humans

Descending from May Lake we passed through Yosemite Valley; it was not like May Lake. It did not demand, it welcomed. Here the water flows. The green does not burn. The rocks do not hurt. Everything is grace. Everything is balance. This is not the “unattainable” heaven. This is the garden of “heaven” that God gave us to inhabit in life.

The garden is not a prize. It is an interior possibility. It is reconciliation with the human. Here one does not need to escape. Here God is incarnated for longer than mere gasps of air. He is present. And it was there that I saw the face of Jesus in the majestic granite walls next to El Capitan. There I realized why God as the eternal sun sent Jesus to the Garden — that is, to our earth, to our interior self, to that abyss's level we can understand, digest and have a joyful live — and made Him flesh. He did it to teach us how to reach that Garden and not get irreversibly stuck between the forest and the city in the seek to perfection (May Lake), maybe exaggerating for a heroic purpose; because life is here and now drinking this coffee teaching my daughter how to best drive, guiding my son to setup his new college apartment, going to our favorite restaurant with lovely wife; but also not to pass that garden unnoticed in the hurry for a holy or unique experience kept only for a few, for another nature. It is not to stop seeking heaven but to seek it without anguish, feeling that heaven like the granite sustains everything, and from there to reach the garden and perceive it, live it and protect it, being witnesses of the path both in the forest and in the city when the path leads us there.

We had a picnic, rented bikes, swam in the icy rivers and I kept a small river stone to remind me of that “granite” at May Lake and of how Jesus guides us with His light to our garden, to the place we are balanced, where external labels don't matter as they do at the city, where you can meditate, exercise, enjoy a morning in bed without guilt.

But from the garden we are vulnerable; our roots are not clinging to the granite and something may resist. One morning my wife and I went to meditate at a nearby creek to our cabin; a bee chased us and made us return home. I understood that we are not yet ready to fully enjoy the garden; there are still distractions or buzzes that confuse, we still need to walk more together. But that is not a problem, because whoever has been able to enjoy the garden or even heaven as we did in the Valley or at May Lake can go there at any moment, can relive it, breathe it again and by practicing conscious prayer becoming medicine and a silent testimony for others.

As John Lennon did with Strawberry Fields Forever. He also found his garden in a corner of his childhood, at the back of an orphanage by that name, where he played in peace, away from the chaos of his family. That place became an inner symbol, and later a song that comforted the world. What is your Strawberry Field? What is your May Lake? What is your city, your forest and your garden?

Those who come down from the garden

The garden is not only a state we reach. It is a living memory of the soul. An inner altar. A medicine for when life inevitably returns us to the fire or perhaps to abandonment, to rejection, or to scorn. A way not to forget who we are when everything burns. A way to be testimony of resilience and to become magnets that radiate light to others; we become a flash of that heaven that sustains us — silent light for others; now we are responsible with an embodied Faith.

On the way back we return to the city; we already see how the olive fields in Mariposa County and the vineyards in Napa are irrigated with cold water. We see San Francisco vibrant and multicultural; we see the cities from another angle because service returns in the humblest ways possible — maybe as a carpenter, fisherman, insurance seller or air-conditioning repairer. We descend to accompany those who sometimes burn and suddenly burn themselves when we fail to reconnect our garden in time — we cannot see Jesus at our side. That is why Jesus spoke of the forgiveness of sins, because our nature needs Him, yes or yes; because we return to our fragility …

And the one who has inhabited the garden does not stay there; inevitably we become incarnate angels, just leaders, balanced parents, spouses who walk together, and most importantly — this is done in silence. The only thing that matters is to serve in silence because one has seen the Garden and can no longer ignore or brag from the ego about what one could feel, see, go through the suffocation and return to serve.

When you fall again you already know the path; you have already walked a bit. You know who gives consolation and you know the true refuges. We already know who is with us like my friend Titi; we can see better and so we begin again the ascent toward the garden until one day life finds us toward the final physical transformation.

Descending from Yosemite I saw the plantations with different eyes, I saw the workers’ houses prettier, I focused on the good of those mechanized olive groves. I saw the irrigation with water coming from the granite. I saw that those plantations, just like the city of Modesto and the highway, were sustained by the granite. Arriving at Napa I saw how the fields are irrigated by water and mechanized by energy mills.

Epilogue

This was a contemplative journey, a unique experience that I had to document. Now I will continue with my reading of La divina comedia, return to my work and to the problems of daily life. I wanted to leave this living memory as a map for someone who is asking where so much Faith goes and for anyone who wants to immerse themselves in an awakening of consciousness from the body or from impulse, assuming the consequences and benefits of such. For whoever wants to remember that heaven sustains everything and that God is light in us.

Forgive my ego in advance; maybe I should keep all this to myself but I feel the impulse to share. I feel that there are people who perhaps need it, not to lean on my path but to be a flash of light in their own walking. That granite, that inner light is there and it is only a matter of opening that key — a key of the Heart that only each one has the ability to open by following the path, meditating in a prayer with consideration, learning to pray contemplatively, or simply following the Rites with consideration. Not every path is the same; pray to open perception, as when on the road to Emaús the disciples were able to feel the burning in their hearts. Find moments of peace in a coffee, in a short walk, an intruder insect, explore the simplicity of small things... you already have it!

Can you see Jesus face on this granite wall view from Yosemite Valley?

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