Paulo Coehlo .....

Posted: 25 Sep 2008 07:04 AM CDT

Another of your wisdoms says that it has a prize not to live one’s dreams. But a dream could be nice just as it is, don’t you think? Must all dreams come true? Sex fantasies, for instance, aren’t they often best as just fantasies?

You are always paying a price either you fulfill or not your dream. I can’t possibly pose as a judge and say which types of dreams should or shouldn’t be fulfilled. I merely acknowledge that when you go after your dream – meaning what gives you the feeling of truly being alive – you are facing risks and you certainly pay a price. The same applies for those who choose to pass their dreams under silence.

Many fool themselves thinking that not fulfilling their dreams will have no consequences… Maybe not for others, but there always remains a scar in the soul.

 

The place we desire

Posted: 25 Sep 2008 07:07 AM CDT

Paulo Coelho

A friend came to wait on our table - at a café in San Diego, California. I had met Cláudia in Brazil four years previously, and tell my friends about her life in the USA: she only sleeps for three hours, since she works in the café till late, and is a babysitter throughout the day.

"I don’t know how she can stand it," one of them says.

"There’s a Buddhist story about a turtle," replies an Argentinian woman at our table.

"It was crossing a swamp, covered in mud, when it passed a temple. There it saw the shell of a turtle - all adorned with gold and precious stones.

"I don’t envy you, ancient friend," thought the turtle. "You’re covered in jewels, but I’m doing what I want."

 

We All Have a Tender Spot that's Raw and We Try to Hide ...

In the Tokyo subway

Posted: 24 Sep 2008 05:14 AM CDT

By Paulo Coelho

Terry Dobson was traveling on the Tokyo subway when a drunk got on and began to insult all the passengers.

Dobson, who had studied martial arts for some years, challenged the man.

"What do you want?" asked the drunk.

Dobson got ready to attack him. Just then, an old man sitting on one of the seats shouted: "Hey!"

"I’ll beat the foreigner, then I’ll beat you!" said the drunk.

"I like to drink, too," said the old man. "I sit every afternoon with my wife, and we drink sake. Are you married?"

The drunk was confused, and replied: "I have no wife, I have no one. I’m just so terribly ashamed."

The old man asked the drunk to sit beside him. By the time Dobson got off, the man was in tears.

 

Quote of the Day

Posted: 24 Sep 2008 05:13 AM CDT

By Paulo Coelho

The warrior of light calmly goes to his sacred place and puts on the cloack of faith.
Faith parries all blows.
Faith transforms poison into pure water.
(Manual of the Warrior of Light)

"... A strong woman must be like the willow tree - while she bends to
the wild and wicked ways of life she will endure."

SYLVIA - Bryce Courtenay

The third cardinal virtue: Love

The third cardinal virtue:Love
	According to the dictionary: from the Latin amor: strong affection that drives us towards the object of our desires; inclination of the soul and heart; affection; passion; exclusive inclination; theological grace. In the New Testament: So faith, hope and love endure. These are the great three, and the greatest of them is love. (Corinthians 13:13) According to etymology: the Greeks had three words to designate love: Eros, Philos and Agape. Eros is the healthy love between two persons that justifies life and perpetuates the human race. Philos is the sentiment that we dedicate to our friends. Finally, Agape, which contains both Eros and Philos, goes far beyond "liking" someone. Agape is total love, the love that devours those who feel it. For Catholics, this was the love that Jesus felt for humanity, and it was so great that it shook the stars and changed the course of the history of men. Those who know and feel Agape realize that nothing else in this world has any importance, only loving. For Oscar Wilde: Yet each man kills the thing he loves  By each let this be heard,  Some do it with a bitter look,  Some with a flattering word,  The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! (Ballad of Reading Jail, 1898) In a late 19th century sermon: Pour your love generously on the poor, which is easy; and on the rich, who distrust everybody and cannot see the love that they so need. And on your neighbor – which is very difficult, because it is towards him that we are most selfish. Love. Never lose a chance to give joy to your neighbor, because you will be the first to benefit from this – even if nobody knows what you are doing. The world around you will become happier, and things will become easier for you. I am in this world living the present. Any good thing that I can do, or any happiness that I can bring to others, please tell me. Don't let me put things off or forget, because I shall never live this moment again. (Henry Drummond The Supreme Gift, [1851-1897]) In an e-mail received by the author: "While I kept my heart to myself, I never had a single morning of anguish or a single night of insomnia. Since I fell in love, my life has been a sequence of anguish, losses, confusion. I think that God, by using love, managed to hide hell in the middle of Paradise" (C.A., 23/11/2006) For science: In the year 2000, researchers Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki, of University College in London, located the areas of the brain activated by romantic love by using a series of students who claimed to be madly in love. In the first place, they concluded that the zones affected by the sentiment are far smaller than they had imagined, and are the same as those activated by stimuli of euphoria, such as in using cocaine, for example. Which led the authors to conclude that love is similar to the manifestation of physical dependence provoked by drugs. Also using the same system of scanning the brain, scientist Helen Fisher, of Rutgers University, concludes that three characteristics of love (sex, romanticism and mutual dependence) stimulate different areas of the cortex, and further conclude that we can be in love with one person, want to make love to another, and live with a third. For a poet: Love possesses nothing and does not want to be possessed, because it is enough in itself. It will make you grow, and then throw you on the ground. It will whip you so that you feel your impotence, it will shake you to rid you of all your impurities. It will crush you to leave you flexible. And then it will toss you in the fire so that you can become the blessed bread to be served at God's sacred feast (The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran [1883-1931]) (next Warrior of Light Online Wisdom)

Unto One's Self Be True

So if it was so perfect within, why then did you go in searching for something, without?

 

I still truly believe that when one feels unfulfilled, we will always go in search to find a way to be full again ….

I've had numerous arguments with this person around reason versus intuition, and every time he seems to disagree that its a stable and grounded foundation on which to base deicisons, perspectives and so on ... my argument is that its not something that one jumps to in a split second, intuion is a force, an insight that moves from deep within, in the pit of your stomach and gently makes you aware of its presence -and then ENCOURAGES you to allow it to move and expand some more - over time .... far too many I believe see this force as whimsical, if anyhting I believe it to be far more superior to reason - reason is man - intuiton is Life force, Life force is greater than us...... (but as always, humans are scared of that which they are not in control of, whihc they cannot see, and have to fully trust without knowing whether its really there or not ... I guess the same goes for Love - now thats where I freeze from petrification!) .... Anyway, here's something that came in last night after much confusion, twisting, turning, losing hope, reigniting hope, asking for signs, and still loving despite this all ... this has been my greatest love .... but where to now? I know I cannot replace this one, and I DON'T WANT to.

Quote of the Day
Posted: 10 Sep 2008 05:53 AM CDT
By Paulo Coelho

Whenever we need to make an important decision,it is best to trust impulse and passion,because reason usually tries to remove us from our dream,saying that the time is not yet right.Reason is afraid of defeat,but intuition enjoys life and its challenges.

(Acceptance speech delivered to the Brazilian Academy of Letters)

Paulo Coelho's Blog

This will pass

Posted: 10 Sep 2008 05:55 AM CDT
By Paulo Coelho

The Sufi tradition tells the story of a king who was surrounded by wise men. One morning, as they talked, the king was quieter than usual.
"What is wrong, Your Highness?" - asked one of the wise men.
"I’m confused," replied the king. "At times I am overcome by melancholy, and feel powerless to fulfill my duties. At others, I am dizzy with all power I have. I’d like a talisman to help me be at peace with myself."
The wise men - surprised by such a request - spent long months in discussion. In the end, they went to the king with a gift.
"We have engraved magic words on the talisman. Read them out loud whenever you are too confident, or very sad," they said.
The king looked at the object he had ordered. It was a simple silver and gold ring, but with an inscription:
"This will pass."

ALBUM to Listen to:

"Sensual World" by Kate Bush

Favourite songs .....

• Between a Man and a Woman
• This Woman's Work

Pack My Dream Away

I feel ripped apart when I think of how you gave up on me. Gave up on the beauty that was between us. I'm slowly turning to face the unwalked sands that lie ahead of me... as I turn I'm given a glimpse of why you chose this, resorted to this. As I look back I realise you spoke the words from the beginning, gave up from the beginning already .... Love shares with me how you've never thought you're good enough for me, that you don't deserve me .....

but I want to tell you that for me it was always very much otherwise. And it rips me apart as I see this, and slowly pack my dream away.

For U or Me to Understand me?

"An Unquiet Mind"

by Kay Redfield Jamison

(a note to anyone to read this book, including me ... )

Quote.

Charles Darwin

"It is not the strongest of the species who survive, not the most intelligent, but those who are the most adaptive to change."

Being BIPOLAR

BIPOLAR

Perhaps in a world that is run and authorized by the human nature – a nature that is not always aware of its own shortness in consciousness, and lacks the ability to be real with itself, we have 3 types of people…(possibly for those in transition between one space and another).

The first would be the mainstream, those that plod through life –and see it as the beginning and end. That what is, is, that they have no control over it, and that the meaning of life is to settle, get married, have babies and then die – and that all the other little extras are what come with this. The purpose in life is to focus on their dreams, the house of their dreams, the career of their dreams – but all dreams being physical and of this life – nothing beyond.

Then there would be those that are referred to as lunatics, the absolute extremes whose thoughts and mental wanderings take them to places that the first group cannot come to terms with and refuse to consider, and comprehend. They get hospitalized and locked away for fear of how they may contagiously “inflict” their thoughts upon the innocent young ones. This group tend to reflect that part of human nature that is obscene and macabre, but that in fact exists in all of us. Perhaps their purpose is to remind all of us of a part of who we are – that we are in fact made up of multiple fragments and that this does (whether we like it or not) make up one of those fragments – which come together to make us whole. … yet the first type are in denial about this.

And then there are the real.
Those that function in society but have been and perhaps just touched on the side of the second. They know what the human disposition is capable of – what it is really made up of – all three components. There is also an awareness of life beyond the limitations of this mortal physical existence. Somehow I see myself falling into this third, and last group. The difficulty comes in that this last type of person sees (without being told) which group people fall into, upon first meeting them. There is a deep level of understanding in how their psychology works, and a compassion around this. Yet there is also a fear as this last type of person acknowledges that they too carry all of the rest in them as well. After conversing with a friend yesterday, I realize that person’s suffering from bipolar probably all have a far more real perspective on human nature, human existence and life – and through their own severe and abysmal suffering have learned the absolute necessity to be REAL in all of this – to be REAL in who they are in their relations with the world outside of them whether that be one-on-one REALNESS with a person, or a collective group – to not be, to keep pretending, remaining in denial, and making as if all is well and fine, is just not worth it. It wastes one’s energy, one’s mind, one’s heart, one’s soul. And therefore one’s Life. …. And it seems that it would be this type of person that would actually be able to relate to all other groups as above in a real, non-judgemental way – because they’ve been there, they’ve worn all the dis/guises and have suffered through the lessons in how to discard them.

In further conversing I understood that our sensitivity in experiencing life is so finely tuned, and that it is in fact far beyond mosts ability of comprehension, and far out of other's reference points - their archives of experience just don't have that extreme of "stories" to refer back to. She spoke of her sensitivity to temperature change. And then asked me "aren't your eyes sensitive to light?" At first I didn't understand why she asked this, and then realised she was wearing sunglasses, and I was not. What I did respond with is how I want to climb the walls in my work office because at times the sensorial stimuli is just too much - the sounds, the sensations of people walking on the wooden floorboards, the lack of sunshine onto my skin - it gets to me, in a big way. .... and then we spoke of being real - for once it was another bringing this up - and not me. That was such a relief for me. The fact that I am not an alien to this century of humanity, that I am not alone, but in fact that there is someone who has reached the same conclusions as me. Who no longer wishes to bullshit herself (and I myself) with pretending all is well and fine, in our job, that we gripe and moan about day in and day out, that the marriage / relationship we're in is the one and that we're content in, yet we spend more of our time at work and out of the house than with our so-called "loved one" and most of the time are not even present to what they're doing nor the company they keep and the worst, is not knowing what their inner reality is and knowing what is going on in there or at least being let into their inner world by them and vice verse, that the person we are in our life is who we like to be, yet when we're alone with ourself we cannot stand to keep our own company and hide away with books and computers and drinks or shopping, that when we're left with nothing else to do but to stare into the landscape around us we cannot be with the true emotions that suddenly surface without our permission .... all becuase we don't know how to be REAL. She spoke of being real and I hugged her - I wanted to cry from shere relief. Because she gave me the space to be real too, with her, and with me.

(07th September 2008)

Missing ...

I miss my Best Friend, so very much. I haven't understood why all the
restless aching, until today. Its the pain of loss - the same as that
of my sister... He was with me for just mere momemts at a time. The
man I love let his soul live through into this world for those brief
moments, and it was then that my Best Friend was with me. I didn't
realise it then, only today. I don't know the person whose been living
as him over the past few days, I'm not sure I want to. ... I just miss
my friend, his soul is the other half of me, and I knowI cannot fill that space myself, its not mine to fill - its there waiting for him, because its his. I know that as things stand now, and at the rate he is not moving (humanly) I won't get the chance to see the rest of this life through with him, to share my life with him physically in it - the split between his soul and his human self is just too vast (and I know his soul and body struggle with one another right now). HE is larger than life, but his human heart and mind is just too scared to let him breathe fully with all that is him into this life. ... after today, I know now that we can connect, despite his body, bypassing his blocking mind and walls, in the realsm of the unseen and the intangible - and I'm not even sure if his physical self is even aware of this! I suspect not, judging from what I have been witness too of late. But his soul - my Best Friend (ever) - he's let me know he's there, he's just very hidden. ....

.... and I miss him - he's just stuck behind the bars of human masks and walls, human insecurities and self-denials. And I realise his human self may never let him out.

Stop behaving so childishly, it doesn't suit you.

Reacting to what I do,

because you cannot bare to be alone

will get you nowhere

it will keep you just where you are right now

and where you've been for all this time.

Are you happy being a slave to reactions?

what of your own creative choice?

does that not inspire you more?

but then you need to take me out of the equation - completely

and focus only on what it is that you need to do

for you

if you're ever going to get this right

I do not need a ripple reaction everytime I go away

stop being so childish

and find another way

to find yourself.

A Little Hermit Crab

You've been likened to a hermit crab

the small and timid little creature

who ventures out - feet first

into the big wide world

too scared to expose all what you are

creeping out, and just as suddenly

scuttling back in

for fear

for what might happen

I used to be like you

but now I am a gecko

I am curious

and explore the walls of existence

nearing close to others

out of a need to touch

with them

and be touched back

to be fed water

for my thristy spirit

yet my skin is still so thin

like a sheet of rice paper

that can be torn

with ease

i know this, and yet

I want to stay as a gecko

I also get so very scared,

just like you

I know this too,

but I like my paper-thin skin

and how intensely and richly

I can experience, feel, absorb

all of life

I invite you to come out

and experience the world with me -

little bit by little bit

you sometimes peak out

and I can see what you REALLY look like

(and not see what you let everyone else see -

a shell, with a voice echoing mysteriously from it)

... but rather I get to see YOU

You,

in all your timidness, and sensitivity

in all your gentle ways

and curiosity

with all your child-like intrigue

Why? I wonder

do you not want to be this all the time?

Its so much more fun

and you get to feel the warmth of the sun,

called Love and Life

on your spiritual skin...

come out and venture with me ...

like the child you used to be............. please.

Knowing One's Self

"If the man who I have allowed into the deepest chambers of my heart, still questions being with me - then he does not deserve me.

For this clearly shows that he does not yet know himself, and therefore know his heart and the dreams that lie therein. ... only a man who has ventured into his own vulnerability to know his real emotion and feeling, and has the ability to be present with this part of him, knows himself,

and only then will have the sight to truely see me, and know what an extraordinary and extreme gift it will be, to be with me, and me with him."

- Angela

Words that Soothe and Guide

THE ZAHIR

Paulo Coehlo

'No, I can't think like that. If I behave in the way people expect me to behave, I will become their slave. It requires enormous self-control not to succumb, because our natural tendency is to want to please, even if the person to be pleased is us. If I do that, I will lose not only Esther, but Marie, my work, my future, as well as any respect I have for myself and for what I have said and written.'